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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

That took them until 2021? I wrote this in 2012:

https://jacquesmattheij.com/your-genetic-information-is-not-...

> Before you submit your data for genetic testing please realize that you are giving away a portion of the ultimate family heirlooms, the genes that run in your family and that this decision could easily come back to bite others.

I wish my mom had read this. She would have understood the implications, and not done it.

I actually wrote it for my mom...

It's very annoying how these companies sucker people in to do things they might come to regret later, there is absolutely zero transparency here. Besides the potential for massive privacy violation there is also always the specter of future uses against your interests.

>there is also always the specter of future uses against your interests.

This. The danger isn't even necessarily that we gain some crazy ability to predict things about a person from their DNA, but that people believe that it can be done accurately and that police, courts, government, marketers, etc believe it as well.

Police don't need much convincing if it gets them a conviction. Courts will already admit evidence from forensic labs which have been proven to fabricate evidence. Governments will let just about anything fly if someone donates enough, and if marketers are convinced that it might work, there will be no shortage of cash for campaign funds.

Currently, to my knowledge, you can take somebody's DNA and do just about anything with it without their knowledge or consent, and there seem to be a lot of well-monied interests with a stake in keeping things that way.

Hah, beautiful, well done.

But yours isn't nearly so...catchy looking...as the New Yorker version.

Yes, I suck at the eye candy department. Function over form any day for me.

You should see my e-bike, it is quite literally covered in duct tape (it was meant temporary, but we all know how that goes).

Also:

https://jacquesmattheij.com/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide/

Which is probably my best article.

You mention in the article:

> Which undoubtedly well meaning civil servant long before World War II came up with the brilliant idea of registering religious affiliation during the census is lost in the mists of time.

I guess this happened because The Netherlands used to be a very religious nation?

I mean, in 1901 they got Abraham Kuyper[0] as a prime minister. Abraham Kuyper was a Christian minister, and is well-known among Reformed Christian circles as a very impactful theologian.

It is very understandable that a nation like that would want to list religion as part of their census data.

0: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Kuyper>

> I guess this happened because The Netherlands used to be a very religious nation?

Yes.

They used to be so religious that it incited a revolt in the southern parts of the country that were of a different religious branch. That's how Belgium came to be, with the only unifying trait for the new country being their shared religion, Catholics, regardless of the many other differences (French-speaking Walloons with many merchants and tradespeople, and Dutch-speaking Flemish that were mostly farmers, and mostly oppressed by the French-speaking ruling classes).

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