Autoconverting to a datatype in a spreadsheet, whatever the type, is a defect, plain and simple. The fact that it's often absurdly aggressive in its conversion makes it even worse. Your example - SEPT1 - should not even be considered valid for conversion into a date as it doesn't have a year. Any assumption as to what year to use - i.e. this year, the next September to occur - is a very strong assumption. Plus Excel will interpret a whole bunch of separators as being an attempt at a date, even those that don't fit the current locale.
A lack of a conversion can always be fixed after the fact. An unwanted conversion often cannot.
Excel isn't alone in this defect, most spreadsheets mimic this defective behaviour. It's an antifeature, and should be purged ASAP, from every piece of software with it.
...because hackers breaching research institutions horribly fucks up their ability to conduct the research in the first place.
Some forms of the data contain confidential patient information and certain types of genetic data can never be properly anonymised. That's data that is, and should be, kept behind the usual barriers of protection. A breach there has all the privacy implications it would in other circumstances.
Worse, if there's a breach, there the possibility that the data might be altered (perhaps even by accident) in the process - compromising the integrity of the data that researchers are trying to use.
A breach can also identify particular researchers, who may find their non-work devices and accounts under attack, and dealing with that would take time and energy away from their work.
And this is even before we consider the need to take services off-line to make sure they've been properly secured, further inhibiting the work.
I work at an academic institution in the UK that's had to beef up it's security after seeing an increase in social engineering and hacking attempts - although this far there are no indications there has been a breach. No-one here is rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of getting a patent or jealously hoarding their cache of information so they get the glory.
I don't doubt that stupid nationalistic sentiments exist at the country level, or that the usual suspects in pharma have their fingers crossed that they'll be able to make bank out of the pandemic. The point is that these hackers - every one of them - are exactly of a kind with the above: idiots compromising the response to the global pandemic for petty gain.
Throwing the book at them (modulo the messed up state of laws in this area) is exactly what should be done.
I wondered if the designer of that book cover has taken umbrage at the new logo and is behind the takedowns. Not exactly a proper use of copyright law either, but makes slightly more sense.
Someone I know, from Georgia but resident outside the US, went to check the address they needed to send his postal vote to on Saturday only to discover that, according to the website, they were no longer registered to vote. This, despite having the postal ballot already in their hands.
I would be extremely surprised if voter suppression hadn't already been performed using this vulnerability. Who would be in a better position to know about the vulnerability than Kemp's own team?
A particular issue with this 'softly softly' approach to pseudonyms, with patchy enforcement of unreasonable terms, is that it opens up an avenue for targeted harassment.
It only takes one jackass with a grudge to pull the pin on a fake name report and cause great annoyance for someone.
Uneven enforcement is not the solution to bad policy.
I guess that wisdom should be beaten into every social media company manager.
What makes FB's policy even sillier is that, in the UK, there's not really the same concept of 'real name'. There's a canonical name for official paperwork, and it can be a ball-ache to get that changed, but there's no idea that other names are inherently false.
That's even referenced in FB's own T&Cs in the UK, whereby the 'real name' provision is along the lines of 'must be a name people use for you' rather than any reference to birth certificates and whatnot. Which then clashes with the documentation FB demands from people to prove it's their name. An acquaintance pointed that mismatch out to them in a name dispute, and got a 'yeah, that doesn't make sense, your name is fine, carry on' out of them.
"because we recognize the difference between speech and action."
Giving seminars is an action. Discussing the issues, making them part of a work of art, that's speech. Making a career of delivering it as a practical how-to guide? Action, not speech. I'm not saying that he should automatically be denied entry - I'm saying that denying him a visa is an idea with merit and the pros and cons should be carefully mulled over by the appropriate authorities rather than dismissed with knee-jerk cries of 'freeze peach!'.
"I want to make sure everyone sees what he does and hears what he says. Because the louder he is, the easier it will be to counter him."
That's not how real life works. No matter how much opprobrium is heaped upon him by sensible society, the fact that he was able to get away with these acts, and get away with promoting them, will embolden those who are predisposed to approve of and/or think like him. It also sends a message to his/their likely victims that their safety is not as important as his speaking career. If he's denied entry to a country, it makes it clear that his actions are not okay to anyone who might consider replicating them. It makes it clear to people who are vulnerable to these kinds of attackers that society has their back.
