Hacker News India - <AUTHOR> http://hackernews.in/ <comment><USER3> There's a lot of nay-saying here. I think the idea is great and the name is fine. (By the way, I would just ignore the advice here. Paul may love the name/idea or even simply not care. Until you hear otherwise, don't assume either way.)

HN has been hobbled by small restaurant syndrome. Paul has been loathe to add basic features, let alone extend it, for the same reason a restaurateur will maintain a small number of tables: because he or she likes the client base and extending it will jeopardize that. That's a completely valid reason.

But there's a huge opportunity here to extend this to really assist in driving innovation. Add to your site the missing basic features such as search, then extend it with free startup job listings, co-founder matching, etc. (All those HN spreadsheets? Implement them.) You would be doing a huge service to the Indian startup community, and that means a huge service to innovation in general.

<comment><USER4> Given that Prateek has mentioned that he is unfamiliar with lisp/arc I do not think he intends to extend the code. But that would be great, particularly if such extensions are communicated upstream or released in the open.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1913505>

<comment><USER4> @Prateekdayal It seems I cannot reply 3 levels deep. But if thats the intent all powers to you.

<comment><USER5> There's a cool-off time for replying to nested comments, the more deeply nested the longer. You just need to wait a few minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it only me who finds "Ask Prateek" tad conceited ? I am none too comfortable with the idea of helping oneself to someone else's work/brand unless it was expressly opened for that purpose. But then imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery.

It doesnt help much that the Indian software scene has a stronger reputation for copying than for innovating. And I am Indian. I have similar minor peeves about OSQA helping themselves to SO. But I take back my comments if the news.ycombinator src as well as the brand were indeed opened up for that purpose.

Edit: "Ask Prateek" is "Ask HNI" now, so I take back that part of my criticism.

<comment><USER6> The reason we are using the HN codebase is because it has been proven to work (socially and not just technically). Since this is a not a for profit initiative (no ads/links), there is no sense investing time in reinventing it when this just works.

<comment><USER4> By that logic one can justify any form of plagiarism cant one ? I am more concerned about helping yourself to the brand without permission than about using the code as its on git.

It just reinforces the stereotype that Indian software scene is all about unauthorized copying of other people's ideas. I dont necessarily agree with the stereotype but things like this does not really help dispell it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let me start by saying that I am an Indian hacker. Forget the name. Even if you ignore the name, I personally do not like the idea of an "Indian HN clone". HN stands for something. It is a global close-knit community. It is as if you are forming your own group and sitting at a different table for lunch at school. What if every country sat on their own table? It is just going to result in unnecessary fragmentation.

Now, I understand that you are not moving away from HN and have created the site to discuss Indian specific issues, but I don't see what is stopping you from discussing those issues on HN itself. The site being an exact HN clone doesn't sit well with your good intentions. Add to that the fact that you are using the same name.

Sorry for generalizing, but IMHO, the global image of Indian hackers is not particularly good, and this sort of thing doesn't help. Personally I would suggest looking at some different means to solve the problems for which the clone was created. You have my respect for trying to take some initiative though.

<comment><USER8> I would also much rather that the existing HN community became more global, by including all Indian hackers/entrepreneurs. It doesn't do anyone much good to have people in the US and India isolated on their own websites does it? One of the things I have about US tech news discussions is how they ignore the rest of the world so often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have mixed feelings about this secession from HN. It's great that there's a separate place for Indians to meet and talk, but I fear it may leach from the diverse culture here.

<comment><USER10> I don't think you need to worry. Many Indian HN folks have no plan to join "HN India" (note the quotes).

I personally think this is a distasteful effort (specifically the use of the HN name for an independent site without permission vs just using the open source code), or at best a naive one, which will sputter along for a while and then die.The discussion so far on "HN India" is extremely sub par as compared to HN, and certainly not worth switching or even joining.

Imo, there isn't enough of a critical mass of India specific issues related to hacking/startups/programming etc sufficient to support a whole new community. Sure there are a _few_ India specific issues but they'll be discussed to death in a few weeks and then the forum will stagnate. Discussion about programming/hacking/startups/other matters of intellectual interest are _in general_ best done in a global context.

