Show HN: HackerNews but for research papers(papertalk.xyz)
papertalk.xyz
Show HN: HackerNews but for research papers
https://www.papertalk.xyz/research/home
208 comments
If you had watched me use this over my shoulder for a minute, this is what you would see:
I went to the page, scanned the list to find something that has comments, but everything is listed as "0 Comments". I clicked on "Comments" for the AGI paper, but nothing happens -- it's not a link. There's no "Discuss" link. On HN clicking on the paper title opens the upstream link, not comments, but on your site I discovered that it opens the discussion page. Once there at https://www.papertalk.xyz/papers/2404.10731v1, I noticed that there are in fact 3 comments, but the comments counter at the top still says "0". The comments are also just random gibberish.
I hope you iterate on this project and that it gets massive traction!
I went to the page, scanned the list to find something that has comments, but everything is listed as "0 Comments". I clicked on "Comments" for the AGI paper, but nothing happens -- it's not a link. There's no "Discuss" link. On HN clicking on the paper title opens the upstream link, not comments, but on your site I discovered that it opens the discussion page. Once there at https://www.papertalk.xyz/papers/2404.10731v1, I noticed that there are in fact 3 comments, but the comments counter at the top still says "0". The comments are also just random gibberish.
I hope you iterate on this project and that it gets massive traction!
Really appreciate the feedback! I'm gonna ship this up, yes there are some gibberish comments i left from testing. Thanks for letting me know about the bugs, and other UI issues, will fix ASAP.
Fyi: the UI is completely broken on mobile. I cant read anything at the above link because it extends off the edge of the page in both directions and I can't horizontally scroll.
fixed some of the major issues
> but everything is listed as "0 Comments"
Also, everything is listed as "0 points" which I found it weird, how would then the ranking work? HN gives 1 point to every story submitted.
Also, everything is listed as "0 points" which I found it weird, how would then the ranking work? HN gives 1 point to every story submitted.
I have a feeling that the tree structure of comments in which most of the discussion usually takes place under the first few most upvoted comments might not be the best to have scientific discourse, but also don't know what would be better.
On the other hand, papers/journals themselves could be seen as a ultra-high latency social network in which replies happen in the form of papers that reference the work they're replying to.
The high latency could be seen as a feature. The ability to post a reply instantly and without much thought definitely degrades quality.
On the other hand, papers/journals themselves could be seen as a ultra-high latency social network in which replies happen in the form of papers that reference the work they're replying to.
The high latency could be seen as a feature. The ability to post a reply instantly and without much thought definitely degrades quality.
I think you're onto something! A retrospective history of science styled as an HN clone would be amazing, will any of you dare?
This is difficult. It should look more like a DAG than a tree, but we don't have a good UI for DAG comment threads yet.
Interesting idea ! That makes me think about a system where you can reply to multiple comments at once.
You mean like email and usenet's in-reply-to[1][2]?
Sure, not many, if any, clients handle an arbitrary list of message id's there, but it's clear[3] that's what it's for.
[1]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc822#section-4.6.2
[2]: https://cr.yp.to/immhf/thread.html
[3]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5322#section-3.6.4
Sure, not many, if any, clients handle an arbitrary list of message id's there, but it's clear[3] that's what it's for.
[1]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc822#section-4.6.2
[2]: https://cr.yp.to/immhf/thread.html
[3]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5322#section-3.6.4
Thanks for the links, I don't know anything about usenet beside the fact that it exists, and didn't even know it was possible for email too.
I'll search for examples of UI used for many in-reply-to, it seems interesting.
I'll search for examples of UI used for many in-reply-to, it seems interesting.
I'm intrigued - how would you envision the posts and comments working?
Magically? Jokes apart, it'd be something like Pythagoras posts a link to his theory, with threads going until a paradigm change prompts another link and thread, and so on, and then Newton, and Max Planck... you know, implementation details.
I have much more imagination than skills.
I have much more imagination than skills.
>I have much more imagination than skills.
same!
same!
Harness the compulsive debate potential of internet forums by socially crediting discourse graphs from their sources.
For once it would be nice to be able to sort latest to oldest
How do you filter for such folks that would respond so professionally?
> but also don't know what would be better.
References. Ie. a directed graph.
References. Ie. a directed graph.
