Nasa revives 'weird life forms' trapped inside crystals for 60,000 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/18/newly-discovered-weird-life-forms-may-offer-clue-life-mars/ <comment><USER2> Fascinating that the organisms can remain viable in geo-preservation mode. When growing up in Vegas we used to go swimming in some of the side canyons the lake had filled. And once while swimming we found some gypsum crystals that were like 1:100th scale models of the ones in the cave (I think the largest were about 5" long and maybe an inch in diameter.) we carried a couple of home and for a fairly long time they sat as table decorations. I never even imagined they could have something inside of them like that. Definitely solid horror movie material :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think I have seen enough Hollywood B movies to see where this is going.

<comment><USER4> This is basically every episode of The X-Files.

<comment><USER5> Andromeda Strain!

<comment><USER6> Andromeda strain seems much more likely than Star Trek, considering the past. (human behavior, microorganisms)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Disappointed - not much on why these life forms are "weird".

<comment><USER8> They thrive in an environment devoid of organic matter!

<comment><USER9> I didn't read it as if they were thriving -- more that they were locked dormant within the crystals.

<comment><USER10> <looks around the office on a Monday morning, considers poor life choices and the option of lying dormant within a crystal>

Yep, sounds like "thriving" to me!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As an aside, I find it deeply, poetically beautiful that the world has giant crystal caves.

<comment><USER12> You can buy crystals from this cave on eBay for really cheap. I've got one in my "weird rock" collection.

<comment><USER13> What string would I search for on eBay?

<comment><USER14> _Weird Cave Rocks_

<comment><USER15> See Rock City

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That headline sounds like the plot of some Roger Corman-style B-movie.

Why were they trapped in the first place? And is it a good idea to let them out?

<comment><USER17> Yes, this is the famous aphorism of Zal-Tar's Fence:

> There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for > the sake of simplicity, a crystal or jewel erected to contain an ancient > being. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I > don't see the danger this being poses; let us release it." To which the more > intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the > danger, I certainly won't let you release it. Go away and think. Then, when > you can come back and tell me that you do see the danger, I may allow you to > release it."

<comment><USER18> Zal-Tar's? It's Chesterton's fence [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence)

<comment><USER17> That's the joke.

<comment><USER19> can you please help us by explaining the joke (of an updated renamed Chesterton's fence)?

<comment><USER17> You know, i'm not sure i _can_ explain the joke. I can explain what i wrote, but not why it's funny (if indeed it is). As far as i know, we don't really understand what 'funny' actually is.

My working hypothesis, though, is that this is mostly funny because of the conjuction between the familiar and the unfamiliar. There is then a second layer of funniness to do with absurdity.

So, Chesterton's Fence is a bit of a meme (in the original sense) on HN now. I've seen it come up a few times, as something people consider obscure, but are eager to share, because it's interesting. I assumed that people would recognise it. The re-formulation as a piece of Kryptonian philosophy (Zal-Tar is the scientist guy from the 1984 Supergirl film) about something fantastical and over-the-top like an ancient evil trapped in a crystal, on the other hand, is unfamiliar. There's something about the superposition of the two that is funny.

However, that feeds immediately into absurdity, because my re-formulation is rubbish; it's entirely unconvincing, and fails to disguise the origin of the quote. But that makes it _more_ funny, because now you think i'm an idiot. Except you know i'm not really an idiot (well, something like that), you recognise that i'm playing at being an idiot. That isn't a universal element of all comedy, but it's something i personally lean on a lot - if you can make a really obviously silly statement the right way, either deadpan or hyperbolic, it can be funny.

I'm reminded of "You've not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsCVuO1yeJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsCVuO1yeJc)

<comment><USER19> OK, thank you! I think I might have been amused by it on another day. Or perhaps with a little linguistic style hint that you were up to such ironies (This possibility had been in my range of possibilities, but not at the top). Maybe the responder's literalist correction put me off before I had time to get the joke? Anyways, this helps with the ponderings on the tribulations of text!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> More evidence that life could possibly survive traveling through space.

</comment><comment><USER21> So they found bacteria and archae?

</comment><comment><USER22> Clearly they didn't see the movie Life.

</comment><comment><USER23> What is the researcher wearing in the first photograph? It looks like a lead smock for radiation protection, but those bags have gaps between them so that doesn't seem likely. Sample containers?

<comment><USER24> It's a ice jacket. Temperatures in those caves can reach up to 58 °C (136 °F).

<comment><USER23> Thanks! I see he looks a bit sweaty, on second viewing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Maybe one of those flying alien viruses from Alien: Covenent will come out

<comment><USER26> Hey, spoilers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> No pictures (of lifeforms)?

</comment><comment><USER28> General Zod.

</comment><comment><USER29> _Penelope Boston, the director of NASA 's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua looking for extremophiles, which contain caves as large as cathedrals._

Is it just because English isn't my first language, or does that sentence sound weird to native speakers too? Like the extremophiles contain "caves as large as cathedrals"

<comment><USER30> Native speaker here. For what it's worth, I understood it perfectly. And so did you. It's not possible for extremophiles to contain caves, so obviously you know what they mean. Much of English is like this in informal conversation, and informal conversation is arguably the best way to write.

<comment><USER31> Native speaker here. Having not previously known what extremophiles are, I had to read it three times to convince myself they couldn't contain caves.

Geology has a certain reputation for its vocabulary [https://xkcd.com/1829/](https://xkcd.com/1829/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What could go wrong?

<comment><USER33> Not nearly as much as you're implying

<comment><USER34> The storyline, and even the first picture do mirror a lot of doomsday/virus/zombie/etc plots. I'm sure that occurs to just about everyone that reads it.

A pointer to some credible source as to why it's not dangerous might be interesting.

Even being somewhat reasonable, scary things like prions do exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wonder what the frequency of caves like this might be, and how likely they are to ever be found. Are they typically indicated by some evidence or indicators on the surface, or might there be unthinkable quantities scattered all over the globe?</comment>


50 authors, 50 science fiction stories shorter than novels - <AUTHOR> https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2020/07/50-favorite-short-science-fiction.html <comment><USER2> Like the list, big fan of Borges, Egan and Chiang, but very surprised to see no Lem. He has to be on a list like that. _A Perfect Vacuum_ is brilliant and the Cyberiad is a great candidate as well.

Another thing I'm surprised to not see on the list is Chinese short-story sci- fi, there's been a lot of great stuff coming out of the country in recent years much of it translated by Ken Liu.

 _Folding Beijing_ by Hao Jingfang is great and free to read[1], there's _The Wandering Earth_ by Liu Cixin whose _Three Body_ books got a lot of attention, and there's another collection called _Invisible Planets_ , which has a few good stories by Chen Qiufan. He's also written a very good novel called _Waste Tide_.

[1][https://uncannymagazine.com/article/folding- beijing-2/](https://uncannymagazine.com/article/folding-beijing-2/)

<comment><USER3> I found the first of the Three Body Problem series to be very dry and about twice as long as it should have been.

Are the other stories translated by Liu any better do you think? I want to give Chinese sci-fi an honest try but my attempt with Three Body Problem wasn't great.

<comment><USER2> seconding riffraff, the second book is a much easier and more entertaining read, I'd definitely give it a shot.

