Ciro Santilli
OurBigBook.comA 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!
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Fiscal paradises must be invaded and destroyed.
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 Millionaires" to further this agenda.What Eating the Rich Did For Japan by Asianometry (2021)
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.
Why don't the poor vote in mass for it is incomprehensible considering e.g. the wealth inequality in the United States as of 2020!
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:
- www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/26/698057356/if-a-wealth-tax-is-such-a-good-idea-why-did-europe-kill-theirs If a Wealth Tax is Such a Good Idea, Why Did Europe Kill Theirs?
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzonR81vVzM The Mayfair Set, Episode 2 - Entrepreneur Spelt S.P.I.V. (1999) by Adam Curtis explains nicely how in the 60's, Jim Slater bought stock of inefficient companies, and sold off inefficient assets to make a profit.He managed to do that because previously people had regarded those companies as family companies, and never looked into the fact that they families weren't actually majority shareholders anymore.While this increased efficiency, it also fired many people, and the government didn't manage to change legislation fast enough to tax those profits to increase welfare.
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.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.
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.
x.com/Birdyword/status/1777591446612193667Singaporean taxi drivers are the cutest.
A while ago a Singaporean taxi driver asked me what a UK hawker centre lunch might cost. I explained that there aren't any. He asked what office workers ate, and I explained the concept of Meal deals. And he looked at me with such a powerful combination of pity and revulsion.
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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:
- Twitter: TODO forgot year
- LinkedIn: 2023OK, set "Most recent posts" on "Feed preferences" and it seems to work.
- How to view only posts by followed on Facebook feed?
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:
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Sample "Winklevii" reference: www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2021/04/05/revenge-of-the-winklevii-facebook-winklevoss-bitcoin-nft-billionaire-revenge/?sh=3d8423a71572
These dudes are relentless!!!
How the Winklevoss twins’ crypto program failed by Good Work (2023)
Source. The Social Network: Eduardo Saverin tells the hearing how he was trapped into the shares dilution
. Source. The Social Network: dinner with Sean Parker
. Source. The Social Network: Eduardo Saverin tells the hearing how his shares were diluted
. Source. The Social Network: I'm Not a Bad Guy
. Source. 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?
- www.architecturaldigest.com/story/zuckerberg-real-estate-holdings#:~:text=Zuckerberg%20began%20what%20has%20now,Kauai%20for%20about%20%24116%20million.
- padailypost.com/2017/11/15/zuckerberg-builds-new-houses-near-his-palo-alto-home/
- www.staradvertiser.com/2017/01/18/business/facebooks-zuckerberg-sues-to-force-land-sales/?HSA=74dae150a1d9f99e2592d0eac31ea430d01f35d5
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.
- www.komando.com/social-media/facebook-customized-feeds/847500/
- www.quora.com/How-do-I-limit-my-news-feed-to-friends-only-on-Facebook
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIA8VydqiNQ OK they split their feed into multiple feeds. However on page follows www.facebook.com/?filter=pages&sk=h_chr you very quickly reach:the history doesn't go back even a few days as of November 2023! And the favorites feed www.facebook.com/?filter=favorites&sk=h_chr is more explicit on their ridiculous timing:
You're all caught up on Most Recent posts Check back later for more updates
OMG!You're up to date on posts from the last 3 days
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.
Ciro Santilli's LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/cirosantilli/ see also: accounts controlled by Ciro Santillis.
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.
Impossible to hide your current location?
Ciro Santilli's accounts: Section "Ciro Santilli's Twitter accounts".
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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.
A catalogue for Bitcoin can be found at: Section "Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain".
This is opposed to messages that may be left by non miners during transactions.
Miner messages are therefore of course much harder to control on established blockchains, as they basically require consensus in a mining pool to set. Most of them are just ads for the mining pool itself.
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
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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?
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.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.
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In this section we list charitable organizations that support education or research:
- elifesciences.org/labs by eLife
- www.digital-science.com/investment/catalyst-grant/ by Shuttleworth Foundation.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLOS
- www.chanzuckerberg.com/ Zuck has already invested in education previously:
- openuk.uk/
- Hmm, some/all of it is a copy of LibreTexts but with URLs shorter than a million characters, e.g.:
- Sir Peter Lampl, Education Endowment Foundation and Sutton Trust
- Jacobs Foundation, by German-Swiss coffee mogul Klaus Johann Jacobs
- joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/what-open-education_en
- www.non-trivial.org/ "Launch Your Own Impactful Project CHOOSE YOUR CAUSE. GET EXPERT GUIDANCE. FIND A SOLUTION AND MAKE IT HAPPEN."
