Updates

This section contains the a list of cool things Ciro Santilli has been up to in chronological order, including small quick ones. Many/most of those are also posted on Ciro Santilli's accounts controlled by Ciro Santillis such as:

For a more theme-oriented version of the best results see: Section "The best articles by Ciro Santilli".

For OurBigBook Project updates see: docs.ourbigbook.com/news

Introductory video for Bitcoin inscription museum

Words: 36

I finally took a day to edit the Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain section from Aratu Week 2024 Talk by Ciro Santilli: My Best Random Projects into a proper YouTube video. The amount of effort that goes into every minute of video editing never ceases to amaze me.

Video 1.

My Bitcoin inscription museum by Ciro Santilli

. Source.

Announcements:

I was top user 25 on Stack Overflow in 2024

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In 2024 I was user #25 with the most reputation gained on Stack Overflow.

This is up from #38 in 2023 is even though I have answered less questions than before.

This is likely because LLMs have killed users that just answered lots of easy new questions, and favored those like me who only answer more important questions found through Google.

I was #13 on the last quarter, so this is likely to go even higher in 2025. More details at: Section "Ciro Santilli's Stack Overflow contributions"

Announcements:

Generating test data for full text search tests

Words: 310

I've been thinking lightly about adding full text search to OurBigBook.

For example, at docs.ourbigbook.com/news/article-and-topic-id-prefix-search article search was added, but it only finds if you search something that appears right at the start of a title, e.g. for:

Fundamental theorem of calculus

you'd get a hit for:

fundamental

but not for

calculus

To do this efficiently, we need full text search, which PostgreSQL implements.

But finding a clean way to generate test data for testing out the speedup was not so easy and exploration into this led me to publishing a few new slightly improved methods where Googlers can now find them:

unix.stackexchange.com/questions/97160/is-there-something-like-a-lorem-ipsum-generator/787733#787733 I propose a neat random "sentence" generator using common CLI tools like grep and sed and the pre-installed Ubuntu dictionary /usr/share/dict/american-english:
```
grep -v "'" /usr/share/dict/american-english |
shuf -r |
paste -d ' ' $(printf "%4s" | sed 's/ /- /g') |
sed -e 's/^$.$/\U\1/;s/$/./' |
head -n10000000 \
> lorem.txt
```
- to achieve that, I also proposed two superior "join every N lines" method for the CLI: stackoverflow.com/questions/25973140/joining-every-group-of-n-lines-into-one-with-bash/79257780#79257780, notably this awk poem:
  seq 10 | awk '{ printf("%s%s", NR == 1 ? "" : NR % 3 == 1 ? "\n" : " ", $0 ) } END { printf("\n") }'

stackoverflow.com/questions/3371503/sql-populate-table-with-random-data/79255281#79255281 I propose:

a clean PostgreSQL random string stored procedure that picks random characters from an allowed character list

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION random_string(int) RETURNS TEXT as $$
select
string_agg(substr(characters, (random() * length(characters) + 1)::integer, 1), '') as random_word
from (values('ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789-    ')) as symbols(characters)
join generate_series(1, $1) on 1 = 1
$$ language sql;

first generating PostgreSQL data as CSV, and then importing the CSV into PostgreSQL as a more flexible method. This can also be done in a streaming fashion from stdin which is neat.
```
python generate_data.py 10 | psql mydb -c '\copy "mytable" FROM STDIN'
```

Finally I did a writeup summarizing PostgreSQL full text search: Section "PostgreSQL full-text search" and also dumped it at: www.reddit.com/r/PostgreSQL/comments/12yld1o/is_it_worth_using_postgres_builtin_fulltext/ for good measure.

Getting a list of all currencies from Wikidata with SPARQL

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opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/1560/how-can-i-get-a-list-of-currencies-from-wikidata/21839#21839

I've had a bit more fun with SPARQL and Wikidata.

This one was way harder than my previous fun with "find the oldest people who won a given prize" (Nobel Prize/Oscar) mastodon.social/@cirosantilli/112689376315990248 because unlike those prizes where all the decisions are centralized, countries are much more complicated beasts, with changing currencies and international recognition.

This was a good experience to see a few ways in which Wikidata is inconsistent, with the same concept being expressed in multiple different ways, e.g. "end time" property of the current vs the superior "end time" qualifier.

