This only tells you about your very recent ancestry, but go back enough generations are you are descended from everyone alive at the time who still has living decendants, just like everyone else.
We’re all Ethiopian
All of us are neandthal too, and decendants of various ancient celebrities as well as all the forgotten commoners.
You are all individuals
No, he/she/they can’t possibly be that many. I’m one too!
Honestly I’ve never gotten the desire to do one of these things. You give away arguably the most uniquely valuable and private part of yourself to this company (or companies like it) to do god knows what with in exchange for these results that are (IMO) ultimately just unnecessary trivia about yourself.
Oh, don’t worry. If you hadn’t given it to them, one or ten of your fucking rellies did anyway and had no clue of the implications either.
I want to upvote this, but … Why did you have to shorten “relatives”?
Maybe Australian?
Maybe.
I’m only familiar with the term “BSc” from Red Dwarf, wherein it’s eventually revealed to mean “bronze swimming certificate”; however, from the context of the joke in the novel (and I think the show, don’t remember for sure), I assume it has some more impressive meaning in other uses.
Given the origins of that series, I was guessing British, but that doesn’t limit it much. My cultural ignorance is preventing me from forming a meaningful theory.
edit: I’m sorry, I thought this was a response to another comment I made, making my response 100% irrelevant. Please feel free to disregard.
edit 2: Though I guess the last line of my unedited comment still applies.
Bachelor of Science, however SSC doesn’t have a different meaning that I’m aware of.
Thank you for the information!
Also, I infer from your response that you also remember that part of Red Dwarf, which is awesome.
I love how they just smash “-ies” onto any word. I started using “sunnies” for sunglasses after hanging out with a few aussies.
I like it
I am a technology journalist – I like to think I am thoughtful about what data I share with corporations.
My brother in Christ, if you are a tech journalist then you, out of all people, should know not to give ANY data to corporations. That is a massive fuckup regarding your job.
I’ve got to admit, I’ve wanted to do one of those tests just because my family is such a mix of “lol we don’t know.” Like, no really, what IS my maternal grandma? She does not look like the rest of her family and had a different family name from her siblings. And ok really, where DID my paternal great-grandmother who lied about her race so she could marry my great-grandfather back when “miscegenation” was illegal, come from? And WAS that great-grandpa biracial himself?
There’s a reason I call myself an ethnic Rorschach test, and I’d love to know why it is I am. But the rest of my family is against the idea of finding out because “it doesn’t matter” plus who knows how just data might be used one day.
the test isnt particularly meaningful. As I understand it they just test a handful of genes that they suspect were less varied in the past. As a result if you get tested through all the services that offer gene testing you will get different numbers for each one.
That’s the other big reason I’m hesitant - different tests can give totally different results, so who knows what’s “right”?
You can just do the test in secret, I guess. Just don’t tell anyone. But yeah, costs money of course.
There’s something hilarious about the author’s disappointment to find out they’re British, and nothing else.
Can’t say I blame them though.
I don’t really subscribe to the whole race thing. Its a culture thing.
And even more important is the food. Can you cook me a traditional xyz meal? Delicious. I love that you’re xyz.
That’s just another reason to be disappointed to find out that you’re British.
I read the headline and went, “…I mean, what were you expecting?”
Title is misleading, FTA:
Confirmation that I am 63% British and Irish, 17% Danish and otherwise “broadly north-western European”. I felt a resounding ambivalence about the results, including some disappointment that I had not discovered a newfound heritage – a piece of information that would give my identity new dimension.
But also:
My father’s side of the family is meticulous about tracking our ancestry, with records that hold the name of the exact small village in Ireland our ancestors hail from.
Those results often can’t narrow down to exact countries so it says he’s 63% British and Irish. Seeing as his fathers family has records of being from a small Irish town it’s likely he’s more Irish that British, not that it means anything if you’re actually American anyway.
On this topic, I did ancestrydna long before I got concerned with my data and privacy. I have since deleted my data and had them destroy my physical sample as well (which took them a long time). But I wonder if the damage is done and even though they say they deleted and destroyed the sample how can I know for sure? Etc
I don’t know James Smith, from Phoenix, Arizona. Social security number 523-098-1322. Is your data safe?
Imagine how you’d freak out if I, by change, got it right.
What the hell?! You got mine right!
Not really, but it would have been cool. Also, socials are 9 digits in the US.
I did it over 15 years ago, but for health information before the FDA nuked that. (Although you can still run the raw data through a third party program)
I’m pretty sure I already uploaded myself to at least one open source database, so I don’t see any reason to worry that much.
The problem is when your data can be connected to you. If you just share it anonymously, it will likely help nobody, except that everyone now knows that some person in the world has this DNA. And has money to get it sequenced.
