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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • So I am proposing that the Democratic party is acting irrationally and suboptimally, but you claim that the Democrats are acting most optimally, and it is the fringe left that is acting irrationally instead by refusing to accept a unfair split against all game theory guidance, causing all of us to eat shit (despite them making up only low single digits). Yet if the Democrats are so rational, how come they keep losing? Shouldn’t they have found an optimal strategy to get around the irrational ultimatum of the left? Yet here we are.


  • I want people to be able to report bugs without any trouble.

    Thank you for being aware! I’ve experienced this on github.com. I’ve tried to submit issues several times to open source projects, complete with proposed code to solve a bug, but github shadowbans my account 6 hours after creating it (because I use a VPN? a third-party email provider? do not provide a phone number? who knows). I can see the issue and pull request when logged in, but they only see a 404 on their project page even if I give them a direct link. I ended up sending them a screenshot of the issue page just to convince them this was even possible. Sad to hear gitlab does it even worse now by making phone mandatory.


  • the most a third party is going to do is shave off a few percentage points, resulting in the main party losing

    If the third party can force the main party to lose, then it holds ultimatum power and game theory rules apply. The main party irrationally keeps rejecting the ultimatum and as a result keeps losing. To execute the threat of the ultimatum even after the unfair split has already been offered is the paradox of game theory. You have to appear credible enough to carry out such a threat, but the only reliable way to appear credible is to actually follow through on such threats every time.

    The Democratic party keeps losing and shifting right because it acts irrationally and fails to execute optimal game theory strategy. It could have offered the left a fair split and we could have all had guaranteed single-payer medical care, food, and housing, but instead none of us will have women’s rights, and the immigrants and gays among us will be herded into cages.




  • I know traditionally the dream fantasy of book readers has been to own an expansive physical library, with shelf after shelf full of book spines, but I just could never get into it. I’m a data hoarder, not an object hoarder! All my books are digital, mandatory in plaintext DRM-free format, sorted and backed up. I find joy in the knowledge that everything I have ever read is instantly grep’able, ageless, and can fit in my pocket (on a thumbdrive) wherever I go.

    I do prefer to read on e-ink as well, because the device is lighter than any book, guaranteed to fit in my pocket, can hold multiple books, and gives me control over font size. The only downside is when the battery gets old it needs more frequent recharging. A paper book will not refuse to work for lack of power!







  • Solution: answer “yes” whenever asked but don’t do anything further. This will stop the questions since the “mystery” has been solved. If someone actually propositions, say “flattered but you are not my type”. End up drowning in pussy from all the gay-chaser girls who think they “can change you”.



  • Btw, old reddit used to display the exact upvote/downvote counts (“x upvoted, y downvoted”) for posts AND comments in the “title” attribute of the total number, visible as a tooltip when hovering the mouse over it. All that “x% upvoted it” for posts and removing the counts entirely for comments was nonsense pushed through by the previous reddit jerk CEO on 2014-06-18 against all community opposition (what is it with reddit and dumping unpopular changes in June?).

    If you gonna recreate old reddit, please do not include these later CEO meddlings in it! One of the best features of lemmy is the display of exact counts (which was also a major advertised draw of voat.com and raddle.me before it). Let’s keep that in!



  • There’s also no addresses on Gedmatch, the police would email you and ask for your details.

    You are splitting hairs. Unless you took precautions to use a fake name and an untraceable email address, the police are showing up at your door. It’s what they do.

    On the ‘turned on by default’ statement, that’s just untrue.

    Here’s the gedmatch page describing their policy, and here’s the screenshot they use to illustrate it:

    “Public” is selected by default. Yeah yeah, they added “public opt-in” and “public opt-out” options in 2019 and forgot to update their screenshot, but I bet “public opt-in” is still selected by default. The NYT article says exactly that too. It is just untrue to call that “just untrue”! And can you guess what happened to all the people who uploaded their DNA data before 2019? Were all they automatically upgraded to “public opt-in”? I don’t understand why you are so adamant to protect gedmatch saying “go ahead, upload your DNA freely!” when we know for sure that it was a free-for-all at least until 2019.

    And you are still splitting hairs because you haven’t refuted my main claim that police can get your data with a warrant. All that “opt-in/opt-out” is for the gedmatch’s voluntary police information warrantless sharing program. I have seen no indication that gedmatch will not search the entire database for a match upon police request with a warrant. I have reason to believe that they will, because I know the state is sovereign. You cannot shield your information stored at third parties from government search just because you signed a privacy agreement with them.

    The law dictates it must have an opt in policy

    The law of the state of Maryland, not the other 49 states. And I looked up the actual law, it doesn’t actually say “opt-in” contrary to the news article description of it:
    https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Legislation/Details/hb0240?ys=2021RS https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2021RS/Chapters_noln/CH_681_hb0240e.pdf

    (D) FGGS MAY ONLY BE CONDUCTED USING A DIRECT–TO–CONSUMER OR PUBLICLY AVAILABLE OPEN–DATA PERSONAL GENOMICS DATABASE THAT: (1) PROVIDES EXPLICIT NOTICE TO ITS SERVICE USERS AND THE PUBLIC THAT LAW ENFORCEMENT MAY USE ITS SERVICE SITES TO INVESTIGATE CRIMES OR TO IDENTIFY UNIDENTIFIED HUMAN REMAINS; AND (2) SEEKS ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND CONSENT FROM ITS SERVICE USERS REGARDING THE SUBSTANCE OF THE NOTICE DESCRIBED IN ITEM (1) OF THIS SUBSECTION.

