gvgai Updated 2025-12-13
The project kind of died circa 2020 it seems, a shame. Likely they funding ran out. The domain is dead as of 2023, last archive from 2022: web.archive.org/web/20220331022932/http://gvgai.net/ is marked as funded by DeepMind. Researchers really should use university/GitHub domain names!
Similar goals to Ciro's 2D reinforcement learning games, but they were focusing mostly on discrete games.
They have some source at: github.com/GAIGResearch/GVGAI TODO review
From QMUL Game AI Research Group:From other universities:TODO check:
- Simon M. Lucas: gaigresearch.github.io/members/Simon-Lucas, principal investigator
- Diego Perez Liebana www.linkedin.com/in/diegoperezliebana/
- Raluca D. Gaina: www.linkedin.com/in/raluca-gaina-347518114/ from Queen Mary
- Ahmed Khalifa
- Jialin Liu
Noisy-channel coding theorem Updated 2025-07-16
Setting: you are sending bits through a communication channel, each bit has a random probability of getting flipped, and so you use some error correction code to achieve some minimal error, at the expense of longer messages.
This theorem sets an upper bound on how efficient you can be in your encoding, for any encoding.
The next big question, which the theorem does not cover is how to construct codes that reach or approach the limit. Important such codes include:
But besides this, there is also the practical consideration of if you can encode/decode fast enough to keep up with the coded bandwidth given your hardware capabilities.
news.mit.edu/2010/gallager-codes-0121 explains how turbo codes were first reached without a very good mathematical proof behind them, but were still revolutionary in experimental performance, e.g. turbo codes were used in 3G/4G.
But this motivated researchers to find other such algorithms that they would be able to prove things about, and so they rediscovered the much earlier low-density parity-check code, which had been published in the 60's but was forgotten, partially because it was computationally expensive.
Paris Updated 2025-12-13
Ciro Santilli lived in Paris for a few years between 2013 and 2016, and he can confirm the uncontroversial fact that "Paris is Magic".
Not just one type of magic though. Every quarter in Paris has its own unique personality that sets it apart and gives it a different mood.
Ciro knows Paris not from its historical facts, but from the raw feeling of endless walks through its streets in different times of the year. Ciro is a walker.
Maybe one day Ciro will expand this section to try and convey into words his feelings of love for the city, but maybe the effort would be pointless. Maybe such feelings can only be felt by other free-roaming walker souls living in the city, and that is both beautiful and a shame.
Ciro had written the following in the past before he lived in smaller cities, started cycling and joined the Street reclamation movement he thought:Perhaps compared to São Paulo City, which is what he knew before that was true. But no, his standards have improved since. Paris has way too many cars. The noise of internal combustion engine vehicles is extremely annoying. And because there are too many personal vehicles, cars have to horn a lot to fight for space. Fuck cars. Paris has been making a big cycling push in the early 2020's, and that is great. But it is still far, far from good.
Paris is a friendly city to walkers, as it is not too large, and does not have too many extremely busy roads, you can basically cross all of it on foot.
No-Nonsense Quantum Field Theory by Jakob Schwichtenberg (2020) Updated 2025-07-16
This book really tries to recall basic things to ensure that the reader will be able to understand the more advanced ones.
But Ciro Santilli really prefers it when authors error on the side of obvious.
Normal subgroup Updated 2025-07-16
Ultimate explanation: math.stackexchange.com/questions/776039/intuition-behind-normal-subgroups/3732426#3732426
Only normal subgroups can be used to form quotient groups: their key definition is that they plus their cosets form a group.
One key intuition is that "a normal subgroup is the kernel" of a group homomorphism, and the normal subgroup plus cosets are isomorphic to the image of the isomorphism, which is what the fundamental theorem on homomorphisms says.
Therefore "there aren't that many group homomorphism", and a normal subgroup it is a concrete and natural way to uniquely represent that homomorphism.
The best way to think about the, is to always think first: what is the homomorphism? And then work out everything else from there.
ELF Hello World Tutorial
.shstrtab Updated 2025-07-16Section type:
sh_type == SHT_STRTAB.Common name: "section header string table".
This section gets pointed to by the
e_shstrnd field of the ELF header itself.String indexes of this section are are pointed to by the
sh_name field of section headers, which denote strings.This section does not have outputs:
SHF_ALLOC marked, so it will not appear on the executing program.readelf -x .shstrtab hello_world.oHex dump of section '.shstrtab':
0x00000000 002e6461 7461002e 74657874 002e7368 ..data..text..sh
0x00000010 73747274 6162002e 73796d74 6162002e strtab..symtab..
0x00000020 73747274 6162002e 72656c61 2e746578 strtab..rela.tex
0x00000030 7400 t. ELF Hello World Tutorial
SHT_STRTAB Updated 2025-07-16Sections with
sh_type == SHT_STRTAB are called string tables.They hold a null separated array of strings.
Such sections are used by other sections when string names are to be used. The using section says:
- which string table they are using
- what is the index on the target string table where the string starts
So for example, we could have a string table containing:
Data: \0 a b c \0 d e f \0
Index: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8And if another section wants to use the string
d e f, they have to point to index 5 of this section (letter d).Notable string table sections:
.shstrtab.strtab
ELF Hello World Tutorial
SHT_SYMTAB on the executable Updated 2025-07-16 Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy Updated 2025-07-16
Used to identify organic compounds.
