Comedy show Updated +Created
List of comics Updated +Created
Monolithic system Updated +Created
Industry Updated +Created
How to blackout your window without drilling Updated +Created
This is meant to be an answer to: diy.stackexchange.com/questions/27669/how-can-i-thoroughly-blackout-a-bedroom-window-on-a-budget but that question was protected and I can't answer right now because I don't have 10 reputation on the website, so here goes.
How to teach Updated +Created
Off-the-shelf techniques to become a teaching superhero.
Customized website idea at: OurBigBook.com.
What poor countries have to do to get richer Updated +Created
Like all poor countries, Brazil's lack of money and scientific culture severely limit its ability to make technological and scientific advances.
While this sounds obvious, Ciro Santilli has felt it first hand since he moved from Brazil to Europe, and it is just shocking.
In the city of Santos for example, despite being a dream place from the natural point of view, it would be completely impossible to achieve any deep tech technical advance that impacts the world. In Europe however, there are several several places where this can happen.
Mathematics Updated +Created
The proper precise definition of mathematics can be found at: Section "Formalization of mathematics".
The most beautiful things in mathematics are described at: Section "The beauty of mathematics".
Figure 1. . Source. Applies to almost all of mathematics of course. But we don't care, do we!
Deep tech Updated +Created
Ciro Santilli is a fan of this late 2010's buzzword.
It basically came about because of the endless stream of useless software startups made since the 2000's by one or two people with no investments with the continued increase in computers and Internet speeds until the great wall was reached.
Deep tech means not one of those. More specifically, it means technologies that require significant investment in expensive materials and laboratory equipment to progress, such as molecular biology technologies and quantum computing.
And it basically comes down to technologies that wrestle with the fundamental laws of physics rather than software data wrangling.
Computers are of course limited by the laws of physics, but those are much hidden by several layers of indirection.
Full visibility, and full control, make computer tasks be tasks that eventually always work out more or less as expected.
The same does not hold true when real Physics is involved.
Physics is brutal.
To start with, you can't even see your system very clearly, and often doing so requires altering its behaviour.
For example, in molecular biology, most great discoveries are made after some new technique is made to be able to observe smaller things.
But you often have to kill your cells to make those observations, which makes it very hard to understand how they work dynamically.
What we would really want would be to track every single protein as it goes about inside the cell. But that is likely an impossible dream.
The same for the brain. If we had observations of every neuron, how long would it take to understand it? Not long, people are really good at reverse engineering things when there is enough information available to do so, see also science is the reverse engineering of nature.
Then, even when you start to see the system, you might have a very hard time controlling it, because it is so fragile. This is basically the case of quantum computing in 2020.
It is for those reasons that deep tech is so exciting.
The next big things will come from deep tech. Failure is always a possibility, and you can't know before you try.
But that's also why its so fun to dare.
Stuff that Ciro Santilli considers "deep tech" as of 2020:
Children cartoons Ciro Santilli liked to watch Updated +Created
These did not stand the test of time however.
When Ciro was ten years old, he was addicted to 2 cartoons: Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z!
Pokemon had just launched in Brazil in 1999, 2 years after the Japanese launch: br.historyplay.tv/hoje-na-historia/comeca-exibicao-original-do-anime-pokemon (archive) And Dragon Ball, was first aired in 1989 in Japan! My God, those translations took forever back then!
And everyone was playing Pokemon on their Game Boy Color. Ciro was already cheap however, and didn't buy the console despite wanting it, and just played it through his friends handhelds. But maybe this is a good thing. Playing alone sucks.
ASCII typeface Updated +Created
Tis term was invented by Ciro Santilli, it refers to ASCII art of text, essentially creating a typeface. in that medium..
Universal basic income Updated +Created
Unconditional basic income is Ciro Santilli's ultimate non-transhumanist technological dream: to reach a state of technological advancement and distribution of resources so high that everyone gets money for doing nothing, enough for:
  • basic survival needs: food, housing, clothes, hygiene, etc.
  • two children to keep the world going. Or immortality tech, but is harder and borderline transhumanist :-)
  • high speed computer and Internet
Once a person has that, they can "learn, teach" and create whatever they want. Or play video games all day long if they wish.
