How Reliable Are University Rankings? - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.09006 <comment><USER2> From the abstract:

*>we both formally and experimentally show in multiple ways that this ranking scheme is not reliable and cannot be trusted as authoritative because it is too sensitive to weight changes and can easily be gamed.

That's a feature, not a bug, as far as USNWR (the magazine doing the ranking) is concerned. A more reliable ranking would be more stable and therefore less interesting for the universities. Why pay attention to it if Harvard, Standford, MIT are always 1, 2, 3? It's much more "interesting" and certainly sells more copies/gets more clicks if the rankings have a certain amount of volatility. The fact that it's easily game-able also makes it more attractive to universities because they can do something proactive if they're dissatisfied with their ranking. All these factors combine to make the ranking itself seem more important and prestigious.

<comment><USER3> > The fact that it's easily game-able also makes it more attractive to > universities because they can do something proactive if they're dissatisfied > with their ranking

Are you saying that there is nothing lower ranked universities could do to improve their ranking in a better, more objective ranking of universities? Because it smacks of elitism.

<comment><USER4> It's very similar to sports teams.

The tops teams don't vary all that much from year to year. They might change positions a bit, but it's rare for a new team to show up who hasn't shown up before.

They essentially have to get lucky and get someone who is super talented into a long term contract, who then attracts additional talent.

Or they have to invent a whole new way of doing things, like how the Oakland A's invented a whole new way of recruiting using math (which incidentally no longer helps them because all the top teams adopted it and are back on top again).

It's all about network effects.

<comment><USER5> Unsure of the exact metric you're referring to, and I'm about to be just as informal, but sports teams swing much more wildly and often than universities. In the NBA, most recently GSW, going from 5 straight finals with 3 wins to last in western conference. See also CHI before and after MJ era. LAL most recently after Kobe's retirement and pre-Lebron. In the NFL, SF post-Young pre-Harbaugh. I agree, there are often dynasties and teams can sit in the tops ranks for quite a while, however it is not at all uncommon to see once top ranked teams vying for lottery draft picks. Maybe the over-all mix does not churn that much, but I can't recall the last time a top 10 school dropped out of the top 100 without a scandal involved.

<comment><USER4> I would say sports just moves faster than academics. The average sports career is only a few years with a few exceptions, the average academic career is much longer.

<comment><USER6> That's true and, furthermore, a big part of why a university is well-ranked in year N boils down to it being well-ranked in year N-1 and N-2. With a sports team, if you have some critical injuries or otherwise lose important personnel from the prior year or two, no one cares that you won the championship a couple years back if you have a mediocre record this year. There's just a lot more inertia in university rankings both on objective factors and on things that basically depend on being a good university because they're a good university.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm mostly on board with the critique of university rankings, but I really don't buy this specific critique. It's a strawman.

Here's what they did: they took the top research universities and the top liberal arts colleges. They then observed that the rankings can't distinguish between the top institutions within each class, and that you can also flip which of those two classes is preferred.

But, in what sense is it even meaningful to compare Amherst College and Harvard [1]? Those are just enormously different types of institutions. It'd be like creating a ranking of "best cars" that includes the top 5 sedans and the top 5 trucks, and then observing that you can jiggle the rankings to get anyone on top. Is a Toyota Corolla better than an F-150? IDK. Stupid question. US News and World Report, for all its problems, _does_ at least get this much right! they break down institutions by "type" and then rank within type.

Additionally, just because rankings are noisy and easy to game locally doesn't mean they are inaccurate or easy to game globally. Two institutions within 10-20 slots of one another are probably pretty similar and rankings aren't particularly helpful / are easy to game. But the #100 liberal arts college is probably not as good as Amherst, and the #78 National University is probably not as good as Harvard, and no amount of gaming is going to change that.

Rankings are indeed noisy and inaccurate and easy to game. But this particular article is not a compelling demonstration of that fact.

[1] For non-US readers: Amherst college (not to be confused with UMass Amherst) is in a class of peculiar institutions that are fairly unique to the USA as described here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_college](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_college) TL;DR: they're basically the diametric opposite of super-charged research universities like Harvard.

<comment><USER8> Thank you for your feedback. I am one of the authors of this paper.

I don't think the paper gives any hints on us dividing universities into classes and comparing. Would love to know how you reached that conclusion.

At the same time, yes, we could have divided universities into different classes: research vs liberal arts, this vs. that state, big vs. small size, etc. These are all trivial groupings but none of these would change the conclusions of this paper. For all practical purposes, we could easily have replaced the university names with labels like U1, U2, ... and still the conclusions would not change. What matters is how a weight-based composite index can be gamed and the paper does show that in multiple ways. Pls review the ILP formulations yourself and run them on the dataset of your choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is there such a fixation on university rankings in the United States? Postsecondary rankings don't seem to matter as much in other Western countries.

<comment><USER10> _Is_ there actually a big fixation on university rankings? I had no idea what my school's ranking was (apparently it's now #40) and I'm not sure I've ever had conversation where university rankings came up outside of specifically talking about where a high school student is thinking about applying. Even then it's not like it's common for people to pick which school to go to out of the ones that accepted them based solely on rankings.

People who care about Ivies and the such don't care _because_ the Ivies have a high ranking. Someone who went to Harvard who wants to use that fact to their advantage isn't going to say that they went to a "top 3" school.

<comment><USER11> If you dropped 200k-300k on an education, you'll be invested in either the continued value or and improvement in your investment's reputation, which as the years go on is really its only value.

<comment><USER10> 200k is about what I spent on my education and I can't say I've really had any reason to care about my school's reputation past my first job after graduation.

<comment><USER11> Tech jobs generally don't care, but traditional management and those tracks really care about that.

Because getting a job in those areas is about abstract abilities that can't be (somewhat) measured with code tests, technology signifiers, and tricky questions like tech interviews.

So a certain school is a "class entry cue" for such tracks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Regardless, you should think hard before accepting at the "top" university that will take you. Many times it's better to be a big fish in a small pond than vice versa.

Also, in terms of learning, it's really about the access you can get to the ten or so percent of the faculty that actually worth anything. Figure out who they are and go after them.

Also, network, network, network. Smart or not, everyone you meet in school might give you a reference/job/funding someday.

(source: hard experience)

<comment><USER13> Care to elaborate? Did you have any problems after graduating from the "top" university?

