BackRub Updated 2025-07-16
This was the original name of Google Search.
One wonders if this name has some influence from the LGBT culture in San Francisco! The sexual innuendo is palpable.
"Back" is of course a reference to "backlinks", since Google Search relies on incoming links (AKA backlinks) to a webpage to determine its importance.
Backward design Updated 2025-07-16
Steve Jobs has a great quote about this. He's totally right on this one!
You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to sell it.
Steve Jobs Insult Response excerpt from the 1997 WWDC
. Source. TODO understand the context of the question a bit better. It is something to do with an OpenDoc thing and Java.Decide your goal first, and then do whatever is needed to how to reach it.
Don't start randomly learning tech, because that means you will waste a lot of time learning useless stuff.
There is of course some level chicken-and-egg paradox in this, as highlighted by Dilbert, since choosing an achievable goal in the first place requires some level of technical understanding.
However, it is much more common that people will get way too involved in learning useless stuff and lose sight of the useful end goals.
Rather, take an iterative approach:
There is some truth to the counter argument that "but if you don't spend a lot of time learning the basics, you can never find solutions".
However, these people underestimate your brain. The brain is beautiful, and human intuition is capable of generating interest towards the things that are actually useful to reach your goal. When you feel like learning something related to your goal, by all means, give yourself the time to do so. But this still be much more efficient than just learning random things that other people tell you to learn.
Bibliography:
- Ciro Santilli and many many others believe that backward design is a fundamental principle that should be considered by the educational system rather than wasting 90% of everyone's time with the 90% of mandatory curricula they don't care about:
- notably that school should be personalized and project driven:
- www.cartalk.com/content/rant-and-rave-36 "The New Theory of Learning" by Thomas L. Magliozzi section "Premise III: THE BACKWARDS LEARNING THEORY" says the exact same thing. Ciro actually found this when writing Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain.
- several well known teaching methods:
- a Coding Horror software specific take on this issue: blog.codinghorror.com/please-dont-learn-to-code/
- x.com/7etsuo/status/1784787045157900697: George Hotz
Everyone I've met who can program well learned it the same way: they had an idea, and then they built it.
Bacteria Updated 2025-07-16
Bacterial cellular morphogology Updated 2025-07-16
Bacterial genome Updated 2025-07-16
Bad film Updated 2025-07-16
Banheiros da USP Updated 2025-07-16
Semi-comical student website to review the toilets of the University of São Paulo. Some of the toilets had a reputation for being terrible.
One is reminded of Crushbridge.
Barton Zwiebach Updated 2025-07-16
Affiliation: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Doctoral advisor: Murray Gell-Mann.
Based God Updated 2025-07-16
Someone who is not a pussy.
Someone once called Ciro Santilli that: archive.is/W1ocv. It's an overstatement, considering that Ciro's parents have some money. Not infinite. But still. Changes everything. A real Based God is someone like Charles Bukowski, who had to work decades at the post office.
BCS Theory Updated 2025-07-16
Main theory to explain Type I superconductors very successfully.
TODO can someone please just give the final predictions of BCS, and how they compare to experiments, first of all? Then derive them.
High level concepts:
- the wave functions of pairs of electrons (fermions) get together to form bosons. This is a phase transition effect, thus the specific sudden transition temperature.
- the pairs form a Bose-Einstein condensate
- once this new state is reached, all pairs are somehow entangled into one big wave function, and you so individual lattice imperfections can't move just one single electron off trajectory and make it lose energy
Beeching cuts Updated 2025-07-16
Bibliograpy:
- Losing Track by Channel 4 (1984), especially episode 5
- www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/mar/02/beeching-wrong-about-britains-railwaysToday the makeup of UK transport looks very different from the one envisaged by Dr Beeching. Rail passenger figures have almost doubled over the past 10 years; commuter trains are crammed; young people are deserting the car for the train; and Britain's railway bosses are struggling to meet soaring demands for seats. The legacy of Beeching - dug-up lines, sold-off track beds and demolished bridges - has only hindered plans to revitalise the network, revealing the dangers of having a single, inflexible vision when planning infrastructure."The crucial lesson to take from the Beeching anniversary is that you have to be flexible when planning transport infrastructure. Beeching was not," says Colin Divall, professor of rail history at York University. "Yes, many loss-making lines did need closing down, but nowhere near the number earmarked by Beeching, as we can now see with terrible hindsight."
Being naughty and creative are correlated Updated 2025-07-16
Bell circuit Updated 2025-07-16
Bell Labs Holmdel Complex Updated 2025-07-16
101 Crawfords Corner Rd Holmdel, NJ 07733 USA
They had a smaller building first: youtu.be/BPq_ZyOvbsg?t=51 and in 1962 opened the large new building.
Bell Labs Murray Hill Updated 2025-07-16
Became headquarters in 1967,
Drone footage: www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0Ld2KFjaC8 Bell LABS Headquarters Murray Hill NJ in 4K Drone Flight by ESTOUCHFPV (2017)
Notable inventions made there:
- the first transistor
- TODO confirm C
Bell test experiment Updated 2025-07-16
Some of the most remarkable ones seem to be:
- Alain Aspect 1982
- Hensen et al., Giustina et al., Shalm et al. (2015): "loophole-free" Bell tests
Ben Bernanke Updated 2025-07-16
Benji Wojin Updated 2025-07-16
www.facebook.com/watch/live/?mibextid=qC1gEa&ref=watch_permalink&v=10100156534675351 claims to have a video of Benji Wojin and his cousin Marco Troper from 2018. www.linkedin.com/posts/superintendents_marco-and-benji-wojin-love-these-kids-and-activity-7164448664772435968-siUC/ that links to it is lamenting Marco Troper 's death in 2024.
Claimed photos can be found at:All of the above are likely of the same child.
Bert Hubert Updated 2025-07-16
Co-founder of PowerDNS, an open source dNS implementation.
Homepage: berthub.eu/ says:.
All stuff Ciro cares about too! Cool dude! In particular Ciro loved his quote of I should have loved biology.
All stuff Ciro cares about too! Cool dude! In particular Ciro loved his quote of I should have loved biology.
He's writing a fun-sounding book about molecular biology as of 2022: berthub.eu/dna-book. Appears to be closed source though. Ciro wonders if he really needs to sell the book for money after all those years though, rather than just publishing it online for free.
Looking at Bert just brings the Dutch Golden Age, and more in particular Antonie van Leeuwenhoek to mind. Epic.
How life is Digital by Bert Hubert (2021)
Source. Just a "boring" overview of the central dogma of molecular biology ;-) Bessel function Updated 2025-07-16
Shows up when trying to solve 2D wave equation on a circular domain in polar coordinates with separation of variables, where we have to decompose the initial condition in termes of a fourier-Bessel series, exactly like the Fourier series appears when solving the wave equation in linear coordinates.
For the same fundamental reasons, also appears when calculating the Schrödinger equation solution for the hydrogen atom.
There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.