23andMe is not doing well. Its stock is on the verge of being delisted. It shut down its in-house drug-development unit last month, only the latest in several rounds of layoffs. Last week, the entire board of directors quit, save for Anne Wojcicki, a co-founder and the company’s CEO. Amid this downward spiral, Wojcicki has said she’ll consider selling 23andMe—which means the DNA of 23andMe’s 15 million customers would be up for sale, too. 23andMe’s trove of genetic data might be its most valuable asset. For about two decades now, since human-genome analysis became quick and common, the A’s, C’s, G’s, and T’s of DNA have allowed long-lost relatives to connect, revealed family secrets, and helped police catch serial killers. Some people’s genomes contain clues to what’s making them sick, or even, occasionally, how their disease should be treated. For most of us, though, consumer tests don’t have much to offer beyond a snapshot of our ancestors’ roots and confirmation of the traits we already know about. (Yes, 23andMe, my eyes are blue.) 23andMe is floundering in part because it hasn’t managed to prove the value of collecting all that sensitive, personal information. And potential buyers may have very different ideas about how to use the company’s DNA data to raise the company’s bottom line. This should concern anyone who has used the service. DNA might contain health information, but unlike a doctor’s office, 23andMe is not bound by the health-privacy law HIPAA. And the company’s privacy policies make clear that in the event of a merger or an acquisition, customer information is a salable asset. 23andMe promises to ask its customers’ permission before using their data for research or targeted advertising, but that doesn’t mean the next boss will do the same. It says so right there in the fine print: The company reserves the right to update its policies at any time. A spokesperson acknowledged to me this week that the company can’t fully guarantee the sanctity of customer data, but said in a statement that “any scenario which impacts our customers’ data would need to be carefully considered. We take the privacy and trust of our customers very seriously, and would strive to maintain commitments outlined in our Privacy Statement.” Certain parties might take an obvious interest in the secrets of Americans’ genomes. Insurers, for example, would probably like to know about any genetic predispositions that might make you more expensive to them. In the United States, a 2008 law called the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act protects against discrimination by employers and health insurers on the basis of genetic data, but gaps in it exempt providers of life, disability, and long-term-care insurance from such restrictions. That means that if you have, say, a genetic marker that can be correlated with a heart condition, a life insurer could find that out and legally deny you a policy—even if you never actually develop that condition. Law-enforcement agencies rely on DNA data to solve many difficult cases, and although 23andMe says it requires a warrant to share data, some other companies have granted broad access to police. You don’t have to commit a crime to be affected: Because we share large chunks of our genome with relatives, your DNA could be used to implicate a close family member or even a third cousin whom you’ve never met. Information about your ethnicity can also be sensitive, and that’s encoded in your genome, too. That’s all part of why, in 2020, the U.S. military advised its personnel against using consumer tests. Spelling out all the potential consequences of an unknown party accessing your DNA is impossible, because scientists’ understanding of the genome is still evolving. Imagine drugmakers trolling your genome to find out what ailments you’re at risk for and then targeting you with ads for drugs to treat them. “There’s a lot of ways that this data might be misused or used in a way that the consumers couldn’t anticipate when they first bought 23andMe,” Suzanne Bernstein, counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told me. And unlike a password that can be changed after it leaks, once your DNA is out in the wild, it’s out there for good. Some states, such as California, give consumers additional genetic-privacy rights and might allow DNA data to be deleted ahead of a sale. The 23andMe spokesperson told me that “customers have the ability to download their data and delete their personal accounts.” Companies are also required to notify customers of any changes to terms of service and give them a chance to opt out, though typically such changes take effect automatically after a certain amount of time, whether or not you’ve read through the fine print. Consumers have assumed this risk without getting much in return. When the first draft of the human genome was unveiled, it was billed as a panacea, hiding within its code secrets that would help each and every one of us unlock a personalized health plan. But most diseases, it turns out, can’t be pinned on a single gene. And most people have a boring genome, free of red-flag mutations, which means DNA data just aren’t that useful to them—at least not in this form. And if a DNA test reveals elevated risk for a more common health condition, such as diabetes and heart disease, you probably already know the interventions: eating well, exercising often, getting a solid eight hours of sleep. (To an insurer, though, even a modicum of risk might make someone an unattractive candidate for coverage.) That’s likely a big part of why 23andMe’s sales have slipped. There are only so many people who want to know about their Swedish ancestry, and that, it turns out, is consumer DNA testing’s biggest sell. Wojcicki has pulled 23andMe back from the brink before, after the Food and Drug Administration ordered the company to stop selling its health tests in 2013 until they could be proved safe and effective. In recent months, Wojcicki has explored a variety of options to save the company, including splitting it to separate the cash-burning drug business from the consumer side. Wojcicki has still expressed interest in trying to take the company private herself, but the board rejected her initial offer. 23andMe has until November 4 to raise its shares to at least $1, or be delisted. As that date approaches, a sale looks more and more likely—whether to Wojcicki or someone else. The risk of DNA data being misused has existed since DNA tests first became available. When customers opt in to participate in drug-development research, third parties already get access to their de-identified DNA data, which can in some cases be linked back to people’s identities after all. Plus, 23andMe has failed to protect its customers’ information in the past—it just agreed to pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit resulting from an October 2023 data breach. But for nearly two decades, the company had an incentive to keep its customers’ data private: 23andMe is a consumer-facing business, and to sell kits, it also needed to win trust. Whoever buys the company’s data may not operate under the same constraints.