This is an unpopular view point amongst certain folks here in India(and I fully expect to be downvoted ;-)), but if they pull it off and create an ultra vibrant community, more power to them. I just don't see it happening. And as long as they are ripping off the HN Name (and brand) I won't even think of joining.

<comment><USER11> I concur with your distaste for the domain name (@prateek - no use garnering such animosity. Just drop the name and pick something else - desihacker.in is available. you might even get some good press.)

But having a local technology discussion group might not be all that useless - let me explain.

There are other hi-tech communities in India, similar to HotHardware or Extremetech which are hugely popular in the community (e.g. [http://www.erodov.com/forums/gigabyte-ga-x58a-ud9-review- ln2...](http://www.erodov.com/forums/gigabyte-ga-x58a-ud9-review- ln2-overclocking-results/33458-page5.html)). So this is not something that is of unproven relevance.

India has a chicken and egg problem in terms of programming intellectual prowess. The community is driven primarily by that which can lay down your daily supper - Java/JSP/VB/ASP . By virtue of the existing _tech leadership pool_ , most innovation is driven from the west. And it takes a long time before the community takes root in India.

<begin rant> I blame the community for it. For instance, it would make far greater sense for the Linux community to try and hold their top level conferences in India - which could very well be their biggest customer base (the west is lost to the fruit seller already). Did you know Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. sell laptops with Ubuntu/Freedos preinstalled in India (off the shelf) ? </end rant>

Point being, I think India does need a sunrise period for its technology community to be shepherded in. Hacker News is definitely too advanced in its expectation of the community for... say a fresh-behind-the-ears college student in India.

This community might also be too Yank in its vernacular. Yes, there are a lot of Indians around, but we are all comfortable with the vernacular, prefer it even. That is definitely, definitely not true for most Indians who might feel completely alienated (especially the younger ones)

For all the other Indians, torn between feelings of loyalty and betrayal, I encourage to search out and mentor the fledgling community back home - <USER2> need your help so that eventually they can come here and start flaming!

<comment><USER12> I am on the fence with this one.

While I do agree that, Indian startup community has its own challenges and latest gossip from Angel world of Silicon Valley is of little interest to us (None of the Angels operating out of valley invest here, including YC) but if you leave technical and design problems those issues can be counted on fingers.

Then there is problem of getting traction and yes perhaps Indian entrepreneurs need separate forum for that. "Show HN: Blacklist/review autorickshaws using SMS", might be of little interest to global audience.

My point being, while technical or design discussions at HN will be always superior and there will be little benefit in repeating them on HNI, so clearly there is no need of separate forum as such for such things. What is left is, problems of startup community, there have been numerous efforts to solve that, if HNI succeeds in that; awesome. But at the end of day, HNI won't be a forum in the same spirit as HN (Just startup stuff, no need to call hackernews, which means a lot of different things).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pick a different name. Also, to maintain high S/N ratio, ensure that only items specific to India are discussed there.

There are many issues that hackers/entrepreneurs would like to discuss which never get enough traction on global HN. This could be a good place for those items.

<comment><USER14> "Global HN" isn't really global. It heavily emphasizes news from Silicon Valley.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Hacker News" as the name of this project seems rather disrespectful toward YC/pg.

For the sake of respect, I would consider renaming your project.

<comment><USER6> Sure. Is there a way to reach PG? I can email and check with him.

Also, I picked this name as we decided to put up HN India in a HN meetup and also because HN conveys our objective well. We are not running this for profit.

<comment><USER6> I found his email address in this thread <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1716244>

I have written to him and will wait for his reply. Thanks for all the feedback.

<comment><USER16> You should do things in this order: Change the site name. Wait for PG's response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think it's an interesting idea, but imho it's in rather poor taste to use the "Hacker News" branding without knowing if PG approves.

Whether or not the site is for profit is entirely irrelevant; it comes off as you trying to cash in on the work that PG et al have put into building up the HN brand. It's tantamount to stealing.

