However, many, many, many terrible horrors come with it:
- it hasn't made the move to desktop for too many years. It could destroy Microsoft Windows and replace it with open source, but they just won't budge towards an unified mobile/desktop setup.
- vendors litter it with uninstallable bloatware that should be illegal. European Union to the rescue!!! www.cnbc.com/2020/12/15/digital-markets-act-eus-new-rules-on-big-tech.html
- vendors lock down devices so it is very hard to get sudo, let alone to modify their images!
- there isn't enough hardware standardization for open source distros to thrive like on desktop
- code drops mean that "master" is useless and trying to contribute from outside vendors' closed walls is a waste of time: stackoverflow.com/questions/1809774/how-to-compile-the-android-aosp-kernel-and-test-it-with-the-android-emulator/48310014#48310014
- if you ever go below the Java API, e.g. to C++ or AOSP build, everything is horrendous and undocumented
- Google doesn't care about the CLI, even the hello world requires creating infinite out-of-control boilerplate from a GUI: stackoverflow.com/questions/20801042/how-to-create-android-project-with-gradle-from-command-line/46994747#46994747
- the boot is uber bloated and takes forever in cycle simulators
Without me, my stack is useless. Without my stack, I am useless. I must fire my requests true. I must shoot straighter than my hackers who are trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will ...My stack is human, even as I am human, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its ORMs and its asset bundlers. I will keep my stack clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will ...
Explanation: this is an allusion to the Rifleman's Creed. This particular version talks about the website stack chosen for a website, i.e. the libraries used.
Ciro Santilli has always felt that choosing a stack is an almost religious choice. It is perhaps part of why the prayer style of the original Rifleman's Creed resonates with the web stack choice.
It is very hard to know how things are going go, the ups and downs, before putting big hours into it.
And once you start, it is hard, though not impossible, to move away.
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.
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
Although it is impossible to understand without examples in mind, try to get familiar with the manuals as soon as possible.
Intel describes paging in the Intel Manual Volume 3 System Programming Guide - 325384-056US September 2015 Chapter 4 "Paging".
Specially interesting is Figure 4-4 "Formats of CR3 and Paging-Structure Entries with 32-Bit Paging", which gives the key data structures.
When an exception happens, the CPU jumps to an address that the OS had previously registered as the fault handler. This is usually done at boot time by the OS.
This could happen for example due to a programming error:but there are cases where it is not a bug, for example in Linux when:
int *is = malloc(1);
is[2] = 1;- the program wants to increase its stack.
- the page was swapped to disk.The OS will need to do some work behind the processes back to get the page back into RAM.
The algorithmically minded will have noticed that paging requires associative array (like Java
Map of Python dict()) abstract data structure where:The single level paging scheme uses a simple array implementation of the associative array:and in C pseudo-code it looks like this:
- the keys are the array index
- this implementation is very fast in time
- but it is too inefficient in memory
linear_address[0] = physical_address_0
linear_address[1] = physical_address_1
linear_address[2] = physical_address_2
...
linear_address[2^20-1] = physical_address_NBut there another simple associative array implementation that overcomes the memory problem: an (unbalanced) k-ary tree.
Using a K-ary tree instead of an array implementation has the following trade-offs:
In C-pseudo code, a 2-level K-ary tree with and we have the following arrays:
K = 2^10 looks like this:level0[0] = &level1_0[0]
level1_0[0] = physical_address_0_0
level1_0[1] = physical_address_0_1
...
level1_0[2^10-1] = physical_address_0_N
level0[1] = &level1_1[0]
level1_1[0] = physical_address_1_0
level1_1[1] = physical_address_1_1
...
level1_1[2^10-1] = physical_address_1_N
...
level0[N] = &level1_N[0]
level1_N[0] = physical_address_N_0
level1_N[1] = physical_address_N_1
...
level1_N[2^10-1] = physical_address_N_Nand it still contains
2^10 * 2^10 = 2^20 possible keys.K-ary trees can save up a lot of space, because if we only have one key, then we only need the following arrays:
Just like a classic programmer does not need to understand the intricacies of how transistors are implemented and CMOS semiconductors, the quantum programmer does not understand physical intricacies of the underlying physical implementation.
