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Ask HN: Which recent research paper blew your mind?

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Re: Ask HN: Which recent research paper blew your mind?

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is referenced hundreds of times in many classic papers. Wait, you mean people include papers they haven't even opened in their references?!

Happens far more than you think. It can be an innocent (sort of) mistake, where authors see the citation in a previous paper and simply copy it into their own.

> where authors see the citation in a previous paper and simply copy it into their own.

Without opening the paper to even read the abstract? To me it doesn't sound like “innocent” at all, and borderline malpractice…

Re: Ask HN: Which recent research paper blew your mind?

#42
post #17

"Overview of SHARD: A System for Highly Available Replicated Data" it's the first paper to introduce the concept of database sharding. It was published in 1988 by the Computer Corporation of America. It is referenced hundreds of times in many classic papers. But, here's the thing. It doesn't exist . Everyone cites Sarin, DeWitt & Rosenb[e|u]rg's paper but none have ever seen it. I've emailed dozens of academics, libr…

I am infinitely disappointed to discover you are also the only person who seems to care about this online. I found a website, but it’s you apparently. Now I’m going to be bugged by this too! Great trivia also a heck of a mystery

It seems like he is not the only one (in case he did not use a pseudonym here): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Shard_(database_architect...

Re: Ask HN: Which recent research paper blew your mind?

#43
"Cyclic Combinational Circuits", by Marc D. Riedel

> we present theoretical justification for the claim that the optimal form of some [combinational] circuits requires cyclic topologies. We exhibit families of cyclic circuits that are optimal in the number of gates, and we prove lower bounds on the size of equivalent acyclic circuits.

http://www.mriedel.ece.umn.edu/wiki/images/7/7a/Riedel_Cycli...

Re: Ask HN: Which recent research paper blew your mind?

#44
post #26

Integral Neural Networks (CVPR 2023 Award Candidate), a nifty way of building resizable networks. My understanding of this work: A forward pass for a (fully-connected) layer of a neural network is just a dot product of the layer input with the layer weights, followed by some activation function. Both the input and the weights are vectors of the same, fixed size. Let's imagine that the discrete values that form these…

smart

Re: Ask HN: Which recent research paper blew your mind?

#45
post #17

"Overview of SHARD: A System for Highly Available Replicated Data" it's the first paper to introduce the concept of database sharding. It was published in 1988 by the Computer Corporation of America. It is referenced hundreds of times in many classic papers. But, here's the thing. It doesn't exist . Everyone cites Sarin, DeWitt & Rosenb[e|u]rg's paper but none have ever seen it. I've emailed dozens of academics, libr…

That's pretty interesting actually. Someone must have a copy somewhere. Seems like a real failure of scholarship if it's truly lost, and a serious argument against walled gardens-style publishing.

Re: Ask HN: Which recent research paper blew your mind?

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happens far more than you think. It can be an innocent (sort of) mistake, where authors see the citation in a previous paper and simply copy it into their own.

> where authors see the citation in a previous paper and simply copy it into their own. Without opening the paper to even read the abstract? To me it doesn't sound like “innocent” at all, and borderline malpractice…

There's a crowd who tilt the other way -- if I might possibly have hinted at the idea before you then it's borderline malpractice to not reference me. In many fields it's common to directly reference what appear to be the bigger transitive references then, even if they didn't directly influence this work in particular. I'd personally want to see a twidge more evidence before bringing out the pitchforks.

Re: Ask HN: Which recent research paper blew your mind?

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happens far more than you think. It can be an innocent (sort of) mistake, where authors see the citation in a previous paper and simply copy it into their own.

> where authors see the citation in a previous paper and simply copy it into their own. Without opening the paper to even read the abstract? To me it doesn't sound like “innocent” at all, and borderline malpractice…

It's innocent in the sense that it's (usually) not checked out of laziness/complacency as opposed to malicious and intentional citation fraud.

Re: Ask HN: Which recent research paper blew your mind?

#48
post #17

"Overview of SHARD: A System for Highly Available Replicated Data" it's the first paper to introduce the concept of database sharding. It was published in 1988 by the Computer Corporation of America. It is referenced hundreds of times in many classic papers. But, here's the thing. It doesn't exist . Everyone cites Sarin, DeWitt & Rosenb[e|u]rg's paper but none have ever seen it. I've emailed dozens of academics, libr…

They should have kept the paper as highly available replicated data.

Re: Ask HN: Which recent research paper blew your mind?

#49
post #17

"Overview of SHARD: A System for Highly Available Replicated Data" it's the first paper to introduce the concept of database sharding. It was published in 1988 by the Computer Corporation of America. It is referenced hundreds of times in many classic papers. But, here's the thing. It doesn't exist . Everyone cites Sarin, DeWitt & Rosenb[e|u]rg's paper but none have ever seen it. I've emailed dozens of academics, libr…

Do Sarin, DeWitt & Rosenb[e|u]rg exist? Are they still alive? Tracking them down and going directly to the source would seem to be the way to go. Perhaps even enlisting some "big names" in the industry to ask around?

Re: Ask HN: Which recent research paper blew your mind?

#50
post #17

"Overview of SHARD: A System for Highly Available Replicated Data" it's the first paper to introduce the concept of database sharding. It was published in 1988 by the Computer Corporation of America. It is referenced hundreds of times in many classic papers. But, here's the thing. It doesn't exist . Everyone cites Sarin, DeWitt & Rosenb[e|u]rg's paper but none have ever seen it. I've emailed dozens of academics, libr…

I found LinkedIn profiles for Sunil Sarin, Mark Dewitt, and Ronni Rosenberg who all worked at CCA during this time period.

I've gone ahead and sent them each a message asking if they might be able to make the paper available.

If you'd like to get in contact with them yourself and are having trouble finding their LinkedIn, shoot me an email and I'll be happy to provide you links.

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