Not only that, but it might cause confusion.

I wish you good luck, but I hope you'll change the name or at least put up a disclaimer in an obvious place noting that you are not affiliated with Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER18> I got really excited when I saw this on the front page only to realize that this is not an official sub-HN once I read the comments.

This is a good initiative but please call it something else.

<comment><USER19> same here, some excitement vanished after finding out that this is not official HN. It will be good to call it something else to avoid any confusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just been on it for a day. The best thing so far has been that it gives me a chance to connect with hackers in India and discuss specific issues with them. Mailing lists just don't cut it when it comes to interacting with like minded folks on a number of subjects.

It cannot be a replacement for HN, but I hope it does become a useful (add-on) forum in its own right.

P.S. Yes, the site's name should ideally be something else.

</comment><comment><USER21> This site is the by-product of the "hacker news meetup" we had this last Sunday in Bangalore. It all started with this thread - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1885605> Hope this helps Indian audience discover/ask issues faced by Indian startups in cities like Bangalore, Bombay, NCR..

</comment><comment><USER6> This post talks about why we started this

<http://hackernews.in/item?id=1>

Thanks to PG and HN for the code and inspiration. Now only if I could get the latest code base :)

<comment><USER22> Even with the noblest of intentions, I don't know how proper it is to take the hackernews brandname for your own site. At the least I think you ought to consider putting a disclaimer on an 'about' page somewhere stating that you are not affiliated to HN and YC.

On a positive note, nice job! It looks like you're getting a bit of traction already.

<comment><USER6> Good point. I want to put the disclaimer but sadly I am not able to figure it out (since I don't know any lisp).

I am using this codebase - <https://github.com/nex3/arc>

If someone can tell me how to put a disclaimer in the footer, I will put it rightaway.

<comment><USER10> "If someone can tell me how to put a disclaimer in the footer"

The right way is to change the name. If I start a site called Google India, or even Digg India, it isn't enough (legally or ethically) to have a disclaimer in the footer, even if I am running a non profit. You keep repeating the "this is not for profit" sentence. That isn't a valid defense against brand name abuse.

At the very least get permission from the owners on the original site before starting a new site by adding an "India" to its name.

The last thing "Indian hackers" need is a reputation for ripping off other peoples work/brands (As if the outsourcing horror stories aren't enough). Use the open source code, by all means. But don't copy the name.

I am an Indian developer and I think such unabashed copying of a popular brand is shameful. YMMV.

<comment><USER4> Fully agreed +1

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Have some class and don't copy the name without permission.

(channelling the sentiment of the recent Zed Shaw ruckus)

</comment><comment><USER24> Kudos to the efforts. But sorry to say, this is really unnecessary. There are hell a lot of hackers in Europe and there is no HN Europe.

Real Hackers in India I know few (over social networks) they don't talk.(You can't see them in foss.in )They just code.!

We are not there yet. so just code! <back to maintain the spaghetti code>

(Disclaimer: I'm a Indian. I'm not a hacker myself yet,I still work in a body shopping "Megacorp")

[Deleted] Few points as its reported as offending.My point is Programming / Hacking has to align with global context.

And in my personal experience I never found any good hackers in the local community, I have always founded them outside of it and I don't expect HNI will have them. If it does Im happy as well.

<comment><USER24> Huh down voted! I told my view "Real Hackers i know, I admire in India, just code". they don't or won't spend in such community not even high profiled foss.in. That's the truth."

Any way its just a number on site, keep 'em coming ;-)

<comment><USER25> I agreed with the substance of what you said, as it appears that many others in this thread do as well. Though I did not down vote you, I'm guessing that the quality of your English may have contributed to some down votes.

<comment><USER26> You don't think generalizing about 'the one who work for body shoppers and maintain a big pile of spaghetti code' had anything to do with it?

Personally I was more offended by the unfalsifiable definition of the mysterious 'real hackers in India'.

