[HN Gopher] Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board
___________________________________________________________________
Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board
Author : LarsDu88
Score : 596 points
Date : 2024-09-17 21:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (investors.23andme.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (investors.23andme.com)
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Literally just one day after 23andMe presented positive phase 2
| clinical results for two anti-cancer drugs:
| https://therapeutics.23andme.com/news-and-research/
|
| The board of directors of 23andMe just resigned in protest. The
| CEO, Anne Wojcicki (who's sister Susan died of lung cancer last
| month, and was the former CEO of YouTube) had tried to low ball
| take the company private at only $0.40 a share -- a more than 96%
| drop from its deSPAC price.
|
| For reference, right now the market cap of 23andMe is $172
| million, its closest competitor Ancestry.com was bought out by
| the Blackstone group for $4.7 billion, and cumulative sales of
| KeyTruda - an anti-cancer drug in the same family as the one
| being developed by 23andMe had cumulative sales of $25 billion by
| 2023.
|
| Feels like the main thing holding this company back is the CEO
| and lack of corporate governance (due to majority shareholder
| control resting in the hands of one person)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Does the corporate structure support a hostile takeover? This
| would enable purging management and re-staffing with competent
| leadership.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Virtually impossible as Anne Wojcicki holds 20% of the
| outstanding shares and 49% of the voting power of total
| outstanding shares. That's essentially dictator-level power
| over the company. I believe the next largest shareholder is
| Richard Branson. Source: https://investors.23andme.com/news-
| releases/news-release-det...
|
| Despite the promising drug development news, the CEO signaled
| last month that she was willing to let public investors get
| hosed, with a low ball take-private offer of $0.40/share. I
| believe this pissed both public investors and the board
| members off. I'm not sure if the positive phase 2 results
| were icing on the cake.
|
| Quite honestly this company is a ripe target for acquisition
| by a biopharma company like GSK or Roche.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Regrettable. I suppose the alternative path is to let them
| go bankrupt and to get bought out of bankruptcy. That
| should wipe out all equity holders. If you're a potential
| bidder, get your financing or cash lined up.
| javierluraschi wrote:
| She (the CEO) has a fiduciary duty to act in the best
| interests of the company and its shareholders.
| Intentionally driving a company into bankruptcy for
| personal gain is a massive breach of that duty and opens
| her up to all kinds of legal trouble. So I would think
| that's a very bad idea.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| They're going bankrupt because they're almost out of cash
| [1]. The CEO is holding public investors hostage with the
| low ball take private offer LarsDu88 mentioned. The
| stock, NASDAQ: ME, currently trades at 29 cents/share [2]
| and will be delisted shortly [3]. Their failure to secure
| their customer DNA data with MFA cost them a $30M fine
| they must pay [4].
|
| My comment you replied to was attempting to communicate
| that, because the CEO holds most of the control over the
| company, it is preferable to let it slip into bankruptcy
| (where equity and their control will be wiped out) vs
| continuing allowing them the control they have, which is
| not leading to a favorable outcome for the enterprise.
| This is potentially superior to recapitalizing the
| existing enterprise and continuing to allow the CEO to
| light capital on fire.
|
| [1] https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-
| release-det... (draw your attention to quarterly burn
| rate and cash on hand)
|
| [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ME/
|
| [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-10/st
| rugglin... |https://archive.today/yTo01
|
| [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41536494
| javierluraschi wrote:
| I'm just arguing that she can't let the company go
| bankrupt when she placed a bid for $0.40. Even if she
| could, she could loose control of the company when all
| shareholders get wiped out, not sure the court will let
| her keep 70% through bankruptcy.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Acting as a fiduciary would entail seeking a buyer at the
| best price possible, not a low "take private" offer. Can
| the CEO demonstrate they're working to find someone to
| buy them?
|
| Edit: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/23andme-ceo-
| wojcicki-open-thi...
|
| > A special committee formed by the company rejected
| Wojcicki's previous proposal, deeming it insufficient and
| not in the best interest of the non-affiliated
| shareholders.
| javierluraschi wrote:
| If we agree that public market are the closest we can get
| to realtime market value, it's hard to argue it's easy to
| find a better offer. Otherwise, many other companies that
| are down 95% from their 2021 highs should _just_ find a
| buyer of their companies to maximize shareholders value.
|
| I think we are disappointed that the market is giving $ME
| and many other companies non-ZIRP valuations at 95%
| discounts, and we don't have the cash to buy them at the
| bottom, like she can.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| At that burn rate it seems like the only recourse other
| than a buy out offer from another company at this point
| is to shutdown everything not related to cancer drug
| development and self-financing that endeavor.
| ShufflerL wrote:
| reminds me of Elizabeth Holmes, of Theranos fame. I
| wonder what will happen...How big or hyped up is 23andme?
| justinclift wrote:
| Unless the data turns out to be fraudulent (ugh!), then
| 23 & Me seems like it has actually promising products
| currently going through their development process(es).
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| nah. 23andMe actually works. they use real science to do
| genome sequencing, and that's provable. Theranos never
| worked, and was nothing but lies and hype.
|
| But having working science does not make a successful
| business plan.
| LeanderK wrote:
| what am I missing? Isn't this good news (the positive phase 2
| results)?
| firejake308 wrote:
| Yes, but the CEO was trying to take those profits for herself
| by biding to take the company private, which the Board of
| Directors refused to put up with
| maxerickson wrote:
| The board is making it clear that they don't think the
| CEO/largest shareholder is making good on their duty (as CEO)
| to the other shareholders.
|
| "Good luck ......" or so.
| ilamont wrote:
| Phase 2 is not a slam dunk. Much more work remains, and under
| the guidance of a CEO who has zero drug development
| experience and a track record of management incompetence:
|
| - lying about growth
|
| - pushing out the cofounder
|
| - never making a profit
|
| - hack that went undiscovered for months
|
| About the only area she's had success is raising money and
| that's in large part thanks to being a member of the Silicon
| Valley elite.
| dekhn wrote:
| you left out "ignored a letter from the FDA telling them to
| shut down"
| gosub100 wrote:
| Could the hack have been part of the plan all along to
| depress the share price to make for a cheap buy-out?
| justinclift wrote:
| > Literally just one day after 23andMe presented positive phase
| 2 clinical results for two anti-cancer drugs ...
|
| That's not entirely correct. It was two days after. ;)
|
| * https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-
| det...
|
| There's also this, on the same day:
|
| * https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-
| det...
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| I stand corrected. Well maybe the board took a day to get
| together and draft the letter. One of the board members Neal
| Mohan has to stand before a judge in Google's current anti-
| trust trial. No doubt he has no time for this stuff.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Why is she even the CEO? Was she placed there by Google once
| they bought 23andme?
| sanswork wrote:
| She founded it
| akkartik wrote:
| She's one of the original cofounders. Google never acquired
| it, only invested.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23andMe
| vlovich123 wrote:
| When did that happen? A founder was married to Sergei Brin
| for 8 years but that's it.
| hackernewds wrote:
| They haven't bought 23andme. but there is overlap, Anne was
| the former CEO of YouTube and wife of Sergey Brin
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Anne's sister Susan, who died a month ago of lung cancer
| was CEO of YouTube. Susan was the person who advocated
| Google acquire YouTube in the first place.
|
| Google was founded in the garage of Anne and Susan's
| childhood home. Anne was married to Sergei until he had an
| affair.
|
| One of the board members of 23andMe is Neal Mohan who is
| the current CEO of YouTube.
| tikhonj wrote:
| Well, one of the board members _was_ Neal Mohan
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Haha, correct
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| She founded the company 18 years ago. Google invested like
| <$10 million at the beginning and pulled out just earlier
| this year.
| brookst wrote:
| To complete the data, the company is trading at $0.34/share, so
| while $0.40 is a bit lower than the typical 20% premium
| (~$0.41), I'm not sure it counts as "lowball". It's a typical
| premium over market cap.
|
| Is there any reason to think the company is worth $4.7B or
| whatever ($9.30/share)? If so the stock is a steal at its
| current price and we should all buy lots. But can the market be
| THAT wrong?
| austhrow743 wrote:
| My take on their comment was that it should be worth many
| billions if it was being run effectively but that it's not.
|
| That doesn't mean the market is wrong, it means the market
| thinks it will continue to be run ineffectively.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| if that is the case, isnt paying stockholders 20% over
| value a pretty good deal, and not a ripoff?
|
| It seems like there are contradictory facts being claimed:
| that the price to go private is a lowball, and that the
| current price is accurate.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| If the one offering 20% over listed price is the one
| causing the listed price to be far more than 20% below
| what the company could be worth if they were running it
| properly, most people would consider that to be a ripoff.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That seems like conspiracy thinking. The stockholders own
| part of the company with current management, not some
| hypothetical alternative.
|
| If they sell, they are selling a stake in the real
| company as it exists, not the alternate reality one.
|
| Think of a more relatable example. . A rental house with
| crazy tenants sells for less than a vacant one.
|
| If you buy or own a stake in a business that is
| controlled by poor managers, you are lucky to sell for a
| 20% premium.
| busterarm wrote:
| As a sale, yes, but to take it private no. After taking
| the company private they could then manage the company
| properly and make all of the upside, completely screwing
| over the shareholders who they bought out.
|
| Honestly that's borderline fraud.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That would completely be fraud, but seems pretty far
| fetched.
|
| They have been (miss)managing the company about the same
| for 18 years, so it would have to be one of the most epic
| cons of all time.
|
| On the other hand, partial owners and management take
| companies private all the time. It is an extremely common
| occurrence. It and PE buyout are probably the two most
| common ways.
| busterarm wrote:
| Based on my parent poster's question we're already
| operating from the assumption that happening and I'm just
| explaining why that's bad, not how likely it is.
| mtkd wrote:
| If someone wants to delist and have equity/executive
| control -- there is little minority shareholders can do to
| prevent it in practice
|
| The controlling interest can just hire incompetent ops
| heads and side-line competent ones for a few quarters ...
| slowwalk any events that could increase value
|
| The board resigning likely helps the plan
|
| Fair chance future offers will get worse the longer it goes
| on
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| The resignation implication is that the CEO is running the
| company to the ground.
|
| The comment further implies this is on purpose in order to
| buy the company cheaply.
| saghm wrote:
| I'm confused by this; isn't the board of directors who
| picks the CEO? Or are they locked in for some period of
| time and don't want to wait around?
| soganess wrote:
| I don't know the first thing wrt how 23andMe has its
| governance and voting setup, but the letter seems to
| imply the CEO has majority power or, at least, a large
| enough plurality that it is a one-person-show:
|
| > _Because of that difference and because of your
| concentrated voting power, we believe that it is in the
| best interests of the Company's shareholders that we
| resign_
|
| EDIT: But that brings up a different question: If you
| have majority voting power, why try to take the company
| private (as it has been suggested by others here)?