<comment><USER12> More "during" than "after". Not sure if mine counts as "top", but most would say it's easily in the top 25 for my discipline. It was plenty hard for me, though, and in hindsight, I think it would have been better to be the brilliant kid in a lower-ranked school than an also-ran in a higher-ranked school (relative to the range of schools that would admit me).

That's just a guess, but I've seen a lot of others suffer from shooting too high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> University rankings have two key issues:

1\. They are significantly biased to English language (universities/research output) and bigger countries in general 2\. They are totally irrelevant from the student perspective as they mostly focus on research output, which means that you'll get the richest universities and the best professors will be writing papers rather than teaching bachelor level courses.

There are some attempts to fix these issues (see eg the EU "Multirank" which allows you to choose your priorities), but it's still hit and miss.

<comment><USER15> Those are useful issues, to be sure, but there is a lot more incoherence than those two: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-order- of-t...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-order-of-things)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Gaming of rankings aside, the ratings organizations themselves offer various 'services' to colleges looking for a reputation boost.

[https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/29/methodology-q...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/29/methodology- qs-rankings-comes-under-scrutiny)

For instance, QS sells a 'star-ranking' system for schools. Coincidentally the schools who paid for a '5-star' ranking, such as the Unviersity of Bristol or the Universiti Malaya are also placed higher on the actual QS ranking than those that did not, including Georgia Tech, the University of Washington, Ecole Polytechnique and UIUC.

<comment><USER17> Related to expenses..

"And there are several perverse incentives in the marketplace that make it hard for colleges to cut costs. The most basic one is that the U.S. News algorithm rewards them for spending a lot of money: Higher faculty salaries and more spending on student services lead directly to better rankings. If you reduce your expenses, your ranking will fall, which means that next year your applicant pool will probably shrink."

You'd be surprised at the burgeoning expenses of universities, and often meager profitability, despite record-high tuition rates. It seems, often like startups, a burn rate signals potential growth!

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/magazine/coll...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/magazine/college- admissions-paul-tough.html)

<comment><USER18> I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that above-market faculty salaries are _not_ a major issue.

<comment><USER17> I would argue its headcount growth (not salary per employee), but admittedly I could not immediately find data for this.

Edit: Also upon looking through the Trinity College financial statements, a huge portion was categorized as "Other", which included consulting fees, travel, interest expenses and various other expenses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/08/26/how- northeast...](https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/08/26/how-northeastern- gamed-the-college-rankings/)

> Freeland swept into Northeastern with a brand-new mantra: recalibrate the > school to climb up the ranks. "There's no question that the system invites > gaming," Freeland tells me. "We made a systematic effort to influence [the > outcome]." He directed university researchers to break the U.S. News code > and replicate its formulas.

<comment><USER20> Yeah this kind of gaming is probably widespread. UChicago is known for "artificially" driving down their acceptance rate with lots of decision rounds and marketing. Cornell isn't releasing their numbers at all this year - I'd guess because they don't like them.

<comment><USER19> I've heard many allegations about established universities gaming their ranking by, e.g., soliciting applications widely -- not so much to have a larger and more diverse pool from which to choose -- but to maintain/lower their acceptance rate metric.

Two things I like about the Northeastern story are that the official demonstrated even more ambitious gaming, and it was publicized.

No criticism of Northeastern; they have many great people, doing great work. And I've heard many faculty objected to the rankings-climbing emphasis as it was happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sometime not too long ago there was a blog post or article covered on HN, about data showing student scores on some academic achievement measure over time. If I remember, all students generally improved on this measure throughout undergrad, and there was some average tendency for universities with higher average entering standardized test scores to have higher scores, but the effect seemed to be mostly driven by the students. That is, it wasn't that some schools accelerated scores more, it was that they just tended to select for higher-performing students. Also, the signal provided by school, if I remember, was relatively weak. The author was basically arguing that universities in general provide some educational value (or students just learn over time; there was no control of students who didn't go to college) but that the ranking was by and large just a signaling thing.

I can't find it now though because all the search terms I can think of just return a bunch of other stuff related to universities and students.

<comment><USER22> Interesting. I wonder how one would measure whether an institution changes student trajectories? Or if that data is available somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you only read one sentence from this article, it should be this one:

> In this paper, we take a fresh look at this ranking scheme using the public > College dataset; we both formally and experimentally show in multiple ways > that this ranking scheme is not reliable and cannot be trusted as > authoritative because it is too sensitive to weight changes and can easily > be gamed.

</comment><comment><USER24> There is a very current thing happening where individual professors have too much power. The whole "remote teaching" thing is VERY new for some universities and professors. My son recently survived a final where > 90% of the class failed. Mostly due to poor execution of remote learning. Including simple stuff like classes overlapping meeting times, study material uploaded too late, etc.

No pressure on the professor or university, though. All on the students. There's a rant letter, from the prof, about effort where effort wasn't a factor. My kid survived solely because he has a very good memory. No accountability. I AM PISSED.

<comment><USER25> > where > 90% of the class failed.

I can't imagine this happening in a college class where the instructor get to keep his class next year.

<comment><USER24> U.S. State college, a fairly well respected one, happening now. Chemical Engineering. They have no idea how to operate "online/remote". And that matters for classes like Fluid Dynamics, Organic Chem, Differential Analysis, etc. Is there some realistic path for me to escalate?

<comment><USER7> _> Is there some realistic path for me to escalate?_

Is the instructor an ad junct? Those are cheap and replaceable. They make maybe ~1/10th of what your average FAANG engineer makes because the labor supply is extraordinarily over-saturated. Enough complaints will probably get them fired, if that's what you're looking for, but realize you're probably putting someone with no prospects and no savings out on the street and they will almost certainly be replaced with someone who gives about as many shits as you can expect from someone with a PhD who makes 30k a year. That tuition you're paying isn't flowing to the people teaching the courses.

If the instructor is an actual professor, then probably there's nothing you can do.

BTW, let your kid at least try their hand at navigating this on their own, even if you provide oversight. Barely competent people doing a poor job is not unique to pandemic times and is definitely not unique to higher ed. Knowing how to use a bureaucracy to route around an incompetent person not doing their job well is a valuable life skill. Plus, everyone involved is going to be more sympathetic to an articulate student than to a "helicopter parent".

<comment><USER24> Not a big fan of the "helicopter parent" term. I'm paying for it, so I want to understand what I'm paying for. Why is that a "helicopter"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think they're useful-ish, but it's important not to get too focused on specifics.