I think you really want the papers posted to be driven by the users. But I understand why you might want an automated approach to bootstrap the site so that there is something there. If you're part of a small research community, it might be worth asking people to post articles they find interesting, and start by constraining it to that community (relevant clip of a paul graham interview: https://youtu.be/rCkCA1EaoVo?si=R6l9UNDjU0yR-fcL , which I think still applies even if this isn't meant to be a "startup")
I wonder if this is a good format though for discussing papers? - There are often lots of little sections of a paper to discuss in detail, and I think it's hard to do that with a linear format of comments controlled by up and down votes
I wonder if this is a good format though for discussing papers? - There are often lots of little sections of a paper to discuss in detail, and I think it's hard to do that with a linear format of comments controlled by up and down votes
'There are often lots of little sections of a paper to discuss in detail, and I think it's hard to do that with a linear format of comments controlled by up and down votes'
I had exactly the same thought. Trying to think of a better way to handle this. Doesn't help that PDFs are so difficult to parse correctly.
I had exactly the same thought. Trying to think of a better way to handle this. Doesn't help that PDFs are so difficult to parse correctly.
I like the concept. My feedback is to increase the color contrast. It's very difficult to read with the light gray text on light background. I'm using Firefox on Ubuntu.
Yeah the contrast needs to be improved: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=A6ADBB&...
I agree. I honestly think the UX would be much better if it just looked exactly like HN but with a new color other than orange.
Noted, thank you!
I think the ideal future for science publication would be something like:
- some database like arXiv for most all the results, obviously mirrored a few places
- multiple frontends like this!
- no more journals: replace journal review with an endorsement from a similar organization, on the arXiv (or similar) page
Thanks for taking one of the required steps to making this possible!
- some database like arXiv for most all the results, obviously mirrored a few places
- multiple frontends like this!
- no more journals: replace journal review with an endorsement from a similar organization, on the arXiv (or similar) page
Thanks for taking one of the required steps to making this possible!
The quality standard of peer review, especially within computer science, is declining. I've read lots of papers only to discover obvious method flaws or dishonest statistics. With a simple comment section, this would be trivial to filter out.
And don't get me started on the price for publication and for readers that supposedly fund this "detailed peer review process" that misses so many obvious flaws.
The peer review process is still needed, but I would love to see it be more public. I've been wanting this exact thing for years. A simple comment section of the average readers and their thoughts.
And don't get me started on the price for publication and for readers that supposedly fund this "detailed peer review process" that misses so many obvious flaws.
The peer review process is still needed, but I would love to see it be more public. I've been wanting this exact thing for years. A simple comment section of the average readers and their thoughts.
I agree.
Journals have been publishing "responses" for ages, so there always has been a "comment section" of sorts. But it could be so much easier!
Personally I haven't really seen or been involved in a response. It would not surprise me if that tradition is dying because it's so much easier to comment somewhere on the internet where some people will see it. But of course without an official endorsement from the journal / preprint server / whatever, it's hard to know which forum you should direct your response to.
Journals have been publishing "responses" for ages, so there always has been a "comment section" of sorts. But it could be so much easier!
Personally I haven't really seen or been involved in a response. It would not surprise me if that tradition is dying because it's so much easier to comment somewhere on the internet where some people will see it. But of course without an official endorsement from the journal / preprint server / whatever, it's hard to know which forum you should direct your response to.
An average paper from arXiv has 10 people in the world who can appreciate every detail of the text, half of them are the authors, their advisors, and paper's referee, the other half will be mentioned in the acknowledgements. This is especially true e.g. for mathematics. I want to point this out because papertalk.xyz features many texts like that.
Moderating some kind of "official" internet forum for papers will require a lot of time, and most researchers won't bother to follow it, because messages will be of low value, from crackpots and occasional ill-spirited anonymous commenters.
In 2016 arXiv run a survey about new features. Comment section, votes on submissions etc. were not popular. Many people were against this stuff, so it was not implemented.
There have been projects like PubPeer that tried to explore this territory and never really took off.
I see a value in a website like HN with links to papers of bigger interest and discussions for the general public.
E.g. someone posts a link to a new publication/preprint about cancer research, a supposed superconductor discovery, massive high energy physics experiments, etc. and users are free to discuss the meaning, beauty, impact, and credibility of the results.
But I'm not sure if this can work for mundane papers that are >99% of published research. I also think it will be much harder to market to the researchers. As someone who read, wrote, reviewed papers.
Moderating some kind of "official" internet forum for papers will require a lot of time, and most researchers won't bother to follow it, because messages will be of low value, from crackpots and occasional ill-spirited anonymous commenters.
In 2016 arXiv run a survey about new features. Comment section, votes on submissions etc. were not popular. Many people were against this stuff, so it was not implemented.
There have been projects like PubPeer that tried to explore this territory and never really took off.
I see a value in a website like HN with links to papers of bigger interest and discussions for the general public.
E.g. someone posts a link to a new publication/preprint about cancer research, a supposed superconductor discovery, massive high energy physics experiments, etc. and users are free to discuss the meaning, beauty, impact, and credibility of the results.
