4 ms·
No, of course not. In 2010 I went to a guest lecture from a guy who worked on the scanning algorithm for IDT. A few years later, there was a minor scandal when
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
No, of course not. In 2010 I went to a guest lecture from a guy who worked on the scanning algorithm for IDT. A few years later, there was a minor scandal when someone in a nearby lab used a personal credit card for a purchase and got a big shared account locked. So not only were they scanning the content of synthesis orders, they were validating payment back to labs. In 2010, when HTTPS was rare and facebook didn't even offer it.
- estearum 2mo ago"There are websites where you can just buy prescription drugs online?" You: "No, of course not. I once went on a website to buy a drug, and they made go to a doctor and get a prescription and send it to them"
- smallmancontrov 2mo agoThe legit synthesis sites have been scanning and authorizing since before the internet was encrypted. You suggested otherwise, demibabs expressed surprise, and was correct to express surprise because your implication was incorrect. The black market exists -- but comes with black market problems.
- estearum 2mo agoIf that's the understanding you came away with, it was clarified in my immediately following comment. Glad we agree that there are labs that will solve very hard parts of creating a novel virus, either by accident or by negligence.
- smallmancontrov 2mo agoIt was dishonest then for you to imply that readily accessible commercial labs didn't take reasonable precautions and it's dishonest now, too.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- estearum 2mo agoDefine "reasonable precautions"? Here's a red team exercise where researchers successfully bought fragments of the best known pathogen in the world, never mind a novel one. What reasonable precautions failed to catch this but we could expect to catch a novel virus that "kinda looks like" a known virus? https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/08/shouldnt-be-easy-buy-synthetic-dna-fragments-recreate-deadly-1918-flu-virus/ https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/08/shouldnt-be-easy-buy-syn...
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- smallmancontrov 2mo agoSo shredding, mutating, and reassembling the genome is the minimum bar to slip it past the scanning? I thought you said you could just order it?
- estearum 2mo agoThis may have flown past you, but we’re commenting on an article about trivially creating novel pathogens The shredding, mutating, reassembling is all it took to get the most well known pathogen in the world by the controls that you are suggesting are sufficiently tight