Sorry to be nit-picky, but that sounds conspiracy theory-ish. The link you provided does not back-up your claim of the NSA having hacked the Starwood database. The linked article makes it sound like as a by-product of massively vacuuming up internet traffic, GCHQ has been able to track hotel booking confirmations sent to gov.whatever addresses. Which is noteworthy but (legally and morally) not as sinister as active measures.
I'm interested in your argument to why fiction is not time "wasted"! Would you mind discussing? I have thought about this a lot and personally only read non-fiction, but am always interested in other viewpoints.
I am not the original thread author, but I would postulate that it first depends on what each individual considers time wasted vs time well spent.
Many consider a relaxing, entertaining read to be worthwhile after a hard week of work in its own right.
For those who need a more "tangible" return on reading, though, many fiction books, intentionally or not, introduce ideas, philosophies, thoughts and perspective.
Some explore political systems, others philosophies, others social/economic constructs, yet others interpersonal relationships, etc. From that perspective, one can learn from many fiction books, exercise one's mental muscles, gain new perspectives, and even take actionable insight.
I'm not saying Danielle Steel or Sydney Sheldon are necessarily likely candidates for bringing lifestyle change; but I have personally found many fiction (particularly SF in my case) books to have played a large part in influencing my perspective on the world and people within it, impact my likes and priorities, and so on.
I don't agree with ideas in Starship Troopers but found them challenging my own worldview. Arthur Clarke put Sri Lanka / Ceylon on my bucket list, made me interested in astronomy AND computer science. Neuromancer instigated my trip to Japan and visit to Tokyo, where I very much experienced the night-time vista through Case's eyes. A lot of Tom Clancy (I know... I know;) renewed my interest in flying and geopolitics, and I've happily used the word "nekulturny" in my daily usage since. Karl May's doubly-fictional accounts of American West and Arabian Peninsula added them to my own imagination.
Tau Zero, Childhood's end, and Children of men made me realize how much I empathized with success and continuation of species more than Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" or Dawkins' "Selfish Gene" ever did. And so on...
Do you consider time experiencing any art to be wasted?
I find it to: enhance empathy; expose me to new ideas and perspectives (both of background and state of mind); improve my writing; allow me to experience the beautiful and the sublime, which I'd count as among the least-wasteful uses of time; act as a kind of therapy by letting me see that my struggles both great and mundane are, without exception, not only my own; generally aid self reflection, understanding, and improvement.
Granted few or none of these things may result if we're talking about trash fiction, which isn't better than any other time-waster one may choose (TV, say—though both are fine if one's goal is simply entertainment). The above is what The Good Stuff does, by definition—achieving most or all of those things is overwhelmingly why those works are considered great.
[EDIT] I'd add that even mediocre fiction can be a great source of inspiration and ideas, while also being entertaining.
> Granted few or none of these things may result if we're talking about trash fiction, which isn't better than any other time-waster one may choose (TV, say—though both are fine if one's goal is simply entertainment).
I think there's an argument for reading as entertainment, regardless of quality, as a form of non-productive entertainment that is less harmful than other forms of entertainment. I've taken to switching off my devices at night and just reading books (fiction and non-fiction) before bed.
I would say my attention span has benefited greatly from this, as has my sleep (from not staring into blue lights late into the night).
Of course reading fiction isn't the only activity that this could apply to. Just the one we happen to be talking about.
> I think there's an argument for reading as entertainment, regardless of quality, as a form of non-productive entertainment that is less harmful than other forms of entertainment. I've taken to switching off my devices at night and just reading books (fiction and non-fiction) before bed.
That's a good point. I was over-broad in my post—the form by which one experiences otherwise low-nutrient entertainment can have its own benefits. Reading even so-so fiction's not the same as watching so-so TV or compulsively refreshing online news aggregators, for example.
Just curious, how long is your average nightly reading period? I'm thinking of taking up a similar habit but not sure how long to allot. Also I'm a little worried about going over-time, especially when reading fiction!
Probably about a half hour minimum, sometimes going for hours, depends on when I turn the computer off. I have a pretty flexible waking time as I work remotely but I've never totally lost track of time doing it.
Fiction is a petri dish for all of those ideas you're consuming in non-fiction books.
Have you ever had an idea that you thought could change the world? Write a short story about it. When you are really forced to create different viewpoints in your head, put those viewpoints into characters, and then have those characters come into conflict with one another, you're subjecting your idea to scrutiny that costs nothing more than a few bytes in word processor and a few hours of time.
