In my understanding, some people have donated their academic login credentials, effectively giving Sci-hub access to their institution's subscriptions.
When somebody requests an article, Sci-hub will try and see if it already has it. If not, it will attempt to use some of the donated credentials to gain access, download it and store it for further download requests.
I don't think you'll have to. Both hidden and conspicuous watermarks are common in trade book PDF downloads. RIAA members poisoned the Bit Torrent well.
I'm neutral on the matter, but there are some obvious paths of recourse for publishers who don't want people sharing their credentials.
(Disclaimer: I work for Crossref, which is an organisation in the scholarly publishing space.)
In any case, some researchers have claimed that Sci-Hub obtained their credentials through phishing. I don't know if it's true but in any case, such claims provide plausible deniability against that kind of watermarking proof, don't they ?
I'm asking because a friend of mine who's enrolled in 2 colleges, just downloaded the same scholarly PDF (one that's also available through sci-hub) with 2 different college credentials and they had the same sha256sum.
Then when he tried it through sci-hub, he also got the same sha256sum.
Crossref doesn't do anything at all in relation to SciHub or watermarking PDFs. We don't host content. (I'm happy to talk about what we do do, but it's off-topic)
Sorry if my disclaimer wasn't clear. I was just pointing out affiliation as standard on HN.
Nah, that doesn't work for academic papers. You usually access them anonymously anyway through your institution (which has a subscription). So even if they watermark (and I don't think they do), they can only watermark the institution.
I'm still curious as to how this system works. Don't institutions have logs that would show someone researching topics wildly outside of their field of study?
We do keep logs for a period of time, but the library administration's policy is to only investigate them when a publisher contacts us with a claim of abuse (we do not proactively monitor for unusual activity, although we do take steps like limiting the number of concurrent sessions per user and blacklisting IP addresses/ranges with a history of suspicious activity).
The publisher generally supplies examples of timestamps and URLs that were part of the alleged abuse. We use that information to identify the "abusing" user in the log.
Usually there is pretty clear evidence that the user is not conducting legitimate personal research (e.g. the user is a freshman early childhood education major at the local rural branch campus, but they're downloading thousands of chemistry papers from an IP address in China or Russia). Typically the user does not seem like an information freedom warrior, or even to have a clue what is going on, so it seems most likely the credentials were phished.
These cases may or may not be phishing. When corporations are hacked for their user credentials, those databases sometimes end up in dark web markets. It would be easy to extract email addresses with .edu domains ... so if a student used their university address for some service and reused the password, there's your login.
Moral of the story: Encourage students to use a password manager and 2FA.
Academic librarians, who negotiate terms with publishers, are obsessed with privacy and academic freedom. Bless 'em. In theory, publishers don't know who's downloading what. The librarians I've talked to say they delete their logs daily, if not several times a day.
As for geographic location, academics tend to travel a lot. Last I heard (from reading the court docs in Elsevier's lawsuit against Sci-Hub), they stopped using proxy connections a few years ago. They just log in using stored credentials, grab an auth token that lasts X minutes/hours, and download articles from whatever IP is convenient.
Usually, institutions don't subscribe to everything a publisher has on offer, but rather a subset that is interesting for them. Therefore, if a download works with a set of credentials, it should not look suspicious.
Storing the documents on Sci-hub controlled machines also makes sure that repeated requests don't actually hit the publishers, which significantly lowers what would otherwise be suspiciously high traffic.
For me personally, that's sad and good news at the same time.
After school, I did a 3-year training in a company and basically learned all my programming skills from using WebObjects in enterprise applications. Somehow it felt ancient already back then (around 2007). But I learned to like it a lot. Nowadays there are much more modern and mostly streamlined web frameworks...in contrast to the huge bulk of components WebObjects brought with it.
Now, I wonder what my old company will do now. As far as I know, they're still using it.
Going by the compat.linux.osrelease sysctl, it is currently providing the kernel interface of Linux kernel version 2.6.32 (the one that ships with RHEL6). Similarly, the GNU userland that can be installed is based on CentOS6.
