How to mine Monero Updated 2025-11-05
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Ubuntu 20.10 as per xmrig.com/docs/miner/build/ubuntu:
sudo apt install git build-essential cmake libuv1-dev libssl-dev libhwloc-dev
git clone https://github.com/xmrig/xmrig.git
mkdir xmrig/build && cd xmrig/build
cmake ..
make -j$(nproc)
At minexmr.com/#getting_started we see that all you then need is a single CLI command:
xmrig -o pool.minexmr.com:4444 -u <your-monero-address>
Seems simple, well done devs!
Benchmark on Lenovo ThinkPad P51 (2017) as per xmrig.com/docs/miner/benchmark:
./xmrig --bench=1M
gives:
948.1 h/s
which according to the minexmr.com mining pool would generate 0.0005 XMR/day, which at the February 2021 rate of 140 USD/XMR is 0.07 USD/day. The minimum payout in that pool is 0.004 XMR so it would take 8 days to reach that.
So clearly, application-specific integrated circuit mining is the only viable way of doing this.
www.makeuseof.com/cryptos-you-can-mine-at-home/ is a completely full of bullshit article that says otherwise. How can someone publish that!
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Automatic programming Updated 2025-11-30
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We use the term "automatic programming" to mean "generating code from natural language".
The ultimate high level of which is of course to program with:which is basically the goal of artificial general intelligence, especially according to The Employment Test definition of AGI.
The term has not always had that sense:
automatic programming has always been a euphemism for programming in a higher-level language than was then available to the programmer
sums it up.
But in the current AI boom, this is the sense that matters, so that's what we will go with.
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Sponsor Ciro Santilli's work on OurBigBook.com / Progress updates Updated 2025-11-21
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Ciro Santilli wants to make sure that you get clear highlights of what your donation money is going into!
Sponsors also receive the "Ciro's Edit" email newsletter if desired, which contains similar updates to the above, but delivered directly to their inbox.
Video 1.
OurBigBook Project 2025 one year funded work debrief by Ciro Santilli
. Source. This video debriefs the end of the 1-year-funded 1000 Monero donation work in 2025, in addition to some personal remarks and what might come next.
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Education is broken Updated 2025-11-21
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Once Ciro was at a University course practical session, and a graduate was around helping out. Ciro asked if what the graduate did anything specifically related to the course, and they replied they didn't. And they added that:
One has to put the bread on the table.
Even though Ciro was already completely disillusioned by then, that still made an impression on him. Something is really wrong with this shit.
Other people that think that the educational system is currently bullshit as of 2020:
Video 1.
The problem with education by Ciro Santilli
. Source. In this video Ciro Santilli exposes his fundamental philosophy regarding why Education is broken. This philosophy was the key motivation behind the failed OurBigBook Project.
Figure 1.
Educational systems are carried by Indian YouTubers meme
. Source. Over a Dmitriy Khaladzhi carrying a horse over his shoulders meme template.
Video 2.
Peter Gregory from Silicon Valley shows his hate for university in a fake TED talk
. Source. Key moment: someone from the crowd cries:
The true value of a college education is intangible!
to which the speaker replies:
The true value of snake oil is intangible as well.
IMDb says it's not a cameo. It really looked like one, good acting, but what a missed opportunity. Imagine a Xavier Niel appearance.
Video 3.
David Deutsch on Education interviewed by Aidan McCullen (2019)
Source.
Key quote that hits the nail:
[...] the existing assumptions behind educational systems are that the purpose of education is to transmit valuable knowledge faithfully from on generation to the next. From people who already have that knowledge, to people who don't.
So the knowledge is conceived of as a kind of valuable fluid, which you pour from one generation to the next, pour it into their brains.
So right... the purpose of education is not to teach facts. The purpose of education is to propose ways of thinking, which students themselves must try to apply and decide if it suits them! And use the patterns of thinking that are useful to reach their goals.
Like Noam Chomsky, he proposes education has been a system of indoctrination more than anything else e.g. twitter.com/daviddeutschoxf/status/1406374921748496386:
All compulsory education, "tough" or not, "love" or not, in camps or not, and whether it "traumatises" or not, is a violation of human rights.
At twitter.com/DavidDeutschOxf/status/1051475227476185089 another good quote by Churchill:
Headmasters have powers at their disposal with which Prime Ministers have never yet been invested.
The same video also mentions in passing that john Wheeler used to be Deutsch's boss, but I can't find a reference for it very easily.
Video 4.
