There seems to be nothing of particular artistic value as far as we've seen so far, the only interest in such tokens seems to be that:
- there are some examples that came earlier than those in the Bitcoin blockchain, notably a bit earlier than Section "BitLen"
- Namecoin is a NFT system unlike Bitcoin which is fungible, so those assets are naturally tradable
As opposed to:
- 2020 cryptocurrencies, while governments still don't accept them for taxes, as well as other assets that are also not accepted for taxes (i.e. most assets)
- physical currencies that have intrinsic material value, e.g. gold coins
Our minimal definition of "electronic money" is the following.
Instead of creating legal tender such as Dollars as banknotes or transactions in some complex obscure banking system, the government offers an official simple centralized API that represents it instead.
Each citizen or legal entity has an account there, and transfers between registered users are just simple API calls.
Centralized system that still attempts some level of privacy.
In it, a central bank issue tokens that are stored offline in your cell phone, a bit like cash bank notes.
When you take those tokens, a corresponding amount gets removed from your bank account, a bit like cash bank notes.
When a transaction is made, tokens are put into a spent token list via central API, and cannot be double spent thereafter. The corresponding ammount is then added to the bank account of the receiver. This also means that offline transactions are not possible.
John Doerr Q&A at Berkeley (2015)
Source. - youtu.be/4xWGSUZmkIc?t=634 invest in batteries
Xavier Niel, Iliad - Free: Je suis un casseur de monopoles by DECIDEURSTV (2011)
Source. Title translation: "I'm a hunter of monopolies".In this section we list charitable organizations that support education or research:
- elifesciences.org/labs by eLife
- www.digital-science.com/investment/catalyst-grant/ by Shuttleworth Foundation.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLOS
- www.chanzuckerberg.com/ Zuck has already invested in education previously:
- openuk.uk/
- Sir Peter Lampl, Education Endowment Foundation and Sutton Trust
- Jacobs Foundation, by German-Swiss coffee mogul Klaus Johann Jacobs
- joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/what-open-education_en
- www.non-trivial.org/ "Launch Your Own Impactful Project CHOOSE YOUR CAUSE. GET EXPERT GUIDANCE. FIND A SOLUTION AND MAKE IT HAPPEN."
- by United States Government:
- FY 2024 Education Innovation and Research:
- Education Innovation and Research (EIR) Notices Inviting Applications
- oese.ed.gov/offices/office-of-discretionary-grants-support-services/innovation-early-learning/education-innovation-and-research-eir/fy-2024-competition/
- www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/05/06/2024-09797/applications-for-new-awards-education-innovation-and-research-eir-program-early-phase-grants
- FY 2024 Education Innovation and Research:
At crankstart.org/grants the organization's website describes mostly California activities, but they do at least also act in the University of Oxford, see: Section "University of Oxford study costs".
Presumably the name refers to crank starting an old car, as in helping out those in difficulty like poor students get started in life. But is also an obscure slang for a type of handjob according to Urban Dictionary.
Follows the "certified teacher only" approach which is in Ciro Santilli's opinion a fatal flaw of most elearning systems out there, OurBigBook.com won't suffer from that!
All notes appear to have been extracted from existing notes, as noted on the bottom of each page.
Appears to have mixed licenses. E.g.:
- phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/University_Physics/Book%3A_University_Physics_(OpenStax)/Book%3A_University_Physics_III_-_Optics_and_Modern_Physics_(OpenStax)/06%3A_Photons_and_Matter_Waves/6.06%3A_De_Broglies_Matter_Waves is CC BY
- but we had seen another one that was CC BY-NC-SA
- phys.libretexts.org/Courses/University_of_California_Davis/UCD%3A_Physics_9HE_-_Modern_Physics/06%3A_Emission_and_Absorption_of_Photons/6.1%3A_Transitions_Between_Stationary_States CC BY-SA
- chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_Chemistry/Introductory_Chemistry_(CK-12) uses the custom "CK-12 license" which seems a bit like CC BY-NC-SA
- some don't even have a free license, e.g.: phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Quantum_Mechanics/Quantum_Mechanics_(Fowler)/00%3A_Front_Matter/04%3A_Licensing
TODO how does it work exactly? Do they ask for permission from authors in every case, including when the content has open license? Or when it has open license, do they just do it? In some cases, the notes have no license, so they must have asked.
TODO what is the source code that authors write? LaTeX or something else? LaTeX feels extremely likely given that it is what most original materials were already written in.
They are attempting a "model up this entire university" thing: phys.libretexts.org/Courses which is good. E.g. they have a bunch of "quantum mechanics ones under: phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Quantum_Mechanics
Appears to be UC Davies-based mostly.
They claim to use this closed source backend: www.nice.com/resources/cxone-expert-knowledge-management? Seriously? For a publicly funded project with low-tech requirements?? It is mind blowing.
Some issues:
- the internal cross references are somewhat broken as of 2022.
- their URLs are HUGE! All components of every ancestor are in it. E.g. check this out: phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Quantum_Mechanics/Introductory_Quantum_Mechanics_(Fitzpatrick)/12%3A_Time-Dependent_Perturbation_Theory/12.13%3A_Forbidden_Transitions Insane.
Of all the rich person foundations, this is the one that feels the most hardcore.
They put huge focus on autism. Do they have an autistic child? Yes: www.forbes.com/pictures/eilm45mll/james-simons-autism/?sh=7825234250ce his daughter.
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 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 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. 
- 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