- www.architecturaldigest.com/story/zuckerberg-real-estate-holdings#:~:text=Zuckerberg%20began%20what%20has%20now,Kauai%20for%20about%20%24116%20million.
- padailypost.com/2017/11/15/zuckerberg-builds-new-houses-near-his-palo-alto-home/
- www.staradvertiser.com/2017/01/18/business/facebooks-zuckerberg-sues-to-force-land-sales/?HSA=74dae150a1d9f99e2592d0eac31ea430d01f35d5
Mark Zuckerberg and wife gush over Indian billionaire Anant Ambani $1M watch at pre-wedding party
. Source. 2024. Then later in 2024: www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/07/zuckerberg-swiss-watch-meta-factchecking-video. Sad, very sad.
Circa 2023, the feed is an unbearable list of stupid suggestions, never-ending idiotic memes, and you just end up missing posts you actually care about from people you actually follow.
- www.komando.com/social-media/facebook-customized-feeds/847500/
- www.quora.com/How-do-I-limit-my-news-feed-to-friends-only-on-Facebook
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIA8VydqiNQ OK they split their feed into multiple feeds. However on page follows www.facebook.com/?filter=pages&sk=h_chr you very quickly reach:the history doesn't go back even a few days as of November 2023! And the favorites feed www.facebook.com/?filter=favorites&sk=h_chr is more explicit on their ridiculous timing:OMG!
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Of course those racist Nazis are a bunch of idiots, but how can you be surprised when freedom-of-speech focused tech gets used by them? www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentralized-social-network-gab-migration-fediverse-app-blocking
Obviously, a few large instances dominate the user base for all practical purposes: kevq.uk/centralisation-and-mastodon/. And likely the network splits into hate-speech/non-hate-speech blacklist boundaries. And since the dominating closed networks will never lose user counts (???), the only instance that dominates will be the main hate speech one.
The flagship instance was mastodon.social and then in 2020 they closed signups for it and created a secondary mastodon.online.
The multi-instance thing is confusing and problematic. E.g. replies and likes might not show up across instances in some occasions: www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/ynt7ta/is_there_a_way_to_see_post_replies_displayed_on/
The "advanced interface" feature is bad. Really bad. MacOS file browser inspired.
Ciro Santilli's LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/cirosantilli/ see also: accounts controlled by Ciro Accounts.
LinkedIn fully complies with censorship imposed locally by the Chinese government, and does so in a non-transparent way: cirosantilli.com/china-dictatorship/linkedin.
It is hard to understand what the point of that website is, as it is basically just a more closed version of Facebook, but alas, it has flourished as the only place where people post more useful content compared to Twitter and Facebook. In any case, Ciro just applies the same unfollow policy to all of them: aggressively filter your social media follows.
Tested on Ubuntu 23.10;
git clone https://github.com/google-deepmind/mujoco
cd mujoco
git checkout 5d46c39529819d1b31249e249ca399f306a108ac
mkdir -p build
cd build
cmake ..
make -jNow let's play. Minimal interactive UI simulation of a simple MJCF scene with one falling cube:Test soure code: github.com/google-deepmind/mujoco/blob/5d46c39529819d1b31249e249ca399f306a108ac/sample/basic.cc. The only thing you can do is rotate the scene with the computer mouse it seems. Mentioned at: mujoco.readthedocs.io/en/2.2.2/programming.html#sabasic
bin/basic ../doc/_static/hello.xmlSome more interesting models can be found under the
model/ directory: github.com/google-deepmind/mujoco/tree/5d46c39529819d1b31249e249ca399f306a108ac/model E.g. the imaginary humanoid robot DeepMind used in many demos can be seen with:bin/basic ../model/humanoid/humanoid.xmlA more advanced UI with a few controls:Test soure code: github.com/google-deepmind/mujoco/tree/5d46c39529819d1b31249e249ca399f306a108ac/simulate. Mentioned at: mujoco.readthedocs.io/en/2.2.2/programming.html#sasimulate
bin/simulate ../doc/_static/hello.xmlA very cool thing about that UI is that you can manually control joints. There are no joints in the hello.xml, but e.g. with the humanoid model:under "Control" you move each joint of the robot separately which is quite cool.
bin/simulate ../model/humanoid/humanoid.xmlThere's also a Mentioned at: mujoco.readthedocs.io/en/2.2.2/programming.html#sarecord but TODO that produced a broken video, related issues:
bin/record test executable that presumably renders the simulation directly to a file:bin/record ../doc/_static/hello.xml 5 60 rgb.out
ffmpeg -f rawvideo -pixel_format rgb24 -video_size 800x800 -framerate 60 -i rgb.out -vf "vflip" video.mp4Cryptocurrencies have two applications:
- illegal activities, notably buying drugs, paying for ransomware and money laundering. But also paying for anti-censorship services from inside dictatorships. Illegal activity can be good when governments are bad, and arguably selling drugs should be legal.For this reason Ciro Santilli believes that privacy coins like Monero are currently the most useful cryptocurrencies. Also, people concerned with their privacy are likely to more naturally make fewer larger payments to reduce exposure rather than a bunch of small separate ones, and therefore transaction fees matter less, and can be seen as a reasonable privacy tax. Also drugs are expensive, just have a look at any uncensored Onion service search engine, so individual transactions tend to be large.
