The Machiavellian Stack Overflow contributor by 
Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2024-12-31 +Created 1970-01-01
Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2024-12-31 +Created 1970-01-01- always upvote questions you care about, to increase the probability that they will get answered
- never upvote other people's answers unless you might gain from it somehow, otherwise you are just giving other high reputation users more reputation relative to you
- only mark something to close or as a duplicate if it will bring you some advantage, because closing things creates enemies, especially if the OP has a high profileOne example advantage is if you have already answered the question (and the duplicate as well in case of duplicates), because this will prevent competitors from adding new better answers to overtake you.
- protect questions you've answered whenever someone with less than 10 reputation answers it with a bad answer, to prevent other good contributors from coming along and beating you
- when you find a duplicate pool answer every question with similar answers.Alter each answer slightly to avoid the idiotic duplicate answer detector.If one of the question closes, it is not too bad, as it continues netting you to upvotes, and prevents new answers from coming in.
- follow on Twitter/RSS someone who comments on the top features of new software releases. E.g. for Git, follow GitHub on Twitter, C++ on Reddit. Then run back to any question which has a new answer.
- always upvote the question when you answer it:
- the more upvotes, more likely people are to click it.
- the OP is more likely to see your answer and feel good and upvote you
- if a niche question only has few answers and you come with a good one, upvote the existing ones by other high profile users.This may lead to them upvoting or liking you.Even if they don't, other people will still see your answer anyway, and this will lead to people to upvoting you more just to make your great answer surpass the current ones, especially if the accepted one has less upvotes than yours. Being second is often an asset.
- always upvote comments that favor you:
- "I like this answer!" on your answers
- "also look at that question" when you have answered that question
- don't invest a lot in edits. They don't give you rep, and they can get reverted and waste your time.Why are you trying to help other people's answers to get rep anyways? Just make a separate answer instead! :-)
- if you answer a question by newbie without 15 reputation, find their other questions if any and upvote them, so that the OP can upvote your answer in addition to just accepting
- If you haven't answered a question, link to related questions you've answered on question comments, so more people will come to your answers.If you have answered the question, only link to other questions at the bottom of your answer, so that people won't go away before they reach your answer, and so as to strengthen your answer.
- if a question has 50 million answers and you answer it (often due to a new feature), make a comment on the question pointing to your answer
- if you get a downvote, always leave a comment asking why. It is not because you care about their useless opinion, but because other readers might see the comment, feel sorry for you, and upvote.
- ask any questions under a separate anonymous accounts. Because:
- intelligent people are born knowing, and don't ever ask any questions, so that would hurt your reputation
- downvoting questions does not take 1 reputation away from the downvoter, and so it greatly opens the door for your opponents to downvote you without any cost.
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
\Include and \x and working on dynamic website by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2024-12-31 +Created 1970-01-01This was the major final step of fully integrating the OurBigBook CLI into the dynamic website (besides fixing some nasty bugs that escaped passed by me from the previous newsletter).
The implementation was done by "simply" reusing scopes, e.g.:
cirosantilli's article about mathematics has scope cirosantilli and full ID cirosantilli/mathematics.That on the website is equivalent to a local file structure of:
cirodown/mathematics.bigbThe problem is that a bunch of subdirectory scope operations were broken locally as well, as it simply wasn't a major use case. But now they became a major use case for , so I fixed them.
OurBigBook Library tested on PostgreSQL by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2024-12-31 +Created 1970-01-01
Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2024-12-31 +Created 1970-01-01After something broke on the website due to SQLite vs PostgreSQL inconsistencies and took me a day to figure it out, I finally decided to update the test system so that
OURBIGBOOK_POSTGRES=true npm test will run the tests on PostgreSQL.Originally, these were being run only on SQLite, which is the major use case for OurBigBook CLI, which came before the website.
But the website runs on PostgreSQL, so it is fundamental to test things in PostgreSQL as well.
Bibliography:
One specific software project, typically with a single executable file format entry point.
Ciro Santilli used to use file managers in the past.
But he finally converted to a shell
cd aliases that auto-ls: github.com/cirosantilli/dotfiles/blob/a51bcc324f0cff0eddd4c3bb8654ec223a0adb7b/home/.bashrc#L1058What happens when the underdogs get together and try to factor out their efforts to beat some evil dominant power, sometimes victoriously.
Or when startups use the cheapest stuff available and randomly become the next big thing, and decide to keep maintaining the open stuff to get features for free from other companies, or because they are forced by the Holy GPL.
Open source frees employees. When you change jobs, a large part of the specific knowledge you acquired about closed source a project with your blood and tears goes to the trash. When companies get bought, projects get shut down, and closed source code goes to the trash. What sane non desperate person would sell their life energy into such closed source projects that could die at any moment? Working on open source is the single most important non money perk a company can have to attract the best employees.
Open source is worth more than the mere pragmatic financial value of not having to pay for software or the ability to freely add new features.
Its greatest value is perhaps the fact that it allows people study it, to appreciate the beauty of the code, and feel empowered by being able to add the features that they want.
That is why Ciro Santilli thought:
Life is too short for closed source.
But quoting Ciro's colleague S.:
Every software is open source when you read assembly code.
While software is the most developed open source technology available in the 2010's, due to the "zero cost" of copying it over the Internet, Ciro also believes that the world would benefit enormously from open source knowledge in all areas on science and engineering, for the same reasons as open source.
Once upon a time young Ciro Santilli spent lots of time evaluating the features of different terimnals. The many windows of Terminator. The pop-uppiness of Guake/Yakuake.
But then one day he met tmux, and he was enlightened
Terminal choice doesn't matter. Just use tmux.
Aggressively filter your social media follows by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2024-12-31 +Created 1970-01-01
Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2024-12-31 +Created 1970-01-01Ciro Santilli very aggressively aggressively people in social media.
There are basically 3 categories:
This is perhaps slightly worse than the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but still amazing.
Some difficult points:
- how did the general deduce that the old woman's daughter had a link to Karla? It must be linked to the fact that the Russian agent who made the offer was a Karla-man.
- some things are hard to understand without having seen the previous Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, e.g. they say nothing clearly who Toby Esterhase is, he now works on art sales
- but others are inconsistent, e.g. they changed the actor for Peter Guillam...
Smiley's letter to Karla scene from Smiley's People 1982 BBC miniseries John le Carré adaptation EP6o
. Source. Fan-uplod by Ciro Santilli, one of the greatest television scenes ever. Blocked in the UK. Classification of simple Lie groups by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2024-12-31 +Created 1970-01-01
Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2024-12-31 +Created 1970-01-01A bit like the classification of simple finite groups, they also have a few sporadic groups! Not as spectacular since as usual continuous problems are simpler than discrete ones, but still, not bad.
It is not obvious why there have to be two sexes.
Sex itself is obvious: by mixing genes we increase variability.
But having two sexes rather than just being able to reproduce with anyone reduces the possible mating pool by half!
There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.