If he was just peddling the usual PUA garbage, it would be a free speech issue. But he's not, so it isn't; or at least, not solely.
If someone wanted to give seminars about how to knife someone and take their wallet, I don't think there would be any objection to denying them an entry visa. It's clearly teaching how to do a criminal and violent act, and that should not attract automatic free speech protections anywhere.
Blanc wants to give seminars about how to use physical violence (and the implicit threat of further physical violence) to get what you want (attention and/or sex from a woman). That's also teaching how to do a criminal and violent act.
If the authorities of the countries in question decide that's not quite enough to deny a visa, that's their process and decision. But to object to petitioning for that decision to be considered in the first place on the grounds of some sort of 'free speech slippery slope' is asinine.
"Yes, there can be false positives, but is it better to keep people totally ignorant, or to better inform them across the board?"
This assumes that information they're getting meets even the most basic level of reliability. If what they're getting is little other than noise, they will be _worse_ off with it than without. It doesn't matter how carefully you couch the results in caveats, there's a level of quality below which the service will do more harm than good.
The current state of the art medical genetics involves either mutation-specific screening or high-coverage whole exome sequencing. The former is restricted to a handful of known, common variants. It requires greater scrutiny by genetic counsellors that 23andme can possibly offer at their price. The latter is _expensive_, far above 23andme's price point, requiring as it does not only the sequencing kit, but hours of time for skilled lab technicians, bioinformaticians and clinical experts. Even with best technology and people, diagnosis is very much a hit-and-miss affair because we haven't built up a large enough information base yet. That will only come with time.
And even then, there are huge question marks about about the quality of the sample provided: blood is used most often for sequencing (I don't think saliva is ever used in real research or diagnosis) and sending it through the ordinary post is not going to help matters. Plus there are ethical considerations surrounding a service where you could send anyone's saliva and claim it was your own.
A 23andme-like product would be a wonderful thing, assuming suitable oversight of the ethics angles. Unfortunately, no such product exists yet. It's going to be a good few years before we an even approach it. If they restricted themselves to a little light ancestry and a few well-understood phenotypes, I'd be cheering for them.
There is a wealth of "information" provided besides raw results including references to clinical studies, journals, reference population information (eg this gene has only been clinically tested and found relevant in Japanese subjects etc). They could always provide more, but there is a really very substantial amount of background information plus they respond to questions. They have also initiated GWAS research studies which have led to peer-review publications.
That's exactly the information in the HGMD and other similar variome databases. At the moment, it simply isn't full or reliable enough to support the testing that's being claimed. Even where a variant has strong functional work supporting its role in a disease, it can still have a very low penetrance. There's a huge difference between searching for the genetic cause of a disease in a patient and screening someone for anything they might carry. Most of the databases are built on studies of the former, and as such even most of those 'strong' variants tell us little if they are found in a patient without any a priori reason to look for the disease. Even if 23andMe's filtering and analysis is best-of-breed (which, let's face it, they don't have the resources for), that still doesn't overcome the issues with their sample collection and sequencing quality.
Berg et al (2013) in Genetics in Medicine gives a good summary of the state of the art, if you have access.
I think the real problems with 23andme are using substandard samples (sent through regular post and taken by the customer, yikes) going through bargain basement sequencing (at too low a coverage to be at very useful for analysis of the individual's genome) and reporting confidently on 240 traits and conditions (few of which they can be remotely confident about).
For comparison, the American College of Medical Genetics best practises document includes only 24 diseases where incidental findings should be reported to the doctor, and hence patient. This is in the context of clinical exome sequencing, at high coverage, with extensive expert analysis of any suspect variants found before they are passed on.
23andMe's spiel is basically fraud. There is no way they have the accuracy needed to produce the kinds of reports they do.
Further down the line, when things like the Human Gene Mutation Database are fuller and more reliable, when you can sequence at effective depth cheaply even with samples of inferior quality, then the sort of service that 23andMe is trying to offer will be worthwhile. At the moment, it's a joke.
