HHTT by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
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.
Eternity Wall by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
This website used to allow embedding text messages with OP_RETURN, here's an archive from 2015: web.archive.org/web/20150718052659/http://eternitywall.it/
As of January 2024, it seems to read-only mode, where it simply indexes matching transactions that were made via other means: web.archive.org/web/20230929075331/https://eternitywall.it/
There were 3191 hits for the search term:
git grep '\bEW '
in our data starting with tx a3b3af21514bd79a4cbcac9916a8514636a72d813539192214542fd85247082e (2015-06-24):
EW Eternity wall is live
up to the last entry on tx 28820bc14cf2cfda58ecbc9ac6df3f41a1cb90f4246543f01ba42a5e9dac3cf8 (2023-06-15)
EW May our friendship endure, signed by hg, kty, wjj, and xyz.
no doubt initials of 4 Chinesepeople. A blood brother oath comes to mind, akin to the Oath of the Peach Garden. Will these four be the ones to take down the evil dictator Xi Jinping?
The very first message gives away the name of what we assume is a web-based upload system, "EW" being its advertisement signature added to every message.
Running bitcoin-cli:
bitcoin-core.cli getrawtransaction a3b3af21514bd79a4cbcac9916a8514636a72d813539192214542fd85247082e true
shows that the messages are encoded with OP_RETURN:
  "vout": [
    {
      "value": 0.00000000,
      "n": 0,
      "scriptPubKey": {
        "asm": "OP_RETURN 455720457465726e6974792077616c6c206973206c697665
Themes by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
In this section we document events that led to a large number of thematically related messages being added to the chain., e.g. referencing some current event that happened, as opposed to the media encoding/type like images and text sections.
"Hitler did nothing wrong" meme [ref] is repeated several times, e.g.: tx 41967a7d75e9e1ca8c142a45ce29ea08b451a3b55c3e33538f5cc8a389ec66ab (2015-07-20):
EW Hitler did nothing wrong.
This one is also an Eternity Wall message.
Brazil:
  • tx 1c05bb7c0a8c9498d33a1e6d4a91bbb4c651daa5ea5a21aa5c8c600d3300b8bb Viva Brazil's Impeachment!
  • tx 105fb3a0be8ab50bfa36012e0319a752dee39702cb44f3904cf423eb20367d57 contains a misogenous joke:
    A mulher feia so tem uma coisa a oferecer,uma boa foda(Diego Silva de Oliveira)
    which translates to:
    Ugly women only have one thing to offer, a good fuck
    It is attributed to Diego Silva de Oliveira, possibly this football player: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Silva_(footballer,_born_1990)
  • c72dc315a5504362d01f2dcdfe77826d14a9eb3411b83edd7aa782e95e4a7794 via cryptograffiti.info:
    NÓS DISSEMOS SIM
    AGÊNCIA TRANSITIVA 2015
    
    Nota pública de reconhecimento do Acordo Reconformado, assinado pela Agência Transitiva e 
    pela Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, em 22 de Abril de 2015.
    
    #ENCRUZILHADA
    EAV PARQUE LAGE
    22.04.2015
  • 1c05bb7c0a8c9498d33a1e6d4a91bbb4c651daa5ea5a21aa5c8c600d3300b8bb via cryptograffiti.info:
    Viva Brazil's Impeachment!
Our indexer does not handle UTF-8, here's a collection of some UTF-8 messages we've stumbled upon somewhat randomly:
Arabic:
  • 7eb561f2139761064de20033fa4843f1f3e1a9551268704b36f84d94e66fd91a
    يا سلم!
    شعرك جميل
    و عينيك حلوة
    انا عطشان
    اِروني من عينيك
    O peace!
    Your hair is beautiful
    And your eyes are beautiful
    I'm thirsty
    Show me from your eyes
  • b7376cae03b88392e5fd0292bcb43105386fbb534fc9be68c1e3d0b8f39e5ba4 via cryptograffiti.info
    sjalom, salaam, peace!
    الدين
  • 7a898b7e6b2145f4f887e1ff890d0b613e3008fbe350aa92662735e3acd0c0bc
    هذه رسالة من المستقبل
    إلى الماضي ...
    الحياة صعبة في المستقبل
    رعاية العالم
    وتحمل المسؤولية
    /y
    This is a message from the future
    To the past...
    Life is difficult in the future
    Caring for the world
    And take responsibility
    /y
Russian:
  • 1dcd62c922eb1ddbc1f58615b6271d64736bf55e83408cef02a7d0ac6707e423 via cryptograffiti.info
    А на Земле Быть Добру!
    And on Earth To Be Good!
  • 596cc6e905a5fc8248cf59198a19ce5070228b302a9f3a993197e2c87ddcaf14 via cryptograffiti.info
    Книга Вечно Живущих открыта
    The Book of the Ever-Living is open
  • 596cc6e905a5fc8248cf59198a19ce5070228b302a9f3a993197e2c87ddcaf14 via cryptograffiti.info
    Это тест, сука блять.