So, if your application requires newer kernel interfaces that were introduced in 3.x or 4.x, it will not work.
I know FreeBSD (or *BSD in general) is still used heavily in server environments.
Is anyone using it on the desktop as well?
I always wanted to give it a try, but then I'm hesitant because of lacking hardware support. I remember struggling with Intel KMS support in one of the earlier releases. Is this still a problem?
I run FreeBSD -CURRENT on a Lenovo C30, which is a dual Xeon E5 workstation platform. Key to my use for the past 1-2 years with a 30" and 3 24" monitors is the nvidia binary video driver. Prior to this setup I ran Gentoo. I find FreeBSD more conductive toward the things I want to work on, but I am also much more interested in working on FreeBSD src than I was Linux kernel. I maintain a small repo that does everything I want at https://github.com/kev009/digital-life
On my laptop, a Lenovo T420, I run PC-BSD -CURRENT (http://iso.cdn.pcbsd.org/11.0-CURRENTMAR2016/edge/amd64/), which eliminates the need to build src and packages. I also run PC-BSD -CURRENT on my work desktop with a Radeon card and two monitors. I could potentially expand my workstation builds to these with pkg, but PC-BSD is more or less hands off which I want on these devices.
Open source video needs work, but as of this week that has started heating up and we may start closing in toward DragonflyBSD in terms of Freedesktop/Linux equivalence by the time FreeBSD 11.0 ships https://github.com/iotamudelta/freebsd-base-graphics/tree/dr...
I've an elderly Asus notebook nowadays as my PC, with 10.2 on it that I installed rather recently. It's battery is long-dead (I use it as a workstation mostly), so I can't comment on that, but suspend/hibernate does not work for me. FreeBSD does not have hibernate, and suspend, AFAIK, does not work with Xorg, so it's practically useless. There are some posts that demo how to do it, by unloading troublesome stuff before suspend and reloading them later, but I didn't get around to trying that yet, because suspend does not resume, and hard reboots give me the shakes without a backup, I couldn't port my backup script to't yet.
Performance-wise, I did not notice much between Arch linux, what I was using before, and this. My setup is very light, Emacs+Xombrero on TWM. I notice, though, a certain performance problem with video in browser, but that may well be Gstreamer plugins that run slower than Linux on *BSD, I can't comment, as I don't know the internals. But VLC works just fine.
Running it on a laptop is a bit of a science project still, if you want a seamless experience it's not really there, but it can be done. At this point you can use up to Haswell intel graphics with suspend/resume.
I run it as a desktop OS on a Lenovo G700 and those all work fine.
Hardware support isn't as complete as Linux but it isn't bad at all either. Chances are anything that's older than 2-3 years will work out of the box, anything newer may or may not require a little tinkering.
I only recently got myself a used ThinkPad X220 that is now running PC-BSD. I tried a stock FreeBSD 10.2 first and could not get suspend/resume to work properly, so I tried PC-BSD, where suspend/resume works; then again the latest PC-BSD is based on FreeBSD 10.3, so a stock FreeBSD 10.3 might have worked as well; but now I am too lazy to re-install.
Otherwise the hardware is supported very nicely. Only scroll support for the trackpoint was a bit of a pain to get working.
I run FreeBSD on my workstation since 2004 and am at 10.3-RELEASE right now. I'm a web developer and run several VMs, different browsers, all development work including graphics, as does the staff of ten at my office.
FreeBSD has no issues with any of the high end hardware we run and the oldest to newest hardware we have is one to three years old.
I use FreeBSD on my personal laptop. I picked up an X230 used on eBay and upgraded it so that it has 2x256GB SSDs in a ZFS mirror and 16GB of RAM. More than enough horsepower to do anything I need, and FreeBSD ensures that it's used most efficiently.
