Ciro's Edict #7 Issue tracker Updated 2025-07-16
Every article now has a (very basic) GitHub-like issue tracker. Comments now go under issues, and issues go under articles. Issues themselves are very similar to articles, with a title and a body.
This was part of 1.0, but not the first priority, but I did it now anyways because I'm trying to do all the database changes ASAP as I'm not in the mood to write database migrations.
Here's an example:
- ourbigbook.com/go/issue/2/donald-trump/atomic-orbital a specific issue about the article "Atomic Orbital" by Donald Trump. Note the comments possibly by other users at the bottom.
- ourbigbook.com/go/issues/1/donald-trump/atomic-orbital list of issues about the article "Atomic Orbital" by Donald Trump
Ciro's Edict #8 Article metadata shown next to every header Updated 2025-07-16
This is a major feature: we have now started to inject the following buttons next to every single pre-rendered header:
This crucial feature makes it clear to every new user that every single header has its own separate metadata, which is a crucial idea of the website.
Screenshot showing metadata next to each header
. The page is: ourbigbook.com/donald-trump/chemistry. Note how even the subheaders "Chemical element" and "Hydrogen" show the metadata. Wikipedia Updated 2025-07-16
Why Wikipedia sucks: Section "Wikipedia".
Best languages:
The most important page of Wikipedia is undoubtedly: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources which lists the accepted and non accepted sources. Basically, the decision of what is true in this world.
Wikipedia is incredibly picky about copyright. E.g.: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_of_all_fair_use_images_of_living_people because "such portrait could be created". Yes, with a time machine, no problem! This does more harm than good... excessive!
Citing in Wikipedia is painful. Partly because of they have a billion different templates that you have to navigate. They should really have a system where you can easily reuse existing sources across articles! Section "How to use a single source multiple times in a Wikipedia article?"
- youtu.be/_Rt0eAPLDkM?t=113 encyclopedia correction stickers. OMG!
- youtu.be/_Rt0eAPLDkM?t=201 Jimmy was a moderator on MUD games
Inside the Wikimedia Foundation offices by Wikimedia Foundation (2008)
Source. Crystal detector Updated 2025-07-16
The first diodes. These were apparently incredibly unreliable, especially for portable radios, as you had to randomly search for the best contact point you could find in a random polycrystalline material!!
And also quality was highly dependant on where the material was sourced from as that affected the impurities present in the material. Later this was understood to be an issue of doping.
It was so unreliable that vacuum tube diodes overtook them in many applications, even though crystal detectors are actually semiconductor diodes, which eventually won over!
For a long time, before artificial semiconductors kicked in, people just didn't know the underlying physical working principle of these detectors. What I cannot create, I do not understand basically.
CUDA hello world Updated 2025-07-16
Dan Abramson Updated 2025-07-16
Dan, if you ever Google yourself here, please contact Ciro Santilli: Section "How to contact Ciro Santilli" to do something with OurBigBook.com. Cheers.
DigitalDreamDoor Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro's Edict #8 List topics on home page Updated 2025-07-16
The new default homepage for a logged out user how shows a list of the topics with the most articles.
This is a reasonable choice for default homepage, and it immediately exposes users to this central feature of the website: the topic system.
Doing this required in particular calculating the best title for a topic, since it is possible to have different titles with the same ID, the most common way being with capitalization changes, e.g.:would both have topic ID
JavaScript
Javascriptjavascript.The algorithm chosen is to pick the top 10 most upvoted topics, and select the most common title from amongst them. This should make topic title vandalism quite hard. This was made in a single SQL query, and became the most complext SQL query Ciro Santilli has ever written so far: twitter.com/cirosantilli2/status/1549721815832043522
Screenshot showing the list of topics
. The page is: ourbigbook.com for the logged out user, ourbigbook.com/go/topics for the logged in user.
Screenshot showing a topic page
. The page is: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/vector-space. Before this sprint, we didn't have the "Vector Space" at the top, as it wasn't necessarily trivial to determine what the preferred title would be. Ciro's Edict #9 Advances Updated 2025-07-16
OurBigBook Web error reporting starting to look amazing.
Source. Spontaneous emission Updated 2025-07-16
Explaining this was was one of the key initial achievements of the Dirac equation.
Yes, but this is not predicted by the Schrödinger equation, you need to go to the Dirac equation.
See also:
- physics.stackexchange.com/questions/233330/why-do-electrons-jump-between-orbitals
- physics.stackexchange.com/questions/117417/quantum-mechanics-scattering-theory/522220#522220
- physics.stackexchange.com/questions/430268/stimulated-emission-how-can-giving-energy-to-electrons-make-them-decay-to-a-low/430288
Domain name speculation Updated 2025-07-16
Spring-mass system Updated 2025-07-16
The simplest harmonic oscillator system.