Like honestly, I’d rather be open sourced than sold as proprietary data haha
In either case the actors to worry about (whatever they might be) gets access, in the latter case it might additionally do some good.
they’ve mostly got your genetics anyways if your brother did it
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I refuse to do it because I’m a twin. We both agree that it’s shitty if one of us does it because then the other is forced into it basically, being identical.
Also our dad was a piece of cheating shit so we don’t ever want to know about that possibility.
I think of myself as someone who always wants to know, I want to know the truth, I don’t like not knowing things. Plus, it could help finding out about genetic conditions and things to be on the lookout for, which can definitely be valuable.
I’d still never do one of these tests because of the privacy concerns and because I don’t trust companies with something like this, especially since I have seen so many times where companies have a lax attitude or lax policies or both about security.
Yeah companies don’t care. McDonald’s sold my fingerprint data. I used it to clock in and out for work. I got like a 50 dollar settlement or something so that was nice <3 ty Ronald
Why do you rich people always get off flaunting your wealth in our faces?
So sorry. I’m sure with lots of hard work, nepotism and education you too may some day be able to work at a McDonald’s of your own and get your prints stolen. Keep that head up champ and pull up hard on those boot straps! :)
That would indicate your mom cheated as well? Not sure exactly what your dad cheating has to do with your DNA. Wouldn’t it be better to find out he wasn’t your dad if he was so shitty?
We do not want to find my father’s illegitimate children. He was our father, as our mother never cheated.
I’m very sorry I didn’t think of this context. I wasn’t being daft intentionally, it just didn’t occur to me when I was trying to figure out the situation
I can understand now. Thank you for sharing and gently explaining the situation
(I’m also very, very sorry to have implied your mother had cheated in that scenario. I did not mean to cast shade on her character)
You are much more polite than the person who was much more condescending about my mother. It’s fine.
I know for facts my mother never cheated. Mother is at an age I have increasing access to medical records of previous…attempts at children. Which lines up entirely with things my father talked about, and how delighted they were when we were born. Also, my father, for his faults, absolutely could spot another cheater at 50 paces and knew my mother did not.
Also she was like. The only person at home, working in education with long hours and then taking care of us, so if she did cheat, like. Damn, she was really finding the time somehow taking care of terrible twins.
Fair.
our mother never cheated.
That you know of, or care to know of. To be fair that’s a better reason to not do it. You know your dad is a piece of shit apparently, your mom you have a good image of, and no benefit to the image being tarnished after it matters.
That you know of, or care to know of.
Yes, but also who cares. No need to point out that “technically there’s always a chance” because you can do that for basically anything.
They don’t want to find other siblings
How does that work? The lab puts you in contact with people they know share your DNA?
If you choose to opt in and participate in DNA Relatives, other customers that have also elected to participate in this feature will be able to view the following information about you:
Your DNA Relatives display name
How recently you logged into your account
Your relationship labels (masculine, feminine, neutral)
Your predicted relationship and percentage of DNA shared with your matches
Your location (optional)
Ancestor birth locations and family names (optional)
Your profile picture (optional)
Your birth year (optional)
A link to your Family Tree (optional)
Anything you have added to the “Introduce yourself!” Section (optional)
Much better than Tinder for solid matches in my experience.
Thank you; I’m sorry I missed that broader context. I try to think critically about what I read and sometimes I struggle with widening my scope of thinking
It’s this. We do not want to find his other children.
But what if they’re totally cool people who own a bar in Tahoe or something? You’d be missing out on the fun.
Yeah, but what if they’re right wing weirdos obsessed with genealogy and they reach out to you first because they want to save you or something?
¿Porque no los dos?
But what if it’s Bill Gates and he’s been trying to find his lost sibling for inheritance purposes?
What if deys rich foke?
I mean obviously it would just discover that your mom was also a cheater?
Well I mean beyond the possibility of half siblings.
You mean that?
Dare I say it?
Man did you look in the mirror? 😂
Ja moa
I’m honestly not interested in 23andMe so I never bothered to fact-check so take this with a massive grain of salt but I did watch Linus (from TechTips, not Linux) rant about the privacy problems it has. I don’t trust him about these things but I’ve also watched him rant in favor of letting the
spywareconsumer features of Windows stay on because they’re so great and it’s not that big of a deal, so 23andMe has to be doing something very, very wrong.deleted by creator
MURICA FUCK YEA!
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Don’t worry, I’m sure your IQ test will come back negative too.
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Maybe if I swab my mouth and send it off to a company, I’ll finally be interesting and people will like me.
puts letter down
…maybe not.
