Topics (118k) Articles (119k) Users (847) Discussions (539) Comments (463) New article
New Updated Top Announced A-Z
Superconducting temperature by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Read the full article
It is hard for complex organisms to evolve because longer DNA means longer replication time by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Because DNA replication is a key limiting factor of bacterial replication time, such organisms are therefore strongly incentivized to have very minimal DNAs.
Power, Sex, Suicide by Nick Lane (2006) 7 "Why bacteria are simple" page 169 puts this nicely:
Bacteria replicate at colossal speed. [...] In two days, the mass of exponentially doubling E. coli would be 2664 times larger than the mass of the Earth.
Luckily this does not happen, and the reason is that bacteria are normally half starved. They swiftly consume all available food, whereupon their growth is limited once again by the lack of nutrients. Most bacteria spend most of their lives in stasis, waiting for a meal. Nonetheless, the speed at which bacteria do mobilize themselves to replicate upon feeding illustrates the overwhelming strength of the selection pressures at work.
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Interesting AtomSea & EMBII uploads by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2026-04-05
View more
tx e3e37ed5c1de2631c147bd39429e42ff634e95b7d72423bc32d6c6b9d8eef8ee (2014-07-01):
For my first official Journal entry I've decided to archive some old poetry. Here are a few of the computational poems I've created using cyphers.
Figure 1.
Shiemaa&Vincent.jpg
. Source.
Message:
"Even if we tried to do it on purpose, never would have we succeeded." My beloved Vincent.
TODO identify Shiemaa and Vincent.
Figure 2.
BikeLady.jpg
. Source.
This seems to be a novel work uploaded by its creator artist Allen Vandever according to EMBII.[ref].
Figure 3.
Arecibo_message.svg
. Source.
An "artificially" colored visualization of the Arecibo message ripped from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arecibo_message.svg (with attribution).
The cool thing about this image is that it highlights the striking parallels between the encoding of the Arecibo message with crypto graffiti, because in both cases people were creating undocumented new ways of communicating with strangers on a new medium in those early blockchain days.
The associated message contains the Arecibo message as ASCII 0's and 1's. When properly cut at the newlines, they draw the message as ASCII art, as the original Arecibo encoding intends, here's a version with the 0's replaced by spaces to make it more readabale:
      1 1 1 1
  1 1     1 1       1
1   1   1   1  1 11  1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1  1  1

            11
          11 1
          11 1
          1 1 1
          11111

11    111   11    11
1             11  1
11 1   11   11    11 1
11111 11111 11111 11111

    1                 1

    1                 1
11111             11111

11    11    111   11
1       1         1
11 1    11   111  11 1
11111 11111 11111 11111

    1      11         1
          11
    1     11          1
11111     11      11111
          11
  1        1        1
    1      11       1
    11    11      1
      11   1    11
          11  11
      11   1    11
    11    11      1
    1      1        1
  1       11        1
  1        11        1
  1         1       1
  1       1       1
    1            11
    11        11
  1   111 1 11
  1       1
  1     11111
  1    1 111 1  1 11 11
      1  111  1  111111
1 111    111     11 111
          1 1     111 11
  1      1 1     111111
  1      1 1     11
  1     11 11

  111     1
  111 1 1   1 1 1 1 1 1
  111         1 1 1 1
              1 1
        11111
      111111111
    111       111
    11           11
  11 1         1 11
  11  11       11  11
  1   1 1     1 1   1
  1   1  1   1  1   1
      1   1 1   1
      1    1    1
      1         1
        1  1 1
  1111  11111 1  1111
Figure 4.
He sleeps in a temple.jpg
. tx 460ed23bea89176cdfe18e13fce51ad5386ad8e3e1f7d6f5b4711b3be97b0502 block 360565 (2015-06-12). EMBII claimed on Twitter that he took this photo in Auckland, New Zealand. The shop on the right corner has a sign that starts with "Bo" and searching for "Auckland Bo" gave us the "The body shop" on the corner of Queen Street and Darby Street. Some things changed between 2015 and 2024, notably the bench is gone and the shop on the left corner changed, but we can go back in time in Google Street View to 2015 which further confirms the location.
Figure 5.
PIA17563.jpg
. Source.
Associated message:
NASA: A purple nebula, in honor of #Prince, who passed away today. Image: Crab #Nebula, as Seen by Herschel and #Hubble Image credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/MESS Key Programme Supernova Remnant Team; #NASA, ESA and Allison Loll/Jeff Hester (Arizona State University) #PIA17563
Figure 6.
Dr_Craig_Wright.jpg
. Source.