<comment><USER24> I'm sorry I have deleted it now. Im really tired of the local community here, found very few interesting and admiring ex dev_camp.I have found many smart people outside this community who code alot.I honestly feel those are real. The one who code alot and then speak. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Already seen. Discussion at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1908893>

</comment><comment><USER27> Nice job guys. As Obama's trip to India demonstrated, India is (or rather will be) an emerging tech center, so it makes sense that it is ripe for its own version of Silicon Valley. Any online community that can facilitate the growth of its local physical economy is a good one.

Not sure I agree with all the negative comments here about the IP issues. After all, NewMogul.com was (is?) pretty much a clone of YC News here, but open to submission and discussion about more broad topics besides startups.

</comment><comment><USER28> Since it's the same name, My personal concerned about possible separation of people whom would normally contribute good content and comments to HN proper.

Perhaps I'm off base because I don't know the way the site is set up, but are comments and articles shared between the sites in any way?

Also, more importantly, has there ever been a survey or statistics collection as to where contributers are geographically located?

</comment><comment><USER29> Hacking in India is a total different context. The west hacks because it's cool.(To increase the happiness.) The east hacks to solve a problem. (To reduce the sadness.)

Something like this is totally necessary, but this approach is very wrong. Its sad Pratik keeps mentioning 'profit' in terms of money. Glory to the name is enough a profit imo.

</comment><comment><USER30> 1\. It's a good sign, when people "try" to copy you.

2\. It could increase the quality of the original.

</comment><comment><USER25> you really should pick a different name. even if you're legally allowed to use a snapshot of the HN codebase. Calling yourself HN India makes it sound like you're the official India branch of HN. There are already enough stereotypes about Asian folks making cheap clones/ripoffs of Western services or products that it's also not good to open yourself to that criticism as well, even if not necessarily warranted.

<comment><USER6> I'll comment here since this is the top comment. As I said below, I have emailed PG asking for his thoughts. Thanks for the feedback.

A point that I would like to make is that HN is non profit and so is HNI. So the analogy you give may not apply here.

<comment><USER31> You're using PG's code in a trademarked/copyrighted environment (the domain is called exactly HackerNews). That's blatant copyright infringement, you should have gotten YC's permission before, not after the site went live. What you have done is illegal in both US and India.

You should respect the law and change the name or take the site offline until you receive appropriate permissions.

Please note that even licenses as GPL or MPL (that govern the Firefox code for example) give you permission to use the code, not the trademarks of the project. Ubuntu had to make a Linux package called "abrowser" ( <https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/lucid/+package/abrowser> ) simply because Mozilla didn't agree with branding their modifications as "Firefox".

<comment><USER32> I may be wrong, but "Hacker News" does not appear to be trademarked in the US. And the code is open source. So which particular laws are being broken here?

<comment><USER33> the existence or non-existence of a trademark registration filed with the USPTO doesn't necessarily mean that the name is trademarked or not. registration helps when you're suing, but trademark rights can attach without registration.

<comment><USER32> But there's other sites using the HN name, presumably without permission (e.g. hackernewsers.com). Surely if PG did sue, his case would be quite weak.

It also occurred to me that hackernews.in is clearly a website aimed at Indians, so I don't know to what extent US law applies.

Anyway, it seems that the name is going to be changed, so this whole trademark point becomes moot. <http://hackernews.in/item?id=375>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> what about your HN experience has made you feel that the community here would not welcome india-related discussions?

i would love to hear about the issues, projects, and things in general that startup founders, hackers, techies, and tinkerers around the world have to deal with.

why slice by region?

as i see it you're segmenting across the wrong vertical. look at the stackexchange model: are they spinning off "stack exchange: china"/"stack exchange: india"? -no, its stack exchange: physics, stack exchange: math, etc. they're differentiating based on general subject matter. is that model something that could be replicated in the context of "all things hacker"? sure (hardware, software, gadgets, networking, cracking, blackhat/whitehat, security, etc). would it succeed? who knows.

<comment><USER6> Stuff like maths, programming and physics are pretty universal. A problem in maths is a problem everywhere.

However things like payment gateways, local events, feedback on startups focused on Indian markets are not very global and may not interest a large majority of hackers here.

