Microelectromechanical systems Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
MEMS: The Second Silicon Revolution? by Asianometry (2022)
Source.
System of units Updated 2025-07-16
The key thing in a good system of units is to define units in a way that depends only on physical properties of nature.
Ideally (or basically necessarily?) the starting point generally has to be discrete phenomena, e.g.
What we don't want is to have macroscopic measurement artifacts, (or even worse, the size of body parts! Inset dick joke) as you can always make a bar slightly more or less wide. And even metals evaporate over time! Though the mad people of the Avogadro project still attempted otherwise well into the 2010s!
Standards of measure that don't depend on artifacts are known as intrinsic standards.
Emergence Updated 2025-07-16
Basically the opposite of reductionism.
BB84 Updated 2025-07-16
Does not require entangled particles, unlike E91 which does.
en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Quantum_key_distribution&oldid=1079513227#BB84_protocol:_Charles_H._Bennett_and_Gilles_Brassard_(1984) explains it well. Basically:
  • Alice and Bob randomly select a measurement basis of either 90 degrees and 45 degrees for each photon
  • Alice measures each photon. There are two possible results to either measurement basis: parallel or perpendicular, representing values 0 or 1. TODO understand better: weren't the possible results supposed to be pass or non-pass? She writes down the results, and sends the (now collapsed) photons forward to Bob.
  • Bob measures the photons and writes down the results
  • Alice and Bob communicate to one another their randomly chosen measurement bases over the unencrypted classic channel.
    This channel must be authenticated to prevent man-in-the-middle. The only way to do this authentication that makes sense is to use a pre-shared key to create message authentication codes. Using public-key cryptography for a digital signature would be pointless, since the only advantage of QKD is to avoid using public-key cryptography in the first place.
  • they drop all photons for which they picked different basis. The measurements of those which were in the same basis are the key. Because they are in the same basis, their results must always be the same in an ideal system.
  • if there is an eavesdropper on the line, the results of measurements on the same basis can differ.
    Unfortunately, this can also happen due to imperfections in the system.
    Alice and Bob must decide what level of error is above the system's imperfections and implies that an attacker is listening.
www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07VL2MLYY DECARETA Pedal Spanner Bike Pedal Wrench Three-in-one Function Bicycle Pedal Spanner 24mm Front and Rear Axle Spanner Pedal Install Spanner Repair Tool with Anti-Skidding Long Handle (Silver) £10.99.
Got dented the first time I tried to use it in the Kross bicycle (2017). All Amazon reviews say the same thing, should have read first, and bought instead known brand like Park And Tool which is the same price. Material advertized on Amazon: "Steel alloy and rubber".
Physicist Updated 2025-07-16
Figure 1.
xkcd 435: Fields arranged by purity
. Source.
Meta breaking glitch Updated 2025-07-16
A meta breaking glitch of a video game is a glitch that when discovered significantly breaks the meta.
In non-video game-game, it does sometimes happen that a meta is broken as well, but these events tend to be rarer and less dramatic than meta-breaking due to computer program glitches.
In PvP games, those glitches are generally forbidden by existing rules, and quickly patched after discovered.
In speedrunning however, they are either incorporated in the existing strategy, or may lead to the creation of a new run category for particularly significant glitches.
Video 1.
The Controversial Olofboost by theScore esports (2018)
Source. Descries the boost used by CS:GO pro-team Fnatic during the DreamHack Winter 2014 quarterfinals.
Shelter Island Conference Updated 2025-07-16
Sponsored by National Academy of Sciences, located in Long Island.
This is where Isidor Rabi exposed experiments carried out on the anomalous magnetic dipole moment and Willis Lamb presented his work on the Lamb shift.
It was a very private and intimate conference, that gathered the best physicists of the area, one is reminded of the style of the Solvay Conference.
Ciro's word of caution for 2019 aspiring system programmers: Should you waste your life with systems programming?
This is basically a direct consequence of backward design.
The higher the level you can operate at, the better.
C is better than assembly, userland better than kernelland.
The ideal level to operate at, and one of humankind's greatest ambitions is "AGI, make me money", the highest possible level.
Only go down a level when it seems necessary.
Bell state Updated 2025-07-16
One of the four following states:
When unqualified as in "the Bell state", it generally just means .
The Bell states are entangled and non-separable. Intuitively, we can see that when we measure that state, the values of the first and second bit are strictly correlated. This is the hallmark of quantum computation: making up states where qubits are highly correlated to match a specific algorithmic answer, and opposed to uniformly random noise. For example, the Bell state circuit is a common hello world, e.g. it is used in the official Qiskit hello world.
Beta decay Updated 2025-07-16
Uranium emits them, you can see their mass to charge ratio under magnetic field and so deduce that they are electrons.
Caused by weak interaction TODO why/how.
The emitted electron kinetic energy is random from zero to a maximum value. The rest goes into a neutrino. This is how the neutrino was first discovered/observed indirectly. This is well illustrated in a decay scheme such as Figure "caesium-137 decay scheme".
better-sqlite3 Node.js package Updated 2025-07-16
As claimed on their README, their operation truly appears to be 10x faster than the node-sqlite package!! It is insane!! How can that other package still exist at all?
The only big problem was the lack of ORM, but people are looking into that by adding it to Sequelize:
When I came, two Bell GU4 (MR11) 20W 12v.
One burnt. Put in an ASDA halogen one.
ASDA burnt, put in TopLux on right, old Bell left.
2019-01-24, right one burnt a few days ago, old Bell still works. Inner part black, and black dot on the wire. Putting new TopLux again, but this time on the left, old bell on right.
2019-01-24 toilet top lamp also burnt a few days ago, but not at the same time as mirror. Diall, 240V 40W, GU10. Putting in IKEA 240V 35W.
2019-02-02 toilet mirror lamp left (TopLux) burnt. Don't know what to do anymore. Only the magic Bell lamp works.
2019-03-06 toilet top lamp left burnt, IKEA 240V 35W GU10. Putting in another one.
2019-03-28 toilet top lamp right burnt, IKEA 240V 35W GU10. Waiting for people to come to look at transformer, there is definitely something wrong.
2019-04-03 top lamps: replaced with LED (LAP GU10 3W) since lower power, transformer not changed. Mirror lamps: transformer changed, left one replaced with Homebase Halogen 20W 12V. When I came back lamps flickering badly and sometimes not turning on, recalled technician.
2019-04-12 mirror lamp: it was just he connector that was bad, it was changed, also put LEDs there to make it less warm and hopefully have less tear on connector.
Total derivative Updated 2025-07-16
The total derivative of a function assigns for every point of the domain a linear map with same domain, which is the best linear approximation to the function value around this point, i.e. the tangent plane.
E.g. in 1D:
and in 2D:
Euler number Updated 2025-07-16
Go (game) Updated 2025-07-16

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