Seems to be based on the effects that electrons around the nuclei (shielding electrons) have on the outcome of NMR.
So it is a bit unlike MRI where you are interested in the position of certain nuclei in space (of course, these being atoms, you can't see their positions in space).
What's Nuclear Magnetic Resonance by Bruker Corporation (2020)
Source. Good 3D animations showing the structure of the NMR machine. We understand that it is very bulky largely due to the cryogenic system. It then talks a bit about organic compound identification by talking about ethanol, i.e. this is NMR spectroscopy, but it is a bit too much to follow closely. Basically the electron configuration alters the nuclear response somehow, and allows identifying functional groups. Nuclear weapon Updated 2025-07-16
A weapons-grade ring of electrorefined plutonium, typical of the rings refined at Los Alamos and sent to Rocky Flats for fabrication
. Source. The ring has a purity of 99.96%, weighs 5.3 kg, and is approx 11 cm in diameter. It is enough plutonium for one bomb core. Which city shall we blow up today?
Ciro Santilli is mildly obsessed by nuclear reactions, because they are so quirky. How can a little ball destroy a city? How can putting too much of it together produce criticality and kill people like in the Slotin accident or the Tokaimura criticality accident. It is mind blowing really.
More fun nuclear stuff to watch:
- Dr. Strangelove (1964)
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_(miniseries)
- The World Of Enrico Fermi by Harvard Project Physics (1970)
- Fat Man and Little Boy (1987) shows a possibly reasonably realistic of the history of the development of the Trinity
The Ultimate Guide to Nuclear Weapons by hypohystericalhistory (2022)
Source. Good overall summary. Some interesting points:- youtu.be/8uIPQBOCJ64?t=2946 talks about the difference between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons
- youtu.be/8uIPQBOCJ64?t=3291 mentions variable yield devices, this is the main new thing Ciro Santilli learned from this video
- youtu.be/8uIPQBOCJ64?t=3416 discusses if a strategic nuclear weapon usage would inevitably lead to tactical nuclear weapon escalation. It then mentions one case in which a possibly comparable escalation didn't happen: the abstinence of using chemical weapon during World War II.
ELF Hello World Tutorial
.strtab Updated 2025-07-16Holds strings for the symbol table.
This section has
sh_type == SHT_STRTAB.It is pointed to by outputs:
sh_link == 5 of the .symtab section.readelf -x .strtab hello_world.oHex dump of section '.strtab':
0x00000000 0068656c 6c6f5f77 6f726c64 2e61736d .hello_world.asm
0x00000010 0068656c 6c6f5f77 6f726c64 0068656c .hello_world.hel
0x00000020 6c6f5f77 6f726c64 5f6c656e 005f7374 lo_world_len._st
0x00000030 61727400 art.This implies that it is an ELF level limitation that global variables cannot contain NUL characters.
ELF Hello World Tutorial
STT_NOTYPE Updated 2025-07-16Then come the most important symbols:
Num: Value Size Type Bind Vis Ndx Name
4: 0000000000000000 0 NOTYPE LOCAL DEFAULT 1 hello_world
5: 000000000000000d 0 NOTYPE LOCAL DEFAULT ABS hello_world_len
6: 0000000000000000 0 NOTYPE GLOBAL DEFAULT 2 _start ELF Hello World Tutorial
.text section Updated 2025-07-16Now that we've done one section manually, let's graduate and use the
readelf -S of the other sections: [Nr] Name Type Address Offset
Size EntSize Flags Link Info Align
[ 2] .text PROGBITS 0000000000000000 00000210
0000000000000027 0000000000000000 AX 0 0 16.text is executable but not writable: if we try to write to it Linux segfaults. Let's see if we really have some code there:objdump -d hello_world.ohello_world.o: file format elf64-x86-64
Disassembly of section .text:
0000000000000000 <_start>:
0: b8 01 00 00 00 mov $0x1,%eax
5: bf 01 00 00 00 mov $0x1,%edi
a: 48 be 00 00 00 00 00 movabs $0x0,%rsi
11: 00 00 00
14: ba 0d 00 00 00 mov $0xd,%edx
19: 0f 05 syscall
1b: b8 3c 00 00 00 mov $0x3c,%eax
20: bf 00 00 00 00 mov $0x0,%edi
25: 0f 05 syscallIf we grep
b8 01 00 00 on the hd, we see that this only occurs at 00000210, which is what the section says. And the Size is 27, which matches as well. So we must be talking about the right section.The most interesting part is line to pass the address of the string to the system call. Currently, the This modification is possible because of the data of the
a which does:movabs $0x0,%rsi0x0 is just a placeholder. After linking happens, it will be modified to contain:4000ba: 48 be d8 00 60 00 00 movabs $0x6000d8,%rsi.rela.text section. Elliptic geometry Updated 2025-07-16
Elliptic partial differential equation Updated 2025-07-16
Emission theory (vision) Updated 2025-07-16
It is so mind blowing that people believed in this theory. How can you think that, when you turn on a lamp and then you see? Obviously, the lamp must be emitting something!!!
Then comes along this epic 2002 paper: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12094435/ "Fundamentally misunderstanding visual perception. Adults' belief in visual emissions". TODO review methods...
Empty circle control qubit notation Updated 2025-07-16
Endosymbiont Updated 2025-07-16
EngineerGuy Updated 2025-07-16
Epistle to the Romans Updated 2025-07-16
There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.