I never implied HN will not welcome such discussions or disapprove of it. I just feel (as others do too) that its hard for these discussions to get enough visibility here (for the reasons mentioned above).

<comment><USER35> I don't think anyone here has any issues with you creating a site for the Indian community, I think most people disagree with your use of "Hacker News". Why don't you just create a site, call it something else and link to it from here? That's probably the better approach

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Its been a day and the site is thriving, I am personally very enthusiastic. I do not know arc but that will change just so I can add some features to this site.

I urge anyone who is not considering joining to just go and at least see whats happening. You would be pleasantly surprised. And after that I am sure you would agree that many of those discussions would have sunk here to oblivion.

This is a great forum to meet indian hacker, especially if you are in banglore.

<comment><USER4> Comments and sentiments like "Let them come in India and claim a trademark if it comes to that", doesn't quite encourage people to do what you are asking for.

A community, with a well entrenched reputation for cheap knock-offs, helps oneself to a brand without permission (that would be stealing) and then shows attitude about it.

There used to be an old joke about different countries coming together to show off their engineering prowess by improving a parent product originally from US (or Japan I do not remember). No one can figure out India's contribution. It turns out that they have stamped "made in India" to it.

HackerNewsIndia reinforces that very stereotype.

<http://hackernews.in/item?id=555>

<comment><USER36> its a boot strapping community, what do you expect? I bet even HN had there shares of headaches.</comment></comment></comment>


What is stopping women from cycling? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-41737483 <comment><USER2> Pardon me if I sound vulgar, but could it also be perspiration?

Going to work in an office not completely fresh smelling often attracts more opprobrium with women than with men.

<comment><USER3> While that wasn't mentioned directly, one of the quotes was:

> I would also have to overcome the fear of the work shower room (singular). > And figure out how to dry my hair and do my make-up to make myself > presentable for work - all in the confines of one slightly grotty space.

This points out that "fresh smelling" isn't the only factor. In general, women are held to higher standards regarding hair and makeup than men are.

<comment><USER4> Women typically have much longer hair than men. This is much more of a burden in terms of trying to appear publicly presentable than most people seem to realize.

I know this from firsthand experience. I have kept my hair short like a man for about a decade. It makes a really huge difference in terms of what is needed for me to look presentable. I can just shower and wash my hair and not even dry it and my hair looks fine. With even a few inches of hair, you simply can't do that. It looks terrible and also drips all over your clothes.

<comment><USER3> Coincidentally, I am a man who for about a decade had long hair, down to the middle of my back, and I now have short hair.

I still think I was held to lower standards. Though now that I think about it, it's not like my jobs had high standards, either formal or informal.

When I say "lower standards", that includes my own low standards. That is, I remember going out with still-wet hair, including one time when I felt like I had a stick caught in my hair, only to realized that no, it had simply frozen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anecdatum: lack of protected bike lanes. My commute is a perfect distance for cycling, but the idea of sharing the road with drivers terrifies me.

<comment><USER3> The text "Another primary concern for many female cyclists is safety, according to a report on cycling by Sustrans in 2013." links to [https://www.sustrans.org.uk/blog/why-dont-more-women- cycle](https://www.sustrans.org.uk/blog/why-dont-more-women-cycle) which provides the data point "67% of women said cycle lanes separated from traffic was the number one thing that will get more women cycling".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lack of safety.

<comment><USER3> Yes. The third paragraph is:

"Commonly cited reasons for shunning the benefits of getting into the saddle include sexual harassment, fears about appearance and concerns about safety. So what can be done to get more women on their bikes and out on the road?"

