Incoming links: Ciro Santilli
Some people from them contacted Ciro Santilli after Ciro's initial publishing of CIA 2010 covert communication websites.
After a quick Discord chat with them, it was apparent that these people were really cool and knowledgeable.
Also many of them seem to think university is broken and just go hack straigh away.
A perfect example of a dojo learning model.
Also they don't seem to need sleep. Go figure!
With pepole like this, there's hope for Brazil: Section "What poor countries have to do to get richer".
No open signup it seems. TODO CV of owner.
They are making a proof assistant to integrate into the website: github.com/bookofproofs/fpl/, reminds Ciro Santilli of website front-end for a mathematical formal proof system.
Main article: Section "Brain-computer interface".
This is one of the deep tech bets that Ciro Santilli would put his money in as of 2020.
How hard could it be? You just have to learn the encoding of the neural spine/eyes/ear, add an invasive device that multiplexes it, and then the benefits could be mind blowing.
Interestingly and obviously, the initial advances in the area are happening for people that have hearing or vision difficulties. Since they already have a deficient sense, you don't lose that much by a failed attempt.
Hearing is likely to be the first since it feels the simplest. Ciro heard there are even already clinical applications there. TODO source.
Ciro Santilli invented this term, derived from "hardware in the loop" to refer to simulations in which both the brain and the body and physical world of organism models are modelled.
E.g. just imagine running:
- NeuroMechFly
- a Drosophila connectome simulation
Notation used in quantum mechanics.
Ket is just a vector. Though generally in the context of quantum mechanics, this is an infinite dimensional vector in a Hilbert space like .
Bra is just the dual vector corresponding to a ket, or in other words projection linear operator, i.e. a linear function which can act on a given vector and returns a single complex number. Also known as... dot product.
For example:is basically a fancy way of saying:that is: we are taking the projection of along the direction. Note that in the ordinary dot product notation however, we don't differentiate as clearly what is a vector and what is an operator, while the bra-ket notation makes it clear.
The projection operator is completely specified by the vector that we are projecting it on. This is why the bracket notation makes sense.
It also has the merit of clearly differentiating vectors from operators. E.g. it is not very clear in that is an operator and is a vector, except due to the relative position to the dot. This is especially bad when we start manipulating operators by themselves without vectors.
This notation is widely used in quantum mechanics because calculating the probability of getting a certain outcome for an experiment is calculated by taking the projection of a state on one an eigenvalue basis vector as explained at: Section "Mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics".
Making the projection operator "look like a thing" (the bra) is nice because we can add and multiply them much like we can for vectors (they also form a vector space), e.g.:just means taking the projection along the direction.
Ciro Santilli thinks that this notation is a bit over-engineered. Notably the bra's are just vectors, which we should just write as usual with ... the bra thing makes it look scarier than it needs to be. And then we should just find a different notation for the projection part.
Maybe Dirac chose it because of the appeal of the women's piece of clothing: bra, in an irresistible call from British humour.
But in any case, alas, we are now stuck with it.
Ciro Santilli's birth country.
An awesome country, with amazing people and natural resources, and without an evil government like China.
When visiting Brazilian cities coming from Europe, one of the things that shocks the most is the amount of motorcycles. It seems that the poorer the country, the less people's lives are worth, and the more motorcycles there are.
Another thing that was shocking is the amount of phone spam when you get a new SIM card, some legal and some likely illegal. Everyone is desperate for cash it seems on a poor country, and everyone fights hard for it.
The Portuguese term for it is "música popular brasileira". The widely recognized Brazilian acronym is "MPB".
"Brazilian pop" and "Br-pop" are inventions by Ciro Santilli, which are how Ciro thinks Brazil should market it to the world.
Unfortunately "B-pop" is too ambiguous with British pop music, and should be avoided.
YouTube playlist by Ciro Santilli containing all the songs in this section: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcZOZrP1P_V4_SBDnegcLTcP-5YhNmWBB
Bibliography:
- www.slipcue.com/music/brazil/aa_styles/mpb.html has many good album reviews
There is a lot of "who kills who" useless fluff, and everything to do with the wife is boring, but too much gold otherwise.
It is amazing to see how seasons got better and better until the finale. The last season was amazing, Ciro Santilli actually watched all episodes of that one! This is clearly seen on the evolution of metacritic scores.
That's The Best Coffee I've Ever Tasted scence from Breaking Bad
. Source. The chemistry and business related stuff is especially cool. Because when companies and criminals don't tell anyone about their secrets, it is up to the imagination of film makers to do so.The Beauty Of Cooking scened from scence from Breaking Bad S02 E09
. Source. To break the meta means to find a new strategy that offers a significant advantage over the existing meta.