Quote selection by Charles Bukowski (2016)
Source.
Generally speaking, you're free until you're about 4 years old. Then you go to grammar school and then you start becoming... oriented and shoved into areas. You lose what individualism you have, if you have enough of course, you retain some of it... Then you work the 8 hour job with almost a feeling of goodness, like you're doing something. Then you get married like marriage is a victory, and you have children like children is a victory... Marriage, birth, children. It's something they have to do because there's nothing else to do. There's no glory in it, there's no steam, there's no fire. It's very, very flat... You get caught into the stricture of what you're supposed to be and you have no other choice. You're finally molded and melded into what you're supposed to be. I didn't like this.
Video 5.
Was MIT worth it? by Joseph Li
. Source.
Video 6.
I "Crashed Out" After Studying Physics In College by Alex Wei
. Source. A large part of his problem are High expectations Asian father issues. But society does absolutely nothing to help either, treating Education as an IQ test.
Video 7.
The decline of play by Peter Gray TEDxNavesink talk
. Source.
Video 8.
Can you get an MIT education for $2,000? by Scott Young
. Source.
Video 9.
Graduating from Chinese College by Arcnimation
. Source.
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Home Updated 2025-12-02
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Check out: OurBigBook.com, the best way to publish your scientific knowledge. It's an open source note taking system that can publish from lightweight markup files in your computer both to a multi-user mind melding dynamic website, or as a static website. It's like Wikipedia + GitHub + Stack Overflow + Obsidian mashed up. Source code: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook.
Sponsor me to work on this project. For 400k USD I will quit my job or not get a new job and work on OurBigBook full time for a second year to try and kickstart The Higher Education Revolution. Status: ~44k / 400k USD. At 4M USD I retire/tenure and work on open STEM forever. How to donate: Section "Sponsor Ciro Santilli's work on OurBigBook.com".
I first quit my job 1st June 2024 to work on the project for 1 year after I reached my initial 100k goal mostly via a 1000 Monero donation. For a second follow up year, I increased my requirement to 400k USD to give me more peace of mind as I'm destroying my career in the process. A second year greatly improve chances of success: on year one I improved my tech, on year two I want to come guns blazing to solve courses and get users.
Mission: to live in a world where you can learn university-level mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and engineering from perfect free open source books that anyone can write to get famous. More rationale: Section "OurBigBook.com"
Explaining things is my superpower, e.g. I was top user #39 on Stack Overflow in 2023[ref][ref] and I have a few 1k+ star educational GitHub repositories[ref][ref][ref][ref]. Now I want to bring that level of awesomeness to masters level Mathematics and Physics. But I can't do it alone! So I created OurBigBook.com to allow everyone to work together towards the perfect book of everything.
My life's goal is to bring hardcore university-level STEM open educational content to all ages. Sponsor me at github.com/sponsors/cirosantilli starting from 1$/month so I can work full time on it. Further information: Section "Sponsor Ciro Santilli's work on OurBigBook.com". Achieving what I call "free gifted education" is my Nirvana.
This website is written in OurBigBook Markup, and it is published on both cirosantilli.com (static website) and outbigbook.om/cirosantilli (multi-user OurBigBook Web instance). Its source code is located at: github.com/cirosantilli/cirosantilli.github.io and also at cirosantilli.com/_dir and it is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted.
To contact Ciro, see: Section "How to contact Ciro Santilli". He likes to talk with random people of the Internet.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirosantilli/media/master/ID_photo_of_Ciro_Santilli_taken_in_2013.jpg https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirosantilli/media/master/Ciro_Santilli's_learn_teach_apply_logo.png
Besides that, I'm also a freedom of speech slacktivist and recreational cyclist. I like Chinese traditional music and classic Brazilian pop. Opinions are my own, but they could be yours too. Tax the rich.
I offer:
My approach is to:
For minors, parents are welcome to join video calls, and all interactions with the student will be recorded and made available to parents.
I am particularly excited about pointing people to the potential next big things, my top picks these days are:
I am also generally interested in:
Figure 1.
Ciro Santilli's amazing Stack Overflow profile
. Ciro contributes almost exclusively by answering question he Googles into out of his own need, and never by refreshing the newest question of big tags for low hanging fruit! More information at: Section "Ciro Santilli's Stack Overflow contributions".
Figure 2.
Ciro Santilli's Stack Overflow stats
. Further methodology details at: Figure "Ciro Santilli's Stack Overflow stats".
Video 1.
