Incoming links: Ciro Santilli
Theses places give out free food all the time.
The first time Ciro Santilli went to one was when an Indian friend of his took him to the one in the North of Paris when they were living there in the first half of the 2010's, the Gurdwara Singh Sabha France.
Much like Islam's Ramadan, Ciro Santilli appreciates this a lot due to due to Ciro Santilli's self perceived compassionate personality and Ciro Santilli's cheapness.
Instead of just talking, those people really go out, and put food on the plate for anyone who needs it (or even for those that don't really need it! Although who would be so souless to eat for free and not donate a few bucks if they can afford to???). There's a beauty to that.
Writing this also remembered Ciro of non-religious groups that would give out free food to the poor at
Author of gwern.net.
Accounts:He posts insanely much on these websites. It's a bit like Ciro Santilli on Stack Overflow.
- news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gwern
- www.lesswrong.com/users/gwern LessWrong
- twitter.com/gwern locked 2021: www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/kp2fek/does_anybody_know_what_happened_to_gwern/
- www.reddit.com/user/gwern/
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gwern on Wikipedia. Self summary: gwern.net/wikipedia-resume. Also he is a critic of deletionism on Wikipedia like Ciro Santilli
Ciro Santilli envies this guy a bit. He dumps his brain more or less full time on his highly customized static website partly due to early Bitcoin investments gwern.net/me says:
Also unsurprisingly he likes Haskell:
I mostly contribute to projects in Haskell, my favorite language
Ciro Santilli considers Gwern Ciro Santilli's e-soulmates due to his interest in "dark web things" like Bitcoin and Silk Road, his immense writing output in encyclopedic book-sized articles on a static website, and his desire to live frugally and just research and write all day. Ah, if only Ciro had some old coins!!!
This is likely a pseudonym, his real name not being publicly unknown, e.g. at news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5659278:
Why do you choose relative anonymity?For the reasons I've said in the past. To which I can add personal safety: my Silk Road page is a bit questionable legally, and we all know that there are ways to exploit knowledge of one's True Name and address (even if, as far as I know, I have no enemies willing to resort to, say, 'swatting' me) - one group of stalkers called up a college they thought I worked at to see if they could get me fired or otherwise ruin my day.
Gwern Branwen's website.
One thing that annoys Ciro Santilli about that website are the footnote overload. Ciro likes linear things.
The most popular programming news sharing forum of the 2010's by far. If your content gets shared there, and it stays on top for a day, the traffic peak will be incredible. Reddit posts are sure to follow.
Basically a programming-only Reddit-lite.
Ciro Santilli had a few of his content shared there as mentioned at the best articles by Ciro Santillis.
Ciro Santilli's favorite. A mixture of painting and book.
This has annoyed Ciro Santilli for many years, it is just too wasteful of screen space on laptops!
Or likely more generally, on GNOME desktop, which is the default desktop environment as of Ubuntu 22.10.
Ciro Santilli once talked to a man who had been working on high-frequency trading for the last six years.
He was quite nice.
Ciro asked him in what way did he feel his job contributed to the benefit of society.
He replied that it didn't contribute at all. It was completely useless. More than that, it so completely useless, that it was even pure. A bit like advanced mathematics, but not even providing beauty for anybody outside of the company, since everything is a closely guarded trade secret, unlike mathematics which is normally published for the vanity recognition.
And so, Ciro was enlightened.
A great mind can work in the most useless branches of finance, without the desire to improve the world, nor make it worse. Not to compete, nor be afraid, nor anxious. A Sand mandala.
Only being. Being, in the exact fraction of a moment where bid meets ask.
This is a term "invented" by Ciro Santilli to refer to quantum compilers that are able to convert non-specifically-quantum (functional, since there is no state in quantum software) programs into quantum circuit.
The term is made by adding "quantum" to the more "classical" concept of "high-level synthesis", which refers to software that converts an imperative program into register transfer level hardware, typicially for FPGA applications.