The main difference to keep in mind is that quantum computers cannot save and observe intermediate quantum state, so programming a quantum computer is basically like programming a combinatorial-like circuit with gates that operate on (qu)bits:
For this reason programming a quantum computer is much like programming a classical combinatorial circuit as you would do with SPICE, verilog-or-vhdl, in which you are basically describing a graph of gates that goes from the input to the output
For this reason, we can use the words "program" and "circuit" interchangeably to refer to a quantum program
Also remember that and there is no no clocks in combinatorial circuits because there are no registers to drive; and so there is no analogue of clock in the quantum system either,
The Hadamard gate takes or (quantum states with probability 1.0 of measuring either 0 or 1), and produces states that have equal probability of 0 or 1.
Equation 1.
Hadamard gate matrix
. Whenever Ciro Santilli walks in front of a school and sees the tall gates it makes him sad. Maybe 8 year olds need gates. But do we need to protect 15 year olds like that? Students should be going out to see the world, both good and evil not hiding from it! We should instead be guiding them to the world. But instead, we are locking them up in brainwashing centers.
Video "The Purpose of Education by Noam Chomsky (2012)" puts it well, education can be either be:He has spoken about that infinitely, e.g. from when he was thin: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVqMAlgAnlo
- a brainwashing to make people comply with The Establishment
- a way to get people genuinely interested and help them to reach their life goals
Bibliography:
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts7CEFQM2bE How Education Became Indoctrination: Dr Stephen Hicks (2021) Interview by www.youtube.com/c/KnowlandKnows Interesting channel. "Are you sick of woke-washing in education? Free speech distinguishes education from indoctrination" and "I taught at Eton College before I was fired because 'The Patriarchy Paradox' caused offence.".
dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/latest/enwiki-latest-category.sql.gz contains a list of categories. It only contains the categories and some counts, but it doesn't contain the subcategories and pages under each category, so it is a bit pointless.
The schema is listed at: www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Category_table
The SQL first defines the table:followed by a few humongous inserts:which we can see at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Computer_storage_devices
CREATE TABLE `category` (
`cat_id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`cat_title` varbinary(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`cat_pages` int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
`cat_subcats` int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
`cat_files` int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
PRIMARY KEY (`cat_id`),
UNIQUE KEY `cat_title` (`cat_title`),
KEY `cat_pages` (`cat_pages`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=249228235 DEFAULT CHARSET=binary ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED;INSERT INTO `category` VALUES (2,'Unprintworthy_redirects',1597224,20,0),(3,'Computer_storage_devices',88,11,0)Se see that en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Computer_storage_devices_by_companyso it contains only categories.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Computer_storage_devices is a subcategory of that category and it appears in that file.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronis_Secure_Zone is a page of the category, and it does not appear
We can check this with:and it shows:There doesn't seem to be any interlink between the categories, only page and subcategory counts therefore.
sed -s 's/),/\n/g' enwiki-latest-category.sql | grep Computer_storage_devices(3,'Computer_storage_devices',88,11,0
(521773,'Computer_storage_devices_by_company',6,6,0Docker is good.
As a lightweight virtualization however, it does break more often than full proper virtualization like QEMU after some updates.
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain Interesting AtomSea & EMBII uploads by
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Shiemaa&Vincent.jpgMessage:TODO identify Shiemaa and Vincent.
tx 36d0d77acd760f0aa549b6b314f0c1e9690baa6bcc2d0f07ea9f3167f4a5ec99, block 318836 (2014-09-03)Cost: ~0.002 BTC ~ $0.77 at the time.
Several other interesting uploads were also made around block 318836 (September 2014):
RedRaven.jpgbitfossil.org/e17b83234402d85f3a18207eec11bc5c4397f88aa880aae4fb7d15802806a971/index.htmEarth3Archive.jpgbitfossil.org/ae8d3b46b934bedc363e11abe8c8607171994470957c286274f699a0b3a9bbd7/index.htmSkyEarth5Archive.jpgbitfossil.org/ae8d3b46b934bedc363e11abe8c8607171994470957c286274f699a0b3a9bbd7/index.htm
BikeLady.jpgBike Lady by Allen Lee Vandever. tx 2c4b9497af8c0c0eb9383357b40c3de33dba0b4f481099a32719f2b9036da8e7, block 319927 (2014-09-10)
This seems to be a novel work uploaded by its creator artist Allen Vandever according to EMBII.[ref].
Arecibo_message.svgArecibo message on tx c6d2e535cd2ba4659e954a61198c66fd98c60f6475cf8ff92a404f3fe3a16c4b, block 337874 (2015-01-07)
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 1111He sleeps in a temple.jpgDr_Craig_Wright.jpg
. Source. Associated message:
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.
