Age of Empires II Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
Parsa's Age of Empires II Cartoons (2021)
Source. The cutest fan art ever!
Polarization of light Updated 2025-07-16
This section discusses the pre-photon understanding of the polarization of light. For the photon one see: photon polarization.
People were a bit confused when experiments started to show that light might be polarized. How could a wave that propages through a 3D homgenous material like luminiferous aether have polarization?? Light would presumably be understood to be analogous to a sound wave in 3D medium, which cannot have polarization. This was before Maxwell's equations, in the early 19th century, so there was no way to know.
Udacity Updated 2025-07-16
It is a shame that they refocused to more applied courses. This also highlights their highly "managed" approach to content creation. Their 2022 pitch on front page says it all:
for as few as 10 hours a week, you can get the in-demand skills you need to help land a high-paying tech job
they are focused on the highly paid character of many software engineering jobs.
But one cool point of this website is how they hire tutors to help on the courses. This is a very good thing. It is a fair way of monetizing: e-learning websites must keep content free, only charge for certification.
When TLB is filled up, older addresses are overwritten. Just like CPU cache, the replacement policy is a potentially complex operation, but a simple and reasonable heuristic is to remove the least recently used entry (LRU).
With LRU, starting from state:
  valid  linear  physical
  -----  ------  --------
> 1      00003   00005
  1      00007   00009
  1      00009   00001
  1      0000B   00003
adding 0000D -> 0000A would give:
  valid  linear  physical
  -----  ------  --------
  1      0000D   0000A
> 1      00007   00009
  1      00009   00001
  1      0000B   00003
Allegory Updated 2025-07-16
Electrolysis Updated 2025-07-16
Weekend Updated 2025-07-16
Days of the week where you don't do what you set out to do. And yet, it is in those days that you save your sanity, and possibly the world. Wait, this sounds exactly like a week day?
Figure 1.
Calvin and Hobbes "Oh No! I overslept! I gotta get up!" cartoon
. Source.
XP School Updated 2025-07-16
Amazing self-directed learning direction:
The pupils have a parents' evening coming up but instead of their teachers giving an account of their progress, it is a "student-led conference" at which they must present a portfolio of their work, explain what they are most proud of and discuss where they need to put in more effort.
world.hey.com/gwyn/no-excuses-bc4152fb mentions that the founder was inspired by other schools: High Tech High and Expeditionary Learning.
Lots of focus on showcase student work.
The founder Gwyn ap Harri is quite dirty mouthed, which is also cool.
Ciro Santilli tried to contact them in 2021 at: twitter.com/cirosantilli/status/1448924419016036353 and on website contact form to see if we could do some project together, but no reply.
Academia is broken Updated 2025-07-16
Sometimes Ciro Santilli regrets not having done a PhD. But this section makes him feel better about himself. To be fair, part of the merit is on him, part of the reason he didn't move on was the strong odour of bullshit oozing down to Masters level. A good PhH might have opened interesting job opportunities however, given that you don't really learn anything useful before that point in your education.
twitter.com/togelius/status/1584611702691483648:
The "real world" is full of people who couldn't make it in academia.
Video 1.
I failed in academia by Andy Stapleton (2021)
Source.
Video 2.
6 Dirty Tactics Found In Academia & Universities by Andy Stapleton (2022)
Source.
Video 3.
Rise to the Top: The Habits and Mindset of Top 0.1% PhD Students by Andy Stapleton (2023)
. Source.
Figure 1.
Profzi scheme by PhD Comics
.
A Ponzi scheme that trains people in new skills is not necessarily a terrible thing. It is a somewhat more useful version than standard exam based education.
Perhaps the problem is "forcing" 35 year olds to go down that path when they might also want to have boring stuff like families and security.
If people could get to the PhD level much, much sooner, it wouldn't be as obscene: Section "Students must be allowed to progress as fast as they want".
Video 4.
The broken system at the heart of Academia by Peter Judo (2023)
. Source.
Video 5.
My dream died, and now I'm here by Sabine Hossenfelder (2024)
. Source.
Video 6.
I left academia. Here's why. by Jared Henderson
. Source.
Robert Noyce Updated 2025-07-16

There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.