Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli  40

 Incoming links: Ciro Santilli

ARM architecture family Updated 2025-07-16

This ISA basically completely dominated the smartphone market of the 2010s and beyond, but it started appearing in other areas as the end of Moore's law made it more economical logical for large companies to start developing their own semiconductor, e.g. Google custom silicon, Amazon custom silicon.

It is exciting to see ARM entering the server, desktop and supercomputer market circa 2020, beyond its dominant mobile position and roots.

Ciro Santilli likes to see the underdogs rise, and bite off dominant ones.

The excitement also applies to RISC-V possibly over ARM mobile market one day conversely however.

Basically, as long as were a huge company seeking to develop a CPU and able to control your own ecosystem independently of Windows' desktop domination (held by the need for backward compatibility with a billion end user programs), ARM would be a possibility on your mind.

in 2020, the Fugaku supercomputer, which uses an ARM-based Fujitsu designed chip, because the number 1 fastest supercomputer in TOP500: www.top500.org/lists/top500/2021/11/
It was later beaten by another x86 supercomputer www.top500.org/lists/top500/2022/06/, but the message was clearly heard.
2012 hackaday.com/2012/07/09/pedal-powered-32-core-arm-linux-server/ pedal-powered 32-core Arm Linux server. A publicity stunt, but still, cool.
AWS Graviton

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The best articles by Ciro Santilli Updated 2026-08-21

These are the best articles ever authored by Ciro Santilli, most of them in the format of Stack Overflow answers.

Ciro posts update about new articles on his Twitter accounts.

A chronological list of all articles is also kept at: Section "Updates".

Some random generally less technical in-tree essays will be present at: Section "Essays by Ciro Santilli".

Trended on Hacker News:
- CIA 2010 covert communication websites on 2023-06-11. 190 points, a mild success.
- x86 Bare Metal Examples on 2019-03-19. 513 points. The third time something related to that repo trends. Hacker news people really like that repo!
  - again 2020-06-27 (archive). 200 points, repository traffic jumped from 25 daily unique visitors to 4.6k unique visitors on the day
- How to run a program without an operating system? on 2018-11-26 (archive). 394 points. Covers x86 and ARM
- ELF Hello World Tutorial on 2017-05-17 (archive). 334 points.
- x86 Paging Tutorial on 2017-03-02. Number 1 Google search result for "x86 Paging" in 2017-08. 142 points.
  Figure 1.
  BIOS bare metal hello world running on a Lenovo ThinkPad T430
  . Source.
x86 assembly
- What does "multicore" assembly language look like?
- What is the function of the push / pop instructions used on registers in x86 assembly? Going down to memory spills, register allocation and graph coloring.
Linux kernel
QEMU
gcc and Binutils:
- How do linkers and address relocation works?
- What is incremental linking or partial linking?
- GOLD (-fuse-ld=gold) linker vs the traditional GNU ld and LLVM ldd
- What is the -fPIE option for position-independent executables in GCC and ld? Concrete examples by running program through GDB twice, and an assembly hello world with absolute vs PC relative load.
- How many GCC optimization levels are there?
- Why does GCC create a shared object instead of an executable binary according to file?
C/C++: almost all of those fall into "disassemble all the things" category. Ciro also does "standards dissection" and "a new version of the standard is out" answers, but those are boring:
- What does "static" mean in a C program?
- In C++ source, what is the effect of extern "C"?
- Char array vs Char Pointer in C
- How to compile glibc from source and use it?
- When should static_cast, dynamic_cast, const_cast and reinterpret_cast be used?
- What exactly is std::atomic in C++?. This answer was originally more appropriately entitled "Let's disassemble some stuff", and got three downvotes, so Ciro changed it to a more professional title, and it started getting upvotes. People judge books by their covers.
- notmain.o 0000000000000000 0000000000000017 W MyTemplate<int>::f(int) main.o 0000000000000000 0000000000000017 W MyTemplate<int>::f(int)
  Code 1.
  nm outputs showing that objects are redefined multiple times across files if you don't use template instantiation properly
  . From: What is explicit template instantiation in C++ and when to use it?

What is difference between quiet NaN and signaling NaN?
In Java, what does NaN mean?

