Interesting to note there slide 5 -- "For many polynomial time problems, improving the best known algorithms, even slightly, implies ¬SETH or ¬ETH." So appare

Interesting to note there slide 5 -- "For many polynomial time problems, improving the best known algorithms, even slightly, implies ¬SETH or ¬ETH." So apparently the edit-distance result discussed here is part of a history of similar results. Edit: More detail on this in slides 11 and forward.