EMBII Updated 2025-07-16
One of the dudes from the AtomSea & EMBII Bitcoin-based file upload system.
Figure 1.
EMBII's usual profile image
. Source.
qiskit/initialize.py Updated 2025-07-16
In this example we will initialize a quantum circuit with a single CNOT gate and see the output values.
By default, Qiskit initializes every qubit to 0 as shown in the qiskit/hello.py. But we can also initialize to arbitrary values as would be done when computing the output for various different inputs.
Output:
     ┌──────────────────────┐
q_0: ┤0                     ├──■──
     │  Initialize(1,0,0,0) │┌─┴─┐
q_1: ┤1                     ├┤ X ├
     └──────────────────────┘└───┘
c: 2/═════════════════════════════

init: [1, 0, 0, 0]
probs: [1. 0. 0. 0.]

init: [0, 1, 0, 0]
probs: [0. 0. 0. 1.]

init: [0, 0, 1, 0]
probs: [0. 0. 1. 0.]

init: [0, 0, 0, 1]
probs: [0. 1. 0. 0.]

     ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
q_0: ┤0                                 ├──■──
     │  Initialize(0.70711,0,0,0.70711) │┌─┴─┐
q_1: ┤1                                 ├┤ X ├
     └──────────────────────────────────┘└───┘
c: 2/═════════════════════════════════════════