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > EDIT: But that brings up a different question: If you
| have majority voting power, why try to take the company
| private (as it has been suggested by others here)?
|
| 1. Less legal oversight and paperwork.
|
| 2. I don't know the terms of the buyout, but if this
| means the CEO, family, friends, etc ("insiders") become
| the new shareholders, then any future upside will be
| distributed to insiders not the open market.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| You can have company control without having even a
| majority.
|
| This is similar to what zuckerberg is doing with Meta.
| Supervoting Class A shares vs common shares, etc.
|
| The arrangement is completely up to the governing docs of
| the entity.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| The CEO does currently control the company without a
| majority.
|
| Having less legal oversight generally refers to paperwork
| that needs to be done for the SEC.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >But that brings up a different question: If you have
| majority voting power, why try to take the company
| private (as it has been suggested by others here)?
|
| voting power dictates control. Ownership dictates rights
| to profits. you can have full control with 51% ownership,
| but you still only get 51% of profits.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _If you have majority voting power, why try to take the
| company private (as it has been suggested by others
| here)?_
|
| I don't know their governance structure, but the CEO may
| have a majority of votes, but not own a majority of the
| actual shares. Being able to take the company private
| would give her (and her other investors) full economic
| control as well as voting control.
|
| This is risky ground, of course. Even with voting
| control, legally the CEO cannot screw over the minority
| shareholders.
| zerocrates wrote:
| The CEO owns 49% of the voting power so the board is
| pretty much toothless. Facing a direct conflict with her,
| loudly resigning is probably about the best they could
| do.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| It's the ONLY thing they could do.
|
| CEO Founder has a direct conflict of interest with
| shareholders...
| brookst wrote:
| Since CEOs typically own a lot of stock and are compensated
| for performance, doesn't that seem like a strange theory?
| Intentionally destroying a company you run and own shares
| in so you can buy more shares seems like a really
| complicated and high risk strategy compared to just running
| it well, making a fortune, and getting an even bigger CEO
| gig.
| error_logic wrote:
| Was that not a strategy successfully employed by Ford to
| edge out other investors?
| svnt wrote:
| The viability and profitability of the strategy depend
| critically on the ownership and control position of the
| CEO. Many CEOs do not have all that much stock, in
| percentage terms. If they have access to resources and
| sufficient board control they could privatize, reset the
| cap table, and reorganize.
|
| If they were to reorganize first and produce a company
| worth as much as its competitors, they only get eg 5% of
| eg 30B, which after taxes makes them maybe a billionaire.
| Reorg and do the same thing and they could be looking at
| control and $10-20B.
|
| Where tens of billions of dollars are involved, "really
| complicated" and "high risk" plays are basically table
| stakes.
| vintermann wrote:
| Honestly, it would be more surprising to me if this sort
| of thing never happened. In politics it happens fairly
| regularly (entryism, agent provocateurs etc.) so why
| wouldn't it happen in business? It would take even less
| coordination, all it would take is a bit of personal
| loyalty between top leaders which - shock and horror! -
| didn't disappear when one of them changed company.
| gojomo wrote:
| I don't think you're properly modeling a truly ambitious
| person whose basic needs are already fully-met for life.
|
| Anne Wojicki is already sufficiently wealthy - net worth
| $150m+? - that maybe what really interests her is playing
| hardball for (say) $10B+ instead of just a few hundred
| million more? Or for the control & glory of shepherding
| forward some breakthrough cancer treatments that the
| other investors might simply treat as financial options
| to sell early?
|
| And, perhaps she's got the votes & de facto IP control &
| legal budget to think she's got a good chance of winning,
| and even a loss can't cut her out?
|
| Isn't this just bare-knuckle "founder mode"?
| sdwvit wrote:
| I have Nokia flashbacks
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > can the market be THAT wrong?
|
| Yes. Historic examples abound of the market being that wrong.
| People can and have made fortunes by finding those
| opportunities.
|
| Which is different from _is_ the market that wrong in this
| case?
| bboygravity wrote:
| Yes. The market can be THAT wrong, not just wrong but also
| corrupt and broken (on purpose).
|
| Hint: regulatory crisis, Suzanne Trimbath, failure to deliver
| shares, naked shorting, Tesla shortsqueeze, VW shortsqueeze,
| UBS's and Swiss gov's 50 year secret, etc.
| OrigamiPastrami wrote:
| You actually think people are familiar with most, if any,
| of your hints? You mention Susanne Trimbath like most
| people have any idea who she is. If you construct an
| argument instead of throwing out a buzzword salad of ideas,
| people are more likely to listen to you.
| kortilla wrote:
| You're kinda all over the place with your "hints". Naked
| shorting and failure to deliver shares have zero
| relationship to setting a bid price people are willing to
| buy at.
|
| Shortsqueezes are cases of driving prices up because shares
| are hard to get and shorts need to cover. Again, not
| related to the best offer being too low.
|
| Secrets are also dumb examples because that's hidden
| information.
|
| What we're talking about here is the valuation with all of
| the public information available now. Nobody of any
| relevant market size seems to agree that it should be
| $9/share.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| I'm willing to grant some leeway on a shortsqueeze.
|
| If one is willing to grant that the stock "price" for a
| liquid listing, is the price for a stock at any given
| time, then you could argue the markets are "wrong"
| insofar that the price quoted in the open market, is
| absolutely not the correct price - regardless of the
| excuse of a short squeeze.
| kortilla wrote:
| They are not the same because without available shares to
| short its very easy to recognize there is stuff
| overpriced in the market and the open market can't do
| anything about it because the sellers are limited and
| they control the ask.
|
| This is absolutely not true of a price that's "too low".
| Anyone, including you, can go hit those asking prices and
| start to load up. There is also capped downsize risk (as
| opposed to uncontrolled risk in a short).
|
| This is all to say that it's possible that company could
| be worth $9-10/share, but based on all of the information
| publicly available today, there are effectively tens of
| thousands of people each swinging billions in capital
| than are parking it in stuff providing 5% return rather
| than the 20000% you suggest is there.
|
| So this tells me that you are just much more hopeful for
| the future of the company than the current financial
| projections and prospects support.
| vkou wrote:
| That's word salad randomly picked from the small book of
| 'scary words from finance', but you haven't explained what
| the actual problem is.
| axpvms wrote:
| Hint: GME bagholder
| hackernewds wrote:
| why are these companies worth so much, if not for sneakily
| monetizing and selling their user's most personal data?
| llm_nerd wrote:
| The plan was always that DNA could be use for medical
| research, which is enormously valuable.
|
| And given that 23andme currently has a market cap 1/20th DJT
| (Trump Media & Technology Group Corp) -- a firm that makes
| less revenue than a variety store yet has huge losses -- I
| wouldn't really say it's "worth so much".
| elictronic wrote:
| I wouldn't compare any stock to DJT. MAGA voters value
| signaling, institutional investors playing games, foreign
| governments laundering money to the campaign, primary
| shareholder prepping for exit.
|
| The companies actual revenue has zero impact and never
| will. Treat DJT like a NFT and it makes a ton of sense.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _wouldn't compare any stock to DJT. MAGA voters value
| signaling, institutional investors playing games, foreign
| governments laundering money to the campaign, primary
| shareholder prepping for exit_
|
| You're right for the wrong reasons. (EDIT: I'm wrong for
| no reason.)
|
| Dow Jones is obsolete [1]. Its value is in its brand,
| _i.e._ other people look at it.
|
| The other factors you mention are noise. Relevant to a
| trader or market maker with infintessimal time horizons.
| But irrelevant to an investor thinking even in months.
| The American markets are simply too deep. The totality of
| dollars at work by MAGA voters, game-playing hedge funds
| and money launderers--through the stock market--is
| negligible. (Lots of political tea-leave reading funds
| have been attempted. Zero prevail.)
|
| [1] https://retirementresearcher.com/why-the-dow-doesnt-
| work/
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > NASDAQ: DJT
|
| > Trump Media & Technology Group Corp
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DJT/
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Ha! Wow. Yes. Thank you.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| I thought DJT is just a huge foreign influence campaign to
| get financial leverage over the "future US president".
| Can't compare the two.
| JCharante wrote:
| > The plan was always that DNA could be use for medical
| research, which is enormously valuable.
|
| Couldn't one just pull a worldcoin and give people $5 for a
| cheek swab?
| jajko wrote:
| Ask not how it can be used, but rather how it will be
| misused, generating various profits for owners of the data
| down the line. So far targeted ad business takes the cake,
| I'd expect DNA profiling and corresponding credit/social
| score, insurance premiums and recruiting score coming
| eventually.
|
| I can't believe how people can be naive over and over.
| jheriko wrote:
| in some cases the value doesn't really exist. if someone owns
| 75% of a company from the founding, and they sell 25% for
| $100000 then its worth $400000 in a valuation whether the
| starting capital was $1000000 or $1
|
| selling the smallest amount of share possible for the highest
| amount you can get can easily balloon the "paper" value of a
| company, but that money doesn't really exist anywhere.
|
| it will change when things go public, but often the initial
| price is based on some vapourous guess like this...
| nextos wrote:
| Was the plan all the time to go B2B (drug development) and they
| just used B2C (selling SNP kits) to hoard samples?
|
| Even considering all FDA limitations, I cannot understand how
| bad their genetic risk scores are.
|
| They have talent, they have lots of customers and data. This is
| a position other companies, like deCODE, would have killed to
| be in.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| If the board is resigning, and the company is selling DNA
| kits, running a telemedicine operation, selling
| pharmceuticals online AND developing cancer drugs at a 180
| million dollar market cap...
|
| It's quite possible there was no plan at all...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I saw Ann when she gave a talk at Google (that was when she
| was still married to Sergey). They had spit cups we could
| use if we wanted our DNA sequenced. I didn't.
|
| Their business plan was straight out of South Park:
|
| 1. Collect lots of DNA
|
| 2. ??????
|
| 3. Profit!!
| marcinzm wrote:
| Isn't that the case for almost every single VC backed
| startup?
| hennell wrote:
| s/dna/data and you're pretty much any tech business.
| burningChrome wrote:
| >>> selling pharmceuticals online
|
| That would explain them selling 5 million users DNA
| information to GSK.
|
| _Earlier this summer, the often-scrutinized at-home
| genetic testing company 23andMe sold genetic data from five
| million customers to the pharmaceutical company
| GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). This surprised a lot of their
| customers who had forgotten that they consented to this
| when they signed up for the service._
|
| https://cglife.com/blog/23andme-sold-your-genetic-data-to-
| gs...
