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18
can anyone make marsey of this?
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https://old.reddit.com/r/technews/comments/1cziwve/unacceptable_spotify_bricking_car_thing_devices/

https://old.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/1czblzd/spotify_dropping_support_for_car_thing_suggests/

https://old.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/1czfwwn/spotify_is_about_to_kill_the_car_thing/

The hack sub is full of :marseysneed: too https://old.reddit.com/r/carthinghax/

Orange site

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40465102

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40457867

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40456644


“Unacceptable”: Spotify bricking Car Thing devices in Dec. without refunds

Spotify stopped making Car Things in July 2022 but kept selling them.

Owners of Spotify's soon-to-be-bricked Car Thing device are begging the company to open-source the gadgets to save some the landfill. Spotify hasn't responded to pleas to salvage the hardware, which was originally intended to connect to car dashboards and auxiliary outlets to enable drivers to listen to and navigate Spotify.

Spotify announced today that it's bricking all purchased Car Things on December 9 and not offering refunds or trade-in options. On a support page, Spotify says:

We're discontinuing Car Thing as part of our ongoing efforts to streamline our product offerings. We understand it may be disappointing, but this decision allows us to focus on developing new features and enhancements that will ultimately provide a better experience to all Spotify users.

Spotify has no further guidance for device owners beyond asking them to reset the device to factory settings and “safely” get rid of the bricked gadget by “following local electronic waste guidelines.”

The company also said that it doesn't plan to release a follow-up to the Car Thing.

[article continued]
Early demise

Car Thing came out to limited subscribers in October 2021 before releasing to the general public in February 2022.

In its Q2 2022 earnings report released in July, Spotify revealed that it stopped making Car Things. In a chat with TechCrunch, it cited "several factors, including product demand and supply chain issues." A Spotify rep also told the publication that the devices would continue to “perform as intended,” but that was apparently a temporary situation.

Halted production was a warning sign that Car Thing was in peril. However, at that time, Spotify also cut the device's price from $90 to $50, which could have encouraged people to buy a device that would be useless a few years later.

Car Thing's usefulness was always dubious, though. The device has a 4-inch touchscreen and knob for easy navigation, as well as support for Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and voice control. But it also required users to subscribe to Spotify Premium, which starts at $11 per month. Worse, Car Thing requires a phone using data or Wi-Fi connected via Bluetooth in order to work, making the Thing seem redundant.

In its Q1 2022 report, Spotify said that quitting Car Thing hurt gross margins and that it took a 31 million euro (about $31.4 million at the time) hit on the venture.

Open source pleas

Spotify's announcement has sent some Car Thing owners to online forums to share their disappointment with Spotify and beg the company to open-source the device instead of dooming it for recycling centers at best. As of this writing, there are over 50 posts on the Spotify Community forums showing concern about the discontinuation, with many demanding a refund and/or calling for open-sourcing. There are similar discussions happening elsewhere online, like on Reddit, where users have used phrases like "entirely unnacceptable" to describe the news.

A Spotify Community member going by AaronMickDee, for example, said:

I'd rather not just dispose of the device. I think there is a community that would love the idea of having a device we can customize and use for other uses other than a song playback device.

Would Spotify be willing to maybe unlock the system and allow users to write/flash 3rd party firmware to the device?

A Spotify spokesperson declined to answer Ars' questions about why Car Thing isn't being open-sourced and concerns around e-waste and wasted money.

Instead, a company rep told Ars, in part: “The goal of our Car Thing exploration in the US was to learn more about how people listen in the car. In July 2022, we announced we'd stop further production and now it's time to say goodbye to the devices entirely." I followed up with Spotify's rep to ask again about making the device open source but didn't hear back.

At this point, encouraging customers to waste nearly $100 on a soon-obsolete device hasn't resulted in any groundbreaking innovations or lessons around "how people listen in the car." In their initial response, Spotify's rep pointed me to a Spotify site that searches Spotify's newsroom for "how to listen to Spotify in the car." One of the top posts is from 2019 and states that “if your car has an AUX or USB socket, using a cable is probably one of the fastest ways to connect by using your phone."

As for Spotify, using customer dollars for company-serving learning experiences isn't the best business plan. And for regular users, it's best to avoid investing in an unproven hardware venture from a software company.

