[HN Gopher] A collection of outlandish human-computer interactio...
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A collection of outlandish human-computer interaction papers
Author : danso
Score : 92 points
Date : 2021-07-19 21:25 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (floe.butterbrot.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (floe.butterbrot.org)
| nneonneo wrote:
| Hey, nice to see DATANOSE on that list! It was co-written by my
| PhD supervisor Scott Hudson, and it emphatically was a joke. He
| likes to tell the story every so often at conferences. If I'm not
| mistaken, the picture shows Scott with his trademark mustache
| under the DATANOSE :)
| Readywater wrote:
| Shameless share of my toilet based art installation.
| https://vimeo.com/75448871
| jontonsoup wrote:
| I will shamelessly plug my personal contribution to outlandish
| toilet-related HCI papers!
|
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2468356.2468738
| jhgb wrote:
| > You're in control: a urinary user interface
|
| > The picture alone says a thousand words. Play a game by peeing
| on the right spot in an urinal...
|
| That's how you end up with a pee sea instead of a PC.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Hayes Raffle on that paper eventually ended up at Google
| leading AR UX. So just because you start with silly ideas
| exploring things as a student doesn't mean you aren't learning.
| buitreVirtual wrote:
| These papers would be funny if you didn't stop to think of all
| the tax dollars being wasted on all of this.
| vnorilo wrote:
| Are you similarly annoyed by the stupid stuff private companies
| you deal with spend their margins on?
|
| Of course, the government has a tax monopoly. But wait, several
| private companies look like they do too! From my perspective
| there are more viable countries/governments to choose from than
| mobile or desktop OSes or online retailers.
| buitreVirtual wrote:
| As a matter of fact, I am. It's not one or the other, it's
| both. It's a moral obligation to point out wrong wherever it
| is.
|
| Criticism of government waste shouldn't be taken as an
| argument against government, like some opportunists do, but
| as necessary accountability. In this case, the funding for
| this garbage research (and all paper mills, while we are at
| it, which are a majority of academia these days) should be
| reinvested in useful areas like climate change, fundamental
| sciences (such as physics and chemistry) and technology
| transfer from science to industry.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Who decides what research is garbage or not? I notice your
| list lacks any mention of anthropology, history, or other
| humanities, for example.
| buitreVirtual wrote:
| It's not so much about the area, although some areas lend
| themselves to more abuse. Obviously humanities are
| important. The problem is the bad incentive system and
| the irrelevance of the resulting research.
| Wistar wrote:
| How do you know a government funded these? And which
| government? These seem to be from institutions all over the
| world.
| vnorilo wrote:
| I respect that. But I would contend that these people made
| something, learned something, and published their findings.
| Even if it is all goofy and of no immediate practical
| value, I wouldn't call it a waste.
| buitreVirtual wrote:
| Yes, they learn, and others might appreciate reading the
| papers too. But I'd rather steer creative students to
| solve real-world problems or build serious science, and
| they will learn more about what matters.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Go read the CVs of the authors. They are all working on
| real problems. These are goofy 1030pm fucking around in
| the lab projects, not the real Serious Work these
| students are doing.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| On the contrary, stuff like this happens because of a business
| model that SAVES the taxpayer hundreds of millions.
|
| In CS at least, we pay grad student research assistants close
| to nothing relative to their worth. And then we work them to
| the bone. In exchange, students like these ones are allowed to
| do whatever they want in their free time in betweeen working on
| actually funded projects.
|
| If you can find an alternative model that allows me to hire
| kids who have 200k offers at 30k-40k and get 50+ hours of work
| out of them, please let me know.
|
| Even if these kids work on these projects during the 9-5 day --
| and I kind of doubt it, these are all probably "fucking around
| in the lab at 1030pm" projects -- we're still getting a killing
| by calling them students instead of SWEs.
|
| I've advised exactly zero students who didn't have multiple
| offers in the 200s when they started their phd, and never paid
| more than 45k. They could spend like most of their time on BS
| and I'd still be getting an amazing deal.
|
| Kids using their free time to do stupid/fun projects in between
| working for the taxpayers at a REALLY FUCKING STEEP discount is
| not an example of government waste. And if you start getting
| greedy by treating phd students like civil servants, well,
| better also be willing to pay six figures and a pension.
| Spoiler: you're not going to save money.
| buitreVirtual wrote:
| Highlighting the cost of opportunity of hiring these students
| doesn't make the irrelevance problem of a lot of modern
| research any better. I'd rather teach students to work on
| practical or fundamental problems and change the incentive
| system to do real, long-term research projects rather than
| pumping papers to boost up the advisor's resume and the
| institutional numbers.
|
| While you mention price tag, the student gets only a small
| part of all the funding. Most of the money goes to the
| institution, not to mention the advisor's summer salary.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| All of those students ARE working on real problems. These
| papers are fun asides, not the core of the research
| agendas.
|
| Stop with the professional attacks against researchers
| until you at least take the time to read their CVs. What
| you we doing here is attacking peoples professional
| reputation. And you're doing it without knowing anything
| about them. Stop.
|
| At least half the money goes to the student in stipend+core
| benefits, and another third covers fringe benefits and
| overhead - lights, bathrooms, offices, security, data
| centers, travel, ... It's pretty common for the total cost
| of an employee to be 1.5x+ their salary.
|
| Sometimes grants fund faculty summer salaries, but I kind
| of doubt those faculty spent any time on these specific
| projects.
| buitreVirtual wrote:
| Actually, I've been there and done that. There is a huge
| difference between the relevance of the problems people
| are officially targeting and the actual substance and
| relevance of the research being done. I've seen first-
| hand that even at top institutions the priority is to
| maximize PR, often based on number of papers published
| (in prestigious-sounding venues if and when possible) and
| to maximize rankings to attract more students and
| funding.
|
| The reality is that the incentive system is wrong.
| Impactful, long-term research is super hard to achieve
| like this.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Sounds like you washed out of a toxic lab and are now
| lashing out at some 20-something's' funny side projects.
| buitreVirtual wrote:
| Not at all. I'm just being realistic.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| You're latching onto a set of kinda transparently obvious
| joke papers [1] written by clearly accomplished
| individuals [2] and claiming that the whole institution
| is rotten. You're not being realistic; you're being
| absurd -- literally using a bunch of April Fools Day
| jokes as evidence that all of academia is broken.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27909164
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27911634
| buitreVirtual wrote:
| Stop pretending this is about some kids. I'm talking
| about the system and culture today. A lot of academic
| research is broken and you can't pretend you don't see
| it. The main goal is to maximize metrics.
|
| Just look at many authors' publication lists that look
| like paper mills. Quantity over quality. Irreproducible
| results, bad study design, too many hidden variables,
| unrepresentative subjects. Unrealistic and oversimplistic
| assumptions. I've even served as subject of studies
| published in top venues, and I can tell that the study
| was a joke.
|
| It varies by the area, but this is present everywhere.
| Just one example: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/
| article?id=10.1371/jo....
| xor99 wrote:
| Honestly would use the bathtub interface. Convert it to a hot tub
| and that is an excellent outdoor office.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Keep thinking I should put a waterproof tablet in my shower (no
| camera of course ha)
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(page generated 2021-07-21 23:01 UTC)