For example I did a stint in policy and I'm reminded of how everyone insisted for a long time that "top" law schools are the "top 14" or T14 for short. This is historically the measure used since Georgetown was in DC, and the children of the elite must be "top tier" regardless of if their school ranked outside top ten on every official metric such as incoming LSATs, publications, etc :D

<comment> barry-cotter That's not where T14 comes from.

> There exists an informal category known as the "Top Fourteen" or "T14," > which refers to the fourteen institutions that regularly claim the top spots > in the yearly U.S. News & World Report ranking of American law schools.[8] > Furthermore, only these fourteen schools have ever placed within the top ten > spots in those rankings.[9] Although "T14" is not a designation used by U.S > News itself, the term is "widely known in the legal community."[10] While > these schools have seen their position within the top fourteen spots shift > frequently, they have generally not placed outside of the top fourteen spots > since the inception of the rankings.[11] There have been rare exceptions to > this, however, such as UCLA School of Law appearing in the top fourteen > instead of Cornell and Northwestern in 1987 and University of Texas School > of Law displacing Georgetown in 2018, although the significance of these > changes has been debated.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_school_rankings_in_the_Uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_school_rankings_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER26> >> That's not where T14 comes from.

>There have been rare exceptions to this, however, such as UCLA School of Law appearing in the top fourteen instead of Cornell and Northwestern in 1987 and University of Texas School of Law displacing Georgetown in 2018, although the significance of these changes has been debated.

People select measures for a number of reasons. It's perfectly possible the single and only reason T14 is used is for the reasons you lay out.

OTOH I have personally had conversations with people who argued that the T14 is a measure of merit when Georgetown was in the T14 then " _debated the significance_ " of the measure when Georgetown dropped out of the top 14 in 2018.

It was not clever or endearing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I personally think Universities and colleges are a scam that was necessary before we had access to the bulk of human knowledge on the tip of our fingers. We should go back to an apprentice system, go through elementary and middle school and then find a profession you would want to learn OTJ, this would shift the responsibility of training to companies but the people coming out of there would be immediately productive.

</comment><comment><USER28> Rankings are a bit dumb, especially because any non english university is going to get ranked terribly basically on every of these rankings. There's no way that the oldest university in central Europe, started in 1348 should be placed 400-500th. That's just a joke.

</comment><comment><USER29> The only ranking that matters to the vast majority of people:

Median starting salary / median cost to attend.

Sure, there are other considerations such as. If it will get you into a better grad school or something, but for most it's really this simple.

</comment><comment><USER30> Here is the code used by the paper: [https://github.com/alidasdan/university- rankings](https://github.com/alidasdan/university-rankings)

</comment><comment><USER31> Any idea what they are measuring against? For example avg. income or accolades of graduates.</comment>


The Seven Deadly Sins of Cloud Computing Research (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.usenix.org/conference/hotcloud12/workshop-program/presentation/schwarzkopf <comment><USER2> TLDR - added to [https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup) ...

Sin #1 - Unnecessary distributed parallelism: It does not always make sense to parallelize a computation. Doing so almost inevitably comes with an additional overhead, both in runtime performance and in engineering time. When designing a parallel implementation, its performance should always be compared to an optimized serial implementation in order to understand the overheads involved. If we satisfy ourselves that parallel processing is necessary, it is also worth considering whether distribution over multiple machines is required. The rapid increase in RAM and CPU cores can make local parallelism economical and worthwhile. Establish the need for distributed parallelism on a case by case basis.

Sin #2 - Assuming performance homogeneity: Virtualized cloud environments exhibit highly variable and sometimes unpredictable performance. Base reported results on multiple benchmark runs, and report the variance.

Sin #3 - Picking the low-hanging fruit: It is unsurprising that it is easy to beat a general system by specializing it. Few researchers comment on the composability of their solutions.

Sin #4 - Forcing the abstraction: In some application domains, it is unclear if a MapReduce-like approach can offer any benefits, and indeed, some have argued that it is fruitless as a research direction. Ideally, future research should build on [iterative processing, stream processing and graph processing], rather than on the MapReduce paradigm.

Sin #5 - Unrepresentative workloads: The common assumption in academic research systems is that the cluster workload is relatively homogenous. Most research evaluations measure performance by running a single job on an otherwise idle cluster.

Sin #6 - Assuming perfect elasticity: The cloud paradigm [...] its promise of an unlimited supply of computation. This is, of course, a fallacy. Workloads do not exhibit infinite parallel speedup. The scalability and supply of compute resources are not infinite. There are limits to the scalability of data center communication infrastructure. Another reason for diminishing returns from parallelization is the increasing likelihood of failures and vulnerability to "straggler" tasks.

Sin #7 - Ignoring fault tolerance: Many recent systems neglect to account for the performance implications of fault tolerance, or indeed of faults occuring. For each system, we should ask whether fault tolerance is relevant or required. If it is, it makes sense to check precisely what level is required, and what faults are to be protected against; consider and ideally quantify the cost.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that this is more targeted at academic research. Not to undermine its importance of course.

Its good to see something like this out there. There are literally thousands of papers published which try to demonstrate "speedups" but which are usually not very reproducible or useful. The "publish or perish" mentality is responsible for a lot of this. The only way to be upto date with cutting-edge meaningful research seems to be to attend conferences and talk to other researches in the field, and try to publish in the better journals.

</comment><comment><USER4> This assumes most academics are more interested in good research than publishing papers or looking objectively at software they spent years writing without any fundamentally new ideas.

<comment><USER5> Systems is much more practical as an academic field. For example, Googlers are heavily involved in high-end systems research, and they really are just interested in good research vs. increasing their paper counts (which they doesn't help them much in their career in industry). The tier one systems conferences, OSDI and SOSP, also only accept much fewer papers a year than most fields (~30 vs. 60+) with about the same number of active researchers. The culture of your field really helps in this regard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The paper is [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotcloud12/ho...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotcloud12/hotcloud12-final70.pdf).

<comment><USER7> I was about to post the same link.

I wonder if 'dang' followed the same process I did: click the submitted link; read the interesting abstract; scroll to the bottom only to be scared by the embedded video; recover for a second from the panic of being without plain text; scroll back up scrutinizing the small print for a link to actual paper; then click with an awkward urgency, feeling relief at having found my way back to safe ground.

Then I asked myself, "Why did the submitter link to the container page rather than to the real content? Maybe 'dang' should change the link?" But then I wondered, "What if there are people who actually prefer the video? It's hard for me to picture, but presumably such people exist. How will they be able to watch the video if the link goes straight to the PDF?"

