| ▲ | demibabs an hour ago |
| Would they not be like “hmmm this one looks kinda similar to a known virus” They really just synthesize anything for you? |
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| ▲ | estearum an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| I'm sure some of them would, but they're not required by law to do so. And historically the way you'd do this is by actual fragment/substring matches. But these are novel viruses now. So what you really want to do is try to predict whether a novel genome is pathogenic... which is itself obviously a very hard technical problem. |
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| ▲ | Enginerrrd 33 minutes ago | parent [-] | | That’s not too much a concern I think. Most of the real pathogenic qualities result from known genes. Inventing a totally novel virus that is also pathogenic is basically science fiction right now. Splicing together known components that could be bad in combination is closer to current technology. |
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| ▲ | smallmancontrov an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | estearum 42 minutes ago | parent [-] | | "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 35 minutes ago | parent [-] | | The 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 28 minutes ago | parent [-] | | If 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 12 minutes ago | parent [-] | | It was dishonest then for you to imply that readily accessible commercial labs didn't take reasonable precautions and it's dishonest now, too. | | |
| ▲ | estearum 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Can you describe specifically what is "reasonable precautions" as far as labs detecting novel pathogens sent to them? |
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