init: [0.7071067811865475, 0, 0, 0.7071067811865475]
probs: [0.5 0.5 0.  0. ]
which we should all be able to understand intuitively given our understanding of the CNOT gate and quantum state vectors.
quantumcomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/13202/qiskit-initializing-n-qubits-with-binary-values-0s-and-1s describes how to initialize circuits qubits only with binary 0 or 1 to avoid dealing with the exponential number of elements of the quantum state vector.
Andrew Wiles Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
Beauty Is Suffering
. Source.
Install Conda on Ubuntu Updated 2025-07-16
Tested on Ubuntu 20.04:
mkdir -p ~/miniconda3
wget https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh -O ~/miniconda3/miniconda.sh
bash ~/miniconda3/miniconda.sh -b -u -p ~/miniconda3
rm -rf ~/miniconda3/miniconda.sh
Add to your .bashrc:
PATH="$PATH:$HOME/miniconda3/bin"
and then to use it on a shell e.g. with Python 3.9 create the environment with:
conda create -y -n mytest3.9 python=3.9
and then use it with:
eval "$(command conda 'shell.bash' 'hook' 2> /dev/null)"
conda activate mytest3.9
Now you can use python and pip normally from inside that mytest3.9 environment.
At that time, the exact installer under latest appears to have been: repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-py311_23.11.0-2-Linux-x86_64.sh
Project Xanadu Updated 2025-07-16
Crazy overlaps with Ciro Santilli's OurBigBook Project, Wikipedia states:
Administrators of Project Xanadu have declared it superior to the World Wide Web, with the mission statement: "Today's popular software simulates paper. The World Wide Web (another imitation of paper) trivialises our original hypertext model with one-way ever-breaking links and no management of version or contents.
Video 1.
New Game in Town by TheTedNelson (2016)
Source.
AGI blues Updated 2025-07-16
Term invented by Ciro Santilli, similar to "nuclear blues", and used to describe the feeling that every little shitty job you are doing (that does not considerably help achieving AGI) is completely pointless given that we are likely close to AGI as of 2023.
Obsidian (software) Updated 2025-07-16
Good:
Bad:
Figure 1.
Obsidian demo
. Source.
The book is a bit slow until Charles K. Kao comes along, then it gets exciting.
Ollama Updated 2025-07-16
Ollama is a highly automated open source wrapper that makes it very easy to run multiple Open weight LLM models either on CPU or GPU.
Its README alone is of great value, serving as a fantastic list of the most popular Open weight LLM models in existence.
Install with:
curl https://ollama.ai/install.sh | sh
The below was tested on Ollama 0.1.14 from December 2013.
Download llama2 7B and open a prompt:
ollama run llama2
On P14s it runs on CPU and generates a few tokens per second, which is quite usable for a quick interactive play.
As mentioned at github.com/jmorganca/ollama/blob/0174665d0e7dcdd8c60390ab2dd07155ef84eb3f/docs/faq.md the downloads to under /usr/share/ollama/.ollama/models/ and ncdu tells me:
--- /usr/share/ollama ----------------------------------
    3.6 GiB [###########################] /.ollama
    4.0 KiB [                           ]  .bashrc
    4.0 KiB [                           ]  .profile
    4.0 KiB [                           ]  .bash_logout
The file:
/usr/share/ollama/.ollama/models/manifests/hf.co/mlabonne/Meta-Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct-abliterated-GGUF/Q2_K
gives a the exact model name and parameters.
We can also do it non-interactively with:
/bin/time ollama run llama2 'What is quantum field theory?'
which gave me:
0.13user 0.17system 2:06.32elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 17280maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+2203minor)pagefaults 0swaps
but note that there is a random seed that affects each run by default. ollama-expect is an attempt to make the output deterministic.
Some other quick benchmarks from Amazon EC2 GPU on a g4nd.xlarge instance which had an Nvidia Tesla T4:
0.07user 0.05system 0:16.91elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 16896maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+1960minor)pagefaults 0swaps
and on Nvidia A10G in an g5.xlarge instance:
0.03user 0.05system 0:09.59elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 17312maxresident)k
8inputs+0outputs (1major+1934minor)pagefaults 0swaps
So it's not too bad, a small article in 10s.
It tends to babble quite a lot by default, but eventually decides to stop.
Disclaimer: closed source vendors tend to be highly secretive, solving small issues without any reply, so I use my best judgement given the lack of feedback.
DateProjectTypeDescription
2019-07zenodo.org/Security bugCross-Site Scripting vulnerability. Also mentioned at: invenio-software.org/blog/security-advisor-20190715/
2015-09GitHubSupportAdd ability to fork and edit files from external URL
2015-05GitHubBug500 when listing GCC mirror branches
2015-04Free Software FoundationBugDuplicated paragraph at Octave at description of high priority projects
2015-03GitHubBug@about and @pricing generate at mentions even though they are reserved
2015-03Jenkov tutorialsTypotypo boolean -> long
2015-03GitHubBug502 on homepage on long streak
2015-02GitHubBugIf a CONTRIBUTING.md that is a symlink is present, the link to it should not show on new issue forms
2015-02GitHubFeatureAllow to reopen pull requests after a force push
2015-02GitHubBugIf a CONTRIBUTING.md that is a symlink is present, the link to it should not show on new issue forms
2014-12My Science WorkTypoTypos on settings page
2014-12GitHubBugMerge pull request window appears after rebase even if I don't have permission
2014-12GitHubFeatureRepository Traffic Analytics API
2014-12GitHubSupportPin issues or add header text to issues page
2014-12GitHubBugTree show links blobs to the last commit that contained the blob instead of commit that introduced the file
2014-12GitHubDuplicateDeal properly with uppercase .GIT file basenames on web editor like for lowercase .git
2014-12GitHubDuplicateAdd a "I have this issue too" button
2014-11GitBookBug500 on /edit without access
2014-11GitHubFeatureView non-rendered markdown source with line numbers on blob show
2014-11GitHubBug500 on branch index for long branch name pushed together with other branch
2014-11GitHubBugGFM ordered list with inner unordered paragraph list generates two ordered lists
2014-11GitHubBugGlitches for filenames that contain only spaces
2014-11GitHubBug500 on raw and 414 on blob show of long file name with 1024 characters
2014-11GitHubFeatureHighlight bytes / words in diffs on adjacent multi-line modifications
2014-11GitHubDuplicateAllow following of groups similar to following users
WikiAlpha Updated 2025-07-16
WikiAlpha is an alternative to Wikipedia, where the main difference is that our deletion policy is far more lenient with regard to notability requirements. Basically, WikiAlpha is a near-indiscriminate collection of information in the form of articles on any topic: you can create an article about the band you just started, your pet dog, yourself, your house - as long as your content does not fall under our speedy deletion policy, it will likely remain on the site forever!
Sister transaction of 4373b97e4525be4c2f4b491be9f14ac2b106ba521587dad8f134040d16ff73af with another variant of the XSS but without IF and OP_FROMALTSTACK, thus making it spendable:
OP_ADD OP_ADD 13 OP_EQUAL <large xss constant> OP_DROP
Ouptut 0 disassembles as:
OP_IF OP_INVALIDOPCODE 4effffffff <large constant> OP_ENDIF
The large constant contains an ASCII Bitcoin Core patch entitled Remove (SINGLE|DOUBLE)BYTE so presumably this is a proof of concept:
From a3a61fef43309b9fb23225df7910b03afc5465b9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 02:28:02 -0200
Subject: [PATCH] Remove (SINGLE|DOUBLE)BYTE

