Home Updated 2026-09-29
Check out: OurBigBook.com, the best way to publish your scientific knowledge. It's an open source note taking system that can publish from lightweight markup files in your computer both to a multi-user mind melding dynamic website, or as a static website. It's like Wikipedia + GitHub + Stack Overflow + Obsidian mashed up. Source code: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook.
Sponsor me to work on this project. For 1M USD I will quit my job and work on OurBigBook full time for three more years to try and kickstart The Higher Education Revolution. Status: ~44k / 400k USD. At 4M USD I retire/tenure and work on open STEM forever. How to donate: Section "Sponsor Ciro Santilli's work on OurBigBook.com".
I first quit my job 1st June 2024 to work on the project for 1 year after I reached my initial 100k goal mostly via a 1000 Monero donation.
Mission: to live in a world where you can learn university-level mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and engineering from perfect free open source books that anyone can write to get famous. More rationale: Section "OurBigBook.com"
Explaining things is my superpower, e.g. I was top user #17 on Stack Overflow in 2025[ref][ref] and I have a few 1k+ star educational GitHub repositories[ref][ref][ref][ref]. Now I want to bring that level of awesomeness to masters level Mathematics and Physics. But I can't do it alone! So I created OurBigBook.com to allow everyone to work together towards the perfect book of everything.
My life's goal is to bring hardcore university-level STEM open educational content to all ages. Sponsor me at github.com/sponsors/cirosantilli starting from 1$/month so I can work full time on it. Further information: Section "Sponsor Ciro Santilli's work on OurBigBook.com". Achieving what I call "free gifted education" is my Nirvana.
To contact Ciro, see: Section "How to contact Ciro Santilli". He likes to talk with random people of the Internet.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirosantilli/media/master/ID_photo_of_Ciro_Santilli_taken_in_2013.jpg https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirosantilli/media/master/Ciro_Santilli's_learn_teach_apply_logo.png
Besides that, I'm also a freedom of speech slacktivist and recreational cyclist. I like Chinese traditional music and classic Brazilian pop. Opinions are my own, but they could be yours too. Tax the rich.
I offer:
My approach is to:
For minors, parents are welcome to join video calls, and all interactions with the student will be recorded and made available to parents.
I am particularly excited about pointing people to the potential next big things, my top picks these days are:I am also generally interested in:
Figure 1. . Ciro contributes almost exclusively by answering question he Googles into out of his own need, and never by refreshing the newest question of big tags for low hanging fruit! More information at: Section "Ciro Santilli's Stack Overflow contributions".
Video 1.
The problem with education by Ciro Santilli
. In this video Ciro Santilli exposes his fundamental philosophy regarding why Education is broken. This philosophy was the key motivation behind the failed OurBigBook Project. Source.
Video 3.
OurBigBook Web topics demo
. The OurBigBook topic feature allows users to "merge their minds" in a "sort by upvote"-stack overflow-like manner for each subject. This is the killer feature of OurBigBook Web. More information at: docs.ourbigbook.com/ourbigbook-web-topics. Source.
Video 4.
OurBigBook dynamic article tree demo
. The OurBigBook dynamic tree feature allows any of your headers to be the toplevel h1 header of a page, while still displaying its descendants. SEO loves this, and it also allows users to always get their content on the correct granularity. More information at: docs.ourbigbook.com/ourbigbook-web-dynamic-article-tree. Source.
Video 5.
OurBigBook local editing and publishing demo
. With OurBigBook you can store your content as plaintext files in a Lightweight markup, and then publish that to either OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features, or as a static website where you are in full control. More information at: docs.ourbigbook.com/publish-your-content. Source.
Video 8. . This project, with source code at: github.com/cirosantilli/linux-kernel-module-cheat, aims to be the perfect emulation setup to study and develop the Linux kernel, kernel modules, QEMU, gem5 as well as x86_64, ARM userland and baremetal assembly and more. Source.