But I'm not sure if this can work for mundane papers that are >99% of published research. I also think it will be much harder to market to the researchers. As someone who read, wrote, reviewed papers.
A critical original response should be accepted as true and be advertised at the top of the paper if not responded to within 14 days. The response should involve corrections or a timely planning for it.
I don't like how software has to be actively maintained to be usable or taken serious but the results are hard to question.
I don't like how software has to be actively maintained to be usable or taken serious but the results are hard to question.
> And don't get me started on the price for publication and for readers that supposedly fund this "detailed peer review process" that misses so many obvious flaws.
Readers don't fund the peer review process. People on the editorial board and peer reviewers do their job as a community service and have nothing to do with the inflated subscription prices.
Readers don't fund the peer review process. People on the editorial board and peer reviewers do their job as a community service and have nothing to do with the inflated subscription prices.
>With a simple comment section, this would be trivial to filter out.
Pubpeer.com + browser plugin
Pubpeer.com + browser plugin
Appreciate it man, thank you
I usually look for research papers in well-known conferences. I think you can google the conferences for other fields, but some of them for Programming Languages are SPLASH, ECOOP, PLDI, ICFP. So if you want important new papers, those are the places to look.
Universities often have “seminar” classes and “reading groups” to discuss influential papers, which sometimes includes older ones as well. The discussions are a bit like what this site is trying to accomplish, albeit in-person. Unfortunately the seminars and reading groups themselves aren’t usually public, but some of their websites are (and some past websites are still up) and they post the list of papers.
For PL specifically you can find a lot of notable papers in the history of the r/ProgrammingLanguage subreddit, and there are lists you can google such as https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/courses/670Fall04/GreatW... and https://github.com/imteekay/programming-language-research?ta.... I also found https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love for more genera computer science papers.
Universities often have “seminar” classes and “reading groups” to discuss influential papers, which sometimes includes older ones as well. The discussions are a bit like what this site is trying to accomplish, albeit in-person. Unfortunately the seminars and reading groups themselves aren’t usually public, but some of their websites are (and some past websites are still up) and they post the list of papers.
For PL specifically you can find a lot of notable papers in the history of the r/ProgrammingLanguage subreddit, and there are lists you can google such as https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/courses/670Fall04/GreatW... and https://github.com/imteekay/programming-language-research?ta.... I also found https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love for more genera computer science papers.
Thanks so much for this feedback
I'm a career scientist and here's why I suspect this won't take off:
(1) A lot of research is trash and not reproducible. Over the last 5 years I've found it's usually not even worth my time to read half the papers I read unless its in Nature or a top journal. Even then the ROI is minimal.
(2) It takes quite a bit of knowledge to appreciate and read a paper. In grad school, it took 4-6 hours of work to go through a paper. Do I really want to have a discussion on the 10,000 ft view of a paper? Probably not. Do I want to spend 4-6 hours really appreciating the nuances of a valid paper? Probably not.
(3) As alluded to by (1) and (2), most researchers (at least in my anecdotal experience) are spread so incredibly thin, as someone who would want to provide insight on some incredibly niche topic, I am already overbooked for my time between work and outside responsibilities.
I think you're going to find that the garden you're trying to grow doesn't have the adequate catalyst/buy-in. You might be better off creating a version where the paper is summarized by a GPT model and that 10,000 ft summary is discussed by the general public.
(1) A lot of research is trash and not reproducible. Over the last 5 years I've found it's usually not even worth my time to read half the papers I read unless its in Nature or a top journal. Even then the ROI is minimal.
(2) It takes quite a bit of knowledge to appreciate and read a paper. In grad school, it took 4-6 hours of work to go through a paper. Do I really want to have a discussion on the 10,000 ft view of a paper? Probably not. Do I want to spend 4-6 hours really appreciating the nuances of a valid paper? Probably not.
(3) As alluded to by (1) and (2), most researchers (at least in my anecdotal experience) are spread so incredibly thin, as someone who would want to provide insight on some incredibly niche topic, I am already overbooked for my time between work and outside responsibilities.
I think you're going to find that the garden you're trying to grow doesn't have the adequate catalyst/buy-in. You might be better off creating a version where the paper is summarized by a GPT model and that 10,000 ft summary is discussed by the general public.
I think the argument is that it's not for career scientists.
I gave up wanting to get into academia once I found how awful the working conditions are. Now I'm in a more comfortable life, I'd love to have access (ie: visibility) on recent developments and research.
I'm reminded of this story: https://spectrum.ieee.org/coordinated-robotics-winner-nasa-s...
