Top all-time · #5417
blogs.ancestry.com
Company blog · blogs.ancestry.comhistorydata
blogs.ancestry.com is the company blog at blogs.ancestry.com, writing about history and data. Since 2015, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 15 times, most often “Ancestry to Retire Family Tree Maker Software”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters link Ancestry's company blog as a source for name-frequency statistics, genetic migration maps, historical record transcription and its response on DNA policy. The comments cite these posts as data without judging them.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /cm/files/2017/02/MapMigration_c.jpg2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-28
- Ancestry to Retire Family Tree Maker Software2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-12-08
What Hacker News says?
It may not be so much a great guess as a statistical likelihood! In 2000, there were over 2.3 million Smiths in the United States: https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/smith-a-short-history-of-ameri... (This number has likely grown roughly alongside our population, so let's use 2000 numbers for this.) In 2000, we had 281 million people in the US, which means 0.8% of Americans have the last name Smith. If we assume every po…
Comment linking /cm/smith-a-short-history-of-americas-most-popular-surname/
on “Submit Your Claim in the Equifax Breach Settlement”Submitted A map of America’s migrations using genetic data from 770K saliva samples as a story · 42 points
HN discussionI'm think the hobby you're referring to is genealogy. It's actually a very common and useful hobby. :-) https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/genealogy-second-most-popular-...
Comment linking /cm/genealogy-second-most-popular-hobby-us/
on “How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry”Submitted Ancestry to Retire Family Tree Maker Software as a story · 3 points
HN discussionToo add a data point, here is a list of the 10 most common <FirstName, LastName> pairs in the United States. https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/calling-james-smith-10-most-co... I hesitate to guess ethnicity based on names, but I see mostly Caucasian and Latin names (Smith is represented heavily).
Comment linking /cm/calling-james-smith-10-most-common-first-and-surname-combinations/
on “Indiana Purging Voters Using Software That’s 99% Inaccurate”Submitted Ancestry Mexico Launches with 220M Searchable Mexican Historical Records as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI agree with your sentiment, but a minor nitpick: [Stop using anchors as buttons!][1] An anchor would be good here if the clicking the icons also triggered a URL change, but as it stands a button would be semantically most appropriate [1]: ( http://blogs.ancestry.com/techroots/buttons-vs-anchors/ )
Comment linking /techroots/buttons-vs-anchors/
on “Two Factor Auth List of Websites”Submitted Ancestry retiring Family Tree Maker – check comments, people are ANGRY as a story · 1 points
HN discussion10+ years ago, Ancestry.com hired people in Asia to transcribe U.S. census returns and vital records. They also used volunteers: http://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/?p=2321 Not sure how it's done now, but I suspect it's very hard to automate owing to inconsistent handwriting styles, unusual names for people and places, footnotes and abbreviations, etc.
Comment linking /circle/?p=2321
on “UK scientists ask for help in transcribing 200 years of rainfall data”Submitted Scaling Node.js in the Enterprise as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAncestry.com, today, issued a response which refutes some of the claims in this article: "Setting the Record Straight: Ancestry and Your DNA" [0]. [0]: https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2017/05/21/setting-the-r...
Comment linking /ancestry/2017/05/21/setting-the-record-straight-ancestry-and-your-dna/
on “Ancestry.com takes DNA ownership rights from customers and their relatives”This is really evident when you look at the genetic data from places like Ancestry.com and 23andMe. The states with highest percentage British/Irish are all in the South: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929714... http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2014/04/04/a-genetic-cens... http://blog.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Bryc_ASHG...
Comment linking /ancestry/2014/04/04/a-genetic-census-of-america/
on “150 Years of Immigration in America, Visualized”Open the actual image in a new tab it is much larger and actually readable. https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/files/2017/02/MapMigration_c.j...
Comment linking /cm/files/2017/02/MapMigration_c.jpg
on “A map of America’s migrations using genetic data from 770K saliva samples”Direct link to the full-size map for the lazy right-clickers: https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/files/2017/02/MapMigration_c.j...
Comment linking /cm/files/2017/02/MapMigration_c.jpg
on “A map of America’s migrations using genetic data from 770K saliva samples”IMHO We'll develop learning paths to speed up adoption of new tools, so new junior people will have the skills from school. Or, we won't need people doing those jobs anymore and they will do something else. There are tons of jobs in history that have been superseded, I sure don't miss some of them https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/10-of-the-most-disgusting-jobs...
Comment linking /cm/10-of-the-most-disgusting-jobs-in-history/
on “AI revolution puts skilled jobs at highest risk, OECD says”
