Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli 37 

Street reclamation Updated 2025-07-16

Only people who need to drive a car should be allowed to drive a car anywhere near a city, e.g. people who work door to door, people who are disabled, etc.

Countryside driving is fine. If going to a city, you just have to drive to a parking outside of the city where you then take the public transport. And those who live in cities must leave their cars there too.

Everyone else must walk or cycle from home to public transport.

Cars just destroy everything, they make everything ugly:

this was extremely clear to Ciro Santilli as a cyclist. He previously lived in a place with few cars and the countryside was so pleasant. Then he moved to a place with more cars and it was shocking. It's a mixture of pollution, noise, and the fact that roads cut up the countryside that just make things not pleasant at all. Dual lane roads in particular are just a terrible thing. You can hear them from afar, much before you see them.
You can just see as tiny little villages surrounding the bit city and it's oversized motorways are more or less homogenized into one big city mass, the process is clearly visible as you cycle out of the big city and the villages become nicer and more unique as you go along further out.
even within cities, cars completely dehumanize the streets. For example, Ciro once lived in a small dead end street, and he would have gladly opened his front window more often to meet the neighbours. But just the noise of cars passing by every so often makes it impractical to work like that.

The Zatoichi effect applies well to the problem of cyclists:

they are not really pedestrians, and pedestrian paths are not suitable to them because they are too narrow, of not smooth, or curved. But pedestrians will always have enough political power to have their paths, because they live around the paths
they are not really motor vehicles, because motor vehicle paths are too wide and too fast for them. But motor vehicles will always have enough political power to have their paths, because people are lazy and stupid, and because as the world stands, individually you just don't have any reasonable choice to go anywhere.

This is the main drama faced by cyclists.

Lobbying groups:

Why isn't cycling normal in London? by Jay Foreman (2018)

Source.

Students must have a flexible choice of what to learn Updated 2025-07-16

This is one of the main reasons why Ciro Santilli invested in OurBigBook.com.

Ciro believes that the only thing students must be forced to learn is to speak read and write English and that a teacher's main job after that is to help students find their next big goals and also ties into the backward design philosophy.

Everything else, the student must choose.

This idea is generally known as self-directed learning.

This is most notable in University entry examinations of poor countries, where students often have to waste one extra year of their lives to go through preparation for the useless university entry exams. And then, surprise surprise, if they actually get in, they find that this is not what they really wanted to do, and they just go through to the end miserably because they understandably they don't want to risk another year of their lives.

And importantly: It must be easy to change your area of study.

Ciro saw this first hand École Polytechnique which was way freer than his university in Brazil.

Steve Jobs's university dropout stories from Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address also come to mind.

Interesting projects:

Brown University's Open Curriculum concept sounds exemplary:
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq_6qBnjZTA
- www.brown.edu/academics/undergraduate/open-curriculum
Gallatin School of Individualized Study from New York University
Advanced Placement

The Purpose of Education by Noam Chomsky (2012)

Source.

0:00 discusses Education as a system of indoctrination: indoctrination for people to comply with the Establishment and pass tests, vs the Age of Enlightenment in which education should help you achieve your own intellectual/life goals. He suggests without specific evidence that after the 60's there was explicit intervention in the US to increase the indoctrination aspect, of which debt is a part.
15.45: assessment vs autonomy: exams are useless, except as a tool to help improve teaching and self assess. Tells anecdote about little girl who wanted to learn more about a subject, asked teacher how to learn more, teacher said you can't, you have to study for this useless national exam instead which will determine your future, and if I'm rehired or not.

Godfrey Hounsfield, 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine:^[ref]

They tried hard to educate me but I responded only to physics and mathematics

Suikoden Updated 2025-07-16

This game (1 or 2, can't remember) made an impression on Ciro Santilli for some reason.

Only many many years after playing it, after Ciro started getting more interested, did he learn that it was actually an adaptation of the Chinese mega-classic Water Margin.

"Suikoden" is the actual Japenese transliteration for the Chinese name of the original Water Margin novel.

Yet another case of Chinese thing better known in the West as Japanese.

The game puts great emphasis on the concept of the 108 Stars of Destiny, which never left Ciro's mind: making 108 allies, the main collectible of the game, allows you to make a more powerful alliance, and unlock better endings.

Sun Microsystems Updated 2025-07-16

Although Ciro Santilli is a bit past their era, there's an aura of technical excellence about those people. It just seems that they sucked at business. Those open source hippies. Erm, wait.