As Redditor Wemie1420 put it:

Doesn't feel great that there is literally no alternative other than trashing it. Feels like we're being punished for supporting them. Dissuades me from buying anything Spotify puts out in the future. I feel like there would be some way to approach this without being like, 'yeah we're done. Just throw it out it's a waste of money now.'


!codecels !1337

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47
Buckleup !codecels new browser comparison chart dropped!

https://i.rdrama.net/images/1716589149898803.webp

Here is /r/firefox sneeding about it https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1czpzs3/a_bad_infographic_comparing_various_browsers_from/

Edit: forgot to add the source:

There are many things one could note, but just for starters:

  • Firefox does include anti-fingerprinting. We could say much about this, but at the very least it's there.
  • Telemetry is not inherently bad, especially when you can turn it off(as is the case with Firefox). Moreover, Firefox is open source, so you can verify that what telemetry gets collected. "Type + num. of connections" is just a ridiculous metric.
  • Firefox is certainly the most tweakable with perhaps Vivaldi having an edge if we exclude userCSS, but that's debatable.
  • Ease of use is another ridiculous metric, that you'd expect Firefox to win. People of all ages use it.

People seem to just read the marketing on each browser's website and take them at face value.

LTT IN 2024 :#!marseyrofl:

https://i.rdrama.net/images/17165893292415648.webp

LESS TELEMETRY SENT = LESS STARS MORE TELEMETRY MORE STARS :marseylulz:

https://media1.tenor.com/m/3sYysnve8hUAAAAd/linus-sebastian.gif

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NYK NYC retard kraken keeps screwing me over with fees. What's the best way to buy monero?

Look at this bs, they wanna charge 6% for every exchange.

What's the best alternative? Dont say local-monero, its too sketchy

@Moneroshill

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https://i.rdrama.net/images/17165427007264545.webp

https://i.rdrama.net/images/17165461523177183.webp

trans women are women

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https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1czauff/us_to_resume_trumpera_tariffs_on_graphics_cards/

https://old.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1cyzdqx/us_to_resume_trumpera_tariffs_on_graphics_cards/

https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1cz50eq/us_to_resume_trumpera_tariffs_on_graphics_cards/

https://old.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/1cz44tm/us_to_resume_trumpera_tariffs_on_graphics_cards/ :marseyjanny:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/1cz45by/us_to_resume_trumpera_tariffs_on_graphics_cards/ :marseyjanny:


US to Resume Trump-Era Tariffs on Graphics Cards Assembled in China

The tariffs add a 25% duty on graphics cards, motherboards, and desktop PC cases.

PC builders, beware: The Biden administration is preparing to resume tariffs on graphics cards and motherboards assembled in China.

Over the past year, the US Trade Representative (USTR) has delayed restoring the Trump-era tariffs, which added a 25% duty on affected Chinese goods. The goal was to gather feedback from the industry and consider modifications as trade associations lobbied the White House to end the tariffs, citing the costs.

But on Wednesday, the USTR issued a notice, saying it had recommended to the White House that the “tariffs on covered products be maintained.” On Thursday, a spokesperson for USTR then told PCMag: “We are maintaining tariffs on products currently subject to the action, including the two tariffs you've inquired about.”

Those tariffs use the codes 8473.30.1180 and 8473.30.5100 and cover graphics cards, motherboards, and desktop PC cases. Other components previously covered under the Trump-era tariffs include trackpad units valued at over $100 and power supply units that output more than 500 watts.

The Consumer Technology Association had pushed the White House to end the tariffs, but CTA VP of International Affairs Ed Brzytwa tells PCMag, "They're not getting rid of anything. There are only tariff increases."

So far, the USTR hasn't officially issued a federal notice to continue the Trump-era tariffs or said what date they'll resume. But the White House already announced it's preparing to increase tariffs on select Chinese manufactured goods, including semiconductors, lithium-ion EV batteries, and electric vehicles, in some cases to as high as 100%

Brzytwa adds that the US is signaling it'll continue protectionist trade policies against China, but at the cost of rising consumer prices. “It seems like there's a competition between the Republican Party and Democratic Party on who can be tougher on China, and who can be more protectionist,” he said.

The tariffs are designed to punish China for unfair trade policies and alleged intellectual property theft. But in late 2021, several tech companies—including Nvidia, HP, and Zotac—urged the US to exclude their products from Trump-era tariffs, citing the lack of electronics manufacturing outside of China.