Due to Ciro Santilli's self perceived creative personality, Ciro Santilli is very attracted to meta breaks.
How One Man Changed the High Jump Forever by Olympics (2018)
Source. Dick Fosbury created and implemented the Fosbury Flop jump style in 1968.Akiyo Noguchi asks the rules while climbing! | Beta Break Ep.1 by Albert Ok (2020)
Source. Happened at the 2015 IFSC Climbing World Cup during the Haiyang, China, bouldering event. The author has a playlist of such climbing meta breaks. In climbing, the meta is called "the beta". Climbing competitions are perhaps the sport in which the meta is broken the most often, since each stage is unique.There is great beauty here. Great beauty. It's pure terminal poetry.
The most canonical source code Ciro Santilli can find right now is: sources.debian.org/src/bsdgames/
Ciro Santilli's favorite religion. He does not believe fully in it, nor has he studied it besides through brief Wikipedia and Googling.
Ciro likes Buddhism because it feels like the least "metaphysical explanations to things you can't see" of the religions he knows.
Rather, it feels more like "a plausible theory of the mind" and highly compatible with physics.
Ciro also believes that there is a positive correlation between being a software engineer and liking Buddhist-like things, see also: the correlation between software engineers and Buddhism.
Ciro Santilli defines a "business film" as a film about business, enterprises or entrepreneurship. Political thrillers are closed related as well.
This is one of his favorite film genres!
Some lists:
- www.99signals.com/movies-entrepreneur-watch-inspiration Hit and miss.
- www.imdb.com/list/ls033563570/ Best Business Movies and Documentaries by scott_dowle
Sometimes Ciro Santilli says half jokingly that user interface does not matter.
This software circa 2010-2020 makes that joke not be funny.
How can a UI feel so clunky!
The most aggravating thing is that it is not immediately obvious why it feels so bad.
Can a smartphone's PIN or password be brute-forced in an offline attack? Updated 2024-12-15 +Created 1970-01-01
Ciro Santilli has a hard time understanding why this is possible, e.g. many people use short 4 digit pins, or a short swipe pattern. Why can't this be cracked easily offline?
Ciro Santilli was touched by this, and then watched several other documentaries by Curtis.
Part of Ciro asks if it is all a big conspiracy theory. But it feels and sounds so right.
Notably the part of the governments have lost all power to companies, and can't do anything meaningful anymore to actually represent the people, because globalization reduces the power of governments.
Full name Carl Mark Force IV, the fourth! As mentioned at www.vice.com/en/article/vv7dgj/great-moments-in-shaun-bridges-a-corrupt-silk-road-investigator (this made Ciro Santilli laugh quite hard:
Carl Mark Force IV - the other corrupt cop charged alongside Bridges - is pretty hard to beat, just name-wise.
Seems to simulate the world in an extremely elaborate way.
Ciro can't help but to think that with a little content work, this game engine could also produce a Factorio-like (conveyor belts mentioned in passing at: discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/vehicle-unloading/10783), or a The Sims-like, or an Stardew-valley-like. E.g. even stuff like house building is already included: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnCYGSlZ1gE
They're also adding more and more allyied NPC management in "faction camps" it seems: www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/edg5y0/a_beginners_guide_to_faction_bases/ thus approaching the game further to Dwarf Fortress or RimWorld.
Ciro Santilli played this for 1 day and a half non-stop with save scumming in 2022, then he deleted his saves and uninstalled the game, and started Googling to see how end games can look like, as usual.
The problem is that it is a bit hard to find edited gameplay with highlights only, the type of people who play those games are just regular nerds right. But there is a lot of gameplay videos, just not edited ones.
Then two days later Ciro re-downloaded it and played more, just no so nonstop, the urge was too strong. Two days later, he deleted the save again after clearing out a middle sized town, and reaching a large town.
Then Ciro learned about debug menu, which is the best way to experience all buildings/weapons/abilities easily without grinding more than necessary. TODO any simple easy way to become invincible there? discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/prompt-for-certain-debug-commands/19209/5Lol. Found a "Debug invincibility" and "Debug invisibility" under mutations.
We do not accept feature requests for the debug menu.
But a few days later he played a bit more for a day non-stop after having learnt some more techniques from YouTube, and then deleted again.
Ciro noticed that the part of this game that he likes the most is the early game. Raiding low populated areas like farms is joy. Once you get a car and stabilize, things become a bit less fun, and it is then just a matter of getting more and more powerful with a lot of routine work, which takes time. Sleeping in tents is quite tempting as well, there's a campfire overmap tile that is great. You can actually take down tents Ciro later learnt... that's awesome.
