skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are already experimental clinical decision support applications which, given a list of symptoms, can produce the differential diagnosis. But they generally aren't very useful since in most cases the physician can figure out the same diagnosis just as quickly. Real medicine isn't like House, MD.

IBM is more likely to apply Watson technology toward analytics and data mining. There are huge amounts of clinical data locked up in unstructured text reports. If they can analyze that data in a useful way to draw correlations between symptoms, patient demographics, medications, treatments, and outcomes then that could add a lot of value for medical researchers.
You created a fake account just to attack her?
What is intuition? What is flexibility? How do you test these things in a lab? Turing's test is based on the most straightforward way of measuring intelligence (loaded word, but common; here I'm specifically talking about "intuition, creativity, flexibility and the ability to learn").

If you can have an interview with a computer, and an interview with a human, and be unable to determine which is which (accurately, over several trials), how can you argue that the computer isn't human-like? Most versions of the test have ways of eliminating everything but the straight communication of information (because whether you can build a convincing robot or amazing TTS software is a different problem).

How do you know that I'm not a computer?
I'm not sure why they always seem to be left out these days, but Microchip PIC micros are great for learning this kind of stuff. There are lots of cheap programmers available, most of the chips are available in DIP format to use with a breadboard, and they have the most generous sample program ever.
"Now I don't think socialism is a dirty word, but saying Open Source is socialist is wrong. If anything it's extreme Libertarianist. It's saying if I give you something, you can do whatever the fuck you want with it.
Open Source is not about the government, or any other organization, providing institutionalized software for the good of all."

Open source may be this way, but the GNU (which Wordpress is licensed under) isn't.

The GNU license makes it so everyone is equal. Nobody can have any competitive advantage over another, because as soon as you do, everybody else can now have your code.

You also can't do anything you want with it.
Are you familiar with dynaTrace AJAX? If so, how is yours different? If not, here's a 12 minute video, http://ajax.dynatrace.com/ajax/en/content/full-video-demo.as...

More info: http://ajax.dynatrace.com/ajax/en/
They also have server-side tracing: http://ajax.dynatrace.com/ajax/en/content/upgrade-trace.aspx
An Upgrade for Facebook Pages
Any chance of them selling devices like the ones PayPal uses any time soon?

Definitely a good idea, though. Losing control of your email is the first step towards losing control of all your other online accounts.
NDI didn't ditch GOAL because I left. In fact they used it for JakX and they also ported it to the PSP (successfully). However, the PS3 development didn't get started on porting it early, so they went with a different tact. Christophe (co-president and lead tech honcho there now) lamented to me on several occasions that they should have ported it to the PS3.

Not that the process hasn't gone well for them -- Uncharted and UC2 are totally awesome, and watching the UC3 trailer gives me goosebumps. Dan (head gameplay programmer) did miss it so bad that he went with Scheme for their scripting :-) There are many ways to skin a cat, and the truth is that as long as you have good people (which they do in spades) and make decent decisions decisively, things tend to work out. Forward progress is one of the most important things.
Well, he didn't
I wonder what the armed forces in Egypt are going to do. Will there be a coup?
a few entries from kyle:

