Cosmic microwave background anisotropy Updated 2025-07-16
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There is a slight variation in temperature of CMB across the sky of the order of 200 microKelvin. It is small to the ~2.7 K average temperature, but it can be measured.
If the initial conditions of the Big Bang and the laws of physics were perfectly symmetric, then we could expect the universe to just be one perfectly uniform boring soup.
But instead some asymetry made all the fun weird things we see today happen eventually, like galaxies and life.
And the cosmic microwave background serves as a way for us to look back in time to the early conditions of the universe, as it was set in stone as soon as the universe became transparent to this light during recombination.
Or if you want to get poetic, it is the closest we can ever get to listening to the original word of God when he setup the initial conditions of the universe.
The ansiotropies of CMB is the ultimate astronomical compass we will ever have, as it is the thing with the least proper motion.
Figure 1.
Cosmic microwave background anisotropy measured by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe
. Source.
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Matthew Heaney Updated 2025-07-16
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Amit Singhal Updated 2025-07-16
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Pitched OurBigBook.com to him:
Idea: make all Sitare University materials open, and allow students to write the content
Also, allow anyone to take the exams without enrolling (possibly for a fee if they don't have scholarship).
This is the way to go if you really want to increase your impact/dollar and do something truly innovative that ill make a mark. Why just mirror existing university models that haven't yet caught up to the Internet Age?
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Yohei Nakajima Updated 2025-07-16
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He does lots of little experiments which is cool.
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Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Quotes and threes Updated 2025-07-16
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Starting tx 2f201c8518c7b012c03c2c82e40e86f6aaf616ea5fbe22570aac9d2c6611cb68 (2023-03-11), the chain is flooded with ASCII transactions containing many repeated double quotes " and digits 3, with some other characters interspersed in them without any clear pattern e.g. the first one:
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""jk""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""'}""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""/D""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""q1""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""XK""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
TODO what is up with that?
In that first trasaction the quotes appear as part of a multisig output script.
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Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Other blockchains Updated 2025-07-16
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GNOME Display Manager Updated 2025-07-16
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Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Mt. Gox' shutdown Updated 2025-07-16
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Mt. Gox was the first Cryptocurrency exchange in existence, and when it shutdowon in Febrauary 2014 because the website was crap and they got hacked, some people were not happy at all about their missing funds!
tx 0540b5dda23ee870330c6b1e18a88c592cf8d847c47f1dc1d5328f46115b12b3 (2014-02-25)
2014-02-25: The day Mt.Gox shut down. Farewell, may even you rest in peace!
tx c00a4a04905a2e8d8dee8a768165aa6bdf842413a8a648462a6349db89cd77f2 (2014-02-27) has an ASCII art of a seal, TODO understand meme:
        o
      / |
      | \
  .   |  |
.'\`  | \|
  | \_/ \ \
  \____/\/
<3 You Seals!
There are also a few Base58 messages referring to Mt Gox, the nicest and most expensive one being to burn addres:which as of 2025 holds 0.014537 BTC burnt on:
Many of these transactions also contain other quick messages, e.g.:
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g4ad.xlarge Updated 2025-07-16
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EC2 instance type Updated 2025-07-16
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Amazon's informtion about their own intances is so bad and non-public that this was created: instances.vantage.sh/
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F2Pool Updated 2025-07-16
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Domain name registrar Updated 2025-07-16
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Knowledge graph Updated 2025-07-16
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Many people believe that knowledge graphs are a key element of AGI: Knowledge graph as a component of AGI.
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Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Cursed ordinal Updated 2025-07-16
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These were ordinals that were only indexed in later versions of the script. So to prevent changing the useless indices of existing ordinals, they gave them negative numbers.
The word "cursed" is a meme from the 2010/20s, e.g. knowyourmeme.com/memes/cursed-images--2.
Some examples:
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Connect two computers directly without a router with an Ethernet cable Updated 2025-07-16
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For IP-level communication, askubuntu.com/questions/22835/how-to-network-two-ubuntu-computers-using-ethernet-without-a-router/116680#116680 just worked between P51 and P14s both on Ubuntu 23.10 connected with a regular Cat 5e cable.
On both machines, first we found the Ethernet cable interface name with the ip CLI tool:
ip a
which outputs on the P41s:
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: enp1s0f0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether fc:5c:ee:24:fb:b4 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: wlp2s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 04:7b:cb:cc:1b:10 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.1.123/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute wlp2s0
       valid_lft 61284sec preferred_lft 61284sec
    inet6 fe80::3597:15d8:74ff:e112/64 scope link noprefixroute
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
so the interface was enp1s0f0, because wlp is wireless and lo is localhost.
So on the P14s we assign an IP of 10.0.0.10 to the P51:
sudo ip address add 10.0.0.10/24 dev enp1s0f0
Then on the P51 analogously, giving IP of 10.0.0.20 to the P14s:
sudo ip address add 10.0.0.20/24 dev enp0s31f6
And after that, P14s can:
ping 10.0.0.10
and P51 can:
ping 10.0.0.20
TODO after a few seconds, the settings appear to be forgotten, and ping stops working unless you do sudo ip address add on the local machine again. This seems to happen after a popup appears saying "Activation of network connection failed" as it fails to obtain Internet from the cable.
TODO list and delete such manual assignments we've made.
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Computer science course of the University of Cambridge Updated 2025-07-16
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The courses are highly open, almost everything is given publicly except solutions, many of which are given to teachers only. Well done!
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eLearning provider Updated 2025-07-16
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Video 1.
Infomercial: For-Profit Online University by Adult Swim
.
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LSF get version Updated 2025-07-16
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Most/all commands have the -V option which prints the version, e.g.:
bsub -V
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Spock Updated 2025-07-16
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Eligius pool Updated 2025-07-16
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Created by Luke Dashjr.
The pool is named after Saint Eligius, patron of miners[ref]
Eligius also means to "choose" or "chosen" in Latin: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Eligius, same root as "to elect" in modern English presumably.
Figure 1.
Saint Eligius by Petrus Christus
. Source. Eligius pool is named after Saint Eligius, patron of goldsmiths and miners[ref]
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