Without subnormals:

          +---+---+-------+---------------+-------------------------------+
exponent  | ? | 0 |   1   |       2       |               3               |
          +---+---+-------+---------------+-------------------------------+
          |   |   |       |               |                               |
          v   v   v       v               v                               v
          -----------------------------------------------------------------
floats    *    **** * * * *   *   *   *   *       *       *       *       *
          -----------------------------------------------------------------
          ^   ^   ^       ^               ^                               ^
          |   |   |       |               |                               |
          0   |   2^-126  2^-125          2^-124                          2^-123
              |
              2^-127

With subnormals:

          +-------+-------+---------------+-------------------------------+
exponent  |   0   |   1   |       2       |               3               |
          +-------+-------+---------------+-------------------------------+
          |       |       |               |                               |
          v       v       v               v                               v
          -----------------------------------------------------------------
floats    * * * * * * * * *   *   *   *   *       *       *       *       *
          -----------------------------------------------------------------
          ^   ^   ^       ^               ^                               ^
          |   |   |       |               |                               |
          0   |   2^-126  2^-125          2^-124                          2^-123
              |
              2^-127

Visualization of subnormal floating point numbers vs what IEEE 754 would look like without them

. From: What is a subnormal floating point number?

Computer science
- Algorithms
  - Figure 5.
    Average insertion time into heaps, binary search tree and hash maps of the C++ standard library
    . Source. From: Heap vs Binary Search Tree (BST)
- Is it necessary for NP problems to be decision problems?
- Polynomial time and exponential time. Answered focusing on the definition of "exponential time".
- What is the smallest Turing machine where it is unknown if it halts or not?. Answer focusing on "blank tape" initial condition only. Large parts of it are summarizing the Busy Beaver Challenge, but some additions were made.

  | 0           | 4            | 8           | C              |
  |-------------|--------------|-------------|----------------|
0 | DIRC        | Version      | File count  | ctime       ...| 0
  | ...         | mtime                      | device         |
2 | inode       | mode         | UID         | GID            | 2
  | File size   | Entry SHA-1                              ...|
4 | ...                        | Flags       | Index SHA-1 ...| 4
  | ...                                                       |

ASCII art depicting the binary file format of the Git index file

. From: What does the git index contain EXACTLY?

tree {tree_sha}
{parents}
author {author_name} <{author_email}> {author_date_seconds} {author_date_timezone}
committer {committer_name} <{committer_email}> {committer_date_seconds} {committer_date_timezone}

{commit message}

Description of the Git commit object binary data structure

. From: What is the file format of a git commit object data structure?

How do I clone a subdirectory only of a Git repository?

Python
- What is the difference between old style and new style classes in Python?
- What is a mixin in Python, and why are they useful?
- What are the differences between threads and processes in Python?
  Figure 6.
  Python Threads vs Processes with 8 hyperthreads
  . Source.
Web technology
- What does enctype='multipart/form-data' mean?
- JavaScript
  - How does JavaScript .prototype work?
  - What is the difference between .prop() vs .attr() in JavaScript?
OpenGL
- Figure 7.
  OpenGL rendering output dumped to a GIF file
  . Source. From: How to use GLUT/OpenGL to render to a file?
- Figure 8.
  Example of a texture atlas containing glyphs
  . Source.
  Image by Nicolas P. Rougier, author of Freetype GL.
  Used on Ciro Santilli's answer: How to draw text using only OpenGL methods?
- Figure 9.
  OpenGL glFrustrum vs glOrtho
  . Source. From: How to use glOrtho() in OpenGL?
- What are shaders in OpenGL?
- Why do we use 4x4 matrices to transform things in 3D?
- Figure 10.
  Sinusoidal circular wave heatmap generated with an OpenGL shader at 60 FPS on SDL
  . Source.
  From: Is it possible to build a heatmap from point data at 60 times per second?
  Compared CPU vs GPU shaders.
- Image Processing with GLSL shaders? Compared the CPU and GPU for a simple blur algorithm.
  Figure 11. Source.
  Video 1.
  OpenGL GPU GLSL fragment shader real time v4l2 Linux webcam computer vision box blur vs CPU
  . Source.
Node.js
- What's the difference between dependencies, devDependencies and peerDependencies in npm package.json file?
Ruby on Rails
- What is the difference between +<%+, +<%=+, +<%#+ and +-%>+ in ERB in Rails?
POSIX
- What is POSIX? Huge classified overview of the most important things that POSIX specifies.