In that way, I think a lot of non-fiction is time wasted. I think more non-fiction writers should be fiction writers.
Reading is the 10 hour version of the above multi-year exercise - as all books are. Instead of deriving Newton's laws, you read what Newton spent a lifetime to come up with. Instead of deriving the implications of a situation where sentient alien races can communicate between stars, read about the solution arrived at when they spent years thinking about. Sure, it's not as technically difficult (nor probably rewarding) as synthesizing the ideas themselves, but still valuable to ingest - especially given the investment/reward ratio.
As a scientist, authors like William Gibson, Borges, Bradbury, Ramez Naam, Asimov, Clarke, Richard Morgan, etc. have provided me with rapid access to very real and useful perspectives inaccessible in non-fiction form. Such stories are long-form versions of Einstein's 'gedanken' [1] - thought experiments such as those he relied on to conceive of relativity.
There's a caveat though: through just reading, it's easy to fall into the illusion that you learned anything. Maybe for some this is enough, but I'd wager that for vast majority of people (myself included), to internalize some idea even on the most basic level, you have to do something along the lines of:
- rehearse it after a time, or
- try to derive it by yourself (applies to e.g. math and physics), or
- explain in your own words (whether by teaching someone, or just writing a blog post), or
- code a working demo of it
Basically, you have to apply the idea somehow to actually learn it.
I agree, but I don't think there's a difference whether the initial idea is consumed as fiction or non-fiction.
And it's certainly true that writers of hard-to-grasp ideas often use both - fictional examples in non-fiction books, historical examples and exposition in fiction books.
It exposes me to viewpoints, warnings, or subjects I wouldn't have learned otherwise.
For example, I've never given time to reading about gene editing, but after reading Change Agent I've been reading about gene editing and Crispr. I also have some minor understanding of the dangers and benefits of where that could take civilization.
I hadn't thought about what would happen in doomsday scenarios, like a large virus outbreak or an EMP blast, but Holding Their Own and One Second After exposed me to that.
Reading Seveneves exposed me to space travel and Lagrange points, I had no idea about these otherwise.
Authors like John Fante are great story tellers and he's such a joy to read instead of watching a tv series.
Change Agent is great. I read it after finishing The Windup Girl, which is a book someone on HN recommended to me.
I do second The Windup Girl - in particular, I liked the exploration of technologies in a society so energy constrained, that the Joule becomes pretty much the most important resource.
If anyone has any biotech fiction recommendations, I'd love to hear them.
I have no idea if this is valid, but it is often said that people who read a lot more fiction tend to have more of a certain type of empathy.
Not all types of empathy. I think the idea is that when they see someone behave in a negative manner, they are more likely to conjure up a scenario in their mind where that behavior makes sense.
I remember one communications workshop I took where one of the lessons was: "When someone acts poorly or irrationally, try to ask yourself: Why would a reasonable person ever behave this way?" If you can come up with a scenario, then you don't automatically attribute negative qualities to the other (irrational, jerk, etc).
The claim is people who read a lot of fiction are much better at this. Anecdotally, I often find I'm better at this than most around me - even people who I view as much more intelligent. Often gets me in trouble, as well (e.g. my refusal to blanket condemn Wall Street professionals after the 2008 crisis (the key word being "blanket")).
Until recently, I would get quite frustrated with those who were quick to judge in situations where I could come up with (reasonable) scenarios vindicating the person, and could clearly see the person judging had not ruled those out. But in the last year or so, people have sent me signals that this is hard for the average person to do and I'm much better than most.
And the advice I keep hearing on how you can develop that skill is "Read more fiction".
Anyway, my 2 cents. Would love to see if this is backed by anything rigorous.
I guess I have two thoughts. The first concerns what is "wasted" time? If fiction is enjoyable, why is that waste of time? You might say you should use your time to gain new skills or hone your old. But to what end? If all your time is spent on non-fiction, when are you truly enjoying yourself? (Unless of course you truly enjoy non-fiction more than fiction). Life is short and nobody will remember you in 10000 years from now, why not enjoy the time you have?
The other is the hidden benefits of fiction. You'll be exposed to different world views than your own, different social constructs and different time periods which can shape how you see events. It's possible to live your life, in very different ways, in fast forward with fiction hundreds of times. You can gain new ideas, new creative energy or it may help you relax and recharge energy for when you don't want to "waste" your time.
I held the same belief as you a few years ago - I only wanted to read something if it was going to increase my technical skills.
But there's certain works, literary classics, which started to fascinate me - because these books changed the world. Nowadays, it's technology that changes viewpoints - but there are parallels between good technology and good storytelling.
