PostgreSQL serialization failure Updated 2025-07-16
When using SQL REPEATABLE READ isolation level and SQL SERIALIZABLE isolation level, concurrent transactions may fail with a serialization failure, and then you might need to retry them. You server code or your ORM must always account for that.
Related questions:
- stackoverflow.com/questions/7705273/what-are-the-conditions-for-encountering-a-serialization-failure
- stackoverflow.com/questions/59351109/error-could-not-serialize-access-due-to-concurrent-update
- stackoverflow.com/questions/50797097/postgres-could-not-serialize-access-due-to-concurrent-update/51932824
Human vs computer chess Updated 2025-07-16
Hydrogen line Updated 2025-07-16
Hypercube Updated 2025-07-16
Convex hull of all (Cartesian product power) D-tuples, e.g. in 3D:
( 1, 1, 1)
( 1, 1, -1)
( 1, -1, 1)
( 1, -1, -1)
(-1, 1, 1)
(-1, 1, -1)
(-1, -1, 1)
(-1, -1, -1) Hyperfine structure Updated 2025-07-16
Small splits present in all levels due to interaction between the electron spin and the nuclear spin if it is present, i.e. the nucleus has an even number of nucleons.
As the name suggests, this energy split is very small, since the influence of the nucleus spin on the electron spin is relatively small compared to other fine structure.
The most important examples:
- hydrogen line useful in astronomy, and also the simplest possible case between 1s
- caesium standard, which is used to define the second in the International System of Units since 1967.
Kudos Updated 2025-07-16
Ahh, Ciro Santilli was certain this was some slang neologism, but it is actually Greek! So funny. Introduced into English in the 19th century according to: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kudo.
is by far the most important of because it is quantum mechanics states live, because the total probability of being in any state has to be 1!
has some crucially important properties that other don't (TODO confirm and make those more precise):
- it is the only that is Hilbert space because it is the only one where an inner product compatible with the metric can be defined:
- Fourier basis is complete for , which is great for solving differential equation
Lamb-Retherford experiment Updated 2025-07-16
Published as "Fine Structure of the Hydrogen Atom by a Microwave Method" by Willis Lamb and Robert Retherford (1947) on Physical Review. This one actually has open accesses as of 2021, miracle! journals.aps.org/pr/pdf/10.1103/PhysRev.72.241
Microwave technology was developed in World War II for radar, notably at the MIT Radiation Laboratory. Before that, people were using much higher frequencies such as the visible spectrum. But to detect small energy differences, you need to look into longer wavelengths.
This experiment was fundamental to the development of quantum electrodynamics. As mentioned at Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics by James Gleick (1994) chapter "Shrinking the infinities", before the experiment, people already knew that trying to add electromagnetism to the Dirac equation led to infinities using previous methods, and something needed to change urgently. However for the first time now the theorists had one precise number to try and hack their formulas to reach, not just a philosophical debate about infinities, and this led to major breakthroughs. The same book also describes the experiment briefly as:
Willis Lamb had just shined a beam of microwaves onto a hot wisp of hydrogen blowing from an oven.
It is two pages and a half long.
They were at Columbia University in the Columbia Radiation Laboratory. Robert was Willis' graduate student.
Previous less experiments had already hinted at this effect, but they were too imprecise to be sure.
Laplacian in Einstein notation Updated 2025-07-16
Lie group Updated 2025-07-16
The key and central motivation for studying Lie groups and their Lie algebras appears to be to characterize symmetry in Lagrangian mechanics through Noether's theorem, just start from there.
Notably local symmetries appear to map to forces, and local means "around the identity", notably: local symmetries of the Lagrangian imply conserved currents.
More precisely: local symmetries of the Lagrangian imply conserved currents.
TODO Ciro Santilli really wants to understand what all the fuss is about:
Oh, there is a low dimensional classification! Ciro is a sucker for classification theorems! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_low-dimensional_real_Lie_algebras
The fact that there are elements arbitrarily close to the identity, which is only possible due to the group being continuous, is the key factor that simplifies the treatment of Lie groups, and follows the philosophy of continuous problems are simpler than discrete ones.
Bibliography:
- youtu.be/kpeP3ioiHcw?t=2655 "Particle Physics Topic 6: Lie Groups and Lie Algebras" by Alex Flournoy (2016). Good SO(3) explicit exponential expansion example. Then next lecture shows why SU(2) is the representation of SO(3). Next ones appear to eventually get to the physical usefulness of the thing, but I lost patience. Not too far out though.
- www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRlVmXqzHjURZO0fviJuyikvKlGS6rXrb "Lie Groups and Lie Algebras" playlist by XylyXylyX (2018). Tutorial with infinitely many hours
- www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/lectures/lieg07.pdf
- www.physics.drexel.edu/~bob/LieGroups.html
What is Lie theory? by Mathemaniac 2023
. Source. Light cone Updated 2025-07-16
The key insights that it gives are:
- future and past are well defined: every reference frame sees your future in your future cone, and your past in your past coneOtherwise causality could be violated, and then things would go really bad, you could tell your past self to tell your past self to tell your past self to do something.
