Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli  40

Initially there were mathematical reasons why people suspected that all boson needed to have 0 mass as is the case for photons a gluons, see Goldstone's theorem.

However, experiments showed that the W boson and the Z boson both has large non-zero masses.

So people started theorizing some hack that would fix up the equations, and they came up with the higgs mechanism.

Can be contrasted with baryons as mentioned at baryon vs meson vs lepton.

Centralized system that still attempts some level of privacy.

In it, a central bank issue tokens that are stored offline in your cell phone, a bit like cash bank notes.

When you take those tokens, a corresponding amount gets removed from your bank account, a bit like cash bank notes.

When a transaction is made, tokens are put into a spent token list via central API, and cannot be double spent thereafter. The corresponding ammount is then added to the bank account of the receiver. This also means that offline transactions are not possible.

When emitting, the bank signs the token with their private key. When spending, the bank checks that signature.

How do we prevent the bank from logging which token goes to which user besides trusting that they are running the software we whink they are running? Notably, couldn't timing be used to identify that?

The main ones as of 2020 are:

There are several choices of electromagnetic four-potential that lead to the same physics.

E.g. thinking about the electric potential alone, you could set the zero anywhere, and everything would remain be the same.

The Lorentz gauge is just one such choice. It is however a very popular one, because it is also manifestly Lorentz invariant.

At crankstart.org/grants the organization's website describes mostly California activities, but they do at least also act in the University of Oxford, see: Section "University of Oxford study costs".

Presumably the name refers to crank starting an old car, as in helping out those in difficulty like poor students get started in life. But is also an obscure slang for a type of handjob according to Urban Dictionary.

Follows the "certified teacher only" approach which is in Ciro Santilli's opinion a fatal flaw of most elearning systems out there, OurBigBook.com won't suffer from that!

But that is a very, very good project.

All notes appear to have been extracted from existing notes, as noted on the bottom of each page.

Appears to have mixed licenses. E.g.:

TODO how does it work exactly? Do they ask for permission from authors in every case, including when the content has open license? Or when it has open license, do they just do it? In some cases, the notes have no license, so they must have asked.

TODO what is the source code that authors write? LaTeX or something else? LaTeX feels extremely likely given that it is what most original materials were already written in.

They are attempting a "model up this entire university" thing: phys.libretexts.org/Courses which is good. E.g. they have a bunch of "quantum mechanics ones under: phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Quantum_Mechanics

Appears to be UC Davies-based mostly.

They claim to use this closed source backend: www.nice.com/resources/cxone-expert-knowledge-management? Seriously? For a publicly funded project with low-tech requirements?? It is mind blowing.

Some issues:

OK let's database it:

This is an interesting initiative which has some similarities to Ciro Santilli's OurBigBook project.

The fatal flaw of the initiative in Ciro Santilli's opinion is the lack of user-generated content. We will never get there without UGC and algorithms, never.

Also as of 2021, it mostly useless business courses: learn.saylor.org unfortunately.

But it has several redeeming factors which Ciro Santilli aproves of:

Licensing appears to be a mixed mess between the dreaded CC BY-NC-SA and the good CC BY, e.g.:?

The founder Michael J. Saylor looks a bit crooked, Rich people who create charitable prizes are often crooked comes to mind. But maybe he's just weird.

No mention of education specifically on website. But at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liveonline/00/business/saylor0621.htm from Michael J. Saylor they did show interest, so adding to this Educational charitable organization list anyways.

Of all the rich person foundations, this is the one that feels the most hardcore.

They put huge focus on autism. Do they have an autistic child? Yes: www.forbes.com/pictures/eilm45mll/james-simons-autism/?sh=7825234250ce his daughter.