Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com $£ Sponsor €¥ 中国独裁统治 China Dictatorship 新疆改造中心、六四事件、法轮功、郝海东、709大抓捕、2015巴拿马文件 邓家贵、低端人口、西藏骚乱
A bit like a cult.
Many speakers are good. But especially in TEDx, we've had some notorious ones:
Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia CHAPTER VIII www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/652/pg652-images.html:
Oppression is, in the Abyssinian dominions, neither frequent nor tolerated; but no form of government has been yet discovered by which cruelty can be wholly prevented. Subordination supposes power on one part and subjection on the other; and if power be in the hands of men it will sometimes be abused. The vigilance of the supreme magistrate may do much, but much will still remain undone. He can never know all the crimes that are committed, and can seldom punish all that he knows.
This is a must if the people want to regain control of their society from apathetic politicians.
I would also increase voter percentage due to convenience, and reduce the weight of voting fraud cases, as everyone would be able to check that their own vote was counted correctly.
And then, we would be able to have referendums for basically any important decision being made. No need to go out on the streets and waste your time in a mass protest! Just vote!
It is possible to implement anonymous electronic voting with ring signatures, an algorithm also used by Monero, an anonymity focused cryptocurrency, as mentioned e.g. on this 2004 paper eprint.iacr.org/2004/281.pdf. The system can be set in a way such that you can only deanonymize someone if everyone else, or a very large number of people, conspire against that person.
The same system could also be used to setup forums where only citizens of the country could comment and propose changes and vote on them.
With electronic voting, we could have a system where you can let someone you trust vote for you automatically, or vote automatically for certain subjects alone, a bit like we do by electing senators. But then you would also be able to override specific votes if you wanted to.
In this system therefore, anyone who can proxy vote has to have their vote public, and placed in a decent website that shows clearly who voted for what.
Related:
  • www.vote-coin.com/ allows you to delegate your voting power to someone else, that's perfect!
Fiscal paradises must be invaded and destroyed.
Video 1. How the rich avoid paying taxes by Vox (2021) Source. Features interview with Morris Pearl, a rich dude that is campaigning to tax the rich. He also participates in an association called "Patriotic Milionairs" to further this agenda.
Video 2. What Eating the Rich Did For Japan by Asianometry (2021) Source.
Video 3. Georgism 101 by BritMonkey (2019) Source.
Obviously coupled with measures to prevent capital flight. This would be a required step to achieve Ciro Santilli's dream of unconditional basic income.
Perhaps the election of Donald Trump in 2016 woke up the democrats at last, that they were just making empty promises without actually benefiting the poor? www.vox.com/2019/3/19/18240377/estate-tax-wealth-tax-70-percent-warren-sanders-aoc. Or is just another facade?
Bibliography:

Law

words: 527 articles: 63
Video 4. DealBook Conference 2015 - Activist Investing by New York Times Events (2015) Source. At this timestamp, Carl Icahn tells an anecdote of how he found that an entire 12-floor building of the American Car and Foundry Company which he had recently bought was not doing anything useful, and fired the entire building.