A major joy of this type of game is the ability to loot shops and homes without any moral implications since the former owners are all dead/zombified.
Another major joy is the incredible value you attach to items you discover, because they are truly life changing.
For example, Ciro was first obsessed with his duffel bag, which could carry huge volumes, and made fixing it a top priority once it got ripped!
Then he was obsessed about the 4x4 car he found, which looks like this:where:What a great design! Enough room for a lot of loot, and also the reinforced frame to kill zombies without destroying the car, all while not being overly heavy which spends a lot of fuel, not being too wide which makes maneuvering in cities with broken cars on the road hard! Also the trunks were large enough for large water tanks, which solves your clean water supply forever.
fffffF
fttsfF
fttsfF
fffffFf: frameF: reinforced framet: trunks: seat
Humvees are also good, but they are wider, have a lot of useless seats, and consume diesel, a lot of diesel, runs out very quickly. But they are even tougher than the 4x4, and have a turret that can fire at zombies.
It should be noted however that larger towns are generally just too much to use a car to clear, you will just waste too much fuel/car damage/real world time. The only way is to go at night it seems.
And then guns. The power of a guns is something to behold. Encounters that would easily be your death become one shot escapes. But of course, ammo is very limited, so you want to use each precious shot wisely! FEMA camps are a good place to get some easy powerful rifles and reasonable amount of ammo. Just drive in front of the entrance, and make the armed guards follow you out, then run them over. Try not to attract the zombie inside though, they are useless civilians without weapons, and just take up your time.
This game is also very good to learn some English if you are not a native, as you have to learn what all those bit and bobs you never needed to say before are.
The default tileset when running
cataclysm-tiles is a huge improvement over the text version, but still, could be a bit higher res. Overmap tilesets were only added in 2021 it seems: www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/pxtqsn/new_overmap_tileset_available/. Edit: 0.F appears to come with the proper Ultima tileset by defualt via cataclysm-dda-data Ubuntu 22.04 package. Fantastic!There are other built-in tiles under settings, but all of them are way too resolution for a casual gamer.
github.com/I-am-Erk/CDDA-Tilesets has a good tileset pack. To install on Ubuntu 21.10, drop the release under:and then select
~/.local/share/cataclysm-dda/gfx/UltCa from Settings > Tiles in the main menu. It does make things much more immediately understandable. Edit: after some initial plays, Ciro had a second look at the default -tiles graphics, and they are not so bad. But still, the higher resolution is better. Edit: looks like they are going to merge it in-tree, which is great! github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/commits/master/gfx/UltimateCataclysmNo default sounds, but has a soundpacks mechanism. Sad for now default, but cool for the configurability:Installation is similar to tilesets, but you put it under
- github.com/damalsk/damalsksoundpack/releases. It makes a large noise every time you walk, which is very annoying. Ambient sounds and music are OK though. It should really give a comfy music when in the shelter though.
sounds/ instead of gfx/. Restart required to select the soundpack option, and another restart required for the selected option to be used, clunky.This is the type of thing that prevents wider adoption of this game, it is just too hard to figure out things.
The other major requirement for casual players would be mouse clicking stuff with dropdown menus that show what you can do there (e.g.
E and Shift + G), and better menus, everything should be also doable with a mouse in addition to the keyboard shortcuts.Besides the zombies, it also has some high tech stuff like bionics and aliens mixed in. And mods add other stuff, e.g. cddawiki.chezzo.com/cdda_wiki/index.php?title=Magiclysm which is quite cool. The design document/lore spoilers explain that this is the actual cause of te cataclysm: cataclysmdda.org/lore-background.html
The cool thing about this type of game is that enemies are really powerful, which is so much more realistic. Even a single zombie has to be given lots of respect, especially since healing is a slow process like real life, and killing one feels like an achievement.
Some other cool points:
- www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/3m92cc/are_worlds_truly_infinite/ the map is truly infinite. Everything is persistent. They must freeze things in some state of course when the player is not around, and hydrate it (using React.js-like terminology!) when you come back, but they all look very plausibly continuous to how things where. They call the fully simulated world the "reality bubble": cddawiki.chezzo.com/cdda_wiki/index.php?title=Reality_bubble That pages says though that not everything hydrates. Shame there are no oceans yet: www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/huvnon/when_are_we_getting_oceans/But there are lakes, and lake islands: cddawiki.chezzo.com/cdda_wiki/index.php?title=Lake but they are quite rare on the mapgen, outside of fixed scenario starts.There could definitely be some more biome variety in the game though, e.g. hills, mountains, deserts, tropical forests, and so on. As it stands in 2021, the game is basically a USA midwest simulator. This is confirmed in the official design document: cataclysmdda.org/lore-background.html.This also make the survival scenarios a bit ridiculous. Middle of nowhere means you walk a little bit out of the woods and you reach a huge shopping mall!