I also see certain classic films being just as important. Watch all of 'easy rider' and see how it affects you, moves you emotionally.
I still read mostly technical documents, but reading some of the classics can expand your viewpoints. I reread 1984 and brave new world last year for example - I'd read them in high school but clearly didn't appreciate them back then. Just being able to discuss those books with others who have read them have opened up some amazing conversations.
Depends on the kind of fiction, and what you're trying to get, I guess.
Personally, I see lot of value in science fiction books. They're good at exploring impact of technological changes on people (both on individual and societal level), and they can also be very inspiring. Also, the less such work is about people and their relationship, the more I like it - what I look for in science fiction is ideas and inspirations, not the boring interpersonal drama our lives are so full of already.
It's important to think about what is or isn't wasted time. I think about it a lot, because to me, time is the most precious resource - I won't be alive for that long, my time being young is almost over...
To make the most out of my time as a human in this planet, I seek novel things, that will enrich my experience. Doing the exact same things today that I did yesterday is wasted time, because I will feel the same way, and I will be repeating the experience.
Reading good fiction improves my experience as a human. The feeling of the places, the characters and the occurrences is always unique, and (with a good book) I gain new insights of what being a human means.
Non-fiction books are also good, but I don't really get the same feeling for them. The best way of explaining it is also the most boring: It's like watching a good movie vs a good documentary. I get a totally different feeling from a movie, and given the choice, I will almost always go for the movie.
Speaking for myself, I tend to alternate between fiction and non-fiction books. Generally, fiction books are story-driven (any sci-fi/fantasy/general fiction) and center around relationships between characters overlaid with some other topics. This means any good fiction is a setting custom built to examine specific aspects of humanity or some aspect of the world we live in or could live in. Any reasonably 'good' fiction is an exploration of highs and lows and challenges and redemptions, and I believe that these lead us to be better able to understand our fellow humans, and allow us to better think about and imagine the situations we might face in our lives or re-examine experiences we've had.
Sometimes the pleasure of reading fiction is simply to be entertained. Look at the popularity of TV and film - can you imagine never watching a fictional story again?
Teachers always tell their pupils to read often and to read widely. Why? Because the more you expose yourself to a wide range of writing styles the greater the chance it will help improve your own writing (regardless of whether you write fiction or non-fiction).
Fiction arguably lets the writer compose sentences with more freedom and creative licence than the non-fiction writer. The more you read, the more likely that some of that will rub off in your own writing or influence the rhythm of your own writing.
Could I ask you to begin with stating why you think it is "wasted"? That seems like a very odd viewpoint to take. If nothing else, entertainment has value in itself.
From what's publically known, the email to The Intercept related to their podcast, of which we supposedly was a listener and not to the matter at hand.
Blendle is a solution to a very different problem. Blendle provides unbundling for popular magazines and newspapers, i.e. you can selectively read single articles for < 1€ rather than having to buy a full issue of the paper in question.
It's really well done, but basically does what the iTunes store did for MP3s.
What Medium faces is a rather different beast: Trying to reach the holy grail of finding non-advertising funding for journalism (ideally, without a subscription-based model).
I think Blendle's funding model has potential. Of particular importance is how smooth it is to read, and just as easy to say 'nope, not for this one', or not.
I've read good things on Medium, but if anything Sturgeon's Law is too generous regarding overall quality. Considering the nature of the beast, I'm not even sure it is possible to change the quality ratio without potentially breaking what Medium is.
I'd be happy chipping in sub-dollar amounts here and there for the good stuff, but I am not going to pay a flat fee for access to what amounts to a whole lot of tripe and just a few meatballs.
That's what I like about Blendle's model. I'm an infrequent user (< 1 article a month) but I probably spent more on Blendle than the cost of a subscription to any one of Blendle's sources.
Out of all the articles I read, I think I clicked the refund button maybe twice, and that was only because the article was truly terrible.
I can say with certainty that I wouldn't have bothered reading any of these paywalled articles if Blendle didn't exist.
From your blog post: "The cables or other releases could be posted on torrent sites, signed by the Wikileaks organization, and it would be just as effective at generating the media circus and necessary public attention that they seek."
There's your biggest misconception about how the media and world/people's attention works right there.
Why do you think no layperson knows what the heck cryptome is, although they have been leaking stuff for far longer than Wikileaks? Why do you think cryptome (probably) hasn't changed anything and hasn't made anyone aware of anything?