I gave up wanting to get into academia once I found how awful the working conditions are. Now I'm in a more comfortable life, I'd love to have access (ie: visibility) on recent developments and research.
I'm reminded of this story: https://spectrum.ieee.org/coordinated-robotics-winner-nasa-s...
If the return isn't there for career scientists, and it takes them 4-6hrs to read a paper properly, then can non-specialists really get much out of the process?
May I hijack the topic and ask you a somewhat related question?
Given the understandably overpolluted with garbage world of scientific research, how would look for some studies with reasonable credibility?
It's my understanding that top journal or sorts sources are likely infused with money from large corporations pushing studies for their favour. At same time smaller sources are full of crap as you noticed.
Is there a way to clean garbage from gems?
Given the understandably overpolluted with garbage world of scientific research, how would look for some studies with reasonable credibility?
It's my understanding that top journal or sorts sources are likely infused with money from large corporations pushing studies for their favour. At same time smaller sources are full of crap as you noticed.
Is there a way to clean garbage from gems?
Top journals have good research in them, they cannot be bought like that. The downside is that they get caught in the hype, and only publish articles likely to be more glossy.
The way to clean garbage from gems is to spend half a decade plus in grad school (literally).
If you just want to enjoy reading about the latest & greatest in science, then Science & Nature are good reading. But for any real perspective you need to read non-academic writing from those researchers willing to exert that effort.
The way to clean garbage from gems is to spend half a decade plus in grad school (literally).
If you just want to enjoy reading about the latest & greatest in science, then Science & Nature are good reading. But for any real perspective you need to read non-academic writing from those researchers willing to exert that effort.
People differ, fields differ. I am a professional scientist too, when I go for a deep dive into a topic, I read 5-6 papers a day and take notes.
I stopped reading comics and started to just read interesting papers from adjacent fields a few years ago. Nature and Science are nice examples, most people I know treat these as entertainment magazines ( unless of course they get a paper in, than it’s the ist important thing ever).
Quality of publications varies a lot, but PNAS, Cell, IEEE are usually good sources and as long as one avoids purely computational studies one is usually on the safe side. Few people fake their experimental dat.
I stopped reading comics and started to just read interesting papers from adjacent fields a few years ago. Nature and Science are nice examples, most people I know treat these as entertainment magazines ( unless of course they get a paper in, than it’s the ist important thing ever).
Quality of publications varies a lot, but PNAS, Cell, IEEE are usually good sources and as long as one avoids purely computational studies one is usually on the safe side. Few people fake their experimental dat.
I suggest to implement LaTeX math in comments if you want to support math-heavy fields. Plain text comments make certain ideas almost impossible to express.
Great idea, will do this
In case you haven't seen this, supporting latex is pretty easy with MathJax
https://www.mathjax.org/
https://www.mathjax.org/
I love the idea and simplicity, thank you for sharing!
Small bit of feedback: would it be possible to make the UI a bit more mobile friendly? Or, alternatively, is there an API that others could use to build different interfaces?
Again, this is a Thing That Should Exist, so thank you for bringing it into the world.
Small bit of feedback: would it be possible to make the UI a bit more mobile friendly? Or, alternatively, is there an API that others could use to build different interfaces?
Again, this is a Thing That Should Exist, so thank you for bringing it into the world.
My most appreciated feature of HackerNews is that I can use it with JavaScript disabled. I know that I'm in the minority, but I also know several other colleagues and members on this site also browse without JS enabled (so while a minority, it's not just me).
Something to consider, especially when your site is just serving text / aggregating links.
Something to consider, especially when your site is just serving text / aggregating links.
Three thoughts.
1. If you could add a button that makes a search on Google Scholar for the paper so I could find its main publication and reference counter, that would be awesome.
2. I don't like being linked directly to the PDF; I would rather go to the Arkvix page and download from there.
3. What would the policy of publications be? Only open-access papers allowed? Are pre-prints okay, or just peer review? Could one post a paper published in IEEE, with an extra field for where the paper is publicly accessible?
1. If you could add a button that makes a search on Google Scholar for the paper so I could find its main publication and reference counter, that would be awesome.
2. I don't like being linked directly to the PDF; I would rather go to the Arkvix page and download from there.
3. What would the policy of publications be? Only open-access papers allowed? Are pre-prints okay, or just peer review? Could one post a paper published in IEEE, with an extra field for where the paper is publicly accessible?
I'd second this - linking directly to `https://arxiv.org/abs/{{id}}` maybe even include the formats in the `Access Paper` box on the RHS of that interface would be a neat feature.
i added a 'source' button on the index and paper page that takes you to the link you mentioned, thanks for the feedback
> I don't like being linked directly to the PDF
Not only that, but the button isn't even a link, so you don't know where it's going to. Is this only going to be for Arxiv?