So as a survey for my sanity, I have to ask: How many people watched the video without looking at the paper first? How many looked at the paper without giving any consideration to the video? Second, does this correlate with the first 'sin' in the paper? Do those who prefer linear text also frequently wonder if unnecessary distributed parallelism tends to hamper performance?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nate, we don't really have a convention or guideline for this situation. The guidelines only tell us to add [pdf], [video], and similar to the title if it's a link to a media file. Though it's not exactly stated, it means a direct link to the media file itself, rather than a link to the page where the media files can be downloaded. For example, we (almost?) never see "[video]" tags in the titles of stories linking to youtube or vimeo.

On previous USENIX submissions I've put some variation of "[pdf/slides/video]" in the title to indicate multiple things are available, but this just created unnecessary work for poor `dang` who had to edit the title to remove it. I really do try to avoid causing work for the moderators, so this time, I did not put the extra info in the title. I was proud of myself for learning from my mistake... until I saw `dang` adding a comment with a direct link to the paper pdf. (sigh, I'll probably never learn ;)

If there is a "right" answer, then I still haven't figured it out yet.

As for my access pattern, I actually found the USENIX page from another site listing various papers, so that's what I was looking for when I loaded the page. I made sure the USENIX actually did provide a download link to the full paper PDF (sometimes they don't/can't), and then started downloading the video with wget in the background while I read the paper... I still haven't watched the video yet, but I will.

<comment><USER7> I appreciate the insight. I wasn't trying to criticize your choice of link, just wondering if others shared my personal reaction. Similar to linking to the abstract page for arXiv papers, I think you chose the "right" option.

I think the FAQ is out of date with regard to adding an explicit [PDF], as the system now adds this automatically for links where the type is apparent. But I'm always impressed at how efficient the new 'dang' API is for adding publication dates to submitted papers!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tax deductible donations to individuals? - <AUTHOR>

I have this crazy idea to help those in deep financial need caused by unplanned life events such as a severe medical diagnosis, death, or major accident.
I found myself in this situation last year when my Mom passed away and left no life insurance, no savings, and no assets. We had some that supported us in helping to pay for it to the tune of several thousand dollars. Sadly those donations of support weren't tax deductible.
There have been several people I know that have run into similar situations and setup online giving portals for people to donate to. I have given willingly to help those in need, but found the fees to be rather annoying.
I have this idea that I am working on that I would love your feedback on.
Imagine an online crowdfunding site where you can choose to help fund individuals in need. These can be your friends, neighbors, relatives or complete strangers whose story you connect with. The organization would be setup as a 501(c)3 organization so all contributions are fully tax deductible. Families receive 97% of all contributions. Organizational expenses would be covered by donations directly to the organization.
Some basic assumptions... * People care about helping people they know that are in need. * Individuals that give care about transparency and knowing how their donations are spent. * Legalities of course.
Would you find value in such an organization? <comment><USER2> You need to talk to competent tax counsel - specifically someone who works with nonprofits. You can't just use a 501(c)(3) for "gift laundering" \- you could make a donation to a 501(c)(3) that did charitable things "in honor" of a particular needy person, but you can't direct that the contribution be passed through to a specific person.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. That is my next step. I know there will be restrictions and limitations.

Any recommended resources?

<comment><USER2> If you're in/around the Bay Area, try Gene Takagi - [http://www.attorneyfornonprofits.com/](http://www.attorneyfornonprofits.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Similar to Watsi? [http://ycombinator.com/watsi.html](http://ycombinator.com/watsi.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Similar, but focused on the people close to us. Our friends, neighbors, and coworkers.</comment></comment>


Defeating Racket's separate compilation guarantee - <AUTHOR> https://lexi-lambda.github.io/blog/2019/04/21/defeating-racket-s-separate-compilation-guarantee/ <comment><USER2> Very cool write-up, thanks!

I've long appreciated the wizardry that Common Lisp's macros enable, and knew (distantly) that Racket does macros, but was completely unfamiliar with this separate compilation guarantee. If I understand it at all, it's basically a way of getting the benefit of macros without permitting some of the crazier stunts you might be tempted to pull. Neat.

In any case, figuring out a way around that guarantee, and taking us along for the ride, is greatly appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not reading this now, but will totally reading it when I want to learn about macros. All the stuff that Alexis is doing is always mind-expanding and well- explained!

<comment><USER4> Depending on how you learn, you might find it easier to start by learning the normal patterns and tools for how one does macros (aka "syntax extension") in Racket, and later coming back to this article.

The advanced adversarial stuff Alexis is doing can help some people understand the underlying model better upfront, but other people thinking they have to know it upfront will be needlessly discouraged.

There's also a risk of learning the fancy things too soon: people seem to fixate on the fancy things, sometimes to the detriment of the basics. My favorite example is when newbies to a language will hear of `eval`, which is almost insanely powerful, and then their solutions tend to include `eval` when there are almost always vastly better solutions.

<comment><USER3> I appreciate the advice in general; but don't worry - Learning stuff in odd order was never a problem for me and also while I love to learn systems and languages starting from the edge cases and broken corners,the code that I write reflects none of my love for curiosities ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ambient authority strikes again.</comment>


Safety Feature For Pedestrians Has Undesired Consequence - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2014/07/01/327199161/safety-feature-for-pedestrians-has-undesired-consequence <comment><USER2> I sit above a pretty busy intersection and get to witness the madness and regular accidents of rush hour traffic heading out of downtown on a daily basis.

I think simply shimming an extra second or of intersection clearing time between transitions would go long way towards addressing the apparent dangers of light timing.

Activating traffic signals and pedestrian signals simultaneously results in drivers who try to 'beat' the pedestrians off the curb.

Activating perpendicular traffic signals too close traffic/pedestrian signals puts the cross-traffic in danger of being hit by the people trying to time the light.

Add a second or two, end up with <5 fewer light transitions per hour.

Though, on a related note, what I see cause more accidents and general bullshit than timing lights is the ridiculous amount of cellphone use that happens in motion and particularly at intersections.

Every day I see someone stop at the red light below me and immediately start fiddling with their phone, as the light turns green and the fiddler proceeds to hit the gas _irrespective_ of what is happening in the road directly in front of them - pedestrians, gridlock, presidential motorcade only to run into something or panic stop seconds later if they're lucky.

At first this seemed inexplicable..."Can't these people see?"