Much like many people on HN, I suspect, I do most of my work /and/ my play at the command line. Once you're there for a significant amount of your time you begin to get a respect for tight integration in the BSD base system and the superb documentation which is included. Because of the docs, I can reasonably work in an environment where I have no Internet access for an extended period of time without feeling like I'm suffering. In the Linux world, I find myself spending more time looking things up on search engines and less times looking things up in the manual. This simply isn't the case with FreeBSD, which means I'm less tied to being online and more tied to getting stuff done.
YMMV but I love FreeBSD as a desktop/laptop OS. I know many people also use OpenBSD on laptops because of superior driver support for some hardware, but the Linux emulation in FreeBSD allows me to guarantee no matter what I'm trying to do it will work, so I stick to FreeBSD vs OpenBSD for my uses.
I want to run the same OS on my desktops as my servers to minimize expensive brain context switching, so I'm not into the pc-bsd concept, however, numerous people recommended it as a desktop flavor of freebsd. You MIGHT have better luck with hardware drivers or software integration on pc-bsd, if you have problems with freebsd. Maybe. Think of it like freebsd is to pc-bsd as debian is to ubuntu, sorta.
As for my non-significant problems, there was some weirdness with haskell and long term (days, weeks) stability of xmonad, so I switched over to awesome as my window manager with an identical keyboard layout.
I have no experience with desktop environments on freebsd on my desktops... no interest. I need something that switches between emacs, terminal, and browser, that's the total extent of my environment. I'm told freebsd can run KDE and Gnome, although I don't want them. I point this out because some people define desktop by hardware, or by end user use, or others define that word as "runs gnome", and I can only verify the first two definitions.
I used FreeBSD exclusively for a some months on my primary laptop, a Lenovo Ideapad. I never did get wifi working properly (I believe support for my chip is in 10.3 or 11.0) so I had to buy a ten dollar dongle. FreeBSD does not support integrated graphics. I think I got around this by disabling one of the graphics cards. But I'm not certain. I also couldn't get power management or sleep mode working. So I got used to shutting down every time I put it away.
My work now has me using OS X, but I keep the FreeBSD machine on a vpn because I love working on it. If you're thinking about, I'd highly recommend looking into the FreeBSD and OpenBSD support for your laptop. Otherwise just buy an x220.
Yes, I'm using FreeBSD on my netbook. I tried some Linux distros there, but they were too slow. My netbook came with Fedora, where yum was terribly lagging, it was taking even 40minutes to upgrade 20pacakges (what happened weekly), I tried Debian with LXDE, it was faster, but I wasn't able to watch youtube, video was lagging on 460p. GF was using it as portable PC to listen to podcasts etc, but starting any application like firefox, thunderbird or clementine was taking way too long. When Debian switched to systemD, I decided to give FreeBSD a try after 10 years with Debian/Arch and CentOS on server. I was impressed that command line installation of FreeBSD was simpler than Manjaro with GUI. Honestly, application startup of Firefox, Thunderbid was much quicker, youtube videos work with 720p (nearly full screen of the netbook :D). I had some problems setting up my dev environment there, like Qt5 is said to work out of box, but I had to make some manual fixes to get it working system-wide. Setup of Xorg and SLIM was something different than SDDM on ArchLinux.
I don't know about Intel KMS, I use FreeBSD on portable netbook and my work-station (Dell laptop - came with Ubuntu) and everything is superb. You will need to dig some stuff like rc.conf, but documentation is very clear and once you modified it, you're 100% that it will work after reboot. I still don't remember and know from memory how to enable acpi support on Linux (backlight control on laptops, it worked out of box on both laptops on BSD). if you don't have much time to read about it, install bsdconfig from ports it's a nice command line application that helps you select necessary features of the system.
If anything, it's definitely worth giving BSD a try just to get some new experience! I'm also highly impressed with DragonFlyBSD, worth reading their documentation to learn that BSD systems are ahead of Linux when it comes to security and system design.