aldalire Now • 100%
I mean, that’s the point
aldalire Now • 83%
They say a carrier unlocked phone is recommended because carrier locked phones often disable the option to OEM unlock your phone in the Developer settings.
aldalire Now • 94%
What does this do
aldalire Now • 100%
In germany they fine your ass if they find out you’re torrenting.
aldalire Now • 92%
Love it when Mental Outlaw makes a video about i2p
Check out his other i2p videos
aldalire Now • 100%
Wow, thank you kind sir 😊
aldalire Now • 96%
Lmao fuck off with your ad
aldalire Now • 100%
I once used my left hand for the right hand rule because i was writing with my right hand during a physics test
Needless to say, i got the wrong sign
aldalire Now • 100%
Let's do the math. Rice contains about 0.4 mg/kg As by weight. The "bad" rice in Louisiana or whatever contains about 75% more - about 0.7 mg/kg. Let's round up to 1 mg/kg to make the math easy. Chronic exposure limits for a 50 kg adult are about 5 mg/day (on the low end).
So you'd have to choke down a full 10 lb bag of rice every day (about 110 cups of cooked rice) to start to tip the scales. Other sources of arsenic, like groundwater, are likely far more significant.
Comment stolen from reddit
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/26553762 > How can I use my VPNs port forwarding feature while also disabling global routing by adding “route-nopull” in the OpenVPN config? Using hide.me vpn > > I found a relevant post, but the links to the anwsers don't work anymore: https://forum.netgate.com/topic/127557/openvpn-client-port-forwarding-route-nopull-issue
aldalire Now • 50%
Where the seasoned sailors at
How can I use my VPNs port forwarding feature while also disabling global routing by adding “route-nopull” in the OpenVPN config? Using hide.me vpn I found a relevant post, but the links to the anwsers don't work anymore: https://forum.netgate.com/topic/127557/openvpn-client-port-forwarding-route-nopull-issue
aldalire Now • 100%
they can’t win, it’s cute that they’re trying 🥰
aldalire Now • 100%
this guy pirates
aldalire Now • 33%
aldalire Now • 50%
Just because they don’t give a shit about media preservation doesn’t mean they’re not helping towards media preservation by pirating. Just by downloading a torrent you share upload bits of it while you download, even if you stop and delete it after you watch it. And i’d argue, the more people have media, the less likely it will fade away in 100 years.
aldalire Now • 40%
Also not true, i seed in i2p
And also, leechers help in media preservation as well. The more copies there are of media, the more likely it will be preserved well into the future. Even if they dont seed now, just having and spreading copies of media definitely does help in media preservation
aldalire Now • 22%
Aggrandize deez nuts bro. And being a hero of digital media preservation is only one of the myriad of reasons to pirate, such as
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Not accidentally signing away your rights to sue Disney due to forced arbitration when you avail a free trial of Disney+
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No drm
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Puts economic and financial pressure on the studio to keep games cheap
(i’m also gonna ambush my friends about Signal on sunday and coerce them to download it to get rid of the green bubbles)
How do you use BiglyBT to discover I2P torrents from different trackers? I tend to just go to postman.i2p and discover torrents there, but I want a way to discover torrents using BiglyBT and I2P. I know that BiglyBT has DHT capabilities, does that work over the I2P network to discover torrents (Perhaps through Swarm Discovery?) Any seasoned captains out there?