Spy film Updated 2025-07-16
SQL 2D histogram Updated 2025-07-16
Let's try it on SQLite 3.40.1, Ubuntu 23.04. Data setup:
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite 'create table t(x integer, y integer)'
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite <<EOF
insert into t values
(0, 0),
(1, 1),
(2, 2),
(3, 3),
(4, 4),
(5, 5),
(6, 6),
(7, 7),
(8, 8),
(9, 9),
(10, 10),
(11, 11),
(12, 12),
(13, 13),
(14, 14),
(15, 15),
(16, 16),
(17, 17),
(18, 18),
(19, 19),
(2, 18)
EOF
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite 'create index txy on t(x, y)'For a bin size of 5 ignoring empty ranges we can:which produces the desired:
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite <<EOF
select
floor(x/5)*5 as x,
floor(y/5)*5 as y,
count(*) as cnt
from t
group by 1, 2
order by 1, 2
EOF0|0|5
0|15|1
5|5|5
10|10|5
15|15|5And to consider empty ranges we can use SQL which outputs the desired:
genenerate_series + as per stackoverflow.com/questions/72367652/populating-empty-bins-in-a-histogram-generated-using-sql:sqlite3 tmp.sqlite <<EOF
select x, y, sum(cnt) from (
select
floor(x/5)*5 as x,
floor(y/5)*5 as y,
count(*) as cnt
from t
group by 1, 2
union
select *, 0 as cnt from generate_series(0, 15, 5) inner join (select * from generate_series(0, 15, 5))
)
group by x, y
EOF0|0|5
0|5|0
0|10|0
0|15|1
5|0|0
5|5|5
5|10|0
5|15|0
10|0|0
10|5|0
10|10|5
10|15|0
15|0|0
15|5|0
15|10|0
15|15|5 Wikipedia edit request Updated 2025-07-16
Wikisource Updated 2025-07-16
SQL contiguous ranges Updated 2025-07-16
stackoverflow.com/questions/17046204/how-to-find-the-boundaries-of-groups-of-contiguous-sequential-numbers/17046749#17046749 just works, even in SQLite which supports all quoting types known to man including
[] for compatibility with insane RDBMSs!Here's a slightly saner version:
rm -f tmp.sqlite
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite "create table mytable (id integer primary key autoincrement, number integer, status integer)"
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite <<EOF
insert into mytable(number, status) values
(100,0),
(101,0),
(102,0),
(103,0),
(104,1),
(105,1),
(106,0),
(107,0),
(1014,0),
(1015,0),
(1016,1),
(1017,0)
EOF
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite <<EOF
SELECT
MIN(id) AS "id",
MIN(number) AS "from",
MAX(number) AS "to"
FROM (
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY number) - number AS grp, id, number
FROM mytable
WHERE status = 0
)
GROUP BY grp
ORDER BY MIN(number)
EOFoutput:
1|100|103
7|106|107
9|1014|1015
12|1017|1017To get only groups of length greater than 1:
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite <<EOF
SELECT "id", "from", "to", "to" - "from" + 1 as "len" FROM (
SELECT
MIN("id") AS "id",
MIN(number) AS "from",
MAX(number) AS "to"
FROM (
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY "number") - "number" AS "grp", "id", "number"
FROM "mytable"
WHERE "status" = 0
)
GROUP BY "grp"
ORDER BY MIN("number")
) WHERE "len" > 1
EOFOutput:
1|100|103|4
7|106|107|2
9|1014|1015|2 WikiWikiWeb Updated 2025-07-16
The pre-Eternal September feeling is palpable.
People could freely comment their thoughts and sign below, making it much closer to what Ciro Santilli wants OurBigBook.com to be. But with upvotes ;-)
FFmpeg sound synthesis Updated 2025-07-16
Simple sines and variants:
- unix.stackexchange.com/questions/82112/stereo-tone-generator-for-linux/536860#536860
- stackoverflow.com/questions/5109038/linux-sine-wave-audio-generator/57610684#57610684
- superuser.com/questions/724391/how-to-generate-a-sine-wave-with-ffmpeg
- stackoverflow.com/questions/59551013/how-to-generate-stereo-sine-wave-using-ffmpeg-with-different-frequencies-for-eac/77730492#77730492
SQL histogram Updated 2025-07-16
OK, there's a billion questions:
- SQL Server
- stackoverflow.com/questions/485409/generating-a-histogram-from-column-values-in-a-database OP did not know the difference between count and histogram :-) But it's the number one Google result.
- stackoverflow.com/questions/19103991/create-range-bins-from-sql-server-table-for-histograms has a minor extra group by twist, but otherwise fine
- stackoverflow.com/questions/16268441/generate-histogram-in-sql-server
- SQLite
- stackoverflow.com/questions/67514208/how-to-optimise-creating-histogram-bins-in-sqlite perf only, benchmarking would be needed. SQLite.
- stackoverflow.com/questions/32155449/create-a-histogram-with-a-dynamic-number-of-partitions-in-sqlite variable bin size, same number of entries per bin
- stackoverflow.com/questions/60348109/histogram-for-time-periods-using-sqlite-regular-buckets-1h-wide time
- MySQL: stackoverflow.com/questions/1764881/getting-data-for-histogram-plot MySQL appears to extend
ROUNDto also round by integers:ROUND(numeric_value, -2), but this is not widely portable which is a shame - stackoverflow.com/questions/72367652/populating-empty-bins-in-a-histogram-generated-using-sql specifically asks about empty bins, which is amazing. Amazon Redshift dialect unfortunately, but answer provided works widely, and Redshift was forked from PostgreSQL, so there's hope. Those newb open source server focused projects that don't use AGPL!
Let's try it on SQLite 3.40.1, Ubuntu 23.04. Data setup:
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite 'create table t(x integer)'
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite <<EOF
insert into t values (
0,
2,
2,
3,
5,
6,
6,
8,
9,
17,
)
EOF
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite 'create index tx on t(x)'For a bin size of 5 ignoring empty ranges we can:which produces the desired:
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite <<EOF
select floor(x/5)*5 as x,
count(*) as cnt
from t
group by 1
order by 1
EOF0|4
5|5
15|1And to consider empty ranges we can use SQL which outputs the desired:
genenerate_series + as per stackoverflow.com/questions/72367652/populating-empty-bins-in-a-histogram-generated-using-sql:sqlite3 tmp.sqlite <<EOF
select x, sum(cnt) from (
select floor(x/5)*5 as x,
count(*) as cnt
from t
group by 1
union
select *, 0 as cnt from generate_series(0, 15, 5)
)
group by x
EOF0|4
5|5
10|0
15|1 There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.