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Comment by packhughes | Hacker News Reader

I’m sure the dna companies are salivating at their ability to sell another $60 gene report.

Why does this bother you?

People drop $60 on video games, $50 on going to a movie, $100 on lottery tickets, $500 on cigarettes, and $2000 on first-class flights every day, and most of these are no big deal, just a person spending their money on entertainment in their own life.

If they want to spend $60 out of mild curiosity on a genetic test, I don't understand why it merits some kind of particular scorn.

It’s the first thing I thought of when I read the headline. Capitalism has turned me into cynical asshole. How people spend their money is no concern of mine.

True until you look at gambling and other products engineered to maximize addiction.

Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Do people really do that?

Personally, I do not read usernames and have never had the experience on H.N. of recognizing a username as I have on some other fora that have signatures, avatars, profile pages, and other such facilities to create an identity.

The culture of H.N. also favors giving technical, impersonal comments, which consequently leave out even more of a personal identity.

I have really never felt on H.N. that I was responded to in a way that connected me to anything I said prior; no one brought such a thing up.

Are you asking whether people relate to each other on HN? Of course they do. It's a key aspect of the community here.

Users who undermine that system, in the way that I described above, are in a sense freeloading off the community established by others.

> Are you asking whether people relate to each other on HN? Of course they do. It's a key aspect of the community here.

I'm asking whether people actually pay attention to usernames to any significant degree and recognize them.

For another point of reference, I do. Reading comments, I also see people refer to and recognize community members such as 'tptacek, 'rayiner, 'dragonwriter, 'DoreenMichele, and many others. For what it's worth, I also recognize your username. Given the number of people on HN, I'm sure there are others that really don't pay much attention, but I know for a fact that there are also those that do.

I suppose.

The reason I wondered was because I never had anyone reference anything I said prior to me, whereas I've had this happen on 4chan to me, a forum sans usernames because someone recognized my writing style or opinions.

I probably know where 50-100 hn posters work without even having to think about it hard. People have been posting here for a decade and do recognize each other.

There are quite a few nicknames I recognize, along with the associated personalities.

So, it puts me at risk to participate like that even under a pseudonym. But, if you really think people like me are why HN isn't what it used to be then I'll step aside. I wish this place had the community it used to have, too.

> How people spend their money is no concern of mine.

Except if your entire family spends their money on DNA tests, then publishes the results on Facebook then your DNA is out in the open.

It already is. All humans have nearly identical DNA, and if anyone wants yours in particular, there is no way to stop them from getting it. Just takes a few hair strands.

Yeah, but collecting hair strands is still much harder than searching through a huge database.

I think you've turned yourself into a cynical asshole - perhaps by posting too much. The key is to not believe Twitter, which is full of people who have never left the US blaming things on "capitalism", even when those things don't happen in other capitalist countries (eg France) or do in other not-capitalist ones (eg Vietnam).

As for the genetic tests, most of them update with new results after the first $60.

I've never paid 23andMe a penny after the initial test -- every new report they release is given away to past customers for free.

Or the mRNA companies selling a "Limitless" pill?

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