- by United States Government:
- FY 2024 Education Innovation and Research:
- Education Innovation and Research (EIR) Notices Inviting Applications
- oese.ed.gov/offices/office-of-discretionary-grants-support-services/innovation-early-learning/education-innovation-and-research-eir/fy-2024-competition/
- www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/05/06/2024-09797/applications-for-new-awards-education-innovation-and-research-eir-program-early-phase-grants
- FY 2024 Education Innovation and Research:
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.
Appears to have mixed licenses. E.g.:
- phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/University_Physics/Book%3A_University_Physics_(OpenStax)/Book%3A_University_Physics_III_-_Optics_and_Modern_Physics_(OpenStax)/06%3A_Photons_and_Matter_Waves/6.06%3A_De_Broglies_Matter_Waves is CC BY
- but we had seen another one that was CC BY-NC-SA
- phys.libretexts.org/Courses/University_of_California_Davis/UCD%3A_Physics_9HE_-_Modern_Physics/06%3A_Emission_and_Absorption_of_Photons/6.1%3A_Transitions_Between_Stationary_States CC BY-SA
- chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_Chemistry/Introductory_Chemistry_(CK-12) uses the custom "CK-12 license" which seems a bit like CC BY-NC-SA
- some don't even have a free license, e.g.: phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Quantum_Mechanics/Quantum_Mechanics_(Fowler)/00%3A_Front_Matter/04%3A_Licensing
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:
- the internal cross references are somewhat broken as of 2022.
- their URLs are HUGE! All components of every ancestor are in it. E.g. check this out: phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Quantum_Mechanics/Introductory_Quantum_Mechanics_(Fitzpatrick)/12%3A_Time-Dependent_Perturbation_Theory/12.13%3A_Forbidden_Transitions Insane.
OK let's database it:
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This is an interesting initiative which has some similarities to Ciro Santilli's OurBigBook project.
The fatal flaw of the initiative in Ciro Santilli's opinion is the lack of user-generated content. We will never get there without UGC and algorithms, never.
Also as of 2021, it mostly useless business courses: learn.saylor.org unfortunately.
But it has several redeeming factors which Ciro Santilli aproves of:
- exam as a service-like
- they have a GitHub: github.com/saylordotorgo
Licensing appears to be a mixed mess between the dreaded CC BY-NC-SA and the good CC BY, e.g.:?
The founder Michael J. Saylor looks a bit crooked, Rich people who create charitable prizes are often crooked comes to mind. But maybe he's just weird.
Michael Saylor interview by Lex Fridman (2022)
Source. At the timestamp:What statement... maybe he's actually not crooked, maybe it was just an accounting mistake... God, why.
When I go, all my assets will flow into a foundation, and the foundation's mission is to make education free for everybody forever.
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 issaylor@strategy.com.strategy.comredirects tomicrostrategy.comas 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:so it was already beyond 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.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)
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.
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.
- This one does have bias danger though. But detecting greatness, is as type of bias arguably.
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.
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.
The reason public relations is evil in modern society is because, like discrimination, public relations works by dumb association and not logic or fairness.
If you're the son of the killer, you're fucked.
This is unlike our ideal for law which attempts, though sometimes fails, at isolating cause and effect.
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.
Ah, this list: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prizes_known_as_the_Nobel_or_the_highest_honors_of_a_field
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.
The Royal Society's Nobel Prize.
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.
Good background: www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2016/oct/07/prize-science-medal-history-nobel
The Nobel Prize of mathematics!
That 15,000 canadian dollar prize though, what a joke!!
More like a "lifetime achievement" though, rather than the Nobel Prize, which tends to be for more specific achievements.
E.g. International Mathematical Olympiad, International Physics Olympiad, competitive programming, etc.
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.
As an alternative way to get into university, this is not 100% horrible however, e.g. the University of São Paulo accepted students from olympiads in 2019 and then again 2023: jornal.usp.br/institucional/usp-oferece-200-vagas-em-mais-de-100-cursos-de-graduacao-para-alunos-participantes-de-olimpiadas-do-conhecimento/?a
Logo of the International Mathematical Olympiad
. Source. 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?
Social technology