Upon thinking about it, I'm guessing they actually can't or more accurately don't see. That the fraction of a second they have to hit the gas before getting a chorus of horns or a rear-ending is simply too short to take in even major changes in the scene in front of them.

Self-driving cars can't come soon enough.

<comment><USER3> I've never seen an intersection that didn't have some amount of time where it was red in all directions during a light change. I can't find references to back it up right now but I'm pretty sure that in cases where this period is extended you end up with drivers adapting and driving through a stale yellow that they would have previously stopped for.

<comment><USER4> In most of California it seems that the next set of lights turns green as soon as the previous set turns red. In Ontario, Canada I believe there is a 2 or 3 second delay. I don't think that I've noticed any difference in the behavior of people around yellow lights except for the fact that in California it seems people are more willing to run red lights, and the intersection is almost never clear when the next green light happens (unless, of course, traffic is sparse). In Ontario, Canada the intersection is almost always clear when the next green light happens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the trade off between property dammage and pedestrian deaths I am generally going to side with pedestrians.

</comment><comment><USER6> It is an interesting scenario that they play out in Toronto. However, this is a programmatic feature built into the traffic systems - and in the current location I live in completely different.

Here the countdown hits zero well before the lights shift to yellow and finally red. Perhaps Toronto needs to readjust if there is a high number of rear-ends occurring due to drivers going off of the pedestrian control devices instead of vehicle control devices.

<comment><USER7> My experience is that the light changes to yellow as the countdown reaches zero.

<comment><USER8> Here in Phoenix most work this way, but when a road crosses central avenue the walk counter hits 0 and then there is about a 10 second delay before the traffic lights change.

The problem is, people have realized this. So peds continue to begin crossing as the counter gets low (central has a lot of ped crossing because the light rail runs down the middle of the road).

<comment><USER9> They really ought to reverse that. Make the light shorter for cars and drivers can no longer use the countdown clocks as a signal. They'd have to actually look at their own light. Combine that with starting the pedestrians early and you make it much harder for drivers to be jerks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It reduces the number of pedestrians who get hit, and asshole drivers who think they can speed though intersections are getting into accidents.

I don't see the issue.

<comment><USER11> Who do you think the asshole drivers run into? According to the article, drivers who are just trying to be safe by not risking it and slowing down get hit by drivers behind them who speed up.

<comment><USER12> _...drivers who are just trying to be safe..._

If their idea of safety is paying attention to pedestrian signals rather than automotive signals, we'd rather they not bother.

<comment><USER11> Who said anything about "rather than"? What kind of a signal do you expect someone about to rear-end you to give?

<comment><USER12> They should be looking at the signal that consists of a red lamp above a yellow lamp above a green lamp. While the green lamp is lit, they should keep driving and not slam on the brakes just because the little man in the crosswalk started blinking.

Yes I know that rear-enders are _at fault_ even when the rear-ended did something stupid. In fact many driving accidents can be attributed to the stupidity of multiple parties, and the accidents described above can also be so attributed.

<comment><USER4> The driver behind them should be watching the car in front of them and be following at a safe distance. I don't see why you should run into the back of someone if they slow down for an intersection with 1-2 seconds left on the timer and they're at a questionable distance about whether they'll make the light.

<comment><USER12> It's as if you didn't even read the second paragraph, in which I _also_ blamed rear-enders for rear-ending!

If the light is green, there's nothing "questionable". Either one will make the light, or one will have time to slow once it actually turns yellow. If, instead, one does something surprising and irrational, misfortune may result. In this scenario, as in many accident scenarios, _both_ parties have driven poorly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Even if we don't get fully self-driven cars soon, I really hope we get autopilot to take over for timing left turns and yellow lights, entering a highway, avoiding pedestrians, and maybe all parking.

Sure, many drivers handle that all fine most of the time, but each one seems like a potential point of failure that would benefit from a little more standardization.

EDIT: Or traffic robots that direct instructions to proceed or stop to each specific driver. Seems like we have better options than a colored indicator involving a lot of judgment calls based on conflicting interests.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm having trouble understanding this article. If the count down timers show pedestrians the amount of time they have to cross the road (as they do here in London) why would the driver be watching this and think they only have a few seconds until the light goes red and they can't get through the intersection. Surely, the opposite is the case?

I can see that you could potentially form a similar explanation around that scenario too but it doesn't seem as convincing.

<comment><USER15> Pedestrian crossings in the UK are rather unusual compared to most other countries in the world, in my experience.

In most places, crossings work on a parallel/perpendicular system: parallel roads and pedestrian crossings are red or green[1] at the same time. This means that cars turning across a pedestrian crossing must give way (yield) to pedestrians.

The UK system, by contrast, isolates the pedestrian phase from traffic phases: when the green man (the WALK indicator) is displayed, no vehicles will approach the pedestrian crossing from any direction. The time between pedestrian crossing opportunities is longer, but there is no contention for the crossing from cars turning into the road.

The article describes the parallel/perpendicular system. In this scenario, a driver will see a parallel WALK light and a (vehicular) green light at the same time. As the pedestrian crossing typically goes red earlier (because people take longer to cross the road than cars take to cross the intersection), a car driver who watches the pedestrian crossing light or countdown timer gains advanced knowledge of the parallel traffic signal.

1\. Or white in some places in the US!

<comment><USER16> New Zealand has a mix. All stop, all direction crossings are usually reserved for downtown high pedestrian flow intersections.

There is also a distinction between green and green arrow turns. Green arrow indicates safe turns and green means yield to traffic/pedestrians.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like how traffic is kind of organized in Paris: Pedestrians will cross the street whenever they feel like and don't care much about the signals. Because of that car drivers will constantly watch out for jaywalking people, drive with responsible speed and rather stop too often than being cited for reckless driving. All in all this works out extremely well and I always feel like this the safest city for a pedestrian.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's possible that the lowered rate of accidents involving pedestrians can at least partially be attributed to the fact that drivers can see the timers.

</comment><comment><USER19> Good grief.. the article ends with "Install them so that the pedestrians are aware of the timers but the drivers are not. And one way to do that would be to broadcast the timers via audio so that the pedestrians can hear the countdown clock go down, but drivers cannot."

The defacto standard in the Netherlands is that a pedestrian stop makes a loud ticking sound to aid blind people.

When its about to jump to red (lets call this orange) the pace increases, before going calm (not loud, and low pace) when the light is red. The orange period is -say- the time it takes an elderly lady to cross the street.

Here, we dont need countdown displays. People should be able look at the oncoming traffic instead.