<comment><USER6> Dedicated and physically separated bike lanes, I guess.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Finds Cancer Clues in Search Queries - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/technology/online-searches-can-identify-cancer-victims-study-finds.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <comment><USER2> For those curious about what kind of queries the researchers were interested in : " _it typically produces a series of subtle symptoms, like itchy skin, weight loss, light-colored stools, patterns of back pain and a slight yellowing of the eyes and skin that often don't prompt a patient to seek medical attention._ " [1]

The article name is: J. Paparrizos, R.W. White, E. Horvitz. Screening for Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma using Signals from Web Search Logs: Feasibility Study and Results, Journal of Oncology Practice, June 2016.[2]

[1][https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/06/07/how-web- search-d...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/06/07/how-web-search-data- might-help-diagnose-serious-illness-earlier/#sm.000120cjl17p8d0oqj91dpiyyzt7o)

[2] [http://jop.ascopubs.org/content/early/2016/06/02/JOP.2015.01...](http://jop.ascopubs.org/content/early/2016/06/02/JOP.2015.010504)

<comment><USER3> First, this is a very scary first step in the assault on privacy. It is an opening for people to argue that a person who fits a certain search profile should be de-anonymized. After all, wouldn't you want to know if you had cancer? In addition, as it is not about law enforcement but public health, there are a lot fewer limitations on what information the government can access.

Second, after seeing the type of queries, I do not think that this is all that helpful. If a person has unexplained weight loss or yellow skin or eyes, they should always go see their doctor right away. My guess is that most of the specificity of this study comes from those two terms (weight loss combined with yellow skin). Just getting out that message will do a lot more to save people's lives than violating their privacy in this manner.

<comment><USER4> > they should always go see their doctor

GPs often do not catch rare conditions or determine the underlying cause of milder symptoms.

<comment><USER5> I had a collapsed lung and went away from my GP with an inhaler for asthma (I've never had asthma). Luckily I went in after a few days and got x-rays and then got treated immediately, and I'm fine (I hope:-) 20 years later. Still though, it reduced my trust in doctors dramatically.

<comment><USER6> You're a cyclist, so you probably have very good lungs. I was in a similar situation (saxophone player, avid cyclist) so too ended up with a misdiagnosed collapsed lung. If you're not showing the regular symptoms (such as very low oxygen levels in your blood) then they are bound to assume something else is the cause. Sharp pain in your chest is a good reason to suspect a collapsed lung or a partial detachment of the lung from the chest wall if you're otherwise in very good condition and should be taken very seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How long before Google and Microsoft put up an automated warning:

 _Your recent search queries suggest you may have cancer, please seek advice from your doctor._

Or some time in the future...

 _The pattern of your searches seems to indicate you are a terrorist, we aren 't telling you and we have called the thought police._

<comment><USER8> What if they put this warning up to their (actual) customers, like the US insurance companies that could hike premiums or ditch their customers before they realized they had costly conditions.

<comment><USER9> I would be quite likely willing to pay Google for their services more than they are making out of me currently, if:

1.They agree legally bindingly not to give any of my data to anyone.

2\. They do not show me a single ad anywhere.

Obviously, that would mess the current business model of everyone counting on adwords revenue, so I am not holding my breath here.

<comment><USER8> They would quickly have a potential revenue ceiling that would likely decline over time.

At the moment it's the opposite.

<comment><USER10> Google is trying this with their YoutTube Red, which removes all advertising from YouTube.

I believe it is actually kore profitable than advertising. With ads, an average person is worth between $0.01 and $1 a month (depending on what type of ads), much less than the $9 for YouTube Red.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11>
      "The data used by the researchers was anonymized, meaning
       it did not carry identifying markers like a user name,
       so the individuals conducting the searches could not be
       contacted."

As when AOL or Yahoo released their anonymized data set, it is often easy to take someone's search history and work backwards to find out who they are. How can they ensure that personally identifiable information has been scrubbed 100% from all queries? Maybe a user searched a courier tracking number, and that info can now be looked up on the courier's site and tracked back to their home or office address. Each additional piece of info gets you one step closer to identifying who they are.

Yet one more reason to use DuckDuckGo for your general search needs.

<comment><USER8> Not sure why you are getting down voted?

Predicting users health data based on simple searches is terrifying, I'm not sure why anyone would be happy with Google or Microsoft having this information, especially when their customers could use this against you.