If there is one thing that makes Ciro Santilli learn German, this is it (the Romance language are all the same, so reading them is basically covered for Ciro already).
A computer is a highly layered system, and so you have to decide which layers you are the most interested in studying.
Although the layer are somewhat independent, they also sometimes interact, and when that happens it usually hurts your brain. E.g., if compilers were perfect, no one optimizing software would have to know anything about microarchitecture. But if you want to go hardcore enough, you might have to learn some lower layer.
It must also be said that like in any industry, certain layers are hidden in commercial secrecy mysteries making it harder to actually learn them. In computing, the lower level you go, the more closed source things tend to become.
But as you climb down into the abyss of low level hardcoreness, don't forget that making usefulness is more important than being hardcore: Figure 1. "xkcd 378: Real Programmers".
First, the most important thing you should know about this subject: cirosantilli.com/linux-kernel-module-cheat/should-you-waste-your-life-with-systems-programming
Here's a summary from low-level to high-level:
- semiconductor physical implementation this level is of course the most closed, but it is fun to try and peek into it from any openings given by commercials and academia:
- photolithography, and notably photomask design
- register transfer level
- interactive Verilator fun: Is it possible to do interactive user input and output simulation in VHDL or Verilog?
- more importantly, and much harder/maybe impossible with open source, would be to try and set up a open source standard cell library and supporting software to obtain power, performance and area estimates
- Are there good open source standard cell libraries to learn IC synthesis with EDA tools? on Quora
- the most open source ones are some initiatives targeting FPGAs, e.g. symbiflow.github.io/, www.clifford.at/icestorm/
- qflow is an initiative targeting actual integrated circuits
- microarchitecture: a good way to play with this is to try and run some minimal userland examples on gem5 userland simulation with logging, e.g. see on the Linux Kernel Module Cheat:This should be done at the same time as books/website/courses that explain the microarchitecture basics.This is the level of abstraction that Ciro Santilli finds the most interesting of the hardware stack. Learning it for actual CPUs (which as of 2020 is only partially documented by vendors) could actually be useful in hardcore software optimization use cases.
- instruction set architecture: a good approach to learn this is to manually write some userland assembly with assertions as done in the Linux Kernel Module Cheat e.g. at:
- github.com/cirosantilli/linux-kernel-module-cheat/blob/9b6552ab6c66cb14d531eff903c4e78f3561e9ca/userland/arch/x86_64/add.S
- cirosantilli.com/linux-kernel-module-cheat/x86-userland-assembly
- learn a bit about calling conventions, e.g. by calling C standard library functions from assembly:
- you can also try and understand what some simple C programs compile to. Things can get a bit hard though when
-O3is used. Some cute examples:
- executable file format, notably executable and Linkable Format. Particularly important is to understand the basics of:
- address relocation: How do linkers and address relocation work?
- position independent code: What is the -fPIE option for position-independent executables in GCC and ld?
- how to observe which symbols are present in object files, e.g.:
- how C++ uses name mangling What is the effect of extern "C" in C++?
- how C++ template instantiation can help reduce link time and size: Explicit template instantiation - when is it used?
- operating system. There are two ways to approach this:
- learn about the Linux kernel Linux kernel. A good starting point is to learn about its main interfaces. This is well shown at Linux Kernel Module Cheat:
- system calls
- write some system calls in
- pure assembly:
- C GCC inline assembly:
- write some system calls in
- learn about kernel modules and their interfaces. Notably, learn about to demystify special files such
/dev/randomand so on: - learn how to do a minimal Linux kernel disk image/boot to userland hello world: What is the smallest possible Linux implementation?