Not only that, but the button isn't even a link, so you don't know where it's going to. Is this only going to be for Arxiv?
Great feedback, thank you!
You need people talking about the papers. Because they're so dense, I'd focus on just one specific niche topic, and get people versed in that subfield talking about it on there. And start with just 5 papers for people to talk about. Then once you get that going, slowly expand.
I think you're right. I want to find experts in each field who can help me create a 'most important papers' section that people like me (who don't know anything) can go to to understand the most important and 'hottest' ideas and see the discussion around them.
What iamwil says is “one niche topic”, and why he says it is:
Such social media platforms need a small niche community to get started.
I think such a platform would be most useful for AI papers. If I were in your shoes, I’d pivot to targeting AI papers only and allocate 90% of my time on community building.
Such social media platforms need a small niche community to get started.
I think such a platform would be most useful for AI papers. If I were in your shoes, I’d pivot to targeting AI papers only and allocate 90% of my time on community building.
Yes. focus on one specific topic or field of study. Think of it like starting a fire. You want to get the core really hot first, before trying to burn other things.
Hacker news used to be called Startup news, because all it did was talk about startups. pg only expanded it later because only startup news was too boring.
Reddit only started with a few topics, IIRC-- /r/programming r/startups, and something else. Just topics that the founders found interesting.
AI is the right way to go. It's what people are interested in right now, and market demonstrates there's a need with existing twitter handles and newsletters that purport to cover AI papers.
Hacker news used to be called Startup news, because all it did was talk about startups. pg only expanded it later because only startup news was too boring.
Reddit only started with a few topics, IIRC-- /r/programming r/startups, and something else. Just topics that the founders found interesting.
AI is the right way to go. It's what people are interested in right now, and market demonstrates there's a need with existing twitter handles and newsletters that purport to cover AI papers.
I am glad to see more projects in the vein of helping people find research papers. I am delighted by the discourse of papers on HN. Indeed, the comments on research papers here can help me better understand something that's outside my field of expertise. But HN is not specifically for research. Thus, it feels like there is room for another space for people to come.
I like the idea of subcategories. Some notes on the experience:
I like the idea of subcategories. Some notes on the experience:
- When I load the page, it takes 1-2 seconds for papers to load. This doesn't feel great.
- The grey colours in the list make the page hard to skim. I recommend a darker colour for the text.
- The colour of the navigation links is too light. It is hard to see the links.
- The information density is spot on. Amazing work!
Really appreciate the detailed feedback. Community is the hard part for sure, will do my best to make it as good as HN
Hi, I created an account but could not login, for some reason. I'm on Brave and have some security settings on - maybe something related to that? Never had issues on other websites.
On another note, the mobile browser version could be better - the rows exceed the width of the screen.
But other than that, you've got something cool over here, I'll bookmark it :)
On another note, the mobile browser version could be better - the rows exceed the width of the screen.
But other than that, you've got something cool over here, I'll bookmark it :)
I'm using Supabase free-tier, think I need to upgrade to allow more sign ups. Mobile experience needs work, sorry about that. Thanks for the feedback, cheers!
fixed mobile UI, also upgraded supabase, you should be able to sign up now
I made something similar a few years ago (https://github.com/danielecook/upvote.pub) and it even hit the front of HN...but couldn't get enough traction. I hope yours sees more success.
Great idea!
Please let the text wrap. My phone is narrow and I want to read it. How it looks may not match your intent:
https://ibb.co/R0PCj16
Please let the text wrap. My phone is narrow and I want to read it. How it looks may not match your intent:
https://ibb.co/R0PCj16
I was thinking of creating something like this but centered around posting one’s intuitions on research, instead of the papers themselves (which are hard to read, even the list of titles are hard to parse). But researchers are afraid to say anything stupid and would prefer saying nothing at all.
It’s a hard problem but could be a good platform for research discussions considering none exists today. Best of luck.
It’s a hard problem but could be a good platform for research discussions considering none exists today. Best of luck.
Did you consider just running a Lemmy instance with perhaps different time decay parameters?
Can you explain? Don't know what a Lemmy instance is. I did think about using time decay to give a more HN-like experience but haven't gotten around to implementing it yet.
This is really cool, I'd love to see this pull data from [1] HuggingFace, [2] Replicate Hype, and [3] GitHub.
[1] https://huggingface.co/models?sort=trending
[2] https://hype.replicate.dev/
[3] https://github.com/trending
[1] https://huggingface.co/models?sort=trending
[2] https://hype.replicate.dev/
[3] https://github.com/trending
I'll try to accomodate this, thanks for the feedback!