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| OP here. These headlines are simply exaggerated. 23andme
| sells mostly anonymous aggregated GWAS mapping results to
| companies like GSK as far as I'm aware
| Y_Y wrote:
| https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-
| det...
|
| This is complicated. The don't just zip up all the
| customer data and send it over, at least they say that
| they run aggregated queries for GSK and just tell them
| the answer. But then they say that the data is
| "anonymized" before this, which seems unnecessary and
| impossible.
|
| Imho it's very difficult to anonymize any data, and
| especially something like DNA. Without an external audit
| amd some mathematical guarantee (e.g. differntial
| privacy) I work on the assumption that they do the bare
| minimum to pass legal muster but anyone who made the
| effort could confidently associate the data with real
| people after the fact.
| blitzar wrote:
| Pivot to Blockchain AI in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
| bpodgursky wrote:
| It's culturally broken. They have talent but none of the
| talent ships products that consumers ever see.
| dekhn wrote:
| Anne's plan from the very beginning was to capitalize on the
| value of the human genome in drug development and medical
| testing. Frankly everything you need to know about the idea
| behind the company before its various pitfalls and pivots is
| here (2007): https://web.archive.org/web/20140312001152/http:
| //www.wired....
|
| (sorry, it takes a while to load but wired has killed most of
| their long-term links)
|
| IMHO she and Avey were just naive about the actual science
| _and_ business of using genomic information for drug
| discovery. Remember, around the time the company started, the
| human genome had only recently been sequenced and Craig
| Venter was trying to capitalize on that, and lots of folks
| figured it would quickly turn into a multi-billion dollar
| market.
|
| On the other hand, the product is quite good at finding
| relatives (identity by descent) and to be honest I wish
| they'd run 23&me as just that service, without the medical
| angle. My father did 23&Me mainly to figure out more about
| his ancestry, but also it helped a number of children
| conceived via IVF (he had provided a sample for fertility
| testing many years before) identify and contact him (I can't
| even imagine what the experience was like; to me, it's just a
| bunch of half-siblings I didn't know about)
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Funny enough, the entire 23andMe subreddit is purely about
| ancestry results, but the company marketing is oriented
| around health.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Remember, around the time the company started, the human
| genome had only recently been sequenced and Craig Venter
| was trying to capitalize on that, and lots of folks figured
| it would quickly turn into a multi-billion dollar market.
|
| To be fair, a lot of the potential easy money in that
| market was erased two years after 23andMe was founded when
| Congress passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination
| Act.
| Supernaut wrote:
| > it helped a number of children conceived via IVF (he had
| provided a sample for fertility testing many years before)
| identify and contact him
|
| Wait, so a sample he submitted for fertility testing was
| used to impregnate a number of women? Without his
| knowledge?
| dekhn wrote:
| That's a good question- I think he signed a consent form
| that would have allowed additional research on his
| donations. TBH my dad was suprised but pleased by the
| outcome.
| consteval wrote:
| I'm glad your dad was happy about it, but it does kind of
| speak to the potential dangers of giving out your DNA
| (which is concerns many have around 23andMe).
| zzleeper wrote:
| So sad that Blackstone bought ancestry.. newspapers.com is a
| really nice tool for researchers (and most things that get
| touched by PE end up enshittified)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I suppose I should know this: who owns newspapers.com? What's
| the connection?
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Ancestry owns newspapers.com
|
| A lot of Ancestry.com and AncestryDNA was founded to
| support the Mormon belief that the LDS church can
| posthumously baptize ancestors of living individuals into
| the church under the belief that many deceased individuals
| were not alive to hear the gospel of Joseph Smith.
|
| Thus the massive data collection effort for historical
| information like newpaper articles from this century and
| the last.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| I think they stopped doing it. Jewish organizations were
| absolutely livid once they found out they were baptizing
| Holocaust victims.
| mulderc wrote:
| It is a pretty important aspect of Latter Day Saint
| theology. They still do it but officially you can only
| baptize your own family members with the permission of
| surviving family members. These guidelines are not always
| followed. Additionally they have said they removed people
| from their rosters that were improperly baptized but the
| members I have talked with are skeptical and found it a
| bit laughable that the church removing a name from a
| database would somehow undo a sacred ritual.
| voganmother42 wrote:
| When I remove records from databases I follow the sacred
| ritual of BEGIN TRANSACTION...COMMIT;
| philistine wrote:
| That's one good case where it would be the moral thing to
| name a kid Robert'); DROP TABLE Baptized;--
| quesera wrote:
| On the topic of laughability, I would propose that
| "invoking a dead stranger's name in a self-significant
| ritual" is absurd to do, and also absurd to be offended
| by.
|
| I hereby grant permission for my name to be invoked in
| all rituals, sacred and profane, by all current and
| future living persons. And I'll laugh at you in advance.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Que sera, sera
|
| Whatever will be, will be
|
| The future's not ours to see
|
| Que sera, sera
| lioeters wrote:
| And so it begins..
| quesera wrote:
| I'll be recommending this for page one of the hymnal.
| gopher_space wrote:
| I mean I'd see that as an invitation to help myself to
| anything the church owns that isn't nailed down.
| Thiez wrote:
| Can you show damages? If you can win a lawsuit here that
| would be great, paving the way for sueing Christians for
| their passive aggressive 'I'll pray for you' nonsense
| would be amazing.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Probably that's why Myheritage started oldnews.com...
| Although MH was also bought by PE
| bruceb wrote:
| Closest competitor does a lot of heavy lifting in this
| situation. Ancestry is the overwhelming leader in the find long
| lost relative space/your "roots" space. Look at
| https://www.ancestry.com/ and https://www.23andme.com/ 23andme
| has basically given up on this part of the business.
|
| Their pitch is health. But that pitch is murky with no good
| hook to keep you hooked for a monthly subscription. So after
| they get the initial $99 from the customer, most of the value
| customer is going to get is already served up in the first
| report. Maybe their big database will turn into making cancer
| drugs but maybe it wont.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > 23andme has basically given up on this part of the
| business.
|
| The routine emails I get about them allegedly finding new DNA
| relatives suggest otherwise. The DNA relatives feature is
| also still pretty prominent in their UI (at least on desktop
| browsers; haven't looked at the app yet).
|
| That said, it certainly doesn't offer much beyond "these are
| your relatives; send 'em some messages or something lol".
| Ancestry probably has a lot more features on that front,
| which is unsurprising since that's the sort of thing Ancestry
| was doing long before they even offered DNA sequencing kits
| like 23andMe does. I don't know if I'd characterize that as
| 23andMe "giving up", though; more that it's good enough for a
| product that never intended to enter the genealogy software
| market in the first place.
| codedokode wrote:
| I wonder, do the "relatives" know and agree that their
| information is sent to other person?
| sitharus wrote:
| ...yes that's how it works? You opt in and choose what
| you share. They're quite explicit about it.
| nnutter wrote:
| I would say it's a little more murky than that. My
| anecdotal experience is in the context of Ancestry.com.
| Effectively, I might not consent to having my information
| shared but if my uncle, nephew, etc. does it is
| effectively still being shared.
| PawgerZ wrote:
| Yes. You must opt in. When you opt in, you can elect to
| show your full name, or just initals (may be other
| options but I opted in long ago).
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| The new-DNA-relatives feature is one of the few "growth"
| things they can continue to bother you with, outside of
| newly-discovered genome-based indicators for diseases.
|
| I get/got spammed by them about new relatives on the order
| of "6th cousin who shares 0.3% of your DNA." Thanks, but
| who cares...
| busseio wrote:
| "Give the kits as gifts!" and you can learn about your
| closer relatives /s-ish
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| > leader in the find long lost relative space/your "roots"
| space.
|
| Acknowledging Ancestry.com are well ahead of the market here,
| but I never got their appeal of finding some long-lost second
| cousins... basically strangers, and saying, "hey, isn't it
| fascinating that we share some arbitrary level of common
| genetic makeup". If some randomer reached out via email to me
| doing this big reveal I'd be "thanks, but into the spam
| folder with you".
| tylergetsay wrote:
| I think a more common use case might be finding siblings if
| your adopted, or trying to reengage with your roots if you
| were say a member of an indian tribe or native hawaiian.
|
| I have a family member who is retired and has taken up
| geneology as a hobby, she has connected our family history
| really far back. Not my cup of tea personally but I can see
| the appeal, its like a treasure hunt. She has traveled to
| go to old libraries and dig up newspaper archives.
| creshal wrote:
| Another common use case is "I wonder where all my family
| went after $War"; some families are still trying to
| figure out where their parents' families ended up at
| after WW2, or if they survived at all.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| I've found it extremely interesting. It's brought me
| greater insight into my grandfather I knew nothing about,
| and even the (very few) family traditions/recipes that have
| come down to me. It's made the world feel smaller and more
| connected, seeing actual relatives in all of these far off
| places, in the kind of way I always HOPED the internet
| would bring interconnectedness.
|
| I think it's inherently human to want to understand who we
| are and where come from. Especially for someone like me in
| the USA. How did my people end up here?
| jkhdigital wrote:
| I don't think anyone is actually trying to connect with
| distant cousins for social interaction; rather the shared
| DNA segments provide hard evidence to confirm distant
| ancestors. I got into genealogy a couple years ago after
| thumbing through some old family documents and I've been
| able to confirm 6th cousins (traced via our shared
| ancestors) using 23andMe data.
|
| Now there are probably some who think genealogy is a silly
| pastime and maybe it is, but researching my family history
| helps me feel grounded and more connected to humanity so I
| derive a lot of benefit from it.
| vidarh wrote:
| I mean, computer games are a "silly pastime" too. Whether
| or not one feels grounded, it can also just simply be
| fun, and that fine. I've even enjoyed helping strangers
| solve genealogy problems because piecing together the
| evidence and ruling out options is just another type of
| puzzle and one that is often very challenging.
|
| For "close" relatives, I agree there can also be more to
| it.
|
| E.g. my mums mum never told us that much about her family
| (we never asked while she was around), and my mum didn't
| know either, and so uncovering more about that was very
| fascinating (it helped that there was plenty of drama to
| uncover) and helped fill in a lot of gaps.
| appendix-rock wrote:
| That's a very glib HN take.
|
| Interest in family trees predates Ancestry.com and will
| certainly outlast it. It's not necessarily about contact.
| I'm not sure what's controversial here.
| gerdesj wrote:
| I run a small web server for a dataset we call the
| "BIGFAM" - Geneweb with a proxy on the front. It has
| >120,000 individuals in it. In places it is not so much a
| tree as a thicket!
