Radio receiver by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
As well put by Wikipedia, a radio receiver has to perform three functions on the signal from the antenna:
Parameters of the Standard Model by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
The growing number of parameters of the Standard Model is one big source of worry for early 21st century physics, much like the growing number of particles was a worry in the beginning of the 20th (but that one was solved by 2020).
Magic: The Gathering is addictive by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Paraprasing a friend of Ciro Santilli:
Magic: The Gathering is like cocaine in card form.
Luckily, early teens Ciro Santilli was partly protected from this by Ciro Santilli's cheapness.
But Ciro distinctly remembers one day in his early teens that he couldn't sleep very well, and he got up, and the was decided that he would become the greatest Magic: The Gathering player who ever lived. Can you imagine the incredible loss that this would have been to humankind? And talk about the incredible lack of development opportunity present in poor countries, related:
Mathy Magic: The Gathering thoughts by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
In 2019, a paper proved that MTG is Turing complete with a legacy legal deck. Live demo with some hand waving: Video "I Built a COMPUTER in Magic: The Gathering by Because Science (2019)". As Ciro Santilli comments at: github.com/cirosantilli/cirosantilli.github.io/issues/42 this was an interest addition to the previous "indefinite infinite loop" e.g. as found in a Four Horsemen combo deck
Judaism by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Magic: The Gathering meta-based deck choice is a bimatrix game by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Ciro had initially Googled for the "4-card limit thought experiment" but he reached: www.channelfireball.com/articles/what-if-the-4-card-limit-was-abolished-in-modern/ "What if the 4-Card Limit Was Abolished in Modern?" by Frank Karsten (2018) and was much more pleased with the mathematical result. Like-minded people.
That links to www.channelfireball.com/articles/what-if-the-4-card-limit-was-abolished-in-modern/ the related article: "The Mythic Invitational's Duo Standard Format Game Theory Optimized" by Frank Karsten (2019) which explains well how Nash equilibrium is naturally reached: if there is any imbalance, someone can take advantage of it, and then it rebalances. Therefore once you've calculated the equilibrium, your best course of action is to pick a deck at random from a list of possible winners.
Of course, part of the beauty of Magic is that we can never really know the full matrix since deck choice is basically infinite. But at the very least it could give good archetype results.
Wizards of the Coast by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Odds and evens (hand game) by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Video game by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Ciro Santilli used to play video games when he was young. But after he reached 18 he got bored of them.
The problem is that no matter how you look at, the how to become famous in the real world game is just always more interesting and fulfilling.
Therefore adult Ciro enjoys only the following types of video game content in video form, so that other people waste their lives playing the games while you only see the highlights:
The aspect Ciro enjoys about non-PvP games is atmosphere. Not as conveyed by useless story telling, but as conveyed by music and graphics, and the context deep idea. Legend of Zelda and Metroid come to mind.
And too many games commit the sins of dependency of dexterity, no save states, how do I skip this boring part, or jump straight to the beautiful one?
It also doesn't help if you are already typing on a computer all day long on your job. Hands get tired. Eyes have an infinite capacity to consume useless YouTube videos however. Medically proved.
As a result, Ciro just watches videos about video games. Notably games he played when he was a teenager and already understand the rules for.
And things got even worse as after Ciro Santilli's Open Source Enlightenment, and he started to feel bad about playing any game that is not open source.
Figure 1.
Five year old Ciro Santilli playing NES on a joystick
. He would get really mad because he could not finish those insanely hard games. Desperate, his parents would have to call older kids from the neighbourhood to help out. Pro tip from the future: the classic controller would almost always have been a more efficient controller. Maybe this kind of crap shapes one's future?
Video 1. Source.
Ciro Santilli used to watch Doug as kid. Of all the episodes, only this one stuck to his mind as an adult. It really drove the point home. The pain and joy of being addicted to anything really. Thankfully wheneve Ciro got addicted to a video game, he also quickly got tired of it. His last temporary addiction episode as of 2022 was Cataclysm DDA!
It is also so awesome how the episode pictures Dougs imagination while playing the video game, which is much more realistic than the actual crude graphics. The Nintendo hard reference is also clear.
Another great point of the episode is how good it is to play a single player video game taking turns with a friend on your side. Both people have to be fully engaged, and the game has to be hard. Perhaps those days are over now that everyone has their own computer and can each play together... and that is a huge shame. When playing on the couch with a friend, the one who is not playing can act as a copilot and thing more broadly as the other focuses on more specific details of execution. One is also reminded of pair programming.
Another great point is, partially when you are addicted, to play the video game at night until late, or very early in the morning. Ciro has fantastic memories of playing Zelda on the Nintendo 64 on Sunday mornings, or his emulation experiences from late weekend evenings at university: Video "Samba e Amor by Caetano Veloso (1975)".
The followup lucky hat segment is also amazing: doug.fandom.com/wiki/Doug%27s_Lucky_Hat
Looking back, the series is still extremely charming. It is interesting how Doug's best friend Skeeter Valentine is green. Ciro thought he was indian, but doug.fandom.com/wiki/Skeeter_Valentine says he's black.
Ramadan by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Ciro Santilli appreciates this concept of "remembering the suffering of others" a lot due to Ciro Santilli's self perceived compassionate personality and Ciro Santilli's cheapness.
QEMU by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
The leading open source cross architecture and KVM emulator of the 2010's.
Great way to understand how operating systems work, which Ciro Santilli used extensively in his Linux Kernel Module Cheat.
Random-access memory by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
In conventional speech of the early 2000's, is basically a synonym for dynamic random-access memory.
Level: Asian by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
This is true. The level of competition in university entry exams in Asia in insane in the early 21st century compared to the West.
Speedrun by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Quantum algorithm vs quantum gate vs quantum circuit by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
There is no fundamental difference between them, a quantum algorithm is a quantum circuit, which can be seen as a super complicated quantum gate.
Perhaps the greats practical difference is that algorithms tend to be defined for an arbitrary number of N qubits, i.e. as a function for that each N produces a specific quantum circuit with N qubits solving the problem. Most named gates on the other hand have fixed small sizes.
Qiskit hello world by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Quantum compiler benchmark by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
These appear to be benchmarks that don't involve running anything concretely, just compiling and likely then counting gates:
Random number generation by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Raspberry Pi Pico by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Some key specs:

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!
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
  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 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.
  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