The image is present e.g. at: www.kitguru.net/channel/jon-martindale/australian-man-claims-he-is-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin-creator/ It was inscribed about two months after Craig publicly claimed that he is Satoshi.
This is a relatively unusual AtomSea & EMBII upload as it does not have the common toplevel transaction, everything, text + image fits into a single transaction. This is perhaps why the image is relatively low resolution to have a smaller size.
Figure 7.
YellowRobot.jpg
. Source.
Photography by EMBII, original art by TODO.
The associated message reads:
Chiharu and I found this little yellow robot while exploring Chicago. It will be covered by tar or eventually removed but this tribute will remain. N 41.880778 E -87.629210
This is one of Ciro's favorite AtomSea & EMBII uploads. This is the cutest thing ever, and perfectly encapsules the "medium as an artform" approach to blockchain art. More Chiharu stalking at: ILoveYouMore.jpg.
At twitter.com/EMBII4U/status/1615389973343268871 EMBII announced that he would be giving off shares of that image on a Bitcoin-based NFT sale system he's making called Sup!?, and in December 2023 gave 2/300 shares to Ciro Santilli. Amen. The transaction list can be seen on the web UI at: p2fk.io/GetObjectByAddress/1KUyhHLrK1ckY8W7Qu31h6gFkXoihWHMzi?mainnet=true&verbose=true It had unfortunately never sold as of 2025, the only activity was EMBII giving off some shares and two listings of 1/300 for 1 BTC. Poor EMBII!
Other possibly novel EMBII street photography:
Audio:
Read the full article
ANN model by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Read the full article
Applications of superconductivity by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Superconductivity is one of the key advances of 21st century technology:
Read the full article
activatedgeek/LeNet-5 by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
This repository contains a very clean minimal PyTorch implementation of LeNet-5 for MNIST.
It trains the LeNet-5 neural network on the MNIST dataset from scratch, and afterwards you can give it newly hand-written digits 0 to 9 and it will hopefully recognize the digit for you.
Ciro Santilli created a small fork of this repo at lenet adding better automation for:
Install on Ubuntu 24.10 with:
sudo apt install protobuf-compiler
git clone https://github.com/activatedgeek/LeNet-5
cd LeNet-5
git checkout 95b55a838f9d90536fd3b303cede12cf8b5da47f
virtualenv -p python3 .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
pip install \
  Pillow==6.2.0 \
  numpy==1.24.2 \
  onnx==1.13.1 \
  torch==2.0.0 \
  torchvision==0.15.1 \
  visdom==0.2.4 \
;
We use our own pip install because their requirements.txt uses >= instead of == making it random if things will work or not.
On Ubuntu 22.10 it was instead:
pip install
  Pillow==6.2.0 \
  numpy==1.26.4 \
  onnx==1.17.0 torch==2.6.0 \
  torchvision==0.21.0 \
  visdom==0.2.4 \
;
Then run with:
python run.py
This script:
  • does a fixed 15 epochs on the training data
  • it then uses the trained net from memory to check accuracy with the test data
  • then it also produces a lenet.onnx ONNX file which contains the trained network, nice!
It throws a billion exceptions because we didn't start the Visdom server, but everything works nevertheless, we just don't get a visualization of the training.
The terminal outputs lines such as:
Train - Epoch 1, Batch: 0, Loss: 2.311587
Train - Epoch 1, Batch: 10, Loss: 2.067062
Train - Epoch 1, Batch: 20, Loss: 0.959845
...
Train - Epoch 1, Batch: 230, Loss: 0.071796
Test Avg. Loss: 0.000112, Accuracy: 0.967500
...
Train - Epoch 15, Batch: 230, Loss: 0.010040
Test Avg. Loss: 0.000038, Accuracy: 0.989300
And the runtime on Ubuntu 22.10, P51 was:
real    2m10.262s
user    11m9.771s
sys     0m26.368s
One of the benefits of the ONNX output is that we can nicely visualize the neural network on Netron:
Figure 1.
Netron visualization of the activatedgeek/LeNet-5 ONNX output
. From this we can see the bifurcation on the computational graph as done in the code at:
output = self.c1(img)
x = self.c2_1(output)
output = self.c2_2(output)
output += x
output = self.c3(output)
This doesn't seem to conform to the original LeNet-5 however?
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / We are 256, We are 1 by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
"WE ARE 256, WE ARE 1" is an invitation to a Discord-based puzzle game with the promise of a money prize of unspecified value in Round 10.
