International Computers Limited Updated 2025-07-16
They died so completely, Googling "ICL" now has higher hits such as Imperial College London.
Video 1.
Why the UK's IBM Failed by Asianometry (2022)
Source. Main lesson perhaps: don't put national money to fight already established markets. You have to fight for what is coming up next. E.g. that is part of the reason for TSMC's success.
International Standard Music Number Updated 2025-07-16
Why was this so rarely used as of 2020s compared to ISBNs? It would have been perfect for helping find obscure records from Chinese traditional music and Indian classical music!
But instead we have Discogs, which is not too bad.
ISBN Updated 2025-07-16
PhD Comics Updated 2025-07-16
Each comic page has an "Emergency Button" below it, which redirects to a mock PDF formatted as a research paper, so you can quickly pretend to be working. Epic.
Figure 1.
The evolution of intellectual freedom by PhD Comics (2011)
Source.
Because DNA replication is a key limiting factor of bacterial replication time, such organisms are therefore strongly incentivized to have very minimal DNAs.
Power, Sex, Suicide by Nick Lane (2006) 7 "Why bacteria are simple" page 169 puts this nicely:
Bacteria replicate at colossal speed. [...] In two days, the mass of exponentially doubling E. coli would be 2664 times larger than the mass of the Earth.
Luckily this does not happen, and the reason is that bacteria are normally half starved. They swiftly consume all available food, whereupon their growth is limited once again by the lack of nutrients. Most bacteria spend most of their lives in stasis, waiting for a meal. Nonetheless, the speed at which bacteria do mobilize themselves to replicate upon feeding illustrates the overwhelming strength of the selection pressures at work.
Photomultiplier tube Updated 2025-07-16
Can be used to detect single photons.
It uses the photoelectric effect multiple times to produce a chain reaction. In particular, as mentioned at youtu.be/5V8VCFkAd0A?t=74 from Video 1. "Using a Photomultiplier to Detect single photons by Huygens Optics" this means that the device has a lowest sensitive light frequency, beyond which photons don't have enough energy to eject any electrons.
Video 1.
Using a Photomultiplier to Detect single photons by Huygens Optics
. Source. 2024. Wow this dude is amazing as usual. Unfortunately he's not using a single photon source, just an LED.
Photonic quantum computer Updated 2025-07-16
The key experiment/phenomena that sets the basis for photonic quantum computing is the two photon interference experiment.
The physical representation of the information encoding is very easy to understand:
  • input: we choose to put or not photons into certain wires or no
  • interaction: two wires pass very nearby at some point, and photons travelling on either of them can jump to the other one and interact with the other photons
  • output: the probabilities that photos photons will go out through one wire or another
Video 1.
Jeremy O'Brien: "Quantum Technologies" by GoogleTechTalks (2014)
Source. This is a good introduction to a photonic quantum computer. Highly recommended.
Jackdaw Playing With Water Updated 2025-07-16
Considered one of the 10 famous Chaozhou music pieces TODO list.
Was also adapted by Liu Baoshan (1937-1997) as a pipa song. Ciro Santilli prefers the pipa version.
Video 1.
Jackdaw Playing With Water performed by Xu Lingzi on the guzheng at the Wiener Musikverein
. Source.
Video 2.
Jackdaw Playing With Water performed by Lin Shicheng on the pipa
. Source.

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