- every other event (to right and left, known as spacelike-separated events) can be measured to happen before or after your current spacetime event by different observers.
Limtless (2011) Updated 2025-07-16
That makes Ciro Santilli most mad about this film is the fact that the dude was passionate about writing, and when he became a genius, rather than write the best novels ever written, he decided instead to play the stock market instead. This paints an accurate picture of 2020's society, where finance jobs make infinitely more money than other real engineering jobs, and end up attracting much of the talent.
Another enraging thing is how his girlfriend starts liking him again once he is a genius, and instead of telling her to fuck off, he stays with her.
The other really bad thing is the ending. He fixed the drug by himself? He scared off De Niro just like that?
Signal (software) Updated 2025-09-09
Basic must haves:
Other cool stuff:
- sealed sender: signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ Nice!
TODO what's the fucking official discussion/feature request forum?
- community.signalusers.org appears to be the de-facto non-official one.
- github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/5372
- whispersystems.discoursehosting.net
- github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/1318 closes and points to discoursehosting
- github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/549
- www.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/lipo6z/community_signal_forum_vs_reddit/ gives some good history, says they pay for community.signalusers.org/ and have admin powers there.
Silicon Graphics Updated 2025-07-16
This company is a bit like Sun Microsystems, you can hear a note of awe in the voice of those who knew it at its peak. This was a bit before Ciro Santilli's awakening.
Both of them and Sun kind of died in the same way, unable to move from the workstation to the personal computer fast enough, and just got killed by the scale of competitors who did, notably Nvidia for graphics cards.
Some/all Nintendo 64 games were developed on it, e.g. it is well known that this was the case for Super Mario 64.
Silicon Graphics Promo (1987)
Source. Highlights that this was one of the first widely available options for professional engineers/designers to do real-time 3D rendering for their designs. Presumably before it, you had to do use scripting to CPU render and do any changes incrementally by modifying the script. Silicon photonics Updated 2025-07-16
Silicon Photonics: The Next Silicon Revolution? by Asianometry (2022)
Source. - youtu.be/29aTqLvRia8?t=714 GlobalFoundries seems to be one of the leaders at the time. E.g. quantum computing company PsiQuantum uses them. Part of this was from acquiring IBM's microelectronics division in 2014.
- youtu.be/t0yj4hBDUsc?t=566 mentions the paper Deep learning with coherent nanophotonic circuits
Running Neural Networks on Meshes of Light by Asianometry (2022)
Source. - youtu.be/t0yj4hBDUsc?t=440 block diagram
- youtu.be/t0yj4hBDUsc?t=456 Lightmatter lightmatter.co/ seems to be using an in-silicon Mach-Zehnder interferometer to do analog matrix multiplication with light. It is an actual analog computer element!
Silicon Photonics for Extreme Computing by Keren Bergman (2017)
Source. Silicon Valley (TV series) Updated 2025-07-16
Liquid nitrogen Updated 2025-07-16
77K. Low enough for "high temperature superconductors" such as yttrium barium copper oxide, but for "low temperature superconductors", you need to go much lower, typically with liquid helium, which is likely much more expensive. TODO by how much?
Where Do You Get Liquid Nitrogen? by The King of Random (2016)
Source. He just goes to a medical gases shop in a local industrial estate and buys 20L for 95 dollars and brings it back on his own Dewar marked 35LD.Making Liquid Nitrogen From Scratch! by Veritasium (2019)
Source. "From scratch" is perhaps a bit clickbaity, but I'll take it. Local symmetry Updated 2025-07-16
Local symmetries appear to be a synonym to internal symmetry, see description at: Section "Internal and spacetime symmetries".
A local symmetry is a transformation that you apply a different transformation for each point, instead of a single transformation for every point.
Bibliography:
- lecture 3
- physics.stackexchange.com/questions/48188/local-and-global-symmetries
- www.physics.rutgers.edu/grad/618/lects/localsym.pdf by Joel Shapiro gives one nice high level intuitive idea:
- Quora:
Loop-mediated isothermal amplification Updated 2025-07-16
Like PCR, but does not require thermal cycling. Thus the "isothermal" in the name: iso means same, so "same temperature".
Not needing the thermo cycling means that the equipment needed is much smaller and cheaper it seems.
Lost Horse LLC Updated 2025-07-16
www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/mackenzie-scott-how-the-former-mrs-bezos-became-a-philanthropist-like-no-other-1.4850049 MacKenzie Scott: How the former Mrs Bezos became a philanthropist like no other (2020) has some good mentions:
But as Scott's fame for giving away money has grown, so too has the deluge of appeals for gifts from strangers and old friends alike. That clamour may have driven Scott's already discreet operation further underground, with recent philanthropic announcements akin to sudden lightning bolts for unsuspecting recipients.
There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.
