Linux Updated 2025-07-16
From a technical point of view, it can do anything that Microsoft Windows can. Except being forcefully installed on every non-MacOS 2019 computer you can buy.
Ciro Santilli's conversion to Linux happened around 2012, and was a central part of Ciro Santilli's Open Source Enlightenment, since it fundamentally enables the discovery and contribution to open source software. Because what awesome open source person would waste time porting their amazing projects to closed source OSes?
Linux should track glibc and POSIX command line utilities in-tree like BSD Operating System, otherwise people have no way to get the thing running in the first place without blobs or large out-of-tree scripts! Another enlightened soul who agrees.
Particularly interesting in the history of Linux is how it won out over the open competitors that were coming up in the time: MINIX (see the chat) and BSD Operating System that got legally bogged down at the critical growth moment.
You must watch this: truth Happens advertisement by Red Hat.
xkcd 619: Supported Features
. Source. This perfectly illustrates Linux development. First features that matter. Then useless features.Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs by Epic Rap Battles of History (2012)
Source. Just stop whatever you are doing, and watch this right now. "I'm on Linux, bitch, I thought you GNU". Fandom explanations. It is just a shame that the Bill Gates actor looks absolutely nothing like the real gates. Actually, the entire Gates/Jobs parts are good, but not genial. But the Linux one is. Embedded operating system Updated 2025-08-08
Star outside the Milky Way Updated 2025-07-16
With telescopes however, it is possible. www.quora.com/Can-we-distinguish-individual-stars-in-other-galaxies-or-would-it-be-equivalent-to-say-we-know-there-are-other-forests-of-stars-galaxies-but-we-cant-tell-the-individual-trees-stars-What-is-the-farthest-individual/answer/Jerzy-Micha%C5%82-Pawlak contains an amazing answer that mentions two special cases of the furthest ones:
- gravitational lensing observation
- a star that is far but visible because its light is reflected by a nearby nebulae
But what we can definitely see are globular clusters of galaxies. E.g. the article en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_87 basically gauges the size of galaxies by the number of globular clusters that they contain.
Erhu piece Updated 2025-07-16
Galilean moons Updated 2025-07-16
Can you imagine when those guys started to see moons in other planets? They must have shat bricks. What better evidence can you have that the geocentric model could be wrong?
Star Trek: The Next Generation Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli likes this.
He doesn't have the patience to actually watch full episodes with rare exceptions, rather just watching selected scenes from: www.youtube.com/channel/UCdeIGY2DIjpGf0A2m9GSE3g, but still, it is interesting.
What appeals to Ciro in this series is how almost nothing is solved by violence, almost everything is decided in the bridge, at the "cerebral" level of the command structure. This reminds Ciro of a courtroom of law sometimes.
Maybe there's also a bit of 90's nostalgia involved too though, as this is something that would show on some random cable channels a bored young Ciro would have browsed during weekends, never really watching full episodes.
One crime of many episodes is being completely based on some stupid new scientific concept, which any character to back it up.
Another thing that hurt is that due to their obsession with the senior members of the crew, sometimes those senior members are sent in ridiculously risky operations, which is very unrealistic.
Episodes that Ciro watched fully and didn't regret:
- s02e09 Measure of a man en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Measure_of_a_Man_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation) see also physics and the illusion of life
- s04e14 Clues en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clues_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)
- s04e15 First contact en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Contact_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation). Although the premise that the aliens look so much like humans, and worse, that Decker could speak their language to the point of passing as one of their race is preposterous, the idea of inversion of first contact is just too cute.
- s07e15 The Lower Decks en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Decks_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation), sliding scale of idealism vs. cynicism near cynincism, yes please
Semi worth it:
- s03e11 The Hunted memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Hunted_(episode) if it weren't for the ending, maybe this would have been decent
Not worth it:
- Cause and effect
TODO
- s06e11 Chain of command
STED microscopy Updated 2025-07-16
Stefan Hell was really excited by this as of 2023.
Instead of shining a light over the entire sample to saturate it, you illuminate just a small bit instead.
He was basically saying that this truly brings the resolution to the actual physical limits, going much much beyond 2014 Nobel prize levels.