i got pregnant from customer development

i put the P in MVP
(2.10.11, at around 14:10 MST): How does this have any positive karma at all?
Mubarak is not going anywhere. he just said that.
I knew politicians are biggest liars but for the first time I had the chance to witness biggest lie live on tv.
I don't feel as though I know enough about Egypt and the political sentiment there to comment directly, but I sense that this is a very historical moment in time for the entire Middle East.
m night twist
Sometimes I wonder why big corporations can even exist competitively as there is such downward pressure on productivity as they grow. Some companies handle this better than others, Amazon being one that comes to mind first, but everyone ultimately suffers a significant efficiency loss at scale. The only reasonable answer that occurs to me is that the economies of scale and available capital provide such a dominating competitive advantage as to allow outmaneuvering of smaller companies whom are 10x as profitable.
Hmm. I recall the SysInternals books saying it was NT4, not 5. I could be mistaken, though.
Agreed. If you use Vista fully-patched these days, it's perfectly acceptable. The only things you find wrong are the new UI features from Windows 7 (most noticeable the taskbar improvements).
"10x Ninja Bad Ass... Ya... You don't belong here" OR "10x Ninja Bad Ass... Ya... You definitely couldn't hack it"
Managing intelligence programs isn't necessarily a problem. The real issue is that Sulemain was actively involved in torturing people for the US government. This isn't some nutty conspiracy: it has been reported extensively. For example, see Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side (Mayer is a journalist at the New Yorker and before that the Wall Street Journal). The fact that Sulemain has been so deeply complicit in torture for the US government suggests that he's likely to keep power and US backing.

The fact that Mubarak's hand picked replacement is directly responsible for torturing many people on behalf of the US government seems pretty damn relevant to just about everything.
Gaming Expert Jesse Schell on the Future of Virtual Currencies
I wonder whether Watson 'reads' the question or if the questions are fed to it directly as parameters, or if it has to 'listen' to the spoken words and start thinking about its response after that.
I appreciate your thoughts, and I can certainly see where you're coming from.

For me, the cost of the more traditional services is prohibitive, and especially so in the case of automated calls to the police and fire departments -- the city (at least down here) and the monitoring company begin to levy extra fines in false alarm situations (forgot your access code, burned something in the oven, etc.).

My personal take is that I would rather make the judgement call, myself. I can guarantee there will be more "false alarms" (since my service just listens for a sustained increase in volume and isn't wired to sensors directly), but at least the user can weed them out and not the city. And it's a lot cheaper.

Thanks again for your thoughts!
Carmack was the first to come to my mind in terms of individual programmer notoriety.

In his day, he was probably considered by many to be the best programmer in his field. Part of that had to do with pushing limits of the hardware at the time and also shipping code.

With the speediness of computers now, this sort of raw optimization is less celebrated. Also, games and other projects have tended to become massive team efforts, harder to pinpoint to one great programmer.
Anyone like "iterate or die?"
First, this is optional, so no one who doesn't want it has to worry about it. If you aren't worried about your google account being hacked, then don't enable it.

Second, can you really think of a better option? Two factor authentication like this has been used by high security institutions for years and it works quite well. Personally, it has bothered me for years that my bank does not use 2-factor identification to log in... I am certain there is plenty of room for improvement, but it is certainly non-trivial.
Could enterprise software development become "fun" if WebOS fulfills it's potential? Funny to think of BeOS and BeIA becoming HP's NextStep. There's a lot riding on this at HP. I'm not familiar with their executive leadership, other than that Leo Apotheker comes from an enterprise computing background, but a good evaluation of where that leadership comes from will be important at divining what's ahead. Microsoft should be terrified. If anyone can rip enterprise customer's out of Microsoft's grip it's going to be HP.

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/company-information/executive-team/...

HP certainly seems to be trying really hard to support developers. For example, get a $200 developer discount on an unlocked Pre 2. I'm sure they'll have something similar for the Palm Pre 3.

http://developer.palm.com/index.php?option=com_content&v...

Now's a good time to speculate long-term on HP stock. If they do well with WebOS and spin it off to their other computing platforms they could become the "Apple" of enterprise computing. If they /really/ do well maybe people will want to take their work equipment home with them instead of wanting to take their Macs/iphones into work...
Is that really Google's problem? I mean I realize there aren't a lot of great engineers, but it seems to me that their primary problem is that they are no longer the "hot" company to work for. I think all companies reach this point as they mature. Either they have to start paying a lot more than their competitors or they have to lower their standards. Most companies do some of both (best example would be Microsoft right now, they have good engineers, but not as good as they used to. They also pay well)
Twitter for Android update: new and improved | Twitter Blog
Iceland, Norway and Spain are all incorrect.

