Leanpub Updated +Created
Founder: Peter Armstrong
The general idea is publishing entire books with usual copyright, but with gradual updates.
ruboss.com/ documents their stack, a somewhat similar choice to OurBigBook.com as of 2021, notably Next.js. But backend in Ruby on Rails. They actually managed Apollo/GraphQL, which Ciro Santilli would have liked, but din't have the patience for.
The founder/CEO Peter Armstrong www.linkedin.com/in/peterburtonarmstrong/ He looks like a nice guy.
Lebesgue integral Updated +Created
"More complex and general" integral. Matches the Riemann integral for "simple functions", but also works for some "funkier" functions that Riemann does not work for.
Ciro Santilli sometimes wonders how much someone can gain from learning this besides the beauty of mathematics, since we can hand-wave a Lebesgue integral on almost anything that is of practical use. The beauty is good reason enough though.
LessWrong Updated +Created
Ciro Santilli dislikes the fact that they take themselves too seriously. Ciro prefers the jokes and tech approach.
libpng Updated +Created
PNG reference implementation. Ahh, if feels good to have a dominating open source reference implementation.
https://i.stack.imgur.com/rfdHr.png
https://i.stack.imgur.com/IWBSj.png
LibreTexts Updated +Created
Follows the "certified teacher only" approach which is in Ciro Santilli's opinion a fatal flaw of most elearning systems out there, OurBigBook.com won't suffer from that!
But that is a very, very good project.
All notes appear to have been extracted from existing notes, as noted on the bottom of each page.
TODO how does it work exactly? Do they ask for permission from authors in every case, including when the content has open license? Or when it has open license, do they just do it? In some cases, the notes have no license, so they must have asked.
TODO what is the source code that authors write? LaTeX or something else? LaTeX feels extremely likely given that it is what most original materials were already written in.
They are attempting a "model up this entire university" thing: phys.libretexts.org/Courses which is good. E.g. they have a bunch of "quantum mechanics ones under: phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Quantum_Mechanics
Appears to be UC Davies-based mostly.
They claim to use this closed source backend: www.nice.com/resources/cxone-expert-knowledge-management? Seriously? For a publicly funded project with low-tech requirements?? It is mind blowing.
Some issues:
OK let's database it:
Lie group Updated +Created
The key and central motivation for studying Lie groups and their Lie algebras appears to be to characterize symmetry in Lagrangian mechanics through Noether's theorem, just start from there.
Notably local symmetries appear to map to forces, and local means "around the identity", notably: local symmetries of the Lagrangian imply conserved currents.
The fact that there are elements arbitrarily close to the identity, which is only possible due to the group being continuous, is the key factor that simplifies the treatment of Lie groups, and follows the philosophy of continuous problems are simpler than discrete ones.
Bibliography:
Video 1.
What is Lie theory? by Mathemaniac 2023
. Source.
Limtless (2011) Updated +Created
That makes Ciro Santilli most mad about this film is the fact that the dude was passionate about writing, and when he became a genius, rather than write the best novels ever written, he decided instead to play the stock market instead. This paints an accurate picture of 2020's society, where finance jobs make infinitely more money than other real engineering jobs, and end up attracting much of the talent.
Another enraging thing is how his girlfriend starts liking him again once he is a genius, and instead of telling her to fuck off, he stays with her.
The other really bad thing is the ending. He fixed the drug by himself? He scared off De Niro just like that?
LinkedIn Updated +Created
LinkedIn fully complies with censorship imposed locally by the Chinese government, and does so in a non-transparent way: cirosantilli.com/china-dictatorship/linkedin.
It is hard to understand what the point of that website is, as it is basically just a more closed version of Facebook, but alas, it has flourished as the only place where people post more useful content compared to Twitter and Facebook. In any case, Ciro just applies the same unfollow policy to all of them: aggressively filter your social media follows.
Linux Updated +Created
It ain't perfect, but it's decent enough.
From a technical point of view, it can do anything that Microsoft Windows can. Except being forcefully installed on every non-MacOS 2019 computer you can buy.
Ciro Santilli's conversion to Linux happened around 2012, and was a central part of Ciro Santilli's Open Source Enlightenment, since it fundamentally enables the discovery and contribution to open source software. Because what awesome open source person would waste time porting their amazing projects to closed source OSes?
