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As of 2020s and much earlier, Ciro Santilli believes that undergrad studies were fundamentally broken (considering the Information Age which completely changed what would be possible) because university had only two goals, with the exception of a few enlightened professors:As a result, most students, who would not go on to do a PhD essentially do a simple trade: all their time, and possibly some money, in exchange for imbuing themselves with the incredible name of a respected institution so they can get better jobs later on.
- rank students from worse to best so they can get into PhD programs.For regular jobs grades didn't even matter as much compared the prestige of your university (and therefore, university entry exam grades) and your ability to stand the stress of exams to get minimal passing grade.In particular, being able to rank requires setting the difficulty level at a point where you can see a normal distribution in grades, and not have everyone at either 0 nor 100%.
- get money from the students. Of course, in countries where university is "free", this means reporting how many students you had to some government office so they can give you a corresponding budget. But you still have an incentive to enroll as many as possible.
You just have to spend a few minutes with students until they complain about the courses or teachers. And you just have to spend a few hours with teachers until they complain about the students or broader system.
University is broken, and everyone knows it. The only question now is finding a viable, "political cash flow positive" path, into something better.
Bibliography:
- academeblog.org/2022/10/05/american-universities-are-going-to-implode/ American Universities Are Going to Implode (2022) by www.linkedin.com/in/jsgabin/
- theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/04/higher-education-implode-alexander-zubatov.html Higher Education Is About to Implode by Alexander Zubatov (2020)
- 2024-05-28 www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/28/i-see-little-point-uk-university-students-on-why-attendance-has-plummeted ‘I see little point’: UK university students on why attendance has plummetedGive it to me, baby. OurBigBook incoming.
"There’s a bit of a feeling that there is just box-ticking going on [among students], and getting a degree at the end of it."
Amazing project, that basically makes a more searchable Wayback Machine.
A bit hard to use their data though, partly due to size, but also lack of free to use querrying mechanisms, and how obtuse Amazon S3 is to use.
Notably, aws-cli with an account is the only reliable way, everything else is way too broken, e.g. trying the to check the an index index.commoncrawl.org/CC-MAIN-2023-06/ very often 500s.
But still, their projct is amazing.
The only out-of-the-box search they seem to have is: urlsearch.commoncrawl.org/ for domains/URLs. It is good, but there could be so much more... notably IPs.
Sample sizes can be found at: commoncrawl.org/2023/04/mar-apr-2023-crawl-archive-now-available/
To explore the data, after login:
aws s3 ls s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/Copy the toplevel directory only:
aws s3 cp s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/ . --recursive --exclude "*/*"Copy some wet/wat files:
aws s3 cp s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/wat/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.wat.gz .
aws s3 sync s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/wet/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.wet.gz .Directory structrure:
- cc-index.paths.gz (1K)
- cc-index-table.paths.gz (1K)
- segment.paths.gz (1.7K) Sample lines:
crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/ crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381630/ - index.html (2.3K)
- wat.paths.gz (98K) Sample lines:
crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/wat/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.wat.gz crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/wat/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.wat.gz - wet.paths.gz (98K) Sample lines:
crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/wet/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.wet.gz crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/wet/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.wet.gz - warc.paths.gz (99K)
crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz - segments: directgory with actual data
- 1368696381249: one of many segments, any meaning of name?
- CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.wet.gz (142M, 334M unzipped)A tiny bit of metadata, and then plaintext content from the website, e.g. the second one:No IP unfortunately.
WARC/1.0 WARC-Type: conversion WARC-Target-URI: http://004eeb5.netsolhost.com/stephensilver.htm WARC-Date: 2013-05-18T08:11:02Z WARC-Record-ID: <urn:uuid:773b31ba-ddc6-47a5-ae24-d08141b9944d> WARC-Refers-To: <urn:uuid:4b1bdbff-4926-4ced-86f6-072f5bb3837a> WARC-Block-Digest: sha1:LQFSCR2LIJQYMPTXRHWU7HAPQTVSYS3A Content-Type: text/plain Content-Length: 12046 Stephen Silver is a journalist and editor who specializes in the areas of politics, pop culture, film and sports. He works as an editor with the North American Publishing Co. and as a film critic with The Trend, a local newspaper in the Philadelphia area. - A lot of JSON metadata and no contents as desired. Contains IP! Some entries however are humongous with a ton of useless data, that's what bloats these so much:Let's beautify one of them to see it better:
