Where to store images Updated 2025-07-16
Since images are large, they bring the following challenges:
To solve those problems, the following alternatives appear to be stable enough and should be used decreasing preference:
- This way, the entire website is relies on a single third party: GitHub, so we have a simple single point of failure.We are at the mercy of GitHub's 1GB size policy: help.github.com/en/articles/what-is-my-disk-quota, but it will take a while to hit that.GitLab however has a 10Gb maximum size: about.gitlab.com/2015/04/08/gitlab-dot-com-storage-limit-raised-to-10gb-per-repo/ so we could move there is we ever blow up 1Gb on GitHub.
- Wikimedia Commons for videos if the following conditions are met:
- in scope: "educational material in a broad sense", but not e.g. "Private image collections, e.g. private party photos, photos of yourself and your friends, your collection of holiday snaps and so on.". I don't think they will be too picky even with low quality photos.
- allowed format, e.g. images or videos, but not ZIPs
- allowed license: CC BY SA, but no fair use
Since Wikimedia Commons has a higher level of curation and is an educational not-for-profit, it is the method most likely to remain available for the longest time.For this reason, we highly recommend uploading any acceptable files there as well as an additional backup.The downside is that its tooling is not as good, e.g. there are a bunch of messy unofficial tools for batch operations, and upload takes more effort.Another downside of Wikimedia Commons is that while we can choose the basename of files, it also adds some extra SHA crap to the beginning of URLs, making them harder to predict.Another serious downside is that they randomly rename images without redirects... e.g. they renamed upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/03/STJ_SVG_file.svg to upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Superconducting_tunnel_junction.svgAnother "downside" is that they are extremely strict about copyright compliance. This is good because you can be pretty sure that they are correct in general, but it also means that they are very conservative, and delete things where fair use would be OK. And if those fair uses have no Wikipedia page, they won't show up anywhere. - All content will be tracked under the
cirosantillicollection: archive.org/details/cirosantilliarchive.org has a very convenient upload and lax requirements. The generated URLs are predictable (single SHA prefix for the entire collection).Never trust a website that is not on GitHub Pages, for-profit companies will take down everything immediately as soon as it stops making them money.Every external link to non-GitHub pages must be archived. And GitHub links must be forked.We should also backup images that Wikimedia Commons does not accept here in addition to the github.com/cirosantilli/media repository.
The following alternatives seem impossible because Ciro could not find if they expose direct links to the images:
The following do have direct links:
- www.flickr.com e.g. live.staticflickr.com/7437/27402357162_7d91b73cd5_z.jpg documented at help.flickr.com/en_us/get-the-url-of-a-flickr-photo-S1Hnnmjym Also does automatic image size conversion. But only provides ugly autogenerated URLs.
- Instagram does not support upload from computer? Lol?
Milky Way Updated 2025-07-16
Messaging software that force you to have a mobile phone Updated 2025-07-16
Chat programs that don't have a proper web-only operation and force you to have a mobile phone, e.g. WhatsApp.
Heck, even Signal, which is supposed to be super secure and good for your privacy, forces you to disclose your freaking cell phone to all contacts! lifehacker.com/how-to-use-signal-without-revealing-your-private-phone-1818996580
Messier 87 Updated 2025-07-16
Metagenomics Updated 2025-07-16
Experiments that involve sequencing bulk DNA found in a sample to determine what species are present, as opposed to sequencing just a single specific specimen. Examples of samples that are often used:
- river water to determine which bacteria are present, notably to determine if the water is free of dangerous bacteria. A concrete example is shown at: Section "How to use an Oxford Nanopore MinION to extract DNA from river water and determine which bacteria live in it".
- sea water biodiversity: ocean-microbiome.embl.de/companion.html
- food, including searching for desirable microorganisms such as in cheese or bread yeast
- poo, e.g. to study how the human microbiome influences health. There are companies actively working on this, e.g.: www.microbiotica.com/
One related application which most people would not consider metagenomics, is that of finding circulating tumor DNA in blood to detect tumors.
