The opposite of a human-readable format.
This is generally good, especially compared to how crappy Evince, the default Ubuntu one, has been around 2014-2020.
Sometimes Ciro Santilli says half jokingly that user interface does not matter.
This software circa 2010-2020 makes that joke not be funny.
How can a UI feel so clunky!
The most aggravating thing is that it is not immediately obvious why it feels so bad.
Extract certain pages of a PDF:
pdftk input.pdf cat 2-4 output out1.pdfThis is a good thing. It basically contains an entire website, with HTML and assets inside a single ZIP, and a little bit of metadata.
It is incomprehensible why browsers don't just implement it as they already have all the web part, and also ZIP stuff:
The situation is so sad. Ubuntu 21.04 doesn't come with a reader installed by default:
Full name Carl Mark Force IV, the fourth! As mentioned at www.vice.com/en/article/vv7dgj/great-moments-in-shaun-bridges-a-corrupt-silk-road-investigator (this made Ciro Santilli laugh quite hard:
Carl Mark Force IV - the other corrupt cop charged alongside Bridges - is pretty hard to beat, just name-wise.
Richard Bates (Silk Road advisor and Ross' friend) by 
Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-03-28 +Created 1970-01-01
Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-03-28 +Created 1970-01-01He testified against Ross: arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/friend-who-helped-ulbricht-build-silk-road-testifies-against-him/
youtu.be/HBTYVVUBAGs?t=178 claims to contain a photo of him without source. He has no easy to find online profiles.
Variety Jones: IRL, is there anyone with a clue at all? A girlfriend, boyfriend, buddy you talk to, etc?myself: Unfortunately yes, there are two but they think I sold the site and got out, and they're quite convinced of it.
His email was published: baronsyntax@gmail.com. They actaully talked on Google Chat. OMG.
Ross Ulbricht told her about Silk Road, but then later said he had sold the website to someone else, without really doing that.
- LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/julia-vie-35296959/
- Twitter profile: twitter.com/destenyrangel
As of 2023, she's apparently a photographer with a porny focus (boudoir photography).
We need a mini-series, this just doesn't have enough time. Notably, too much focus on dob, and not enough on the development of Silk Road iteslf. Though it is cool to see what his motivations might have been like. One wonders how realistic the character is. Though him meeting Ross Ulbricht personally sounds exceptionally unlikely.
Silk Road 1: Theory & Practice by Gwern Branwen by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-03-28 +Created 1970-01-01
Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-03-28 +Created 1970-01-01 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:
- 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/derivative - 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 2. You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either OurBigBook.com or as a static website.
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 4. Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation.
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. - Internal cross file references done right:
- Infinitely deep tables of contents:
Figure 6. Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents.Live URL: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordateDescendant 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