<comment><USER12> google and microsoft already has this information

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Methods: We identified searchers in logs of online search activity who issued special queries that are suggestive of a recent diagnosis of pancreatic adenocarcinoma. We then went back many months before these landmark queries were made, to examine patterns of symptoms, which were expressed as searches about concerning symptoms. We built statistical classifiers that predicted the future appearance of the landmark queries based on patterns of signals seen in search logs.

Results: We found that signals about patterns of queries in search logs can predict the future appearance of queries that are highly suggestive of a diagnosis of pancreatic adenocarcinoma. We showed specifically that we can identify 5% to 15% of cases, while preserving extremely low false-positive rates (0.00001 to 0.0001).

<comment><USER14> It would be really interesting if after a series of queries, the search engine displayed a little text block that said something like:

"We don't often do this, but did you make the following searches regarding the health of yourself or a loved one? ... SEARCHES FOLLOW ...

Studies show that a large proportion of people making these searches for medical purposes should talk to a doctor about these symptoms. Here's a number to call if you do not have a personal physician: (555) 555-5555"

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was just reading this on mobile, and I got redirected to another doesn't site that told me my device had "problems"!

The NYT can't even keep their site clean from virus malware laden advertisers. Ridiculous.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/9bv5ju0f73bdmcr/Screenshot_2016-06...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/9bv5ju0f73bdmcr/Screenshot_2016-06-08-09-24-51.png?dl=0)

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/ba1g2u2cuox95zz/Screenshot_2016-06...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ba1g2u2cuox95zz/Screenshot_2016-06-08-09-24-40.png?dl=0)

<comment><USER16> The NYT on desktop has generally good ad experience. The mobile website is awful awful awful with ads for some reason. Use their app instead if you can

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Target actually did something similar, though their intent was to eventually find better ads for families who were expecting. In their case, fully deanonymizing and being straight forward - straight out advertising baby products - turned out to be a nightmare, and they eventually turned to more subtle advertising by inserting baby products into the weeklies.

Could we see a case where, when someone searches for one thing, instead of seeing results that pertain to that immediate query we see results that match common future searches?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping- habits.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Isn't the real story here that Bing is keeping track of user's search queries for months?

Google Flu is working different. They try to predict a flu epidemic by counting related search queries.

But Microsoft is predicting the health of a single person based on his search history.

Edit: Thinking about it: ofcourse Google, Facebook and others could do the same because they also gather user data.

<comment><USER19> Everything you do is logged by all these sites, and tied to your identity there, no matter what they say. They have so much storage space to spare that it's more compelling to save the data for potentially analyzing it later than to throw it away.

A few years back, Google decided to recalculate YouTube view and subscriber counts to counter bot usage. They store so much information about every request that they have been able to detect views made by bots in the past, from patterns in this data.

<comment><USER20> The thing is, this is illegal in the EU.

If you collect data for one purpose, you can't use it for any other purpose, unless you explicitly and in easily readable language told the user about it before.

You cant retroactively get permission to use data for other purposes either.

And currently medical or research purposes are not listed in Microsoft's or Google's ToS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure that this is a good way to demonstrate data mining skills. The survival rate for pancreatic cancer is abyssal:

> While five-year survival rates for pancreatic cancer are extremely low, > early detection of the disease can prolong life in a very small percentage > of cases. The study suggests that early screening can increase the five-year > survival rate of pancreatic patients to 5 to 7 percent, from just 3 percent.

WP claims 20%[1] though a glance at the referenced source suggests that the WP summary is bogus.

So the only ones who benefit from this data mining would be health insurances who could get rid of people who'll incur very high treatment cost with low expectancy of success.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancreatic_cancer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancreatic_cancer)

<comment><USER22> You mean abysmal.

<comment><USER21> Indeed, I do. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If people are searching for medical symptoms on a search engine, aren't they already ending up at WebMD or whatever and finding possible diagnoses?

This would have been a lot more interesting if the keywords were a lot more subtle - like a change in behavior marked by a sudden craving for salty foods or whatever.

<comment><USER24> This is searches over a period of time before any diagnosis was actually made. Not "light stool, eyes slightly yellowed, cancer, " etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Cancer can arise anywhere. Symptoms are dependent on where it comes from. I have see too many doctors succumb to cancer, with little warning.