It is written as a short mystery story/cult invitation/tabletop RPG with some mysterious Braille Unicode art cabal symbols thrown in, nice work, e.g. the first one:
 ⣤⡀⠀⠀⠠⣤⠀⠀⠀⠀⣤⠀⠀⢠⡄⠀⠀⣤⠀⠀⠀⠀⣤⠄⠀⠀⢀⣤⠀
⠀⠘⢷⣄⠀⠀⠹⣧⡀⠀⠀⢸⡆⠀⢸⡇⠀⢰⡇⠀⠀⢀⣼⠏⠀⠀⣠⡾⠃⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠙⢷⣄⠀⠘⢷⡄⠀⠘⣷⠀⠘⠃⠀⣼⠇⠀⢠⡾⠃⠀⣠⡾⠋⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠻⣦⣀⠀⠻⣧⡀⠈⢿⡄⠀⢿⠄⢀⡀⠠⡿⠀⢠⡿⠁⢀⣼⠟⠀⣀⣴⠟⠀
⠀⠀⠈⠙⢶⣄⠈⠻⣦⡈⢿⡄⠈⢠⣿⣿⡄⠁⢠⡿⢁⣴⠟⠁⣠⡶⠋⠁⠀⠀
⠀⣀⣀⠀⠀⠈⠛⢦⣈⣿⣄⠃⣠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣄⠘⣠⣿⣁⡴⠛⠁⠀⠀⣀⣀⠀
⠀⠈⠙⠛⠷⢦⣤⣀⡉⠻⠋⣰⣿⡿⠿⠿⢿⣿⣆⠙⠟⢉⣀⣤⡴⠾⠛⠋⠁⠀
⠀⢶⣦⣤⣤⣤⣈⣉⣛⠃⢀⣡⡄⢀⡤⠤⠀⢠⣌⡀⠘⣛⣉⣁⣤⣤⣤⣴⡶⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣉⣉⡉⠁⢰⣿⣿⣇⠸⠀⠀⠀⣸⣿⣿⡆⠈⢉⣉⣉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠛⠛⠉⠉⢉⠉⢁⣤⣈⠛⠻⠿⠷⣤⣤⠾⠿⠟⠛⣁⣤⡈⠉⡉⠉⠉⠛⠛⠀
⠀⣠⣤⡶⠞⠋⢠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣶⣶⣤⣤⣤⣤⣶⣶⣿⣿⣿⣷⡄⠙⠳⢶⣤⣄⠀
⠀⠉⠀⣠⠀⢠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠀⣄⠀⠉⠀
⠀⢀⣠⡾⠋⣠⠞⠁⣰⡟⠁⢸⡏⠀⢸⡇⠀⢹⡇⠈⢻⣆⠈⠳⣄⠙⢷⣄⡀⠀
⠀⠛⠋⠀⠚⠋⠀⠐⠛⠀⠀⠚⠀⠀⠘⠃⠀⠀⠓⠀⠀⠛⠂⠀⠙⠓⠀⠙⠛⠀
The prize promise is:
Amidst the labyrinthine trials, the ultimate test lies in Round 10, where grand prize money riddles await the most skilled and dedicated participants.
There may also be a pay to win mechanic which is perhaps how the scam works:
In this cryptic journey, the number of 256 Ordinals held becomes a key determinant of progress. Those who hold a higher number of Ordinals, standing as sentinels of wisdom, enjoy an edge over others. They are safeguarded from regressing beyond their current round, their position secured by the strength of their holdings.
However, for those who possess fewer Ordinals, a different fate may await. Purges, shrouded in mystery, can demote participants to lower rounds, challenging them to rise again through determination and resolve. The path to enlightenment demands resilience and the tenacity to overcome setbacks.
Finally further down we see some join instructions:
V. Whitelist Access and Discord Roles
And finally they give concrete join instructions at:
IX. Join the Illuminated Ones
SW4gdGhlIGhhbGxvd2VkIGNoYW1iZXJzIG9mIDI1NiwgYSBzZWxlY3QgZ3JvdXAgZW1lcmdlcyBmcm9tIHRoZSBkZXB ... XBsZXMgb2YgQml0Y29pbiByZWlnbiBzdXByZW1lLg==
Removing the spaces it is just Base64:
xsel -b | tr -d ' ' | base64 -d
giving:
In the hallowed chambers of 256, a select group emerges from the depths of knowledge and mastery. As we ascend through the challenging rounds and unravel the enigmas that lie within, a council of visionaries begins to take shape. These luminaries, the Illuminated Ones, are the chosen few who have delved deepest into the mysteries, unlocking the secrets that bind our shared destiny.
To join the ranks of the Illuminated Ones is to embrace the challenge laid before us. It requires unwavering determination, relentless pursuit of knowledge, and an insatiable curiosity that drives us to unlock the hidden depths of the Watch Tower. As we decode the cryptic puzzles and navigate the labyrinthine maze, we become catalysts of change, shaping the very fabric of our collective future.