Bibliography:

archive.org/details/sunburstascentof00hall Sunburst: the ascent of Sun Microsystems by Mark Hall (1990)

The Dawn and Dusk of Sun Microsystems by Asianometry (2022)

Source. One of the main inspirations for the creation of their workstations were CAD applications.

Super Mario 64 Updated 2025-07-16

Ah, Ciro Santilli loved this one... games young Ciro Santilli played.

And as a result, adult Ciro really enjoys tool-assisted speedruns of the game.

Super Mario 64 reverse engineering project Updated 2025-07-16

github.com/MitchellSternke/SuperMarioBros-C

OMG, both of those just fucking work on Ubuntu 20.04 with README instructions, it is unbelievable, those people don't have lives. And it builds the ROM byte by byte equal from source!

There are a few different versions:

github.com/n64decomp/sm64 for emulator (i.e. or real hardware), tested at 9214dddabcce4723d9b6cda2ebccbac209f6447d
github.com/sm64-port/sm64-port Ubuntu native, tested at 6b47859f757a40096fedd6237f2bc3573d0bc2a4
Full screen with F10.
github.com/sm64pc/sm64ex: fork of sm64-port, untested by Ciro Santilli, but more new amazing usability features, notably:
- --skip-intro: skips the annoying pipe intro and the need to wait for Lakitu to bring Peaches message!
- in-game menu:
  - cheats:
  - hide HUD!
- no level selection yet, but a matter of time?
Also reported to work on ARM: www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/ityg6w/pinephone_playing_super_mario_64_30fps/
They also ported to browser with Emscripten: github.com/sm64pc/sm64ex/wiki/Compiling-for-the-web

Tested with the USA ROM at sha1sum 9bef1128717f958171a4afac3ed78ee2bb4e86ce (you need a ROM to extract assets, which the project automates), which is also documented in the project itself: github.com/sm64-port/sm64-port/blob/6b47859f757a40096fedd6237f2bc3573d0bc2a4/sm64.us.sha1. Disclaimer: Ciro Santilli owns a copy of Super Mario 64.

The only dependency missing from Ubuntu packages is the IRIX QEMU user mode which they need for their tooling. The project also has a QEMU fork for that, and provide a working deb.

From this project it was also noticed that certain ROM releases were not compiled with optimizations enabled, presumably because as a release title the compiler had optimization bugs! www.resetera.com/threads/so-apparently-the-ntsc-build-of-mario-64-didnt-use-any-compiler-optimizations.166277/ But now they do have a working compiler, and by turning that switch FPS increases in certain levels!!!

It is good to know that this game will "never die".

Some quick stupid patches:

jump really high:

diff --git a/src/game/mario.c b/src/game/mario.c
index 5b103fa..83c9f40 100644
--- a/src/game/mario.c
+++ b/src/game/mario.c
@@ -826,7 +826,7 @@ static u32 set_mario_action_airborne(struct MarioState *m, u32 action, u32 actio
         case ACT_JUMP:
         case ACT_HOLD_JUMP:
             m->marioObj->header.gfx.unk38.animID = -1;
-            set_mario_y_vel_based_on_fspeed(m, 42.0f, 0.25f);
+            set_mario_y_vel_based_on_fspeed(m, 200.0f, 0.25f);
             m->forwardVel *= 0.8f;
             break;

Interesting entry points:

src/game/game_init.c

TODO: enable the level select debug feature! tcrf.net/Super_Mario_64_(Nintendo_64)/Debug_Content#Classic_Debug_Display They actually shipped quite a few debug features into the retail game, and they have been reversed too. I tried this but it didn't work (or I don't know how to enable the level select menu):

diff --git a/src/game/main.c b/src/game/main.c
index 9e53e50..b7443a8 100644
--- a/src/game/main.c
+++ b/src/game/main.c
@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ s8 sAudioEnabled = 1;
 u32 sNumVblanks = 0;
 s8 gResetTimer = 0;
 s8 D_8032C648 = 0;
-s8 gDebugLevelSelect = 0;
+s8 gDebugLevelSelect = 1;
 s8 D_8032C650 = 0;

 s8 gShowProfiler = FALSE;

The enhancements/ folder contains a few sample patches.

