Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

investors.23andme.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 372 posts

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#341

Post by noirbot »

kelnos wrote: post #218
noirbot wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lawyers are expensive. Most people can't afford one for even one encounter with the police, let alone multiple.

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.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#342

Post by gerdesj »

Mtinie wrote: post #224
gerdesj wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 g…

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.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#343

Post by marcell »

Balgair wrote: post #270
marcell wrote: post #128

I used to work at 23andMe, AMA

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

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 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.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#344

Post by marcell »

dehrmann wrote: post #306
marcell wrote: post #128

I used to work at 23andMe, AMA

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.

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.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#345

Post by marcell »

filchermcurr wrote: post #172
marcell wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is the data actually deleted in non-GDPR countries as well?

Yes, the same code runs for all customers

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#346

Post by marcell »

solardev wrote: post #176
marcell wrote: post #128

I used to work at 23andMe, AMA

Where are we at in terms of being able to use genetic info for treatments and lifestyle improvements?

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.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#348

Post by _DeadFred_ »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #51
AlbertCory wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose I should know this: who owns newspapers.com? What's the connection?

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…

If you are in Salt Lake go check out the computers in the big fancy temple temple there, they used to help you research ancestry stuff. Though all that could have been because we were there on some sort of VIP thing and it might not be open to the public. Interesting side, it's missionaries there that help you. Only instead of young men shipped out into the world, it was attractive young women on missionary to the temple from all over the world.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#349

Post by [deleted] »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #121
fragmede wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nanopore sequencing fidelity was garbage back in 2021. Not sure what it is now.

[deleted]

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#350

Post by Diagon »

chromatin wrote: post #286
LarsDu88 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nanopore sequencing fidelity was garbage back in 2021. Not sure what it is now.

slightly better, but still best for long read capability, not fidelity

Would we be able to improve that with multiple runs? eg. 2 our of 3? (Or, ie. are the errors systematic?)
Post reply on HN