<comment> em-bee that's good to know. i have been struggling with the first one.

one thing i am wondering is if having different translators for the books is noticeable in any way

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My first introduction to sci-fi, I think, at the tender age of maybe eight, was Ray Bradbury's All Summer In A Day. It uses the fantastical setting of human colonies on Venus to starkly illustrate both the thoughtless cruelty of children and their ability to later understand what they've done. I don't think of it often, but it was formative. So thanks OP for the reminder. At that age, with my experience then, it had the same effect that The Lottery had on a lot of older people, I think.

An engaging novella by a now-dead luminary is The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe, 1972. It's a book of three short stories, written in three different styles, all interrelated and containing a central mystery.

Wolfe is well-known for hiding puzzles in his books that deepen your understanding and appreciation of his stories without detracting at all from a more casual reading. He's my favorite author, and I'll freely admit that he's hit-or-miss sometimes. His best works, this one included, are in worlds (usually some iteration of our own) where long-established systems are in a state of decay. More like an ill-maintained shed that's still used while being slowly pulled apart by a beautiful trumpet vine than some catastrophic dystopia, and not without hope. He also has a knack for making sci-fi look like fantasy until you pay closer attention that I really like.

If you're someone who likes to re-read your books, check him out. I'm still holding out for Book of the Long Sun to be made into a miniseries; it's one of the reasons I bring him up so often. Someday, the right set of eyes may read this =)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the Wolfe rec; sounds like we have some tastes in common. Along those lines, I heartily recommend basically everything by David Mitchell -- and reading his works in their published order. They stand on their own, but there are myriad narrative threads and subtle literary puzzles throughout. I look forward to re-reading them in sequence -- after I devour "Utopia Avenue", which I just now learned to my delight was published 12 days ago! :)

<comment><USER4> I'll check him out, thanks in kind! The name threw me at first, because the David Mitchell I'm familiar with is a British comedian who I'm already fond of.

And I've just learned that he wrote Cloud Atlas, a film that I started watching in the wrong headspace so didn't get far, but I remember being intrigued by the synopsis I read beforehand. Ghostwritten is where to start, yes? Or are there short stories that I should seek out first?

Your timing is perfect: I'm waiting for 3 (!) unfinished series to release their next volumes, so a writer who will keep me busy for a month or two is most welcome!

—

For (in)completeness' sake, because I can't help sharing my excitement about these, even though they are strictly off topic at this point and this post will be too damn long, the unfinished series I'm waiting for are:

NK Jemisin (an author in OP's list) - Great Cities series (One book complete). What if cities can become (once they grow complex enough) living beings? What if there are extra-dimensional forces arrayed against them, and the cities raise humans as avatars to help themselves? Only one book is finished, and it's a good one. Self-aware Lovecraft for the modern world, focused on NYC. Her complete Broken Earth trilogy is also good.

Robert Jackson Bennett - The Founders Trilogy (two books complete). In this world, "scribing" is a way to make physical objects behave as if their physical constants were altered, much like variables in programming. A thief who can "see" these scribings gets in touch with a "talking" key who has a much greater understanding of them. But what kind of graybeard made the key ages ago? What's their long game? Why can the thief even see this stuff? Being a programmer probably adds a lot to this one, but it's not a requirement. Reminds me some of Stephenson's wit with a lot less of his expository narrative (no slight there—he's easily in my top 5, and some narrative asides are some of his best bits.)

Peter Newman - The Deathless (Two books complete). This one really surprised me. Royals with flying armor live in floating castles and cultivate "heirs" who will host their consciousnesses when they die, while commoners scrabble near The Wild that grows just outside the influence of the royals' magical roads. I'm sorry to say that I read a preview out of incredulity, with the intent of hating on the premise. Turns out it intrigued me enough to buy the first book, and then I was hooked because the world and its inhabitants are super interesting. "Don't judge a book by its synopsis," etc.

Bonus, 'cause why not: James A. Corey - The Expanse. Read your own summary for this one =)

<comment><USER6> _The Bone Clocks_ and _The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet_ are both greatly entertaining novels as well (and tangentially related to both, the shorter novel _Slade House_ ).

Personally I found these more enjoyable than _Cloud Atlas_ , which is good and a must-read nonetheless, but relies a lot on its narrative structure for its effect (this is not a negative, but the Matryoshka doll structure of the book does define it rather strongly).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I got started in SF by reading the anthologies. Typically vetted by people with a reputation. Fine way to find new favorite authors.

225 examples : [https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/7967.Best_Science_Fictio...](https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/7967.Best_Science_Fiction_Anthologies)

'Escape Pod' reads new short SF, now up to its 740s; it was a 2020 Hugo finalist : [https://escapepod.org/](https://escapepod.org/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Quite a few on this list are sci-fi legends but I'm most glad to see the tail- end: both Maria Machado and Jemisin are amazing voices who write thick and lush prose, something that sci-fi lacks sometimes. Charlie Jane Anders, meanwhile, is delightfully off-beat and every novel of hers was a pleasant time so far.

In general, I'd recommend to not stick to the oldies. Read a bit of the classics and then venture into the modern stuff, there's a lot to like there. Martha Wells, Matt Wallace, T. Kingfisher, K.B. Wagers, to name a few.

<comment><USER9> _Quite a few on this list are sci-fi legends_.

Indeed.

"The Machine Stops" is a must-read. It's over a century old and is not dated.

I've always liked "With the Night Mail". Kipling wrote two SF stories, and this is one of them.

"A Logic Named Joe" \- the Internet and Google, from 1946.

"Ender's Game", the short story, was of course expanded into a series of books and a movie. The original short story is better.

That's also true of "Farewell to the Master", not on the list. That's the basis for "The Day the Earth Stood Still". The original short story is very rarely seen. Nor is the ending well known. It should be. Wikipedia summarizes it.

<comment><USER10> I read farewell to the master in a Hugo winners collection. I then saw "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and felt the movie was much better. The ending of the short story was IMO the weakest part, but ymmv.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. The movie is my Top 100 list. The story is "OK."

<comment><USER9> The 1951 movie, yes. The 2008 remake, er, no way.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had forgotten there even was a remake. I think I heard it was pretty bad and didn't want to ruin my memory of the original.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good list, but a few notable gaps.

Not a lot of people know, perhaps, that Gene Wolfe was a fantastic short story writer. Among my favourites are "Hero as Werewolf" and "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories" [1], the latter a pitch-perfect analysis of why we need to read stories.

R. A. Lafferty is also notably absent. If he needs to be known for just one short story, it's "Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne" [2]. Probably the funniest time-travel story ever written.

[1] [http://www.gbv.de/dms/goettingen/591130106.pdf](http://www.gbv.de/dms/goettingen/591130106.pdf)

[2] [http://220.127.116.11:82/get/pdf/2256](http://126.96.36.199:82/get/pdf/2256)

<comment><USER12> The book I have is titled The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories[1]. Makes the meta element a bit clearer.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_Doctor_Death_a...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_Doctor_Death_and_Other_Stories_and_Other_Stories)

<comment><USER11> Yep. The book has three variations:

* The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories

* The Death of Dr. Island

* The Doctor of Death Island

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ballard wrote a lot of solidly SF short stories. I think my favourite is Report on an Unidentified Space Station:

[http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~kite/doc/roauss.htm](http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~kite/doc/roauss.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually wasn't sure I had picked my favorite Ballard entry. I've been reading through his main collection. Wyndham is also fantastic in _somewhat_ the same vein (although with narrower focus) but I don't love any of his short stories as opposed to novels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Regarding the Le Guin selection: _The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas_ is perhaps my least favourite Le Guin story. I understand (and appreciate) the theme but its presentation is so tritely and artificially delivered that I think it undermines itself. It frankly reads like a morally earnest high schooler's piece of creative writing (albeit with more polished prose). I find Le Guin a mediocre writer when she is at her most didactic. Conversely, when she writes from a more subconscious, mystical space she is brilliant. And this is mostly her earlier work.