I was looking for ways to bypass the Chegg blur. I came across this reddit thread (https://archive.is/Z4r5c#selection-2584.0-2584.1) and one of the comments read: "There used to be a website (probably 5 years ago) that’d scrape answers when you post the link. I can’t remember the name though, but hopefully someone else here is privy to it (if it still exists)." The comment underneath was removed by reddit, but I can't help but think that the link removed by reddit might be this website. Fuck reddit btw, glad we're in this ship now. Anyone here know which site they mentioned?
Crap, i forgot about last week. Time for another Skepticism Sunday! ### Stay on topic: - This thread is only for comments discussing the uncertainties, shortcomings, and concerns some may have about **Monero.** - NOT the positive aspects of it. - Discussion can relate to the *technology* itself or its *economics*. - Talk about community and price is not wanted, but some discussion about it maybe allowed if it relates well. - Be as respectful and nice as possible. This discussion has potential to be more emotionally charged as it may bring up issues that are extremely upsetting: many people are not only financially but emotionally invested in the ideas and tools around Monero. --- ### How it works: 1. Post your concerns about Monero in reply to this thread. 2. If you can address these concerns, or add further details to them -- *reply to that comment.* This will make it easily **sort-able.** 3. Upvote the comments that are the *most valid criticisms* of it that *have few or no real honest* solutions/answers to them. 4. The comment that mentions the biggest problems of Monero *should have the most karma.* --- > The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. - [Richard Feynman](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman)
I’m taking on the mantle this week. ### Stay on topic: - This thread is only for comments discussing the uncertainties, shortcomings, and concerns some may have about **Monero.** - NOT the positive aspects of it. - Discussion can relate to the *technology* itself or its *economics*. - Talk about community and price is not wanted, but some discussion about it maybe allowed if it relates well. - Be as respectful and nice as possible. This discussion has potential to be more emotionally charged as it may bring up issues that are extremely upsetting: many people are not only financially but emotionally invested in the ideas and tools around Monero. --- ### How it works: 1. Post your concerns about Monero in reply to this thread. 2. If you can address these concerns, or add further details to them -- *reply to that comment.* This will make it easily **sort-able.** 3. Upvote the comments that are the *most valid criticisms* of it that *have few or no real honest* solutions/answers to them. 4. The comment that mentions the biggest problems of Monero *should have the most karma.* --- > The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. - [Richard Feynman](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman)
With localmonero shutting down, what would be the challenges of creating a federated version of localmonero? Traders and buyers can have accounts at different servers but still be able to trade each other and see each others' listings. The pros i can see are: It would be harder to stop without a single point of failure, and brave server maintainers can host their services in different jurisdictions to prevent legal troubles. And it would be very difficult to prosecute server admins, as they aren't the creator but merely hosting a site.
drive.proton.me
No shade at the person Michael Fitzgerald (or Stoic.xmr). He's probably a good person But clearly a better quality book with the same name can be written by a person that understands that the average paragraph contains at least three or four sentences. I can write one. I've never written a book before, but fuck it. What topics would you like to be included in a book titled "Monero Standard"?
The monero community is building a lot of infrastructure to build a circular economy, and there is a lot of recent developments in that regard, such as xmrbazaar which is a sort of ebay and the sellers accepts monero. This is great. However, how can we penetrate markets outside of the monero economy? I fear that Monero still has the "dangerous hacker crypto which funds terrorism and north korea" reputation, and although while not true, could severely pause monero adoption and hurt us as a community as a whole. We as a community value privacy, but i feel like we need to work together as a community to forge an alternative to the mainstream narrative about privacy coins. I'm thinking something revolutionarily positive, at least in the USA, such as making a charity that gives directly to homeless people, or setting up a decentralized network of people that work together to distribute life saving drugs for cheap (because drug prices are really fricking high here). Privacy coins tend to attract privacy minded people, and privacy minded people won't even touch twitter with a 10 foot pole because of all the injected ads and the tracking, and i respect that. But, one of these days we gotta do something big to break the mainstream narrative. I personally am locked in, I have a girlfriend and two pets and a full time job, but for those that have less to lose and more time and resources to spare for the cause, i say let's fking do it. Anything, man. Let's change society with this thing.
