In mathematics, the term "triviality" can refer to a situation, result, or concept that is considered to be simple, obvious, or not particularly interesting because it does not offer new insights or complexities. The concept of triviality can manifest in various areas of mathematics, such as: 1. **Trivial Solutions**: In the context of equations or systems, a trivial solution often refers to the simplest possible solution, such as zero in linear algebra.
A parameter is a variable or value that is used in mathematical functions, statistical models, or algorithms to define certain characteristics or behaviors of a system. Parameters help determine the output of a function or model based on their specific values. They can typically be adjusted to influence the results of calculations or simulations. In different contexts, the term "parameter" can have specific meanings: 1. **Mathematics**: In mathematics, a parameter is a constant in equations that can vary within certain limits.
Parameter space refers to the multidimensional space formed by all the possible values that parameters can take in a given model or system. Each parameter corresponds to a dimension within this space, and the combination of values defines a point in that space. In various fields, the concept of parameter space is used as follows: 1. **Mathematics and Statistics**: In statistical modeling, the parameter space may refer to all possible configurations of parameters that define a statistical model.
This article is about covert agent communication channel websites used by the CIA in many countries from the mid 2000s until the early 2010s, when they were uncovered by counter intelligence of some of the targeted countries, notably Iran and China, circa 2010-2013.
This article uses publicly available information to publicly disclose for the first time a few hundred of what we feel are extremely likely candidate sites of the network. The starting point for this research was the September 2022 Reuters article "America’s Throwaway Spies" which for the first time gave nine example websites, and their analyst from Citizenlabs claims to have found 885 websites in total, but did not publicly disclose them. Starting from only the nine disclosed websites, we were then able to find a few hundred websites that share so many similarities with them, i.e. a common fingerprint, that we believe makes them beyond reasonable doubt part of the same network.
If you enjoy this article, consider dropping some Monero at: 4A1KK4uyLQX7EBgN7uFgUeGt6PPksi91e87xobNq7bT2j4V6LqZHKnkGJTUuCC7TjDNnKpxDd8b9DeNBpSxim8wpSczQvzf so I can waste it on my foolish attempts to improve higher education. Other sponsorship methods: Section "Sponsor Ciro Santilli's work on OurBigBook.com".
The discovery of these websites by Iranian and Chinese counterintelligence led to the imprisonment and execution of several assets in those countries, and subsequent shutdown of the channel by the CIA when they noticed that things had gone wrong. This is likely a Wikipedia page that talks about the disastrous outcome of the websites being found out: 2010–2012 killing of CIA sources in China, although it contained no mention of websites before Ciro Santilli edited it in.
Of particular interest is that based on their language and content, certain of the websites seem to have targeted other democracies such as Germany, France, Spain and Brazil.
If anyone can find others websites, or has better techniques feel free to contact Ciro Santilli at: Section "How to contact Ciro Santilli". Contributions will be clearly attributed if desired. Some of the techniques used so far have been very heuristic, and that added to the limited amount of data makes it almost certain that some websites have been missed. Broadly speaking, there are two types of contributions that would be possible:
- finding new IP ranges: harder and more exiting, and potentially requires more intelligence
- better IP to domain name databases to fill in known gaps in existing IP ranges
The fact that citizenlabs reported exactly 885 websites being found makes it feel like they might have found find a better fingerprint which we have not managed to find yet. We have not yet had to pay for our data. If someone wants to donate to the research, some ideas include:
- dump $400 on WhoisXMLAPI to dump whois history of all known hits and search for other matches. Small discoveries were made like this in the past and we'd expect a few more to be left. We don't expect huge breakthroughs from this, but at only $400 it is not so bad
- dump a lot more ($15k+? needs confirmation as opaque pricing) on DomainTools. We are not certain that they have any superior data since there is no free trial of any kind, but it would be interesting to test the quality of the data they acquired from Farsight DNSDB if you are really loaded
Disclaimers:
- the network fell in 2013, followed by fully public disclosures in 2018 and 2022, so we believe that the benefit of giving the public this broader historic understanding outweighs the risks that agents could be found so many years later by sloppy secret services
- Ciro Santilli's political bias is strongly pro-democracy and anti-dictatorship, but with a good pinch of skepticism about the morality US foreign policy in the last century
Deep psychological analyses:
- Hacker News user MichaelZuo comments on a post about CIA 2010 covert communication websites:
- www.reddit.com/r/China_irl/comments/1bn47e5/comment/kwgkl88/ user
Opening_Gazelle_1323comments:Can your kid be the next Fields Medalist or Nobel Prize winner? I'm here to help, especially if you are filthy rich!