Systems programming

What do the terms "CPU bound" and "I/O bound" mean?
Figure 12.
Plot of "real", "user" and "sys" mean times of the output of time for CPU-bound workload with 8 threads
. Source. From: What do 'real', 'user' and 'sys' mean in the output of time?

+--------+                  +------------+       +------+
| device |>---------------->| function 0 |>----->| BAR0 |
|        |                  |            |       +------+
|        |>------------+    |            |
|        |             |    |            |       +------+
   ...        ...      |    |            |>----->| BAR1 |
|        |             |    |            |       +------+
|        |>--------+   |    |            |
+--------+         |   |         ...        ...    ...
                   |   |    |            |
                   |   |    |            |       +------+
                   |   |    |            |>----->| BAR5 |
                   |   |    +------------+       +------+
                   |   |
                   |   |
                   |   |    +------------+       +------+
                   |   +--->| function 1 |>----->| BAR0 |
                   |        |            |       +------+
                   |        |            |
                   |        |            |       +------+
                   |        |            |>----->| BAR1 |
                   |        |            |       +------+
                   |        |            |
                   |             ...        ...    ...
                   |        |            |
                   |        |            |       +------+
                   |        |            |>----->| BAR5 |
                   |        +------------+       +------+
                   |
                   |
                   |             ...
                   |
                   |
                   |        +------------+       +------+
                   +------->| function 7 |>----->| BAR0 |
                            |            |       +------+
                            |            |
                            |            |       +------+
                            |            |>----->| BAR1 |
                            |            |       +------+
                            |            |
                                 ...        ...    ...
                            |            |
                            |            |       +------+
                            |            |>----->| BAR5 |
                            +------------+       +------+

Logical struture PCIe device, functions and BARs

. From: What is the Base Address Register (BAR) in PCIe?

Electronics
- Raspberry Pi
  - Figure 13.
    Raspberry Pi 2 directly connected to a laptop with an Ethernet cable
    . Image from answer to: How to hook up a Raspberry Pi via Ethernet to a laptop without a router?
    Figure 14.
    Raspberry Pi 2 connected to a laptop with an USB UART adapter
    . Image from answer to: How to hook up a Raspberry Pi via Ethernet to a laptop without a router?
    Figure 15.
    Raspberry Pi OS being emulated on QEMU 2.5.0 on Ubuntu 16.04 with a modified kernel
    . Image from answer to: How to emulate the Raspberry Pi 2 on QEMU?
    Figure 16.
    Bare metal LED blinker program running on a Raspberry Pi 2
    . Image from answer to: How to run a C program with no OS on the Raspberry Pi?
Computer security
- Why is the same origin policy so important?
Media
- Video 2.
  Canon in D in C
  . Source.
  From: How is audio represented with numbers in computers?.
  The original question was deleted, lol...: How to programmatically synthesize music?
- How to resize a picture using ffmpeg's sws_scale()?
- Is there any decent speech recognition software for Linux? ran a few examples manually on vosk-api and compared to ground truth.
Eclipse
- How to set up the Eclipse for remote C debugging with gdbserver?
Computer hardware
- Are there good open source standard cell libraries to learn IC synthesis with EDA tools?
Scientific visualization software
- Figure 17.
  VisIt zoom in 10 million straight line plot with some manually marked points
  . Source. From: Section "Survey of open source interactive plotting software with a 10 million point scatter plot benchmark by Ciro Santilli"
Numerical analysis
- Video 3.
  Real-time heat equation OpenGL visualization with interactive mouse cursor using relaxation method by Ciro Santilli (2016)
  Source.
Computational physics
- Figure 18.
  gnuplot plot of the y position of a sphere bouncing on a plane simulated in Bullet Physics
  . Source. From: What is the simplest collision example possible in a Bullet Physics simulation?
Register transfer level languages like Verilog and VHDL
- Verilog:
  Figure 19.
  Interacgive ASDF-controlled demo with core logic written in Verilog using Verilator
  .
  From: Is it possible to do interactive user input and output simulation in VHDL or Verilog?
  See also: Section "Verilator interactive example"
Android
- Figure 20. Source. From: How to compile the Android AOSP kernel and test it with the Android Emulator?
- Video 4.
  Android screen showing live on an Ubuntu laptop through ADB
  . Source. From: How to see the Android screen live on an Ubuntu desktop through ADB?
Debugging
Program optimization
- What is tail call optimization?
- Figure 21.
  gprof2dot image generated from the gprof data of a simple test program
  . Source.
  From: How can I profile C++ code running on Linux?
  The answer compares gprof, valgrind callgrind, perf and gperftools on a single simple executable.
Data
- Figure 22.
  Mathematics dump of Wikipedia CatTree
  . Source. In this project, Ciro Santilli explored extracting the category and article tree out of the Wikipedia dumps.
Mathematics
- Figure 23.
  Diagram of the fundamental theorem on homomorphisms by Ciro Santilli (2020)
  
