Yttrium barium copper oxide Updated 2025-07-16
Upside: superconducting above 92K, which is above the 77K of liquid nitrogen, and therefore much much cheaper to obtain and maintain than liquid helium.
Downside: it is brittle, so how do you make wires out of it? Still, can already be used in certain circuits, e.g. high temperature SQUID devices.
Ciro Santilli's drug experiences Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli never did any illegal drugs, because he:
so don't expect any amazing stories here.
Like LDS believers, Ciro never drinks coffee nor smokes, and only drinks alcohol and tea sparingly, because they are all addictive drugs and bring no net increase of energy and concentration.
Ciro prefers to only enjoy a glass of tea when going out cycling on a cold day (Earl gray, with milk, no sugar), or get a half pint of beer when going out with friends to a pub.
Ciro only got reasonably drunk twice on his life:
  • once when he was quite young, likely pre-10 years old, while visiting an uncle's home, and adults were having a very nice sweet and thick type of alcoholic cocktail, and Ciro drank a bit too much and that made him really really stupid
  • once while studying at University of São Paulo, somehow someone was giving free beers at one of the parties (at which Ciro practiced Cirodance). And since Ciro had always been a cheap-ass, he thought, hey, this is a good chance to try it out. Ciro remembers that this made him a bit euphoric, active, very stupid, and a bit horny (though of course, he got no pussy as usual).
Later in life, around the time of his wedding, there were guests around all the time, and he was drinking beer with them all the time. Then one day, during lunch, Ciro felt a weirdly strong desire to drink one more pint. It was at this point that Ciro realized first-hand what mild, but real, alcohol addiction felt like, and he didn't get that drink, and swore from then on to never drink more than one glass a week, and only with friends at a bar after work. Richard Feynman tells a very similar story on his book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman chapter O Americano, Outra Vez!, see: Section "Richard Feynman's drug use".
Ciro Santilli's formal education Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli participated in a double degree program, so he obtained have engineering degrees in both:
Despite studying in great institutions with great teachers, Ciro feels that:
This motivated Ciro to work on OurBigBook.com.
This is unlike atomic systems like trapped ion quantum computers, where each atom is necessarily exactly the same as the other.
Ciro Santilli's hardware Updated 2025-07-16
One day, someone will invent a way to take the hash of a piece of hardware and see its history log, like software engineers do with version control. Until then, this is as close as you can get.
Ciro one day guessed that hardware would certainly be a slang for something naughty, and yup, here we are: www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hardware, drug paraphernelia. Read on!
Nature Scitable Updated 2025-07-16
As of 2022 visible at: www.nature.com/scitable
Apparently they had a separate URL as just scitable.com, so they were somewhat serious about it before shutting it down.
As of 2022 marked:
This page has been archived and is no longer updated
RIP.
www.nature.com/scitable/blog/student-voices/ has last entry 2015, so presumably that's the shutdown year.
Self description:
Using our platform, you can customize your own eBooks for your students. Create an online classroom. Contribute and share content and connect with networks of colleagues.
so quite related to OurBigBook.com.
OurBigBook.com / Feature ideas Updated 2025-07-16
In this section we will gather some more advanced ideas besides the basic features described at how the website works.
Zhuangzi Updated 2025-07-16
33 chapters. The first 7 are likely by Zhuang Zhou himself, and the rest a mishmash.
  • James Legge (1891):
    • ctext.org/zhuangzi side by side with Chinese, one chapter per page. Dividies it into three parts:
      • Inner Chapters
      • Outer Chapters
      • Miscellaneous Chapters
Diamond Updated 2025-07-16
Game AI Updated 2025-07-16
Game AI is an artificial intelligence that plays a certain game.
It can be either developed for serious purposes (e.g. AGI development in AI games), or to make games for interesting for humans.
Graphite Updated 2025-07-16
The layered one.
Info-ZIP Updated 2025-07-16
The dominant Linux implemenation, e.g. default zip command on Ubuntu 23.04.
So dominant that it is usualy called just "zip".

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