Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli 37

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Ciro Santilli's wife Updated 2025-07-16

For more china-related stuff see: cirosantilli.com/china-dictatorship/wife

Excerpt of For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (1940), slightly adapted for brevity:

"The earth moved," Maria said, not looking at Pilar. "Truly. It was a thing I cannot tell thee."
"It never moves more than three times in a lifetime. Did it really move?" Pilar Said.
"Yes," the girl said. "Truly."
"For you, Inglés?" Pilar looked at Robert Jordan. "Don't lie."
"Yes," he said. "Truly."

Video 1.

Teresinha performed by Maria Bethânia

. Source.

Composed and previously performed by Chico Buarque in 1987: Video "Teresinha by Chico Buarque".

This video has English subtitles, click CC to enable them. This is one of the the best popular Brazilian music (MPB) of all time. A transcribed English translation adapted slightly by Ciro Santilli to be a bit less literal:

The first one came to me as if coming from the flower shop
Brought a stuffed toy, brought an amethyst pin
He told me about his journey and the perks he had
He showed me his watch and called me 'queen'
He found me so undefended that he touched my heart
But he denied me nothing, so, frightened, I said 'no'
The second came to me as if coming back from the bar
Brought a bottle of brandy too bitter to swallow
He asked me about my past and sniffed my food
He searched through my drawer and called me 'the lost one'
He found me so undefended that he scratched my heart
But he gave me nothing, so, frightened, I said 'no'
The third one arrived like he was arriving from nowhere
He brought me nothing and also asked me nothing
I barely know his name but I understand what he wants
He laid on my bed and called me 'woman'
He arrived very sneakily and before I could say 'no'
He settled inside my heart as its owner

Video 2.

Song of pig by Xiangxiang (2005)

Source. Chinese: 猪之歌 by 香香. Baidu Baike page: baike.baidu.com/item/猪之歌/16181836. A dude wrote the lyrics though: 毛慧 (Mao Hui), but wouldn't have been a hit if he had performed it given the insane gender imbalance in China. Chinese lyrics on mojim: mojim.com/cny104491x1x1.htm. A quick translation:

Pig, you have two holes in your nose, and they have snot when you catch a cold
Pig, you have dark eyes, you can't see the edge
Pig, your ears are so big, you can't hear me calling you stupid
Pig, your tail is curled and curled. It turns out that you can't live without it when you run and jump.
Pig head, pig brain, pig body, pig tail, a wise toy who is never picky about food
Every day sleep until after three in the afternoon, you never brush your teeth, and you never fight
Pig, your belly is so bulging, you can tell at a glance that you can't stand the hardships of life
Pig, your skin is so white, you must have been from a rich family in your past life, oh
Legend has it that your ancestor had eight rakes, and it hit a peach blossom criminal.
When you see a beautiful girl, you chuckle, won't blush, and isn't afraid

Some people in the West are quite amused by the usage of "pig" as a term of endearment.

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Ciro's ASCII art circuit diagram notation Updated 2025-08-08

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This notation is designed to be relatively easy to write. This is achieved by not drawing ultra complex ASCII art boxes of every component. It would be slightly more readable if we did that, but prioritizing the writer here.

Two wires are only joined if + is given. E.g. the following two wires are not joined:

  |
--|--
  |

but the following are:

  |
--+--
  |

Simple symmetric components:

-, + and |: wire
AC: AC source. Parameters:
- Hz: frequency
- V: peak voltage
e.g.:
```
AC_1Hz_2V
```
If only one side is given, the other is assumed to be at a ground G.
C: capacitor
G: ground. Often used together with DC, e.g.:
```
DC_10---R_10---G
```
means applying a voltage of 10 V across a 10 Ohm resistor, which would lead to a current of 1 A
L: inductor
MICROPHONE. As a multi-letter symmetric component, you can connect the two wires anywhere, e.g.
```
---MICROPHONE---
```
or:
```
|
MICROPHONE
    |
```
SPEAKER
R: resistor
SQUID: SQUID device
X: Josephson junction

Asymmetric components have multiple letters indicating different ports. The capital letter indicates the device, and lower case letters the ports. The wires then go into the ports:

