Myers-Briggs Type_Indicator by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Bash HOWTO by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Abortion by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Ciro Santilli is for abortion rights of women, until very late in pregnancy.
But it's not something that he would do himself, unless under extreme cases.
Why did Facebook buy WhatsApp? by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Obviously with the single intention of killing a competitor.
It is impossible to make money off WhatsApp as it is because of end-to-end encryption.
Facebook just clearly bought it to prevent it from actually growing further and killing facebook.
It is mindblowing that the sale wasn't cancelled due to anti trust.
The outcome of this is that WhatApp will remain with the same feature set forever, while other competitors have been growing, notably Discord and Slack.
It seems that there is a case looming 10 years after the fact: www.cityam.com/facebook-fails-to-block-antitrust-lawsuit-over-whatsapp-and-instagram-ownership/ Wake up???
ffplay by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Awesome tool to view quick stuff quickly without generating files. Unfortunately it doesn't support all options that the ffmpeg CLI supports, e.g. ffplay multiple input files. One day, one day.
Real projective space by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
In those cases at least, it is possible to add a metric to the spaces, leading to elliptic geometry.
Avery-MacLeod-McCarty experiment by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Nervous system by species by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
System by species by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Systems biology by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Studies biology from a more global point of view, if putting all little pieces of an organism make up the final biological function.
Autothrophs and heterothrophs by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Tissue engineering by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Condensed matter physics by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Condensed matter physics is one of the best examples of emergence. We start with a bunch of small elements which we understand fully at the required level (atoms, electrons, quantum mechanics) but then there are complex properties that show up when we put a bunch of them together.
Includes fun things like:
As of 2020, this is the other "fundamental branch of physics" besides to particle physics/nuclear physics.
Condensed matter is basically chemistry but without reactions: you study a fixed state of matter, not a reaction in which compositions change with time.
Just like in chemistry, you end up getting some very well defined substance properties due to the incredibly large number of atoms.
Just like chemistry, the ultimate goal is to do de-novo computational chemistry to predict those properties.
And just like chemistry, what we can actually is actually very limited in part due to the exponential nature of quantum mechanics.
Also since chemistry involves reactions, chemistry puts a huge focus on liquids and solutions, which is the simplest state of matter to do reactions in.
Condensed matter however can put a lot more emphasis on solids than chemistry, notably because solids are what we generally want in end products, no one likes stuff leaking right?
But it also studies liquids, e.g. notably superfluidity.
One thing condensed matter is particularly obsessed with is the fascinating phenomena of phase transition.
Figure 1.
xkcd 2933: Elementary Physics Paths
.
Video 1.
What Is Condensed matter physics? by Erica Calman
. Source. Cute. Overview of the main fields of physics research. Quick mention of his field, quantum wells, but not enough details.
AGI test by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
2D AI game by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Programming language by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
A language that allows you to talk to and command a computer.
There is only space for two languages at most in the world: the compiled one, and the interpreted one.
For 2020 now, when you have a choice, you must go for:
  • Python as the interpreted one
  • C++ for compiled
Those two are languages not by any means perfect from a language design point of view, and there are likely already better alternatives, they are only chosen due to a pragmatic tradeoff between ecosystem and familiarity.
Ciro predicts that Python will become like Fortran in the future: a legacy hated by most who have moved to JavaScript long ago (which is slightly inferior, but too similar, and with too much web dominance to be replaced), but with too much dominance in certain applications like machine learning to be worth replacing, like Fortran dominates certain HPC applications. We'll see. Maybe non performance critical scripting languages are easier to replace.
C++ however is decent, and is evolving in very good directions in the 2010's, and will remain relevant in the foreseeable future.
Bash can also be used when you're lazy. But if the project goes on, you will sooner or later regret that choice.
The language syntax in itself does not matter. All that matters is how many useful libraries and tooling it has.
This is how other languages compare:
  • C: but cannot make a large codebase DRY without insanity
  • Ruby: the exact same as Python, and only strong in one domain: web development, while Python rules everything else, and is not bad on web either. So just kill Ruby, please.
  • JavaScript: it is totally fine if Node.js destroys Python and becomes the ONE scripting language to rule them all since Python and JavaScript are almost equally crappy (although JavaScript is a bit more of course).
    One thing must be said tough: someobject.not_defined_property silently returning undefined rather than blowing up is bullshit.
  • Go: likely a good replacement for Python. If the ecosystem gets there, will gladly use it more.
  • Java: good language, but has an ugly enterprisey ecosystem, Oracle has made/kept the development process too closed, and API patenting madness on Android just kills if off completely
  • Haskell: many have tried to learn some functional stuff, but too hard. Sounds really cool though.
  • Rust: sounds cool, you will gladly replace C and C++ with it if the ecosystem ramps up.
  • C: Microsoft is evil
  • Tcl, Perl: Python killed them way back and is less insane
  • R, GNU Octave and any other "numerical computing language": all of this is a waste of society's time as explained at: Section "Numerical computing language"
  • Swift: Ciro would rather stay away from Apple dominated projects if possible since they sell a closed source operating system
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