Figure 1.
Screenshot of mupen64Plus running on Ubuntu 20.04 emulating Super Mario 64 with the title screen hacked by Ciro Santilli based on the Super Mario 64 reverse engineering project
. The title was on a string, so the hack was trivial! The patch used was:
`diff --git a/include/text_strings.h.in b/include/text_strings.h.in index 749179b..626f87e 100644 --- a/include/text_strings.h.in +++ b/include/text_strings.h.in @@ -131,7 +131,7 @@ */ // Main Screens #define TEXT_MARIO _("MARIO") // View Score Menu -#define TEXT_SELECT_FILE _("SELECT FILE") +#define TEXT_SELECT_FILE _("HACKED BY CIRO") #define TEXT_CHECK_FILE _("CHECK FILE") #define TEXT_COPY_FILE _("COPY FILE") #define TEXT_ERASE_FILE _("ERASE FILE")`

Some tutorials of hacking it:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkb7Naczoww SM64 Decomp Tutorial 1: Setting Up and First Code Changes by Bitlytic (2021)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuIpqX4neWg Rovert Decomp Tech Demo by Rovert (2019) Metal cap makes Mario huge.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aG1Iyjo20w Is it Possible to Beat Super Mario 64 as Tiny Mario? (Mini Mario Challenge) coverts the obvious make Mario huge/tiny hack. Huge mario verion: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR_gol6zlIo. There was a pre-decompilation ROM hack doing that trivial change already: Tiny Huge Mario 64. Sample tool-assisted speedrun: www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7BjzZ_Nkk0

FIXING the ENTIRE SM64 Source Code by Kaze Emanuar (2022)

Source. Now that we have the source, modders like this are going nuts.

Survey of open source interactive plotting software with a 10 million point scatter plot benchmark by Ciro Santilli Updated 2025-07-16

stackoverflow.com/questions/5854515/large-plot-20-million-samples-gigabytes-of-data/55967461#55967461

By Ciro Santilli.

Sylvain Poirier Updated 2025-07-16

Ciro Santilli feels a bit like this guy:

he's also an idealist, even more than Ciro. So cute. Notably, he he also dumps his brain online into pages that no-one will ever read
he also thinks that the 2010's education system is bullshit, e.g. settheory.net/learnphysics
trust-forum.net/ some kind of change the world website. But:
Started with Vue.js + Node.js. Details reserved for developers willing to contribute
is a sin to Ciro. Planning a change the world thing behind closed doors? Really? Decentralized, meh.
antispirituality.net/ his atheism website

One big divergence: obsession with translating every page into every language.

His Mathematics Genealogy Project entry: www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=56185

Old French website: spoirier.lautre.net/

singlesunion.org/ so cute, he's looking for true love!!! This is something Ciro often thinks about: why it is so difficult to find love without looking people in the eye. The same applies to jobs to some extent. He has an Incel wiki page: incels.wiki/w/Sylvain_Poirier :-)

Figure 1.
Sylvain's photo from his homepage.
Source. He's not ugly at all! Just a regular good looking French dude.

Why learn Physics by yourself by Sylvain Poirier (2013)

Source.

Systems programming Updated 2025-07-16

Ciro Santilli's definition: softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/151610/what-exactly-is-system-programming/399625#399625

Ciro's tutorial: Linux Kernel Module Cheat.

Teaching method Updated 2025-07-16

By Ciro Santilli: Section "How to teach".

Others:

web.archive.org/web/20191223214225/http://settheory.net/academic-system from settheory.net

Telecommunication Updated 2025-07-16

Communicating at a distance, from Greek "tele" for distance!

A very cool thing about telecommunication is, besides how incredibly fast it advanced (in this sense it is no cooler than integrated circuit development), how much physics and information theory is involved in it. Applications of telecommunication implementation spill over to other fields, e.g. some proposed quantum computing approaches are remarkably related to telecommunication technology, e.g. microwaves and silicon photonics.

This understanding made Ciro Santilli wish he had opted for telecommunication engineering when he was back in school in Brazil. For some incomprehensible reason, telecommunications was the least competitive specialization in the electric engineering department at the time, behind even power electronics. This goes to show both how completely unrelated to reality university is, and how completely outdated Brazil is/was. Sad stuff.

Terminal emulator Updated 2025-07-16

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.

Test driven development Updated 2025-07-16

This is a good approach. The downside is that while you are developing the implementation and testing interactively you might notice that the requirements are wrong, and then the tests have to change.