Only the smartest, the most intrepid, and the boldest souls will find themselves welcomed into this secret council. They are the ones who have traversed the treacherous terrain, tested their mettle, and emerged triumphant. With each step forward, they gain insights and wisdom that have the power to reshape the very landscape of the digital realm.
Curious and courageous souls are invited to join the ranks of the Illuminated Ones. Those who dare to challenge the boundaries of what is known and venture into the realm of the unknown are the ones who will find their rightful place among the visionaries and leaders of the 256 community. Together, we wield the power to shape our shared destiny, to create a future where decentralization, privacy, and the principles of Bitcoin reign supreme.
so perhaps there is a hidden message in that text to actually access the Discord?
This is the collection on Magic Eden: magiceden.io/ja/ordinals/marketplace/256, which contains links:
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / OnChainMonkey by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
From their site:
OCM Genesis is our flagship generative art collection that's set many historic precedents since its launch in 2021. Genesis is the first NFT collection where all 10,000 images and metadata (similar to DNA describing the NFT) were generated using code entirely on-chain in a single transaction on Ethereum. With the launch of Bitcoin Ordinals, Genesis is the first ever collection of 10,000 images to be inscribed on Bitcoin in 2023.
Some of their likely transactions were noted in our list of large transactions: github.com/cirosantilli/bitcoin-inscription-indexer/blob/master/data/payload_size_out e.g.:
004c3f1efa0095b229dd05ea247c94a5af742daf682fb082a6e62f4aeeb973f2 66033
ffc73ef454d512f98a451960e05a0a036406ed1078a1bd7082fd4036cf0af067 66021
but we haven't had the patience to index them properly yet. Boring art anyways.
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Cute Coinbase messages by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Coinbase message are messages that only miners can embed in the blockchain.
As such most of them tend to be boring ads for mining pools, but there are a few exceptions, especially in the early days.
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / HHTT by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
The Horrible Horrendous Terrible Tremendous Mining Pool inscribed a few cute Coinbase messages during their operation in 2012-2013.
Many of their messages also mention SockThing, which was part of their mining infrastructure:
Starting from their very first ASCII transaction on block 197602 (2012-09-07), there is what seems to be a poem spread across several transactions. Some of the lines are repeated, presumably because they didn't update the current line to a new line and so mined the same thing multiple times:
I am a pretty princess
covered in mud and blood
water with stuff in it
like everything else that wiggles or jiggles
screaming might not be your waY
see no reason to operate otherwise since
came into the world naked, wet and screaming
but silence will never be mine
until I am dead
but the smell will also give that away
gather all my things
load them in a big boat
airlift that to Kansas
and light it on fire
drop it from 7,000 feet
then railgun my corpse straight down
The sentences are not very coherent together, perhaps this is because lines were chosen by different miners one at a time.
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Prayer wars by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Figure 1.
Saint Eligius by Petrus Christus
. Source. Off-chain image for illustration. Eligius pool is named after Saint Eligius, patron of goldsmiths and miners[ref]
These are some of the earliest inscriptions in the blockchain, and therefore extremelly visible.
Although the prayer verses appear contiguous in ASCII dumps, Eligius was not actually mining every block: it is just that in those early days, miners still hadn't started adding advertisement messages to every block, so only Eligius shows up and appears contiguous.
At some point, opponents noticed these messages, and started adding atheist mockery graffiti replies, which appear interspersed in ASCII dumps with the prayer.
The first prayer is the Latin version of the Divine Praises, a Catholic prayer composed in 1797 in Italian by Luigi Felici for the purpose of making reparation after saying or hearing sacrilege or blasphemy. Luke claims he was referring to anything in particular that came prior in the blockchain: twitter.com/LukeDashjr/status/1749182637569122434. There arent many earlier inscriptions at all to refer to in any case! The prayer and correspondong interrupts (in transaction outputs, not by other miners) ordered by block are:
  • 139690 (2011-08-05) prayer: "Eligius/Benedictus Deus. Benedictum Nomen Sanctum eius."
  • 139717 prayer: "Eligius/Benedictus Deus. Benedictum Nomen Sanctum eius.'
  • 139758 interruption: ***************************************************. This is not a Coinbase message: www.blockchain.com/explorer/transactions/btc/23befff6eea3dded0e34574af65c266c9398e7d7d9d07022bf1cd526c5cdbc94. This Bitcoin input script appears to spend a standard P2PKH output, but it first adds an extra value to the stack which contains the ***.
