As of 2022 visible at: www.nature.com/scitable
Apparently they had a separate URL as just scitable.com, so they were somewhat serious about it before shutting it down.
As of 2022 marked:RIP.
This page has been archived and is no longer updated
www.nature.com/scitable/blog/student-voices/ has last entry 2015, so presumably that's the shutdown year.
Self description:so quite related to OurBigBook.com.
Using our platform, you can customize your own eBooks for your students. Create an online classroom. Contribute and share content and connect with networks of colleagues.
Per-table dumps created with mysqldump and listed at: dumps.wikimedia.org/. Most notably, for the English Wikipedia: dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/latest/
A few of the files are not actual tables but derived data, notably dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/latest/enwiki-latest-all-titles-in-ns0.gz from Download titles of all Wikipedia articles
The tables are "documented" under: www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Database_layout, e.g. the central "page" table: www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Page_table. But in many cases it is impossible to deduce what fields are from those docs.
MOOCs are a bad idea. We don't want to simply map the pre-computer classroom to the Internet. The Internet allows, and requires, fundamentally new ways to do things. More like Stack Overflow/Wikipedia. More like OurBigBook.com.
Ciro Santilli's Stack Overflow suspension for vote fraud script 2019 by
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
After Ciro Santilli got a lot of attention on Hacker News news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19428700 his Stack Overflow account was suspended for 3 days web.archive.org/web/20190320163458/https://stackoverflow.com/users/895245/ciro-santilli-新疆改造中心-六四事件-法轮功 and he received a magic notification that led to a private message:
Hello,I've removed this from your profile github.com/cirosantilli/stack-overflow-vote-fraud-script and do not expect you to post it around the site.Regards,Stack Overflow Moderation TeamTo: Aaron Hall ♦;Andy ♦;Baum mit Augen ♦;Bhargav Rao ♦;Bohemian ♦;BoltClock ♦;Brad Larson ♦;ChrisF ♦;Cody Gray ♦;deceze ♦;Ed Cottrell ♦;Flexo ♦;George Stocker ♦;Jean-François Fabre ♦;Jon Clements ♦;josliber ♦;Madara Uchiha ♦;Martijn Pieters ♦;meagar ♦;Michael Myers ♦;Rob ♦;Robert Harvey ♦;Ry- ♦;Samuel Liew ♦;Undo ♦;Yvette Colomb ♦
Ciro's reply was:
Hi mods,
Security by obscurity does not work. If that is all Stack Overflow relies on, and that is what it looks like, then it is guaranteed to be flawed and already been attacked.That is one of the reasons that my website will eventually beat Stack Overflow: github.com/cirosantilli/write-free-science-books-to-get-famous-website/tree/d77b18d2e7acb3558615797c36195f60dfd26306#pagerank-with-tags If you had messaged me and told me "take down or suspend" I would have done it immediately because I understand the meaning of political power. Is there an existing public discussion saying that you cannot advertise vote fraud tools on this website?If not, can you please create that meta thread as a reference for future users, and perhaps let the community decide by itself?Because if not, does it make any sense to prevent it from being mentioned in Stack Overflow? Any good GitHub repo just gets enough Google pagerank that it won't matter.And if yes, nothing prevents me from re-uploading on an anonymous account.
Reply and unsuspend quickly followed, with link still removed:
I suspended you to get your attention. Your attitude about going to Twitter about it does not bode well with me.Feel free to have whatever you want in your GitHub repo. Just don't advertise tools to make it easier for people to circumvent the rules. As easy or as hard as it may be to circumvent them, you're handing it to people who may not be capable of doing so. It doesn't help.Don't make threats to upload on an anonymous account. Accounts created to circumvent previous warnings are not welcomed on the site.We don't need a meta thread to discuss whether it's ok to post voting fraud links in your profile and we definitely don't need to give it anymore publicity.Regards,Stack Overflow Moderation Team
A meta thread was later created by Yvette, kudos, to which Ciro answered with the correct unpopular answer that will be downvoted to oblivion: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/381577/is-it-ok-to-have-links-on-how-to-create-sock-puppets-and-gain-rep-fraudulently-i/381635#381635
Yvette had also previously deleted one or two of Ciro's answers for being duplicates, which is a policy Ciro is against: if the questions are not dupes, a single answer might still directly reply to both of them.
Yvette later announced that she was leaving the website: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/399495/leaving-the-site-and-the-network-mid-election-is-not-the-best-but-theres-no. This is evil, but Ciro was happy. He does not mean harm to Yvette, but in their limited interaction, Ciro disagreed with her choices.
The Great Places Erased by Suburbia by Not Just Bikes (2022)
Source. Stack Overflow, and other online forums, can serve as a sort of a third place for its more active users.There's no point.
The question remains there, but people lose the ability to help the asker.
Reputation is meaningless regardless, since JavaScript gurus will always have 1000x more readers than low level junkies.
The deeper problem: the existence of multiple separate websites instead of just using the tags on a single website.
Examples:
Free to view draft: web.physics.ucsb.edu/~mark/ms-qft-DRAFT.pdf Page presenting it: web.physics.ucsb.edu/~mark/qft.html
Number of pages: 616!
Don't redistribute clause, and final version by Cambridge University Press, alas, so corrections will never be merged back: web.physics.ucsb.edu/~mark/qft.html. But at least he's collecing erratas for the published (and therefore draft) versions there.
The preface states that one of its pedagogical philosophies is to "Illustration of the basic concepts with the simplest examples.", so maybe there is hope after all.
Specific type of Josephson junction. Probably can be made tiny and in huge numbers through photolithography.
As mentioned on the introduction, the main objective of the course is to try predict qualitative properties of materials, notably the existence of certain phase transitions, starting from first principle toy models.