|
| That data is hard fought and won by a relative who
| conducts meticulous research as a hobby. They've been at
| it for a good 20 odd years now.
| Mtinie wrote:
| How has Geneweb worked for you? Is it straightforward
| enough to use if you are somewhat technical, or do the
| "wizards" need to have a solid understanding of OCaml to
| make it worthwhile?
|
| My daughter has been interested for years in delving into
| our different familial trees and has extensive records on
| paper and in various digital formats. She isn't overly
| technical but could be taught to use a web interface if
| she'd gain value from the effort.
| sandos wrote:
| In my humble opinion as an amateur genealogist, after a
| year or so with paid services (Ancestry, Myheritage) I
| find there is really no good reason not to use a
| combination of Wikitree and Familysearch, both free, if
| we ignore DNA tests.
|
| Especially familysearch allows private profiles, no need
| to share. Wikitree has a policy of "do not add living
| people", but it is possible to do and Ive done it for
| close family.
|
| Yes, this means sharing fairly freely, but I do not see a
| reason not to. Unless you want a fantasy tree, sharing
| your tree will make it higher quality. We all make
| mistakes here and there.
|
| Wikitree especially requires you add sources to your
| work, which might feel odd for a personal tree of course.
| gerdesj wrote:
| I personally think that Webtrees might be the best bet
| but that is GEDCOM based and GEDCOM cannot store certain
| things. My relative is an expert in genealogy and if they
| say that GEDCOM doesn't cut it then it probably doesn't,
| eventually. I suggest you look into Webtrees - its a LAMP
| job.
|
| My relative uses The Master Genealogist (TMG) which is no
| longer developed. We are both Linux users and he uses
| Wine bottles to keep it alive. I will probably end up
| hosting a Win XP VM for it.
|
| Geneweb is seeing renewed development and is really fast.
| The plan is to migrate to Geneweb. The fields that TMG
| has that GEDCOM can't handle are turned into NOTES which
| is probably good enough.
|
| You do not have to get to grips with OCAML to run it. The
| Github releases shield you from that. It is a bit
| idiosyncratic but it does work!
|
| Genealogy is a very deep and complicated subject with as
| many opinions as there are practitioners. You could try
| both Webtrees and Geneweb and use GEDCOM to act as an
| intermediary data format until you decide which to use
| full time. Do make sure you listen to her. She may
| potentially have some "odd" ideas about data that may not
| have occurred to you. Be warned - genealogists are a
| breed apart and any reasonably serious one has damn good
| reasons for that! There are also quite a few reasons for
| becoming a genealogist as well as methods used.
| sandos wrote:
| Im trying, really trying to understand what BIGFAM is
| about. Is it related to gut biome, and what the bacteria
| eats, and trying to find the genes for that? Or am I
| completely lost.
| gerdesj wrote:
| Its part of the filename (short for Big Family) that we
| use to transfer the data via GEDCOM from The Master
| Genealogist (TMG) to Geneweb.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Americans treat their ancestry (specifically the nations
| they come from) almost like zodiac signs. This is meme
| material (e.g. Plastic Paddies, Plywood Poles etc.)
| marxisttemp wrote:
| Zodiac signs is a good way of putting it.
|
| I think as a country of immigrants--or colonizers--we all
| feel desperate for some sense of personal history and
| identity.
| slavik81 wrote:
| The family tree is a big deal for Mormons due to their
| religious beliefs. They can baptise their ancestors,
| providing lost souls with a chance to convert after death.
| derriz wrote:
| A first cousin of mine found a (adult) daughter he didn't
| know he had through it. They are in the process of building
| a relationship. It was a significant/important discovery
| for them even without having a prior relationship.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| I not only found a genetic disorder that my mother and I
| shared (Partial PNP Deficiency) but I also found an woman
| who was the illegitimate daughter of my Uncle (who had
| passed away) and she was fianlly able to see pictures of
| him and know more about him.
|
| There is so much more power in 23andMe's Raw Data regarding
| health than people realize and I am capitalizing on it.
| (Less with the v5 chip but it is still really good,)
|
| Finding drugs with 23andMe is a waste of time and is not
| wehre they should be focusing on making money. They should
| be focusing on personalized medicine.
| raddan wrote:
| I also have a rare genetic disorder (alpha-1 antitrypsin
| disorder) and discovered it using 23andMe. I am in the
| process of working with a pulmonologist to manage the
| disease, and if they had not screened me for it, I would
| have written off my symptoms as "just bad asthma."
| Currently there is no health product that 23andMe sells
| that is appealing to me, but if there were, I would
| gladly pay. I hope they can stick it out because their
| DNA screening is a valuable service.
| newsclues wrote:
| My mom (70year old boom) is obsessed with it.
|
| I think she is unhappy that our family line will likely end
| with me. (only child, who is almost a 40 year old virgin)
|
| If you don't get to see the future you want, consume your
| time with the past.
| iwishiknewlisp wrote:
| If you are from the United States its interesting to trace
| back your ancestry and last name to a specific
| person/persons from another country.
|
| There are tons of websites for different last names in the
| United States, showing history of the name. Many times the
| last name be traced back to a singular person, which I find
| especially cool since you have sprawling families all
| connected by one guy who made the journey over. Obviously
| last names like Smith won't be like this, but if you have a
| unique last name it can actually be quite common that one
| person coming to the new world connects you and everybody
| else in the Americas together. I find that super cool to
| think about and I am glad people are doing the effort to
| research and find this info out.
| iwishiknewlisp wrote:
| In addition, for people who were adopted and didn't know
| their birth parents, it can be interesting to connect
| with your biological family through ancestry work.
| percivalPep wrote:
| My mother is adopted and 23andMe and Ancestry have both
| provided me with a way of connecting with relatives as
| far apart as Canada and Australia. Before "revealing" my
| connection to them I've stated that in doing so I may
| reveal information about a shared ancestor that doesn't
| put that person in the best light (my mum was the result
| of a short affair between a married man and a much
| younger woman at the end of World War 2). All have stated
| they are ok with this and in most cases had no contact to
| the ancestor involved anyway.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's also helping children figure out who their bio dad is
| since most aren't involved in their kids lives these days.
| vidarh wrote:
| It's not really the selling point. The selling point is the
| interest in the genealogy, and the "finding the long-lost
| second cousins" is a feature that helps you address the
| genealogy.
|
| Concrete example: My grandmother was born in Brooklyn. As
| it turns out, her half-brother lived a few blocks away. At
| the time my grandmother was born, he was 9 and living with
| his grandparents despite the fact his father lived nearby.
|
| I still don't know why, but when I found out he even
| existed - something I didn't know until long after my
| grandmother died -, I also soon found his daughter was
| alive and well in New Jersey, and was able to get in touch.
| I now have pictures, and stories to fill in not just his
| background, but thanks to that connection I now have
| pictures of the graves of my great-great-grandfather, and
| several of his children, and stories about my grandmothers
| uncles, and aunts she never mentioned while she was alive.
|
| I also have pictures of my great-grandfather - my mums
| grandfather - that I hadn't seen before.
|
| Of course, that is reasonably close, but sometimes those
| things end up passed down one side of a family, with no
| copies existing, and you can increasingly find relatives
| far away from you in the tree who has photos of shared
| ancestors, and that proportion will increase dramatically
| with each new generation.
|
| So every time I find a match, however remote, with an
| active account, you better believe I'll message them. Not
| because I care that we're related, but because I care about
| whether or not they can fill in some bit or other in my
| ancestry. For me, anyway, it's a fun puzzle more than
| anything else, when you go beyond the immediate family.
|
| Like why is that one ancestor showing up as a widow one
| moment, and someone with the same name as her husband
| showing up as married to her sister in the next census with
| an implausible country of origin? Can I find evidence to
| corroborate theories? Can I find that notorious "hat maker
| from Bremen" that almost certainly didn't exist but was
| cover for infidelity, or evidence that he didn't exist (I
| almost certainly can't) - it'd be funny, because an entire
| arm of the family took on the supposed, probably invented,
| last name of the hypothetical hat maker because an ancestor
| of theirs thought it sounded posh.
|
| The "long-lost second cousins" are just bit players in that
| game.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Family is extremely important to most people
| JamesSwift wrote:
| I used ancestry.com to help locate a "long lost sibling" of
| my in laws. They were able to partly rekindle a
| relationship after decades apart.
| elictronic wrote:
| One of my parents was adopted creating a much higher
| incentive and an increased likelihood of finding nearer
| relatives.
|
| She would not pursue out of respect to her adopted mother.
| Outside of this I would be in the same boat as you.
| zooq_ai wrote:
| just because you are anti-social, doesn't mean the general
| public are
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Others have shared some more heartwarming tales of using
| these services but I saw a story that in Australia a
| project is helping the children of sex tourists to look up
| their fathers via these services to get child support
| payments:
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/am/dna-helps-
| children...
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| If you are sleeping with a prostitute isn't there like an
| implied contract that you aren't responsible for any
| resulting child? That is practically the entire purpose
| of prostitution.
| cardanome wrote:
| If you sleep with someone you are responsible for any
| resulting child.
|
| Prostitution in the Philippines is illegal so any
| explicit or implicit contract would be void anyway. Not
| to mention that consent is questionable anyway when most
| of these women are either trafficked or forced by
| economic hardship to partake in it.
| archi42 wrote:
| A quick Google search suggests that in the US, you're on
| the hook.
| samtho wrote:
| The rise of services like 23andMe and AncestryDNA have
| actually allowed people to discover information about their
| parentage that they would otherwise not have had access to,
| basically they find out that one or both of their parents
| are not biologically related to them. Individual situations
| range from extramarital affairs, closed adoption, in-
| familiy adoption (teen gets pregnant, her parents raise the
| child as a sibling), and those who's parents chose to
| conceive with donor gametes. In many of these cases where
| it is a surprise, the parents have either actively chosen
| to withhold the information or didn't know.
|
| In cases where the user is trying to find their parent,
| it's statistically unlikely that their parent would have
| taken the test, but 2nd cousin matches are very common.
| These seem like a huge distance away, but you can work
| backwards and build a family tree up to their great
| grandparents and fan out from there.
| greswen wrote:
| Yep, this happened to me. Got a random message from a
| half brother, dug deeper into my ancestry and realized
| that my dad isn't actually my biological father. It was
| certainly an odd week for me when I found out.
| vintermann wrote:
| Not everyone is interested in genealogy, that's up to them,
| but to those of us who are, finding an unknown nth cousin
| may be worth a lot to untangle the lives of our ancestors,
| write the stories of our families, and find out where we
| come from, in a far wider sense than merely the genetic
| one.
