Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure we are now just a couple of marketing cycles away from a version of this being re-packaged and sold to police departments around the world as a tool for identifying suspects in a cloud database of DNA sequences belonging to People of Interest.

(You don't need a complete sequence for that, just enough unique markers to ID somebody.)

Goodbye "papers, please", hello "cheek swab, please".

View on HN

The forensic field moves very slowly in adopting new technology since they have to do a lot of re-validation every time anything changes.

This idea already here, but with technology based on older/simpler methods. One example is Intigenx: https://integenx.com/rapidhit-system/

The FBI has plans for implementing them: https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/fbis-plans-for-the-use-of.... The laws just need to catch up (or prevent it).

Too expensive with the current nanopore technology.

And with any other technology, including a miniaturized PCR implementation, it would be too slow.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com