New articles - OurBigBook.com

Wikipedia dumps by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

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.

Massive open online course by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

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

Upvote this: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/381577/is-it-ok-to-have-links-on-how-to-create-sock-puppets-and-gain-rep-fraudulently-i/381635#381635

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'm writing in reference to your Stack Overflow account:
I don't understand why you are actively promoting and assisting people to commit fraud on the site.
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.
I'm suspending you to gain your attention on this matter.
We have temporarily suspended your account; you may return after 3 days.
Regards,
Stack Overflow Moderation Team
To: 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,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs%27s_principle
stackoverflow.com/questions/533965/why-is-security-through-obscurity-a-bad-idea
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.
That would have been the better course of action for everyone: I get no block, and you get no bad publicity as I shout Kerckhoff's principle on Twitter.
But maybe it is a good thing that people learn more about that.
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?
In particular, will you still suspend me if I don't take down the GitHub repo?
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.

twitter.com/cirosantilli/status/1108413211840339970

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.
I'll unsuspend you, now we've had this discussion.
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.

Closing questions as off-topic by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

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:

Stuff school should actually teach by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

Tearjerker by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

Socket.IO by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

Quantum Field Theory book by Mark Srednicki (2006) by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

Free to view draft: web.physics.ucsb.edu/~mark/ms-qft-DRAFT.pdf Page presenting it: web.physics.ucsb.edu/~mark/qft.html

Author affiliation: University of California, Santa Barbara.

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 book is top-level organized in spin 0, spin half, and spin 1. Quite ominous, really.

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.

Superconducting tunnel junction by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

Specific type of Josephson junction. Probably can be made tiny and in huge numbers through photolithography.

Quantum Transport, Lecture 14: Josephson effects by Sergey Frolov (2013)

Source. youtu.be/-HUVGWTfaSI?t=878 mentions maskless electron beam lithography being used to produce STJs.

Theories of Quantum Matter by Austen Lamacraft by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

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:

fractional quantum Hall effect

Theories of Quantum Matter by Austen Lamacraft / The Elastic Chain / The Classical System by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

austen.uk/courses/tqm/elastic-chain/#the-classical-system

ELF Hello World Tutorial / ELF header by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

Running:

readelf -h hello_world.o

outputs:

Magic:   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: 3

Running:

readelf -h hello_world.out

outputs:

Magic:   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: 3

Bytes 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 = 8x 00: reserved bytes. Must be set to 0.
1 0: e_type = 01 00 = 1 (big endian) = ET_REl: relocatable format
On the executable it is 02 00 for ET_EXEC.
Another important possibility for the executable is ET_DYN for PIE executables and shared libraries.
ET_DYN tells the Linux kernel that the code is position independent, and can loaded at a random memory location with ASLR.
This is explained further at:
- stackoverflow.com/questions/2463150/what-is-the-fpie-option-for-position-independent-executables-in-gcc-and-ld/51308031#51308031
- stackoverflow.com/questions/34519521/why-does-gcc-create-a-shared-object-instead-of-an-executable-binary-according-to/55704865#55704865
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 = 8x 00: execution address entry point, or 0 if not applicable like for the object file since there is no entry point.
On the executable, it is b0 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
2 0: e_phoff = 8x 00: program header table offset, 0 if not present.
40 00 00 00 on the executable, i.e. it starts immediately after the ELF header.
2 8: e_shoff = 40 7x 00 = 0x40: section header table file offset, 0 if not present.
3 0: e_flags = 00 00 00 00 Arch specific. i386 docs say:
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?
3 6: e_phentsize = 00 00: size of each program header, 0 if not present.
38 00 on executable: it is 56 bytes long
3 8: e_phnum = 00 00: number of program header entries, 0 if not present.
02 00 on executable: there are 2 entries.
3 A: e_shentsize and e_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 .shstrtab section.

Retrosynthetic analysis by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

Cadmium by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

Cell by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

Excretion by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

De novo DNA synthesis by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

Many companies are attempting to create more efficient de novo synthesis methods:

As of 2018, Ciro Santilli believes that this could be the next big thing in biology technology.

"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.

TODO current de novo synthesis costs/time to delivery after ordering a custom sequence.

The initial main applications are likely going to be:

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

but the real pipe dream is building and bootstraping entire artificial chromosomes

News coverage:

2023-03 twitter.com/sethbannon/status/1633848116154880001
AnsaBio created the world's longest DNA oligo produced using de novo synthesis! 1,005 bases! 99.9% stepwise yield
2020-10-05 www.nature.com/articles/s41587-020-0695-9 "Enzymatic DNA synthesis enters new phase"

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

Brain cell type by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

Television by

Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16

 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!