The problem with education by Ciro Santilli
. Source. In this video Ciro Santilli exposes his fundamental philosophy regarding why Education is broken. This philosophy was the key motivation behind the failed OurBigBook Project.
Video 2.
Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
. Source.
Video 3.
OurBigBook Web topics demo
. Source. The OurBigBook topic feature allows users to "merge their minds" in a "sort by upvote"-stack overflow-like manner for each subject. This is the killer feature of OurBigBook Web. More information at: docs.ourbigbook.com/ourbigbook-web-topics.
Video 4.
OurBigBook dynamic article tree demo
. Source. The OurBigBook dynamic tree feature allows any of your headers to be the toplevel h1 header of a page, while still displaying its descendants. SEO loves this, and it also allows users to always get their content on the correct granularity. More information at: docs.ourbigbook.com/ourbigbook-web-dynamic-article-tree.
Video 5.
OurBigBook local editing and publishing demo
. Source. With OurBigBook you can store your content as plaintext files in a Lightweight markup, and then publish that to either OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features, or as a static website where you are in full control. More information at: docs.ourbigbook.com/publish-your-content.
Video 6.
Top Down 2D continuous game with Urho3D C++ SDL and Box2D for Reinforcement learning by Ciro Santilli (2018)
Source. More information: Section "Ciro's 2D reinforcement learning games". This is Ciro's underwhelming stab at the fundamental question: Can AGI be trained in simulations?. This project could be taken much further.
Video 7.
Water Margin tribute to Chinese dissidents by Ciro Santilli (2022)
Source. Part of Ciro Santilli's campaign for freedom of speech in China, see also: cirosantilli.com/china-dictatorship/water-margin.
Figure 3.
Lenovo ThinkPad T430 running a BIOS hello world
. This uses Ciro Santilli's project x86 bare metal examples with source code at: github.com/cirosantilli/x86-bare-metal-examples
Video 8.
Linux Kernel Module Cheat presentation
. Source. This project, with source code at: github.com/cirosantilli/linux-kernel-module-cheat, aims to be the perfect emulation setup to study and develop the Linux kernel, kernel modules, QEMU, gem5 as well as x86_64, ARM userland and baremetal assembly and more.
Video 9.
My Bitcoin inscription museum by Ciro Santilli
. Source. Introductory video to Section "Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain".
 -------------------------------------
|  Force of Will               3 U U  |
|  ---------------------------------  |
| |                  ////////////   | |
| |                ////() ()\////\  | |
| |               ///_\ (--) \///\  | |
| |        )      ////  \_____///\\ | |
| |       ) \      /   /   /    /   | |
| |    ) /   \     |   |  /   _/    | |
| |   ) \  (  (   /   / /   / \     | |
| |  / ) ( )  / (    )/(    )  \    | |
| |  \(_)/(_)/  /UUUU \  \\\/   |   | |
| .---------------------------------. |
| Interrupt                           |
| ,---------------------------------, |
| | You may pay 1 life and remove a | |
| | blue card in your hand from the | |
| | game instead of paying Force of | |
| | Will's casting cost.  Effects   | |
| | that prevent or redirect damage | |
| | cannot be used to counter this  | |
| | loss of life.                   | |
| | Counter target spell.           | |
| `---------------------------------` |
|                                     l
| Illus.  Terese Nelsen               |
 -------------------------------------
Code 1.
ASCII art of a Force of Will Magic: The Gathering card inscribed in the Bitcoin blockchain
.
Artist unknown, uploaded December 2014. Part of Section "Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain" where Ciro Santilli maintains a curated list of such interesting inscriptions.
This was a small project done by Ciro for artistic purposes that received some attention due to the incredible hype surrounding cryptocurrencies at the time. Ciro Santilli's views on cryptocurrencies are summarized at: Section "Are cryptocurrencies useful?".
Figure 4.
YellowRobot.jpg
. Source.
JPG image fully embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain depicting some kind of cut material art depicting a yellow robot, inscribed on January 29, 2017.
Ciro Santilli found this image and others during his research for Section "Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain" by searching for image fingerprints on every transaction payload of the blockchain with a script.
The image was uploaded by EMBII, co-creator of the AtomSea & EMBII upload mechanism, which was responsible for a large part of the image inscriptions in the Bitcoin blockchain.