<comment><USER15> I'm no literary critic, but I really liked Omelas. She makes this huge push to make it very clear that she is setting up a moral allegory, and in the end, she leaves the actual point completely vague. It feels like a windup to "this society is bad," but then she just weakens the condemnation down to a mild suggestion. It was neat.

<comment><USER14> Appreciate you giving your well-expressed differing take.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ted Chiang is one of my all-time favorites. I keep going back to his stories. Other than "Story of your life" which is listed here, I highly recommend "Tower of Babylon" and "Hell Is the Absence of God".

Also, there are some gems in Fred Saberhagen Bereserkers series.

<comment><USER17> +1

Absolutely loved Chiang's short story collection "Exhalation". I didn't quite see SF as essential reading before reading this book.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I really appreciate everyone's helpful feedback and recommendations. It definitely encourages me to do some reading and come up with an addendum for some additional stories.

</comment><comment><USER18> Good list. Sad not to see "Sentry" by Fredric Brown in it[0]. It's 70 years old and still reads great.

[0] [http://www.gutenberg.org/files29948/29948-h/29948-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files29948/29948-h/29948-h.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> I just read Sentry—didn't take long—and I wonder if the intervening years didn't set up certain expectations. Because I pretty much knew where things were going.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Thanks for posting this! I've been enjoing short stories more than I thought after picking up Men Without Women recently. They make for very nice lunchtime reading :D I also appreciate that the list is full of classics. I quite like the feeling of reading an established canon.

Flowers For Algernon never interested me much, but learning now that it was originally a short story, I'll put it on my list.

Here is a neat pdf of Asimov's The Last Question, for those who are into that sort of thing: [https://docdro.id/GQfVN6o](https://docdro.id/GQfVN6o)

</comment><comment><USER20> It's a good list. I have a copy of "The 100 best short short science fiction stories" somewhere in the attic. Pretty old now, but some classics from a variety of authors. I'm sure there's cheaper options than amazon but it has the book details [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Science-Fiction-Short- Stories...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Science-Fiction-Short- Stories/dp/0380507730)

<comment><AUTHOR> That book is a collection of _very_ short stories. It's fine given that focus but I read through it recently and I don't personally find much in there that I consider to be particularly great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice list. There is lots of new stuff here for me.

The obvious miss is John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" (1938), which is the inspiration for the movie The Thing.

<comment><USER22> I have that "book". I have read it several times and it is a great read. There is also an expanded version and John Betancourt is working on a sequel to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Surface Tension is one of the most memorable stories from my youth. Not hard sci-fi, but rationality and adventure. The introduction can be skimmed. [http://www.sfsfss.com/stories/Blish,%20James%20-%20%5BNovele...](http://www.sfsfss.com/stories/Blish,%20James%20-%20%5BNovelette%5D%20Surface%20Tension%20%5Bv1.0%5D.htm)

</comment><comment><USER24> There's a lot there I need to add to my list. I'd like to put in a word for Eric Frank Russell, whose short Allamagoosa ([https://www.baen.com/Chapters/1439133476/1439133476___3.htm](https://www.baen.com/Chapters/1439133476/1439133476___3.htm)) won the first Best Short Story Hugo.

</comment><comment><USER25> Reading this reminded me of the Oxford Book of Science Fiction, my first introduction to serious science fiction - I had a copy and lost it. So I searched for it and found the cover page[0] and noticed Tom Shippey's name who was the editor - I remembered that name after 20+ years! And then I searched for other anthologies by him and found The Oxford Book of Fantasy stories which I also lost - this[1] was the cover page. Blast from the past!

[0]: [https://blackwells.co.uk/jacket/l/9780192831675.jpg](https://blackwells.co.uk/jacket/l/9780192831675.jpg) [1]: [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d8/b5/d7/d8b5d7aa47735f7a0a51...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d8/b5/d7/d8b5d7aa47735f7a0a51d72ce401bb20.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER26> How do you prefer to read these?

They mostly seem to be free to read directly from the websites of their online magazines, like [http://www.tor.com](http://www.tor.com), [http://strangehorizons.com](http://strangehorizons.com), [http://apex- magazine.com](http://apex-magazine.com), [http://uncannymagazine.com](http://uncannymagazine.com), [http://clarkesworldmagazine.com](http://clarkesworldmagazine.com).

So you would read them on your tablet or notebook? How would you read them on e.g. the Kindle? Print as PDF, and copy the PDF to the Kindle? Or some better way?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's actually a complaint of mine that I can't mostly buy these for $1-2 on Amazon and call it a day. Rather I have to head around the web and find "free" copies that may or may not be legit or buy collections off Amazon (which may be OK). But, yes, it's annoying I can't legit just pay for the whole collection, much of which is pretty old.

<comment><USER27> Popular collections tend to stay in print in softback for a while. The late Gardner Dozois edited "Years Best Science Fiction" every year which is a hefty collection of good short SF from that year, usually takes me a few months to consume one of those, and it's nice to have a mix even if not all the stories are to my taste. The collection is paying the authors for their work to appear, so if your concern is whether authors get paid that's covered.

Even really old stuff is not infrequently still in print. Somebody else mentioned Lem, the English translations of Lem's short fiction are generally in print, though it can be a struggle to find things like Hospital of the Transfiguration that are a bit niche (and not Science Fiction) or his literary criticism (Lem thought most SF in his day was crap, I am tempted to agree)

You will struggle to buy individual stories because that's not really a thing. Some professional writers only write shorts to introduce an idea or setting before novel-length publication e.g. Egan gives away shorts about the Amalgam, the setting for his novel Incandescence, and the intro to some of his novels works as a short (e.g. "Orphanogensis" is actually the start of a novel, but it's also a perfectly functional short story about "orphans", people created randomly in a society where people are just software...). So for those the author believes they are essentially advertising the larger product with a free story.

<comment><USER6> Finding (print) anthologies that contain a specific short story can be a challenge though.

I got introduced to Bujold's Vorkosigan series via the short story "The Borders of Infinity" which is (amongst plenty of other anthologies and a collection of three Vorkosigan shorts confusingly called _Borders of Infinity_ itself) included in _Infinite Stars_ (ed. Bryan Thomas Schmidt). Getting most of the novels was easy enough, but hunting down the remaining short stories meant foraging for second-hand out-of-print anthologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> One interesting collection of science fiction short stories from the early seventies is "Moderan" by David R. Bunch. After many years out of print, it was recently re-published in the NYRB Classics series: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38732324-moderan](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38732324-moderan) Very surreal—and sometimes disturbing—tales about cyborgs trying to leave their humanity behind.