Metastable electron Updated 2025-07-16
A fundamental component of three-level lasers.
As mentioned at youtu.be/_JOchLyNO_w?t=581 from Video "How Lasers Work by Scientized (2017)", they stay in that state for a long time compared to non spontaneous emission of metastable states!
phys.libretexts.org/Courses/University_of_California_Davis/UCD%3A_Physics_9HE_-_Modern_Physics/06%3A_Emission_and_Absorption_of_Photons/6.3%3A_Lasers mentions that they are kept in that excited state due to selection rules.
This is also one of mechanisms behind phosphorescence with triplet states.
Meteor (web framework) Updated 2025-07-16
The idea is cool. It really unifies front-and back end.
But Ciro Santilli feels the approach proposed by FeathersJS of being a glue between bigger third-party Front-end web frameworks like React and backend (object-relational mapping) is more promising and flexible.
Methane Updated 2025-07-16
Metric (mathematics) Updated 2025-07-16
A metric is a function that give the distance, i.e. a real number, between any two elements of a space.
Because a norm can be induced by an inner product, and the inner product given by the matrix representation of a positive definite symmetric bilinear form, in simple cases metrics can also be represented by a matrix.
Metric space vs normed vector space vs inner product space Updated 2025-07-16
TODO examples:
- metric space that is not a normed vector space
- norm vs metric: a norm gives size of one element. A metric is the distance between two elements. Given a norm in a space with subtraction, we can obtain a distance function: the metric induced by a norm.
Hierarchy of topological, metric, normed and inner product spaces
. Source. M. genitalium whole cell model by Covert lab Updated 2025-07-16
www.wholecellviz.org/viz.php awesome visualization of simtk, paper: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3413483/ A Whole-Cell Computational Model Predicts Phenotype from Genotype - 2013 - Jonathan R. Karr.
Followed up by the E. Coli Whole Cell Model by Covert Lab.
Michael Nielsen Updated 2025-07-16
Interesting dude, with some interest overlaps with Ciro Santilli, like quantum computing:
Michio Kaku Updated 2025-07-16
Well known popular science character. He just looks futuristic and wraps stuff in exciting empty words. When he shows up, you won't be learning much.
Milky Way satellite galaxy Updated 2025-07-16
Micro Bit example Updated 2025-07-16
- microbit/micropython/uart.py: the Micro BIt comes with a UART simulator via the USB connection, it is very convenient: support.microbit.org/support/solutions/articles/19000022103-outputing-serial-data-from-the-micro-bit-to-a-computer To output data to the computer simply use Python
print. To receive you can e.g. use GNU screen:It appears to be very unreliable however, some times it shows up, sometimes it doesn't.screen /dev/ttyACM0 115200
Microbotics Updated 2025-07-16
10 TINY Micro Robots and Nano Drones by JUST AMAZING (2020)
Source. - cyborg beetle from Hirotaka Sato
- RoboBee
Bibliography:
Microscope Project (YouTube channel) Updated 2025-07-16
As of 2022, this channel is still finding its feet. But it has promise.
Unfortunately it does not show sample preparation, and it does not use controlled cultures, so we are never sure which species are represented.
Microscopy connectome extraction Updated 2025-07-16
This is the most plausible way of obtaining a full connectome looking from 2020 forward. Then you'd observe the slices with an electron microscope + appropriate Staining. Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom (2014) really opened Ciro Santilli's eyes to this possibility.
Once this is done for a human, it will be one of the greatest milestone of humanities, coparable perhaps to the Human Genome Project. BUt of course, privacy issues are incrediby pressing in this case, even more than in the human genome project, as we would essentially be able to read the brain of the person after their death.
This is also a possible path towards post-mortem brain reading.
Microscopy YouTube channel Updated 2025-07-16
Microsoft employee Updated 2025-07-16
There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.