WARC/1.0 WARC-Type: metadata WARC-Target-URI: CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz WARC-Date: 2013-11-22T14:51:12Z WARC-Record-ID: <urn:uuid:ec54e493-8965-41be-b344-07596cc30b3a> WARC-Refers-To: <urn:uuid:cfeff436-7c4c-4119-aaa4-ec2ce27ad3e1> Content-Type: application/json Content-Length: 1180 {"Envelope":{"Format":"WARC","WARC-Header-Length":"274","Block-Digest":"sha1:JCZOI4V3UOTXGIRLFMPLW4J2WPLAKGVR","Actual-Content-Length":"372","WARC-Header-Metadata":{"WARC-Type":"warcinfo","WARC-Filename":"CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz","WARC-Date":"2013-11-22T14:51:12Z","Content-Length":"372","WARC-Record-ID":"<urn:uuid:cfeff436-7c4c-4119-aaa4-ec2ce27ad3e1>","Content-Type":"application/warc-fields"},"Payload-Metadata":{"Trailing-Slop-Length":"0","Actual-Content-Type":"application/warc-fields","Actual-Content-Length":"372","Headers-Corrupt":true,"WARC-Info-Metadata":{"robots":"classic","software":"Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0","description":"Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for Spring 2013","hostname":"ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal","format":"WARC File Format 1.0","isPartOf":"CC-MAIN-2013-20","operator":"CommonCrawl Admin","publisher":"CommonCrawl"}}},"Container":{"Compressed":true,"Gzip-Metadata":{"Footer-Length":"8","Deflate-Length":"453","Header-Length":"10","Inflated-CRC":"866052549","Inflated-Length":"650"},"Offset":"0","Filename":"CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz"}} WARC/1.0 WARC-Type: metadata WARC-Target-URI: http://%20jwashington@ap.org/Content/Press-Release/2012/How-AP-reported-in-all-formats-from-tornado-stricken-regions WARC-Date: 2013-05-18T05:48:54Z WARC-Record-ID: <urn:uuid:d519658f-7a63-46c1-849b-4cd92332ddb8> WARC-Refers-To: <urn:uuid:cefd363b-1fec-4590-8305-4c6fab2e095f> Content-Type: application/json Content-Length: 1501 {"Envelope":{"Format":"WARC","WARC-Header-Length":"433","Block-Digest":"sha1:B2B6JDSGWCUQIIUGV54SXEE25RX4SANS","Actual-Content-Length":"302","WARC-Header-Metadata":{"WARC-Type":"request","WARC-Date":"2013-05-18T05:48:54Z","WARC-Warcinfo-ID":"<urn:uuid:cfeff436-7c4c-4119-aaa4-ec2ce27ad3e1>","Content-Length":"302","WARC-Record-ID":"<urn:uuid:cefd363b-1fec-4590-8305-4c6fab2e095f>","WARC-Target-URI":"http://%20jwashington@ap.org/Content/Press-Release/2012/How-AP-reported-in-all-formats-from-tornado-stricken-regions","WARC-IP-Address":"165.1.125.44","Content-Type":"application/http; msgtype=request"},"Payload-Metadata":{"Trailing-Slop-Length":"4","HTTP-Request-Metadata":{"Headers":{"Accept-Language":"en-us,en-gb,en;q=0.7,*;q=0.3","Host":"ap.org","Accept-Encoding":"x-gzip, gzip, deflate","User-Agent":"CCBot/2.0","Accept":"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8"},"Headers-Length":"300","Entity-Length":"0","Entity-Trailing-Slop-Bytes":"0","Request-Message":{"Method":"GET","Version":"HTTP/1.0","Path":"/Content/Press-Release/2012/How-AP-reported-in-all-formats-from-tornado-stricken-regions"},"Entity-Digest":"sha1:3I42H3S6NNFQ2MSVX7XZKYAYSCX5QBYJ"},"Actual-Content-Type":"application/http; msgtype=request"}},"Container":{"Compressed":true,"Gzip-Metadata":{"Footer-Length":"8","Deflate-Length":"455","Header-Length":"10","Inflated-CRC":"453539965","Inflated-Length":"739"},"Offset":"453","Filename":"CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz"}}Fuck no IP addresses either. But other entries do have it, why not this one?{ "Envelope": { "Format": "WARC", "WARC-Header-Length": "274", "Block-Digest": "sha1:JCZOI4V3UOTXGIRLFMPLW4J2WPLAKGVR", "Actual-Content-Length": "372", "WARC-Header-Metadata": { "WARC-Type": "warcinfo", "WARC-Filename": "CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz", "WARC-Date": "2013-11-22T14:51:12Z", "Content-Length": "372", "WARC-Record-ID": "<urn:uuid:cfeff436-7c4c-4119-aaa4-ec2ce27ad3e1>", "Content-Type": "application/warc-fields" }, "Payload-Metadata": { "Trailing-Slop-Length": "0", "Actual-Content-Type": "application/warc-fields", "Actual-Content-Length": "372", "Headers-Corrupt": true, "WARC-Info-Metadata": { "robots": "classic", "software": "Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0", "description": "Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for Spring 2013", "hostname": "ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal", "format": "WARC File Format 1.0", "isPartOf": "CC-MAIN-2013-20", "operator": "CommonCrawl Admin", "publisher": "CommonCrawl" } } }, "Container": { "Compressed": true, "Gzip-Metadata": { "Footer-Length": "8", "Deflate-Length": "453", "Header-Length": "10", "Inflated-CRC": "866052549", "Inflated-Length": "650" }, "Offset": "0", "Filename": "CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz" } }The reason these can be huge is theHTML-Metadatasection which contain all outlinks! gist.github.com/Smerity/e750f0ef0ab9aa366558#file-bbc-pretty-wat-L34 CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz()Obtain:aws s3 cp s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz .
- 1368696381249: one of many segments, any meaning of name?
The algorithmic trick that solves Rubik's Cubes and breaks ciphers by polylog (2022)
Source. Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
- topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculusArticles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
- a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 2. You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either OurBigBook.com or as a static website.
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally. Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension. 
- Infinitely deep tables of contents:
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact