Hacker News Reader

anusinhaon The world's biggest ship – for 53 days

I find that there are two extremes--never enough pictures or too many pictures and not enough description of what I'm looking at. D'oh!

anusinhaon Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University

I think it is also worth nothing that Zuckerberg is (perhaps was?) quite talented at Latin and nearly went on to study Classics at Harvard.

anusinhaon Levels of Excellence

What is MR?

anusinhaon A new theoretical model suggests quantum entanglement helps hold DNA together

My understanding is that their work is more like "coupling" than "entanglement" (as the media describes entanglement). From the abstract of their arXiv article, it sounds like what they're looking at is the motion of the base pairs together. This is certainly pretty cool, but it's not quite the same as some of the other results on quantum entanglement where two particles are entangled and by observing one, you can infer the other, etc etc.

anusinhaon How to Get an A- in Organic Chemistry

There are two points regarding the relevance of organic chemistry to future doctors that the article could expand on further.

1. Organic chemistry is often the first class that a prospective future doctor takes that requires you to develop proper study habits. One can get away with most other introductory level courses in the sciences by cramming during the day or two before the exam. Organic chemistry is different--it requires structured and daily studying. This is an essential skill for anyone planning to go to medical school.

2. Organic chemistry teaches you to thing and reason about objects in three-dimensional space. Stereochemistry (roughly: if something is right handed or left handed) is an essential idea in organic chemistry. Being able to think about objects in 3D space is a very useful ability (and necessary) for a future doctor.

anusinhaon Hubble Finds New Neptune Moon

Really cool.

Also possibly of interest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Pluto

I had no idea Pluto (not a planet) had five moons.

anusinhaon Bose founder, Amar Bose, has died at 83

Prof. Phil Sharp [1] received the Nobel Prize and founded Biogen, one of the earliest biotech companies. He remains on the faculty at MIT as an Institute Professor, the highest distinction awarded to MIT faculty.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Allen_Sharp

anusinhaon Battery technology: A pile of wood

I think the title is an oversimplification.

> To test this idea, they used slivers of wood from yellow pines. First, they coated these with carbon nanotubes, to improve their conductivity. Then they applied a film of tin to each sliver.

There's a lot more that is going on than just the wood.

anusinhaon Americans are wasting billions a year on name-brand pills

This webpage by the FDA [1] is also a simple and easy resource about generic drugs.

The basic fact about generic drugs is that they have to contain the same active compound(s) and they have to match the bioavailability (active compound presence in the blood or other targeted region). If the generic drug fits this and is FDA-approved, then it can be sold.

The composition of a pill is complex. There is the active compound, but there are also many other compounds that are needed to make the pill into a discrete structural unit, instead of a fine white-ish powder, the native form of many organic molecules. See [2] for a common example. The composition of these ingredients can vary dramatically between the brand name drug and generics. I know somebody who is allergic to a number of generic drugs, but is fine with the brand name drug. This is presumably due to different fillers used to make the pill.

In some cases, the fillers used in the generic are very similar to those used in the brand-name drug. However, in many cases, they are different and it is incorrect to say that they are identical. However, in the majority of cases, it really does not matter, and Americans are probably wasting billions a year. But in some cases, buying the brand-name is necessary.

[1]: http://www.fda.gov/drugs/resourcesforyou/consumers/buyingusi...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannitol

It is worth nothing that some cancer patients can become sensitized to Mannitol and become allergic to it. This may be a result of chemotherapy.

anusinhaon Unheralded Mathematician Bridges the Prime Gap

Talking to other people in the field is a great way to find influential work. You can only read so many papers, but by talking to many other people, you expand your accessible information. Other people can mention that this paper is great or that they've seen a series of great papers from a particular lab, etc and point out connections that you might miss. It's not just the frequency of names that matters though, it's the quality of work? Are they doing revolutionary or deeply insightful work or are they doing lots of good work, but that isn't _great_ work. (Yes, the comparison is a little vague--leaving that open to interpretation intentionally).

anusinhaon Elsevier Has Bought Mendeley

I've heard a great deal of praise for Papers App (Windows, OS X, iOS) [1]. It'll cost you quite a bit though--$79.

[1]: http://www.papersapp.com/papers/

anusinhaon The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (2010)

One country that does it right is Canada--they try very hard to keep top talent in the country instead of going to their previous homes.

anusinhaon What did you cover in your undergrad CS degree?