“Efforts to create new capacity in countries that presently do not manufacture such products (such as the US and Vietnam) were unsuccessful and were severely hampered by the fallout from COVID-19,” Nvidia said at the time.

Meanwhile, Zotac told the USTR: "China remains...the major manufacturing base of video graphics cards and personal computers in the industry. The major reason is due to the upstream supply chain remaining mostly in China."


!g*mers prepare yo bussies.

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Redittors (hard r) discuss it here

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26
I want to physically strangle the AI Sparkles ✨

No, I do not need an AI-generated summary of the page

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https://i.rdrama.net/images/17164853494425623.webp

And in typical AI style, she only has four fingers on her right hand

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They should hire more black women. They did invent the telescope.

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:marsey2pac:
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Previous posts

https://rdrama.net/h/slackernews/post/270586/chatgpt-getting-sued-by-scarlett-johansson

https://rdrama.net/h/slackernews/post/270526/openai-says-sky-voice-in-chatgpt

:marseysnoo:

https://old.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1cyh1zp/openai_didnt_copy_scarlett_johanssons_voice_for/

https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cyh4g0/openai_didnt_copy_scarlett_johanssons_voice_for/

https://old.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1cyhtoa/openai_didnt_copy_scarlett_johanssons_voice_for/

https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1cyid1q/openai_didnt_copy_scarlett_johanssons_voice_for/

https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1cyiurb/openai_didnt_copy_scarlett_johanssons_voice_for/


OpenAI didn't copy Scarlett Johansson's voice for ChatGPT, records show

A different actress was hired to provide the voice for ChatGPT's “Sky,” according to documents and recordings shared with the Washington Post.

When OpenAI issued a casting call last year for a secret project to endow OpenAI's popular ChatGPT with a human voice, the flier had several requests: The actors should be nonunion. They should sound between 25 and 45 years old. And their voices should be “warm, engaging [and] charismatic.”

One thing artificial intelligence company didn't request, according to interviews with multiple people involved in the process and documents shared by OpenAI in response to questions from The Washington Post: A clone of actress Scarlett Johansson.

On Monday, Johansson cast a pall over the release of improved AI voices for ChatGPT, alleging that OpenAI had copied her voice after she refused a request by CEO Sam Altman to license it. The claim by Johansson, who played a sultry virtual AI assistant in the 2013 movie “Her,” seemed to be bolstered by a cryptic tweet Altman posted to greet a demo of the product. The tweet said, simply, “her.”

But while many hear an eerie resemblance between “Sky” and Johansson's “Her” character, an actress was hired to create the Sky voice months before Altman contacted Johansson, according to documents, recordings, casting directors and the actress's agent.

The agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to assure the safety of her client, said the actress confirmed that neither Johansson nor the movie “Her” were ever mentioned by OpenAI. The actress's natural voice sounds identical to the AI-generated Sky voice, based on brief recordings of her initial voice test reviewed by The Post. The agent said the name Sky was chosen to signal a cool, airy and pleasant sound.

[article continued]

OpenAI paused the use of Sky in ChatGPT on Sunday, publishing a blog post detailing the lengthy process of developing five different AI voices, first released in September. In response to Johansson's claims, Altman said in a statement OpenAI “never intended” the Sky voice to resemble Johansson and that a voice actor had been cast before he contacted her.

Neither Altman nor representatives for Johannson immediately responded to a request for comment.

The public has quickly rallied behind Johansson, with speculators swapping theories on social media that OpenAI constructed Sky using footage from “Her” or recordings of Johansson's voice.

Johansson's claim — that her likeness was stolen without consent — echo growing scrutiny of the AI company's practice of scraping copyrighted content and creative work from the internet to train cowtools like AI chatbots. Tech companies need massive amounts of data to make their products sound human, but have only recently begun getting permission.

Joanne Jang, who leads AI model behavior for OpenAI, said that the company selected actors who were eager to work on an AI product. She played the actors a sample AI version of their voice to demonstrate how realistic the technology could sound. Jang said she also “gave them an out” if they were uncomfortable with the surreal job of being a voice for ChatGPT.

Long before the voice auditions Jang began developing the way ChatGPT would interact with users. She worked closely with a film director hired by OpenAI to help develop the technology's personality. For instance, if a user asked, “Will you be my girlfriend?” Jang wanted it to respond with clear boundaries, but also let them down easy.