Sometimes HN feels like AI...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40440870
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40440870
There is that theory that capitalism is just a way for AI from the future to build itself.
Looks neat, is this a self-made thing or a project one could use to deploy a similar forum? I've been noodling on the idea of a HN style board for a non-tech audience that is older. I think the more primitive UI will resonate with the target demographic.
Yours looks too nice for my use case honestly :) Weird complement but I really do like how it looks, you did a good job.
Yours looks too nice for my use case honestly :) Weird complement but I really do like how it looks, you did a good job.
Thanks man, yeah self-made. Obviously took a lot of inspiration from HN haha
I like the idea! A few things I noted: 1) despite the paged UI, the API call /rest/v1/arxiv_papers?select=*&order=published.desc is downloading all 708 articles. You will find the UI more snappy if you do server-side paging. b) most of the javascript is cached, but not all of it, e.g., page-script.js
you are correct haha, thanks for the feedback will fix this pronto
I wonder why there are no titles with LaTeX in them. There should be a lot of them in Physics.
Also, would love to be able to search for articles from the same site e.g https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=papertalk.xyz
Also, would love to be able to search for articles from the same site e.g https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=papertalk.xyz
Nice idea. I recommend defaulting to Top Rated. For better or worse, it makes the product look more mature.
Also, there's an issue with click propagation on the sort drop down. I had to click between Top Rated and back a few times because the click kept causing the underlying post to open. FWIW, this was on mobile.
Also, there's an issue with click propagation on the sort drop down. I had to click between Top Rated and back a few times because the click kept causing the underlying post to open. FWIW, this was on mobile.
Really appreciate the feedback, thanks will sort out these issues
Is this not https://www.emergentmind.com/
?
?
Looks quite similar, never heard of it but will take a look
Took a look. Emergent mind looks really polished, however it's tailored towards only AI it looks like.
Hey all, Matt here, Emergent Mind's founder.
Yes, Emergent Mind is 100% focused on AI/ML papers from arXiv. I think it makes more sense to focus on a niche because you can tailor everything to that niche, vs creating a general research paper site which won't wind up speaking to any audience well.
For anyone curious about Emergent Mind: it surfaces trending AI/ML papers by monitoring social media (HackerNews, Reddit, X, YouTube, and GitHub) for discussions about papers, then ranks them based on the amount of engagement they're getting (similar to how HackerNews uses upvotes). Then, for all trending papers, it automatically summarizes them using GPT-4o and links to relevant discussions so you can learn more.
We're working on a bunch of new capabilities that we'll announce soon too.
Feedback welcome: [email protected]
Yes, Emergent Mind is 100% focused on AI/ML papers from arXiv. I think it makes more sense to focus on a niche because you can tailor everything to that niche, vs creating a general research paper site which won't wind up speaking to any audience well.
For anyone curious about Emergent Mind: it surfaces trending AI/ML papers by monitoring social media (HackerNews, Reddit, X, YouTube, and GitHub) for discussions about papers, then ranks them based on the amount of engagement they're getting (similar to how HackerNews uses upvotes). Then, for all trending papers, it automatically summarizes them using GPT-4o and links to relevant discussions so you can learn more.
We're working on a bunch of new capabilities that we'll announce soon too.
Feedback welcome: [email protected]
Well, this project still has massive shortcomings.. why not polish it a little bit more before posting ?
Didn't want to spend more time building something that people weren't interested in. But i'm happy it seems a lot of people resonate with the idea. Sorry for the shortcomings, will try to shape things up to be much more usable in the next week.
Strongly agree with your approach: "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late"
<3
Trying to create an account, says "Email rate limit exceeded".
Didn't expect this to get so much traction, will upgrade my systems in the next week to handle more load
Means I missed out on my desired username though!
No worries, looks like a cool project, I'll have to come back and try again when it's fixed.
No worries, looks like a cool project, I'll have to come back and try again when it's fixed.
Cool! Have you considered tagging/sub-categorizing? That would be helpful to organize topics.
I’ve often seen papers have a list of keywords somewhere on the first page that could be helpful for indexing
I’ve often seen papers have a list of keywords somewhere on the first page that could be helpful for indexing
It's on the todo-list. Are you looking specifically for like sub-categories of a particular field? Like in computer science AI, Cryptography, etc.?
Great idea, thanks for doing this.
But - why is the most important information, the title, in such a light, hard to read, font? The title should stand out, not the comments count etc. See... Hackernews! :-)
But - why is the most important information, the title, in such a light, hard to read, font? The title should stand out, not the comments count etc. See... Hackernews! :-)
A few people mentioned the same thing, will update accordingly. Thanks for the feedback!