Tips for beginners:
- a Reddit list: www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/hsxpco/things_you_wish_you_knew_when_you_started_playing/
- go to town at night, zombies are even blinder than you, it is possible to sneak by massive hoards, fighting one enemy at a time, even when they are well packed together. The only possible reason to go out during the day is to smash zombies with a car without crashing.
- favoriting items makes you not drop them by default with
,. This is fundamental so you can drop loot while keeping survival stuff on you. - indestructible and faster than you early game enemies, encounter means certain death: Survivor zombie, Giant cockroach, Giant wasp. Walking on trails is also potentially deadly, which is very annoying... sometimes you only see dealy enemies like wolves when you are on top of them on trails. Not sure what to do about that.
- pick up all items from any surrounding tile:
/, then on leftIfor inventory, on rightAfor area. You can also examine items witheif not everything fits, and sort by category withs. That's the most important menu in the game! - duffel bags are the best thing ever made, carry huge volumes, and you can craft them too!
- smash (
S) zombie corpses after you kill them, or else they will re-raise after a few hours. They will be wounded and easy to kill however. - just like in real life, cars are the ultimate killing machine. For some reason though, it does not smash zombie corpses. They can also carry infinite crap, after clearing up a town, you can just pick up EVERYTHING without thinking too much, just hit
,. To bulk move things into/off a car, just hold Enter until the inventory is full. So sort huge piles by category: Shift + V then S:.- to get fuel from other cars, you need a rubber hose that can be easily obtained by smashing a refrigerator.
- you can just siphon directly from one vehicle to another if you stop them close by, no need to go through containers every time!
- you will learn where are good places to find cars:
- bridges
- prisons
- mine entrance parking lots
- car refueling/repair stationsJust like in real life, bicycles are pretty good if you can't find a working car, as they don't consume fuel, just stamina. You can even go around hordes if you are crazy enough, and try to look for working cars in towns, but going on the countryside would be wiser. Just make sure you always have enough stamina to cycle out to safety if your electric motor isn't working, which is often the case!
Electric cars can also be recharged from the sun, which means they will never run out. They are generally not very strong, so not suitable for ramming, and the battery runs out relatively soon. But great to stop out of town. - head encumbrance does not seem to do anything besides limit how many hats you can wear, so do ware that motorcycle helmet: www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/a5nq6c/head_encumbrance/
- headlamps are a must
- on the overmap
m, you can fast travel withShift + Wtwice. Not perfect path finding, but saves a lot of useless clicking! - on the EVAC shelter computer, contact us is not useless at all! It shows the nearest refugee center, and can show a lot of map because it shows the full road path there
- climb buildings to see further out. You can start by climbing the EVAC shelter via gutter with
>! But to go down pipes you have to examine it, not<, it's weird. Edit: actually, you can "climb down" any ledge, so that's why. But you can still get hurt, so don't do it unless it is really necessary. You will want to carry the telescope, or a binoculars with you at all times most likely, as it is just a huge asset. You just can't climb back up without the water pipe. Radio tower and silos are other good buildings to climb, and radio towers often contain telescopes which allow you to see very very far, climbing those is a top priority when scouting a new region. Don't jump down, even of 1 floor, as it hurts you. A bit exaggerated, but so be it. - you can grind fabrication easily to level 1 even without a book: www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/6r2477/best_way_to_grind_fabrication/ This is fundamental to make the all important brazier. And you'll learn that dumping things in the brazier unnecessarily burns them out, the uninsuitive "Construct" > "Firewood Source" is a must.
- place brazier immediately outside of the EVAC shelter window, this way you avoid smoke problems, but can still cook from the inside.
- shopping carts are the very best mechanism to carry a lot of loot in town besides a car. And there's a foldable version that can fit into cars, but you have to craft it... www.youtube.com/watch?v=kccBl7cksPY. Most important item ever.
- there's a built-in debug menu that allows you to cheat whatever you want: spawn items, change your stats (e.g. 10000 strenght and smash through walls? no problem), learn skills, reveal map, and teleport. You have to bind a key to it before using it from
?,,is a good bind candidate. Now that's real fun, being God. - auto-smash mode is a must
- you likely should look into spears: www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/7m99jb/why_melee_with_anything_besides_spears/. Reach attacks from spears are OP, as you can hit a zombie, run, wait for it to come in range, hit from afar, run, and so on. Then after killing a zombie, you wait until your stamina recovered with
|. This allows to safely kill anything as fast as you without taking hits. Wooden spear is a good first one, and it is not flimsy and lasts a while, like 30-50 zombies maybe. A pitch fork is another good option if you can find one.