三西猴老哥这一张嘴⏰味拉满，可以封为荣誉中国人Brother Sanxihou’s mouth is so full of flavor that he can be named an honorary Chinese. - www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/1brryao/ciro_santilli_received_a_1000_xmr_donation_to/ from 1000 Monero donation user
Inaeipathy:; - archive.is/W1ocv originally boards.4channel.org/g/thread/75097729/who-is-this-guy on 4chan:
a based retard
Is that his own personal site where he has just listed everything he has ever done? Based.
He refers to himself in the third person, because gender has non place in the Sciences. Based autismo.
Holy based. Keep up the good work my man.
Ciro Santilli feels that all really important and productive activities come spontaneously, without being internally forced upon people.
You may say that this is because Ciro is lazy and irresponsible, but Bill thinks this isn't necessarily always bad:This is yet another manifestation of YAGNI.
I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.
As another way to put it, Ciro has very little "self-discipline", and acts very heavily based on small passions that take hold of him. Related: high flying bird vs gophers.
You may also say that Ciro is an idealist, because what to do when the food will run out and you have to hunt? To which Jesus replies at Matthew 6:25-34 "Do Not Worry" (archive):Also closely related: man shall not live by bread alone.
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you - you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Ciro is also fond of the description of the work method of Yukio Mishima presented in Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (TODO based on Mishima's self descriptions?). Ciro Santilli's father highlighted this to him, and Ciro had already watched that movie and thought it was amazing:
This is perfectly complemented by him making tea, as if suggesting:
Don't rush the work. Just let it happen. Every day at midnight, I would boil a teapot of tea. I would watch the steam rise, and with it feel my consciousness deepen. Everything was pure silence. When the hand was ready, it would, by itself, pick up the brush, and writing would start.
Ciro generally feels that many major developments in his life happened "by miracle", beyond his control. So when he saw the quote by Carl Jung:Ciro tends to do major decisions in his life due to uncontrollable passion rather than logic.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
Ciro believes that this is linked to his self perceived creative personality, Because Ciro gives in to such uncontrollable passions, this leads him to do things which are more unusual/creative, because other more logical people would write such options off as weird.
Another type of laziness Ciro is to blame for is passionately seeking instrumental goals rather than hard end goals, in order to reach the hard goals more effectively. This is well put in the quote apocryphallyref attribute to Abraham Lincoln:For example, whenever joining a new company, Ciro would first try to improve any exceedingly shitty systems, like the build system or test system, rather than doing whatever random task the manager felt like doing that week. He was somewhat fired for that actually. But in the end, if your infrastructure sucks, your project will fail, so better be fired early and go work on something that might succeed than later when the enterprise goes bankrupt.
Related:
Alan Watts' wuwei talk
. Source. During this talk, Alan quotes Jesus: Matthew 18:3 "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.".Don't Try - The Philosophy of Charles Bukowski by Pursuit of Wonder (2019)
Source. www.openculture.com/2013/02/dont_try_charles_bukowskis_concise_philosophy_of_art_and_life.htmlWe work too hard. We try too hard. Don’t try. Don’t work. It’s there. It’s been looking right at us, aching to kick out of the closed womb. There’s been too much direction. It’s all free, we needn’t be told. Classes? Classes are for asses. Writing a poem is as easy as beating your meat or drinking a bottle of beer.
Mathematical proofs are logical arguments that demonstrate the truth or validity of a mathematical statement or theorem. A proof provides an explanation of why a particular statement is true based on axioms (fundamental truths accepted without proof), previously established theorems, and logical reasoning. Key features of mathematical proofs include: 1. **Logical Structure**: A proof is constructed using a clear logical framework, often consisting of statements and arguments that follow a structured approach.
Mathematical terminology refers to the specific language, symbols, and vocabulary used in the field of mathematics. This terminology helps convey concepts, methods, and relationships in a precise and standardized way. Here are some key aspects of mathematical terminology: 1. **Definitions**: Precise descriptions of mathematical concepts, such as "a prime number is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself.
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 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 4. Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation.
Figure 5. Web editor. 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.Video 4. OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo. Source. 
- 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