This is the result what one would expect. Scientists (until recently) have only been able to sequence species which can be cultured in the laboratory (you need massive amounts of DNA for sequencing). But in fact, more than 90 percent of all microbial species cannot be cultured in the lab and hence (until recently) could not be sequenced and stayed unknown. However, in the past few years, "Next next generation sequencing" (that's how I like to call it) techniques emerged and we are now able to sequence nearly everything. The umbrella terms "metagenomics" and "single-cell sequencing" are often used for such new methods and have huuuge potential in many, many fields. Basically, the new methods eliminate the culturing step and instead have novel techniques for amplifying DNA from only a single strand.
If not sequenced, would we not know many of them by traditional identification methods (e.g. staining) ? I'm guessing their sequencing process prevents the concurrent use of these methods, so we can't match up DNA to known bacteria.
As for unculturability, the recent antibiotic discovery that made the news came from learning how to culture soil bacteria. No, we didn't learn what it needs. We just grew it in it's natural environment: dirt.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8852487
> If not sequenced, would we not know many of them by traditional identification methods (e.g. staining) ?
Yes, and no. Many "traditional" staining methods dont really offer up much information, like a gram-stain (common when learning microbiology, not so common in research) can only divide bacteria into two groups: gram-positive and gram-negative. More to the point, if these bacteria have no known methods of culturing (which was correctly noted at 90%+), you can not get them in a pure culture and can only stain them in mixed groups, which isnt that useful.
That being said, there are some staining-like methods you can use to identify what taxonomic group a given bacteria is from. You can use a fluorescent DNA probe that binds to a specific target region of DNA that is highly conserved in groups of bacteria (the 16S rRNA). It is not 100% accurate, and it requires reference data from known organisms, but it can be a good tool for initial surveys of mixed samples. You can also get some cool looking pictures from it.
>I'm guessing their sequencing process prevents the concurrent use of these methods, so we can't match up DNA to known bacteria.
Nope! The above method is actually used in some single-cell sequencing techniques. The cell is florescently tagged, then you can use a microfluidic device (or other methods) to isolate the cell, extract its DNA, and sequence. It is however difficult to assemble a complete genome from a single cell's DNA.
This assessment strikes me as precisely correct. This article gets dangerously close to click-bait academia, since while it (presumably) does good science, the abstract highlights this sensational-sounding result, that the authors must know will get picked up by the public.
That 1/2 of the DNA is of unknown origin does not mean it is somehow really weird or alien (as the public will imagine), rather, it just means we don't know all that much about extant DNA.
I agree. The whole "NYC Subway" could be replaced with any transit vehicle in any town/city and you would get the same results. Nothing special about NYC subway.
The article in question used the Illumina HiSeq 2500 for sequencing. Which would normally be described as a "next-generation" or "2nd generation" sequencer.
I would guess that the rapid reduction in sequencing cost, has in part allowed novel sample preps to be developed which have reduced the amount of material required for a sequencing project (such that even single cell sequencing projects are now feasible).
This looks great! I used Julia in my Master's thesis and it was very fast and easy to use. One thing however was annoying: The lack of shared memory parallel computing. Unfortunately, in Julia, each parallel process has its own memory such that you have to keep multiple instances of your data and/or move data around all the time. This can be a deal breaker if working with very large data sets and actually is preventing me from using Julia even more. But I'm sure, it's on the right track.
Shared-memory multiprocessing is supported in the latest release on linux and mac. Multi-threading is in development and has seen some significant progress over the past few months.
> But I'm sure, it's on the right track.
Yes, and it is worth pointing out that both this article and the @simd feature were written by Arch Robison - who is also the architect of Intel's Threading Building Blocks.
I don't get the point why someone would learn a new keyboard layout.
- It is very hard to learn since muscle memory is very difficult to change.
- I think it would take me a while to be as fast as on my current layout QWERT[ZY].
- I see no real advantage for learning a new keyboard layout. None of my friends and coworkers ever complained about keyboard layout and the urge to change it.
- When you want to get things done, learning a new layout would be the last thing you want.
- You may not have your new keyboard layout available at different workplaces.
So I think this is just a hipster thing. Prove me wrong :)
I don't get the point why someone would learn to ride a motorcycle.