D: diode
- a: anode (where electrons can come in from)
- c: cathode
Sample usage in a circuit:
```
--aDc--
```
Can also be used vertically like aany other circuit:
```
|
a
D
c
|
```
We can also change the port order, the device is still the same due to capital D:
```
--cDa--

 |
Dac--

 |
Dca--

   |
--caD
```
DC DC source. Ports:
- p: positive
- n: negative
E.g. a 10 V source with a 10 Ohm resistor would be:
```
+---pDC_10_n---+
|              |
+----R_10------+
```
If only one side is given, the other is assumed to be at a the ground G. We can also omit p and m in that case and assume that p is the one used, e.g. the above would be equivalent to:
```
DC_10---R_10---G
```
If the voltage is not given, it is assumed to be a variable voltage power supply.
LED: same as diode
I: electric current source. Ports:
- s: electron source
- d: electron destination
P: potentiometer source. Ports:
- 1: one of the sides
- 2: the middle
- 3: the other side
T: transistor. The ports are sgTd:
- s: source
- g: gate
- d: gate
Sample usage in a circuit:
```
---+
   |
--sgTd--
```
All the following are also equivalent:
```
   |
   g
--sTd--

    |
--Tsgd--
   |
```
V: Voltmeter. Ports:
- p: positive
- n: negative
If we don't need to specify explicit positive and negative sides, we can just use:
```
---V---
```
without any ports. This is notably often the case for AC circuits.
Optionally, we can also add the sides as in:
ports can also be separated by double underscores from the component names to increase readability. Single underscores can also be used to increase readability of longer multi-word component names e.g.:
```
RPI_PICO_W__1gp0__3gnd
            |       |
            R_2k    |
            |       |
            +-aLEDc-+
```
which is the same as:
```
RPI_PICO_W
1gp0  3gnd
|       |
R_2k    |
|       |
+-aLEDc-+
```
represents a circuit linking port 1 of a Raspberry Pi Pico W, which is GPIO pin 0, through a resistor and an LED, back to pin 3 of the board, which is ground.

Numbers characterizing components are put just next to each component with an underscore. When there is only one parameter, standard units are assumed, e.g.:

+-----+
|     |
C_1p  R_2k
|     |
+-----+

means:

a capacitor with 1 pico Faraday
a resistor with 2 k Ohms

Micro is denoted as u.

Wires can just freely come in and out of specs of a component, they are then just connected to the component, e.g.:

DC_10---R_10---G

means applying a voltage of 10 V across a 10 Ohm resistor, which would lead to a current of 1 A

If a component has more than two parameters, units are used to distinguish them when possible, e.g.:

AC_1kV_2MHz

means an AC source with:

1 kV voltage
1 MHz frequency

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Ciro's everyone gets a raise story Updated 2025-07-16

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Once upon a time, when Ciro worked at a company, one day the company decided to give everyone a 20% raise.

The likely reason was that Apple was coming to town, and was sucking the fuck out of the company's talent.

Nothing ever drove it so clearly into Ciro's heart the obvious fact that even for skilled jobs, companies don't pay you what you're worth. They pay you as little as possible so you won't quit to join someone else. It is pure market forces in play.

The annoying thing is that people are highly non-fungible, so much like painting auctions, you can only estimate your price by putting yourself on auction and seeing what people will pay for you, i.e. interviewing for new jobs.

Another point is that people have all sorts of stupid restrictions such as not wanting to work on certain areas for moral reasons, or not wanting to move away from a certain area they like. Companies will of course readily exploit such weakness to be able to pay less. Silly non-rational beings.

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Cirq Updated 2025-07-16

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Cisco Updated 2025-07-16

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Video 1.

Nerds 2.0.1 excerpt about Cisco (1998)

Source.

youtu.be/mhz24AR3nIc?t=45 the founders both worked at Stanford University but because they were in different departments they couldn't send an email to one another.
youtu.be/mhz24AR3nIc?t=54 Sandy Lerner is very nice and chilled. She says how she was amazed by Leonard's manners!
youtu.be/mhz24AR3nIc?t=86 "sincerity begins at a little over 100 hours a week". The dude is a robot.
youtu.be/mhz24AR3nIc?t=279 earthquake!!!
youtu.be/d0ya8DggDYs?list=PLn7AqqWS1I_9EHEHy6sw-v6hUMhbeOTRW&t=3268 she bought a manor house, probably in Chawton Hampshire, England, possibly Chawton House
youtu.be/d0ya8DggDYs?list=PLn7AqqWS1I_9EHEHy6sw-v6hUMhbeOTRW&t=3312 he started donating to search for extraterrestrial intelligence

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Microphone Updated 2025-07-16

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Video 1.

Testing and Circuit for a Condenser microphone by RSD Academy (2018)

Source.

Not very numerical, but shows a simple working breadboard circuit and an oscilloscope. He whistles with his mouth to get a pretty pure frequency.

That type of microphone requires a bias voltage. The circuit is in Ciro's ASCII art circuit diagram notation:

DC_9---R_10k--+--MICROPHONE--+--G
              |              |
              +-------V------+

Video 2.

Soundwaves on an oscilloscope by Animated Science (2015)

Source. Dude speaking to microphone. Some analysis of how different sounds look like. No circuit diagram.

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Rock music Updated 2025-07-16

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Video 1.

Space Oddity by David Bowie (1969)

Source.

Video 2.

Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin (1971)

Source.

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Remarkable (tablet) Updated 2025-07-16

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Remarkable 2 is really, really good. Relatively fast refresh + touchscreen is amazing.

No official public feedback forum unfortunately:

PDF table of contents could be better: twitter.com/cirosantilli/status/1459844683925008385

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Replication crisis Updated 2025-07-16

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Of course, if academic journals require greater reproducibility for publication, then the cost per paper increases.

