Also I have no idea why it veered into a discussion about a moth's DNA. That was unexpected, but very tumblrish.

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[–] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

a closest DNA/genome string

To what? As in - what in that thread is it relating the moth to? (it's fine if you don't remember, but if anyone else does, I need my confusion eased lol)

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    The 'idea' is that a post ... of any length ... is stripped of all characters other than ATCG, and that what remains constitutes a possible genome sequence.

    bark moth couple dingo

    becomes

    atcg

    Then you run this 'sequence' against a database of genomic data, and get a nearest match to some species.

    The actual problems with this are many.

    Actual genomic sequences are orders of magnitude larger than even a lengthy, stripped down tumblr post.

    Actually running a nearest match search of a short string / sequence will likely match many, many different species.

    Running an exhaustive, ie, accurate, nearest match search against an actually comprehensive database would require using a supercomputer, or at the very least, a lot of powerful, networked computers.

    ...

    EDIT: There's no real relation to the content or context of the post or thread to the 'genomic match' species. None.

    Its about as legitimate or useful as trying to decipher the 'Bible Code' by running any number of pattern matching algorithms on a modern, English Bible.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Thanks for the explanation, I would have never figured out the stripping of the post down to those letters part lol

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    Strange, it was literally the first explanation I thought of, I then spent 10 minutes confirming that was in fact the sequence of ACTGs in the original post before coming into the comments to find out that it is indeed what happened.

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