Iceland has nothing to do with ice; in old Norse it is "Island", and means (duh) "island."

Norway has nothing to do with "way"; the Norwegian name for Norway is Noreg or Norge (depending on the language form you use) and in either case means "Northern Kingdom/Reich".

In the case of Spain, they have picked the most provocative way to phrase one of the more unlikely etymologies.

And that's just on first glance.
I'm able to start the login process in Safari on my iPhone and when I get to the prompt for the one-time code, switch to the Authenticator app, double click on the number to get the copy icon, then switch back to Safari and paste it.
My thoughts:

1. the video on the front page is just sound not video as I was expecting.

2. I would prefer it if the interface was more like IRC, so each comment went at the end of the previous one.

3. I didn't understand what "stabd up" means.
Direct links, submitted page is just linking to them:

http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-ban...

http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/03/making-crash-ban...

http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/04/making-crash-ban...

http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/05/making-crash-ban...

http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/06/making-crash-ban...

http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/07/making-crash-ban...

http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/08/making-crash-ban...
The user would first have to go to the attacker.com phishing site though right?

It sounds like it makes phishing scams a lot easier.

(thanks for the explanation btw)
'Star Wars'-like 3D Holograms Coming to Smartphones, iPads
Remember that scene in Star Wars where Chewbacca and R2-D2 play holographic chess? That technology is no longer in a galaxy far, far away.
How do we know it's their "entire" email database? 4.71GB would hardly cover my person email database.
You just made a lot of assumptions there without anything to back them up.

I, for example am running a windows install of windows xp from 2003 repair installed through 4 different computers and finely optimized to my liking, on a Macbook Pro with a 3Ghz processor, 8GB of ram (of course it only uses 3GB) and an ssd Drive ... I have a copy of windows 7 Ultimate that I got at SxSW (Microsoft gave them out at their party) ...

I'm a busy person ... I have 60hr workweeks and thats not counting weekends ... losing a week of productivity (because thats pretty much what it would be) upgrading to windows 7 while I back up my data, install windows 7, install all my apps and try to restore the data isn't something I'm going to do anytime soon.
I actually thought he had come to his right senses!
Windows XP marketshare drops to 53 percent
I have lunch with a mandarin speaker once a week to practice. My parents native tongue is cantonese, so it's similar in grammar at least to mandarin. I found I really suck at speaking cantonese, but a couple of months ago I went to China. With no english speakers around me, I was forced to adapt, within 3 days I was speaking fluent cantonese to my cousins. So I'm a firm believer in practice makes perfect.
You seem to present a dichotomy for employment motivations: securing talent (i.e. so Facebook can't have 'em) vs. increasing headcount. However, Google is probably hiring because they have more opportunities and workload than their existing employee base can handle.
Some key elements of the speech. Not exact wording, but key phrases.

"I announced that I will not be running in the next presidential elections." "I also announced that I will remain shouldering the responsibilities until September."
... ouch. This is going to be bloody.
Scared to see what happens by the end of the weekend. You could hear the crowds tone change as the man spoke trying to cling on to his power.
This is my first project as a business guy turned developer. Any feedback would be appreciated.
After some practice with Vim I started to think about editing in terms of Vim's commands. That made me very effective. And it's not only about h j k l. It gives you many small tools that you can combine. The basics are actions and movements. Let me give you a few basic examples.

Some movements are:

- h, j, k, l,

- f <char> - the given character,

- w / b - beginning of the next / previous word,

- 0 / $ - beginning / end of the line.

Some actions:

- d - delete

- dd - delete whole line

- y - yank (copy to the Vim's clipboard)

- p - paste

- c - change

- <n> G - go to the n-th line.

Their combinations could be:

- d f . - delete from the cursor to the first period

- d w - delete the current word

- c w - change the current word

- d 0 - delete to the beginning of the current line

- dd 10 G p - delete the current line (that also puts it in the Vim's clipboard), move to the 10th line and paste the deleted one there.