- learn how to GDB Step debug the Linux kernel itself. Once you know this, you will feel that "given enough patience, I could understand anything that I wanted about the kernel", and you can then proceed to not learn almost anything about it and carry on with your life
- system calls
- write your own (mini-) OS, or study a minimal educational OS, e.g. as in:
- learn about the Linux kernel Linux kernel. A good starting point is to learn about its main interfaces. This is well shown at Linux Kernel Module Cheat:
- programming language
How low can you go video by Ciro Santilli (2017)
Source. In this infamous video Ciro has summarized the computer hierarchy.From the abstract:
Much money, his student went on to say, is spent by various Governments in attempting to discover those people whose thorough education may be expected to bring in a return of value to the State, and the question how best to discover latent genius is an eminently practical one. After cogitation, Prof. Ostwald came to the conclusion that it is those students who cannot be kept on the rails - that is, who are not contented with methodical teaching - who have within them the seeds of geniusCiro Santilli couldn't agree more... notably students must have a flexible choice of what to learn.
The approach many courses take to physics, specially "modern Physics" is really bad, this is how it should be taught:
- start by describing experiments that the previous best theory did not explain, see also: Section "Physics education needs more focus on understanding experiments and their history"
- then, give the final formula for the next best theory
- then, give all the important final implications of that formula, and how it amazingly describes the experiments. In particular this means: doing physics means calculating a number
- then, give some mathematical intuition on the formulas, and how the main equation could have been derived
- finally, then and only then, start deriving the outcomes of the main formula in detail
This is likely because at some point, experiments get more and more complicated, and so people are tempted to say "this is the truth" instead of "this is why we think this is the truth", which is much harder.
But we can't be lazy, there is no replacement to the why.
Related:
- settheory.net/learnphysics and www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MKjPYuD60I&list=PLJcTRymdlUQPwx8qU4ln83huPx-6Y3XxH from settheory.net
- math.ucr.edu/home/baez/books.html by John Baez. Mentions:
This webpage doesn't have lots of links to websites. Websites just don't have the sort of in-depth material you need to learn technical subjects like advanced math and physics — at least, not yet. To learn this stuff, you need to read lots of booksCiro Santilli is trying to change that: OurBigBook.com.
- web.archive.org/web/20210324182549/http://jakobschwichtenberg.com/one-thing/ by Jakob Schwichtenberg
See: Section "Exam".
The only thing that matters is that students aim towards the goals described at explain how to make money with the lesson.
Any "homework for which the student cannot use existing resources available online" is a waste of time.
The ideal way to go about it is to reach some intermediate milestone, and then document it. You don't have to do the hole thing! Just go until your patience with it runs out. But while you are doing it, go as deep and wide as you possibly can, without mercy.
This is actually how Ciro Santilli learns new subjects he is curious about, even as an adult! Some examples:
Tell students to:
- make suggestions to the course material themselves, since you have used text and published your source.Review their suggestions, and accept the best ones.
- answer the questions of other students on your online forum. Let them work instead of you.
Praise those that do this very highly, and give them better grades if you have that superpower.
This is part of a larger concept Ciro Santilli holds dear: don't just consume, but also produce.
Whatever you do, even if it is playing video games: if you manage to produce related content that will interest other people, and possibly allow you to get paid, it will much much fun to do that thing.
Just make it very clear what you've tried, what you observed, and what you don't understand if anything at all.
This will already open up room for others to come and expand on your attempt, and you are more likely to learn the answers to your questions as they do.
And there's a good chance someone who knows more than you will come along and correct or teach you something new about the subject. For example, this has happened countless times to Ciro Santilli when doing Ciro Santilli's Stack Overflow contributions.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Examples of famous fails:
- QED and the men who made it: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga by Silvan Schweber (1994) chapter 7.11 "Epilogue" mentions how Julian Schwinger has lots of unpublished notes, or that his collaborators had to write most of the stuff down themselves in the end because he felt they were not perfect enough
Ciro Santilli often sees all those genius who are much smarter than him making shitty forum/mailing list posts, they need to learn this:
- The apparently most important one liner error message must appear in the title, and fuller apparently relevant logs must appear on the body
- You must always give the version of the software that you are using as either a tag or git SHAThese are an important part of the minimal working example.
- For build errors, you must give your OS and compiler version and version of any relevant external library