Another masterful writer of surreal science fiction stories was R. A. Lafferty [https://www.amazon.com/Best-R- Lafferty/dp/1473213444/](https://www.amazon.com/Best-R- Lafferty/dp/1473213444/)

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Thanks. I'll check those out. I tried to cast a fairly wide net here although I'm probably less into surreal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I remember reading several of these in school, as school assignments. I remember being surprised years later to find how recent they were, as well as how uncontroversial their inclusion in the curriculum was.

On that note, kinda sad that they chose "True Names" over "Fast Times at Fairmont High" for Vinge's entry. Though I haven't read the former, the latter reads like TN's description, except for phenomena that haven't fully unfurled their existence and possibility yet. AR glasses, anyone?

[https://www.scribd.com/document/139440129/Fast-Times-at- Fair...](https://www.scribd.com/document/139440129/Fast-Times-at-Fairmont- High)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually not sure I have read that and I will have to. True Names was much earlier and I think probably more prescient as a result. (And I personally read it during that earlier period so my reaction is probably much different.)

ADDED: It's also very much a story about people, not just technology.

<comment><USER29> I would not be surprised if Vinge considered RE an update or reboot of TN, because they share many qualities. TN was prescient because a lot of what it imagined came to pass. I think RE ultimately will be, too; we're just in the middle of watching it unfold. I think that's profound. We haven't seen a massive pitched battle between players of Pokemon Go and some other fandom (Vinge thought it would be Terry Pratchett fans, but I'm thinking Yu-Gi-Oh or Harry Potter stans are more likely), but just you wait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm surprised to not find Stanley G. Weinbaum in the list or the comments. He was early in sci-fi (mid 1930s) and died not too long after his career took off, but a bunch of his writing laid the foundation for many SF writers that came after.

<comment><AUTHOR> I reread "A Martian Odyssey" and I know it appears on a lot of top 10 lists but I honestly don't think it's a terribly interesting story for a modern audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's a Good Life - the article mentions it was made into a Twilight Zone episode. I saw this episode like a month ago on MeTV, accidentally, late at night. Wow it was freaky. Really disturbing.

The article doesn't really do it justice. The kid in the story has God powers and can do whatever he wants, so he creates Cronenberg creatures and wantonly kills people. All of the adults have to agree that it's a good thing, otherwise he gets irritated and disappears them. So you get scenes like where a wife has to emphatically agree that it was a good thing her husband was killed.

The whole thing was like a scary David Lynch scene.

</comment><comment><USER32> > Sturgeon is not generally very well known

This must be an example of Sturgeon's Law.

</comment><comment> site-packages1 Liking this list a lot! I've read a bunch of these and enjoyed them so if that's any indication of the quality of the rest for me, then I'll enjoy many of the others!

I think I'll catch some flack for saying this, but skimming I'm only seeing 14% of the authors are female. I'm sure there are many reasons why one might say the proportion of female to male SF writers is not the same as the proportion of male to female in society at large, but it would have been nice to see more female representation on the list.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think your numbers are about right even allowing for the pseudonyms of husband and wife teams (Lewis Pladgett) and women individually (James Tiptree Jr) but it just reflects what has been a rather male-dominated genre. You'd see the flip case I'm sure if we were talking romance novels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Ambiguity Machines: An Examination, by Vandana Singh

[https://www.tor.com/2015/04/29/ambiguity-machines-an- examina...](https://www.tor.com/2015/04/29/ambiguity-machines-an-examination- vandana-singh/)

Salto Mortal, by Nick T. Chan [http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/salto- mortal/](http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/salto-mortal/)

</comment><comment> rkuykendall-com Two more not on this list:

Terry Bisson - They're Made out of Meat [https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...](https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html)

Andy Weir - The Egg [http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html](http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I will check out. Bears Discover Fire was a recommendation that I didn't live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> One of my favorite scifi short stories is Manna by Michael Brain (creator of howstuffworks.com)

It two futures based around easy industrial production/ai and feels closer to reality then it did a few years ago.

Here is the link for anyone interested: [https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

</comment><comment><USER35> This is a great list. Given my limited attention span, I've always been drawn to short fiction. I'm familiar with a number of the stories mentioned and some of the "runners up". And now I've got a list of new stories to hunt down.

One typo: "Speaker of the Dead" should be "Speaker for the Dead".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Fixed. I admit a lot of these stories tend towards novelette or novella length. But it's still easier for me than a novel these days in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> _searches for Murderbot_

I'm surprised to see it's not mentioned yet! Martha Wells' Murderbot series is really fun reading.

<comment><USER37> +1 for Murderbot, but I think it's a little long for the list! Great read though if anyone is looking for recommendations.

<comment><USER36> There were four novellas before the novel, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I had a vague idea that I had read Shirley Jackson's The Lottery from this list. I checked it out and I do recall it, and it was really shocking to read. Apparently subscribers of The New Yorker, where it was first serialized, cancelled their subscriptions in disgust. Early cancel culture.

</comment><comment><USER39> Nnedi Okorafor's _Binti_ would be a great modern addition to this list.

</comment><comment><USER40> I couldn't find "The Desire Machine" by the Strugatsky brothers which is a prelude to "Roadside Picnic". For those who watched "The Stalker" by Tarkovsky this is a must read.

</comment><comment><USER41> Some very strong choices here. Here's another great one: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ruum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ruum)

</comment><comment><USER42> Great to help my reading list. Thanks for sharing! I think many great science fiction ideas don't require a full novel to get the reader to open their mind. That's why I love the short stories. Thanks again!

</comment><comment><USER43> Although it's from a "newer" author, one of my favourite short stories is Diamond Dogs, by Alastair Reynolds. For me, it's perfect sci-fi, it gets a re- read every couple of years..

</comment><comment> ur-whale I would have added Jack Vance's _The_Moon_Moth_ [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Moth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Moth)

</comment><comment><USER44> I was surprised not to see Ken Liu on there, given just how many really good short stories he's written. If I had to pick just one, _Paper Menagerie_ deserves to be on this list.

</comment><comment><USER45> Scifi short stories and no Lem? Any story from Cyberiad would do.

</comment><comment><USER27> No alt-history on this list? Or maybe I didn't read carefully enough.

There's a lot of interesting short alt-history, the nice thing about the genre for shorts is that the reader needs little introduction to the setting - it's our world, except a little different, and discovering how it's different is often the core of the story.

A great many of the famous examples involve Nazis winning World War II, though e.g. Weinachtsabend by Keith Roberts puts an very interesting spin on that (Britain agrees terms with Germany and the war is over quickly, but decades later things aren't so simple) but much less obviously how about Howard Waldrop's "Custer's Last Jump" in which the Battle of the Little Bighorn happens in an alternate 19th century America that has powered flight...

<comment><USER46> Harry Turtledove has some very interesting short stories, such as "Road Not Taken" that concerns alien invaders in our near future.

But overall he's a master of the alt-history genre and worth the attention of reading his books. Guns of the South: General Lee on the cover holding an AK-47. He's a historian and did original primary research for it, but, 'nuff said. Worldwar In the Balance: Aliens attack in 1941, during fierce WWII fighting. Well fleshed out.

<comment> Seb-C "The road not taken" is one of my favourites. It gives a very interesting alternative way to think about science and technological progress. And the ending gives such an amazing feeling...