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Re:
Autoconverting to a datatype in a spreadsheet, whatever the type, is a defect, plain and simple. The fact that it's often absurdly aggressive in its conversion makes it even worse. Your example - SEPT1 - should not even be considered valid for conversion into a date as it doesn't have a year. Any assumption as to what year to use - i.e. this year, the next September to occur - is a very strong assumption. Plus Excel will interpret a whole bunch of separators as being an attempt at a date, even those that don't fit the current locale. A lack of a conversion can always be fixed after the fact. An unwanted conversion often cannot. Excel isn't alone in this defect, most spreadsheets mimic this defective behaviour. It's an antifeature, and should be purged ASAP, from every piece of software with it.
Why? The reason is obvious
...because hackers breaching research institutions horribly fucks up their ability to conduct the research in the first place.
Some forms of the data contain confidential patient information and certain types of genetic data can never be properly anonymised. That's data that is, and should be, kept behind the usual barriers of protection. A breach there has all the privacy implications it would in other circumstances.
Worse, if there's a breach, there the possibility that the data might be altered (perhaps even by accident) in the process - compromising the integrity of the data that researchers are trying to use.
A breach can also identify particular researchers, who may find their non-work devices and accounts under attack, and dealing with that would take time and energy away from their work.
And this is even before we consider the need to take services off-line to make sure they've been properly secured, further inhibiting the work.
I work at an academic institution in the UK that's had to beef up it's security after seeing an increase in social engineering and hacking attempts - although this far there are no indications there has been a breach. No-one here is rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of getting a patent or jealously hoarding their cache of information so they get the glory.
I don't doubt that stupid nationalistic sentiments exist at the country level, or that the usual suspects in pharma have their fingers crossed that they'll be able to make bank out of the pandemic. The point is that these hackers - every one of them - are exactly of a kind with the above: idiots compromising the response to the global pandemic for petty gain.
Throwing the book at them (modulo the messed up state of laws in this area) is exactly what should be done.
Not an original design?
As striking as the logo is, it's kind of an inferior version of one design that appeared on a book cover:
https://i.redd.it/ji5nb6jxn8r21.jpg
I wondered if the designer of that book cover has taken umbrage at the new logo and is behind the takedowns. Not exactly a proper use of copyright law either, but makes slightly more sense.
Braess's Paradox
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox
The discovery of 'new' routes by apps can induce this effect.
Very probably already exploited
Someone I know, from Georgia but resident outside the US, went to check the address they needed to send his postal vote to on Saturday only to discover that, according to the website, they were no longer registered to vote. This, despite having the postal ballot already in their hands.
I would be extremely surprised if voter suppression hadn't already been performed using this vulnerability. Who would be in a better position to know about the vulnerability than Kemp's own team?
Re:
A particular issue with this 'softly softly' approach to pseudonyms, with patchy enforcement of unreasonable terms, is that it opens up an avenue for targeted harassment.
It only takes one jackass with a grudge to pull the pin on a fake name report and cause great annoyance for someone.
Uneven enforcement is not the solution to bad policy.
I guess that wisdom should be beaten into every social media company manager.
What makes FB's policy even sillier is that, in the UK, there's not really the same concept of 'real name'. There's a canonical name for official paperwork, and it can be a ball-ache to get that changed, but there's no idea that other names are inherently false.
That's even referenced in FB's own T&Cs in the UK, whereby the 'real name' provision is along the lines of 'must be a name people use for you' rather than any reference to birth certificates and whatnot. Which then clashes with the documentation FB demands from people to prove it's their name. An acquaintance pointed that mismatch out to them in a name dispute, and got a 'yeah, that doesn't make sense, your name is fine, carry on' out of them.
And yet, Britain "We Will Take Direct Action Against the Mayor of London" First still have a page which, according to facebook, is fine and dandy.
Re: Re:
"because we recognize the difference between speech and action."
Giving seminars is an action. Discussing the issues, making them part of a work of art, that's speech. Making a career of delivering it as a practical how-to guide? Action, not speech. I'm not saying that he should automatically be denied entry - I'm saying that denying him a visa is an idea with merit and the pros and cons should be carefully mulled over by the appropriate authorities rather than dismissed with knee-jerk cries of 'freeze peach!'.
"I want to make sure everyone sees what he does and hears what he says. Because the louder he is, the easier it will be to counter him."