You need the most publicity you can get as a leaking platform, as much as it will kill you (by making a person synonymous to the mission and providing an attack window) at the same time. And actual mass publicity will not be generated by putting it out there via bittorrent, which the majority of journalists don't even know about.
I believe this is a result of the PR actions performed by wikileaks amd the relationships they set up with news outlets, none of which Cryptome has ever bothered with.
They could have performed these tasks using nyms or anonymously, too.
Probably the right thing to do is something like the IRA/Sinn Fein, where you've got a bunch of black ops somewhat connect to a somewhat accountable white operation.
you can use encrypted mail, however that requires you to convince all people that you exchange mails with to use encrypted mail as well.
You could use a hosted email service in another country where the american authorities don't have easy access. Europe might be an option. However, as with hosting your own email server, that's only a partial solution: If you communicate with other people, your mail is not only stored in your inbox but also in their outbox. So they'd have to use a mail provider outside the US as well - see the first paragraph.
The best is probably a hybrid solution: Try to educate as many people to use encrypted mail as you can and use a mail server that's located outside the US. It doesn't provide 100% protection, but at least you're not part of the dragnet search.
Valid point. It's a different branch and a different issue though. Mails that are already on your server and stored there would be relatively safe. Make sure communication is encrypted.
To receive mail, you could setup Haraka (a very simple NodeJS smtp server)[1] on any unix instance (such as AWS micro). You'll need to set proper MX records for your domain and a few simple configurations. If Heroku would let you specify a port (specifically, 25), you would be able to host on Heroku's free plan. This may put you back at odds by hosting your data on AWS (third-party). Also, you would likely need to setup a POP server to download your messages from the server.
I've been researching doing this for a while, but there's one big caveat that I can't get past- there's no decent server solutions for push mail. For desktop computers there's IMAP IDLE, but all the push solutions Apple's software uses are based on Microsoft Exchange (expensive).
I'm running it on two small sites (< 50 users each) and it works as advertised. The nice thing is, it isn't monolithic - you choose the MTA and web software (in my case postfix and apache) and it uses mysql as the backend.
The webmail interface is the best opensource one I've come across (easily beats redcube) and active sync works fine with iphone 4/5 and android.
You could use a local email program and set it to download then purge your mail from the server. That way it's not in their possession for more than 180 days. But you are then responsible for your own backups etc.
It's also ridiculously outdated. It's from 1957 and based on an outdated, traditional understanding of "big" industrial/engineering companies and their employees ("the little guys"). Also, it protects the companies' interests to the detriment of the employees' interests, which is understandable given that it is based on a war-time law (WWII) which was supposed to support German war engineering.
I'm not so sure that it's ridiculously outdated. Sure, it could use a brush-up but it acknowledges the basic fact that your employer often spends time educating you and allows access to ressources in your line of work that form the basis of your inventions - hence the requirement that the invention be related to your work. Fact is that inventions are rarely a stroke of genius that happens instantly in vacuum. They're often refinements and improvements of readily known things. Quite often they're obvious and simple in hindsight.
It's a hard balance to strike, but just giving the option of moving all "inventions" to after-hours so that the employee gets all benefits won't cut it either, especially with modern work-time models such as flex-time or home office. I don't have a perfect solution, but giving the employer first-buy rights seems like a reasonable starting point for a compromise. The law stipulates a reasonable and fair compensation for the work provided.
I read his book, "You are not a gadget", and found it really thought-provoking and inspiring to focus more on real-world stuff I needed to do and less on reading about the ever latest fad that has no impact on my life whatsoever.
As always, was it the book or my state of mind/stage in my life during which I read the book that made me change my mind about re-prioritizing? I don't know. But I'd recommend the book for an alternative perspective not often heard in the TechCr/otherblogs/Forbes/BW hype cycle that is the tech (esp consumer internet) world.
FWIW, the book didn't strike me as elitist at all. I didn't know anything about him before, so I was strictly considering his arguments for their merits.
Edit: Just finished the Smithsonian article, which I consider singularly unhelpful in really understanding the points he makes in his book. Do not judge his book or his arguments by this article. The article is an incoherent mess.
Is the most obvious question being adressed in any jurisdiction yet? - Do you legally have to disclose your results to any insurance company you already have an existing contract with or prior to any new insurance contract?
By chance, I just read a typical life insurance contract and it already stated that if you have undergone a genetic testing, you do have to disclose your results if you enter into a life insurance contract >300.000€. This was stipulated in the contract and not under general German contract law. If you do not disclose your results, the company can void the contract any time and/or terminate it any time in the future.