Key phenomena covered include:
Running:outputs:
readelf -h hello_world.oMagic: 7f 45 4c 46 02 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Class: ELF64
Data: 2's complement, little endian
Version: 1 (current)
OS/ABI: UNIX - System V
ABI Version: 0
Type: REL (Relocatable file)
Machine: Advanced Micro Devices X86-64
Version: 0x1
Entry point address: 0x0
Start of program headers: 0 (bytes into file)
Start of section headers: 64 (bytes into file)
Flags: 0x0
Size of this header: 64 (bytes)
Size of program headers: 0 (bytes)
Number of program headers: 0
Size of section headers: 64 (bytes)
Number of section headers: 7
Section header string table index: 3Running:outputs:
readelf -h hello_world.outMagic: 7f 45 4c 46 02 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Class: ELF64
Data: 2's complement, little endian
Version: 1 (current)
OS/ABI: UNIX - System V
ABI Version: 0
Type: EXEC (Executable file)
Machine: Advanced Micro Devices X86-64
Version: 0x1
Entry point address: 0x4000b0
Start of program headers: 64 (bytes into file)
Start of section headers: 272 (bytes into file)
Flags: 0x0
Size of this header: 64 (bytes)
Size of program headers: 56 (bytes)
Number of program headers: 2
Size of section headers: 64 (bytes)
Number of section headers: 6
Section header string table index: 3Bytes in the object file:
00000000 7f 45 4c 46 02 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |.ELF............|
00000010 01 00 3e 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |..>.............|
00000020 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |........@.......|
00000030 00 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 00 00 40 00 07 00 03 00 |....@.....@.....|Executable:
00000000 7f 45 4c 46 02 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |.ELF............|
00000010 02 00 3e 00 01 00 00 00 b0 00 40 00 00 00 00 00 |..>.......@.....|
00000020 40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 |@...............|
00000030 00 00 00 00 40 00 38 00 02 00 40 00 06 00 03 00 |....@.8...@.....|Structure represented:
# define EI_NIDENT 16
typedef struct {
unsigned char e_ident[EI_NIDENT];
Elf64_Half e_type;
Elf64_Half e_machine;
Elf64_Word e_version;
Elf64_Addr e_entry;
Elf64_Off e_phoff;
Elf64_Off e_shoff;
Elf64_Word e_flags;
Elf64_Half e_ehsize;
Elf64_Half e_phentsize;
Elf64_Half e_phnum;
Elf64_Half e_shentsize;
Elf64_Half e_shnum;
Elf64_Half e_shstrndx;
} Elf64_Ehdr;Manual breakdown:
- 0 0:
EI_MAG=7f 45 4c 46=0x7f 'E', 'L', 'F': ELF magic number - 0 4:
EI_CLASS=02=ELFCLASS64: 64 bit elf - 0 5:
EI_DATA=01=ELFDATA2LSB: little endian data - 0 6:
EI_VERSION=01: format version - 0 7:
EI_OSABI(only in 2003 Update) =00=ELFOSABI_NONE: no extensions. - 0 8:
EI_PAD= 8x00: reserved bytes. Must be set to 0. - On the executable it is
02 00forET_EXEC.Another important possibility for the executable isET_DYNfor PIE executables and shared libraries.ET_DYNtells the Linux kernel that the code is position independent, and can loaded at a random memory location with ASLR. - 1 2:
e_machine=3e 00=62=EM_X86_64: AMD64 architecture - 1 4:
e_version=01 00 00 00: must be 1 - 1 8:
e_entry= 8x00: execution address entry point, or 0 if not applicable like for the object file since there is no entry point.On the executable, it isb0 00 40 00 00 00 00 00. The kernel puts the RIP directly on that value when executing. It can be configured by the linker script or-e. But it will segfault if you set it too low: stackoverflow.com/questions/2187484/why-is-the-elf-execution-entry-point-virtual-address-of-the-form-0x80xxxxx-and-n 40 00 00 00on the executable, i.e. it starts immediately after the ELF header.- 2 8:
e_shoff=407x00=0x40: section header table file offset, 0 if not present. The Intel386 architecture defines no flags; so this member contains zero.
- 3 4:
e_ehsize=40 00: size of this elf header. TODO why this field needed? Isn't the size fixed? 38 00on executable: it is 56 bytes long02 00on executable: there are 2 entries.- 3 A:
e_shentsizeande_shnum=40 00 07 00: section header size and number of entries - 3 E:
e_shstrndx(Section Header STRing iNDeX) =03 00: index of the.shstrtabsection.
"De novo" means "starting from scratch", that is: you type the desired sequence into a computer, and the synthesize it.
The "de novo" part is important, because it distinguishes this from the already well solved problem of duplicating DNA from an existing DNA template, which is what all our cells do daily, and which can already be done very efficiently in vitro with polymerase chain reaction.
Notably, the dream of most of those companies is to have a machine that sits on a lab bench, which synthesises whatever you want.
The initial main applications are likely going to be:but the real pipe dream is building and bootstraping entire artificial chromosomes
- polymerase chain reaction primers (determine which region will be amplified
- creating a custom sequence to be inserted in a plasmid, i.e. artificial gene synthesis
News coverage:
Nuclera eDNA enzymatic de novo DNA synthesis explanatory animation (2021)
Source. The video shows nicely how Nuclera's enzymatic DNA synthesis works:- they provide blocked nucleotides of a single type
- add them with the enzyme. They use a werid DNA polymerase called terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase that adds a base at a time to a single stranded DNA strand rather than copying from a template
- wash everything
- do deblocking reaction
- and then repeat until done
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