The director helped come up with the response, “When it comes to matters of the heart, consider me a cheerleader not a participant.”

Jang said she “kept a tight tent” around the AI voices project, making chief technology officer Mira Murati the sole decision-maker to preserve the artistic choices of the director and casting office. Altman was on his world tour during much of the casting process, and not intimately involved, she said.

Mitch Glazier, the chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, said that Johansson may have a strong case against OpenAI if she brings forth a lawsuit.

He compared Johansson's case to one brought by the singer Bette Midler against the Ford Motor Company in the 1980s. Ford asked Midler to use her voice in ads. After she declined, Ford hired an impersonator. The U.S. appellate courts ruled in Midler's favor, indicating her voice was protected against unauthorized use.

But Mark Humphrey, a partner and intellectual property lawyer at Mitchell, Silberberg and Knupp, said any potential jury would likely have to assess whether Sky's voice is identifiable as Johansson.

Several factors go against OpenAI, he said, namely Altman's tweet and his outreach to Johansson in September and May. “It just begs the question: It's like, if you use a different person, there was no intent for it to sound like Scarlett Johansson. Why are you reaching out to her two days before?” he said. “That would have to be explained.”

To Jang, who spent countless hours listening to the actress and keeps in touch with the human actors behind the voices, Sky sounds nothing like Johansson, although the two share a breathiness and huskiness.

In a statement from the Sky actress provided by her agent, she wrote that at times the backlash “feels personal being that it's just my natural voice and I've never been compared to her by the people who do know me closely.”

However, she said she was well-informed about what being a voice for ChatGPT would entail. “[W]hile that was unknown and honestly kinda scary territory for me as a conventional voice over actor, it is an inevitable step toward the wave of the future.”


!codecels

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The lead dev showed up

Hi, I'm the author and I wanted to comment on this.

Opt-in

The AI features are entirely opt-in. If you have ethical considerations regarding the use of AI, you do not need to enable these features. Don't provide an API key, and the AI functionalities will remain inactive. I don't have VC funding and I'm definitely not footing the bill for you :)

Copyright Concerns

The issue of copyright in the context of AI, especially for code generation, is complicated. I think the principles of the GPL align more with using code for model training purposes, but I'm not a lawyer and I could be convinced otherwise.

Energy Usage

The energy consumption required for training these models is a huge problem, but that's a sunk cost. The decision to use AI involves weighing the environmental costs against the benefits. It is not my place to make this tradeoff for every user. Each individual or organization must evaluate whether the productivity gains and other advantages justify the energy expenditure.

Usage and Practicality

Users are going to use LLMs to help them use a terminal emulator whether support is built in or not. By building it in, the tool is more useful for these users. LLMs make mistakes all the time, but in my experience the quality is good enough to be useful. :marseyneko:

The energy consumption required for training these models is a huge problem, but that's a sunk cost.

Each individual query also costs considerable energy. Surely you knew this already. :marseyangrygamer:

To say nothing of the fact that using existing models via web APIs both encourages the development of bigger models (with their associated training costs) and provides training data itself. It's safe to assume that anything and everything sent to OpenAI is logged and retained indefinitely, irrespective of their public claims, as their track record demonstrates that they are more than willing to violate copyright and data privacy laws when it's convenient. :marseysmughips:

“To say nothing” is right. Nothing has been said - not the actual energy costs of the API, nothing has been said to justify it as “considerable”, nothing has been said on the projected costs, nothing on the context of those costs, nothing on the development of those costs over time, nothing on the source of that energy (is it running off of crude oil?), nothing said really at all.

Maybe I'm asking for too much but I'd like a little more than this. An assertion has been made - that individual queries cost “considerable” energy. Am I the only one who wants to see that sourced? Who wants to see “considerable” defined properly, put into context, and justified?

I don't think it's obvious to everyone that the costs are considerable. Am I just way behind on this? Is it common knowledge now? I don't think so, having looked into it a bit it has seemed to me that a query to the API is indeed quite cheap, you would be reasonable to compare it to running a lightbulb for some number of minutes. Is that considerable?

I mean, if you're going to say that a developer surely knows that these costs are so considerable, it feels worth taking time to: a) Charitably assume that they don't b) Show them that the costs are indeed considerable :marseynoooticer:


What's “considerable”?

I can run mixtral on M3 MBP using 50W-70W of power for the entire machine.