|
| But Ancestry is a roach motel. Of all sites that sell user-
| contributed data back to their users, and they're all
| scummy, I don't know any which are more scummy than
| Ancestry and MyHeritage.
| paganel wrote:
| I'm on mobile and too lazy to check, but is ancestry.com
| related in any way to Jehovah'a Witnesses? I'm asking because
| at some point I was online searching for any info about the
| Russian Imperial census held at the end the 1890s and, to my
| surprise, the JW website had all the info in there (or at
| least almost all the info on the region I was interested in,
| Kherson). And then I found out that this sort of stuff is
| right down JW's alley for some religion-related reason, good
| for them.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Not Jehova's witnesses but the founders are Mormon and the
| company operates out of Utah.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > at some point I was online searching for any info about
| the Russian Imperial census held at the end the 1890s
|
| Any idea where I might find a list of Russian navy officers
| from then or the following decades?
| datavirtue wrote:
| They should do a social media AI play where they just friend
| everyone for you.
| rocho wrote:
| But a genetic analysis to find your "roots" is also something
| you do once. Does Ancestry have subscriptions for that?
| punchmesan wrote:
| Ancestry does more than genetic analysis. Their claim to
| fame is their tools to search through old public records to
| help one build their genealogy/family tree.
| fph wrote:
| It's sad that we have come to a point where people frown upon
| a company that makes a product and sells it, without luring
| their customers in with monthly subscriptions.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| "closest competitor" really doesn't mean anything here. That's
| like calling a failing burger joint in a random US city a
| "competitor of McDonalds". No they're not.
| phonon wrote:
| So why doesn't Ancestry/Blackstone buy out 23andMe? Antitrust?
| Shareholder control issues?
| ac29 wrote:
| They are deeply unprofitable and always have been. Looking at
| FY24, they spent $4 for every $1 in revenue.
| darby_nine wrote:
| > Feels like the main thing holding this company back is the
| CEO
|
| Use has also dropped, no? There's serious questions about long
| term revenue generation. Ancestry.com doesn't require selling
| your genetic code to collaborate on geneology.
| edm0nd wrote:
| Anne Wojcicki is also the exwife of billionaire Google founder
| Sergey Brin.
|
| I have always felt as if 23andMe was just her pet lil project
| and it doesn't matter if its ever profitable or not.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| Luck and being in the right place at the right time can't make
| a CEO. Anne is a terrible CEO
| jonstewart wrote:
| They also just settled a class-action lawsuit stemming from their
| data breach:
| https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/23andme-to-pa...
| hackernewds wrote:
| "data breach"
| justin_oaks wrote:
| To those wondering why the quotes are given, I assume it's
| because no 23andMe system was compromised.
|
| The data was retrieved via credential stuffing, which is
| trying username/email and password combinations from other
| data breaches.
|
| It can be argued that 23andMe should have had stricter login
| requirements (e.g. require MFA, require longer passwords) and
| by failing to do so they were responsible for the leaked
| data. Or you can argue that the users didn't protect their
| own data since they didn't use long, secure passwords that
| were unique per website.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| The settlement is way lower than what it could have been. The
| settlement should be seen as positive news for the company's
| future, not negative.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| I think data-breaches could carry the death penalty for
| companies.
|
| I just got a notification from some health services company
| that my and my toddlers data was accessed. Including medical
| history, diagnoses, payment details, SSN, birthday. Why was
| this not encrypted? Given the world today, this is negligent.
| The government should be able to disolve the company and give
| the money to the victims.
|
| If there was a willful disregard for "common security and
| privacy standards", criminal charges against the executive
| team.
|
| You want my personal life data? It comes with steep personal
| risk.
| mikercampbell wrote:
| My HSA emailed me and said "woopsies, we leaked all your
| data".
|
| And...? You're going to try and give me credit monitoring
| when I literally have 2 overlapping credit monitoring offers
| from the other companies that leaked my data?
| itake wrote:
| > The government should be able to disolve the company and
| give the money to the victims
|
| I feel you, but my understanding is without clear monetary
| impact, its hard to collect any amount of money from these
| companies. Even if you experience identity theft, whose to
| say this vs one of the other data leaks was the issue.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Yes. That's the current state of things. And we want it to
| _not_ be the state of things.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _data-breaches could carry the death penalty for companies_
|
| One, corporate death penalties are nonsense. They're a
| distraction from fines.
|
| Two, what would America pay for its adversaries to enact such
| a policy. Automatic self destruct for the entire data sector.
| dbspin wrote:
| I agree that a 'corporate death penalty' would be
| enormously open to abuse, sector rivals would be even more
| incentivised to industrial espionage for one thing...
|
| But 'a distraction from fines'? Fines do nothing to help
| those affected by such breaches. Even class action lawsuits
| usually result in symbolic payouts to individual victims.
| Given the potential consequences of these breathes -
| especially in the health space, criminal prosecution for
| those executives responsible seem appropriate, commensurate
| and incentivising.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| To quote... someone? "A fine is a price."
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _But 'a distraction from fines'? Fines do nothing to
| help those affected by such breaches_
|
| Bigger fines. Fines that bankrupt the company. Note:
| bankrupt. Not shut down. Clean out the shareholders and
| upper management, possibly spin some stuff off or even
| break it up. (There is this popular conception that
| bankruptcy means an F-35 bombs the company's offices and
| factories and it's plain wrong.)
|
| Corporate death penalty is a distraction from bigger
| fines.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > I think data-breaches could carry the death penalty for
| companies.
|
| The ironic thing is: why pay for their data now when it's out
| there already?
|
| Sounds like they played themselves
| snapcaster wrote:
| Because most companies aren't going to go out to the dark
| web and buy breached data with bitcoin?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Zero chance I ever give my DNA to one of these companies.
| mhsdef wrote:
| Did your relative?
|
| I'm not a geneticist so I could be totally off the mark; but,
| to my understanding, the painful part is that is a big
| disclosure right there
| HideousKojima wrote:
| My oldest brother did so I'm already screwed
| starfezzy wrote:
| Can even one single person here articulate their specific
| fears of using 23andme, or is it all FUD?
| zetsurin wrote:
| Maybe too far fetched? Company sells/loses data,
| insurance companies use data to deny coverage, or deem
| claims as pre-existing.
| peanutz454 wrote:
| Can an insurance company deny claim based on your DNA?
| They deny claims for pre-existing condition that you hid
| from the, which would be the wrong thing to do on your
| part. They cannot deny claim based on pre existing
| disposition. Practically everyone is predisposed for
| getting cancer by merely being human, you might even have
| cancerous cells in your body right now, that you body
| will destroy in a couple of minutes.
| dekhn wrote:
| Health insurance in the US can't- it's protected by a law
| called GINA. Life insurance, however, can use DNA
| information.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Review world history.
| genewitch wrote:
| Sure. Someone who has their data in 23andme was someplace
| where something horrible happened. Law enforcement has no
| leads, so they process the DNA, and find no matches. They
| subpoena 23andme (or just look at the leaked data, who
| knows), and that person is now a person of interest. If
| they don't know they should have a lawyer on their side
| with them when being questioned, they might talk
| themselves into prison.
|
| Now imagine that person is innocent.
| noirbot wrote:
| I know it's not exactly the point, but the answer is you
| always have a lawyer if you're being questioned by the
| police, especially if you're not the one who called them.
| This is in no way specific to any DNA related situation.
| If any law enforcement shows up and has questions for
| you, you say nothing until you have a lawyer with you.
| kelnos wrote:
| Lawyers are expensive. Most people can't afford one for
| even one encounter with the police, let alone multiple.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Doesn't matter. If they're talking to you say you need
| your lawyer present -- that will end the interrogation,
| and you might never need a lawyer. But if you don't say
| that you might end up convicted.
| itishappy wrote:
| Pleading the 5th is free.
| noirbot wrote:
| I'm not saying it's fair or right. As with most things in
| life, the cost/benefit makes it likely you'll have to
| take some risks, but people need to understand that
| literally any interaction with any law enforcement
| without a lawyer present is a risk of things going
| horrifically badly. This is especially true if they show
| up and you do not know why. That is a massive set of
| alarm bells that should be going off.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Police (in the U.S. anyways) are allowed to use ruses
| almost without limits, so you might not even know you're
| being interrogated, and your answers can be used against
| you (and _only_ against you -- never to exculpate you!)
| in a court of law.
|
| IMO the hearsay rule is way too biased in favor of the
| government.
|
| Worse! Say you know it's police asking you questions, and
| the questions are all very harmless, so you answer them,
| but then you start to get an inkling that _you_ are a
| suspect, that they like you for some crime, so _now_ you
| shut up and /or lawyer up, but guess what: your
| disposition's change from cooperative to non-cooperative
| _can and will be used against you_ in a court of law!!
| What, you say? Yes, the SCOTUS in the 2010s (see Salinas
| vs. Texas, from.. 2014 IIRC) greatly reduced the 5th
| Amendment 's protections in this way. If you're talking
| then clam up, the fact that you clammed up -and at what
| particular question- can be used against you. And if you
| never said a word to them, that too can be used against
| you! The only thing that works is to tell them very early
| on that you will only talk to them with your lawyer
| present [and since you don't have a lawyer yet you might
| never talk to them] then _follow through_.
|
| If the police are talking to you it's either a) they
| think your testimony can convict someone else, and/or b)
| they like you for some crime and want to give you ample
| opportunity to convict yourself of it even if you didn't
| commit it (they may not know that, but they may like you
| so much for it that their bias is too strong to see that
| you're innocent) and even if you have no idea what the
| heck they're talking about (because they don't even have
| to tell you).
|
| See all of professor James Duane's videos on this topic,
| starting with Don't Talk to Police (this one is pre-
| Salinas), and then the later post-Salinas reprise(s) of
| it.
| noirbot wrote:
| I mean, assume any time you're talking with the police,
| you're being interrogated. If you called them yourself
| for something, then you've decided to take that risk, but
| that's also a situation where you're less likely to be in
| trouble yourself, though there's still a risk.
| toast0 wrote:
| If I've committed a crime and gotten away with it for
| several decades, I don't need a relative to NARC on me by
| giving 23 and me and the feds a DNA sample, thank you
| very much.
|
| It's bad enough they took my fingerprints when I worked
| for a school district.
| atoav wrote:
| Wrong people come into power, decide that they want some
| sort of purity based one genetic information, you are not
| it get genocided.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| >you are not it [,] get genocided.
|
| Wouldn't the singular be 'un-alived', these fucking days?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Can even one single person here articulate their
| specific fears of using 23andme_
|
| Sure. I find out my competitor for the top role has a
| degenerative disease, _e.g._ Parkinson's. It's not
| relevant for many years. But I use it, subtly, to shape
| opinion.
|
| More pointedly: we are in an era of mass disinformation.
| The simple fact that somebody used 23andMe makes any lie
| about it somewhat credible.
| busterarm wrote:
| There's a whole book about said fears.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Change-Agent-Daniel-
| Suarez/dp/1101984...
| lurkshark wrote:
| The company seems to be in rough condition. Say they go
| bankrupt and an ad-tech data broker buys their assets.
| Now DraftKings can laser focus their ads to folks
| genetically predisposed to addiction.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| This is both dystopian and hilarious.
|
| 23andMe a subsidiary of Pizza Hut... We know exactly what
| you crave and it ain't anchovies.
| jay-barronville wrote:
| > Say they go bankrupt and an ad-tech data broker buys
| their assets. Now DraftKings can laser focus their ads to
| folks genetically predisposed to addiction.
|
| Excellent example, but yikes!
