ronaldx

It's traditional in text adventures that you infer un-helped verbs from the text (that is, if the verb is clued at all): here the wizard instructs you to 'say' the answer.

Text adventures used to be hard!

That your parents and the parent commenter react in this way ("it's obvious") is by design of the author of the piece and the author of House.

I can watch an episode of House and anticipate "they obviously have lupus", which makes me feel intelligent and satisfied even though I can see they are planting obvious clues from the very start which a diagnostician would be mind-numbingly stupid to ignore.

The same with the headline of this article. It's designed that way. In reality, you don't get to read the headline or watch the episode before making a clinical decision.

Regarding House: in mid-series episodes, I believe they occasionally subvert this by planting clues for the wrong thing. At least, I enjoyed being wrong in those episodes.

True in theory, but unlikely to the point of irrelevant.

Assuming chromosomes are inhereted whole, the probability that siblings share less than 25% DNA - the equivalent of one further generation away - is 0.00531 (0.5% chance).

But chromosomes are not inherited whole - they recombine. This hugely reduces the probability even from that start point.

Mitochondrial DNA between twins is expected to be almost identical, but you and I also have extremely similar mitochondria: since it doesn't recombine and rarely mutates. So, you have to get to a much deeper level to identify the differences.

Even if it's now possible/cheap, that's a recent development.

mtDNA is good for finding your (maternal) ancestral group, less so for your immediate relatives.

I see no reason why a mitochondrial DNA test would be helpful - your point is that the mitochondria are maternally inherited?

1. Mitochondrial DNA is less apt than regular DNA to accurately identify motherhood since it has a low mutation rate.

2. The mitochondria would still come from the chimeric cells which still are a generation away from the mother's cells.

3. If you have have considered the possibility of chimerism, there are much simpler tests - e.g. the tests that they did do.

The ova all come from the germline so IMHO it's overwhelmingly likely they would have the same DNA but it's not exactly guaranteed: it depends if her ovaries are chimeric.

Apologies for editing my point above.

Chimerism is well-studied because it's biologically interesting, but most social/medical professionals are not expected to come across human chimerism in their whole career.

Chimerism not often documented in humans and the other possibilities (e.g. surrogacy scam) are hugely more probable explanations.

It's not uneducated to use Occam's razor: if someone tests as not being the mother, they almost always are not the mother. This is an every day occurrence.

Chimerism is a possible explanation but vanishingly unlikely. Two identified cases, ever (i.e. none before this).

This is news because it's exceptional.

This article doesn't totally add up.

If the mother was chimeric, she would be chimeric with a 'twin' from the same (grand)mother and father. Therefore her 'twin' chimera would share 50% of her DNA, as any regular sibling.

This would be identifiable on a DNA test as a close relative: she would be genetically equivalent to an aunt rather than a mother.

It's also surprising that they had to test the thyroid when the gametic cell line is the important one (wikipedia suggests they tested her cervix).

Great, thanks :)

It is not exactly clear (on the website) what you mean by 'rejected', so the English text could be improved to make your meaning more explicit. Perhaps 'returned' would be better?

Good luck!

So stuff which appears to be spam is bounced, with a return message.

On reflection, this does seem like a better system. I had imagined a silent fail as per other popular e-mail hosts.

"A lot of advice says to only accept jobs which are willing to pay the rate you're offering..."

IMHO the rule is good, but you don't have to offer the same rate for each job. If there's a job that benefits you, work out what how much that benefits you and quote the appropriate rate. If there's a job that doesn't benefit you, double your normal rate.

Clients insisting on negotiating the rate is a negative signal. It may be a signal that they don't value your work at the rate you're quoting, and this is often a signal that they won't value your work. It may be a signal that they are under financial pressure (i.e. it's high risk for you). Better clients might ask for a discount but normally will agree if you stick to the quoted rate.

> I do not understand the Legal Certainty paragraph.

My interpretation is: Spam is deleted in order to give you plausible deniability that you haven't received and read it.

i.e. There is no spam folder.

But, this seems like it would normally be a bug rather than a feature.

You can also pass the test this way by having "generous" judges contributing to the 1/3, which is likely because the judges are not impartial: they are emotionally invested in being part of a positive result. I wonder how Kevin Warwick himself voted, for example.

A more correct test (which admittedly doesn't cover this issue) would be to give each judge a conversation with one human and one computer, and for them to say which one they believe is the human.

Chances are you don't get to be a (self-made) billionaire without throwing away $5k here and there.

If you're spending your time saving easily recoverable $5ks, you might get to be a millionnaire but you will never get to be a billionaire: it's totally irrelevant on that scale.

Equivalent statement: You don't get to buy a house without picking pound coins up off the street.