Ciro Santilli will not live to see this, and is content with helping it happen faster by increasing the efficiency of the world as. And having at least two well educated kids to carry on the project after he dies :-)
Technologies which would help a lot towards unconditional basic income, and might be strictly required required are:
So in the worst case we can just grow brainless bodies and replace the cavity hole with a computer that controls the body, possibly with high level decisions coming from a remote building-sized genetically engineered biological AGI brain.
Of course, it is all about costs. A human costs about 130k 2010 USD/year. So how cheap can we make the AGI / robot human equivalent / year for a given task?
AGI + humanoid robots likely implies AI takeover though. It would then come down to human loving bots vs human hating bots fighting it out. It will be both terrifying and fun to watch.
AGI alone would be very dangerous, in case it can get control of our nuclear arsenals through software zero days or social engineering. Although some claim that is unlikely.
Humanity's best bet to achieve silicon AGI today is to work on: Ciro's 2D reinforcement learning games.
By Charles Bukowski mentioned e.g. at tatyanany.medium.com/slavery-was-never-abolished-it-was-only-extended-to-include-all-the-colors-6ca21d586e7e:
Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.
Bibliography:
Video 1.
Easy street by Stan Kenton and June Christy (1945)
Source. TODO exact lyrics for copy paste? There seem to be several variants, and I don't have the patience to transcribe. Close enough: lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/e/easystreet.html. Except that with UBI there won't be a:
guy that you can hire to plant trees so you can have shade
because most people will have something better to do. That's where artificial general intelligence comes in!
Having more than one natural language is bad for the world Updated +Created
Figure 1.
Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563)
Source.
Even the Bible writers already know that multiple languages suck as seen from the Tower of Babel parable
Isn't it incredibly fitting that the building of the European Parliament looks like the Tower of Babel?
The fact that in poor countries a huge number of people do not speak the economically dominating language of the world, the lingua franca, English as of 2020, is a major obstacle to the development of those countries.
Despite us being in the information age, the people in those countries cannot fully benefit from it at all!
Teaching its people English should be the number one priority of any country. Without that, there can be no technological development. Everything else is secondary and can be learnt off the Internet once you know English.
And the most efficient way to do that, is that every country should create amazing free open source English learning material for their own language.
European countries are perhaps the most perfect example of how many languages destroy once powerful countries: Section "European Tower of Babel"
The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is bullshit outside of poetry, and the ending of Arrival (2016) makes one want to puke, where learning a language changes not only your brain, but also Ciro's precious "laws" of Physics!
Much more likely are To Serve Man/A Small Talent for War events which we have already seen countless times!
Remember that those ideas come from a person who speaks 3.5 languages in 2019, and sees absolutely no practical difference between them.
Of course, like all non-constructed languages, English is not fully optimal in terms of regularity and information density. It could be argued that other languages are better in those aspects.
For example, Ciro does believe that spoken Chinese is a better language than English overall from a purely "ease of learning from scratch point of view" as mentioned at: github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/tree/6fdeb5aa3826c69f7c058de4e6f652a6924bc08a#does-ciro-santilli-speak-chinese. Chinese writing is completely insane of course, completely out of the question.
However, Ciro just doesn't think that the difference is that great to justify replacing English which is already dominant. How much more efficient can a perfect constructed language be than English? 1.01? 1.001? Such margins don't matter. Once you have learnt it young, it's done, for good.
English-based a posteriori constructed languages that regularize English further are perhaps the only reasonable alternative, like how C++ evolved from C by creating a low cost upgrade path. Although in practice they will never take off unless a dictatorship rules the world:
One interesting anecdote is that Ciro met his wife in French, and talking to her primarily in English feels really weird, so language does matter in love.
Different languages might also good at producing interesting diverse touristic locations, with different diverse and interesting foods. Because that's what tourism is all about. The exotic. The unique. And therefore, also necessarily the inefficient.
People with similar ideas:
Video 1.
English spelling - a bit mad, but perhaps the best system around by Lindybeige (2015)
Source. To be taken as a semi-joke, but he does mention the interesting point that English insane spelling helps disambiguate reading, like an intermediate between Chinese characters and more regular spelled languages.
Governments should provide basic Internet infrastructure Updated +Created
Companies are getting too much power to distort regulations and destroy privacy.
Taxes pay for the physical car roads, so why shouldn't they also pay for the "online roads" of today?