The associated message reads:
Chiharu [EMBII's Japanese wife] and I found this little yellow robot while exploring Chicago. It will be covered by tar or eventually removed but this tribute will remain. N 41.880778 E -87.629210
This is one of Ciro Santilli's favorite AtomSea & EMBII uploads, as it perfectly encapsules the "medium as an art form" approach to blockchain art, where even non-novel works can be recontextualized into something interesting, here depicting an opposition between the ephemeral and the immutable.
At twitter.com/EMBII4U/status/1615389973343268871 EMBII announced that he would be giving off shares of that image on Sup!?, a Bitcoin-backed NFT system he was; making. In December 2023, he gave some shares of the robot to Ciro Santilli.
Figure 5.
2010 Wayback Machine archive of starwarsweb.net
.
This website was used as one of the CIA 2010 covert communication websites, a covert system the CIA used to communicate with its assets. More details at: Section "CIA 2010 covert communication websites".
Ciro Santilli had some naughty OSINT fun finding some of the websites of this defunct network in 2023 after he heard about the 2022 Reuters report on the matter, which for the first time gave away 7 concrete websites out of a claimed 885 total found. As of November 2023, Ciro had found about 350 of them.
Figure 6.
2010 Wayback Machine archive of noticiasmusica.net
.
This is another website that was used as one of the CIA 2010 covert communication websites. This website is written in Brazilian Portuguese, and therefore suggests that the CIA had assets in Brazil at the time, and thus was spying on a "fellow democracy".
Although Snowden's revelations made it extremely obvious to the world that the USA spies upon everyone outside of the Five Eyes, including fellow democracies, it is rare to have such a direct a concrete proof of it visible live right on the Wayback Machine. Other targeted democracies include France, Germany, Italy and Spain. More details at: USA spying on its own allies.
This investigative report by Ciro Santilli was featured on the Daily Mail after 404 Media reported on it in 2025.
Video 10.
How I found a Star Wars website made by the CIA by Ciro Santilli
. Source. Slightly edited VOD of the talk Aratu Week 2024 Talk by Ciro Santilli: My Best Random Projects about the CIA 2010 covert communication websites.
Figure 7.
Diagram of the fundamental theorem on homomorphisms by Ciro Santilli (2020)
Shows the relationship between group homomorphisms and normal subgroups.
Figure 8.
Spacetime diagram illustrating how faster-than-light travel implies time travel by Ciro Santilli (2021)
Used in the Stack Exchange answer to Does faster than light travel imply travelling back in time?. One of Section "The best articles by Ciro Santilli".
Figure 9.
Average insertion time into heaps, binary search tree and hash maps of the C++ standard library by Ciro Santilli (2015)
Source. Used in the Stack Overflow answer to Heap vs Binary Search Tree (BST). One of Section "The best articles by Ciro Santilli".
Video 11.
Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture in two minutes by Ciro Santilli
. Source. Quick and direct explanation of the statement of the BSD conjecture for people who know basic university mathematics. This is one of the Millennium Prize Problems, and you will get a million dollars if you can solve it! This therefore falls in the Simple to state but hard to prove of Ciro Santilli's the beauty of mathematics aesthetics.
Figure 10.
Top view of an open Oxford Nanopore MinION
. Source. This is Ciro Santilli's hand on the Wikipedia article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Nanopore_Technologies. He put it there after working a bit on Section "How to use an Oxford Nanopore MinION to extract DNA from river water and determine which bacteria live in it" :-) And he would love to document more experiments like that one Section "Videos of all key physics experiments", but opportunities are extremely rare.
A quick 2D continuous AI game prototype for reinforcement learning written in Matter.js, you can view it on a separate page at cirosantilli.com/_raw/js/matterjs/examples.html#top-down-asdw-fixed-viewport. This is a for-fun-only prototype for Ciro's 2D reinforcement learning games, C++ or maybe Python (for the deep learning ecosystem) seems inevitable for a serious version of such a project. But it is cute how much you can do with a few lines of Matter.js!
HTML snippet:
<iframe src="_raw/js/matterjs/examples.html#top-down-asdw-fixed-viewport" width="1000" height="850"></iframe>
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Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Porn Updated 2025-12-01
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For now we are going to keep this site porn-free and only link to prevent bad things from happening, as it might violate GitHub porn policy depending on how it is hosted, and Google may dislike it. Video "What is more obscene: sex or war? scene from The People vs. Larry Flynt".
If illegal porn were to ever be found, we would be unable to acknowledge that, and would just have to silently remove it. Of course, the reproducible nature of Bitcoin Inscription Indexer means that anyone who regenerates the data would immediately see such entries in the diff.