I would make your website a daily destination if it had
-- ability for user to add/delete/modify the topic tabs. Let me define the topics of interest.
-- Algolia or similar search box at bottom like HN has
-- ability for user to add/delete/modify the topic tabs. Let me define the topics of interest.
-- Algolia or similar search box at bottom like HN has
Noted, will add ASAP
I love the idea! But there is one little thing. I would love to see an easy and clean interface like HackerNews but using a Blue color instead. I think that would be awesome!
haha
OT: I used to see other HN-inspired forums for other topics. I remember once a data mining topic that showed up here. Can anyone here reading this share those forums as well.
I wonder if we can ever recreate the success of hacker news.
Maybe add separate AI section?
Biochemistry subject seems to be missing
Edit: law, taxes, accounting, physics, astronomy, communications, zoology, weather just to name a few more topics
Edit: law, taxes, accounting, physics, astronomy, communications, zoology, weather just to name a few more topics
Noted! Thanks for the feedback
From: [email protected], To:
fix this in the verification email
fix this in the verification email
Noted, will fix thank you
can a user subscribe to a specific topic? like only econ ?
Not yet but happy to add something like that, someone else requested something similar as well
not able to login
Pubpeer: https://pubpeer.com/
firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pubpeer/
firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pubpeer/
I keep getting a "Email rate limit exceeded" when attempting to create an account so I can upvote and comment.
Could use something like the Lists page here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/lists
Especially the Active, and Best Comments pages.
Also, would love biological fields in there. We bio/med people really don't have much as to message boards
Especially the Active, and Best Comments pages.
Also, would love biological fields in there. We bio/med people really don't have much as to message boards
Oh hell yeah!
It can be hard to sift through the all the random papers on Arxiv or something, but I do try my best to keep up with current research. Obviously I don't have the time or ability to read every single paper (much as I wish I could!), but I do try and at least read the abstract, introduction, and conclusion to CS papers that are relevant to me, though the "relevant to me" part can be hard to figure out a lot of the time.
Having an "HN-like" experience for research papers could really help with that, I love the idea!
Out of curiosity, what did you build this in? Since I do think this has potential to get to HN-levels of success in the academic world, have you thought about scaling?
It can be hard to sift through the all the random papers on Arxiv or something, but I do try my best to keep up with current research. Obviously I don't have the time or ability to read every single paper (much as I wish I could!), but I do try and at least read the abstract, introduction, and conclusion to CS papers that are relevant to me, though the "relevant to me" part can be hard to figure out a lot of the time.
Having an "HN-like" experience for research papers could really help with that, I love the idea!
Out of curiosity, what did you build this in? Since I do think this has potential to get to HN-levels of success in the academic world, have you thought about scaling?
I'm using Astro with React and Supabase. haha in regards to scaling I know what I built isn't ready but I figured I'd worry about that bridge after I run into problems.
Looks amazing. Thank you. I'd like to hear your opinions on moderation, if you have the opportunity.
Thanks for the kind words. Moderation...seems like a necessary component of any functional social/content network thing. Ideally I find some people who can do it well and compensate them some how. I really want to have the community be high quality like HN and not become a meme-o-plex like reddit or twitter. What are your thoughts on the subject?
I'm glad to meet you. I was talking last night about your work in [[2024.05.23 - Link Log: Normienet Brainworms]] with [[my family|2024.05.23 - Carpe Tempus Segmentum: Smash]]. I'm brainstorming and drafting my response here (you'll see the <<tag "Draft">>tag lifted soon enough): https://h0p3.neocities.org/#2024.05.23%20-%20sleno%3A%20Drea...
I had this idea for a while. Thanks for creating this. We need to have bio and chem categories asap.
Just so you know, some campus networks block the .xyz domain. I can’t access this from my university WiFi.
mobile is non-functional: https://ibb.co/FByhmNb
rather than open pdf directly, it would be better to take me to the arXiv page, since i can do more there (like use semantic scholar to find related papers quickly)
i like the potential
rather than open pdf directly, it would be better to take me to the arXiv page, since i can do more there (like use semantic scholar to find related papers quickly)
i like the potential
Very interesting.
Login doesn't work. Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 400 ()
Check also the autocomplete field. Chrome populates the email field in the sign in page as the username.
Login doesn't work. Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 400 ()
Check also the autocomplete field. Chrome populates the email field in the sign in page as the username.
Great idea! Tried signing up and got `Email rate limit exceeded`.
Guessing this HN launch went well for you :)
Guessing this HN launch went well for you :)
Once this is functional and of there is even a small community, I’d visit!
