Stefan Thomas Updated 2025-07-16
www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html
As for his lost password and inaccessible Bitcoin, Mr. Thomas has put the IronKey in a secure facility - he won’t say where - in case cryptographers come up with new ways of cracking complex passwords. Keeping it far away helps him try not to think about it, he said.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it," Mr. Thomas said.
Video 1.
What is Bitcoin? (v1) by WeUseCoins (2011)
Source. This is the video that Stefan Thomas as paid 7,002 Bitcoins to make back in 2011.
Ciro Santilli's hardware Updated 2025-07-16
One day, someone will invent a way to take the hash of a piece of hardware and see its history log, like software engineers do with version control. Until then, this is as close as you can get.
Ciro one day guessed that hardware would certainly be a slang for something naughty, and yup, here we are: www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hardware, drug paraphernelia. Read on!
Divergence Updated 2025-07-16
Takes a vector field as input and produces a scalar field.
Mnemonic: it gives out the amount of fluid that is going in or out of a given volume per unit of time.
Therefore, if you take a cubic volume:
  • the input has to be the 6 flows across each face, therefore 3 derivatives
  • the output is the variation of the quantity of fluid, and therefore a scalar
Hydrogen cyanide Updated 2025-07-16
Figure 1.
Ball-and-stick model of hydrogen cyanide
. Source.
Non Abelian anyon Updated 2025-07-16
Exotic and hard to find experimentally.
Video 1.
Topological quantum computation by Jason Alicea (2021)
Source.
Colony (biology) Updated 2025-07-16
It is hard to distinguish between colonies of unicellular organism and multicellular organism as there is a continuum between both depending on how well integrated they cells are.
GNU Privacy Guard Updated 2025-07-16
Generate public private key, test encrypt and test decrypt:
# Create your pubkey.
gpg --gen-key
gpg --armor --output pubkey.gpg --export <myemail>

# Encrypt using someone's pubkey.
gpg --import pubkey2.gpg
echo 'hello world' > hello.txt
gpg --output hello.txt.gpg --encrypt --recipient <other-email> hello.txt

# Double check it is not plaintext in the encrypted message.
grep hello hello.txt.gpg

# Decrypt.
gpg --output hello.decrypt.txt --decrypt --recipient <myemail> hello.txt.gpg
diff -u hello.decrypt.txt hello.txt
Stack Exchange Updated 2025-07-16
Waste of time sub-sites that should instead be merged into Stack Overflow as different tags.
Nowhere is this waste more visible than at: cs50.stackexchange.com/. A website just for some specific course that is completely covered by other sites of the network? What a humongous waste!!!
Rubik's Cube solution Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
The algorithmic trick that solves Rubik's Cubes and breaks ciphers by polylog (2022)
Source. Talks about the Meet-in-the-middle algorithm.
Stern-Gerlach experiment Updated 2025-07-16
Originally done with (neutral) silver atoms in 1921, but even clearer theoretically was the hydrogen reproduction in 1927 by T. E. Phipps and J. B. Taylor.
Video 1.
The Stern-Gerlach Experiment by Educational Services, Inc (1967)
Source. Featuring MIT Professor Jerrold R. Zacharias. Amazing experimental setup demonstration, he takes apart much of the experiment to show what's going on.
Compton scattering Updated 2025-07-16
Classic theory predicts that the output frequency must be the same as the input one since the electromagnetic wave makes the electron vibrate with same frequency as itself, which then irradiates further waves.
The formula is exactly that of two relativistic billiard balls colliding.
Therefore this is evidence that photons exist and have momentum.
Video 2.
L3.3 Compton Scattering by Barton Zwiebach (2017)
Source.
Corollary Updated 2025-07-16
An easy to prove theorem that follows from a harder to prove theorem.
Steve Jobs Updated 2025-07-16
Co-founder of Apple.
Is Jobs evil? Is he interesting? Undoubtedly.
Good quotes:

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