The only drawback is that as a non-native English speaker, the "pirate english" language at the beginning made it very hard for me to understand, so it is a story that is difficult to recommend to my friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I recently started reading Neuromancer thinking it was going to be an interesting sci-fi short story. Boy was I mistaken (happy but still mistaken)

</comment><comment><USER48> The only ones I've read are the ones by Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Orson Scott Card. Looks like I have a lot of reading to do.

</comment><comment> tom-thistime Great list. It's too bad there wasn't room to squeeze an early John Varley story on there. Maybe Press Enter _.

</comment><comment> joe-collins Not yet a mention of Charles Stross in this thread! For a short story, I recommend his Lovecraftian _A Colder War_.

<comment><AUTHOR> I very nearly included "Rogue Farm." I just ran out of slots.</comment></comment>


List of the Most Popular MOOCs - <AUTHOR> http://www.onlinecoursereport.com/the-50-most-popular-moocs-of-all-time/ <comment><USER2> Im Noticing a lot of these courses are coursera, and one of the most frustrating things about the plattform is the fact that most courses close and access to course materials/videos etc. is revoked after the course is over, this destroys the whole point of a mooc for me, and this choice seems arbitrary.

Why cant education materials just be open and remain open to everyone, journals and textbooks included? There are enough tax paying citizens all over the world pumping money into our education systems that there is no reason it should not be freely available 24/7 to all.

The fact that unlimited free education still doesnt exist in 2015 makes me sad everytime I think about it.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Coursera's approach seems to capture the worst of both worlds of traditional and online ed. It lacks the live lecture and person-to-person contact of a traditional college course. Yet, it maintains the timeboxed approach of traditional ed, which exists chiefly to provide simultaneity, to scale real-life human contact to lecture-hall size.

Now I realize that some aspects of the way some courses are run require simultaneity. Things like human-powered grading, by TAs or peers. But they don't _have_ to be designed that way. I've taken Coursera courses that are largely machine graded. For those, there doesn't seem to be any real reason why the courses are timeboxed. And even for courses where this is difficult to design around, it seems like it should be possible to tighten the iteration cycle.

<comment><USER4> > ... worst of both worlds ... timeboxed approach

Just to provide the other side of the story, I've done about a dozen MOOCs (mostly through Coursera) and I'm most of the way through Georgia Tech's online masters program.

Having to make progress every week is contributes a _lot_ to me actually finishing these courses. The Udacity courses I've signed up for never get touched because there's no urgency. Ditto the textbooks on my shelf that I keep meaning to go through, and the Open Yale and MIT OCW courses I've bookmarked... I obviously have the time, but unless there's a threat of "Do it now or it's gone" I'll probably go and watch TV when I get home from work.

<comment><USER3> I think that's fine, but if the urgency is manufactured, I'd argue that it should be an additional feature to provide that urgency, rather than the default.

I'm the other side of the coin. I may start off on schedule, but once life intervenes and I fall behind, and I've gotten a couple zeros, I'm like why bother catching up? As a result, I've only successfully finished one out of the 6 or 7 Coursera courses I've started.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Design Of Computer Programs on Udacity by Peter Norvig is pretty awesome. As someone who's only been seriously programming for a year or two , each problem set went like this :

Write the code here to do X :

I write a messy 4 liner after lots of thinking.

Professor Norvig comes along and does it in a simple functional one liner.

Mind blown.

He teaches good functional style program design one epiphany at a time.

<comment><USER6>
      >> Professor Norvig comes along and does it in a simple functional one liner.
      >> Mind blown.

That is how I felt taking Martin Odersky's Scala course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've _completed_ a bunch of Coursera courses. Quality really varies. Even within the 9 course Data Science specialization [1] track some courses were rather poor while the rest were very good. I'm currently taking the #5 rated course [2]. It is excellent. But I'm only taking it because the Statisical Inference course in the Data Science specialization was so weak.

I would also recommend the Cryptography 1 course by Dan Boneh on Coursera [3]. Excellent if you are at all interested in the subject.

I always download the lecture videos, slides, quizzes, labs and exams because, as mentioned, many of the courses don't allow access once the class is completed.

You definitely have to have plenty of self discipline to complete MOOCs. And I don't have any delusions about a Coursera certificate being useful in landing a job; that's not what I'm after. I'm building the skills I want to apply to my own projects.

[1] [https://www.coursera.org/specializations/jhudatascience](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/jhudatascience) [2] [https://www.coursera.org/course/statistics](https://www.coursera.org/course/statistics) [3] [https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto](https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto)

<comment><USER8> [https://www.coursetalk.com](https://www.coursetalk.com) has quite good reviews, especially on the more popular courses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am surprised that Khan Academy is not recognized in this report probably because the scope is limited to just those offer by an accredited university. I think calculus and chemistry have helped many first and second years of college students taking introductory courses including myself. I think KA is probably the most popular MOOC for all ages, in the most accessible way given it only requires a YouTube account, which millions have for over a decade. But that's just my opinion.

YouTube has a few really amazing courses available online.

For example, UCB has a channel with up-to-date content that otherwise not available on MOOC platform.

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMV45tHCYNI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMV45tHCYNI) is a very good class on data structure

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyUK5RAJg1c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyUK5RAJg1c) and the rest has very good lectures on theory of computation

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G6_-ljgmXE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G6_-ljgmXE) also very good for algorithms. I find MIT's version to be too theory based for practitioners. Anyway, I still watch MIT's just to complement anything missing (no two speakers can teach the same topic equally)

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting but... I enrolled _and completed_ a couple of the courses listed there. I'd be interested in seeing for each what percentage of enrolled students actually completed the whole course. Anecdotally the numbers are really really low (as in "around 5%").

<comment><USER11> I'm a huge MOOC fan, but after completing a couple of the very early Stanford ones I haven't completed any. Quite frankly I don't see completing a MOOC as the best use of time. I use MOOCs to either pick up new skills I need for work, brush up on stuff I haven't looked at since University or as 'entertainment', basically learning interesting stuff purely for fun. For non of these things actually completing the course to their satisfaction adds anything to their value.

I wish people would stop looking so much at completion scores and not judge the concept as a failure just because they are so low.

<comment><USER12> I would agree with and extend your remarks that getting a title of nobility from a brick and mortar uni gives you a vocational meal ticket, so you can motivate grinders by asking if they like money of if they like eating food, and then they'll grind away for letters on a transcript.

But in MOOC land I get nothing. I did the complete automata class mostly to see if there's much new since I did a brick and mortar version some decades ago, and the "reward" was not exactly fulfilling. I'm not expecting Ullman to fly out and shake my hand, or my phone to ring off the hook from recruiters seeing I jumped thru some hoops, but something more would have been nice? Actually, anything would have been nice?

Since the grind factor was aggressively burned out of me, I haven't completed a single course. I did watch the videos and did the assignments for computational neuroscience and one of the multi-class algo series and the functional programming and the famous AI class.

There's a lot of talk about how grinders don't grind therefore grinders suck or grinding sucks. However what really sucks is the playground presented to the grinders. Its not their fault they aren't being given something worth grinding.

By analogy most MMORPGs that tanked and died, tanked and died because the grind experience sucked. Its not the fault of the grinders that the businessmen couldn't or wouldn't present something as enjoyably grindable as WoW or Eve.