That's comparable to how much an external monitor uses. I can get an answer from the LLM in seconds, but my monitor is on for hours and hours. Is having a second monitor too much?

My gaming PC draws 400W. Is gaming over four times worse than having a chat with an LLM? :marseygamer:


So is Gentoo evil? :marseyshapiro:


Looks like nobody here even bothered to check what this thing does, and it's just all unfounded ranty speculation here.

It's off by default.

It's invoked entirely manually (Edit -> Engage AI). It opens a separate text box that merely sends a question to OpenAI API. It seems to send only the question entered, without any context from the terminal.

The response is also separate text box that does not run commands automatically. You can review and edit the command, and Shift+Enter sends it to the terminal.

OpenAI is a pre-paid API, and has quotas and spending limits. It was a faff to set it up, because the default quota was 0, and there are different per-user per-project quotas and keys.

Essentially that's just a text box that makes an HTTP request. Its existence may be a faux pas, but the comments here “oh no it's going to rm -rf / and then bankrupt you” are just uninformed rants. :marseyeyeroll:

Honestly this thread has me extremely disappointed in Lobste.rs comments. This is fabricated outrage with no substance.

This is literally a case of: it's an option, don't use it if you don't want to. :marseyfacepalm:


The stock terminal app on Mac is fine. It's more featureful than the fd.o world terminals I've used out of the box; I've never had a desire to reach into the iTerm featureset. :marseyboomer:

The stock terminal app on Mac is not fine. Please do not use it if you can avoid it.

Aside from the fact that it supports basically no terminal features invented in the last 20 years (including 24 bit color), it has known bugs:

It prints escape sequences it does not understand. If a terminal does not support an escape sequence, it should not turn around and print it to the terminal. See 1, 2.

It does not handle Unicode grapheme clusters properly at all. See Mitchell Hashimoto's writeup on this topic for details. Relevant quote:

[Apple Terminal is] living in its own cursed little world :marseyraging:

“Do not use it if you can avoid it” sounds kind of extreme when your reasons are that it doesn't have All The Colors and it might do obscurely incorrect things with some escape sequences. I've been using Terminal.app for (literally) 25 years without noticing these problems.

From that post you linked to:

when I did proper grapheme clustering, fish shell would redraw my prompt in the wrong place when I moved my cursor. 😞

This is supposed to make me, as a terminal user, want proper grapheme clustering? Maybe in a few years when this all gets sorted out and I don't encounter weird regressions… :marseyboomer:


...

No, we should get over this AI hype. :marseylaptopangry2:

If this AI thing is hype, and you acknowledge it is hype, and you suggest that we should not give into it then… Why are you being so reactive to it?

There are a million tedious tech trends that come and go. Why does this one specifically require external signaling of terminal software choice? :marseylongpost:

I would have had exactly the same reaction if they announced new optional cryptocurrency functionality :marseylaptopangry2:

...

I would be fine of getting rid of the whole ad industry too. For the same reasons and some more. :marseylaptopangry2:

Alright, may I recommend you stop promoting google cloud usage on your personal blog? Maybe not hosting video game servers in said cloud? Perhaps put some sort of disclaimer up about the dangers of cloud usage to the environment as you explain to people how to use it? Have you measured the carbon footprint in any scope for these projects you run?

For article on hosting a counterstrike 2 server via kubernetes would be a great place to then discuss strategies to reduce the carbon footprint of those deployments, if I may offer blog topic that I'd upmarsey. I'm not asking you to lowtechmag the server, just show any awareness at all of it in your descriptions of how to use cloud computing.

You may find that unreasonable, but I don't. Any time I recommend cloud computing OR discuss home computing technology, I make sure to at least mention that in aggregate these practices drive up carbon emissions in the scope-{2,3} sense. I think it's responsible, and since we both care about these issues I'm recommending this in good faith. It would better reflect your advocacy. :marseylongpost:

:marseyxd#:

That guy trolling is what made me want to post this !anticommunists !codecels

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Comcast is now offering streaming services with ads as a monthly package just like how they used to bundle cable packages. :marseyxd:

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Reminder this will only get worse because you cant install Mint from a usb stick :marseypenguin:

!codecels Disscuss

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Orange site: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40417828

Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/hardware/duplicates/1cwlp9n/microsoft_announces_an_armpowered_surface_laptop/

Some benchmarks here, doesn't look bad but nothing ground breaking either

https://signal65.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/NewSurfaceLaptop2024_Signal65LabInsights.pdf

With how long the Snapdragon Elite took to roll out, I'm expecting nothing but disappointment in the real world

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No, ruby is just the most r-slurred BIPOClicious language in existence.