 -------------------------------------
|  Force of Will               3 U U  |
|  ---------------------------------  |
| |                  ////////////   | |
| |                ////() ()\////\  | |
| |               ///_\ (--) \///\  | |
| |        )      ////  \_____///\\ | |
| |       ) \      /   /   /    /   | |
| |    ) /   \     |   |  /   _/    | |
| |   ) \  (  (   /   / /   / \     | |
| |  / ) ( )  / (    )/(    )  \    | |
| |  \(_)/(_)/  /UUUU \  \\\/   |   | |
| .---------------------------------. |
| Interrupt                           |
| ,---------------------------------, |
| | You may pay 1 life and remove a | |
| | blue card in your hand from the | |
| | game instead of paying Force of | |
| | Will's casting cost.  Effects   | |
| | that prevent or redirect damage | |
| | cannot be used to counter this  | |
| | loss of life.                   | |
| | Counter target spell.           | |
| `---------------------------------` |
|                                     l
| Illus.  Terese Nelsen               |
 -------------------------------------
Code 1. .
Artist unknown, uploaded December 2014. Part of Section "Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain" where Ciro Santilli maintains a curated list of such interesting inscriptions.
This was a small project done by Ciro for artistic purposes that received some attention due to the incredible hype surrounding cryptocurrencies at the time. Ciro Santilli's views on cryptocurrencies are summarized at: Section "Are cryptocurrencies useful?".
Figure 4.
YellowRobot.jpg
. Source.
JPG image fully embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain depicting some kind of cut material art depicting a yellow robot, inscribed on January 29, 2017.
Ciro Santilli found this image and others during his research for Section "Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain" by searching for image fingerprints on every transaction payload of the blockchain with a script.
The image was uploaded by EMBII, co-creator of the AtomSea & EMBII upload mechanism, which was responsible for a large part of the image inscriptions in the Bitcoin blockchain.
The associated message reads:
Chiharu [EMBII's Japanese wife] and I found this little yellow robot while exploring Chicago. It will be covered by tar or eventually removed but this tribute will remain. N 41.880778 E -87.629210
This is one of Ciro Santilli's favorite AtomSea & EMBII uploads, as it perfectly encapsules the "medium as an art form" approach to blockchain art, where even non-novel works can be recontextualized into something interesting, here depicting an opposition between the ephemeral and the immutable.
At twitter.com/EMBII4U/status/1615389973343268871 EMBII announced that he would be giving off shares of that image on Sup!?, a Bitcoin-backed NFT system he was; making. In December 2023, he gave some shares of the robot to Ciro Santilli.
Figure 5. .
This website was used as one of the CIA 2010 covert communication websites, a covert system the CIA used to communicate with its assets. More details at: Section "CIA 2010 covert communication websites".
Ciro Santilli had some naughty OSINT fun finding some of the websites of this defunct network in 2023 after he heard about the 2022 Reuters report on the matter, which for the first time gave away 7 concrete websites out of a claimed 885 total found. As of November 2023, Ciro had found about 350 of them.
Figure 6. .
This is another website that was used as one of the CIA 2010 covert communication websites. This website is written in Brazilian Portuguese, and therefore suggests that the CIA had assets in Brazil at the time, and thus was spying on a "fellow democracy".
Although Snowden's revelations made it extremely obvious to the world that the USA spies upon everyone outside of the Five Eyes, including fellow democracies, it is rare to have such a direct a concrete proof of it visible live right on the Wayback Machine. Other targeted democracies include France, Germany, Italy and Spain. More details at: USA spying on its own allies.
This investigative report by Ciro Santilli was featured on the Daily Mail after 404 Media reported on it in 2025.
Video 11. . Quick and direct explanation of the statement of the BSD conjecture for people who know basic university mathematics. This is one of the Millennium Prize Problems, and you will get a million dollars if you can solve it! This therefore falls in the Simple to state but hard to prove of Ciro Santilli's the beauty of mathematics aesthetics. Source.
A quick 2D continuous AI game prototype for reinforcement learning written in Matter.js, you can view it on a separate page at cirosantilli.com/-/raw/js/matterjs/examples.html#top-down-asdw-fixed-viewport. This is a for-fun-only prototype for Ciro's 2D reinforcement learning games, C++ or maybe Python (for the deep learning ecosystem) seems inevitable for a serious version of such a project. But it is cute how much you can do with a few lines of Matter.js!