This is going to be THE most important issue with genetic testing - the implications for your insurance contracts. Obviously, your test results can have massively positive or negative results.
edit: Specifically, "`(A) IN GENERAL- For purposes of this section, a group health plan, and a health insurance issuer offering group health insurance coverage in connection with a group health plan, may not adjust premium or contribution amounts for the group covered under such plan on the basis of genetic information."
Note that it doesn't prevent discrimination for life insurance, disability insurance or long-term care insurance; if you get a dangerous condition in your DNA testing you'll never get any of those types of insurance again.
Also note the limitations are not very comprehensive. Health insurers could use genetic info and then find ways to deny you coverage on a technicality (didn't disclose tonsilitis at age 4 - DENIED). There's no civil remedy in the law so it would be up to you to petition the Federal government to carry out some sort of enforcement action against insurers, which seems less than likely.
While it isn't covered by law in all states (yet), my state restricts discrimination for life/disability and requires informed consent to use genetic information.
Health insurers could use genetic info and then find ways to deny you coverage on a technicality
How could that work once the Affordable Care Act goes into effect? It requires Guaranteed Issue, so insurers can't do that. Insurers have to accept anyone who requests their plan and they can only vary premiums based on age, location, and smoking.
Gender is determined genetically, and men and woman have different life expectancies. Does this mean you can't charge men and women different rates (all else being equal)?
The US bill explicitly excludes gender: "`(C) EXCLUSIONS- The term `genetic information' shall not include information about the sex or age of any individual."
The european court of justice has already ruled that price discrimination based on gender for insurance premiums is sex discrimination and therefore in violation of fundamental human rights.
The claim that ideology is separate from fact is an ideological position, so I don't think you are saying much. Do you care to make a claim about why you feel its acceptable to confuse sex and gender?
You can. Insurance spreads risk across population pools. You have to carve out those pools somehow, so you use broad variables like age and gender. The problem is genetic information has potential to make the pools too small.
You don't have to carve out those pools at all. Insurance is workable if everyone is lumped into a single huge pool. The trouble is that a company which is able to break their clientele into smaller pools will outcompete those who aren't, so you get a bit of a race to the bottom.
And from a payer perspective, it's problematic if a sizable population secretly learns that they are at meaningfully greater risk of health problems. Those individuals could then adversely select against the payers by buying Cadillac healthcare plans.
Since these companies don't determine your sex by asking you to submit a DNA sample and then surmising your sex via genetic information, but rather by asking you to indicate 'M' or 'F' on a form, genetic protections would be unlikely to be pertinent in the vast majority of cases. At least, that's my nonlawyer layperson read of things.
Tangentially related, I've been wondering if that could affect current gender discrepancies in the entrepreneurial scene (prospect of paying 200-300% more for private health insurance than male counterparts makes it even harder to leave your day job). More female startup founders in 2014, maybe?
As far as I know, women in the UK used to pay less for car insurance because they are less accident prone. I don't know if this has changed because of sex discrimination laws. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12600284
What? No. Gender isn't determined genetically. It's a psychological phenomenon. Also, sex can't even reliably be determined by chromosomes. There are things like Klinefelter syndrome, or XX male syndrome (exactly like it sounds).
I think this isnt a good solution. Imagine the following scenario.
A disease hits with p=0.001. To cure it is Very Expensive. Everyone gets insurance that covers it.
Now imagine we have a test, that can predict it with certainty. Very soon only those with positive results will want insurance. The insurance against it will become unprofitable and discontinued.
Does the law even matter here? If it's illegal to discriminate, then the insurance becomes unprofitable and is no longer available. If it's not illegal to discriminate, then the insurance can remain profitable by jacking up the price, but then is no longer available to the vast majority of those who suffer from it.
Insurance really only works when either 1) what it covers is truly unpredictable or 2) everybody is required to participate regardless of whether they really need it.
This is the reason why single payer healthcare systems based on residency make economic sense, it prevents this exact situation. We already have this problem to an extent, it's called being elderly.
Insurance is a pretty stupid model for health-care financing, in any case. It's not "insurance" if you know that everybody will eventually need to file a claim.
But that's one of those inconvenient truths that American politics refuses to confront.
I won't disagree (coming from Canada) that the american "For Profit Medical Insurance" system is pretty cold ("You're poor? You get the cheapest possible health care that keeps you out of the emergency room, which you are more likely to land in because you haven't been getting very good medical care.") - but it is insurance. Some people go fifty years without needing it. Some people make claims multiple times a year for hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical care...