How a typical early day looks like for a newbie: go to down, fight 5 zombies, get some stuff from houses, and run back home because your limbs are too weak and could break. Get home 10AM, and read the hole day and night. Repeat.
A fun play style is: get a car, clear out a small town with a library, bring food and books back to the base, fill the 4 60L tanks with water and bring them on the car as well, and then just read for several days until the food runs out. Repeat. It is not super serious if you don't have a car though, as even "shallow water" pools found in every forest can fill one of them. Exploitative mechanic BTW.
Top feature requests for Ciro Santilli:
- www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/2mni5z/can_i_store_items_in_a_backpack_and_drop_the/. As of 0.E-3-1, drop happens automatically on Take off, but then you have to pick up items that go overweight/volume one by one.
- find items in my inventory by quality, or at least all item qualities in a single sortable table, otherwise it is too hard to know which item can do what
- fill all empty containers with something, e.g. water from a large pool into 25 plastic bottles
- view wound details without having to select bandage or antiseptic.
@"EFFECTS" has a summary, but it is too tiny, that stats window should be fullscreen for sure - realism requests. Ciro is a big fan of realism in CDDA, the more the better, and if you don't like something, just use the debug menu!
- shitting/peeing system
- when you wash clothes (currently important because zombie worn clothes that you pickup are generally filthy and reduce morale), make the clothes wet and require drying. There are even already some rotation clothes handers in houses, but just putting on a bench would be enough. And of course, higher temperatures mean faster drying, next to a fire would be ideal. Wearing wet clothes would of course make you cold and demoralized.
- exercise/fitness
TODO how to create a custom non random map/scenario? Possible from JSON: discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/guide-to-adding-new-content-to-cdda-for-first-time-modders/17781/13/ ?
Their dominating Q&A communication channels are terrible, as of 2021 everything you google leads to: www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/ which suffers from online forums that lock threads after some time are evil (edit: this changed since). They've since made a discourse thankfully however: discourse.cataclysmdda.org/
Source code overview:
- it is funny how the
lang/directory with translations is by far the largest of the repo ta 100MB, way larger thangfx, it's comical
One of the things it simulates is some level of builing stuff:
- you can build a wooden house: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnCYGSlZ1gE including floor, roof, windows. There are also concrete walls. Of course, building is useless, what you really want is a super mega truck that doubles as a home.
- you can dig water channels from rivers/lakes with a digging tool to bring water to your doorstep. TODO can you dig down deeper than "pit", minecraft style?OK, you can build a "Dig downstair" and it works. With a pickaxe you can carve stone sideways. With infinite cheated strength you can just mash the rock walls. The have salts and coal sometimes, funny. Upper floor does not collapse. TODO can't dig the second one "You cannot build here".
- TODO can you generate power e.g. in solar cells or not, and wire it into home appliances? www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/4zm7tf/solar_panels_useless/ from 2016 says no.The solution would be simple... just mark the edge incoming wire from the reality bubble as a magic source that has a given voltage/max amperage/total power or total wattage available. Would be good enough. Sure, some estimates might be hard, e.g. how much sun is there in a far away location of the map, etc. but just having some average of those values would be good enough. E.g. average temperature of an off bubble tile would also be useful to calculate food rotting time.
- cddawiki.chezzo.com/cdda_wiki/index.php?title=Power says yes "farmhouse kitchen running off of outside solar, cabled in"
- www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/9j9e16/wired_homes_and_electrical_systemgrid/ from 2018 says no due to fundamental reality bubble limitations, the only way is with power coming from stuff mounted on vehicles...
A related obvious application would be refrigerators. www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6B0KBJHvZs from 2021 mentions again that you can't have power without vehicles. TODO do the refrigerators in a powered 01 lab protect food?The fork github.com/cataclysmbnteam/Cataclysm-BN is actually trying to add an electric grid...
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead Review by SsethTzeentach (2018)
Source. This game really is right up Seth's alley, glad he tried it out. Perhaps his review was partly what motivated Ciro Santilli to give it a try. But the other part, perhaps even more important, was the joy of trying out crappy open source video games. Ciro especially likes Seth's observation that you could just go all in Mad Max mode. Since vehicles are so powerful, you can just clean up towns with them and basic weapons, then either get a new vehicle when the old one goes bust, or at least very easily find gas. Another good observation is that crafting in this game is amazing.