HTML snippet:
<iframe src="-/raw/js/matterjs/examples.html#top-down-asdw-fixed-viewport" width="1000" height="850"></iframe>
Updates / Post OurBigBook job search round 2025 Created 2025-05-07 Updated 2025-07-16 2025-07-16
I shouldn't be doing this on funded OurBigBook time which is until the end of May, but I was getting too nervous and decided to start a casual job search to test the waters.
In particular I want to see if I can get past the HR lady step without toning down my online profiles. If nothing works out for the next round I'll be hiding anything too spicy like:
Another interesting point is to see if French companies are more likely to reply given that Ciro Santilli studied at École Polytechnique which the French worship.
Figure 1. . Ciro's profiles may be a bit too much for the HR ladies who reject his job applications on the spot. To be fair, perhaps not enough years of experience for certain applications and job hopping may have something to do with it too. But since they don't ever tell you anything not to get sued, we'll never know.
I'm looking in particular either for:
I spent the last two weeks doing that:
I'll make sure to add two weeks of OurBigBook work after May to make up for this.
Do one cool thing every day Updated 2025-07-16
If you are a pussy and work a soul crushing job, this is one way to lie to yourself that your life is still worth living: do one cool thing every day.
Find a time in which your mind hasn't yet been destroyed by useless work, usually in the morning before work, and do one thing you actually like in life.
Work a little less well for you boss, and a little better for yourself. Ross Ulbricht:
I hated working for someone else and trading my time for money with no investment in myself
Selling drugs online is not advisable however.
Even better, try to reach an official agreement with your employer to work 20% less than the standard work week. For example, you could work one day less every week, and do whatever you want on that day. It is not possible to push your passion to weekends, because your brain is too tired. "You keep all non-company-related IP you develop on that time" is a key clause obviously.
On a related note, good employers must allow employees to do whichever the fuck "crazy projects", "needed refactorings or other efficiency gains" and "learn things deeply" at least 20% of their time if employees want that: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20%25_Project. Employees must choose if they want to do it one day a week or two hours per day. One day per month initiatives are bullshit. Another related name: genius hour.
Video 1.
I did it for me, Skyler
. Source. Pursuing a dream part time can make you feel afraid and tired. But at least, you will feel alive.
Maybe you will be fired, but long term, having tried, or even succeeded your dream, or a one of its side effects, will be infinitely more satisfying.
The same goes for school, and maybe even more so because your parents can still support you there. Some Gods who actually followed this advice and didn't end up living under a bridge:
Gandhi TODO source:
You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind
Data Updated 2025-07-16
Information Updated 2025-07-16
  • battery life:
    • 2023-04: on-browser streaming + light browsing on Ubuntu 22.10: about 2h45. Too low! Gotta try buying a new battery.
  • 2022-01-04 updated firmward after noticing that ubuntu 21.10 does not wake up from suspend seemed to happen every time when not connected to external power. dmidecode diff excerpt:
     BIOS Information
            Vendor: LENOVO
    -       Version: N1UET40W (1.14 )
    -       Release Date: 09/28/2017
    +       Version: N1UET71W (1.45 )
    +       Release Date: 07/18/2018
    used the "Ubuntu Software" GUI as mentioned at: support.lenovo.com/gb/en/solutions/ht510810-how-to-do-software-updates-linux. Kudos for making this accessible to newbs.
    After doing that, another update became available to: 0.1.56, clicked it and was much faster than the previous one, and didn't auto reboot. After manual reboot, dmidecode diffed again:
     BIOS Information
            Vendor: LENOVO
    -       Version: N1UET71W (1.45 )
    -       Release Date: 07/18/2018
    +       Version: N1UET82W (1.56 )
    +       Release Date: 08/12/2021
    plus a bunch of other lines.