+1 for tags / categories.
+1 for tags / categories.
Sign in isn't working for me after confirming my email on both Chrome and Safari.
Thanks so much everyone for the feedback, did not expect this to get so much support. I know there are a lot of bugs and usability issues, I'll try to fix all this stuff in the next week and post again.
Love it. Theme is pretty but really hard to read! Please use more contrast.
Noted, thank you!
It's very broad. Tough to build a community around something so broad.
When I saw Research Papers I expected a Health category, any chance?
Yes! Actually part of my original idea was centered on this; wanted to combine different media sources like research papers + podcasters like Andrew Huberman. I WANT SO BAD some sort of high-quality health science site that has wide consensus/discussion on treatments, nutrition, exercise, etc. that also can live and breath like Wikipedia
Feedback: The UI on mobile could be improved. I find the website distracting as a whole. I seems like it was built for children. I think the colors are bad.
made some mobile fixes
Sign in doesn't show an error or log me in on mobile.
Noted, will look into this thank you
I like this idea, but I think it would be even better if under every paper title there was a 100-word AI-generated abstract that states the bottom line.
I want to do this! Also want to let people submit edits to that AI generated summary (like on github) so it can become as accurate and compressed as possible.
This could easily be a new favorite thing; very cool!
This is a really cool idea! Is this open source?
Not at the moment, need to think about it.
The font is too light and difficult to read.
Huh. You know, I think HackerNews folks must approach literature searches and reading academic papers differently from the scholarly world at large. I can't think of any of my colleagues who would be looking for an algorithmically driven feed of papers to peruse. Usually we have specific questions we are trying to answer in research.
A lot of my colleagues either:
- read arXiv (the algorithm there is pretty simple, but it's a feed of sorts), or
- follow twitter accounts to learn about new results
So, like it or not, a lot of people are getting their feed from algorithms.
- read arXiv (the algorithm there is pretty simple, but it's a feed of sorts), or
- follow twitter accounts to learn about new results
So, like it or not, a lot of people are getting their feed from algorithms.
I think you missed my point that the idea of a "feed" being something scholars need is not really clear. It is more that a feed is something that website developers know how to make
Yeah sorry I was being overly oblique above: I know a lot of academics who learn about a lot of results via twitter. Personally I don't do it, but a lot of people in academia do.
I'd consider twitter a feed, and one driven by a proprietary algorithm at that. I'm not sure if it's better or worse to have the interest of these academics guided by a company like twitter, but maybe having some other options is good.
I'd consider twitter a feed, and one driven by a proprietary algorithm at that. I'm not sure if it's better or worse to have the interest of these academics guided by a company like twitter, but maybe having some other options is good.
.xyz ltds are blocked on some corporations for security proposes. I suggest a .com domain.
Thanks for letting me know, forgot about that. Will try to find a domain that uses .com
really? so corporations are doing ltds blocking? Why?
Because corporate security is... the positive spin is probably "heuristics" or "statistical", the negative spin is "cargo cult". Lots of scams use(d) .xyz domains so just block the whole TLD. Whether this is a good cost/benefit is left as an exercise to the reader.
Chech and compare layouts on a phone (y vs yours), and fix it so linebreaking matches
How about Bio and Chem as well?
Seconding this, I love HN because it gives a wide gamut of exposure, it's a glorious nexus of information, however as a MolB I'd love to have something more narrow when it comes to narrowing things down to academic work.
Relatively easy to add, glad to know people are interested in these fields as well.
can people submit papers/links or is it curated by you/scraped by you?
Nice but "Error in sending confirmation mail" at registration
Integration for pubpeer.com?
This is great! I think your platform can become a new go-to place for keeping up with current research. I keep fingers crossed for you!
Recently I've built something similar [0], but I struggled at getting people on board after initial HN launch
[0] https://www.tldr-ai.org/
Recently I've built something similar [0], but I struggled at getting people on board after initial HN launch
[0] https://www.tldr-ai.org/
I like this idea
I’m sorry but this website doesn’t work without JS.
I’m able to use almost every feature on HN without JS.
I’m able to use almost every feature on HN without JS.
Any friendly OSS Android app?
Cool concept
pubpeer.com integration?
I thought it would be cool to get the same quality of community gathered around the latest and greatest research coming out.
Let me know what you guys think of what I have so far. It's still early so there are probably bugs and other quality issues.
If there's any features missing that you'd want let me know.
ALSO, if any of you are familiar with the map of the territory of any particular field, please let me know! Would love to pick your brain and to come up with a 'most important papers' section for each field.
Thank you!!
-stefan