  Shows the relationship between group homomorphisms and normal subgroups.
  From: What is the intuition behind normal subgroups?
- Section "Formalization of mathematics": some early thoughts that could be expanded. Ciro almost had a stroke when he understood this stuff in his teens.
- Figure 24.
  Simple example of the Discrete Fourier transform
  . Source. That was missing from Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete_Fourier_transform!
Network programming
- How to make an HTTP get request in C without libcurl?
Physics
- What is the difference between plutonium and uranium?
- Figure 25.
  Spacetime diagram illustrating how faster-than-light travel implies time travel
  . From: Does faster than light travel imply travelling back in time?
Biology
- Figure 26.
  Top view of an open Oxford Nanopore MinION
  . Source. From: Section "How to use an Oxford Nanopore MinION to extract DNA from river water and determine which bacteria live in it"
- Figure 27.
  Mass fractions in a minimal growth medium vs an amino acid cut in a simulation of the E. Coli Whole Cell Model by Covert Lab
  . Source. From: Section "E. Coli Whole Cell Model by Covert Lab"
Quantum computing
- Section "Quantum computing is just matrix multiplication"
- Figure 28.
  Visualization of the continuous deformation of states as we walk around the Bloch sphere represented as photon polarization arrows
  . From: Understanding the Bloch sphere.
Bitcoin
- Section "Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain"
GIMP
- Figure 29.
  GIMP screenshot part of how to combine two images side-by-side in GIMP?
  .
Home DIY
- Figure 30.
  Total_Blackout_Cassette_Roller_Blind_With_Curtains.
  Source. From: Section "How to blackout your window without drilling"
China
- What would happen if I walked around Beijing with a t-shirt that said "freedom of speech is pretty great"?

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Artificial general intelligence Updated 2025-07-16

Given enough computational power per dollar, AGI is inevitable, but it is not sure certain ever happen given the end of end of Moore's Law.

Alternatively, it could also be achieved genetically modified biological brains + brain in a vat.

Imagine a brain the size of a building, perfectly engineered to solve certain engineering problems, and giving hints to human operators + taking feedback from cameras and audio attached to the operators.

This likely implies transhumanism, and mind uploading.

Ciro Santilli joined the silicon industry at one point to help increase our computational capacity and reach AGI.

Ciro believes that the easiest route to full AI, if any, could involve Ciro's 2D reinforcement learning games.

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ASCII art Updated 2025-07-16

It should be a crime to automatically generate ASCII art from images.

For some ASCII art in the Bitcoin blockchain see: ASCII art.

Random fun mentions:

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/roflcopter | knowyourmeme.com/memes/roflcopter
www.ludd.ltu.se/~vk/pics/ascii/junkyard/misc/who's_who.txt "Who's who in the ascii art world" contains a list of well known artists with their signatures

        z

        ^
        |    *------*
        |   /|      /
        |  / |     /|
top -------*------* |
        |  | *----|-*
        |  |/     | /
        |  |      |/
bottom ----*------*
        |  |      |
        +--|------|-----> y
       /   |      |
      /    |      |
  x  /     |      |
    v
          left   right

3D cube plot ASCII art by Ciro Santilli (2021)

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ASCII porn Updated 2025-07-16

ASCII porn is ASCII art depicting pornography.

Collections and overviews:

asciiart.website/index.php?art=people/naked%20ladies "Naked Ladies - Nude Women" category
- if you value medium over content, Ciro found two of the images reproduced in asciiart.website above also reproduced in the Bitcoin blockchain as described at: ASCII art, that should definitely turn you on, horny nerd
www.reddit.com/r/ASCII_porn/ on Reddit boring
www.vice.com/en/article/nepapk/ascii-pr0n-porn-predates-the-internet-but-its-still-everywhere-rule-34 ASCII Porn Predates the Internet But It's Still Everywhere by Vice News (2019)

You just couldn't resist Googling it and clicking this page, could you? You naughty, naughty bearded programmer nerd. Yes, I'm talking to you.