  • 2021-06-05 upgraded to Ubuntu 21.04 with a clean install from an ISO. Selected
    • "Minimal installation"
    • "Erase disk and install Ubuntu". Notably, this erased the Microsoft Windows that came with the computer and was never used not even once
    • "Erase disk ans use ZFS"
    • Encrypt the new Ubuntu installation for security
    After this, the GUI felt fast, who would have thought that erasing a bunch of stuff would make the system faster!
    lsblk contains:
    zd0               230:0    0   500M  0 disk
    └─keystore-rpool  253:0    0   484M  0 crypt /run/keystore/rpool
    nvme0n1           259:0    0 476.9G  0 disk
    ├─nvme0n1p1       259:1    0   512M  0 part  /boot/efi
    ├─nvme0n1p2       259:2    0     2G  0 part
    │ └─cryptoswap    253:1    0     2G  0 crypt
    ├─nvme0n1p3       259:3    0     2G  0 part
    └─nvme0n1p4       259:4    0 472.4G  0 part
    and lsblk -f:
    zd0               crypto_LUKS 2
    └─keystore-rpool  ext4        1.0   keystore-rpool
    nvme0n1
    ├─nvme0n1p1       vfat        FAT32
    ├─nvme0n1p2       crypto_LUKS 2
    │ └─cryptoswap
    ├─nvme0n1p3       zfs_member  5000  bpool
    └─nvme0n1p4       zfs_member  5000  rpoo
    Then:
    grep '[rb]pool' /proc/mounts
    contains:
    rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_uvs1fq / zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    rpool/USERDATA/ciro_czngbg /home/ciro zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    rpool/USERDATA/root_czngbg /root zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_uvs1fq/srv /srv zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_uvs1fq/usr/local /usr/local zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_uvs1fq/var/games /var/games zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_uvs1fq/var/log /var/log zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_uvs1fq/var/lib /var/lib zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_uvs1fq/var/mail /var/mail zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_uvs1fq/var/snap /var/snap zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_uvs1fq/var/www /var/www zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_uvs1fq/var/spool /var/spool zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_uvs1fq/var/lib/AccountsService /var/lib/AccountsService zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_uvs1fq/var/lib/NetworkManager /var/lib/NetworkManager zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_uvs1fq/var/lib/apt /var/lib/apt zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_uvs1fq/var/lib/dpkg /var/lib/dpkg zfs rw,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    bpool/BOOT/ubuntu_uvs1fq /boot zfs rw,nodev,relatime,xattr,posixacl 0 0
    which gives an idea of how the above map to mountpoints.
    Had two GUI freezes since installation, a fixed images shows no matter what I do, possibly graphics only, but impossible to tell (next time I'll try SSH access). No Nvidia drivers installed yet.
2020-06-06: dropped some lemon juice on the bottom left of touchpad. Bottom left button not working anymore... I'm an idiot. There are many other alternatives, but very aggravating, I'll replace it for sure. Can't find the exact replacement part or any videos showing its replacement online easliy, dang. For the T430: www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3lzV9uXRjU Asked at: forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P-and-W-Series-Mobile-Workstations/P51-left-bottom-button-below-trackpad-mouse-left-click-stopped-working-possible-to-replace/m-p/5019903 Also I could not access it because you need to remove the HDD first: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Klawxc7T_Y and I can't pull it out even with considerable force, unlike in the video... And OMG, those button caps are impossible to re-install once removed!!! Then when I put the whole thing back together, the upper buttons were not working anymore. FUUUUUUUUCK. When first opening I pulled on it without properly removing the cap and it came off, but it didn't look broken in any way and I put it back in. Keyboard works thank God, so right black connector is fine, left white one oppears to be the one for upper keys and trackpoint, both of which stopped working. The hardware manual confirms that they are both part of the same device, so basically a mouse :-) TODO can it be bought separately from te keyboard? Doesn't look like it, photo of keyboard part includes those buttons. The manual also confirms that the bottom buttons are one device with the trackpad "trackpad with buttons", thus forming the second entire mouse.
2019-04-17: popup asking about "ThinkPad P51 Management Engine Update" from from 182.29.3287 to 184.60.3561, said yes.
Ubuntu 17.10 setup after buying it:
Battery life shown by Ubuntu battery app after installation:
  • before NVIDIA driver setup: 8h
  • after: 6.5h
Monophyly Updated 2025-07-16
Basically the same as clade.
Ciphertext Updated 2025-07-16
Ronald Wayne Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
The Sad Story of Apple's Third Co-Founder by ColdFusion (2022)
Source.

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