Ciro's modest nature can be seen as he likes to compare this event Buddha's Great Renunciation.
Particularly interesting in the history of Linux is how it won out over the open competitors that were coming up in the time: MINIX (see the chat) and BSD Operating System that got legally bogged down at the critical growth moment.
Figure 1.
xkcd 619: Supported Features
. Source. This perfectly illustrates Linux development. First features that matter. Then useless features.
Video 1. Source. Just stop whatever you are doing, and watch this right now. "I'm on Linux, bitch, I thought you GNU". Fandom explanations. It is just a shame that the Bill Gates actor looks absolutely nothing like the real gates. Actually, the entire Gates/Jobs parts are good, but not genial. But the Linux one is.
Linux Foundation Updated +Created
The fact that this foundation has a bunch of paid, closed, certification courses makes Ciro Santilli not respect them at all. They should be making open access content instead!
Linux kernel Updated +Created
Linux Kernel Module Cheat Updated +Created
This is the most important technical tutorial project that Ciro Santilli has done in his life so far as of 2019.
The scope is insane and unprecedented, and goes beyond Linux kernel-land alone, which is where it started.
It ended up eating every system programming content Ciro had previously written! Including:
so that that repo would better be called "System Programming Cheat". But "Linux Kernel Module Cheat" sounds more hardcore ;-)
Other major things that could be added there as well in the future are:
Due to this project, some have considered Ciro to be (archive):
some kind of Linux kernel god.
which made Ciro smile, although "Linux kernel documenter God" would have been more precise.
[    1.451857] input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /devices/platform/i8042/s1│loading @0xffffffffc0000000: ../kernel_modules-1.0//timer.ko
[    1.454310] ledtrig-cpu: registered to indicate activity on CPUs             │(gdb) b lkmc_timer_callback
[    1.455621] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid                  │Breakpoint 1 at 0xffffffffc0000000: file /home/ciro/bak/git/linux-kernel-module
[    1.455811] usbhid: USB HID core driver                                      │-cheat/out/x86_64/buildroot/build/kernel_modules-1.0/./timer.c, line 28.
[    1.462044] NET: Registered protocol family 10                               │(gdb) c
[    1.467911] Segment Routing with IPv6                                        │Continuing.
[    1.468407] sit: IPv6, IPv4 and MPLS over IPv4 tunneling driver              │
[    1.470859] NET: Registered protocol family 17                               │Breakpoint 1, lkmc_timer_callback (data=0xffffffffc0002000 <mytimer>)
[    1.472017] 9pnet: Installing 9P2000 support                                 │    at /linux-kernel-module-cheat//out/x86_64/buildroot/build/
[    1.475461] sched_clock: Marking stable (1473574872, 0)->(1554017593, -80442)│kernel_modules-1.0/./timer.c:28
[    1.479419] ALSA device list:                                                │28      {
[    1.479567]   No soundcards found.                                           │(gdb) c
[    1.619187] ata2.00: ATAPI: QEMU DVD-ROM, 2.5+, max UDMA/100                 │Continuing.
[    1.622954] ata2.00: configured for MWDMA2                                   │
[    1.644048] scsi 1:0:0:0: CD-ROM            QEMU     QEMU DVD-ROM     2.5+ P5│Breakpoint 1, lkmc_timer_callback (data=0xffffffffc0002000 <mytimer>)
[    1.741966] tsc: Refined TSC clocksource calibration: 2904.010 MHz           │    at /linux-kernel-module-cheat//out/x86_64/buildroot/build/
[    1.742796] clocksource: tsc: mask: 0xffffffffffffffff max_cycles: 0x29dc0f4s│kernel_modules-1.0/./timer.c:28
[    1.743648] clocksource: Switched to clocksource tsc                         │28      {
[    2.072945] input: ImExPS/2 Generic Explorer Mouse as /devices/platform/i8043│(gdb) bt
[    2.078641] EXT4-fs (vda): couldn't mount as ext3 due to feature incompatibis│#0  lkmc_timer_callback (data=0xffffffffc0002000 <mytimer>)
[    2.080350] EXT4-fs (vda): mounting ext2 file system using the ext4 subsystem│    at /linux-kernel-module-cheat//out/x86_64/buildroot/build/
[    2.088978] EXT4-fs (vda): mounted filesystem without journal. Opts: (null)  │kernel_modules-1.0/./timer.c:28
[    2.089872] VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly on device 254:0.    │#1  0xffffffff810ab494 in call_timer_fn (timer=0xffffffffc0002000 <mytimer>,