Particularly bad is the notion of a "deprecated rank", that should really not exist.

This is exactly the type of semi interactive data munching that I like to do, a bit in the same vein as CIA 2010 covert communication websites and Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain.

As you might imagine, the secret services use exactly this type of knowledge modelling to do their dirty business, e.g. Gaffer by the GCHQ.

If only I weren't such a rebel, I'd be a perfect fit for the intelligence agencies.

This is the best monstrosity I had the patience to come up with:

SELECT
  ?currency
  (GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT ?currencyIsoCode; SEPARATOR=", ") AS ?currencyIsoCodes)
  ?currencyLabel
  (GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT ?countryLabel; SEPARATOR=", ") AS ?countries)
WHERE {
  ?country wdt:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q6256. # is country
  ?country p:P38 ?countryHasCurrency.
  ?countryHasCurrency ps:P38 ?currency.
  ?countryHasCurrency wikibase:rank ?countryHasCurrencyRank.
  OPTIONAL {
    ?currency p:P498 ?currencyHasIsoCode.
    ?currencyHasIsoCode ps:P498 ?currencyIsoCode.
  }
  FILTER NOT EXISTS {?country wdt:P576 ?countryAbolished}
  FILTER NOT EXISTS {?currency wdt:P576 ?currencyAbolished}
  FILTER NOT EXISTS {?currency wdt:P582 ?currencyEndTime}
  FILTER NOT EXISTS {?countryHasCurrency pq:P582 ?countryHasCurrencyEndtime}
  FILTER (?countryHasCurrencyRank != wikibase:DeprecatedRank)
  FILTER (!bound(?currencyHasIsoCode) || ?currencyHasIsoCode != wikibase:DeprecatedRank)
  # TODO makes query take timeout? Why? Needed to exclude PLZ.
  FILTER NOT EXISTS {?currencyHasIsoCode pq:P582 ?currencyHasIsoCodeEndtime}
  SERVICE wikibase:label {
    bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],en".
    ?currency rdfs:label ?currencyLabel .
    ?country rdfs:label ?countryLabel .
  }
}
GROUP BY ?currency ?currencyLabel
ORDER BY ?currencyIsoCodes ?currencyLabel

It got quite close to the ISO 4217 list.

I was drawn into this waste of time after I noticed that someone had managed to create the Wikipedia of PsiQuantum which I had tried earlier but got deleted: mastodon.social/@cirosantilli/113488891292906243, and then I made the mistake of having a look at the Wikidata page of PsiQuantum.

Figure 1.
500,000 Transnistrian ruble banknote 1997 series
. This is one of the most widely used currencies which does not have an ISO 4217 code.

Announcements:

I also had one more fun with: opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/15750/structured-data-for-nobel-prizes/21847#21847 getting some basic info about Nobel Prize winners, and noticed one, John Sulston, 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine laureate, who likely has the wrong place of birth on his Nobel Prize profile: www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2002/sulston/facts/ which is funny. I suggested the change now. Edit they fixed it after I pointed it out:

Another highlight was 1913 Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate Alfred Werner who born either in Mulhouse in Alsace, France, or in "Yo no sé qué me pasó" ("I don't know what happened to me" in Spanish), a 1986 song by Mexican singer Juan Gabriel.

Announcements:

Also at opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/21849/how-to-get-a-list-of-all-nobel-prize-winners-who-never-had-a-doctorate-from-wiki/21850#21850 I tried to get the list of Nobel Prize laureates who don't have a PhD. I think the query was correct, but Wikidata data is just too incomplete. Related:

CIA 2010 websites video

Words: 26

I edited the VOD of the talk Aratu Week 2024 Talk by Ciro Santilli: My Best Random Projects about the CIA 2010 covert communication websites a bit and published it at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFfuzZC5Qpc.

Video 2.

How I found a Star Wars website made by the CIA by Ciro Santilli

. Source.

Announcements:

GitHub blocked the China Dictatorship bot

Words: 231

github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/1330

GitHub forbade our China Dictatorship auto-reply bot, the reason given is because they forbid comment reply bots in general. Though it was cool to see a junior support staff person giving out what obviously triggered the action:

We've received a large volume of complaints from other users indicating that the comments and issues are unrelated to the projects they were working on.

before a more senior one took over.

