[ghubbard]

(2009)

Some discussion from the first time around: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=667801

Actual article title: On Influenza A (H1N1)

HN clickbait version: On Influenza a (H1N1): How many bits does it take to kill a human?

[mdrzn]

Actually it's a good title. I wouldn't have clicked "On Influenza A" because it could have been just a science article.

Instead, by adding that "how many bits" I know that it's gonna talk in computer science terms, and I enjoyed it.

edit: it's also written in the article by the author, have you read it?

[TeMPOraL]

Upvoting for the link to previous discussion. Some good stuff there.

I don't mind this type of "clickbait" - it summarizes the main thread of the article well.

[roflc0ptic]

It's a little click-baity, but it's also a pretty good framing for the article, which discusses both the number of kilobytes encoded in the virus and the number of bits that need changing to make the virus deadlier. Much like with naming poems, they took the first sentence of the post (minus some preamble) and used it as the title. Idk. Seems pretty defensible to me.

[schoen]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incipit

[gpvos]

The incipit (thanks schoen, see sibling comment) was also in the link that got me to the article initially.