TODO it is quite hard to actually find non-automatically generated ASCII art of people fucking, most of them are just sexy/horny women drawn by bearded nerds, likely and based on sticky physical paper porn magazines from the 80's, good old days.

                                    |
                                    |
   Tank Man                         |
   by Ciro Santilli          00     |
   2021 CC-BY-SA 4.0          \\  +-|-+
                               \\/   /|-+o
                                \\--+ / /o
                               /|\\ |/ /oo
                        |     / ----- /oo
                        |    /       /oo
                        |   +-------+oo
                        |   oo+---+ooo
                 00     |   oo     oo
                  \\  +-|-+
                   \\/   /|-+o
                    \\--+ / /o
                   /|\\ |/ /oo
            |     / ----- /oo
            |    /       /oo
            |   +-------+oo
            |   oo+---+ooo
     00     |   oo     oo
      \\  +-|-+
       \\/   /|-+o
        \\--+ / /o
       /|\\ |/ /oo
      / ----- /oo
     /       /oo
    +-------+oo
    oo+---+ooo
    oo     oo
 xx
 --
/||\
|--|
o||0
 ||
 /\

Tank man ASCII art by Ciro Santilli (2021)

This image depicts the Chinese government fucking 1 million Chinese people in the ass during the Tiananmen Square Protests, which was undoubtedly one of the largest gang bangs of the late 20th century:

The IBM 1401 mainframe runs "Edith" by CuriousMarc

. Source. 1960's punched card ASCII porn. Vintage. EDITH is also mentioned e.g. at: www.threedee.com/jcm/aaa/index.html. No ASCII uploads found however: www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/a2pser/the_ibm_1401_mainframe_runs_edith/.

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ASCII typeface Updated 2025-07-16

Tis term was invented by Ciro Santilli, it refers to ASCII art of text, essentially creating a typeface. in that medium..

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Asian fetish Updated 2025-10-27

All interests are based on fetishes.

The fetish of beauty. The fetish if intelligence. The fetish of kindness.

What's wrong with the fetish of Asianess?

Whenever Ciro's wife starts with "the Asian fetish talk", Ciro reminds her of her own claimed "tall person fetish", and they call it quits.

Asian fetish is much more than sex. It is about the culture, the history, the language. It is the same fetish that makes great mathematicians an Artists do what they do.

When Ciro Santilli was at École Polytechnique, he had to do a presentation for his stupid English courses that all students were forced to take, no matter how good their English was.

The topic was likely something like "pick a country", and Ciro was delighted when he managed to pick "China", after it had gone around a table with many many people before him.

The PowerPoint presentation Ciro made over the weekend was so amazing (and making it was actually fun to make, Ciro actually remembers it a bit!), drawing partly from stuff his wife then girlfriend showed him, that at the end the one of the other students asked him if he had lived in China.

It is a shame Ciro couldn't find the presentation when he wrote this line many many years later. Anything that is not in a BLOB-free monorepo, will disappear, heed my words. But he's certain about two things which it contained:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_fetish#History_of_origins

In the United States, women of East and Southeast Asian descent are sometimes stereotyped as subservient, passive, mysterious, villainous in nature, and hyper-sexual.

subservient, passive, mysterious are understandable. But Hyper-sexual and villainous? OMG have these people never seen real Asians?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_fetish#Pornography:

Several studies have implied that Asian women are over-represented in the American pornography industry. Asian women make up perhaps 20% of all female performers, despite being roughly 2.5% of the U.S. population. Asian men also appear to be considerably over-represented, at 10% of male actors.

How my boyfriend CHEATED with another Asian girl by Jenny Tian

Sam Rockwell monologue about being an Asian girl on The White Lotus

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ASML Holding Updated 2025-07-16

As of 2020 leading makers of the most important fab photolithography equipment.

ASML: TSMC's Critical Supplier by Asianometry (2021)

How ASML Won Lithography by Asianometry (2021)

First there were dominant Elmer and Geophysics Corporation of America dominating the market.