That's not how real life works. No matter how much opprobrium is heaped upon him by sensible society, the fact that he was able to get away with these acts, and get away with promoting them, will embolden those who are predisposed to approve of and/or think like him. It also sends a message to his/their likely victims that their safety is not as important as his speaking career. If he's denied entry to a country, it makes it clear that his actions are not okay to anyone who might consider replicating them. It makes it clear to people who are vulnerable to these kinds of attackers that society has their back.
If he was just peddling the usual PUA garbage, it would be a free speech issue. But he's not, so it isn't; or at least, not solely.
If someone wanted to give seminars about how to knife someone and take their wallet, I don't think there would be any objection to denying them an entry visa. It's clearly teaching how to do a criminal and violent act, and that should not attract automatic free speech protections anywhere.
Blanc wants to give seminars about how to use physical violence (and the implicit threat of further physical violence) to get what you want (attention and/or sex from a woman). That's also teaching how to do a criminal and violent act.
If the authorities of the countries in question decide that's not quite enough to deny a visa, that's their process and decision. But to object to petitioning for that decision to be considered in the first place on the grounds of some sort of 'free speech slippery slope' is asinine.
FDA Drives Borderline Scammers Overseas
"Yes, there can be false positives, but is it better to keep people totally ignorant, or to better inform them across the board?"
This assumes that information they're getting meets even the most basic level of reliability. If what they're getting is little other than noise, they will be _worse_ off with it than without. It doesn't matter how carefully you couch the results in caveats, there's a level of quality below which the service will do more harm than good.
The current state of the art medical genetics involves either mutation-specific screening or high-coverage whole exome sequencing. The former is restricted to a handful of known, common variants. It requires greater scrutiny by genetic counsellors that 23andme can possibly offer at their price. The latter is _expensive_, far above 23andme's price point, requiring as it does not only the sequencing kit, but hours of time for skilled lab technicians, bioinformaticians and clinical experts. Even with best technology and people, diagnosis is very much a hit-and-miss affair because we haven't built up a large enough information base yet. That will only come with time.
And even then, there are huge question marks about about the quality of the sample provided: blood is used most often for sequencing (I don't think saliva is ever used in real research or diagnosis) and sending it through the ordinary post is not going to help matters. Plus there are ethical considerations surrounding a service where you could send anyone's saliva and claim it was your own.
A 23andme-like product would be a wonderful thing, assuming suitable oversight of the ethics angles. Unfortunately, no such product exists yet. It's going to be a good few years before we an even approach it. If they restricted themselves to a little light ancestry and a few well-understood phenotypes, I'd be cheering for them.
Re:
That's exactly the information in the HGMD and other similar variome databases. At the moment, it simply isn't full or reliable enough to support the testing that's being claimed. Even where a variant has strong functional work supporting its role in a disease, it can still have a very low penetrance. There's a huge difference between searching for the genetic cause of a disease in a patient and screening someone for anything they might carry. Most of the databases are built on studies of the former, and as such even most of those 'strong' variants tell us little if they are found in a patient without any a priori reason to look for the disease. Even if 23andMe's filtering and analysis is best-of-breed (which, let's face it, they don't have the resources for), that still doesn't overcome the issues with their sample collection and sequencing quality.
Berg et al (2013) in Genetics in Medicine gives a good summary of the state of the art, if you have access.
Public access genomics is damn premature
I think the real problems with 23andme are using substandard samples (sent through regular post and taken by the customer, yikes) going through bargain basement sequencing (at too low a coverage to be at very useful for analysis of the individual's genome) and reporting confidently on 240 traits and conditions (few of which they can be remotely confident about).
For comparison, the American College of Medical Genetics best practises document includes only 24 diseases where incidental findings should be reported to the doctor, and hence patient. This is in the context of clinical exome sequencing, at high coverage, with extensive expert analysis of any suspect variants found before they are passed on.
23andMe's spiel is basically fraud. There is no way they have the accuracy needed to produce the kinds of reports they do.
Further down the line, when things like the Human Gene Mutation Database are fuller and more reliable, when you can sequence at effective depth cheaply even with samples of inferior quality, then the sort of service that 23andMe is trying to offer will be worthwhile. At the moment, it's a joke.