[    2.097168] devtmpfs: mounted                                                │    fn=0xffffffffc0000000 <lkmc_timer_callback>) at kernel/time/timer.c:1326
[    2.126472] Freeing unused kernel memory: 1264K                              │#2  0xffffffff810ab71f in expire_timers (head=<optimized out>,
[    2.126706] Write protecting the kernel read-only data: 16384k               │    base=<optimized out>) at kernel/time/timer.c:1363
[    2.129388] Freeing unused kernel memory: 2024K                              │#3  __run_timers (base=<optimized out>) at kernel/time/timer.c:1666
[    2.139370] Freeing unused kernel memory: 1284K                              │#4  run_timer_softirq (h=<optimized out>) at kernel/time/timer.c:1692
[    2.246231] EXT4-fs (vda): warning: mounting unchecked fs, running e2fsck isd│#5  0xffffffff81a000cc in __do_softirq () at kernel/softirq.c:285
[    2.259574] EXT4-fs (vda): re-mounted. Opts: block_validity,barrier,user_xatr│#6  0xffffffff810577cc in invoke_softirq () at kernel/softirq.c:365
hello S98                                                                       │#7  irq_exit () at kernel/softirq.c:405
                                                                                │#8  0xffffffff818021ba in exiting_irq () at ./arch/x86/include/asm/apic.h:541
Apr 15 23:59:23 login[49]: root login on 'console'                              │#9  smp_apic_timer_interrupt (regs=<optimized out>)
hello /root/.profile                                                            │    at arch/x86/kernel/apic/apic.c:1052
# insmod /timer.ko                                                              │#10 0xffffffff8180190f in apic_timer_interrupt ()
[    6.791945] timer: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.                 │    at arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:857
# [    7.821621] 4294894248                                                     │#11 0xffffffff82003df8 in init_thread_union ()
[    8.851385] 4294894504                                                       │#12 0x0000000000000000 in ?? ()
                                                                                │(gdb)
Code 1.
Terminal dump of a LKMC session with two tmux panes with QEMU on left and GDB on right showing a backtrace of the Linux kernel code currently being under QEMU
.
Literature Updated +Created
Ciro Santilli used to read books when he was younger (Harry Potter up to the 4th, Lord of the Rings), but once you are reading code, technical articles and news the whole day, you really just want to watch videos of people doing useless things on YouTube to rest, enough text.
Books are slow. No patience. Need faster immediate satisfaction.
Paradoxically Ciro feels like he's becoming a writer of sorts though, one semi independent section/answer/piece of knowledge at a time.
Writing is not just giving out information. It is re-feeling it.
Luxury goods Updated +Created
One of the things Ciro Santilli most deeply despises.
Real luxury is to understand quantum field theory and number theory.
Clothing/jewelry/car luxury is at worst a way to show off. And at best a replacement for nature/the countryside. People living in big cities have lost nature, and to some, looking at luxury goods (or watching television) serves as a (unsatisfactory) replacement.
Machine learning Updated +Created
The main reason Ciro Santilli never touched it is that it feels that every public data set has already been fully mined or has already had the most interesting algorithms developed for it, so you can't do much outside of big companies.
This is why Ciro started Ciro's 2D reinforcement learning games to generate synthetic data and thus reduce the cost of data.
The other reason is that it is ugly.
MacOS Updated +Created
Nice looking and expensive operating system by Apple. Ciro Santilli believes that:
  • if you want to be ripped off, just use Microsoft Windows which has more software available
  • or if you want to attain Enlightenment, just use Linux, which is free and open source
The story of how OS X was ported to x86 from PowerPC with large initial work up to boot by a single man in the year 2000, John Kullmann, is really worth reading: www.quora.com/Apple-company/How-does-Apple-keep-secrets-so-well/answer/Kim-Scheinberg on Quora, see also:
Magarena Updated +Created
Open source MtG engine implementation written in Java.
Seems to have an option to download art from internet as well.
Ciro Santilli wonders how legal it is. They very explicitly do not mention the words Magic: The Gathering anywhere.
Their UI does a good job at being self explanatory. Space is the shortcut to skip phases.
No online play.