However, the total cost has to be smaller than the cost everyone who reads the paper spends to reproduce, no?

The truth is, part of the replication crisis is also due to research groups not wanting to share their precious secrets with others, so they can keep ahead of the publication curve, or maybe spin off a startup.

And when it comes to papers, things are even crazier: big companies manage to publish white papers in peer reviewed journals.

Ciro Santilli wants to help in this area with his videos of all key physics experiments project idea.

Cool initiative. Papers that do not share source code should be banned from peer reviewed academic journals.

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Closed source offline software used by millions Updated 2025-07-16

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Closed source on offline products used by millions of people is evil, when you could just have those for free with open source software! Thus Ciro's hatred for Microsoft Windows and MacOS (at least userland, maybe).

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Closing questions as off-topic Updated 2025-07-16

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There's no point.

The question remains there, but people lose the ability to help the asker.

Reputation is meaningless regardless, since JavaScript gurus will always have 1000x more readers than low level junkies.

The deeper problem: the existence of multiple separate websites instead of just using the tags on a single website.

Examples:

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Cloud chamber Updated 2025-07-16

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Figure 1.
Radium 226 source in a cloud chamber
. Source.

Video 1.

How to make a cloud chamber by Suzie Sheehy (2011)

Source.

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Cloud computing market share Updated 2025-07-16

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Cloud computing platform Updated 2025-07-16

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CNN convolution kernels are also learnt Updated 2025-07-16

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CNN convolution kernels are not hardcoded. They are learnt and optimized via backpropagation. You just specify their size! Example in PyTorch you'd do just:

nn.Conv2d(1, 6, kernel_size=(5, 5))

as used for example at: activatedgeek/LeNet-5.

This can also be inferred from: stackoverflow.com/questions/55594969/how-to-visualise-filters-in-a-cnn-with-pytorch where we see that the kernels are not perfectly regular as you'd expected from something hand coded.

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CNOT gate Updated 2025-07-16

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The CNOT gate is a controlled quantum gate that operates on two qubits, flipping the second (operand) qubit if the first (control) qubit is set.

This gate is the first example of a controlled quantum gate that you should study.

1000010000010010

(1)

Equation 1.

CNOT gate matrix

Figure 1.
CNOT gate symbol
. Source. The symbol follow the generic symbol convention for controlled quantum gates shown at Figure "Generic controlled quantum gate symbol", but replacing the generic "U" with the Figure "Quantum NOT gate symbol".

To understand why the gate is called a CNOT gate, you should think as follows.

First let's produce a generic quantum state vector where the control qubit is certain to be 0.

On the standard basis:

∣ 00 ⟩ ∣ 01 ⟩ ∣ 10 ⟩ ∣ 11 ⟩

(2)

we see that this means that only

∣ 00 ⟩

and

∣ 01 ⟩

should be possible. Therefore, the state must be of the form:

x y 00

(3)

where

x

and

y

are two complex numbers such that

∣ x ∣ + ∣ y ∣ = 1.0

If we operate the CNOT gate on that state, we obtain:

1000010000010010 \times x y 00 = x y 00

(4)

and so the input is unchanged as desired, because the control qubit is 0.

If however we take only states where the control qubit is for sure 1:

1000010000010010 \times 00 x y = 00 y x

(5)

Therefore, in that case, what happened is that the probabilities of

∣ 10 ⟩

and

∣ 11 ⟩

were swapped from

x

and

y

y

and

x

respectively, which is exactly what the quantum NOT gate does.

So from this we understand more concretely what "the gate only operates if the first qubit is set to one" means.

Now go and study the Bell state and understand intuitively how this gate is used to produce it.

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Code golf Updated 2025-07-16

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Microscopy connectome extraction Updated 2025-07-16

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This is the most plausible way of obtaining a full connectome looking from 2020 forward. Then you'd observe the slices with an electron microscope + appropriate Staining. Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom (2014) really opened Ciro Santilli's eyes to this possibility.

Once this is done for a human, it will be one of the greatest milestone of humanities, coparable perhaps to the Human Genome Project. BUt of course, privacy issues are incrediby pressing in this case, even more than in the human genome project, as we would essentially be able to read the brain of the person after their death.

As of 2022, the Drosophila connectome had been almost fully extracted.

This is also a possible path towards post-mortem brain reading.

Figure 1. Source. Unconfirmed, but looks like the type of frozen brain where a Microtome would be used.

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Microwave transmission for trading Updated 2025-07-16

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Finance is a cancer of society. But I have to admit it, it's kind of cool.

arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/private-microwave-networks-financial-hft/ The secret world of microwave networks (2016) Fantastic article.

Video 1.

Lasers Transmit Market Data and Trade Execution by Anova Technologies (2014)

Source. Their system is insane. It compensates in real time for wind movements of towers. They also have advanced building tracking for things that might cover line of sight.

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Competitive programming website Updated 2025-10-14

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