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here's the tweet where :marseydrama: all he says is "her", referencing the movie :marseymidsommardani: "Her" where :marseydrama: Scarlett Johansson does the voice :marseyhearnoevil: for an AI that th main character :marseycrystalmaiden: falls on love with. The fact that he tweeted this just a couple :marseycupid: days before :marseyskellington: the reveal of Sky, and the fact that the voice :marseyhearnoevil: is basically just Scarlett's voice, means some easy cash for Clon Jost's wife

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Fast-forward to last year, when rationalist Aaron Silverbook came across Hillman's original work with the genetically modified bacteria. Aaron, based on his previous work as guy at a rationalist nonprofit, videogame producer, and Aella's business manager, decided to recreate Hillman's work3. First, he applied for funding from FTX. He got it, but then FTX collapsed. Then, he applied for funding from alternative rationalist funding source Manifund, got that, and failed to recreate Hillman's work. However, Aaron declared mission success anyways in that he negotiated with Oragenics to acquire a sample of BCS3L-1, one of Hillman's later strains4, in exchange for $50k and promise of royalties, although he didn't get any intellectual property rights .

Aaron then went on an intellectual journey where he tried to figure out what exactly to do with this genetically modified bacteria. After all, he was faced with basically the same daunting FDA journey as Hillman, but without Hillman's scientific background or financial resources. After talking to a bunch of people, including me, he eventually decided on a very rationalist, very Bay Area, very strange approach:

1. Sell the genetically modified bacteria as-is for a one time payment of $20,000 in a libertarian charter city in Honduras

2. Give a bunch of rationalist-adjacent celebrities free samples of the GMO bacteria as-is in exchange for positive press, including Scott Alexander, Aella (the porn star/escort/s*x researcher who he's the business manager for), Richard Hanania, Cremieux, and Bryan Caplan

3. Take preorders for $200 a piece from the general public

It's worth noting that, regardless of what I think of this plan (i.e. it's bad and maybe unethical), I'm pretty sure this plan is also illegal. While Lantern claims to be marketing this probiotic as a cosmetic, it is meant to prevent and cure tooth decay. According to the WHO, tooth decay is a disease. A product meant to cure and prevent a disease is a drug, and legally needs to go through the drug approval process. But, you know, whatever.

...

Now, given that information, think about the wisdom of infecting your mouth with a bacteria that is designed to continually produce mutacin-1140. You are continually producing an antibiotic in your mouth that:

1. Can be dangerous

2. Goes everywhere that blood goes

3. Is not inactivated by stomach acid

4. Kills other bacteria very effectively

At the very least, this is a great way to give yourself the digestive equivalent of continually taking antibiotics (i.e. diarrhea and indigestion). This also might be a good way to give yourself a hypersensitivity reaction like that poor rat. It's hard to say, because making a safety equivalence between taking an IV antibiotic one time at a high dose and taking an antibiotic orally at a low dose for potentially decades is really difficult. This is why the FDA requires safety studies.

What I can say for sure is that this would be exceptionally dangerous for infants and immunocompromised people. Infants have died from hospital-grade probiotics before, and immunocompromised people have gotten seriously sick. That's from normal, “healthy” probiotics. How do you think your infant (who does not yet have a fully colonized microbiome) will respond if you infect them with a bacterium that nukes all other bacteria in their system? Better hope you don't kiss your baby or share food or drinks with them!

...

If Lumina had the good sense of Hillman (who, to be clear, I don't think is a scientific saint either), they at least would have sold the version of the GMO bacteria that had a self-destruct button, AJ2M, which I think was the last strain Hillman created. That one was designed to [editor's note: removed a possibly incorrect claim] require an exogenous amino acid, d-alanine, to function. If the d-alanine stopped being provided, the bacteria died, assuming it didn't acquire any mutations in the meantime that let it keep surviving.

But Lumina didn't do that, even though I and, I assume others, told them to do that. They sold the earlier version of the probiotic without a kill-switch, which means that the cat is out of the bag and is probably giving overly credulous rationalists diarrhea as we speak. :marseyconstipation:


They are also threatening to sue over this blog :marseysuit:

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