Then a Japanese government project managed to make Nikon and Canon Inc. catch up, and in 1989, when Ciro Santilli was born, they had 70% of the market.

youtu.be/SB8qIO6Ti_M?t=240 In 1995, ASML had reached 25% market share. Then it managed the folloging faster than the others:

TwinScan, reached 50% market share in 2002
Immersion litography
EUV. There was a big split between EUV vs particle beams, and ASML bet on EUV and EUV won.
youtu.be/SB8qIO6Ti_M?t=459 they have an insane number of software engineers working on software for the machine, which is insanely complex. They are big on UML.
youtu.be/SB8qIO6Ti_M?t=634 they use ZEISS optics, don't develop their own. More precisely, the majority owned subsidiary Carl Zeiss SMT.
youtu.be/SB8qIO6Ti_M?t=703 IMEC collaborations worked well. Notably the ASML/Philips/ZEISS trinity

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLNsYecX_2Q ASML: Chip making goes vacuum with EUV (2009) Self promotional video, some good shots of their buildings.

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Assembly language Updated 2025-07-16

A human readable way to write instructions for an instruction set architecture.

One of the topics covered in Ciro Santilli's Linux Kernel Module Cheat.

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Astronomy Updated 2025-07-16

Ciro Santilli likes to learn astronomy a bit like he learns geography: go down some lists of "stuff that seems most relevant in some criteria to us!", possibly at different size scales e.g.:

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Athlete Updated 2025-07-16

The athletes Ciro Santilli admires the most are from endurance sport:

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Atomic clock Updated 2025-07-16

How atomic clock works? answer by Ciro Santilli on Physics Stack Exchange.

How an atomic clock works, and its use in the global positioning system (GPS) by EngineerGuy (2012)

Source. Shows how conceptually an atomic clock is based on a feedback loop of two hyperfine structure states of caesium atoms (non-radioactive caesium-133 as clarified by the Wikipedia page). Like a quartz clock, it also relies on the piezoelectricity of quartz, but unlike the quartz clock, the quartz is not shaped like a tuning fork, and has a much larger resonating frequency of about 7 MHz. The feedback is completed by producing photons that resonate at the right frequency to excite the caesium.

Inside the HP 5061A Cesium Clock by CuriousMarc (2020)

A similar model was used in the Hafele-Keating experiment to test special relativity on two planes flying in opposite directions. Miniaturization was key.

Contains a disposable tube with 6g of Caesium. You boil it, so when it runs out, you change the tube, 40k USD. Their tube is made by Agilent Technologies, so a replacement since that opened in 1999, and the original machine is from the 60s.

Detection is done with an electron multiplier.

youtu.be/eOti3kKWX-c?t=1166 They compare it with their 100 dollar GPS disciplined oscillator, since GPS satellites have atomic clocks in them.

Quick presentation of the atomic clock at the National Physical Laboratory (2010)

Source. Their super accurate setup first does laser cooling on the caesium atoms.

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Atomic Weapons Establishment Updated 2025-07-16

Their website, and in particular the recruitment section, are so creepy.

There's not mention of bombs. No photos of atomic explosions. The words "atomic" and "weapon" do not even show up in the front page!!! The acronym AWE is instead used everywhere as an euphemism.

In the recruitment section we can see a bunch of people smiling: web.archive.org/web/20211007213222/https://www.awe.co.uk/careers/working-at-awe/, suggesting:

We make nukes, and we do it with a smile!

There's even children outreach!!!

Ciro Santilli is not against storing a few nukes to be ready against dictatorships. But don't be such a pussy! Just say what the fuck you are doing more clearly! You are making weapons to kill people and destroy things in order to maintain the Balance of power. If the public can't handle such facts, then shut down the fucking program.

Keeping the peace: A history of AWE

. Source. By AWE, 2005.

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Backward design Updated 2025-07-16

This is one of Ciro Santilli's most important principles.

Steve Jobs has a great quote about this. He's totally right on this one!

You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to sell it.

Steve Jobs Insult Response excerpt from the 1997 WWDC

. Source. TODO understand the context of the question a bit better. It is something to do with an OpenDoc thing and Java.

Decide your goal first, and then do whatever is needed to how to reach it.

Don't start randomly learning tech, because that means you will waste a lot of time learning useless stuff.

There is of course some level chicken-and-egg paradox in this, as highlighted by Dilbert, since choosing an achievable goal in the first place requires some level of technical understanding.