<comment><USER20> quite a lot of lights in London (uk) have a count down for the pedestrian side - its just the nutters on fixed wheel bikes who blast through junctions at 25-30mph you have to watch for.

If you think I am kidding about the fix wheeled bikers visit the junction next to Holborn tube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd like to see a study of red light countdown timers. I have only seen them in China, but I think they are awesome. The timer tells you how long until the light turns green. If it is 30 seconds, you can check your text messages, or adjust the radio, but when it hits 3...2...1... everyone goes at the same time. I have never seen so many cars make it through an intersection in a single light cycle.

I have a feeling it is good for safety as well because drivers get some downtime, and a timer that lets them know when they need to be back at full attention.

<comment><USER22> And then you have the dicks who will move at -1 second and jump the lights without checking that it is clear.

<comment><USER23> Well, this can be solved by well-known practices of red light cameras and revoking licences for repeated violations.

I mean, what you describe isn't a problem with timers, it's a problem with some dicks that are dangerous to others (not only in this situation but others) and should be prevented from driving at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Even when the intersection doesn't have the countdown timer, I memorize the number of "hand flashes" before the light changes and use that to figure out if I need to speed up to get through. This is on a bike, though, so hardly life threatening. The timers are actually very convenient, especially in New York with long yellows and long 4-way reds. 1 second? More than long enough.

</comment><comment><USER25> In this context, it's a "cheat" for drivers with greater awareness, and one can't assume the driver in front knows to accelerate. Perhaps it would be safer if the timers were installed on the drivers' traffic lights as well. I've seen them in China and I liked the idea. What's stopping automobile traffic timers from being installed in the U.S.?

<comment><USER8> We have pedestrian walk timers here in Phoenix and they are very easy for drivers to see.

The situation described in the article happens when a driver is approaching a traffic light which is green but notices that there is only 1 or 2 seconds left on the walk count down and decides to stop. A driver behind, who may or may not have seen the count down isn't ready for a car to begin stopping as it approaches a light which is still green. Bang.

<comment><USER26> I think you've slightly misrepresented the second driver's intentions. The article says:

"...the guy behind, he sees the two or three seconds and thinks, oh, the guy in front of me is going to floor it too, I'll floor it and we'll both get through the intersection. Whereas the guy in front thinks, OK, I only have two or three seconds left, I'm going to slowdown."

So it's not that the driver in front sees the timer and stops during a green light, whilst the driver behind doesn't see the timer and isn't expecting to stop during a green.

More likely that both drivers see the timer and make conflicting decisions: the driver in front decides there isn't enough time and slows down; the driver behind decides there is enough time and speeds up, having assumed the driver in front would be doing the same.

However, your scenario is plausible too and just as problematic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can't wait till we get self-driving cars. Next generation will find it completely reckless that we put people in charge of driving cars

</comment><comment><USER28> Weird. I wonder if this is primarily a problem in larger, more congested cities where people tend to drive more aggressively. I live in a smaller city where we've had these a very long time, and they don't seem to inspire the kind of behavior they're talking about here. But driving here is also significantly less aggressive than somewhere like, say, Chicago.

<comment><USER29> I wonder if there's any weight to that assertion of a correlation between city size and aggression.

I live in London and I generally find that the behaviour is surprisingly courteous. My suspicion is that it's because many (most?) roads are actually too narrow to have two cars pass at the same time so people are very used to having to pull over to get out of each other's way.

Obviously, all totally anecdotal, but there must be some research on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> With all this focus on self-driving cars, nobody is looking at the low-hanging fruit - cameras on the traffic lights. No, not for ticketing people, but for changing the signals in a way that maximizes flow. This will save time and an awful lot of gas. With all the sophisticated camera algorithms these days, this should be a relatively simpler problem to detect the speed, number, and distance of cars coming from each direction.

It can also be used to save lives - the light for the cross street need not turn green when the other turns red if there looks like a car is going to run the red. If there are pedestrians in the intersection, the lights can also remain red.

<comment><USER31> You can detect speed,ount and types ofcas with a pair of inductive loops (car length determines the type pretty well). I'd guess that putting such a pair some distance before the intersection would be a lot simpler (cars would obscure each other in the camera's view). That said, this would give you information about cars passing a single point on the road and would give you no information about pedestrians.

<comment><USER32> This has been implemented for some traffic lights in Warsaw, and has one more bad side effect (possibly because of bad implementation): if you a bike in the late evening on the smaller street, that's configured "red unless there's a car that will be crossing" to maximize throughput of the bigger street, you have to wait for a car or use a pedestrian crossing, because the loops won't detect a bike.

<comment><USER33> Lots (most?) of the traffic light controlled junctions in the UK have induction loops to detect cars. I have personally complained to the authorities about their lack of ability to detect bicycles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There are/were a couple of junctions in Phnom Penh where the traffic lights for the roads have count down timers on both the green and the red. All the motorbikes started going around the 5 second mark meaning there was a good few seconds of everyone going from both directions. I'm sure it's pretty dangerous, but it was fun to navigate

</comment><comment><USER35> Seems to me they could put blinders on the crosswalk timers so they are only visible from the corner and not from the middle of the street. They already often do similar things to left turn lane arrows (so that when you aren't turning left you don't see green out of the corner of your eye and jump the gun).

<comment><USER36> As a driver, I really like these timers. I can see from a block away that I've got 15 seconds (and will make it comfortably) or 2 seconds (and may as well slow down now since I won't be anywhere close).

As long as the blinders weren't too restrictive, my use case would still be viable.

<comment><USER37> That's _exactly_ the use case that they caution about--drivers at different distances interpreting the signals differently, causing accidents.

<comment><USER36> The use case they caution about is drivers reacting suddenly to short clocks -- flooring it or slamming on the brakes -- when they're very close to each other. They're talking about how people react to a "2" when they're 2.1 seconds away from the intersection and right on somebody else's tail.

I'm talking about reacting from a long distance out by subtly adjusting speed (obviously in conjunction with reading traffic -- you don't accelerate if there's a vehicle right in front of you.) If you're 10 seconds out and see a 2, there's no differential reaction, likewise if you're 10 seconds out and see a 20. Even if you're 10 seconds out and see a 9, the difference between "slight acceleration" and "slight touch on the brakes" isn't significant unless you're already driving too close for the circumstances I drive under.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Here in Auckland, I think we only have those countdown timers at intersections where pedestrians can cross in all directions at the same time, so there are no cars speeding up to make the light, all of the cars are stopped.

