Point-contact transistor Updated 2025-07-16
As the name suggests, this is not very sturdy, and was quickly replaced by bipolar junction transistor.
Bipolar junction transistor Updated 2025-07-16
By William Shockley in 1948 also at Bell Labs Murray Hill.
Field-effect transistor Updated 2025-07-16
Bloons Tower Defense 5 Updated 2025-07-16
One of Ciro Santilli's favorites.
Theme music Updated 2025-07-16
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (TV series) Updated 2025-07-16
- 1: Jim Prideaux captured. Some ex-colleague invites Smiley to dinner and keeps asking how incompetent people like Alleline climbed to the top of the Circus. Smiley recalled to service to meet Ricki Tarr.
- 2: Ricki Tarr tells his story to Smiley. Peter Guillam starts stealing material from the Circus, find missing page on the communication officer list. Smiley sets up his investigation operation.
- 3: Smiley meets Connie who tells that she was fired for suspecting Poliakov. Flashbacks show the ousting of Control and Smiley.
- 4: Guillam steals more material from the circus. While doing that, he is called by the top officers to inquire about Ricki Tarr being in England, which they suspect because they discovered that his family has come.
- 5: Jim Prideaux tells his story to Smiley, who cannot easily access the Circus reports about it. When he is returned to England, there was basically no debriefing, and Esterhase already knew about the Tinker Tailor codenames, presumably through Merlin.
- 6: Smiley hears the story of yet another ousted man, who heard the Russians knew in advance about Jim Prideaux' coming. Toby Esterhase dismissed him for alcoholism.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (film) Updated 2025-07-16
This is not bad, but some divergences to the better BBC miniseries, which presumably sticks more closely to the novel:
- in the film Jim Prideaux is captured in a cafe in Prague, in the series it's in the woods. It is therefore much more plausible that he would have been shot.
- in the film Peter Guillam is played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who feels a bit young to be Ricki Tarr's boss. Not impossible, but still.
- the series is much less chronological, and more flashback based, as new information becomes available. The film is more chronological, which makes it easier to understand, but less interesting at the same time.
- in the film they shoot the Russian girl Irina in front of Jim, in the series the fact that she was shot is only known through other sources. The film has more eye candy, which weakens it.
- Toby Esterhase is not threatened in an airfield, only in a safe ;house in London.
Simultaneous multithreading Updated 2025-07-16
- superuser.com/questions/133082/what-is-the-difference-between-hyper-threading-and-multiple-cores/995858#995858
- stackoverflow.com/questions/680684/what-are-the-differences-between-multi-cpu-multi-core-and-hyper-thread/73405312#73405312
- unix.stackexchange.com/questions/88283/so-what-are-logical-cpu-cores-as-opposed-to-physical-cpu-cores/739296#739296
Enthalpy Updated 2025-07-16
Adds up chemical energy and kinetic energy.
The sum is of interest when thinking about reactions because chemical reactions can change the number of molecules involved, and therefore the pressure.
To predict if a reaction is spontaneous or not, negative enthalpy is not enough, we must also consider entropy via Gibbs free energy.
Gibbs free energy Updated 2025-07-16
At least from the formula we see that:
- the more exothermic, the more likely it is to occur
- if the entropy increases, the higher the temperature, the more likely it is to occur
- otherwise, the lower the temperature the more likely it is to occur
A prototypical example of reaction that is exothermic but does not happen at any temperature is combustion.
Lab 7 - Gibbs Free Energy by MJ Billman (2020)
Source. Shows the shift of equilibrium due to temperature change with a color change in a HCl CoCl reaction. Unfortunately there are no conclusions because its student's homework. Grand Unified Theory Updated 2025-07-16
Appears to be an unsolved physics problem. TODO why? Don't they all fit into the Standard Model already? So why is strong force less unified with electroweak, than electromagnetic + weak is unified in electroweak?
The standard model and general relativity are incompatible Updated 2025-07-16
TODO arguments, proofs
Fundamental interaction Updated 2025-07-16
Quantum gravity Updated 2025-07-16
Nick Lucid Updated 2025-07-16
When in doubt, choose the course that has the most experimental work Updated 2025-07-16
And above all, you can always learn software engineering later on for free, because the programming community is so much more open than any other so far, notably e.g. with Stack Overflow and GitHub, see also: Section "Ciro Santilli's Open Source Enlightenment". Ciro Santilli is trying to change that with OurBigBook.com, but don't hold your breath. But it is increasingly hard to understand why there isn't an university that forces teachers to publish all their notes and lecture videos (which should be mandatorily recorded) with a Creative Commons License, and then let anyone take whichever exams they want for a small fee or for free.
Actually, there is a good chance you will learn to program, like it or not, because chances are that you won't be able to find as decent a job doing anything else.
But there is one thing you cannot learn for free: laboratory work. Laboratory work is just too expensive to carry out outside of an institution.
Basically, if you don't do laboratory work in undergrad, you will very likely never be able to do so in your entire life.
Because laboratories are so rare and expensive, it is laboratories that put you in the best most unfair position at creating world changing deep tech startups, which is why when in doubt, choose the course that has the most experimental work. Yes, you won't be able to achieve those insanely concentrated equities of the early-Internet, as you will need more venture capital to run your company, but those days are over now, deal with it.
Nobel disease Updated 2025-09-11
The Eighth Day of Creation has a related quote:
In a conversation a few weeks earlier at the faculty club of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a couple of biologists had speculated whether Pauling, whose recent popular book on the benefits to health and sanity of massive doses of vitamin C was stacked in display near the entrance of the M.I.T. bookstore, was showing signs of what one of the men called "old scientist's disease" - which they defined as what happens to great men when they grow beyond the psychological reach of the salutary system by which scientists blow the whistle on one another's mistakes.
The Nobel Prize Winners With Crazy Theories by Qxir
. Source. MRS degree Updated 2025-07-16
After learning this term, Ciro Santilli finally understood that his actual major was MR, and not bullshit like applied mathematics or control theory.
Instrumentation (computer programming) Updated 2025-07-16
Instrumentation basically means adding loggers/print statements to certain points of interest of your hardware/software.
The downside is that if the instrumentation does not provide you the data you need to debug, there's not much you can do, you will need to modify it, i.e. you don't get full visibility from instrumention.
This is unlike emulation that provides full observability.
Caetano Veloso Updated 2025-07-16
Within the The Holy Trinity of popular Brazilian music, Caetano has the most New Age religious feel to him. He is also perhaps the most varied of the trinity however, also covering heavier topics at times.
Caetano Veloso in the 60s
. Source. /i.s3.glbimg.com/v1/AUTH_59edd422c0c84a879bd37670ae4f538a/internal_photos/bs/2021/h/y/wSwVvmSbGgBiYJ3Fmb0g/caetano.jpeg)
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