To some extent the whole market segment of MOOCs smells like a freshmen psych class lab experiment, "what happens to grind performance when you leave all the annoyance factors of grinds in place but remove all the rewards, with the hypothesis that almost every rat in the box stops grinding"

<comment><USER13> It's not clear what you're looking for exactly but, if anything, MOOCs (Coursera at any rate) have cut back on issuing completion certificates in the absence of paying a fee. Their problem, one of them anyway, is that certificates basically aren't worth anything as a certification mechanism in most cases so very few are willing to pay for them.

And, I expect, that if you start from the assumptions that 1.) MOOC certificates aren't worth anything as a real-world "vocational meal ticket" beyond the value of the underlying education and 2.) Companies offering MOOCs are not going to become unicorns and probably won't even return investors money-- you probably end up with something that isn't designed to mirror a university course.

<comment><USER12> I know that's the conventional top down narrative and I think you presented it well.

I'm proposing that as a bottom up narrative, they continue to include extensive grind barriers such as peculiar scheduling and pacing, someone else designing arbitrary barriers in terms of assignments with firm due dates, etc. Yet the reward has been cut out as per reasons in the top down narrative, etc. So from the bottom up perspective you're left with a stereotypical grind game where the reward has been removed, and from that theoretical model, the dropout rate makes sense. Then when people sign up and get something out of partial participation, it makes no sense to use a successful grind game metric measurement when its a failed grind game therefore the players aren't cooperating because they feel no need to do so. Because "MOOC as a grind game" has failed, a MOOC is a place to learn, not a place to jump thru hoops or not get a reward other than making someone else's completion metric result look good.

You can run a grind game without a vocational meal ticket reward model. WoW and Eve do just fine.

My suggestion would be to use advanced technology to abandon the grind game aspects, assuming higher completion rates are inherently valuable. Even if completion rates are not valuable, removal of pointless grind will result in better operating conditions for the students. Why must class schedules correspond vaguely to the northern hemisphere agricultural growing season? If you're not teaching project management, why are due dates so important? Why is there (typically) only one very fixed learning track if more exist or there is a "chose two from column B and three from column C" aspect inherent in the field itself? All of that would be very difficult to implement at Harvard in 1640, but due to technological advances would not be very challenging to implement today.

<comment><USER13> Maybe. I'd just say though that one person's "designing arbitrary barriers in terms of assignments with firm due dates, etc." is another's structured approach to learning. After all, there are plenty of learning opportunities if you want total flexibility.

Of course, as you suggest, there are potentially ways to gamify and provide incentives for learning that don't as closely mimic traditional course structures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'll just throw in a plug here for Prof. Abu-Mostafa's _Learning from Data_ course at Caltech, which is outstanding: [http://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html](http://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html)

Unlike Andrew Ng's Coursera Machine Learning class, it is a real, unadulterated Caltech class, and exactly as challenging as that implies. It delves much more deeply into the mathematics behind ML, and the homework assignments are quite time consuming.

I took it as part of an interactive session through EdX, and the professor himself was extremely active on the forums: responding to student questions, clarifying lecture points, and giving homework suggestions--seemingly at all hours of the day and night.

</comment><comment><USER15> I did #27 "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking" during Feb-April this year. I enjoyed it a lot and found it challenging without being impossible to complete. Finished with a distinction and a feeling of great satisfaction.

I'm now doing Coursera's Interaction Design specialisation [1], which is proving to be very informative and a lot of fun.

If you're considering doing a MOOC then I'd definitely recommend it. Choose a free, short-ish course to start with, make the commitment, and dive in.

[1] [https://www.coursera.org/specializations/interaction- design](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/interaction-design)

<comment><USER16> That looks like a great series of courses. Unfortunately I am too busy with real school right now, but hopefully they offer them again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I found it very interesting that the second most popular Mooc of all time is a philosophy course.

Although personally I like better the philosophy introduction offered by MIT:

[https://courses.edx.org/courses/MITx/24.00_1x/3T2014/info](https://courses.edx.org/courses/MITx/24.00_1x/3T2014/info)

I am also looking forward to this one [https://www.edx.org/course/philosophy- minds-machines-mitx-24...](https://www.edx.org/course/philosophy-minds- machines-mitx-24-09x)

> An introduction to philosophy of mind, exploring consciousness, reality, AI, > and more. The most in-depth philosophy course available online.

> What you will learn

The basics of argumentation

Some central arguments for and against the view that a sufficiently powerful computer can think (AI)

The main theories of mental states and their relations to physical states

Some central arguments for and against the view that the world is not as we perceive it to be

What the "hard problem of consciousness" is

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm a big fan of uDacity, which only appears once in that list.

For a novice, their 'Intro to Computer Science' course is fantastic, as is the follow-on 'Web Development' course, led by Steve Huffman.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been doing Coursera courses for the past few years in an on/off fashion. I'm pleasantly

surprised by the courses that are more popular in this list.

I think the pattern is that the foundational or introductory courses are popular as they have a

larger audience. But it doesn't comment on the quality of the course. An interesting data point

is the social media "Share" widget that appears on the right column [0].

[0] [https://www.coursera.org/course/rprog](https://www.coursera.org/course/rprog)

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder how many of these were actually completed...

Enrolment would be an empty number to me, completion would be the mark of quality.

<comment><USER21> It's lower, but still orders of magnitude greater than complete the equivalent bricks and mortar course. If 1% complete the Android course that's 50 years worth of two classes of 30 students a year. At 10% it would take Adam Porter 500 years.

The thing about MOOC's is that scale is staggering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's insufficient to measure Popularity as the total number of registrants. People browse through course offerings, register, and may never return.

Rating by the total number of students that completed a course would be even more revealing. Add a student retention rate, too. Etc etc.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure whether the number of people enrolled in a course is a very good measure for the impact of a course. I agree with some other commenters that the number of people that completed a course isn't necessarily a good measure either. Some measure that includes the percentage of videos watched, exercises attempted, links followed, etc. would probably better represent the actual impact of a course.

Some considerations: all courses have lots of people that enroll to subsequently discover the course is hard, boring or otherwise not what they expected. I expect this number varies strongly per course. On the other hand, not attempting/passing exercises doesn't mean someone hasn't invested time in watching all lectures.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's heartening there are so many math focused courses. With the Calculus course at [https://www.coursera.org/learn/calculus1/](https://www.coursera.org/learn/calculus1/) \- I'm going over differential calculus right now, but I'm getting somewhat stuck on the Chain Rule, and in particular working out how to use it to differentiate 2^x.

The courses I've found so far haven't been all that helpful, even Khan academy is confusing me somewhat. Does this course explain things better?

<comment><USER25> Since 2 = e ^ ln 2, use the identity:

2^x = (e^(ln 2))^x = e ^ (x * ln 2)

<comment><USER12> Well, that's the specific example, but there exist a class of educational blocks such that the learner doesn't know where they're stuck, because if they could define it, the act of correctly defining the stuck step would inherently unstick it.

So MOOC strategy works for some areas that don't have sticking points like that, but not so well where five minutes with a Socratic strategy tutor could save a lot of video re-watching time. Arguably, better video would point out likely sticking points. However, advanced math instructors got their position not by getting education degrees which theoretically vocationally train people to present like that, but got their position by being very successful when getting a PHD in an obscure and advanced part of the field. So if you're lucky, your higher math instructor might be a talented educator in addition to being a talented mathematician... but probably not, unfortunately.

