Real paper -> Pop reporting of real paper -> Derivative crap on arxiv.org in essay form -> HN homepage.
We've got it down to about two weeks now. It's a game of telephone with massive information loss at each step.
We've got it down to about two weeks now. It's a game of telephone with massive information loss at each step.
So the chain was really (a bunch of real papers) --> (those authors summarizing what they did, and putting it on the arXiv) --> HN. Calling it derivative crap is totally wrong, and suggesting that the arXiv somehow makes the papers less "real" is wrong too.
Full disclosure: I wrote http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.03055 for the contest [honarable mention].