Advertising

words: 117 articles: 7
It should be illegal to give someone money to advertise your product.
We should just use tags and upvote-based algorithms.
Advertisement is a form of brainwashing.
TODO find Sergey Brin quote bout advertising being a form of perverting search engine ranking neutrality. In other words, there are neutral metrics to what people find good, like links and upvotes. And then advertising is a way to pervert that to someone's profit.
Sometimes Ciro Santilli thinks advertising should be on-subscription only, but that is too restrictive, e.g. imagine the local business owner who wears a t-shirt of their business.
White papers are a form of advertisement. They are not peer reviewed papers.
Clickbait advertisement
Taboola is a clickbait trained neural network. Which happens to have been written by Adolf Hitler.
If a Big Company makes a product that Does Something, they just call it Big Company Does Something.
If a product is called "Big Company Catchy Name Does Something", then it came from an acquisition, and they wanted to keep the name due to its prestige and to not confuse users.
Basically a social network where you don't know the other people very well.
During the early 2020s, many of the idiotic social media platforms started adding a non optional "feature" of suggesting feed posts by people you don't follow:
It must have been some A/B testing overload that made that decision to try and make things more addictive for everyone. Or perhaps as a way to drive revenue with people paying to cheat the algorithm and boost their posts.
European Union we need you.
Ciro Santilli very aggressively aggressively people in social media.
There are basically 3 categories:
  • are you Ciro's parents or children or brothers: OK, keep following, unless you are truly truly very noise.
  • does Ciro really really like or respect you? OK, he can take some useless (i.e. non-technical/scientific) posts
  • otherwise: one bad post and unfollow
Related:
Ciro Santilli is just too old to understand what the point of that website is compared to Twitter. There must be one, right?
Also, it is impossible to use it on the browser without a cell phone, similar critique as Section "Messaging software that force you to have a mobile phone" but a bit more aggravating, because, well, you would expect creators want people to see their stuff on a browser unlike private messages?
Circa 2023, the feed is an unbearable list of stupid suggestions, never-ending idiotic memes, and you just end up missing posts you actually care about from people you actually follow.
Of course those racist Nazis are a bunch of idiots, but how can you be surprised when freedom-of-speech focused tech gets used by them? www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentralized-social-network-gab-migration-fediverse-app-blocking
Obviously, a few large instances dominate the user base for all practical purposes: kevq.uk/centralisation-and-mastodon/. And likely the network splits into hate-speech/non-hate-speech blacklist boundaries. And since the dominating closed networks will never lose user counts (???), the only instance that dominates will be the main hate speech one.
The flagship instance was mastodon.social and then in 2020 they closed signups for it and created a secondary mastodon.online.
The "advanced interface" feature is bad. Really bad. MacOS file browser inspired.
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.
Data that is inscribed in a blockchain as a way to perpetuate the data, rather than to follow the main intended purpose of the given blockchain, e.g. ASCII art instead of financial transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Namecoin examples are catalogued at: punycodes.xyz. The are small Unicode art or emoji code.
There seems to be nothing of particular artistic value as far as we've seen so far, the only interest in such tokens seems to be that:
  • there are some examples that came earlier than those in the Bitcoin blockchain, notably a bit earlier than Section "BitLen"
  • Namecoin is a NFT system unlike Bitcoin which is fungible, so those assets are naturally tradable
A useless piece of paper (or digital version of it) that you can pay taxes with :)
As opposed to:
  • 2020 cryptocurrencies, while governments still don't accept them for taxes, as well as other assets that are also not accepted for taxes (i.e. most assets)
  • physical currencies that have intrinsic material value, e.g. gold coins
Our minimal definition of "electronic money" is the following.
Instead of creating legal tender such as Dollars as banknotes or transactions in some complex obscure banking system, the government offers an official simple centralized API that represents it instead.
Each citizen or legal entity has an account there, and transfers between registered users are just simple API calls.
So for example you would e able to put all your money in the government account instead of using useless banks. And then you would invest it as you want with the investment company of your choice, without tying the "my money is here" with "this is the best investment" aspects of banks.
Centralized system that still attempts some level of privacy.
In it, a central bank issue tokens that are stored offline in your cell phone, a bit like cash bank notes.
When you take those tokens, a corresponding amount gets removed from your bank account, a bit like cash bank notes.
When a transaction is made, tokens are put into a spent token list via central API, and cannot be double spent thereafter. The corresponding ammount is then added to the bank account of the receiver. This also means that offline transactions are not possible.
When emitting, the bank signs the token with their private key. When spending, the bank checks that signature.
How do we prevent the bank from logging which token goes to which user besides trusting that they are running the software we whink they are running? Notably, couldn't timing be used to identify that?
Video 5. The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic by Yanis Varoufakis (2018) Source. Talk given at the Oxford Union. youtu.be/cCA68U3P_Z8?t=1288 describes the problem with the Uero a bit better.
Video 6. Predecimal Currency: The Nightmare in Your Pocket by BritMonkey (2021) Source.
Video 7. Saltburn's Halfpenny Toll Bridge by BBC (1971) Source. What they mean is one penny return, good clickbait though. Also the presenter is hot, that Nouvelle Vague feel.
They were basically a Microsoft of their century. A little less monopolistic perhaps as countries believed they should own they natural resources, unlike their data.