Devanagari Updated 2025-07-16
Software developed by Nvidia Updated 2025-07-16
Stone garden Updated 2025-07-16
The literal Chinese name says it all: "Fake Mountain". The stones evoke the feeling of the beautiful rock mountains of China.
The term "奇石假山" (qi2 shi2 jia3 shan1, lit. "weird shaped stone fake mountain") is also used, almost as a synonym by many people, since the stones are often chose in interesting shapes. Choosing the right stone is basically an art form in itself.
The stones used are generally limestone, which as a sedimentary rock is weaker, and more likely to be eroded into interesting shapes.
Database trigger Updated 2025-07-16
De novo DNA synthesis company Updated 2025-07-16
Transverse Doppler effect Updated 2025-07-16
PhysX Updated 2025-07-16
Had hardware acceleration in mind from the very start, and for a long time that has meant GPU acceleration.
stress-ng Updated 2025-07-16
Structure of Hen Egg-White Lysozyme: A Three-dimensional Fourier Synthesis at 2 Å Resolution (1965) Updated 2025-07-16
www.nature.com/articles/206757a0 on Nature 181, 662-666. Paywalled as of 2022. Has some nice pictures in it.
Subtle is the Lord by Abraham Pais (1982) Updated 2025-07-16
Sum of three cubes Updated 2025-07-16
Silk Road (marketplace) Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli has become slightly obsessed with this story, and the main mastermind Ross Ulbricht.
The best article available so far is: www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/29/how_i_caught_silk_road_mastermind (archive) which summarizes what one of the investigators said in a 2019 French computer security conference.
The key living posts are:
- stackoverflow.com/questions/15445285/how-can-i-connect-to-a-tor-hidden-service-using-curl-in-php (archive) which was originally asked under the real name, and then the username was changed to "Frosty", which matches one of the server's logins after the laptop was captured
- altoid early Silk Road mention: bitcointalk.org/?topic=175.70;wap2 (archive)
The big question is of course how libertarian free market ideologically motivated the website was, and how purely criminal greed it was.
The magnitude of the early operational security mistakes does make Ciro think that Ross did it "because he could" and "for the lolz" in a real world Breaking Bad way.
The entry in Ross' diary does resonate a lot with Ciro and any entrepreneur, full diary at: www.wired.com/2015/01/heres-secret-silk-road-journal-laptop-ross-ulbricht/ (archive).
[i]n 2011," [I believe I will be] "creating a year of prosperity and power beyond what I have ever experienced before,Silk Road is going to become a phenomenon and at least one person will tell me about it, unknowing that I was its creator."
Having this kind of feeling, is the greatest thing any human can have, and what motivates all great things.
Capitalizing in illegal things though is a cheat, big things take longer than a few years to reach, but reaching them is that much more satisfying as well.
Other interesting quotes:which Ciro also feels, see don't be a pussy, and:
Everyone knows I am working on a bitcoin exchange. I always thought honesty was the best policy and now I didn't know what to do. I should have just told everyone I am a freelance programmer or something, but I had to tell half truths. It felt wrong to lie completely so I tried to tell the truth without revealing the bad part, but now I am in a jam. Everyone knows too much. Dammit.
Also very worth reading is the San Francisco flat mate account: www.vice.com/en_us/article/ae3q8g/my-roommate-the-darknet-drug-lord (archive).
The murder for hire allegations are also interesting: mashable.com/2013/10/03/silk-road-hits, he paid 80k dollars to undercover DEA agents!
Except for the fact that Ross was an 80 million Dollar drug lord, those accounts sound exactly like what you would expect from any other nerdy startup founder! The:
- "just do it" strategy effectively going to a minimal viable product (manual transaction management!), while making many mistakes along the way, including hiring mistakes and successes when scaling is needed
- the hardship of self bootstrapping your own social network (here with some kilos of mushrooms)
- the variety of periods, from relatively calm, to hair pulling stress during big changes
It is also amusing to see very concretely the obvious fact that the FBI can get a subpoena for all accounts you ever had, e.g. they knew his laptop model from Amazon and brought a corresponding power cable to the arrest! If you are going to be a cyber criminal, don't use your real name, ever!
Should justice be blind? Maybe. But it does hurt for mere non-blind men to see it sometimes. Especially when drug liberalization is involved.
Stored procedure Updated 2025-07-16
There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.