    To me that sounds more like “providing a warning” than providing an “opt-in/opt-out” system. The “acknowledgment and consent” could be as simple as clicking “I agree to terms of service”. Here’s what gedmatch privacy policy says:

    some of these possible uses of Raw Data, personal information, and/or Genealogy Data by any registered user of GEDmatch include but are not limited to:
    Familial searching by third parties such as law enforcement agencies to identify the perpetrator of a crime, or to identify remains.

    We may disclose your Raw Data, personal information, and/or Genealogy Data if it is necessary to comply with a legal obligation such as a subpoena or warrant.

    we may use and disclose personal information for meeting legal requirements and enforcing legal terms, as described in more detail above

    I am not a lawyer but to me that sounds like an explicit notice that law enforcement may get my data and satisfies the Maryland law requirement for a warrant. Specifically, gedmatch policy does not say they will ignore a warrant if you opt out. Again, my assertion is that the opt-in/opt-out system is for the voluntary warrantless information sharing system, and the warrants described in Maryland law are separate from that.

    You also imply that 23andMe and ancestry.com do NOT share any information with law enforcement because they do not have an opt-in system. This is also false. Here’s ancestry.com policy:

    Ancestry will release basic subscriber information as defined in 18 USC § 2703©(2) about Ancestry users to law enforcement only in response to a valid trial, grand jury or administrative subpoena.

    Ancestry will release additional account information or transactional information pertaining to an account (such as search terms, but not including the contents of communications) only in response to a court order issued pursuant to 18 USC § 2703(d).

    Contents of communications and any data relating to the DNA of an Ancestry user will be released only pursuant to a valid search warrant from a government agency with proper jurisdiction.

    They WILL give up your DNA data to a valid warrant. The only question in my mind is whether they will also search the entire database for a given police sample. There is this article that says ancestry.com refused a police warrant in 2019 as improper, and police did not push the matter further. But it is unclear if ancestry.com was refusing to search its database on principle, or whether that one warrant in particular was faulty. Like if the police request “all 15 million DNA records” because they are idiots and don’t know how databases work there is grounds to argue that is too broad of a request. But we don’t have the text of the actual warrant. There are other articles that say police have been using specifically ancestry.com successfully to investigate crimes.

    Someone would need to search the actual court cases where police used genealogy data to find suspects to confirm whether every single instance has used GEDMatch voluntary opt-in service, or whether police warrants have successfully retrieved match data from GEDMatch full database and from ancestry.com and 23andMe. I do not have such access.

    EVEN IF ancestry.com and GEDmatch refuse warrants to search non-opt-in DNA in databases, such refusals have not yet been tested in court.

    EVEN IF the Maryland law is amended/interpreted to mean that police cannot search non-opt-in DNA in databases even with a warrant (a voluntary restriction of the state on its own sovereign power, quite possible!), and EVEN IF the opt-in is made an explicit choice made in consultation with a “trained bioethicist” instead of an “I agree” checkbox below Terms of Service, and EVEN IF all other 49 states pass the same law as Maryland, it would STILL not be perfectly safe to upload your DNA to these services. Just as Maryland law changed in 2019, so it can change again. As we’ve seen with Roe v. Wade even long-established laws are not safe when there is a political interest to change them.


  • this is unrelated to genetic genealogy

    Am I still misunderstanding something?

    Beginning on Oct. 1, investigators working on Maryland cases will need a judge’s signoff before using the method, in which a “profile” of thousands of DNA markers from a crime scene is uploaded to genealogy websites to find relatives of the culprit. The new law, sponsored by Democratic lawmakers, also dictates that the technique be used only for serious crimes, such as murder and sexual assault. And it states that investigators may only use websites with strict policies around user consent.

    To me that reads that the court order allows the police to use the genealogy database. For example:

    • I am curious about my genes
    • I submit my DNA for sequencing
    • Some years later some cousin rapes and murders someone, dumps the body
    • Police find body, find unknown DNA
    • Police get court order in murder case
    • Police force genealogy database to scan for matching DNA
    • Genealogy database gives police my name
    • Police show up at my door, start asking if I have any relatives that “kinda like to rape people”
    • Police hang out behind my house, steal the pizza crust from my trash bin for further DNA tests

    Is that not a plausible scenario? What in the language of the law used by the NYT article makes you think this is disallowed? And remember, this is for Maryland only. The other 49 states can obtain a court order for any reason, be it murder or subway fare dodging.

    it’s a program you need to opt in to

    Again, not what privacy advocates from the NYT article say:

    Currently, customers of GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA are given a choice about whether to participate in these searches. But the companies provide little information about what those searches entail, and the opt-in settings are turned on by default.

    I.e. more like opt-out than opt-in, and again, irrelevant in case of a court order.