    This is a test, motherfucker.
  • ed56ef68ccbfb1d47bc159fb62fab6807ee4d7363d0ad4cded2e922a5b47362e via cryptograffiti.info
    Путин хуйло лалалалалалалалалал
    Putin sucks lalalalalalalalala
Chinese:
Japanese:
  • ac2ad7c15162a8e461387b0d0d681bb5f81f2db1138b8f200b81bbc585bd0b8f via cryptograffiti.info:
    モキーのフラッシュバン許すな
    Don't forgive Moky's flashbang
Hebrew:
  • 0b32736592ce7abdd4d971bc4591544e1610ff51f498c9a14a6ba34a3abcad5d via cryptograffiti.info
    חתימה טובה לכולם בכלל ולחברי ביטקוין ישראלי בפרט.
    A good signature for everyone in general and Israeli Bitcoin members in particular.
  • d7b80c8fefc88cc3f06d74f8496e2dc6f44b5f5f0a59f9ba1ba27266848a8666 via cryptograffiti.info contains what appears to be UTF-8 Hebrew text on my terminal, but Google Translate couldn't translate it, so we are unsure.
Illegal content of block 229k by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
These can be viewed at bitcoinstrings.com/blk00052.txt and are mostly commented on the "Wikileaks cablegate data" section of Hidden surprises in the Bitcoin blockchain by Ken Shirriff (2014).
Soon after block 229991 uploaded the Satoshi uploader, several interesting files were added to the blockchain using the uploader, and notably some containing content that might be illegal in certain countries, as a test to see if this type of content would make the Bitcoin blockchain illegal or not:
So basically, this was the first obviously illegal block attempt.
None of this content is particularly eye-popping for Ciro Santilli's slightly crazy freedom of speech standards, and as of 2021, the Bitcoin blockchain likely hasn't become illegal anywhere yet due to freedom of speech concerns.
Furthermore, it is likely much easier to find much worse illegal content by browsing any uncensored Onion service search engine for 2 minutes.
Ciro Santilli estimates that perhaps the uploader didn't upload child pornography, which is basically the apex of illegality of this era, because they were afraid that their identities would one day be found.
Bibliography:
Protests against larger block sizes by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Protesters were posting large chunks of text multiple times into the blockchain as a way to protest against the controversial increase of block size.
tx 08893442680a20c4d0548dec2c8c421fa43336528b4e274dbf2652774f9c9f2d has the first copy of:
I like big blocks and I can not lie
which is the first line of a parody on:
I like big butts and I cannot lie
from the Baby Got Back hip-hop song.
tx 52159222289cd0a5afe0644150d0e23d5d272a57365627d5e869fdb458289858 has the first copy of:
Time to roll out bigger blocks
which is likely a copy of an email from the bitcoin development mailing list. This message is repeated dozens of times in other transactions.
Rickrolling by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Rickrolling lyrics were mined several times into the blockchain.
The first currently known instance is as a link right during the prayer wars on block 142573 (2011-08-25) as the miner message:
Militant atheists, bit.ly/naNhG2 -- happy now?"
which redirects to www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGDuExhS6Nw&blockchain
Around block block 246k (e.g. 27b7c526489dac8245747fa1c425a2e3eb07dea57b294eb4ae583fec9b859fcf, 2013-10-17) we note several transactions starting with a XML format <CG SZ="1156"><MG>... the first one being 0b4efe49ea1454020c4d51a163a93f726a20cd75ad50bb9ed0f4623c141a8008 As mentioned not very clearly at www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photographs.html#ref12 the content of the first <MG><payload></MG> is a Base64 encoded string
Catagory: Poetry
Title: Never Gonna Give You Up
Performer: Rick Astley
Writer: Mike Stock, Matt Aitken, Pete Waterman
Label: RCA Records
followed by lyrics also base64 encoded as part of the XML metadata. Hidden surprises in the Bitcoin blockchain by Ken Shirriff (2014) was not able to identify the exact format either. At twitter.com/EMBII4U/status/1655831533750562816 EMBII mentions that this was part of an upload test.