Of course it gives you much more: searching, replacing, scripting, plug-ins, syntax highlight, auto-completion, browsing etc.
It's a difficult situation to be in. Google can't stop hiring because the only asset the company has is brainpower. If they don't continue to recruit the best they will wither into just another internet company. Many large companies can sit on their existing products because there exists some competitive advantage that prevents competitors from overtaking them in the near term. Google's competitive advantage is the algorithms and data, both of which result from having top talent, hence the need for them to continue hiring.
Isn't the result of this that users have to pay twice? Once for Instapaper, and once for whichever app they are using to access Instapaper?

Granted, 1$/month is low, but making people pay twice (only for apps that charge, of course) could be problematic.

It's a nice approach, just seems like it comes with its own set of issues.
My reading is that it's not necessarily phishing because they wouldn't need to ask the user for any information. All that would be required is for the user to be signed into the targeted webapp.

It could be totally automated. But, since the attacker doesn't get the response, they couldn't necessarily do anything with that. That doesn't make this any less dangerous, as in the bank example, you don't necessarily need to see that your transfer was successful in order to get the money.
Love the creative ambigram logo
I'm planning to use Paypal Adaptive Payments for a site I'm building. Can anyone save me?

I'm building a Ruby site and will charge my users automatically on a monthly basis, based on their usage, so their charge varies. They agree to a billing agreement when they sign up, and their charges will vary mostly between $0.25 and $5.00.

I need a payment service that:

(1) enables me to automatically charge my users varying amounts (without them approving each time),

(2) has a decent micropayment fee structure ($0.05 + 5% for less than $10),

(3) allows my users to pay with any credit/debit card without requiring a proprietary login (e.g. Amazon), and

(4) can store my users' billing info so I don't have to be PCI compliant - I just do an API call to charge them.

The only service I've found meeting my needs is Paypal's Adaptive Payments API. I've had some bad experiences in the past with Paypal and I'm wary based on others' feedback (e.g. "Paypal is the Anti-Christ"), but I don't see any other option.

Does anyone know of a good alternative?
Summary: "Look how different these offices are. But wait, it turns out the way offices look doesn't matter."
This is a very compelling idea. It makes me glad I am not on FB, but it is interesting.

You might have some angry folk asking for content to be removed, however.

BTW, not sure you can trademark trollface :)
I'm glued to AlJazeera at the moment and have definitely been following the whole story with enthusiastic interest since the beginning.

BUT

Why are we discussing this topic here again? Seems completely off-topic...
I think... the protesters won't accept it. I also think the ball is in the military's court now, they've come down quite heavily on the side of the protesters.

Crucially the army leaders seem to have made some quite strong statements tonight when it looked like he was leaving.
To elaborate:

Start on the south coast in the east, make your way across Antalya, go up to Urfa, where everything is between 2000 and 17,000 years old. Go to Lake Van and Mount Nimrut, watch out for the heads. Do Capadocia (fairy chimneys) and look out for the old christian hideout caves where it was first preached and used to hide from the romans. Head across to Ankara to see the Ataturk mauseleum then down to Konya. Onwards to Bodrum, up through Ephesus, Troy and get the boat from Bursa to Istanbul. Spend a few days in Istanbul and take the train or bus to Thessaloniki.

From Thessaloniki go to Volos then on to Athens. From Port Piraeus you can go on to Crete after which you can head back to Athens then on to Patra to try some wine. From Patra get a ferry to Ancona in Italy.

From Ancona go on to Rome, then up to Florence. Don't forget the galleries. From there on to Milan and Turin. Here you can go on to Cannes, Monaco (if you fancy but it is expensive) and Nice. From Nice head west to Cerbere to connect on to Barcelona.