- It is very hard to learn since your muscles are trained for driving a car
- I think it would take me a while to be as confident as in my current Monte Carlo LS
- I see no real advantage for learning a new automobile. None of my friends and coworkers ever complained about driving a car and the urge to change it.
- When you want to get from point A to point B, learning a new vehicle would be the last thing you want.
- You may not have a motorcycle available at different car rental places when you travel
Didn't really prove you wrong, and maybe I am a hipster :-)
I found it enjoyable learning a new layout. Maybe it was just for the sake of trying something new. My productivity didn't suffer since I never really abandoned QWERTY. I didn't utilize colemak in my work until I was relatively fluent. Learning workman might be an interesting weekend excursion, but I have no plans to use it for work until I'm fluent, if it is as fun to type on as colemak.
Assuming that everything you don't personally understand is "just a hipster thing" is such a shitty attitude!
You offer five cons, which _to_you_ outweigh the pros – which are so obvious it seems redundant to even mention them, but let's just say, to sum it up, ergonomics.
It's very well known that full-time IT work takes a heavy toll on your body. That's why reasonable people make sure to work with decent posture, to take frequent breaks, and to exercise. It's why decent companies make sure to provide high-quality tools to help their employees stay healthy and avoid injury.
And it's why some people are interested in improving the ergonomics of typing, which – as everyone knows – is fraught with the dangers of repetitive stress.
That doesn't mean that keyboard layout choice is the most important thing in IT ergonomics. But for some people, switching to Dvorak or Colemak or whatever else seems like a reasonable choice, and many of them, myself included, are very satisfied with it, even while working in a collaborative environment where others use QWERTY.
For you to call this "just a hipster thing" is embarrassingly dumb! Do you say the same about ergonomic keyboards, rollermice, and saddle chairs?
I'm not convinced either, but your arguments basically are: I don't get it, it's hard, and I don't know anybody doing it. If you read it like this, you should see such arguments don't make much sense :]
Okay, as I wrote in another comment, I once learned Colemak (I didn't like it very much) and subsequently, CarpalX (QGMLWY) which I liked and I soon reached a reasonable speed of about 80-90 wpm on it (which is about 2/3 of my QWERTY speed).
What were my reasons of trying new keyboard layout?
- "The hipster thing" (so that one doesn't count).
- Curiosity. I wanted to find out what the fuss is about - whether the talk behind it isn't just that, a hipster thing itself
- I like to learn and I love the feel of improving, of being better than the day before
- It's very comfortable once you get used to it.
Adressing your objections:
"- I think it would take me a while to be as fast as on my current layout QWERT[ZY]."
1. The time will pass anyway.
2. I never typed faster than on QWERTY, but I'm not really a typist. I'm not a court reporter. My productivity is not directly proportional to my typing speed. It's the thinking that takes most of the time anyway. So I can sacrifice some of the speed for the sake of comfort.
"None of my friends and coworkers ever complained about keyboard layout and the urge to change
This I believe, but as Henry Ford remarked: "if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." :)
"You may not have your new keyboard layout available at different workplaces."
That's obvious, but I, for one, don't change workplaces that often. And I only use two computers: one at home, one at work. Installing a preconfigured keyboard layout on a new machine takes a minute.
I mainly returned to QWERTY (I'm repeating myself again, but so be it) because English isn't my native language. All these alternative keyboard layouts are optimized for English. I use a QWERTZ mutation (PN-87 - rare and somewhat forgotten even in Poland) for typing in Polish. So sticking to QGLWMY could only ever make like 1/3 of my typing life better :) If I used no other language than English, I probably wouldn't have looked back.
The most serious problem with learning a different keyboard layout for hipstering purposes is not only that it requires a certain degree of effort, but that nobody can tell you've done it unless you tell them. Which you absolutely never must. Because you'll never hear the end of it. As this thread is demonstrating amply.
The advantages are speed and comfort. Yes, it's hard to learn and you'll be slower than with QWERTY for a while, but it pays off in the end. Consider it a long term investment in productivity.
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