Sponsor Ciro Santilli's work on OurBigBook.com Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Ciro Santilli is actively looking for donations and contracts so he can continue to work full time on OurBigBook.com sustainably, and develop free hardcore university-level STEM education for all ages!
For 300k USD I will quit my job or not get a new job and work on OurBigBook full time for a second year to try and kickstart The Higher Education Revolution. Status: ~44k / 300k USD. At 2M USD I retire and work on open STEM forever.
I first quit my job 1st June 2024 to work on the project for 1 year after I reached my initial 100k goal mostly via a 1000 Monero donation. In this first year I improved project tech, but didn't go and solve university courses to create super targeted content, and didn't obtain a single contributing user except myself, see a summary at Section "OurBigBook Project Update March 2024".
For a followup, it would be an interesting experiment to spend on year full time solving as many courses as I can from a world class university in the city where I live in the UK, and adding that as content to the platform to see if that would attract interest, and reaching out directly to course takers at their university environment to try and help them. I intended to do that in year one but my got distracted by tech. It is quite possible that no one has ever done that before in history: a highly motivated technical person with the time and opportunity to do one single thing: help top university students learn their STEM courses better and have more fun doing so. I have in particular identified one course where this would be particularly feasible: the mathematics course, given that much of their course materials, and also their building are quite open. I do sometimes wonder if doing this would be just a waste of my life. But part of me tells me it could generate big interest and is worth a try.
For a second follow up year, I increased my requirement to 300k USD to give me more peace of mind. So the total donation so far is 244k, and if I reach a total of 300k USD, then I'll work on the project for a second year.
At 2M USD I retire and work on open STEM projects forever. At these timelines, I can't guarantee it will be specifically on education technology specifically all the way, but I guarantee that whatever it is it will be open and extremely well explained as usual.
It's necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant - James Watson
Total donations to date ~244k USD. Donation breakdown:
More details: Section "Accounting method"
How to give:
And if you have a different preferred payment mechanism not listed above, please contact Ciro, and he will set it up.
Ciro's current ambitions require him to remain in developed countries, because Ciro wants to document advanced science and technology by liaising with top universities, and there is not nearly as much high technology in poor countries. Remaining in developed countries is also a required due to family reasons.
Note to potential anonymous crypto donors: anonymous donations incur a regulatory risk. I cash out most of such donations and announce it very clearly to the government and banks. For example, at one point Barclays even froze my UK account. Things have been manageable for now, but it is stressful to think that at any point I might be kicked out from my bank. On one hand, such donations serve as a fun test of the financial system. But on the other, if all banks reject my money or if the government decides to take it, I will write off the anonymous donation at zero.
If you would like public acknowledgement for your support, Ciro will very gladly give it, just let Ciro know how you'd prefer it. Due to Ciro Santilli's campaign for freedom of speech in China, many supporters have chosen to be anonymous, and that is totally fine, not everyone is interested in politics, or has a situation where going public is acceptable, so we don't have a standard setup yet, let's build it together. A acknowledgement section at the bottom of this page would be a minimum, but I for larger donations we could add a your advertisement in a locations such as:
100k USD/year is a semi arbitrary amount that sounds nice. My last day job total compensation as of 2024 was about 150k USD/year.
Video 1.
Intro to the OurBigBook Project
. Source.
Video 2.
OpenGL GPU GLSL fragment shader real time v4l2 Linux webcam computer vision box blur vs CPU
. Source.
Figure 1.
Ciro Santilli playing with a pipette at the University of Cambridge circa 2017
. Although totally disqualified for it, Ciro would really like to understand and explain cool scientific experiments in insane detail much as he does with computer software, related:
Maybe if he ever gets enough credibility, such opportunities would actually materialize. It could be a bit like Periodic Videos, but for molecular biology and physics, and backed by OurBigBook text/tree with minimal openly licensed videos. The fact that such opportunities are essentially impossible outside of the boredom of the university system is something we should really change about education.
Read the full article
Sponsor Ciro Santilli's work on OurBigBook.com / 1000 Monero donation / Barclays regulation Created 2024-10-23 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
On Friday 18th October 2024, Ciro Santilli received a call from Barclays asking where some of the money in his Barclays account came from and went to, obviously linked to the Monero donation and sale.
The following day, the 19th, a "explain your income in 30 days or you'll lose you account" letter arrived, dated from the 8th of October. This had been available on the online documents, but Ciro did not get an email for it so he was unaware.
The following Tuesday, the 22nd, Ciro noticed that all payments from his card were being declined, and upon calling Barclays they said that this was for pending regulatory issues. His account had been frozen.
The following Tuesday, 29th of November, Ciro noticed that a regular payment had gone through. He then tested his card and it was working again, so at some point the account had been unfrozen.
Part of me wants the donor to give me his real identity and sort this out. It would likely be better for the OurBigBook Project. But the other part of me wants to test the British monetary system. Fun and stressful times.
The chaotic nature of Barclays' Know your customer is apparent:
  • they took 6 months to flag anything
  • once it was finally flagged
    • their communication is a mess:
      • the letter was messy, with unclear list of transactions at some points and several typos
      • there was no clear notice that the account was frozen or unfrozen. While there can be a rationale for not giving notice before the freeze to prevent criminals from fleeing, once you freeze a regular account user will find it out mighty fast, so there is no point in not notifying them about it
    • they block the account days after the online document had been available (which unfortunately Ciro did not see due to lack of email notification), but before you've had the time to reply. This achieves the worst of both worlds both worlds by:
    Also, they freeze accounts of people who are still obviously in the country at their home address and making regular purchases locally as before. Not exactly how a criminal would act?
It is also slightly fun, but not surprising, to see the AgoraDesk buyers refuse to give any contact besides their public Telegram, not even email. I'm not sure that Barclays does Telegram! Not super important though because ultimately the initial Monero donation is anonymous. Shame I started on AgoraDesk before finding out about cryptocurrency swappers such as SimpleSwap.
De-banking is apparently a widespread issue in the UK: www.uktech.news/fintech/revolut-good-reason-debank-20240909: e.g. www.uktech.news/fintech/revolut-good-reason-debank-20240909 notably mentions a well known base by, God forgive me, Nigel Farage.
Read the full article