One intermediate approach Ciro Santilli likes is to do the implementation and be happy with interactive usage, then create the test, make it pass, then remove the code that would make it pass, and see it fail. This does have a risk that you will forget to test something, but Ciro finds it is a worth it generally. Unless it really is one of those features that you are unable to develop without an automated test, generally more "logical/mathematical" stuff. This is a sort of laziness Driven Development.

Text-based game Updated 2025-07-16

Although Ciro Santilli is a big fan of plaintext files and of Vim, not so for games. Games must be easy to understand since they are just a toy.

Tilesets to the rescue!

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics was not in Physics Created 2024-11-04 Updated 2025-07-16

This was the most obscene Nobel Prize of all time. They were completely swept away by the AI boom, and gave this ridiculous prize completely unrelated to Physics.

x.com/cirosantilli/status/1843615145127489921
Nobel Foundation:
Did you know that models for machine learning were based on equations from physics?
Ciro Santilli:
Nice try but the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics still isn't about Physics.
academia.stackexchange.com/questions/214109/is-there-a-reason-why-the-nobel-prize-in-physics-2024-is-awarded-to-a-computer-s
lamarr-institute.org/blog/thoughts-physics-nobel-prize-2024
www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/1fz27m5/nobel_prize_2024/ User ervexHublot comments
Nobel prize sponsored by Nvidia
x.com/skdh/status/1843675220433088598

The artist and the politician Updated 2025-07-16

Once upon a time in the 2010's, Ciro Santilli went to an artsy theatre venue in the suburbia of Paris, dragged by his wife then girlfriend of course.

In the venue, there was a politician, who was doing his best to show how much they supported the arts, and there were of course the artists, involved in the play.

The politician would see a political power score on top of every person's head, and would spend an amount of time talking to each person exactly proportional to that score. This meant basically one sentence to us. The words themselves didn't really matter of course, only the time spent, they just have to produce nice sounds.

One of the artists however, and he seemed quite important in the production, for some reason spent a huge amount of time speaking to us. The score the artist saw on our heads was of love, or how interested we were in the art.

The beauty of mathematics Updated 2025-07-16

Ciro Santilli intends to move his beauty list here little by little: github.com/cirosantilli/mathematics/blob/master/beauty.md

The most beautiful things in mathematics are results that are:

simple to state but hard to prove:
- Fermat's Last Theorem
- number of unknown rationality, e.g. is $e + π$ rational?
- transcendental number conjectures, e.g. is $e + π$ transcendental?
- basically any conjecture involving prime numbers:
  - twin prime conjecture
- many combinatorial game questions, e.g.:
  - first-move advantage in chess
surprising results: we had intuitive reasons to believe something as possible or not, but a theorem shatters that conviction and brings us on our knees, sometimes via pathological counter-examples. General surprise themes include:
- classification of potentially infinite sets like: compact manifolds, etc.
  - classification of finite simple groups
  - classification of regular polytopes
  - classification of closed surfaces, and more generalized Poincaré conjectures
  - classification of wallpaper groups and space groups
- problems that are more complicated in low dimensions than high like:
  - generalized Poincaré conjectures. It is also fun to see how in many cases complexity peaks out at 4 dimensions.
  - classification of regular polytopes
- unpredictable magic constants:
  - why is the lowest dimension for an exotic sphere 7?
  - why is 4 the largest degree of an equation with explicit solution? Abel-Ruffini theorem
- undecidable problems, especially simple to state ones:
  - mortal matrix problem
  - sharp frontiers between solvable and unsolvable are also cool:
    attempts at determining specific values of the Busy beaver function for Turing machines with a given number of states and symbols
    related to Diophantine equations:
    decidability of Hilbert's tenth problem of a given degree and number of variables
    Hilbert's tenth problem over other rings
Lists:
- math.stackexchange.com/questions/139699/what-are-some-examples-of-a-mathematical-result-being-counterintuitive
- math.stackexchange.com/questions/2040811/what-are-some-counter-intuitive-results-in-mathematics-that-involve-only-finite/2055458#2055458
applications: make life easier and/or modeling some phenomena well, e.g. in physics. See also: explain how to make money with the lesson

Good lists of such problems Lists of mathematical problems.

Whenever Ciro Santilli learns a bit of mathematics, he always wonders to himself:

Am I achieving insight, or am I just memorizing definitions?

Unfortunately, due to how man books are written, it is not really possible to reach insight without first doing a bit of memorization. The better the book, the more insight is spread out, and less you have to learn before reaching each insight.