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| You'd have to work out what variants predispose for that
| which is no easy task. And once you did that you don't
| even really need individual dna data. You might find say
| a swedish population tends to have the variant and you
| just target swedes in general.
| stcroixx wrote:
| Not having control of how my DNA is used. It can be taken
| by the state with a warrant, but otherwise I have control
| over it.
| sophacles wrote:
| Besides the obvious examples of gathering a nice database
| to use for genocidal purposes... (sure lot's of idiots
| like to say that's overblown or not really a worry, while
| being alive in a world where there are on-going 'ethnic
| cleansing' campaigns).
|
| There's also things like - the terms of service include
| the boilerplate "these terms are subject to change at any
| time", and I don't want those terms to suddenly change to
| "we will provide your PII to all insurance companies
| proactively in exchange for a kickback every time they
| are able to use it to reject a claim".
|
| I already get hassled by the law somewhat frequently
| because my house used to be the residence of a criminal
| (2 owners ago it was used as a rental and that owner
| evicted said criminal). I don't want to add getting
| hassled by a bunch of people who came in below the max IQ
| requirements over someone I've never met because they're
| from "that side" of the family.
| dylan604 wrote:
| yeah, it's like the shadow profiles on social media sites.
| just because you didn't do it, doesn't mean that someone else
| doesn't
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Why? It's just a record of a group of letters, not your soul. I
| upload my dna records everywhere I can. Sure I had some
| surprises but in general I benefit from those services.
| 23B1 wrote:
| high time preference thinking
| Spivak wrote:
| Only gotta last 80 years, it's pretty rational given the
| constraints. The what-ifs are unlikely to materialize at
| all, low probability to happen to you, and avoiding them if
| they do materialize requires that neither you nor any of
| your relatives submit their dna or have any contact with
| the justice system ever.
|
| DNA is already protected from use by insurance companies so
| that's a future harm that already got squashed.
| kelnos wrote:
| Funny you picked 80 years. It's been roughly 80 years
| since members of a certain ethnic group were hunted down,
| corralled, and murdered because of their lineage and
| genetics.
|
| And their murderers mostly only had census data and
| people willing to snitch on their neighbors to go on. A
| DNA database? Oof.
| Spivak wrote:
| Thankfully time only goes forward and since I don't
| expect a large scale ethnic cleansing among the developed
| world since our birth rates are already below replacement
| I think we're fine.
| auggierose wrote:
| Tell that to China, Russia, and Trump.
| 23B1 wrote:
| That's ethical egoism, not rationalism.
|
| Considering the second- and third-order effects of one's
| own decisions is obligatory in civilized society.
| Spivak wrote:
| Of course, how could I forget. My DNA is also used for
| medical research so I'm helping develop novel treatments
| to all manners of genetic diseases, and helping my future
| relatives uncover health risks.
| 23B1 wrote:
| blind optimism
| Spivak wrote:
| Negativity bias.
|
| Years ago I would have agreed with you but I have my
| anxiety under control now.
| atoav wrote:
| The religion on census data of people living in the
| netherlands also was just a bunch of letters, till the Nazis
| invaded, then suddenly the bunch of letters got another
| meaning.
|
| What the Nazis would have done if they had gotten their
| fingers onto such a ddatabase is anybodies guess.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Why not? What practical harm is caused to you by other people
| knowing your DNA?
| optymizer wrote:
| Now or in the future?
| philodeon wrote:
| Book recommendation for you: "IBM And The Holocaust" by Edwin
| Black.
|
| If IBM (then known as Hollerith) could do that much damage
| with German census data on punchcards...
| freedomben wrote:
| > _Mankind barely noticed when the concept of massively
| organized information quietly emerged to become a means of
| social control, a weapon of war, and a roadmap for group
| destruction._
|
| From IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black.
|
| Imagine the "massively organized information" that will be
| available to people in power in the future. It doesn't have
| to be a genocide for it to be useful to them. People in
| power today are fully on board with "social control" and
| it's so uncontroversial that they talk about it openly.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| Comments like this are why schools should make liberal arts
| education mandatory again in the STEM curriculum
| dekhn wrote:
| I took an alternate approach: my genome is freely available:
| https://my.pgp-hms.org/profile/hu80855C
|
| When I was sequenced, a bunch of genetic counselors at Illumina
| analyzed it and said they couldn't find a single gene mutation
| that was linked to increased risk of disease, which was a
| surprise to me but is really absence of information rather than
| information of absence.
| rendaw wrote:
| The problem with publicizing genetic information is that
| you're defacto publicizing large amounts of the genetic
| information of your relatives, who may not be in a life
| situation where publicizing it carries no risk. This is also
| an objection many have to 23andMe.
| fastball wrote:
| For example?
| ff317 wrote:
| What if they live in a country in which genetic evidence
| of a disease can deny or significantly increase the cost
| of health coverage? Even if you're clear of those for
| now, a new marker may be discovered tomorrow. Apparently
| (according another commenter) Life Insurance /can/
| legally look at this even in the US. What about
| employers? What if it puts them on the DNA-evidence hook
| for a "crime" in their jurisdiction which you and they
| don't think is an ethical law (evidence of homosexual
| activity in a country that imprisons for it, or worse).
| dpeckett wrote:
| Similar experience here, was WGS and running the results
| against ClinVar came up empty[1] for known disease causing
| variants. Was not expecting that at all.
|
| But I totally think this is more an absence of information
| than anything else. We all have a ton of de novo variation
| and that stuff is not going to be found in the databases.
|
| 1. Am carrying two recessive variants linked to a couple
| extremely rare developmental disorders (prevalence in live
| births of less than 1 in 10,000,000)
| snapcaster wrote:
| This is very unethical and you should be ashamed of yourself.
| You leaked 50% of your direct relatives here, 50% of any
| future or current children you have. Did you ask them for
| consent?
| dekhn wrote:
| Perhaps my ethical framework does not match your framework?
| Note that I start from the premise that genetic data is not
| possible to keep secret (you shed skin cells in public,
| state-level agents can get warrants to grab a cup you used
| from the garbage, etc).
|
| (no, I did not ask my children or my spouse or my parents
| or any other relatives for "consent").
| snapcaster wrote:
| Nothing is possible to keep secret if you're talking
| about state level agents combing through your garbage
| obviously.
|
| But do you think there might be a difference between
| leaving out a cup of coffee you drank from versus
| publishing it and advertising it online?
| acureau wrote:
| Even assuming you had a point, which I don't believe you
| do, it wouldn't be your place to decide this.
| breck wrote:
| For the record, 23andme is one of the few companies where the CEO
| never once responded to one of my emails (2017, 2019, 2022,
| 2024).
|
| You can make a lot of money just by betting on companies where
| the CEO (or the CEO's office) takes listening to customers'(who
| are rooting for them!) emails seriously, and shorting those that
| do not.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Ok, please share more! Who responded and who didn't?
| breck wrote:
| Responds: Airbnb, Stripe, Amazon, Apple, USAA, Microsoft,
| OpenAI, AngelList, Mercury, Coinbase, YCombinator (up to
| 2022) and more.
|
| Didn't: 23andme, VLTA, Reddit, YCombinator (post 2022)
| fallingsquirrel wrote:
| I'm curious to know the topic of these emails. I never once
| thought to cold email the CEO of a company. (Then again
| maybe that's why I'm a programmer, not a CEO myself.)
| breck wrote:
| Most of them are minor ideas like the ones I just
| copy/pasted below. But sometimes they are longer like
| this one: https://hub.scroll.pub/applecard/applecard.pdf
|
| -----
|
| Nope, we don't have one yet though it would be a good
| idea. I'm looping in Joe for this.
|
| Thanks for the nudge!
|
| Nathan Co-founder & CTO Help: www.airbnb.com/help Recent
| press: Washington Post http://bit.ly/KkEzT
|
| On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Breck Yunits
| <breck7@gmail.com> wrote:
|
| just curious why you don't have a favicon (or maybe it
| just doesn't work on my computer)?
|
| - favicon police
|
| ----
|
| Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2019 06:19:24 -1000
|
| Subject: Idea: OpenAI should invest in TabNine which uses
| GPT-2
|
| From: Breck Yunits <breck7@gmail.com>
|
| To: SArouter@openai.com
|
| The product is one in a million. Hard to code without it
| now.
|
| But the kid seems overworked and like he's struggling to
| keep up with demand (https://github.com/zxqfl/TabNine/iss
| ues/179#issuecomment-547...)
| soheil wrote:
| wow altman hired jacob bc of your email?
| breck wrote:
| i have no idea. i've sent sam many emails. that's just
| one. i'm sure most of my ideas are bad, but I like to
| pretend that 1 in 10 are a worthwhile tip.
|
| he (or his office/AGI reply bot) always humors me into at
| least believing he's listening ;)
|
| (he has also always generously provided me with great
| guidance many times over the years, like when he advised
| me to take the MSFT offer we got in 2014, when I was on
| the fence, which turned out to be the right move 110%)
| xyst wrote:
| I'm not parent comment but have received e-mail from Apple
| (Tim Cook and Steve Jobs), and T-Mobile (John Legere era).
|
| It wasn't personal emails but rather their assistants. Still
| a nice touch and issues were always resolved where L1-2
| support failed.
| alfanick wrote:
| Years ago, after months of pushback from Apple Authorised
| Service Provider I decided to write an email to Tim Cook...
| Got a phone call soon after straight from HQ and my issue
| was resolved - it's sometimes worth to escalate high up if
| the situation is absolutely out of company values
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| You cold e-mail CEOs and get a >70% hitrate? I gotta try this
| more often.
| breck wrote:
| I do put try to make them a mix of feedback + entertainment.