YellowRobot.jpgYellow Robot on tx 67b2facfd8160d4fa11b02829b6387d07537b57a7a24f19b029b2a5ae7b81830, block 450516 (2017-01-29)
The associated message reads: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.
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
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:
- bitfossil.com/f2efd446475ad58a3ea808cc0f05a63c55cece9fced70d84799a1ffce5d307e4/index.htm "I will not Stop until the Finite becomes the Infinite."
Audio:
alien.wavblock 318638 bitfossil.org/a3a24d6ea01ce481a50346818b8977220687f3ba385838fe8894ce61c9718bbc/OneGiantLeapForMankind.mp3at tx 4f5b25fa8021c67235423930580e69121aa0d2c2bb779f75139bf442f8dc7297 EMBII-indexed at 743f3286b00fc96c13db4b16d5aead8a1e059fee9ce775b1761be9be5bdc2501 and then indexed at: 0427ec598df38b7d7dc75721316c0bbdec54de4871e11aff8ea64f3717c07efbThe toplevel index does appear on Bitfossil: bitfossil.org/0427ec598df38b7d7dc75721316c0bbdec54de4871e11aff8ea64f3717c07efb/index.htm but the audio is not there as it was for Spock below, maybe a bug on upload/Bitfossil?Spock_Live_Long_And_Prosper.mp3block 345858 bitfossil.org/1bc87dbff1ff5831287f62ac7cf95579794e4386688479bab66174963f9a4a0c/index.htm. Audio of Mr. Spock saying the Vulcan salute.OuterSpace.mp3block 409471 bitfossil.org/c14c1bd862bab6269052bf0a2cda7a35940d7a2d9c3415d4fb8fb8dcb9394fae/ "Outer Space by embii 4MB Large file storage test Apertus 0.3.5-beta" OMG, I don't want to calculate how much it cost to upload this, it will make me sad.At twitter.com/EMBII4U/status/1655969645927563266 EMBII mentions that this inscription, made by him, is the largest inscription he knows of.TODO song composer/performer?- bitfossil.com/c2b170ff450f4529dfbd784e0cf5cdddaca494e67a243dd846c0a9450a5558af/ (2021-03-13) contains
Seikilos.mid, a MIDI file
Interesting text:
- block 273522 bitfossil.org/70fd289901bae0409f27237506c330588d917716944c6359a8711b0ad6b4ce76/index.htm pi to 1000+ decimal digits:
- bitfossil.org/8522787e7e49f3f3b6a9f9e86bc30336d26a3acbaecc93809d2e8b4bb1c4d611/ "Antarctic Ice Cores Revised 800KYr CO2 Data" evidence for global warming
- bitfossil.org/ffa6893a70bcde9b940df9823e0f597f0b6cff964c78473c77db838655e1aeb5/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laudato_si', global warming related
HTML pages:
- block 335290 bitfossil.org/0166db6053f1969c28de8b1f9a8fa4ec890cc4bdfee7602757993b306bb7f295/ JavaScript animated timer clock counting down until the start of the next year
- block 340379 bitfossil.org/062990d54045a9c316110fb713009d1313b2f64c4b216d66891c7284d6c1ca0e/ links to bitfossil.org/062990d54045a9c316110fb713009d1313b2f64c4b216d66891c7284d6c1ca0e/bong-ball.html and has a working JavaScript Pong
- block 328445
tom-signature.jpgbitfossil.org/daa050bf8ac22752e40412c9265b4533f68ab8e6ed26d2db1eeee6710e7d9e4b/index.htm Unrendered HTML of:Likely an obituary for: Thomas L. Magliozzi. Images show fine though.- www.cartalk.com/content/tom-and-rays-bios-photos-2
- www.cartalk.com/content/rant-and-rave-36 "The New Theory of Learning" which agrees perfectly with backward design
- block 401648 bitfossil.com/31c5e5336512568e4a1deb4bbf0e57c3565c32094c0e1a118c48e7929ab49e35/bong-ball.html another one! This one is full-screen, and does not have JavaScript
alerts :-) - block 401657 bitfossil.org/03cb74f270d498302d4dd9cbe82c090d801c8840ab6cb26b71d862489b981db8/ has a JavaScript Pac-Man
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