Another issue is that it can be quite hard to determine if porn is legal or illegal, e.g. it can be hard to distinguish legal an illegal ages or revenge vs consensual porn, especially at the low resolutions that you may expect to find embedded in the blockchain. We are generally going to be quite strict about this, and in case of uncertainty on porn legality we will censor first.
OK the list:
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Verilator interactive example Updated 2025-07-16
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The example under verilog/interactive showcases how to create a simple interactive visual Verilog example using Verilator and SDL.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirosantilli/media/master/verilog-interactive.gif
You could e.g. expand such an example to create a simple (or complex) video game for example if you were insane enough. But please don't waste your time doing that, Ciro Santilli begs you.
Usage: install dependencies:
sudo apt install libsdl2-dev verilator
then run as either:
make run RUN=and2
make run RUN=move
Tested on Verilator 4.038, Ubuntu 22.04.
In those examples, the more interesting application specific logic is delegated to Verilog (e.g.: move game character on map), while boring timing and display matters can be handled by SDL and C++.
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Cyborg beetle Updated 2025-07-16
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Video 1.
Singapore's Remote-Controlled Cyborg Insects by Vice Media (2018)
Source.
By Dr. Hirotaka Sato from Nanyang Technological University Singapore.
It is a bit rough, but kind of works. Flight control is only left or right though, they don't stimulate the wings directly.
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Cycling landscape of Cambridge's surroundings Updated 2025-07-16
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Anywhere north, including NE and NW: fenlands, i.e. marshes. Quite a few quarries as well. Extremely flat, very uniform, towns often have to be on top of small hills to escape the incessant flooding. Norfolk Coast AONB is beautiful if you take a train ride first, the beaches are very wide and many of them have few people if you avoid a few very busy spots.
East and SE: rolling hills towards Suffolk and the coast. Beautiful county, both Dedham Vale AONB and Suffolk Coast AONB.
South: first one of the hilliest nearby areas around Elmdon and Arkesden, then gently going down to the lush Lee River valley.
Southwest: larger and larger cities as you move towards London. From a train starting point, you can reach the Northen Chilterns, for some serious hills.
West: mostly flat farmland until you hit the River Great Ousse.
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Cycling lobbying group Updated 2025-07-16
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Cytosine Updated 2025-07-16
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Cytosol Updated 2025-07-16
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d'Alembert operator Updated 2025-07-16
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d'Alembert operator in Einstein notation Updated 2025-07-16
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Given the function :
(1)
the operator can be written in Planck units as:
(2)
often written without function arguments as:
(3)
Note how this looks just like the Laplacian in Einstein notation, since the d'Alembert operator is just a generalization of the laplace operator to Minkowski space.
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D-Amino acid Updated 2025-07-16
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The rare ones. Notably present in peptidoglycan.
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Riverlane Updated 2025-10-14
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When you fail a HR interview, then you know you've reached rock bottom.
Investments:
Video 1.
The Operating System for Quantum Computing by Steve Brierley (2021)
Source. Founding CEO. He seems nice. You might as well just start watching at: youtu.be/ugzWnw1LTBE?t=1166 where more specific things start to come out.
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Robert O'Callahan Updated 2025-07-16
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Creator of Mozilla rr, of which Ciro Santilli is a huge fan of!
He quit Mozilla in 2016 to try and commercialize an rr extension called Pernosco.
But as of 2022, he advertised himself as part of "Google Research", so maybe that went under, sample source: archive.ph/o9622. TODO when did he start? There's apparently an unrelated homonym: www.linkedin.com/in/rob-ocallahan/
He's apparently very religious, and very New Zelandish, twitter.com/rocallahan auto-describes:
Christian. Repatriate Kiwi.
Terry A. Davis and D. Richard Hipp come to mind. One is tempted to speculate a correlation even, the proportion amongst systems programmers feels so much higher than in other areas of programming! Maybe it is because you have to be a God to do it in the first place.
Video 1.
Robert O'Callahan interview by Toby Ho (2022)
Source.
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David Tong's 2009 Quantum Field Theory lectures at the Perimeter Institute Updated 2025-07-16
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14 1 hours 20 minute lectures.
The video resolution is extremely low, with images glued as he moves away from what he wrote :-) The beauty of the early Internet.
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DC SQUID Updated 2025-07-16
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Two parallel Josephson junctions.
In Ciro's ASCII art circuit diagram notation:
  |
+-+-+
|   |
X   X
|   |
+-+-+
  |
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DDR SDRAM Updated 2025-07-16
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