The following services are obvious picks because they are so simple:
Other less simple ones that might also be feasible:
All of them should have strong privacy enabled by default: end-to-end encryption, logless, etc. Governments are not going to like this part.
And then if you ever forget a password or lose a multi-factor authentication token, you can just go to an ID center with your ID to recover it.
How to write technical help requests and bug reports Updated +Created
Ciro Santilli often sees all those genius who are much smarter than him making shitty forum/mailing list posts, they need to learn this:
  • The apparently most important one liner error message must appear in the title, and fuller apparently relevant logs must appear on the body
  • You must always give the version of the software that you are using as either a tag or git SHA
    These are an important part of the minimal working example.
  • For build errors, you must give your OS and compiler version and version of any relevant external library
The bullying of young Ciro Santilli Updated +Created
When Ciro Santilli was very young, about 6, he was a fatty, and other evil boys picked on him.
Ciro was even more stupid than as of 2020, and continued to try and hang out with those evil kids to show them he was cool too or that he was strong, and so continued to get hurt.
Advice to his children: stay away from evil people.
The bullied sometimes feels an almost masochistic desire to overcome the bullies' contempt, and to try and either become friends with the bullies, or to overpower them.
You must never give into those thoughts.
If you come across evil people, smile a fake smile to them, and walk away, but never give your back to them, and always be ready to fight.
If they laugh at you, know that you are shit like everyone else, pretend to laugh with them, take their post and repost it on your public profile, and silently stay away from those idiots.
Never show any weakness.
If a fight is likely, always be ready, always have your friends nearby, be as well armed as the enemy, and never be outnumbered.
On the Internet, never care about e-bully posts, either block them immediately, and anyone that likes their posts, or follow Ciro's reply policy.
Call parents or other authorities as soon as there is risk of physical harm. Better a living free pussy than dead or in youth detention for murder. Similar advice applies if you are going to jail I guess.
The Sikh knife, the Kirpan, which Sikhs must carry at all times as a religious obligation, also comes to mind. The Sikh must have been bullied out of the their minds at some point in history, Ciro understands.
Non-violence only works when you have bodies to spare from your followers.
Perhaps it was good to learn those lessons early, before the stakes were too high. Adults fake it much better, and therefore it is harder to learn those lessons from them, but they are still just as evil on the inside.
These experiences might have contributed to Ciro Santilli's self perceived compassionate personality.
Ciro Santilli's formal education Updated +Created
Ciro Santilli participated in a double degree program, so he obtained have engineering degrees in both:
See also further remarks on Ciro Santilli's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/cirosantilli/
Despite studying in great institutions with great teachers, Ciro feels that:
This motivated Ciro to work on OurBigBook.com.
Roasted nuts Updated +Created
All with olive oil and salt mixed up before roasting.
2021-04-05 180C:
  • chestnuts: 1.5x 200g: 3x 6min, this was a bit too much
  • hazelnuts: 1.5x 200g: 3x 6min, seemed fine
  • pecans: 4.5x 200g bags: 5x 6 min, a bit uneven roast because too much on tray
2021-02-06 180C:
  • almonds: 2x 200g: 3x 6min, slighted burnt taste
  • Brazil nuts: 2x 300g: 3x 6min + 3min
  • chestnuts: 1x 400g: 3x 6min, perfect
  • pecans: 3x 200g bags (previously had done just 2 bags at a time): 3x 6 min + 2x 3min, perfect
2021-01-04:
  • almonds: 190C, 8 min, they started burning on top! What? I put olive oil abundantly this time. 170C 5 min
  • chestnuts: 180C, 6 min, stir, 6 min, stir, 4 min, they became very good, dark brown
  • pecans: 180C, 6 min, stir, 6 min, stir, 3 min while preparing chestnuts, very good
2020-11-21:
  • mixed nuts: 180C, 10 minutes, did not reach the point. Then 7 more minutes on 190C: pecans completely burned out
  • almonds: 190C, about 25 minutes, opened several times, in the end had a slight burnt taste, but did not get black, just darker brown. Not as crispy as the ones we buy roasted, but pretty good
  • pecans: 180C, 13 minutes, opened 3 times to stir, became great
Trope Updated +Created
A recurring narrative device, i.e. a cliche that has been used endless across stories.

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