Lacquer is a clear or colored coating that is applied to surfaces to create a durable, glossy finish. It is commonly made from a resin, a solvent, and sometimes other additives to enhance its properties. Lacquer is used in a variety of applications, including woodworking, metal finishing, and musical instruments. Here are some key characteristics of lacquer: 1. **Durability**: Lacquer dries quickly and forms a hard, protective layer that resists scratches, moisture, and general wear.
MineCam is a technology solution developed for the mining industry that provides real-time monitoring and data analytics for underground operations. It typically involves the use of cameras and sensors to capture visual information and environmental data from mining sites. The main goal of MineCam is to enhance safety, efficiency, and productivity in mining operations by allowing operators to remotely monitor conditions and make informed decisions based on the data collected.
This point is beautifully argued in lots of different sources, and is clearly a pillar of AGI.
Perhaps one may argue that our deep learning layers do form some kind of hierarchy, e.g. this is very clear in certain models such as convolutional neural network. But many of those models cannot have arbitrarily deep hierarchies, which appears to be a fundamental aspect of intelligence.
How to Create a Mind:
The lists of steps in my mind are organized in hierarchies. I follow a routine procedure before going to sleep. The first step is to brush my teeth. But this action is in turn broken into a smaller series of steps, the first of which is to put toothpaste on the toothbrush. That step in turn is made up of yet smaller steps, such as finding the toothpaste, removing the cap, and so on. The step of finding the toothpaste also has steps, the first of which is to open the bathroom cabinet. That step in turn requires steps, the first of which is to grab the outside of the cabinet door. This nesting actually continues down to a very fine grain of movements, so that there are literally thousands of little actions constituting my nighttime routine. Although I may have difficulty remembering details of a walk I took just a few hours ago, I have no difficulty recalling all of these many steps in preparing for bed - so much so that I am able to think about other things while I go through these procedures. It is important to point out that this list is not stored as one long list of thousands of steps - rather, each of our routine procedures is remembered as an elaborate hierarchy of nested activities.
Human Compatible: TODO get exact quote. It was something along: life goal: save world from hunger. Subgoal: apply for some grant. Sub-sub-goal: eat, sleep, take shower. Sub-sub-sub-goal: move muscles to get me to table and open a can.
ATP synthase by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
One of the most beautiful molecular machines known!
The first one with such complexity that was uncovered.
The thing rotates like a water wheel for God's sake, except it uses protons instead of water.
The ATP synthase complex is so large that Power, Sex, Suicide by Nick Lane (2006) page 123 contains a cryoEM image of several ATP synthases on small membrane vesicles, this is the paper: pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bi00437a031# under a fucking paywall.
Video 1.
ATP synthase in action by HarvardX (2017)
Source.
Git tips / diff3 by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
diff3 conflict is basically what you always want to see, either by setting it as the default as per stackoverflow.com/questions/27417656/should-diff3-be-default-conflictstyle-on-git:
git config --global merge.conflictstyle diff3
or as a one off:
git checkout --conflict=diff3
With this, conflicts now show up as:
++<<<<<<< HEAD
 +5
++||||||| parent of 7b0f59d (6)
++3
++=======
+ 6
++>>>>>>> 7b0f59d (6)
7b0f59d is the SHA-2 of commit 6.
instead of the inferior default:
++<<<<<<< ours
 +5
++=======
+ 6
++>>>>>>> theirs
We can also observe the current tree state during resolution:
* b4ec057 (HEAD, master) 5
* 0b37c1b 4
| * fbfbfe8 (my-feature) 7
| * 7b0f59d 6
|/
* 661cfab 3
* 6d748a9 2
* c5f8a2c 1
so we understand that we are now at 5 and that we are trying to apply our commit 6
So it is much clearer what is happening:
  • master changed the code from 3 to 5
  • our feature changed the code from 3 to 6
and so now we have to decide what the new code is that will put both of these together.
Let's say we decide it is 5 + 6 = 11 and continue rebasing:
git add .
git rebase --continue
We now reach:
++<<<<<<< HEAD
 +11
++||||||| parent of fbfbfe8 (7)
++6
++=======
+ 7
++>>>>>>> fbfbfe8 (7)
and the tree looks like:
* ca7f7ff (HEAD) 6
* b4ec057 (master) 5
* 0b37c1b 4
| * fbfbfe8 (my-feature) 7
| * 7b0f59d 6
|/
* 661cfab 3
* 6d748a9 2
* c5f8a2c 1
So we understand that:
  • after the previous step we added commit 6 on top of 5
  • now we are adding 7 on top of the new 6 (which we decided would contain 11)
and after resolving that one we now reach:
* e1aaf20 (HEAD -> my-feature) 7
* ca7f7ff 6
* b4ec057 (master) 5
* 0b37c1b 4
* 661cfab 3
* 6d748a9 2
* c5f8a2c 1

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!
We have two killer features:
  1. 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-calculus
    Articles 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/derivative
  2. 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.
    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.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
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