</comment><comment><USER39> Seems like they could easily fix this by installing some kind of small plastic guard to keep most cars from seeing the countdown.

</comment><comment><USER40> In London we have the opposite, timers for how long you are allowed to cross, this probably makes more sense.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why can't they just install more speed-bumps? Scientifically calibrated so that they only cause damage to cars going beyond an acceptable speed for the particular intersection in question. I used to live somewhere hoons would regularly speed by; a speed-bump was built, and it put an end to such speeding almost instantaneously as all the hoons had their vehicles' suspension destroyed.

<comment><USER42> _Why can 't they just install more speed-bumps?_

Off the top of my head:

\- Given the variety of suspension systems in cars (and available aftermarket options), trying to make a speed bump targeting one speed (or even a relatively narrow range of speeds) would be pretty difficult unless you want to limit all traffic to 10-15 mph

\- Speedbumps on major thoroughfares can cause problems for emergency vehicles

\- (from personal experience) riding over a speed bump (certainly ones that haven't been well-maintained) on a bicycle is not fun

\- they make snowplowing more difficult (but not impossible)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Why don't they just retrofit these signals so that pedestrians can see but drivers can't?</comment>


WikiLeaks password leak FAQ - <AUTHOR> https://unspecified.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/wikileaks-password-leak-faq/

<comment><USER2> I appreciate the effort, and while I haven't gone through the whole thing, you could probably brush up on the use and meaning of "executive summary." Nothing personal!

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I get you ;) I've never been good at being concise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Article claims that making the encrypted file public is perfectly fine, so long as the password isn't made public.

I think all of us here know how wrong that is. A password isn't going to stop people for long. It was a matter of time until it got out. Maybe it already had, and we didn't know it.

<comment><USER3> (Author of the article here). I think you underestimate the power of a good (long) password. Check this out: <https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm>

That site lets you enter a password and see how long it would take to crack using a brute-force scenario. Assange's 58-character password would apparently take "16.40 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion centuries", assuming one hundred trillion guesses per second (which is far more computing power than is presently available to anybody in the world).

Cryptography relies on strong passwords. Assuming that the password wasn't deliberately given out, a 58-character password is going to be secure for a very very long time.

<comment><USER4> We can crack things today that were considered impossible (aka "not in our lifetime") 10 years ago. Why would anyone think that 10 more years wouldn't bring this again? Quantum computing is looking more and more likely, with progress almost every month now.

Sure, today they couldn't crack it... But this data has ramifications for many years to come. It should never have been gathered together and put in a public place.

Behind the government's firewalls, it was protected by an ever-changing system. If things get easier to crack, they can upgrade it. As a simple file, it can never be changed. It will also be there.

And finally, security experts will tell you that one of the easiest ways to crack something is the human factor. That password is written down somewhere, and wikileaks isn't a fort. Hackers could have gotten that password from wikileaks without them knowing.

So no, I don't think I do underestimate it.</comment></comment></comment>


Nokia's Microsoft Phones May Not Get Traction, Analyst Says - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/nokias-microsoft-phones-may-not-get-traction-analyst-says/

<comment><USER2> How do "analysts" get interviewed by a major newspaper and then their opinions presented as if they're actual news? If the Times wants to run a "here are some opinions from people who are generally knowledgable about the industry but have no specific detailed information about the matter under discussion," they have plenty of on-staff writers who could do the job.

</comment><comment><USER3> But Microsoft does not need to sell WP, it makes profits from Android!

<comment><USER4> lol</comment></comment>


Show HN: Automatic image moderation and nudity detection - <AUTHOR> https://nullnude.com/sandbox/ <comment><USER2> Wow, I'm really blown away at how accurate this is, particularly how well it was able to discern between nudity and covered nudity.

Only odd thing I noticed was that male torsos were flagged for nudity. Is that intentional?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much!

It's semi intentional. We are constantly working on the deep learned models twitching and improving them as we go and the one in the API workers right now is stable, accurate, but doesn't have few major categories learned yet. The newest one knows the difference between female and male torso, and will flag a male torso accordingly - probably increasing a "covered nudity" confidence as it appears.

<comment><USER3> Congratulations, it seem to be pretty accurate. But it looks like it has problems with b/w pictures?

Example: [http://images2.gazzettaobjects.it/methode_image/2014/11/25/V...](http://images2.gazzettaobjects.it/methode_image/2014/11/25/Varie/Foto%20Varie%20-%20Trattate/Lear%201971-k4rG-U10049725290lTB-620x349@Gazzetta- Web_articolo.JPG?v=201411251333)

returns:

{ ... "data": { "covered_nudity": { "confidence": 1, "result": false }, "nudity": { "confidence": 1, "result": false } } }

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

That's a great find, I'll add it to the test images. It might be b/w, it might be that shadow above the breast, I'll check and let you know. Usually b/w images passed the tests well, I might have not have enough in the test sets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> An API based on machine learning and few other algorithms for better precision. Opened for public BETA 2 weeks ago, would appreciate an honest opinion of its inner workings.

<comment><USER4> I actually have a need for this in a new project, I'll be showing it to the team tomorrow. This is a great idea.

I tested it with a bunch of pictures and it was perfect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks greggh, it's great to hear. Drop me an email through the contact page if you have any questions or need help with anything regarding the API, I'll be glad to guide you setting it up if there is a need for that.

On a side note, what programming language would you be using to communicate to the API? We have Python and PHP libs on github already, NodeJS in the works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It does not work on Firefox:

TypeError: $ is not a function $( document ).ready(function() {

Maybe jQuery is loaded too late?

<comment><USER5> Also, the documentation seems to describe the requests only, but not the response.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for reviewing! I am unable to replicate a problem in firefox as it works for me now, but I'll try different versions and fix it if I happen to come across it.

That's a valid point on the documentation, we have only included the raw json response for each endpoint, I'll write descriptions for each field in them. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> awesome service! May integrate this with [https://adcat.io](https://adcat.io) in the future with a public feed feature

</comment><comment><USER7> could you please tell me if my previous comment was inappropriate/violates the guidelines? i'm new here. it confuses me that you replied to everyone except me.

<comment><USER8> It got hit by a spam filter. Sorry about that; those are tuned more aggressively for new accounts. We've marked your account legit so it won't happen again.

