Cortana

See the following -

How Bot That!

About a year and a half ago I wrote I Hate Apps, expressing my concerns that apps had outlived their usefulness due to how they are cluttering up our devices, and found I wasn't alone in this attitude.  Now Facebook is doing something about it, with their vision that they can use "bots" within their Messenger app to eliminate the need for many standalone apps. Indeed, as David Marcus, the head of messaging at Facebook, told Wired: "Everyone wanted websites when the web was launched. And then everyone wanted apps.  This is the start of a new era"...

Microsoft Open Sources Edge Web Browser's JavaScript Engine, Plans Port to Linux

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | ZDNet | January 13, 2016

Who says Microsoft doesn't get open source these days? On January 13, 2016, Microsoft made good its December 2015 promise to open source ChakraCore, the Microsoft Edge JavaScript engine. And, believe it or not, Microsoft will also port it to Linux. Edge is Microsoft's Windows 10 specific web brower. Unlike Internet Explorer (IE), which traces back its family tree to 1995 and Spyglass Mosaic, Edge is largely a new browser. It still traces some of its code to IE. For example, EdgeHTML, which powers Edge's HTML rendering engine, is a fork of IE's Trident Web-rendering engine...

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This Actually Is a Test

When it comes to health care, testing is not what it used to be, or what it is going to be in the not-too-distant future. For example, confirmation of a cancer diagnosis is getting much easier.  The New York Times reported that blood tests -- known as "liquid biopsies" -- have now been shown to generally match the results of a tumor biopsy.  The blood tests look for DNA fragments from the tumor that signal its presence.  The liquid biopsies are useful for both detecting the presence of a tumor and its ongoing monitoring. The current generation of tests are not perfect, with as many as 15% of tumors not generating enough DNA to be detected, but they do offer the advantage of not requiring an invasive procedure...