Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli 37 

This is related to the underlying SVG pain point of SVG background color:

For PNG export:

superuser.com/questions/249860/how-can-i-change-inkscapes-default-export-background-color-from-yellow-to-white

Silk Road (marketplace) Updated 2025-11-05

Ciro Santilli has become slightly obsessed with this story, and the main mastermind Ross Ulbricht.

Figure 1.
Ross Ulbricht's open laptop shortly after his arrest at the Francisco Public Library
. Source. He was running some GNOME based distro, could be Ubuntu from that photo, and likely is given that Ross once recommended Ubuntu to his flatmate.

The best article available so far is: www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/29/how_i_caught_silk_road_mastermind (archive) which summarizes what one of the investigators said in a 2019 French computer security conference.

The key living posts are:

stackoverflow.com/questions/15445285/how-can-i-connect-to-a-tor-hidden-service-using-curl-in-php (archive) which was originally asked under the real name, and then the username was changed to "Frosty", which matches one of the server's logins after the laptop was captured
altoid early Silk Road mention: bitcointalk.org/?topic=175.70;wap2 (archive)

The big question is of course how libertarian free market ideologically motivated the website was, and how purely criminal greed it was.

The magnitude of the early operational security mistakes does make Ciro think that Ross did it "because he could" and "for the lolz" in a real world Breaking Bad way.

The entry in Ross' diary does resonate a lot with Ciro and any entrepreneur, full diary at: www.wired.com/2015/01/heres-secret-silk-road-journal-laptop-ross-ulbricht/ (archive).

[i]n 2011," [I believe I will be] "creating a year of prosperity and power beyond what I have ever experienced before,
Silk Road is going to become a phenomenon and at least one person will tell me about it, unknowing that I was its creator."

Having this kind of feeling, is the greatest thing any human can have, and what motivates all great things.

Capitalizing in illegal things though is a cheat, big things take longer than a few years to reach, but reaching them is that much more satisfying as well.

Other interesting quotes:

I hated working for someone else and trading my time for money with no investment in myself.

which Ciro also feels, see don't be a pussy, and:

Everyone knows I am working on a bitcoin exchange. I always thought honesty was the best policy and now I didn't know what to do. I should have just told everyone I am a freelance programmer or something, but I had to tell half truths. It felt wrong to lie completely so I tried to tell the truth without revealing the bad part, but now I am in a jam. Everyone knows too much. Dammit.

Also very worth reading is the San Francisco flat mate account: www.vice.com/en_us/article/ae3q8g/my-roommate-the-darknet-drug-lord (archive).

The murder for hire allegations are also interesting: mashable.com/2013/10/03/silk-road-hits, he paid 80k dollars to undercover DEA agents!

Except for the fact that Ross was an 80 million Dollar drug lord, those accounts sound exactly like what you would expect from any other nerdy startup founder! The:

"just do it" strategy effectively going to a minimal viable product (manual transaction management!), while making many mistakes along the way, including hiring mistakes and successes when scaling is needed
the hardship of self bootstrapping your own social network (here with some kilos of mushrooms)
the variety of periods, from relatively calm, to hair pulling stress during big changes

It is also amusing to see very concretely the obvious fact that the FBI can get a subpoena for all accounts you ever had, e.g. they knew his laptop model from Amazon and brought a corresponding power cable to the arrest! If you are going to be a cyber criminal, don't use your real name, ever!

Should justice be blind? Maybe. But it does hurt for mere non-blind men to see it sometimes. Especially when drug liberalization is involved.

One Mistake Took Down a 29-Yr-Old Dark Web Drug Lord by Newsthink (2022)

Source. Wow nice video, covers most of the interesting annecdotes and the (alledged) investigation procedure.

Video 2.

What is BusKill?

Source.

Inkscape Updated 2025-11-05

Inkscape is a a good software for editing/creating SVG files.

Its functionality is fundamental for as a software for drawing geometry diagrams, as it is a good middle ground between algorithmic generation, and raster graphics.

At 1.0.2, its UI is a bit terrible:

the way the menus open on the right with title below the window...
several defaults are atrocious, e.g. export drawing rather than page

And it crashes from time to time on Ubuntu 21.04. And it has some glaring bugs, e.g.:

gitlab.com/inkscape/inbox/-/issues/5794

But still, it is a very good initiative.

Personality type Updated 2025-11-05

How to mine Monero Updated 2025-11-05

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.

Some people considering Raspberry Pis also conclude obviously that it is useless at a 10H/s rate:

www.makeuseof.com/cryptos-you-can-mine-at-home/ is a completely full of bullshit article that says otherwise. How can someone publish that!

Transfer Android 11 camera videos to Ubuntu 20.10 Updated 2025-07-16

android.stackexchange.com/questions/66385/how-to-transfer-files-from-an-android-phone-to-a-ubuntu-pc-by-using-a-usb-cable/194107#194107

The video folder is DCIM/Camera.

CuriousMarc Updated 2025-07-16

www.youtube.com/channel/UC3bosUr3WlKYm4sBaLs-Adw

Mostly on vintage electronics. Lots of focus on microwave, which he has worked a lot with.

Has been going wild with restoration and reverse engineering of the Apollo moon mission.

Inside the WILD Lab of CuriousMarc by Keysight Labs (2022)

Source.

youtu.be/qwocVH3_1Eo?t=841 the IBM System/360 is insane!

Cybercrime Updated 2025-07-16

Cyborg beetle Updated 2025-07-16

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.

Cycling landscape of Cambridge's surroundings Updated 2025-07-16

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.

Cycling lobbying group Updated 2025-07-16

twitter.com/bicyclelobby
Shifter YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UC9-ZlLTioqMZowRLZHscozw. Has many videos about making cycling as means of transport. He's from Calgary, Canada.
banprivatecarsinlondon.com/ Ban Private Cars in London
stopkillingcyclists.org
Reclaim the Streets
www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes
kidsonbike.org: they make some large bike rides to promote themselves, good method
2024 www.designboom.com/design/latvia-cyclists-car-skeletons-vehicle-size-10-10-2014/ cyclists with car skeletons

Cytosine Updated 2025-07-16

Cytosol Updated 2025-07-16

d'Alembert operator Updated 2025-07-16

The laplace operator for Minkowski space.

Can be nicely written with Einstein notation as shown at: Section "d'Alembert operator in Einstein notation".

d'Alembert operator in Einstein notation Updated 2025-07-16

Given the function

ψ

ψ : R^{4} \to C

(1)

the operator can be written in Planck units as:

\partial_{i} \partial^{i} ψ (x_{0}, x_{1}, x_{2}, x_{3}) - m^{2} ψ (x_{0}, x_{1}, x_{2}, x_{3}) = 0

(2)

often written without function arguments as:

\partial_{i} \partial^{i} ψ

(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.

D-Amino acid Updated 2025-07-16

The rare ones. Notably present in peptidoglycan.

Riverlane Updated 2025-10-14

www.riverlane.com/

When you fail a HR interview, then you know you've reached rock bottom.

Investments:

2024: 75m GBP
2023-04: 15m GBP: www.uktech.news/deep-tech/riverlane-series-b-20230424 At 100 employeed on LinkedIn, this should keep them going for two more years.
2022 500k GBP: www.uktech.news/deep-tech/riverlane-rigetti-quantum-innovate-uk-20220628 by Innovate UK for joing project with Rigetti Computing to work on quantum error correction

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.

Robert O'Callahan Updated 2025-07-16