After some time in Barcelona, head to Madrid and if you fancy it on to the Douro valley in Portugal, then Lisbon and over towards Cadiz. If you don't fancy Portugal and want to save it for when you're back from Morocco then you can go from Madrid down to Cadiz via Seville. If you time this right you should get there for the Fiesta de Savilla. Go on to Cordoba and do some Flamenco then on to Tarifa to get the ferry to Tangiers.

From Tangiers take the train to Rabat - if you go overnight get a Couchette, then on to Casablanca (although there's not a great deal there). You can go on to Marrakech from there. Try to stay in the Medina if you can, the Riyads aren't that expensive and are worth it. From there you can head to Fez or the Atlas mountains - there's some waterfalls near Marrakech that are also worth a visit. Then you can head up to Tangiers or down towards West Africa. I'd suggest back up to Tangiers, then do Lisbon, Douro and northern Spain. When you get back to France you should be able to go from there up the west coast through the north and either get a Eurostar or Ferry to the UK (at which point drop me an email and I'll buy you a beer) or you can keep going north and east to Belgium, Holland and beyond.

Hope this helps.
When I heard that, and given the political corruption there, I'm anticipating that he's going to be unanimously re-elected by write-in vote or something even though he's not actually "running".
This study seems fundamentally flawed. The Fortune 500 are the 500 companies with the highest revenue. This means that smaller companies only make it into the Fortune 500 if they already have very high revenues/employee. Since costs/employee are necessarily bounded, what the study ends up comparing is the productivity in the most profitable small companies with the productivity in the (roughly) average large companies. That's a serious sample bias and invalidates the conclusion, IMO.
Sometimes, “never apologize” really is the right answer
How does one apply to the next round of the program, and when will it start?
You're able to select up to three "trusted friends" who can moderate your profile for you. Mod powers include post deletion and temporary banning.
That was probably the point of the CIA starting this rumor in the first place.
A third option would be to break the company up and let the by-products run like small companies that need to survive, potentially making it more attractive for recruiting purposes.
Pretty much every piece of really significant world news gets discussed here, no matter what the topic. I find that fine, as long as the bar is high enough that it's not all the time.
Full story is up: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/2011210...
HN help: How could I find a co-founder for something with serious potential?
The actual product launched as a test only couple of days ago and got very good traction over 1000 UVs and 500 posts for only a 6 hour test. Its a new form of communication and has massive potential.
Also we are profitable, the model has huge potential and I think its finally something that can get the traction that twitter and facebook got in its early days. I am a UI designer and I am weak with ROR.
Please tell me if you are interested and I will give you my email.I cant do this without a good dev. Thank you.<p>Michael<p>Thank you.
Oh.... he'll be leaving, I think. Perhaps not in one piece, though. :/
I would think that orbital data center would have some real problems with heat dissipation, since you can only cool via radiation in space. Terrestrial data centers already have a problem with heat, and they can cool via convection (which is what is ultimately going to cool those air-conditioners). And then there is the cost of lifting thousands of soon to be obsolete computers into orbit...
Seems unfair for the humans.

Wouldn't a more fair match be a series of individual 1-on-1 matches with Watson and Jennings / Rutter?

The current configuration means the two humans will both share the questions that are naturally difficult for computers, but Watson will dominate all the questions naturally hard for humans.

Alternatively, to make it fair, we would need a 2nd copy of Watson competing, and if the two Watson's buzz at the same time, randomly pick one to answer.
My only argument is that I disagree that the fictional computers named showed no emotion.
Thanks chopsueyar, I knew there had to be a valid reason!
Mubarak has very strong personal motivations for staying and executing a calm hand-off of power. Other dictators have expatriated themselves suddenly, then later discovered their former countries repatriating their money.

I suspect Mubarak knows he's finished. But he knows that he has to make an orderly withdrawal and broker deals to ensure his family is provided for in their accustomed style. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to play well with that crowd. This looks to me a bit too much like the situation in Tienanmen Square.
There's no escape from politics. Even on HN.
I agree, how does this qualify as hacker news ? There are other websites where this has its place.