Ciro was slightly saddened but not totally surprized by the bloodbath against him on the Reddit the threads he created:

www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/1g7acv6/github_forbade_me_from_running_a_bot_that_would/ deleted by admins because
We don't work for GitHub and we can't help you with your GitHub support problems. You'll just need to be patient.
which is stupid, obviously we should be able to discuss GitHub policies in that sub.
Also good highlight to user whoShotMyCow
Has GitHub also forbidden you from, say, getting a job
Reply:
No, a 120,000 USD donation did that: cirosantilli.com/sponsor#1000-monero-donation
Reply:
Can't hate on the grind but I think you should also consider psychiatric help
Many successful people are neurodiverse comes to mind.

www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/1g7aa6k/american_programming_website_github_forbade_me/: also deleted without reason

So we observe once again the stupidity of deletionism towards anything that is considered controversial. The West is discussion fatigued, and would rather delete discussion than have it.

We also se people against you having freedom to moderate your own repositories as you like it, with bots or otherwise. Giving up freedoms for nothing, because "bot is evil".

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Does copyright transfer of papers to publishers affect when the paper enters the public domain?

Words: 52

academia.stackexchange.com/questions/213576/do-copyright-transfer-of-papers-to-publishers-affect-when-the-paper-enters-the-p Do copyright transfer of papers to publishers affect when the paper enters the public domain since copyright belongs to a corporation and not persons?

I'm asking a law question for a change, because I enjoy skimming through important old papers and uploading parts of them where everyone can legally enjoy them.

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Relationship between the Falun Mine and the discovery of new chemical elements

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I like the Falun Mine for two reasons:

some cool chemical discoveries have been made with a relation to the mine, notably tantalum and selenium, added a section to Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Falun_Mine&oldid=1245374294#Discovery_of_new_elements I used the book discovery Of The Elements by Mary Elvira Weeks as my primary reference.
it is the Chinese version of the Scunthorpe problem due to a naming conflict with Falun Gong, a censored new religion that was banned in China

Announcements:

mastodon.social/@cirosantilli/113143492454499727

duty-machine news on china-dictatorship issues

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Whenever a user creates an issue or comment on China Dictatorship, the bot now automatically creates a new issue with one of the latest news from Duty Machine: github.com/duty-machine/duty-machine

Sample created issue: github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/1322 Script: github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/blob/ab6a46c511afaaf6c9e68ba8813c2b2cf9d9638c/action.js#L195

Duty Machine is a bot repo that automatically scrapes Chinese language news from major news outlets such as the New York Times or Radio Free Asia which ensures that China Dictatorship news will always be new.

It's the war of the anonymous bots against the little pinks, part of asymmetric information warfare: cirosantilli.com/china-dictatorship/asymmetric-information-warfare

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`facial_recognition` Python package

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superuser.com/questions/420885/is-there-a-face-recognition-command-line-tool/1852394#1852394 played with the face_recognition Python package: github.com/ageitgey/face_recognition Cute CLI API, but disappointing accuracy. Also at:

Thanks Adam Geitgey for putting that repo up.

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Marie Curie papers

Words: 118

Under Section "Publication by Marie Curie" I did a quick overview of the papers in which Marie Curie and collaborators publish the existence of new elements polonium and radium. Both are very understandable (except the chemistry), and have some cute terminology. I also cited those papers on her Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marie_Curie&diff=1240252528&oldid=1238097626 Another good exercise in "old paper finding" + "Wikipedia markup/rules" as I looked at the Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences a bit.

This was kickstarted by YouTube recommending me the following good video:

Video 3.

The RaLa Experiment by Our Own Devices

. Source.

which led me into yet a quick nuclear physics binge. I shouldn't do this to myself. I also ended up writing some tentative answers on Quora:

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Text-to-speech software comparison

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askubuntu.com/questions/501910/how-to-text-to-speech-output-using-command-line/1522885#1522885

I tried to use every single free offline text-to-speech engine that would run on Ubuntu 24.04 without too much hassle to see if any of them sounded natural. pico2wave was the overall winner so far, but it is not perfect.

I've been noticing a gap between the "AI" SOTA and what is actually packaged well enough to be usable by a general audience.

Also played a bit more with OpenAI Whisper: askubuntu.com/questions/24059/automatically-generate-subtitles-close-caption-from-a-video-using-speech-to-text/1522895#1522895 Mind blowing performance and perfect packaging as well, kudos.

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