grep Updated +Created
If you are a programmer, grep becomes a verb: "to grep" means "to search text files", much like "to Google" means "to search random stuff online".
How to teach / Advertise your material Updated +Created
Once you have crated something awesome, you have to advertise it, otherwise no one will ever find it.
This means:
  • whenever you walk into a classroom, give students a link to the material
    Then ask them if they want to talk about anything.
    Then leave the classroom and go produce more good material instead of wasting your time there :-)
  • whenever someone asks as question on an online forum, answer it, and link to the section of your material that also answers that question.
    The material will answer many of their future questions.
  • after you've done something awesome, Google possible relevant keywords that should hit it.
    This will lead you to other websites that talk about the same content.
    Then, leave comments on those pages linking to your stuff, or email the authors of those pages.
    It is borderline spam, but if the subject is closely related, it is a win for everyone.
Eventually, people will find you on the front page of Google searches, and then you will know that you've truly made something useful.
Ilana Wisby Updated +Created
Founding CEO of Oxford Quantum Circuits.
As mentioned at www.investmentmonitor.ai/tech/innovation/in-conversation-with-oxford-quantum-circuits-ilana-wisby she is not the original tech person:
she was finally headhunted by Oxford Science and Innovation to become the founding CEO of OQC. The company was spun out of Oxford University's physics department in 2017, at which point Wisby was handed "a laptop and a patent".
Did they mean Oxford Sciences Enterprises? There's nothing called "Oxford Science and Innovation" on Google. Yes, it is just a typo oxfordscienceenterprises.com/news/meet-the-founder-ilana-wisby-ceo-of-oxford-quantum-circuits/ says it clearly:
I was headhunted by Oxford Sciences Enterprises to be the founding CEO of OQC.
Interesting members of the Santilli family Updated +Created
Found through Google with no direct relation known to Ciro Santilli:
Possibly related variants:
Job application by Ciro Santilli Updated +Created
2025 round one during week of April 21st, not toning down online profiles:
John M. Martinis Updated +Created
Timeline:
Julian Kelly Updated +Created
Timeline:
He went pretty much in a straight line into the quantum computing boom! Well done.
Largey Brage Updated +Created
The outcome of Larry Page and Sergey Brin performing a Dragon Ball fusion dance.
Both of them attended Montessori education at some point. Interesting! Mentioned in a talk by Sergey and highlighted at The Google Story.
But in 2023 they were somewhat pulled back in by the AI race and competition with ChatGPT.[ref]
As The Google Story puts it about Largey:
Scholarship was not just emphasized in their homes; it was treasured.
Ciro Santilli likes that.
Machine learning company Updated +Created
This section is about companies that primarily specialize in machine learning.
The term "machine learning company" is perhaps not great as it could be argued that any of the Big tech are leaders and sometimes, especially in the case of Google, has a main product that is arguably a form of machine learning.
Most of the companies in this section likely going to be from the AI boom era.
Meme Updated +Created
The best way to learn about them as of 2020 is to Google into Know Your Meme.
Nerds 2.0.1 Updated +Created
Very very good. Those nice pre-Dot-com bubble vibes.
Part 1 - Networking The Nerds talks about the TCP/IP and early machines implementing it:
Part 2 - Serving the Suits
Part 3 - Wiring the World:
OAuth Updated +Created
The fatal flaw of OAuth is that websites have to enable specific providers, they can't just automatically select the correct OAuth for a given email domain. This means that the vast majority of websites will only provide the most widely popular providers such as Google, and the like, which means people won't have decent privacy.
So you are just better off with password logins and a decent password manager.
Open Images dataset Updated +Created
As of v7:
The images and annotations are both under CC BY, with Google as the copyright holder.
OpenStreetMap Updated +Created
It is rare to find a project with such a ridiculously high importance over funding ratio.
E.g., as of 2020, their help login help.openstreetmap.org/ shows MyOpenID as an option, which was discontinued in 2014, and not Google OAuth.
They do still seem to have a bit more activity than gis.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/openstreetmap on Stack Exchange.
Complaints:
All of this is a shame, because they do have some incredible data that you cannot find easily on other maps because people just edited it up.
Oracle Database Updated +Created
Often known simply as SQL Server, a terrible thing that makes it impossible to find portable SQL answers on Google! You just have to Google by specific SQL implementation unfortunately to find anything about the open source ones.
OurBigBook.com / Other projects Updated +Created
OurBigBook.com / Stack Exchange Updated +Created
Stack Exchange solves to a good extent the use cases:
points of view. It is a big open question if we can actually substantially improve it.
Major shortcoming are mentioned at idiotic Stack Overflow policies:
OurBigBook.com / User acquisition Updated +Created
The general and ideal user acquisition is of course organic Googling:
However, before that point, it is very likely that Ciro will have to physically do some very hard and specific user acquisition work at some University. Maybe there is a more virtual way of achieving this.
This work will involve going through some open set of university lecture notes, and creating a superior version of them on OurBigBook.com, and somehow getting students to notice it and use it as a superior alternative to their crappy lecture notes.
Another very promising route is publishing the answers to old examination questions on the website. It is likely that we will be able to overcome any copyright issues by uploading only the answers to numbered questions. There is a minor risk that these would be considered derivative works of the copyrighted questions. But universities would have to be very anal to enforce a DMCA for that!!!
Getting in contact with students is an epic challenge, as an incredibly deep chasm separates us:
Walking with advertisement t-shirts mentioning specific course names in some university location is something Ciro seriously considers, that's how desperate things are. Watch out: docs.ourbigbook.com/#public-relations for T-shirt news!
Pageviews Analysis Updated +Created
Cool tool that allows you to graphically visualize page view counts of specific pages. It offers somewhat similar insights to Google Trends.
The homepage shows views of selected pages, e.g. when Google had their 25th birthday: pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2023-09-11&end=2023-10-01&pages=Cat|Dog|Larry_Page Larry Page briefly beat "Cat" and "Dog".
/topviews shows the most viewed pages for a given month: pageviews.wmcloud.org/topviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&date=2023-08&excludes= It is extremelly epic that XXX: Return of Xander Cage, a 2017 film, is on the top ten of the August 2023 month. The page was around 8th place on a Google search for "xxx": archive.ph/wip/giRY8 at the time. XXXX (beer) was also on the top 20, followed by Sex on 21.