<comment><USER7> thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> do you log user activity or do i have to report mismatches manually? edit: either way i suggest adding a feedback button so that users can teach the neural network. - edit#2 example: [http://www.kenya-today.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/11/chicke...](http://www.kenya-today.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/11/chicken.jpg) and [http://earhustle411.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/10/recalled-...](http://earhustle411.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/10/recalled-chicken.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh this is a huge help that you found this situation now. The last one - horses bodies - was the same, oval shape and skin with veins.

I do seldomly check the sandbox queue of images looking for those situations. But I do not know about the user taught neural models. You can't trust the internet to teach your AI as microsoft lately shown us. But I will implement some kind of reporting system. Thanks ilovecocacola!</comment></comment>


Academic Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ad/academic-hacker-news.html <comment><USER2> Like the idea, but a few problems:

\- Sites that aren't super active yet for me _must_ have RSS. RSS is my callback mechanism. There are probably only 10 sites that I visit on a routine basis, but I subscribe to 45 (mostly low volume) RSS feeds. Alternative for me these days is Twitter.

\- As others mentioned green color is bad. I can barely read the title.

\- "Academic" is too vague. Academic for what? Computer science? Any papers on anything? Professor's union meeting write-ups? Specials in the U. Toronto snack bar? Note: Current "Hacker News" ousted the previously more specific name, "Startup News".

\- Is this different from <http://www.reddit.com/r/compsci/> ?

<comment><USER3> A memorable domain name would be helpful too, even if it just redirects.

<comment><AUTHOR> hnacademic.com should start redirecting as soon as DNS propagates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Makes me wonder what's wrong with posting them here - I'd welcome some "great tech papers" (as they put it) here.

<comment><USER5> I don't think I've ever seen an actual technical paper on the front page of Hacker News. I remember trying to post some of my favorites when I first came to HN, but people rarely responded to or upvoted them. Also, it's a lot more work to read a technical paper than most forms of online writing, and I hope that this new one has a much slower pace than Hacker News.

This is a good niche to try and fill. Thanks.

<comment><USER6> You are right about papers. But someone has posted a paper from Stanford about _Automatic Generation of High-Coverage Tests_ and I was so glad to see that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Half of me wants this to be successful because it's such a great idea. The other half hopes it crashes and burns simply because I don't need another hacker news to eat away my time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it will be a slower site than HN because it takes longer to read full papers than articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you manage to solve the chicken-and-egg problem of building a community site, let us know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it's up, we'll see where it goes.

I don't actually know anything about building communities. Basically the plan is to keep an open mind and keep learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like it.

Where can I find the chemistry, biology, neuroscience, psychology, economics, and physics versions?

<comment><USER10> Since our interests overlap almost exactly (not a huge chemistry fan), I'd be interested in putting together a subject-specific suite of versions.

<comment><USER11> Would love such a site!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is an excellent idea, and I love the comments so far. It's great to see how open the community is to the idea of others taking a great technology/idea and applying it in new ways. I hope ideas from Academic Hacker News will be able to flow back and influence the original hacker news.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice. I'll try to get some of my friends to check it out as well.

An about page would be nice, to know what kind of content will be accepted. CS Papers only? Or all academic papers? Or anything of interest to CS people?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the about page:

<http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ad/academic-hacker-news.html>

You can see it by clicking on the (empty for now) favicon. I'll add a more obvious link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I found a really cool domain that you might want to use. I couldn't reserve it for various reasons.

I don't want to display it because otherwise a squatter might take it. If you want to know what it is, look on your own site for the username SapphireSun and check the email field. Email me and I'll tell you it.

Posting with this username to get around the noprocrast feature ;-). Normally I wouldn't, but this might be a time sensitive issue now that you've broadcasted your existence to the world.

<comment><USER14> Nevermind, I see the contact information. Feel free to downmod this into oblivion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a really good idea. Maybe this will generate a lot of public discussion about some recent papers...

</comment><comment><USER16> Can you add an rss feed?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's built in to pg's source code. See <http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ad/news/rss>

I also added a link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is just fantastic, thank you!

</comment><comment><USER18> Invest in a favicon :-)

<comment><USER19> Turn the Y upside down, presto!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very nice... but please change the green color of the bar to any other color, or change the color of the items in the menu... like make it white to appear! About marketing... don't forget to tell your friends and every student at your class about it and encourage them to join.

EDIT: I also advice you to check out this post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363> so you can know "what people want".. and the features that should be added.

Try to be creative, and look at the link above, so you can get more ideas about enhancing it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Color changed to be lighter.

Thanks for the link. I plan to specialize the site features for papers as I get ideas.

<comment><USER20> Thanks, but #49960a is still too dark for me to read black against. I'm sticking with my #6c6 hack for now.</comment></comment></comment>


UK government using confidential patient data in coronavirus response - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I think you meant to link here: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/12/uk- government-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/12/uk-government- using-confidential-patient-data-in-coronavirus-response)

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops. Thanks. Although I can't seem to edit now!</comment></comment>


Serious bug in new flash for linux closed because it is low priority - <AUTHOR> https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=2968177

<comment><USER2> How is this news?

First, the Adobe developer explicitly said they're tracking the bug internally and that they've only closed it in their external bug tracker. They said they could reproduce it, so your job as a bug reporter is done.

Second, Adobe has limited resources like any organization and so they have to set priorities. Flash runs on 99% of internet enabled PCs [1], which could very well be hundreds of millions of Windows and Mac OS X desktops. I don't see how _any_ Linux bug could be anything other than low priority in the face of that.

Maybe 5 years ago, when Linux appeared to be gaining significant momentum on the desktop because Ubuntu, priorities could have been different. However, it's now clear that Mac OS X is and will be the alternative OS of choice for most people who don't use Windows for the foreseeable future.

[1] <http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/>

*edit: spelling

<comment><USER3> I think all of the Android devices (phones, tablets and such) running some version of Linux would in some way benefit from increased attention to Linux support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank you for posting this to HN.

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't say I expect anything less from Adobe having been through the rigmarole of getting a bug fixed in Fireworks CS2.</comment>


A new ggplot is here - <AUTHOR> http://blog.yhat.com/posts/new-ggplot.html <comment><AUTHOR> Great, I though that project is frozen. And I am a big fan of ggplot2, often inside IPython Notebooks doing %%R just to use it.

In any case: why "+", not chaining?

\- more Pythonic (not important)

\- no namespace pollution (important)

\- cleaner code

In any case, even ggvis is moving that way. (OK, more in a functional flavour, but effectively the same things as chaining.)</comment>