Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli  40

A closed standard: stackoverflow.com/questions/81656/where-do-i-find-the-current-c-or-c-standard-documents. Nice.

FreeBSD Updated 2025-07-16

Atomic Weapons Establishment Updated 2025-07-16

Their website, and in particular the recruitment section, are so creepy.

There's not mention of bombs. No photos of atomic explosions. The words "atomic" and "weapon" do not even show up in the front page!!! The acronym AWE is instead used everywhere as an euphemism.

In the recruitment section we can see a bunch of people smiling: web.archive.org/web/20211007213222/https://www.awe.co.uk/careers/working-at-awe/, suggesting:

We make nukes, and we do it with a smile!

There's even children outreach!!!

Ciro Santilli is not against storing a few nukes to be ready against dictatorships. But don't be such a pussy! Just say what the fuck you are doing more clearly! You are making weapons to kill people and destroy things in order to maintain the Balance of power. If the public can't handle such facts, then shut down the fucking program.

Keeping the peace: A history of AWE

. Source. By AWE, 2005.

Nature (journal) Updated 2025-07-16

Ended up under Springer in 2015 after a massive merger.

Planck's law Updated 2025-07-16

Used to explain the black-body radiation experiment.

Published as: On the Theory of the Energy Distribution Law of the Normal Spectrum by Max Planck (1900).

The Quantum Story by Jim Baggott (2011) page 9 mentions that Planck apparently immediately recognized that Planck constant was a new fundamental physical constant, and could have potential applications in the definition of the system of units (TODO where was that published):

Planck wrote that the constants offered: 'the possibility of establishing units of length, mass, time and temperature which are independent of speciﬁc bodies or materials and which necessarily maintain their meaning for all time and for all civilizations, even those which are extraterrestrial and nonhuman, constants which therefore can be called "fundamental physical units of measurement".'

This was a visionary insight, and was finally realized in the 2019 redefinition of the SI base units.

TODO how can it be derived from theoretical principles alone? There is one derivation at; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_law#Derivation but it does not seem to mention the Schrödinger equation at all.

Quantum Mechanics 2 - Photons by ViaScience (2012)

Source. Contains a good explanation of how discretization + energy increases with frequency explains the black-body radiation experiment curve: you need more and more energy for small wavelengths, each time higher above the average energy available.

Black-body radiation experiment Updated 2025-07-16

The Quantum Story by Jim Baggott (2011) page 10 mentions:
Early examples of such cavities included rather expensive closed cylinders made from porcelain and platinum.
and the footnote comments:
The study of cavity radiation was not just about establishing theoretical principles, however. It was also of interest to the German Bureau of Standards as a reference for rating electric lamps.
1859-60 Gustav Kirchhoff demonstrated that the ratio of emitted to absorbed energy depends only on the frequency of the radiation and the temperature inside the cavity
1896 Wien approximation seems to explain existing curves well
1900 expriments by Otto Lummer and Ernst Pringsheim show Wien approximation is bad for lower frequencies
1900-10-07 Heinrich Rubens visits Planck in Planck's villa in the Berlin suburb of Grünewald and informs him about new experimental he and Ferdinand Kurlbaum obtained, still showing that Wien approximation is bad
1900 Planck's law matches Lummer and Pringsheim's experiments well. Planck forced to make the "desperate" postulate that energy is exchanged in quantized lumps. Not clear that light itself is quantized however, he thinks it might be something to do with allowed vibration modes of the atoms of the cavity rather.
1900 Rayleigh-Jeans law derived from classical first principles matches Planck's law for low frequencies, but diverges at higher frequencies.

Black-body Radiation Experiment by sciencesolution (2008)

Source. A modern version of the experiment with a PASCO scientific EX-9920 setup.

Ultraviolet catastrophe Updated 2025-07-16

What is the Ultraviolet Catastrophe? by Physics Explained (2020)

Source.

Bitcoin non-standard transaction Updated 2025-07-16

Full list at: github.com/cirosantilli/bitcoin-inscription-indexer/blob/master/data/utxo_nonstandard

Bibliography:

Monday, January 29, 2024

Base58 Updated 2025-07-16

en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Base58Check_encoding

Invented for Bitcoin.

Base64 Updated 2025-07-16

yEnc Updated 2025-07-16

Big O notation Updated 2025-07-16