Figure 1.
Dilbert cartoon about designing a nuclear power plant from user requirements (2002)
Source.
This cartoon illustrates well how when doing deep tech and fighting against the laws of physics, you can't just start from user requirements, but you also have to also think "what can we actually get done at all with this new technique".
The best research engineers are able to identify what is just on the cusp of the "possible", but which has the greatest value. This is the endless dance between the tech push, and the market/need pull.

However, it is much more common that people will get way too involved in learning useless stuff and lose sight of the useful end goals.

Rather, take an iterative approach:

start with an ambitious end goal
learn a bit of tech to try and reach it
realize that you can't reach your end goal and pivot a bit to a related end goal that seems more realistic: the side effects of ambitious goals are often the most valuable thing achieved
loop

There is some truth to the counter argument that "but if you don't spend a lot of time learning the basics, you can never find solutions".

However, these people underestimate your brain. The brain is beautiful, and human intuition is capable of generating interest towards the things that are actually useful to reach your goal. When you feel like learning something related to your goal, by all means, give yourself the time to do so. But this still be much more efficient than just learning random things that other people tell you to learn.

Bibliography:

Ciro Santilli and many many others believe that backward design is a fundamental principle that should be considered by the educational system rather than wasting 90% of everyone's time with the 90% of mandatory curricula they don't care about:
- notably that school should be personalized and project driven:
  - students must have a flexible choice of what to learn
  - help students achieve their goal
- www.cartalk.com/content/rant-and-rave-36 "The New Theory of Learning" by Thomas L. Magliozzi section "Premise III: THE BACKWARDS LEARNING THEORY" says the exact same thing. Ciro actually found this when writing Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain.
- several well known teaching methods:
  - Montessori education
a Coding Horror software specific take on this issue: blog.codinghorror.com/please-dont-learn-to-code/
x.com/7etsuo/status/1784787045157900697: George Hotz
Everyone I've met who can program well learned it the same way: they had an idea, and then they built it.

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Based God Updated 2025-07-16

Someone who is not a pussy.

On Urban Dictionary: www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Based%20God

Someone once called Ciro Santilli that: archive.is/W1ocv. It's an overstatement, considering that Ciro's parents have some money. Not infinite. But still. Changes everything. A real Based God is someone like Charles Bukowski, who had to work decades at the post office.

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Being naughty and creative are correlated Updated 2025-07-16

Ciro Santilli believes that there is a close link between the ability to create disruptive technology, and the desire to find bugs/exploits in systems.

Both of them destabilize society and enterprises.

Some examples:

Jobs and Wozniak's blue box
Robert Noyce's stealing a pig for a university party somewhat as a joke. This was actually a felony, but he got away with a compromise by paying the owner and being suspended for 6 months. The law is not blind, and thanks for that sometimes.
Oh, and apparently he also got a university girlfriend pregnant, and she had an abortion.
Mark Zuckerberg's FaceMash

And yes, this sometimes leads into a fine line between legality and illegality:

Ross Ulbricht from Silk Road
Aaron Swartz

Ciro Santilli's own naughty projects are listed at: Section "Ciro Santilli's naughty projects".

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Bell Labs Updated 2025-07-16

Ciro Santilli sometimes fantasizes of having worked there in their golden years...

Original headquarters and laboratories: 463 West Street in New York, Manhattan area. On Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman Feynman mentions that in 1941 they could see the construction of the George Washington Bridge, presumably from that building, when William Shockley brought him over to visit to get a job there. However, the actual

Later:

1967 Bell Labs Murray Hill

Some interesting videos:

Video "The Story of Light by Bell Labs (2015)"

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Bicycles require too much maintenance Updated 2025-07-16

It is true, something Ciro Santilli often things about. One likely reason is that the world is broken and most cyclist are speed maniacs willing to put the time in. Unlike Dutch people where everyone cycles.

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Bitcoin Inscription Indexer Updated 2026-10-21

github.com/cirosantilli/bitcoin-inscription-indexer

Previously called "bitcoin-strings-with-txids" since text was the initial focus, but Ciro Santilli decided to go for the more general name once images became more and more important to the project.

Set of scripts b Ciro Santilli, primarily created while researching Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain.

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Bloons Tower Defense 5 Updated 2025-07-16

One of Ciro Santilli's favorites.

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