It would be interesting as a thought experiment, or maybe as a startup, to see a good (emphasis on good) K-12 math instructor with a strong background in educational teaching skills try to teach diffeqs or higher math in general. I suspect they'd be extremely good at it, although probably very slow.

<comment><USER26> A lot of those questions are taken care on the forums. People tend to stumble on the same sticking points. But it part of learning to learn in this new medium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here is the list without 50 pagedowns:

      1. Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems – Part 1 / University of Maryland
      2. Introduction to Philosophy / University of Edinburgh
      3. Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence / Case Western Reserve
      4. Introduction to Computer Science / Harvard University
      5. Data Analysis and Statistical Inference / Duke University
      6. Gamification / University of Pennsylvania / Wharton
      7. Social Psychology / Wesleyan University
      8. Circuits and Electronics / MIT
      9. Think Again: How to Reason and Argue / Duke University
      10. Creativity, Innovation and Change / Penn State
      11. A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior / Duke University
      12. Learn to Program: The Fundamentals / University of Toronto
      13. Game Theory / Stanford University, University of British Columbia
      14. Greek and Roman Mythology / University of Pennsylvania
      15. Startup Engineering / Stanford University
      16. Computational Investing, Part I / Georgia Institute of Technology
      17. Financial Markets / Yale University
      18. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence / Stanford University
      19. Introduction to Computer Science and Programming / MIT
      20. Introduction to Financial Accounting / University of Pennsylvania / Wharton
      21. Modern & Contemporary American Poetry / University of Pennsylvania
      22. Machine Learning / Stanford University
      23. Data Analysis / Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School
      24. Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python / MIT
      25. Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science / Harvard University
      26. Introduction to Philosophy: God, Knowledge, and Consciousness / MIT
      27. Introduction to Operations Management / University of Pennsylvania / Wharton
      28. Introduction to Mathematical Thinking / Stanford University
      29. Justice / Harvard University
      30. A History of the World Since 1300 / Princeton University
      31. Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps / University of London/ Goldsmiths
      32. Neural Networks for Machine Learning / University of Toronto
      33. Learn to Program – Crafting Quality Code / University of Toronto
      34. Critical Thinking in Global Challenges / The University of Edinburgh
      35. Statistics – Making Sense of Data / University of Toronto
      36. Introduction to Biology – The Secret of Life / MIT
      37. Drugs and the Brain / Caltech
      38. Introduction to Databases / Stanford University
      39. The Ancient Greek Hero / Harvard University
      40. Social Network Analysis / University of Michigan
      41. Health in Numbers: Quantitative Methods in Clinical & Public Health Research / Harvard University
      42. Introduction to Astronomy / Duke University
      43. Human Health and Global Environmental Change / Harvard University
      44. Software Defined Networking / Princeton University
      45. Introduction to Statistics: Descriptive Statistics / UC Berkeley
      46. Computing for Data Analysis / Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
      47. Functional Programming Principles in Scala / Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
      48. The Camera Never Lies / University of London/ Royal Holloway
      49. Calculus One / Ohio State University
      50. Maps and the Geospatial Revolution / Penn State

</comment><comment><USER28> I typically hate ranking lists like this, since I believe student completion rates are more important than enrollment. However, I did find some joy in finding a new MOOC I could add to the backlog of courses I need to take.

<comment><USER29> I'm not sure why you'd worry about completion rates. When I've taken online courses I've completed all the lectures and their associated exercises. But if I'm taking a course it means I have some end in mind for the skills it teaches me and that makes any final project or exam superfluous.

<comment><USER10> I have to disagree: for me the final project was important to immediately put to the test the things I had learned. And - as I explained above - if the course has peer-grading (almost a given if it has a final project, because you cannot automate the evaluation of a project) you learn even more by evaluating the ways other approached their solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm a little surprised that there is no mention of iTunes University, or maybe that doesn't count as a MOOC. I know there are some very popular courses on there that are easy to access.

<comment><USER24> iTunes university is really quite awesome. Only you need an Apple product to access it.

<comment><USER31> iTunes runs on Windows

<comment><USER11> There are also bunch of third party apps for Android and Linux that let you download iTunes U lectures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Surprise that a philosophy class ranked at number two. Other then that the list mostly looks like what you'd expect.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm surprised, no Jeff Ullman Automata?

</comment><comment><USER34> It would be nice if the prerequisites for a course were listed more clearly.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't like education and universities and all that stuff, I would like them to release the videos and the text in the open, that I can learn my way, not in a supervised fashion, behind a login wall.

</comment><comment><USER22> there's a MOOC aggregator to help keep on top of course offerings and it tracks programs globally: www.class-central.com

<comment><USER36> Clickable link: [https://www.class-central.com/](https://www.class- central.com/)</comment></comment>


Facebook crosses the line into mind control territory - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/enrique-dans/facebook-crosses-the-line-into-mind-control-territory-8c9b01f77b22

<comment><USER2> From the article:

 _In light of this story, Facebook deserves to lose every one of its users. It is completely unacceptable that by using a given platform to share one's personal life with others one is suddenly, and without consent, subjected to such a highly manipulative experiment.

The entire chain of command that approved this experiment, worthy of Dr. Josef Mengele, should be sacked, and at the same time a rigorous internal audit carried out to discover whether other such experiments have been undertaken._

Hear, hear!

I have been involved in small clinical trials involving 50 subjects or so and it is a huge amount of (necessary) work to get proper approval. That Facebook somehow thinks they can "study" (by intentionally seeking to manipulate users' moods!) 700,000 people without proper informed consent being sought boggles the mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> Who knows, it's entirely possible that in FB's T&C, there's some legalese that says that using FB means you allow them to do whatever they want while you are on their site, which amounts to "proper approval"

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Given the recent neuroscience research that people exposed to particular stimuli will alter their decision-making behaviour, it is now, in combination with this new research, possible for Facebook to manipulate election results.

Speaking as a Brit, it's time for Ofcom to start sampling feed content to detect shaping. Don't know what the US equivalent would be.

</comment><comment><USER4> _In light of this story, Facebook deserves to lose every one of its users._

Ad mortem te duci iam pridem oportebat.

If those users would give a rodent's backside, that is.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow! That experiment is incredibly sociopathic - using unsuspecting users as pawn in your games. I am disgusted...

</comment><comment><USER6> Bullshit. Every company runs experiments on their users.</comment>


Portability of tar features - <AUTHOR> https://dev.gentoo.org/~mgorny/articles/portability-of-tar-features.html <comment><USER2> Besides the supported tar features, bsdtar is definitely my favorite. With libarchive it supports all kinds of archive formats, so you can work on .zip and even .iso files with the usual command line interface.

[https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/wiki/LibarchiveForm...](https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/wiki/LibarchiveFormats)

<comment><USER3> yeah, bsdtar is my goto for dealing with archives for work projects, specifically dealing with unpacking iso's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Words to strike fear into the heart of every programmer:

 _The tar format is one of the oldest archive formats in use. ... it is ugly — built as layers of hacks on the older format versions to overcome their limitations. ... This article is directly inspired by my proof-of-concept work on new binary package format_

</comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat famously, tar format is so bad, when kernel needed an compression format for initrd, they went with cpio: [https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/filesystems/ramfs-r...](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/filesystems/ramfs- rootfs-initramfs.txt)

Quote: "tar is ugly as hell and not going to be supported on the kernel side"

</comment><comment><USER6> This article was a great example of something that will never be useful to me, but I was still willing to sink an hour into digesting it. Fascinating read.