|
| Example
|
| To: jeff@amazon.com
|
| subject: The Day the Music Died
|
| I was looking forward to playing my Yamaha Digital Piano that
| I ordered from Amazon today when I got home from work at "the
| country club". Instead I'm stuck tapping this UPS "Delivery
| Attempted" notice and the melodies just aren't coming
| through.
|
| ?
|
| In the last 6 months I ordered 37 packages from Amazon. I
| needed to be home for zero.
|
| Why didn't Amazon send me an email, phone call, text, message
| through Echo, notification through one of my four Amazon
| iPhone apps, or airdrop from a drone alerting me that I
| needed to be there for this package?
|
| I also have an Amazon Echo at home so Alexa should have an
| idea of my schedule and know that the odds of a successful
| delivery at 4:42pm on a weekday are 1%. Now I'm listening to
| Alexa play sad songs instead of belting out great new tunes
| on my Yamaha.
|
| Also, why didn't the UPS driver call or text me when he or
| she was at my building to ask if it was okay to leave the
| package? This would have saved them a minimum of 1 trip and I
| wouldn't have to bet the delivery of my $700 package to a
| half a cent sticky note stuck to my door being pelted by the
| Seattle rain.
|
| OK love ya bye
|
| -Breck
| potsandpans wrote:
| If this is representative of the quality of your emails, I
| would read every one that you published.
| quesera wrote:
| This triggers my "don't overwhelm your correspondent"
| watchdog.
|
| I'm occasionally prone to self-indulgence in written
| correspondence.
|
| ... (There, I said it.)
|
| I hope that my coworkers are blissfully unaware of this
| tendency. Sometimes I must write dense things which they
| must read, because a formal record is required and
| technology is complicated. But I hope they perceive me as a
| crisp and clear communicator who makes copious but
| appropriate use of sentence fragments in bullet point form
| (not too deeply-nested). With judicious and limited use of
| humor, and only of the sort that is adequately subtle to be
| overlooked by any who would not readily accept it.
|
| I would especially hesitate to attempt anything but the
| most simplifed and direct version of my message in a
| request for help!
|
| Although I guess when you're emailing a consumer product
| corp c-suite, you have a greater expectation of patience
| for customer communications, and of general literacy.
|
| In truth, the exec's mail-tenders are likely relieved to
| receive anything not written in a hostile tone, and perhaps
| delighted by anything in complete sentences. All the more
| so, if they are able to help.
|
| Thank you. May every minor wickedness find its appreciative
| audience.
| gadders wrote:
| What was the reply? Give us the gist if you don't want to
| share the whole thing.
| breck wrote:
| Yes, they solved it. I forget what they did in that case,
| but IIRC it was like, that night or early next morning
| the piano showed up. And I got a phone call from someone
| in JB's office.
|
| Even last week I had a similar experience:
|
| Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2024 06:24:04 -1000
|
| Subject: the journey of the thermometer
|
| From: Breck Yunits <breck7@gmail.com>
|
| To: jeff@amazon.com
|
| ORDER NUMBER 112-0027370-6957065
|
| Please don't ask me to explain. Look at the shipping
| history. The package has travelled from Hawaii to
| California. I am in Hawaii. WTF?? October deliver for an
| amazon prime 2 day?!!!!
|
| please fix.
|
| thanks lov ya bye!
|
| ------
|
| Within hours I got a voicemail:
|
| "Hi, this is Heidi calling from the Amazon executive
| customer department calling you regarding to the email
| you sent to Andy Jesse"
|
| And Amazon identified and fixed the problem and gave me a
| $30 gift card.
|
| ----
|
| I tell all the startups I invest in: if the CEO of $1T
| Amazon with 1.6 million employees can intelligently
| handle receiving constructive customer emails over a $10
| purchase, why can't you?
| wslh wrote:
| I have a similar success rate with a few emails to top CEOs
| in companies such as AMEX, and Toshiba Japan. It is probably
| that someone else is shadowing them but they acted very
| quickly with specific issues, and less hierarchical people
| follow the issues until they were success. Better than
| support.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's not the CEO replying, it's one of his/her assistants.
| mr_toad wrote:
| More likely it'll be the PR dept. The CEO's assistants
| might glance at it.
| breck wrote:
| hence why I wrote "(or the CEO's office)"
| fn-mote wrote:
| I check the profile when I read crazy comments like the GP's.
| It looks like a busy life.
| jongjong wrote:
| I suppose it depends if your email is relevant to their
| interests.
|
| My CEO response rate is about 1%. That one time when DHH
| (creator of Ruby on Rails) responded to my email about my
| software library 10 years ago. It wasn't even a Ruby library.
| What a nice guy. A great CEO and engineer as well.
| kirubakaran wrote:
| I too can add that my in-person interactions with DHH were
| incredibly pleasant. What an amazing person!
| busterarm wrote:
| I dunno, man. Valve is one of the most profitable private
| companies ever and GabeN famously replies to cold emails.
|
| Honestly CEOs (and/or their staff) paying attention to
| customers is a typical marker of successful companies.
| dekhn wrote:
| Anne gave us the cold shoulder, too. if you're not in her list
| of people she wants to talk to, she'll ignore you. Susan was
| very different- extremely open and caring if you sent her an
| email when she was VP of Ads.
| Lionga wrote:
| Hedge Fund Managers hate this one little trick to beat all of
| their research
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| "Nearly every baby born in the U.S. has blood drawn in the
| immediate hours after their birth, allowing the baby to be tested
| for a panel of potentially life-threatening inherited disorders.
| This is a vital public health program, enabling early treatment
| of newborns with genetic disorders; for them, it can be the
| difference between a healthy life and an early death.
|
| But recent news suggests that police are seeking access to these
| newborn blood samples in criminal investigations. Such use of
| this trove of genetic material -- to hunt for evidence that could
| implicate a child's relative in a crime -- endangers public trust
| in this vital health program and threatens all Americans' right
| to genetic privacy."
|
| All of our new babies had heel stick blood drawn, won't the
| government be the eventual competitor of 23 and me (since
| Americans don't care too much about privacy).
|
| https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/police-are-usin...
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Not necessarily. Just because the government is collecting
| everyone's DNA doesn't mean they're gonna create a slick web
| app for showing you your ancestry results.
|
| That's like asking why the DMV isn't competing with Google for
| revenue...
| CSMastermind wrote:
| My most radical political opinion is that we need a right to
| privacy enshrined in a constitutional amendment.
|
| And it needs to be robust enough to prevent the government from
| subpoenaing data collected by private companies.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| The 4th Amendment should already do that.
| tikhonj wrote:
| I am very much not an expert, but my understanding is that
| the third-party doctrine[1] means that it (mostly) doesn't.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
| sophacles wrote:
| The traditional favorite game of the supreme court is
| reducing the bounds of the 4th amendment. At this point its
| easier to list the things that the 4th protects than it is
| to list all the exceptions and "well actually not this..."
| situations the court has carved out.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Should, but doesn't _as construed_ by the SCOTUS and the
| appeals courts below them. I think their reading of the 4th
| Amendment is in fact mostly right, especially as
| interpreted in the context of 1789. We could use an
| amendment to strengthen privacy, but it 's hard to write
| such a thing considering that almost everything we do
| nowadays is between "somewhat public" and "public".
| hackernewds wrote:
| Why is this published on their Investor page, against the
| reigning CEO?
| intunderflow wrote:
| It's mandatory that they have to disclose this
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| SEC regulations
| wslh wrote:
| What is a good alternative to 23andMe that retain
| confidentiality, and is it enough to use/play with Python
| packages for genetics
| dangero wrote:
| Dante Labs
| gruez wrote:
| I skimmed their website and it doesn't seem like they're
| promising any sort of confidentiality. Maybe there's
| something buried in their privacy policy, but you'd think
| that privacy would be a pretty big selling point?
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Home lab
| teitoklien wrote:
| DIY tips please on how to do it
|
| What do I need, centrifuges ?, Electrophoresis gel ?, X-RAY
| machines,
|
| Or hand held dna scanning devices like these :
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/pocket-sized-dna-
| rea...
|
| ?
| fragmede wrote:
| https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/24/sequencing-your-dna-
| wi...
|
| ~$800 USB dongle (above article was published in 2021 and
| the price has gone down) plus consumables.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Nanopore sequencing fidelity was garbage back in 2021.
| Not sure what it is now.
| chromatin wrote:
| slightly better, but still best for long read capability,
| not fidelity
| chewmieser wrote:
| Nebula might be worth checking out, I've heard it's pretty good
| but I have not personally used it.
|
| https://nebula.org/whole-genome-sequencing-dna-test/
| marcell wrote:
| I used to work at 23andMe, AMA
| j_bum wrote:
| What was your role?
| marcell wrote:
| Software engineer
| j_bum wrote:
| Were you working in the bioinformatics pipeline?
| marcell wrote:
| Kind of, dev ops and big data
| itake wrote:
| did the employees come out ok equity-wise from the spac merger?
| marcell wrote:
| I did not, but that's because I joined late and had a high
| strike price. I also turned down a second market offer to
| sell at around $15/share. Oops.
|
| Many people sold during internal private liquidity events,
| and they did well. If you joined early you did well.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Only the ones who cashed out on the private market before the
| company went public
| exttam40591 wrote:
| No, generally not. 23andMe only ever did ISOs prior to the
| SPAC merger, not RSUs, and they had a quite high strike
| price. There was a 6 month insider lock up against selling,
| so by the time most of us could sell, the price had tanked.
| By the time I was able to sell, the share price was so low
| that only my oldest options from when I started at the
| company in 2014 were in the money.
|
| I ended up making a few 10s of thousands. Not the 100s it
| would have taken to compensate for the low pay for all those
| years. And I probably did better than most by selling what I
| could when I could. Most people weren't in the money at all.
|
| Maybe if you timed the market perfectly you could have done
| well. I don't know that anyone did.
| CSDude wrote:
| did you have access to customer data
| marcell wrote:
| Yes but I was one of only a handful of people with this
| access. It was heavily audited. AFAIK no one ever used it
| inappropriately.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| Just for some perspective from outside the US: I work at a
| bank in a country subject to GDPR. I have access to customer
| data, as do most people on my team.
| shelled wrote:
| I worked at a US startup from my world country and that
| company dealt exclusively with PII (i.e. IDs, face etc) of
| people, including from the armed forces, of NA and some
| European countries.
|
| I had access to any data I wanted to see, download on my
| work laptop (we all worked remotely). I didn't have to ask
| anyone, I didn't have to justify it, and AFAIK it was not
| audited. Logged? I don't know, maybe it was. I had sent
| mail once regarding to a director and SVP and never
| received even an ack. Oh by the way, everybody had access,
| not just me. For that no other access type was required
| either. Company email was sufficient. And IIRC even the
| stage env. had product data and stage was truly fair game.
