Public Ivy Updated 2025-07-16
Scorewriter Updated 2025-07-16
Tennessee Updated 2025-07-16
Git command Updated 2025-07-16
GNU package Updated 2025-07-16
Google acquisition Updated 2025-07-16
Google Street View Updated 2025-07-16
Street View's go into the past mode is the dream of every archaeologist. Ciro can only dream of a magic street view that allows going back to earlier centuries and beyond... isn't it amazing to think that people in the future will have that ability to time travel back to around the year 2006? Ciro wonders how long Google will be able to keep storing data like that.
Thanks, CIA.
History of Google Updated 2025-07-16
The 1997 Wayback Machine archives are just priceless: web.archive.org/web/19971210065425/http://backrub.stanford.edu/backrub.html. I'm so glad that website exists and started so early. It is just another university research project demo website like any other. Priceless.
Craig Silverstein was the first employee hired, in 1998: www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship-that-made-google-huge
In August 1998 they had an their first investment of $100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, Sun Microsystems co-founder. Some sources say September 1998. This was an event of legend, the dude dropped by, tested the website for a few minutes, said I like it, and dropped a 100$ check with no paperwork. Google wasn't even incorporated, they had to incorporate to cash the check. They were apparently introduced by one of the teachers, TODO which. Some sources say he had to rush off to another meeting afterwards:
Tried to sell it for 1 million in early 1999... OMG the way the world is. It would be good to learn more about that story, and when they noticed it was fuckup.
One of Google's most interesting stories is how their startup garage owner became an important figure inside Google, and how Sergei married her sister. These were the best garage tenants ever!
Bibliography:
- Video "Anne Wojcicki interview by Talks at Google (2018)" has a few mentions, e.g. youtu.be/pDoALM0q1LA?t=173
- www.theverge.com/2019/12/4/20994361/google-alphabet-larry-page-sergey-brin-sundar-pichai-co-founders-ceo-timeline The rise, disappearance, and retirement of Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Good timeline!
Nuclear blues Updated 2025-07-16
Term invented by Ciro Santilli, it refers to Richard Feynman, after helping to build the atomic bomb:
Arcade game Updated 2025-07-16
Git bibliography Updated 2025-07-16
Git UI Updated 2025-07-16
Perfect Git integration belongs in integrated development environments :-)
Google culture Updated 2025-07-16
Semantic triple Updated 2025-07-16
Sex (trait) Updated 2025-07-16
Skew-symmetric bilinear form Updated 2025-07-16
Torah Updated 2025-07-16
Atheism Updated 2025-07-16
Penalty kick left right Nash equilibrium Updated 2025-07-16
And before he kicks, the goalkeeper must also decide left or right, because there is no time to see where the ball is going.
Because the kicker is right footed however, he kicker kicks better to one side than the other. So we have four probabilities:
- goal kick left keeper jumps left
- goal kick right keeper jumps right
- goal kick left keeper jumps right. Note that it is possible that this won't be a goal, even though the keeper is nowhere near the ball, as the ball might just miss the goal by a bit.
- kick right and keeper jumps left. Analogous to above
Atom Updated 2025-07-16
Much before atoms were thought to be "experimentally real", chemists from the 19th century already used "conceptual atoms" as units for the proportions observed in macroscopic chemical reactions, e.g. . The thing is, there was still the possibility that those proportions were made up of something continuous that for some reason could only combine in the given proportions, so the atoms could only be strictly consider calculatory devices pending further evidence.
Subtle is the Lord by Abraham Pais (1982) chapter 5 "The reality of molecules" has some good mentions. Notably, physicists generally came to believe in atoms earlier than chemists, because the phenomena they were most interested in, e.g. pressure in the ideal gas law, and then Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics just scream atoms more loudly than chemical reactions, as they saw that these phenomena could be explained to some degree by traditional mechanics of little balls.
Confusion around the probabilistic nature of the second law of thermodynamics was also used as a physical counterargument by some. Pais mentions that Wilhelm Ostwald notably argued that the time reversibility of classical mechanics + the second law being a fundamental law of physics (and not just probabilistic, which is the correct hypothesis as we now understand) must imply that atoms are not classic billiard balls, otherwise the second law could be broken.
Pais also mentions that a big "chemical" breakthrough was isomers suggest that atoms exist.
Very direct evidence evidence:
- Brownian motion mathematical analysis in 1908. Brownian motion just makes it too clear that liquids cannot be continuous... if they were, there would obviously be no Brownian motion, full stop.
- X-ray crystallography: it sees crystal latices
Less direct evidence:
- 1874 Isomers suggest that atoms exist
- kinetic theory of gases seems to explain certain phenomena really well
Subtle is the Lord by Abraham Pais (1982) page 40 mentions several methods that Einstein used to "prove" that atoms were real. Perhaps the greatest argument of all is that several unrelated methods give the same estimates of atom size/mass:
- from 1905:
- in light quantum paper
- enabled by experimental work of Wilhelm Pfeffer on producing rigid membranes
- 1911: blueness of the sky and critical opalescence
There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.