TODO it appears to parse card functionality out of the human readable text! That's genius, as it helps automatically get new cards working, and squirt around legal issues.
Magic: The Gathering Updated +Created
Magic is the best card game of all time. Ciro Santilli agrees with this fact, and this has nothing to do with the nostalgia factor of having played it while being a teenager.
It is also the one with the most cumbersome name possible, containing even a bloody colon punctuation in it!
However, besides that, Magic has another major flaw: the cards of old formats (Legacy and Modern), which are the only really interesting ones, are fucking expensive: Section "Magic: The Gathering is too expensive".
Like in mathematics, the most beautiful decks are those that do crazy things:
  • infinite combos
  • semi-infinite combos that allow you to likely draw your entire deck or deal 20 damage
  • all-in decks that either win or lose on turn two
  • and lands
All of this comes to a certain extent from the deep asymmetry that permeates the game.
It is also really interesting to watch as new sets as spoiled and try to guess if certain cards will have any impact on the Modern or Legacy metagame.
Here are some cool decks:
If Ciro were to ever overcome his cheapness and play the legacy forma (which will never happen), he would likely play one of the following decks when trying to be able to win at all:Both of this decks focus on cheating a huge creature into play in one go, and both have combo protection methods (discard for turbo depths, and counterspells for sneak and show). Ciro believes that those decks reflect his personality well, notably Ciro Santilli's self perceived creative personality. Related decks that don't appeal as much to Ciro:
  • reanimator: you have to worry about graveyard hate all the time, worrying is bad
  • storm: you have to play too many spells, it's tiring. Ciro would rather put a fattie into play and swing once.
And above all, Ciro would never play a fair deck. Grinding victories is not for him. He'd rather quickly decide win/lose status and move on.
Competitive commander is also interesting, although matches tend to be much more random so the format is harder to digest, see for example this channel; Playing With Power MTG channel.
In Ciro's mind, Urza's block is the most epic of all, followed by the masques block. Those sets had a ridiculous power level and epic art, and they happened just before Ciro Santilli started playing during Invasion, which had an extremely low power level in comparison. So Ciro saw some cards from those slightly older formats floating around, but not many, and they felt so mystical and awesome.
Video 2.
I Built a COMPUTER in Magic: The Gathering by Because Science (2019)
Source. Shows an explicit Turing complete Magic The Gathering setup with real cards in a standard "extremely lucky" 2 player game.
ChannelFireball is one of the best Legacy resources out there, but they have too much crap filling in between legacy videos unfortunately.
The following creators share many of Ciro's interests and output large quantities of interesting content covering all memes/overpowered combos of new sets:
  • www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u5yzmta2oA BoshNRoll (Brian Coval) is basically Ciro Santilli's favorite MTG streamer of the early 2020's very good Legacy focused content, with occasional Modern and Pauper, good spicy deck selection. And he says nice and intelligent things the hole time, it's the type of person Ciro would be good friends with in real life. It sometimes makes Ciro said to see such a person wasting their lives with Magic. Twitter: twitter.com/BoshNRoll
  • Magic Aids
  • Squa Chief. He does a lot of cool decks.
  • Jeff Hoogland. Not Ciro's favorite personality though, too rambly/matter-of-fact. Also was going too much into MTGA.
  • www.youtube.com/channel/UC2hkmJr2x--IiMfozqj6VdQ Meryn MTG. She's too much on the jank side for Ciro's taste, but for that reason she covers some decks of interest that others don't. She's cute, and a Timmy at heart. Which makes you feel really sorry for her as she gets crushed by more competitive decks.
  • CalebD. Legacy and Modern. Too much drafting in the middle of actual videos. Sometimes decks slightly too janky/experimental. Amazing channel soundtrack.
  • Nikachu has some decent commentary. His endlessly rambly persona is a bit annoying, but the content of the commentary is still good.
Ciro was pleased when he learnt that Steve Wozniak plays magic the gathering.
Magic's competitive play became a mess in the late 2010's. They had a clear tournament structure, but they decided to start changing things every 6 months, and give tournaments meaningless names like "Mythic championship", and it just became impossible to follow what is what.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hk3IOQiisg Crazy MTG Scandals That Changed The Game by Nikachu (2021). Good list:
  • obviously wrong card named
  • Dryad arbour camouflaging as a land
  • go to combat