|
| No, I did not misuse and used it handful of times for
| debugging purposes. I doubt anybody did.
| cryptonector wrote:
| How many people in the startup?
| dgan wrote:
| Do you have knowledge of sensitive data being sold to third
| parties?
| marcell wrote:
| Not directly, afaik they never transferred the data.
|
| However they sold access to the data to a bug pharma company
| (GSK). This was widely publicized. Not sure if that counts:
| GSK had some ability to look at the data but didn't have an
| on premise copy of it.
|
| Also, I worked on the GDPR deletion project. I can attest
| that they do best effort to delete your data when your
| request that. At least when I was there, this was the case.
| One caveat is for coding errors, oversights and bugs.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| I had direct knowledge of this. To clarify I believe
| 23andMe did not give direct access to individual's DNA
| data.
|
| What 23andMe was selling to GSK was the results of GWAS
| (Genome Wide Association Study) results, which could be
| used to generate therapeutic candidates.
|
| GWAS is a sort of rudimentary machine learning algorithm
| that basically maps a phenotype (like propensity for a
| particular disease) to a region of DNA. From there the drug
| company can narrow down candidate genes to attempt to
| develop specific drugs for.
| filchermcurr wrote:
| Is the data actually deleted in non-GDPR countries as well?
| cryptonector wrote:
| How do they confirm where the requestor is?
| marcell wrote:
| Yes, the same code runs for all customers
| scruple wrote:
| What is you personal opinion about this news?
| marcell wrote:
| The company was not very well run so I'm not surprised. Their
| stock price has tanked over 10x since IPO, and it dropped by
| half in the employee lockout period after IPO.
| solardev wrote:
| Where are we at in terms of being able to use genetic info for
| treatments and lifestyle improvements?
| marcell wrote:
| I'm not really sure, probably far away. Most of the genomic
| analysis showed very weak correlations. I was more on
| software side of things.
| Balgair wrote:
| Thanks for the AMA.
|
| I want to get my genetic data, but, like obviously I don't want
| to go through one of these services where they ingest all that
| data and keep it around forever. Honestly, I'd like to be the
| only person with access to it and I can destroy it at will.
|
| Tough requirements, I know.
|
| Anyways, do you know of any services that meet those reqs? Any
| good DIY ideas?
|
| Again, thanks for the AMA
| marcell wrote:
| I didn't follow competitors too closely, but Color _may_ be
| what you 're looking for. I don't know if they sell direct to
| consumer though.
|
| If you use 23andMe, and request data deletion, they will do a
| best effort to delete the data. It's part of their GDPR
| requirement. When I was there, I worked on this project and
| they put a lot of effort into it. A big chunk of engineering
| org focused GDPR compliance for a month or two. They
| definitely don't intentionally keep data around if you
| request deletion.
|
| The one caveat is that data deletion is hard, and its
| possible that some gets accidentally retained. I left the
| company over 5 years ago, so I don't know how good their
| deletion process is now.
|
| One final note: to keep costs low, 23andMe doesn't look at
| your whole genome. They only look at a handful of "SNPs" in
| your genome that are known to be significant. If you've heard
| how we share 99.5% of our DNA with chimpanzees, this is what
| they're basing this on. They look at the <0.5% of DNA that
| commonly varies between humans.
|
| The reason I mention this is that, if you're very interested
| in your DNA sequencing, you may want to opt for a higher cost
| service that does full genome analysis. I don't know any
| names but I believe there are some DNA services that do this.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Was there an internal sense that the business model was flawed?
| You can only sell so many DNA tests to people, and the pharma
| research angle always felt like more of a pipe dream than a
| viable business.
| marcell wrote:
| The company bet heavily on pharma/genomics, and it was a bad
| bet.
|
| When I was there, people were pretty confident in this bet.
| They had just signed a huge deal with GSK, so it seemed to be
| going well. There wasn't widespread dissent at the time
| (~2016-2017). I imagine its different now that the stock
| price has crashed over 10x.
|
| The company did follow Ancestry.com pretty closely. Ancestry
| did _not_ bet heavily on genomics. Instead, they bet heavily
| on a subscription model and focused more on consumer interest
| in their ancestors. This has worked out a lot better for them
| than 23andMe.
|
| FWIW, I agree it's obvious in retrospect that pharma was a
| bad bet. Leadership should have made better decisions.
| dvh wrote:
| There is absolutely no reason for these companies to collect your
| PII whatsoever. You should go to nearest pharmacy and buy sterile
| swab, swab yourself and write long random number on it and send
| it. Once a month company publishes one giant zip with all the
| monthly result where you find your file by that random number you
| wrote.
| ben_w wrote:
| > write long random number on it
|
| Human brains when generating 'random' numbers:
| https://xkcd.com/221/
|
| > Once a month company publishes one giant zip with all the
| monthly result where you find your file by that random number
| you wrote.
|
| Given how much of our appearance is due to genetics, that's
| basically all the harm with none of the convenience.
| zahlman wrote:
| >Human brains when generating 'random' numbers
|
| Fortunately, contemporary humans have access to computers,
| which can generate random numbers for them free of charge.
|
| >Given how much of our appearance is due to genetics, that's
| basically all the harm
|
| I can't fathom your concept of "harm"; and neither, I think,
| would any prospective customer of this service.
| ben_w wrote:
| > I can't fathom your concept of "harm"; and neither, I
| think, would any prospective customer of this service.
|
| I'm fairly relaxed about my medical history, but it's
| really obvious to me that I'm weird in being relaxed.
|
| Despite my relaxed attitude, it's still fairly obvious that
| this lists every genetic condition*, which in turn
| obviously going to be relevant to any health insurance
| provider that isn't banned from using it.
|
| Monetary damages are one of the easiest ones to quantify,
| from what I hear.
|
| * even those that have not _yet_ had the relevant genes
| discovered, because statistical methods need a larger
| population
| gklitz wrote:
| What? "I'm worried my genetic sequence will be leaked and
| abused" turns into "why not just have the company leak the
| genetic sequences of everyone every month" and you can't
| see the harm?
|
| At this point we practically have a single search engine
| that'll take you genetic sequence aa input and return your
| face, you entire family tree, your current job and address
| and what you do in your free time.
| stavros wrote:
| Or just create an account with a username and password and get
| the results there, like every other company does.
| psychlops wrote:
| How would that avoid PII? One assumes there would need to be
| an email address to recover that account, and that would
| likely link to every single detail about the owner.
| gklitz wrote:
| If "the account" is just a random number, then what is
| there to recover?
| cryptonector wrote:
| The IPs you access the site from.
| stavros wrote:
| Throwaway email address?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| This fixes the issue with leaks. But it creates a much worse
| issue: anyone can now sequence anyone else's DNA with zero
| oversight or privacy controls.
|
| The film Gattaca covers how this could lead to a sort of night
| are society pretty well, I highly recommend it.
|
| It also makes it much much harder to use the data for clinical
| research.
| gizmondo wrote:
| What prevents anyone from sequencing anyone else's DNA with
| the current system?
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| aye. fake emails aren't hard to come across. create a fake
| username and ID, and then claim the sample is you or your
| kid.
| duped wrote:
| Nothing but terms and conditions of the website. That's how
| Paul Holes identified the Golden State Killer, he created a
| fake profile and sent in the DNA from a crime scene and
| worked backwards from the results to find a suspect.
| psychlops wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how is this "much worse" than a breached
| honeypot of DNA information?
| nytesky wrote:
| Great movie and I didn't realize the title was composed of a
| nucleic acid sequence until like the 2020s!
| tylervigen wrote:
| OK, you send the company two random numbers. One an ID, and
| the other a unique encryption key to encrypt the results.
| gklitz wrote:
| Unless you are suggesting they publish the most PII there is,
| you should propably specify that the data they should publish
| should be aggregated non-identifying information next to the
| number, not the actual DNa strings.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Your genetic data is probably most accurate / valuable PII
| there is. Assuming multiple relatives use the service and at
| least one of them leaks online identity the whole jig is up.
|
| So the issue is not tying it to your online identity, but
| rather them keeping a resource which becomes more valuable as
| the time goes on. So why is that an issue... most obviously
| because of genetic predisposition. There is always a temptation
| to sell diseases you are predisposed to insurers (and maybe
| employers... ugh). After that you can imagine someone figuring
| that genetics affects any number of things (sugar / weight /
| addiction) and sell that to advertisers...
| halyconWays wrote:
| Are you kidding? The CIA would never fund that and if such a
| company existed, the founder would probably end up going for a
| 130 MPH drive at 2 AM and getting in a crash that burned so hot
| nothing but ash remained.
| matrix87 wrote:
| Something I just remembered about this company: after a data
| breach, they tried retroactively changing ToS to shield from
| lawsuits
|
| Frankly I find this lack of accountability utterly repulsive.
| Anything this leadership touches is poison to me
|
| > Through a mechanism called acceptance by silence or inaction,
| 23andMe stipulated that customers must explicitly tell the
| company they disagree with the new terms within 30 days of being
| notified of the changes or they will be locked into the terms
| automatically.
|
| > After the attack, hackers published around 1 million data
| points about users with Ashkenazi Jewish heritage and information
| about more than 300,000 users with Chinese heritage.
|
| https://www.axios.com/2023/12/07/23andme-terms-of-service-up...
| yard2010 wrote:
| Bullshit translation:
|
| We quit. You didn't give us a real offer, so we're out. We still
| believe in the company, but you have too much control, so we're
| leaving to avoid a fight. We did our best, but it's time to go.
| xbar wrote:
| I suspect it goes further.
|
| "You are a liar and we cannot further risk our reputations on
| your dishonesty."
| cromulent wrote:
| Some background from Freakonomics a few months ago:
|
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-23andme-going-under-...
| luxpir wrote:
| A little trivia: since the recent 23andMe breach, the desci
| project genomesdao has launched a new service that allows 23andMe
| data exports to be imported into their platform. They then
| attract pharmaceuticals to make specific requests and share the
| profit from the requests. They'll explain it better on the site!
| They've been around since at least 2018, have won recognised
| innovation awards and is run by scientists, so not your typical
| crypto project.
|
| Disclaimer: 23andMe customer and genomesdao holder.
| aanet wrote:
| This would make for a great case study in corporate governance.
|
| I hope someone is writing a book on _Corporate Governance in
| Silicon Valley_, and include stories from, say, 23andMe, OpenAI,
| WeWork, Uber, and tons more. I'd pay $$ to read 'em all in one
| place.
|
| /sarc
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