Indeed true. And it seems to make an extremely expensive system out of it. But it also manages to do much of the worlds medical research so there are right bits amid the wrongs.
I'm pretty sure the spirit of the law is to prevent those types of situations from happening. Wouldn't this cover your situation?
"`(1) IN GENERAL- A health insurance issuer offering health insurance coverage in the individual market may not, on the basis of genetic information, impose any preexisting condition exclusion (as defined in section 2701(b)(1)(A)) with respect to such coverage."
In insurance, people who get lucky subsidize people who get unlucky. If you can test luck before getting insurance, then lucky people don't get insurance and there's nobody left to subsidize unlucky people.
Forbidding insurance companies to discriminate based on luck does not solve this problem, because the problem is caused by customers selectively buying insurance based on their own luck.
(Clarification: I'm describing reality-as-I-see-it. I'm not trying to make moral judgements on what laws we should or shouldn't pass.)
In insurance, people who get lucky subsidize people who get unlucky. If you can test luck before getting insurance, then lucky people don't get insurance and there's nobody left to subsidize unlucky people.
> Forbidding insurance companies to discriminate based on luck does not solve this problem, because the problem is caused by customers selectively buying insurance based on their own luck.
It's a little more nuanced than that. Let's say men are more prone to car crashes than women. Either you charge men more for auto insurance, OR you charge everyone a flat rate, and the market will rapidly clear itself of all women, since that flat rate will be too high to appeal to women. In this case, you end up with a market that's exclusively men, and women are uninsured.
When applied to health insurance, this means that, if you're forcing companies to insure everyone, they will have to insure people predisposed to expensive illnesses at incredibly high rates, because that's the expected cost of their lifetime care.
One implication of this is that the "no discrimination for pre-existing conditions" portion of the ACA is equivalent to "if you have a pre-existing condition, your coverage will be exorbitantly expensive".
There are ways of hiding this extra cost, but at the end of the day, it's like sweeping dust under the rug: it all has to sum to zero.
There's an easy way to weed out unlucky people. Just randomly throw out half the applicants. (You can substitute any proportion for "half" based on business needs)
> Now imagine we have a test, that can predict it with certainty. Very soon only those with positive results will want insurance. The insurance against it will become unprofitable and discontinued.
That does leave a time when the risk is still insurable: before the test is conducted.
One can imagine it evolving as an additional service that the testing provider may partner with insurance companies to provide. At the time you buy the test, they say "if you pay an extra $X now, you get insurance against us finding anything catastrophic."
(Just idly speculating here, who knows how these things will play out in a combination of regulatory, market, and technology changes.)
But since your parents had the test, and they know your parents' results, your probability of having the (genetic) disease is not exactly unknowable by the insurance company.
You'd have to prove that you didn't already have the test performed, which sounds tough. For example, maybe you flew to Elbonia to get an illicit test done in some dark alley, then came back to the US and retook the test while buying the insurance.
This covers only lucky ones, who are employed and have access to group insurance plans, isn't it? In this case entrepreneurs who just starting will be screwed.
You're right, life insurance is less regulated and is handled by the individual states in the US. Both New York and California prevent genetic discrimination in life insurance, though.
Not sure if you noticed this on their website. Covers a bit of what has been discussed already but I figured while we are talking about the insurance implications involved we should include the answer 23andme already gives the public.
You have a smart marketing ploy with the "Privacy made in Germany" slogan. Similar to "German engineering", instantly recognizable. Also, great looking product.
I wonder though, I am a German lawyer myself and under the impression that German data privacy laws (which I am not specialised in) are not that different from US/UK/generic EU country laws. Do you have any research or comparisons on that?
Because I see two ways how my data might get misappropriated anyway: either by your hosting provider, over which you have no control whatsoever if you don't own the physical servers, or by a police investigation, with which you have to comply anyway. So what exactly does German privacy protection buy me here?
Hi Daniel, thanks for your thoughtful considerations. Due to my experiences, I think privacy laws in Germany differ in one main point frome those in the UK or other EU countries, which is enforcement. As you probably know, we have had some data scandals which created a sense for data privacy in large parts of the population. On top of this, big internet corporations such as Google and Facebook are often portrayed as "data hungry" molochs by German media outlets.
Coupled with our own "bad feeling" when replacing the local OpenOffice or Word installation with Quabel.com for writing documents, we've decided to clearly state data privacy as a feature on our homepage. We hope this emphasizes the user-oriented aspect we have had in mind when creating this application.