</comment><comment><USER7> Python's stdlib module is coded in a rather messy way, but seems like it's actually one of the better implementations of tar-ish formats.</comment>


Show HN: co.vu Free Domain Name with easy dns setup and more. Invite code  - hn - <AUTHOR> http://www.co.vu/invite

<comment><USER3> Bugs I've found:

Fix the user input for domainnames: I'm able to enter non ascii chars

XSS: [http://www.co.vu/search?domain=<marquee>](http://www.co.vu/search?domain=<marquee>); [http://www.co.vu/dnssettings/createrecord?domain=%3E%3Cmarqu...](http://www.co.vu/dnssettings/createrecord?domain=%3E%3Cmarquee%3E)

Full path disclosure (and maybe even SQL injections possible): <http://www.co.vu/dnssettings?domain=>

Access other users DNS (even without login): <http://www.co.vu/dnssettings/dnsrecords?domain=notmydomain>

OpenDir (showing server software used): <http://www.co.vu/img/posterous/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks will do it

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Learn what CSRF is. Your form for resetting passwords is trivially exploitable to change other peoples account passwords. Anyone can just create a form in a hidden iframe on their own site which auto-submits a POST to <http://www.co.vu/account/account_password> with password_new_password and password_retype_new_password params set.

Not only should you fix the CSRF via normal CSRF protection methods, but you should also add a second layer of protection for resetting passwords in that you require their existing password to be submitted as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Will look in to it

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.co.vu/invite>

invite code - <USER2>

It is a simple app where you get a free domain like yourname.co.vu with full dns support.

You can very easily configure the dns settings for tumblr, posterous, blogger and much more..

It is not ready to launch yet need your early feedback

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks interesting - snagged dis.co.vu, now I just need a startup for it or something.

Just two minor issues, though: the option to remove a domain seems to be missing, and it's not clear that the free domain limit is 2. But everything else's peachy.

<comment><USER5> redis.co.vu :-)

Here are other words for grabs:

        {"alcove", "alcoves", "covalent", "covalently", "covariance", \
        "covariances", "cove", "coven", "covenant", "covenanted", \
         "covenanting", "covenants", "covens", "cover", "coverage", \
         "coverages", "coverall", "coveralls", "covered", "covering", \
         "coverings", "coverlet", "coverlets", "covers", "coversheet", \
         "covert", "covertly", "covertness", "coverts", "coves", "covet", \
         "coveted", "coveting", "covetous", "covetously", "covetousness", \
         "covets", "covey", "coveys", "discover", "discoverable", \
         "discovered", "discoverer", "discoverers", "discoveries", \
         "discovering", "discovers", "discovery", "dustcover", "hardcover", \
         "hardcovers", "irrecoverable", "irrecoverably", "Muscovite", \
         "Muscovy", "nonrecoverable", "recover", "recoverable", "recovered", \
         "recoveries", "recovering", "recovers", "recovery", "rediscover", \
         "rediscovered", "rediscoveries", "rediscovering", "rediscovers", \
         "rediscovery", "slipcover", "slipcovers", "softcover", "uncover", \
         "uncovered", "uncovering", "uncovers", "undercover", "undiscovered", \
         "unrecoverable"}

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell This is going to be massively abused. The one good thing about making people pay for domains is that you can generally link their registration to a credit/debit card.

</comment><comment><USER6> So, is this actually a domain name (Can I take it and switch to another registrar, as an example), or is this just a subdomain? On a related note, do I actually own the domain?

I don't see any TOS/AUP, so if you object to my domain, is it going to be taken away?

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell In the account settings, you should automatically determine the language, country and timezone. You should not even ask for gender or d-o-b as it's none of your business. Why "First Name", "Last Name" _and_ "Full Name" ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just added as most of the registers ask these details. Will in to this look in to this based an all your feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just given this a go and I can see that the domain name is given an expiry date. How do expiries work? Is there an email that comes around in one years time to keep it open, or something similar?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently it is one year. Based on how active you are your account will be automatically renewed. If you just register it for parked domain or just you are blocking it you need to pay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wordpress.com - the world's largest blog hoster not supported in auto option? Any idea how do i configure dns for a wordpress.com hosted site?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am about to integrate the wordpress soon.. For now you can edit the dns record to configure to wordpress

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You should really get that site copy-edited. "Favorate" on your homepage should be "Favorite".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Have fixed it. Will do a spell check site wide

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> After registration, it displays the wrong email address in notification of checking inbox.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess it is a bug we did a prototype. I things it is not removed. I will check it an fix it soon. Thanks for reporting it

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> font looks an absolute mess on my machine: <http://imgur.com/fXTur>

linux, chrome 11

<comment><AUTHOR> Used cufon font for rendering. I checked in most of the browsers. Will check it

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> www.co.vu is 'available for registration' ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I am working on the restricted list of domains. Just wanted to validate the app. Before fixing few things

<comment><USER12> Any rough date on when it's gonna get Nameserver support?

<comment><AUTHOR> Very Soon. First will fix most of the security issues and roll out the new features. Will notify you.

Thanks</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Beautiful parallax scrolling – effective to make you travel Swiss airways? - <AUTHOR> http://www.world-of-swiss.com/

<comment><USER2> This is one of the coolest examples of parallax scrolling I have seen. And I though Google did a good job with it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm impressed.

</comment><comment><USER4> Beautiful!</comment>


Highlights on "quality," and Deming's work as it applies to software (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://apenwarr.ca/log/20161226 <comment><USER2> Amazing how deep insights like Deming's are shallowed out by the consultant class.

I engaged with any number of useless "6 sigma black belt" champions that couldn't explain what was deviation from the mean or why +/\- 3 sigma was a good thing. Let alone how it applied to software development and defect detection and variation.

The same applies today to all our "Agile" consultant friends who don't know what a scrum is or why the term is applicable, the "Scrum Masters" that run their daily "stand ups" without actually leading anything except that 15 minutes of the day, the "Product Owners" who have no idea what their "Product" is for or what the actual users need...

What goes around comes around...

</comment><comment><USER3> Going to the source is excellent advice.

A newly-favourite passage from Schopenhauer:

"No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress. Men who think and have correct judgment, and people who treat their subject earnestly, are all exceptions only. Vermin is the rule everywhere in the world: it is always at hand and busily engaged in trying to improve in its own way upon the mature deliberations of the thinkers. So that if a man wishes to improve himself in any subject he must guard against immediately seizing the newest books written upon it, in the assumption that science is always advancing and that the older books have been made use of in the compiling of the new. They have, it is true, been used; but how? The writer often does not thoroughly understand the old books; he will, at the same time, not use their exact words, so that the result is he spoils and bungles what has been said in a much better and clearer way by the old writers; since they wrote from their own lively knowledge of the subject. He often leaves out the best things they have written, their most striking elucidations of the matter, their happiest remarks, because he does not recognise their value or feel how pregnant they are. It is only what is stupid and shallow that appeals to him. An old and excellent book is frequently shelved for new and bad ones; which, written for the sake of money, wear a pretentious air and are much eulogised by the authors' friends."

[https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/...](https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/chapter1.html)</comment>