If mri's were faster, I think whole body mri's would be a decent screening tool. Problem is 1. They are expensive. 2. They take a long time to do and are uncomfortably loud 3. generate heat in the body.

There are also tumor markers for many cancers.

Screening guidelines unfortunately have to be doable to populations (lowest common denominator). More informed people with resources can do better if they take initiative (with some trade offs of time, risk).

In general, our bodies can use a lot of tuning. The more you look, the more you find. Some tuning has trade offs.

If you want to be proactive, you also have to ask your doctor for trials of particular tests or treatments. Doctors are conservative, and the first thing they will want to try is wait and see. That leaves you with may be 100 experiments you can do on yourself in a lifetime. We need to be able to do hundreds / week, to get significant progress towards making our bodies have 99.99999% up time.

The future is Star Trek type doctor, but a personal one for everyone. The major hurdles are economic and regulatory. Some physical.

</comment><comment><USER26> To translate the false-positive rate into concrete numbers:

According to the American Cancer Society ([http://www.cancer.org/cancer/pancreaticcancer/detailedguide/...](http://www.cancer.org/cancer/pancreaticcancer/detailedguide/pancreatic- cancer-key-statistics)), about 53,070 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year. The abstract says this method detects 5% to 15% of cases: that's about 2,700 to 8,000 correct detections. Assuming there are 100 million people using Bing ([https://www.quantcast.com/bing.com](https://www.quantcast.com/bing.com)), between 1,000 and 10,000 cases will be wrongly detected (0.00001 to 0.0001 false positive rate).

<comment><USER27> It wasn't entirely clear from the article, but I assumed that the false positive rate referred to the ratio of people with matching search queries, not of all Bing users. In that case the absolute number of false positives would be much lower.

Also, the detection of 5% to 15% of cases would seem to me to refer to only Bing users; I doubt they're claiming to be able to detect 5-15% of all cases of pancreatic cancer.

Would've been nice if these things were actually spelled out in the article.

<comment><USER26> _It wasn 't entirely clear from the article, but I assumed that the false positive rate referred to the ratio of people with matching search queries, not of all Bing users. In that case the absolute number of false positives would be much lower._

If that's true, how did they have enough real positives to measure such a low false positive rate?

 _Also, the detection of 5% to 15% of cases would seem to me to refer to only Bing users; I doubt they 're claiming to be able to detect 5-15% of all cases of pancreatic cancer._

Yeah, I'm being dumb, there's no way that percentage is out of all cases!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The final confidence of the "diagnosis" is about 50% (you can use the Bayes formula to get that, see here [http://www.visualab.org/index.php/cyberchondria-microsoft- ba...](http://www.visualab.org/index.php/cyberchondria-microsoft-bayes-ny- times-pancreas-cancer)). Yes, 50% is better than nothing, but the NY Times article does exactly what serious newspapers should _not_ do –let people think that "the Internet" is a great place to diagnose yourself. It is not.

</comment><comment><USER4> Insurance companies would just love this data...

</comment><comment><USER29> No mention of what type of queries they believe after associated :/

</comment><comment><USER30> _> " We showed specifically that we can identify 5% to 15% of cases, while preserving extremely low false-positive rates (0.00001 to 0.0001)."_

Back several years ago Google Flu Trend also claimed to have 97% accuracy compared to CDC data. But later on it just found to be way off to the real data. Did the author compare their study to the Google Trend.

Also it's not clear how they achieve the conclusion of low FP. Did they randomize their sample pool and run their predictability model several round?

</comment><comment><USER31> Can't one already run ad campaigns based on a users search history? What if a cancer foundation or similar organisation ran a targeted ad campaign?

</comment><comment><USER32> I was going to make a joke about Microsoft violating privacy as they scan your search queries and are able to ID you but I see HN posters, here, have already taken up that torch.

</comment><comment><USER33> Any links to the non-paywalled technical paper? I'm curious as to the learning models they built to run the actual predictions.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wait ... they used Bing for such a long time and lived to tell the tale? :)</comment>