I've been contemplating about Monero's place in society. If Bitcoin is (debatable) "Digital Gold" then Monero is a non-custodial Digital Offshore Bank Account. There has never been a point in history when there's been a means to hide your wealth perfectly. The possiblities are endless (i've also drank too much coffee this morning). It is a way to break free from the chains of debt. Struggling to pay off your medical debt? Hide all your money in Monero, tell the banks to screw themselves, declare bankruptcy, and rebuild your credit score after the dust settles. Too much student loan debt and afraid they'll come after your money after you default? Hide your money in Monero and tell those vultures in Sally Mae to fuck off. (I skipped a couple steps and important details here and there) Credit card debt? Chapter 7 their asses and they can't touch your money when it's protected by ring signatures lmao get fucked. Of course, you still have to protect your assets such as your house. I haven't tried these strategies out yet, as I still haven't been forced to the brink with my finances. But when the time comes, instead of waiting for the government to implement more robust social safety nets, Monero can protect the wealth I have rightfully earned through my labor. Personally, my father is getting crushed by credit card debt. I think he's paid more interest than the principal amount to those lowlife banker scumbags. Fortunately he's able to survive, but he could be in a better place. Any other scenarios where people can adopt an adversarial strategy against the system? More ways out for people suffering as an economic debt slave? I would like to see a "guide" for this too, a way to more perfectly say fuck you to debt collectors.
Let's just all stop and appreciate that libgen is a thing in the internet. It has saved me so much money with very overpriced math textbooks during college when my family was low-income. It contains virtually all the books, and even obscure ones. It provides low barriers to entry for knowledge for people wanting to advance their career, and perfect for finding epubs for books to send to my kindle. (I buy physical copies of books, it's just convenient to have a kindle instead of volumes of lord of the rings while travelling) Overall, this is what the internet promised. Fast, easy, universal access to information. It sucks that governments are trying to take it down, and do what governments do best which is to restrict the flow of information and restrict freedom. 10/10, libgen is the best thing in the internet. Long live libgen
I’m posting this on the Monero sub because ya’ll are chill, the BTC community are occasionally peppered with nuts My friend who’s a Bitcoin maxi has took all his savings and put it in bitcoin, i believe 10k USD more or less. He’s very (almost religiously) certain that bitcoin will skyrocket. I talk, debate and question his beliefs for weeks now, trying to take a nonjudgmental stance (although sometimes i falter), and there are three pieces of “evidence” that he believes Bitcoin will eventually 100k or even 1M 1. The bitcoin standard by Saifadean Ammous, a watered down textbook on Austrian economics that I’ve been reading recently actually. 2. The “Power Law”, basically a regression analysis on Bitcoin’s historic price and adoption, mainly esposed by this dude https://x.com/Giovann35084111 (here’s a youtube vid https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=NxAkZ2tHQko) 3. The “Energy Hypothesis” of bitcoin, he thinks that bitcoin will allow society to capture excess energy generation and make it profitable through mining bitcoin I’ve reviewed these and think it’s flimsy at best. It is under my belief that a store of value can only be feasible when either it is a medium of exchange or if it is backed by something (like fiat paper money, for example) that allows it to be an efficient medium of exchange, none of which applied to bitcoin right now. I even try to suggest him books like Roger Ver’s Hijacking Bitcoin (that I converted from epub to pdf just for him) and he wouldn’t read it because “Ver’s a scammer and got fooled by BCH”. Although I really just think it’s heavy confirmation bias, Ver is indisputably a knowledgeable source for bitcoin (he was an early adopter, he’s “Bitcoin Jesus” for god’s sake, and has a lot of knowledge of the economics behind bitcoin given that he’s a businessman who’s built his businesses on top of bitcoin). Hijacking Bitcoin is an excellent book btw go check out the pdf I posted it a while ago on this sub I’m just looking for advice on how to proceed. It was fun debating and dunking on him but at this point i’m just worried that the bitcoin bubble will burst and he’d lose his savings. It’s one of those occasions where I kinda don’t want to be right in the debate
github.com
I remember 5 years ago Musescore allowed free downloads of sheet music with an account. Now, I'm trying to get back in to playing the piano, and I was surprised that they're requiring you to pay, so fuck em Pretty easy to do with Tampermonkey. They also show you how to set it up on iOS, which is pretty convenient for nabbing sheet music in my iPad
Unless you enjoy holding paper monero, and letting centralized exchanges get away with fractional reserves, always withdraw your crypto!
I’m tryna buy more monero bro just dip it just a tad. Just a touch.