- inflation-resistance due to money creation in fiat currencies. Money printing is a bad form of tax. But why not just instead invest in bonds or stocks, which actually have a specific intrinsic value and should therefore increase your capital and beat inflation? Even if crypto did take over, its value would eventually become constant, and just holding it would lose out to stocks and bonds. And pre-crypto, salaries should adjust relatively quickly to new inflation levels as they come, though there is always some delay. Also, for non-anonymous cryptocurrencies, governments will sooner or later find a way to regulate and pervert it. If you want to do things without anonymity, then what you really have to fight for is to change government itself, perhaps with a DAO-like approach, or pushing for a more direct democracy.
The key difficulties of cryptocurrencies are:
- how do transaction fees/guarantees/times compare to centralized systems such as credit cards:Obviously, decentralized currencies cannot be cheaper to maintain than centralized ones, since with decentralization you still have to send network messages at all times, and instead of one party carrying out computations, multiple parties have to carry out computations.
- bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1261/is-it-possible-to-send-bitcoins-without-paying-a-fee "The Blockchain Scalability Problem & the Race for Visa-Like Transaction Speed" (2019)
- towardsdatascience.com/the-blockchain-scalability-problem-the-race-for-visa-like-transaction-speed-5cce48f9d44
Crypto could however be close enough in price to centralized systems that it becomes viable, this can be considered. - how can governments tax cryptocurrency. Notably, because:See also globalization reduces the power of governments.
- taxation has to be progressive, e.g. we have to tax the rich more than the poor, and anonymity in transactions would weaken that
- it would be even easier to move money into fiscal paradises, and then just say, oops, lost my passwords, those coins are actually gone
If crypto really takes off, 99.99% of people will still only ever use it through some cryptocurrency exchange (unless scalability problems are solved, and they replace fiat currencies entirely), since downloading full blockchains is unfeasible, so the outcome would be very similar to PayPal, and without "true" decentralization.
For those reasons, Ciro Santilli instead believes that governments should issue electronic money, and maintain an open API that all can access instead. The centralized service will always be cheaper for society to maintain than any distributed service, and it will still allow for proper taxation.
Ciro believes that it is easy for people to be seduced by the idealistic promise that "cryptocurrency will make the world more fair and equal by giving everyone equal opportunities, away from the corruption of Governments". Such optimism that new technologies will solve certain key social problems without the need for constant government intervention and management is not new, as shown e.g. at HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis (2016) when he talks about the cyberspace (when the Internet was just beginning): youtu.be/fh2cDKyFdyU?t=2375. Technologies can make our lives better. But in general, some of them also have to be managed.
In any case, cryptocurrencies are bullshit, the true currency of the future is going to be Magic: The Gathering cards. And Cirocoin.
One closely related thing that Ciro Santilli does think could be interesting exploring right now however, notably when having Monero-like anonymity in mind, would be anonymous electronic voting, which is a pre-requisite to make direct democracy convenient so people can vote more often.
TODO evaluate the possible application of cryptocurrency for international transfers:Of course, the ideal solution would be for governments to just allow for people from other countries to create accounts in their country, and use the centralized API just like citizens. Having an account of some sort is of course fundamental to avoid money laundering/tax evasion, be it on the API, or when you are going to cash out the crypto into fiat. So then the question becomes: suppose that governments are shit and never make such APIs, are international transfers just because traditional banks are inefficient/greedy? Or is it because of the inevitable cost of auditing transfers? E.g. how does TransferWise compare to Bitcoin these days? And if cryptocurrency is more desirable, why wouldn't TransferWise just use it as their backend, and reach very similar fees?
Notable ones:
Flux linkage is a key concept in electromagnetism and electrical engineering, particularly in the study of inductors and transformers. It refers to the total magnetic flux (\(\Phi\)) that links with a coil or a loop of wire. This concept is critical for understanding how inductors work and how electromagnetic induction occurs.
A shock tube is a device used primarily in experimental fluid dynamics and shock wave research to study the behavior of gases under shock wave conditions. It consists of a long, narrow tube divided into two segments by a diaphragm. One segment (the driver section) is filled with a high-pressure gas, while the other segment (the driven section) is filled with a low-pressure gas.
"Ngan" can refer to a few different things depending on the context: 1. **Currency**: In some contexts, especially in Southeast Asia, "ngan" is a unit of currency. For example, in Thailand, "ngan" is a traditional unit of measurement for silver and gold but is not commonly used in currency today. 2. **Names**: "Ngan" can also be a name, particularly in Vietnamese culture.
The term "Tbl" can refer to different things depending on the context. Here are a few possibilities: 1. **Tabular Data**: In programming and data science, "Tbl" is sometimes used as shorthand for "table," referring to structured data organized in rows and columns. 2. **TBL (The Business Logic Layer)**: It can stand for a specific component in software architecture that handles business logic within an application. 3. **TBL (Tech Bureau, Ltd.
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