  • 139792 prayer: "Benedictus Iesus Christus, verus Deus et verus homo.'
  • 139831 prayer: "Benedictum Nomen Iesu.'
  • 139838 (2011-08-06) interruption: "I LIKE TURTLES" (tx 78eb16507b3d3df615e3b474e853db4667f4b11954ec6d918b1ded0fca7ad25a)
  • 138898 prayer: "Benedictum Cor eius sacratissimum."
  • 139904 prayer: "Benedictus Sanguis eius pretiosissimus."
  • 139921 prayer: "Benedictus Iesus in sanctissimo altaris Sacramento."
  • 139942 prayer: "Benedictus Sanctus Spiritus, Paraclitus."
  • 139954 interrupion: "aC-C-C-COMBO BREAKER" (tx 138c024a76df99ecafd2236d5429cf574b7778a3c6508bd83f116c832f3c6980)
  • 139960 prayer: "Benedictus Sanctus Spiritus, Paraclitus."
  • 139977 prayer: "Benedicta excelsa Mater Dei, Maria sanctissima."
  • 139990 (2011-08-06) prayer: "Benedicta sancta eius et immaculata Conceptio."
Then comes:
and various others + output message interruptions.
Then at last come the first miner message interruptions. Luke explained on Twitter[ref] that they were also made by Eligius pool, as there was a system in which contributors besides Luke could submit their own strings:
followed by more prayers and interruptions such as tx ec92d245822fa1ff862f3314b9102f36fe1eb8bc055865674c75323540aedef6:
FFS Luke-Jr leave the blockchain alone!
Oh, and God isn't real
The last Luke prayer appears to be on block 143822 (2011-09-03)
... the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth labourers into his harvest.
Then there is a bit of radio silence, until finally Slush Pool started self advertising for the first time on block 163970 (2012-01-26):
/P2SH/BIP16/slush/R,
They had been mining for a long time by then (December 2010 according to en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Slush_Pool), but this is when they decided to add a human readable ASCII message as well.
From then on, miner messages would be forever polluted with ads, and Luke's multi-miner message feat would never again be reproduced.
The non-obvious interruptions are all well known memes/anime references:
Bibliography:
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Mt. Gox' shutdown by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Mt. Gox was the first Cryptocurrency exchange in existence, and when it shutdowon in Febrauary 2014 because the website was crap and they got hacked, some people were not happy at all about their missing funds!
tx 0540b5dda23ee870330c6b1e18a88c592cf8d847c47f1dc1d5328f46115b12b3 (2014-02-25)
2014-02-25: The day Mt.Gox shut down. Farewell, may even you rest in peace!
tx c00a4a04905a2e8d8dee8a768165aa6bdf842413a8a648462a6349db89cd77f2 (2014-02-27) has an ASCII art of a seal, TODO understand meme:
        o
      / |
      | \
  .   |  |
.'\`  | \|
  | \_/ \ \
  \____/\/
<3 You Seals!
There are also a few Base58 messages referring to Mt Gox, the nicest and most expensive one being to burn addres:which as of 2025 holds 0.014537 BTC burnt on:
Many of these transactions also contain other quick messages, e.g.:
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Trump by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
There's a bit of both sides in the 2016 race:
Read the full article
ImageNet by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
14 million images with more than 20k categories, typically denoting prominent objects in the image, either common daily objects, or a wild range of animals. About 1 million of them also have bounding boxes for the objects. The images have different sizes, they are not all standardized to a single size like MNIST[ref].
Each image appears to have a single label associated to it. Care must have been taken somehow with categories, since some images contain severl possible objects, e.g. a person and some object.
In practice, the ILSVRC subset of ImageNet is the most commonly used dataset.
Official project page: www.image-net.org/
The data license is restrictive and forbids commercial usage: www.image-net.org/download.php. Also as a result you have to login to download the dataset. Super annoying.
The categories are all part of WordNet, which means that there are several parent/child categories such as dog vs type of dog available. ImageNet1k only appears to have leaf nodes however (i.e. no "dog" label, just specific types of dog).
A major model that performed well on ImageNet starting on 2012 and became notable is AlexNet.
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Incoming links by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-26
View more
By others:
Read the full article
1D Ising model by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Read the full article
Bitcoin inscription bibliography by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Read the full article
Optical character recognition by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Read the full article
Pay-to-Fake-Multisig by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Read the full article
Ouroboros (protocol) by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Read the full article

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!
Video 1.
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source.
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
    Video 2.
    OurBigBook Web topics demo
    . Source.
  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 2.
    You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either https://OurBigBook.com or as a static website
    .
    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.
  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
Site settings