I removed this from Bitcoin in f1e1fb4bdef878c8fc1564fa418d44e7541a7e83
in Sept 7 2010, almost three years ago. Be warned that I have not
actually tested this patch.
---
 backends/bitcoind/deserialize.py |    8 +-------
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 7 deletions(-)

diff --git a/backends/bitcoind/deserialize.py b/backends/bitcoind/deserialize.py
index 6620583..89b9b1b 100644
--- a/backends/bitcoind/deserialize.py
+++ b/backends/bitcoind/deserialize.py
@@ -280,10 +280,8 @@ opcodes = Enumeration("Opcodes", [
     "OP_WITHIN", "OP_RIPEMD160", "OP_SHA1", "OP_SHA256", "OP_HASH160",
     "OP_HASH256", "OP_CODESEPARATOR", "OP_CHECKSIG", "OP_CHECKSIGVERIFY", "OP_CHECKMULTISIG",
     "OP_CHECKMULTISIGVERIFY",
-    ("OP_SINGLEBYTE_END", 0xF0),
-    ("OP_DOUBLEBYTE_BEGIN", 0xF000),
     "OP_PUBKEY", "OP_PUBKEYHASH",
-    ("OP_INVALIDOPCODE", 0xFFFF),
+    ("OP_INVALIDOPCODE", 0xFF),
 ])
 
 
@@ -293,10 +291,6 @@ def script_GetOp(bytes):
         vch = None
         opcode = ord(bytes[i])
         i += 1
-        if opcode >= opcodes.OP_SINGLEBYTE_END and i < len(bytes):
-            opcode <<= 8
-            opcode |= ord(bytes[i])
-            i += 1
 
         if opcode <= opcodes.OP_PUSHDATA4:
             nSize = opcode
-- 
1.7.9.4
bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5231222.0 discusses what happens if there is an invalid opcode in a branch that is not taken.
Brits can't say "no" directly Updated 2025-07-16
If you ask for something, and they don't want to do it for whatever reason, they won't say no. They will say "I could do it, sure, no problem" and just never do it, nor explain why they don't want to do it!
And then if you don't understand that this actually meant "no" and push things further, they might eventually say "no", but they might become offended that you didn't understand them at first!
Please just say at least "yes" or "no". And if you're feeling specially nice, say "why no" which helps a lot the asker sometimes, though that's optional since people are entitled to their privacy. Just don't waste our poor foreigners' time with "bhlarmeh"!
Perhaps East Asia is a similar and more severe case of the same problem. But at least in their case it is so obvious that you already expect it.
The polar opposite apparently being Germans and the like.
Why we can't find more bibliography on this?
Video 1.
How I Faked Being American interview with Jack Barsky
. Source. The former East German spy undercover in the USA says:
I had learned to speak English and write it as well as anybody, but I hadn't become an American culturally.
My behavior was still very German.
Having now learned the difference between the German style and the American style, I have been trying to adjust and soften the way I'm approaching things.
Germans are in your face, they will tell you what they think even if you don't ask for it, and they will criticize you at any chance they get.
And that was me.
And there's still a residue of that left.
Americans will be a little more passive, sometimes passive aggressive, and they wrap everything, every piece of bad news, in some kind of a velvet cloth so it doesn't hurt that much.
react/ref-click-counter.html Updated 2025-07-16
Dummy example of using a React ref This example is useless and to the end user seems functionally equivalent to react/hello.html.
It does however serve as a good example of what react does that is useful: it provides a "clear" separation between state and render code (which becomes once again much less clear in React function components.
Notably, this example is insane because at:
<button onClick={() => {
  elem.innerHTML = (parseInt(elem.innerHTML) + 1).toString()
we are extracing state from some random HTML string rather than having a clean JavaScript variable containing that value.
In this case we managed to get away with it, but this is in general not easy/possible.

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