Graduate course of the University of Oxford by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Graphene by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
A single layer of graphite.
Great doubt by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
The type of feeling of confusion and distrut for your sense that some Koans attempt to instill.
Some notable references:
Greek alphabet by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Unfortunately, physicists and mathematicians keep using Greek letters in their formulas, so we just have to learn them.
A helpful way to remember is to learn a bit of their history/pronunciation: Section "Historical correspondence between Latin and Greek".
To learn the greek letters if you have a base latin alphabet, you must learn the sound of each letter, and which Latin letters they correspond to.
Symbols that look like Greek letters but are not Greek letters:
Is Ciro Santilli crazy (he is, but for this point specifically), or do many/most Greek letters represent the mouth position used in the pronunciation of the letter?
Growth medium by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Laughlin wavefunction by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Yes, most of the very rich have acquired their wealth through unfair means, be it through unfair government action like intellectual property, subsidies, bailouts, low-interest loans, etc., or violence, historic or current. Regarding pure socialism/communism, a war to fully redistribute the riches of the wealthy will likely never happen, and cause great devastation if it did.
In a libertarian system, even if everyone started out equally wealthy, some would end up richer than others, as people of differening competency and diligence should. But libertarianism makes things fair even if some are very wealthy.
One who owns a lot of resources can rent or loan it to others without much additional cost to themselves, and make a percentage return. But by making them compete with other rich people, assuming resources are plenty, the ones that offers it for the lowest price, ie., makes the closest to zero profit, will get all the customers.
As for why even partial wealth redistribution isn't preferred in a libertarian society, note that the company that provides the customer with the most value for their money wins. The riches of a wealthy person are assets to be used to finance their business, even if turned into houses or jewelery, since they can be liquidated when needed. Taking these away punishes the best company, which is counter-productive. If a lot of it is turned into stuff like parties and luxury vacations, the company isn't being very efficient, and will likely be replaced quickly in a free market. If not, that means people who can afford it are willingly transferring their money by overpaying due to their affinity for the entity, in which case libertarians would argue they have every right to spend that fairly earned money.
Guerilla Open Access Manifesto by Aaron Swartz (2008) by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Hmmm, he does not know how to spell guerilla? sic? www.quora.com/What-is-the-correct-spelling-guerilla-or-guerrilla
Note to self: if you are going to commit a crime, don't publish your plans online.
Ross Ulbricht's diaries come to mind.
That's how Russian shadow library maintainers do it, they know how to crime good old Russians. Maybe there is a good thing about having dictatorships in the world that give zero fucks about American copyright laws. There will always be some random Russian academic who will implement this and not go to jail. Maybe it's even state sponsored.
Mutagen by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
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
Guitar by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
The guitar is a highly imperfect instrument if compared to something like a piano, which is much more mathematically elegant.
However, Ciro Santilli just loves this imperfection for some reason, especially in the case of the electric guitar.
Bending, sliding and strumming just feel to good to not have.
And Ciro sucks are doing things in parallel, so the more single threaded approach of the guitar fits his brain/abilities better.
For those reasons, the electric guitar is Ciro's favorite musical instrument.
Gülen movement by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Ciro Santilli once was at student a hackthon, where he proposed working on OurBigBook.com to others.
The only person who showed interest was a follower of the sect.
It seems that they put a lot of emphasis in education.
Also, their self-name is Hizmet, which translates as "service".
That day, Mr. Fethullah Gülen gained some Cirocoins.
Gwern Branwen by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated +Created
Ciro Santilli envies this guy a bit. He dumps his brain more or less full time on his highly customized static website partly due to early Bitcoin investments gwern.net/me says:
I am a freelance American writer & researcher. (To make ends meet, I have a Patreon, benefit from Bitcoin appreciation thanks to some old coins, and live frugally.)
Also unsurprisingly he likes Haskell:
I mostly contribute to projects in Haskell, my favorite language
Ciro Santilli considers Gwern Ciro Santilli's e-soulmates due to his interest in "dark web things" like Bitcoin and Silk Road, his immense writing output in encyclopedic book-sized articles on a static website, and his desire to live frugally and just research and write all day. Ah, if only Ciro had some old coins!!!
This is likely a pseudonym, his real name not being publicly unknown, e.g. at news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5659278:
Why do you choose relative anonymity?
For the reasons I've said in the past. To which I can add personal safety: my Silk Road page is a bit questionable legally, and we all know that there are ways to exploit knowledge of one's True Name and address (even if, as far as I know, I have no enemies willing to resort to, say, 'swatting' me) - one group of stalkers called up a college they thought I worked at to see if they could get me fired or otherwise ruin my day.

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