Company

words: 260 articles: 43
At crankstart.org/grants the organization's website describes mostly California activities, but they do at least also act in the University of Oxford, see: Section "University of Oxford study costs".
Presumably the name refers to crank starting an old car, as in helping out those in difficulty like poor students get started in life. But is also an obscure slang for a type of handjob according to Urban Dictionary.
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:
As of 2021, mostly useless business courses: learn.saylor.org
One redeeming factor however: they have a GitHub: github.com/saylordotorgo
They seem to favor the dreaded CC BY-NC-SA.
Video 8. Michael Saylor interview by Lex Fridman (2022) Source.
At the timestamp:
When I go, all my assets will flow into a foundation, and the foundation's mission is to make education free for everybody forever.
What statement... maybe he's actually not crooked, maybe it was just an accounting mistake... God, why.
If only Ciro Santilli knew how to contact him and convince him that his current approach is innefective and that Ciro has something better! Michael, please Google into this page some day, Ciro Santilli needs funding for OurBigBook.com. A hopeless Tweet at: twitter.com/cirosantilli/status/1548350114623660035. Also tried to hit his saylor@strategy.com.
  • twitter.com/saylor 2.6 M followers as of 2022. Because of Bitcoin? Or was he famous before that?
  • www.michael.com/ yes, he is Michael.com lol. When did he get the domain, and at what price? He's mildlly obsessed with domain names it seems: www.domainsherpa.com/saylor/. He also bought frank.com, mike.com. emma.com. This was between 1994 and 2000. He mentions that his email is saylor@strategy.com. strategy.com redirects to microstrategy.com as of 2022, so seems still valid.
    We actually got a backlink from tvt.phishlabs.com to this page in August 2022, a phising security provider, presumably for showing his email here. This reminds Ciro of the All GitHub Commit Emails event!
    A quick google for that address also leads to www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liveonline/00/business/saylor0621.htm, a year 2000 profile page by the Washington Post, followed by a Q&A. In the Q&A, Michael himself gives his email in relation to Saylor Academy:
    Kensington, Maryland: What has happened to your vision of an internet university? I believe it is an important initiative and it doesn't require $100 million to get started. We at the Rockefeller Foundation would like to become involved. How can we do this?
    Michael Saylor: The internet university is alive and well. My goal is to initially roll out a cyber-libary of digital video that can be used by any for-profit or non-profit organization in order to accelerate the free education initiative. Eventually, people may just go direct to the web site.
    I think the entire thing will unfold over about 10 years.
    Send me an email if you would like to get involved. (saylor@strategy.com)
    so it was already beyong leaked. Ciro did hit that email address seeking funding for OurBigBook.com, but no reply unfortunately. Maybe you gotta be part of the Rockefeller family to get a reply from these people? Well, at least this led to Ciro learning about the Rockefeller Foundation.
No mention of education specifically on website. But at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liveonline/00/business/saylor0621.htm from Michael J. Saylor they did show interest, so adding to this Educational charitable organization list anyways.
Of all the rich person foundations, this is the one that feels the most hardcore.
They put huge focus on autism. Do they have an autistic child? Yes: www.forbes.com/pictures/eilm45mll/james-simons-autism/?sh=7825234250ce his adughter.
Video 9. What I learned in Harvard part 1 by Jorge Paulo Lemann (2012) Source. Portuguese talk about his experiences. A bit bably, but has a few good comments:
  • You don't learn the Harvard experience, you absorb it.
  • Being amongst excellent people makes you learn what excelent people are like, just like only by tasting many different types of wine can you know what good wine is like.
    This one does have bias danger though. But detecting greatness, is as type of bias arguably.
It is harder to measure the impact of nonprofits than of for-profits, since you can't just look at their bank balances.
This is one fundamental difficulty of nonprofit work, how to prove that you deserve the investments and not someone else.
Generally, prizes that pay big lumps of money to well established individuals are a bit useless, it would be better to pay smaller sums to struggling beginners in the field, of which there are aplenty.
The most important part about prizes should not be the money, nor the recognition, but rather explaining better what the laureates did. In this, most prizes fail. Thus Ciro Santilli's project idea: Project to explain each Nobel Prize better.
By Zuckerberg. The selection seems decent. And natural sciences only, which is good. A bit more application oriented than the Nobel Prize it seems, e.g. 2022 separates physics and fundamental physics.
Appears to explain award reasoning even worse than the Nobel Foundation.
royalsociety.org/grants-schemes-awards/awards/copley-medal/ says it is now open to international citizens, but having a quick look at the 2010 awards still suggests that it is very British centric, or at least anglophone centric, much like the society fellowship itself. That's likely the reason why the Nobel prize won, being much more international from the start.
Kyoto Prize
That 15,000 canadian dollar prize though, what a joke!!
Ciro Santilli approves of this one, related: Section "Free gifted education".
The downside of the Thiel Fellowship is that it is realistically impossible for its fellows to do anything in deep tech, only information science startsup would be possible, as they would not have the labs, or lab skills required for any deep tech if they drop out before a PhD. Related: Section "The only reason for universities to exist should be the laboratories".
The only solution is the harder process of actually remodelling our very broken educational system.
More like a "lifetime achievement" though, rather than the Nobel Prize, which tends to be for more specific achievements.

Knowledge olympiads

words: 318 articles: 5
Events that trick young kids into thinking that they are making progress, but only serve to distract them from what really matters, which is to dominate a state of the art as fast as possible, contact researches in the area, and publish truly novel results.
Financially backed by high schools trying to make ads showing how they will turn your kids into geniuses (but also passionate teachers who fell into this hellish system), or companies who hire machines rather than entrepreneurs.
The most triggering thing possible is when programming competitions don't release their benchmarks as open source software afterwards: at least like that they might help someone to solve their real world problems. Maybe.
On a related note, hackathons are also mostly useless. Instead of announcing a hackathon, just announce a web forum where people with similar interests can talk to one another instead, and let them code it out on GitHub if they want to. Restricting intensive development to a few days tends to produce crappy code and not reach real goals.
Some irrelevant people highlight that knowledge Olympiads can have good effects, because they are "an opportunity to meet university teachers and their research organizations". Ciro's argument is just that there are much more efficient ways to achieve those goals.
A waste of time like the rest of the knowledge olympiads.
To be fair, this is one of the least worse ones.
If your kids are about to starve, fine, do it.
But otherwise, Ciro Santilli will not, ever, spend his time drilling programmer competition problems to join a company, life is too short for that.
Life is too short for that. Companies must either notice that you can make amazing open source software projects or contributions, and hire you for that, or they must fuck off.
Companies must either notice that you can make amazing projects or contributions, and hire you for that, or they must fuck off.
Days of the week where you don't do what you set out to do. And yet, it is in those days that you save your sanity, and possibly the world. Wait, this sounds exactly like a week day?
Figure 1. Calvin and Hobbes "Oh No! I overslept! I gotta get up!" cartoon. Source.

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