This doesn't look like a CS degree---this looks more like software engineering requirements. CS and SE focus on distinctly different things. I might suggest changing the page title.

anusinhaon SciCombinator - scientific news aggregator and discussion

Awesome project/website. The one thing I'm not terribly thrilled about is the infinite scroll--it's nice to have coherent page 1, page 2, etc so that you don't have to worry about scrolling down, clicking through a link, and then coming back to just the top page.

anusinhaon Things I've quit doing at my desk

Is typing comfortable with a standing desk? Every time I've used a computer at standing height, it's been a little uncomfortable, but they certainly weren't tailored to my height.

anusinhaon Scientists develop lithium-ion battery that charges 120 times faster than normal

I believe this is the citation referenced. [1] It's unfortunately under a paywall.

[1]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201203581/ab...

anusinhaon Google’s Self-Driving Cars Are Going to Change Everything

There is nothing intrinsically wrong about the idea of a car. It is what powers the car (currently gasoline) that is the problem. But the self-driving technology is applicable to electric cars, cars that run on fuel cells, what ever other modern and sustainable methods for powering a car exist.

anusinhaon Thoughts on being a programmer

A bad comment can waste a lot more time than the absence of a comment or a useless one (like x += n; //add n to x).

anusinhaon How to Be a Better Procrastinator

Another relevant article on procrastination: http://lesswrong.com/lw/9wr/my_algorithm_for_beating_procras...

This is one of the original sources on structured procrastination: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

anusinhaon United Airlines Lost My Friend's 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn't Care

As someone who traveled many times as an unaccompanied minor (without a cellphone) in the early 2000s under United Airlines, American Airlines, and Northwest Airlines, I'm shocked to hear this story. I always felt safe and knew who was in charge of taking me from place to place. I'm astonished that United's service has deteriorated to this extent. Yes, it was only a very small sample size of United's service staff, but the fact that this situation happened does not bode well for the quality of their service and will hopefully spark something in the administration and leadership to revitalize the culture that currently tolerates such treatment. If not, well, there are plenty of cheaper airlines with superior service and United's marketshare and reputation will suffer. There's always someone willing to provide the service you do for less. You have to figure out what you can do better than the other guys and capitalize on it.

anusinhaon The effect of typefaces on credibility

Heh, when I TeX-ified my resume, I used your code as a template. Just thought you might like the kudos :)

anusinhaon The effect of typefaces on credibility

An empirical anecdote: when I was in high school, all of my lab reports for chemistry and physics were typeset in LaTeX while most of my friends either handwrote the mathematics or used MS Word's Equation Editor. There were multiple occasions where a friend and I made the same mistake (we usually worked together; yes, we cited each other) and the deduction on my report was less than the deduction on his. It wasn't huge, usually -1 point vs -2, but there was consistently a difference.

anusinhaon Show HN: Chartulo.us - Chart anything from the command line

Nothing fancy. Either a shared folder in my home-directory for users on the same machine, or email. Most of my work is separate individuals showing off their data rather than working together on one dataset. That could be a cool feature though--project groups or something.

anusinhaon Show HN: Chartulo.us - Chart anything from the command line

You know, if you're already on the command line, gnuplot and github already provide ~similar functionality. I can do the same in ~the same number of keystrokes if things are aliased properly. Also, keeping things local is nice.

anusinhaon Immigration will solve the talent war in the valley

FYI the link to interviewstreet.com is not working.

anusinhaon Steve Wozniak: "I worry about everything going to the cloud"

One possible answer is to use encryption of some sort when uploading/downloading files. This is annoying to implement though.

anusinhaon Mars Curiosity's first images

It was acknowledged that they didn't have any direct control over the landing. However, there's lots of work to be done immediately after and most obviously, it's incredibly exciting to see the data as soon as it is available and to know that years and years of hard work executed successfully.

Additionally, watching a room full of engineers "do their thing" does a lot to get the average layman excited about the research and science and may get schoolkids excited about the possibilities of space travel, STEM, etc.

anusinhaon Ask HN: How can I start executing on side projects?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4018274

This might be a thread of interest to you.

anusinhaon Commercial blue-sky research lives on at IBM’s Watson center

The IBM Research Website [1] shows very diverse work in all areas of chemistry, physics, biology, materials science, electrical and systems engineering, theoretical computer science, and mathematics. IBM is deeply involved with cutting edge research across the board in a way that very few other corporations are. I think Intel Labs (according to an Intel employee I spoke to once) looks at about a 10-15 year timeframe, but their purview is more localized than IBMs). Watson Research is an amazing place to be doing science.

[1]: http://www.research.ibm.com/

anusinhaon Show HN: Tiny weekend project from scraped Wikipedia data: whodiedhere.com

Awesome project. Are you releasing the source code?