tx 15b11e8d4e5b9425f024b381ba0cb7a54a35e52389bb4855f505772ce685b39c (2014-06-24): starting from this transaction, the lyrics were inscribed several times via input scripts. Then again:
  • 8bb9db70e24202fdfd0e48b57a11a407e6c8c0e76d879634b801b4345b8810b2
  • b881afa519804a3c93a3c99481517ca8ae070b84c04e8e7a2bfb808e043f9771
  • 70c8405bd0ec10bea49b78a819dfbf46c1082e7e620588f9da65a90b71e52bbd
  • fc4e382793757858bec4b87527caa4bf2e6f71bb2f5a77bb41a45ddb9ed9d409
  • f011e71b711aa54a0c824244fff83fb8b1e1921804624fa0523a6e61612b7f6f
  • a8691cdbca5b82e4e48812e48b7a09e4757801fd3909a09975de957d1bfb52dc
  • d8946aa464be464674bba6d15729d75572ec75dda49fe7ff0ede1a25ca054941
  • d02864cd57c9d041dbd9d6f24327f347b92697a8bc3c86cdf8b738063c6ad002
  • 9b78962d840f1ff681e5042264e4d0359cda98ce49d97569df14ce956622b966
  • 7bdc22fb35f0a8eb6241782a306a8904fb6f793126ff106a04a96f9f223cb8e1
  • e24a4085c54a6362e615f8eab758c12d80e488b73757e6d2b8ab6bfc8be7007e
  • 4257f4980955d8376ee1c6bccb4396da726e4ae13d758e47dc4e0775019723f5
  • a09b49e9374d43386a6a986944e3dcf515c7e1c38324836df5333b8adbe57797
  • 03096688dbb874f7c571691e4241a298284bf4184be339b148f1b48f383a1d7c
  • 62f8b228b6126354736d36d9f3b91882bb81eca7702b74fba6471abc7db96a03 (2015-09-30)
They were mega obnoxious!!! Who does this kind of crap for more than one year!!!
Halvening messages by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Each Bitcoin halvening event prompts a few commemorative messages, much like a New Year's even event in the real world.
3rd (2020):
Dirac equation by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Adds special relativity to the Schrödinger equation, and the following conclusions come basically as a direct consequence of this!
Experiments not explained: those that quantum electrodynamics explains like:
See also: Dirac equation vs quantum electrodynamics.
The Dirac equation is a set of 4 partial differential equations on 4 complex valued wave functions. The full explicit form in Planck units is shown e.g. in Video 1. "Quantum Mechanics 12a - Dirac Equation I by ViaScience (2015)" at youtu.be/OCuaBmAzqek?t=1010:
Then as done at physics.stackexchange.com/questions/32422/qm-without-complex-numbers/557600#557600 from why are complex numbers used in the Schrodinger equation?, we could further split those equations up into a system of 8 equations on 8 real-valued functions.
Video 1.
Quantum Mechanics 12a - Dirac Equation I by ViaScience (2015)
Source.
Video 2.
PHYS 485 Lecture 14: The Dirac Equation by Roger Moore (2016)
Source.
Svengali by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Robot form factor by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Authentic learning by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Exam by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Exams as a prerequisite for a degree are useless. Exams as part of a degree must be abolished. And degrees must be abolished. Ultimately the only metrics that really matter are money and fame. See also: motivation.
The only thing exams should matter for is as a screening tool to select people with specific abilities that you care about as an employer or principal investigator. If:
  • you have no idea about what the content of specific exams are (and you don't because they are all ad-hoc university secrets)
  • or don't have a way to machine learn what grades correlate with your desired performance (you don't because where's the data?)
then exams are useless for your purposes. then might as well just go by interviews (basically what all employers do already, though not PIs). Degrees are too course grained to mean anything to anybody. Employers and PIs likely only care about very few specific subjects.
Once the question of an exam has been formulated, the usefulness of the problem is already been completely destroyed, because formulating the problem that matters is the most important part of things. And any problem with an answer, is useless to put effort into: give answers.
Furthermore, preventing people from searching for answers while answering an exam, AKA preventing "cheating", also makes absolutely no sense. In the real world, we want people to find answers as quickly as possible! We should be teaching people how to "cheat"! What we should teach them instead is what a fucking license is, and what you have to do to comply with it.
And if you pass the exam, you pass the course, without any further time requirements.
And those exams must be applied by professional test application companies to ensure no cheating and to factor out the anti-cheat work, while still making the tests available to people anywhere.
A quote from Richard Feynman present in the book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman chapter O Americano, Outra Vez!:
You cannot get educated by this self-propagating system in which people study to pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything.
You learn something by doing it yourself, by asking questions, by thinking, and by experimenting.
The only metric that matters is "to feel that you've satisfied youre curiosity". When one studies for that, it can take a lot more time to actually learn everything, because it is sometimes not as clear when you should stop. But it is the only way to go deeper.
A person's understanding is the most illiquid asset that exists, to judge that based only on standardized exams, is a certain way to fail to identify top talent.
Chinese musical instrument by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
The main four instruments are undoubtedly:but there is also amazing content on others which must not be missed, including:
Video 1.
25 musical instruments OF China by Learning Music Hub
. Source. Great video, covers all the most important ones briefly with examples of varying relevance.
Video 2.
A beginner’s guide to Chinese musical instruments by SCMP
. Source. 2024. Terrible editing, way to hard to see instrument name.
Video 3.
Chinese vs Western musical instrument battle scene from Our Shining Days
. Source. A bit cheap, but it has some value.
British learned society by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
National Academy of Sciences by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Reviews of Modern Physics by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Pinned article: ourbigbook/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:
    • 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
    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.
    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