This is like a car that can't even get you two blocks from home. Amazing.

"Because of Tether’s inability to conduct significant banking activity during this time, it could not itself hold dollars sufficient to back the hundreds of millions of new tethers that had entered the market. Until September 15, 2017, the only U.S. dollars held by Tether ostensibly backing the approximately 442 million tethers in circulation was the approximately $61 million on deposit at the Bank of Montreal."

https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2021.02.17_-_settlemen...

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I can use biochemistry to build second-generation machines which might be capable of doing that. We might not have a diamondoid nanomachine but we can eventually synthesize it, since biology gives us atomically precise positioning of atoms. This looks like a feasible way to develop Drexlerian nanotech.

An analogy with computer programming could be that biology is like assembly language. Using that you can make a higher-level language such as C, and from there you can develop much more powerful abstractions and technologies (Python, Perl, Lisp, Ruby, etc.)

The domains of biochemistry and molecular manufacturing are not completely different because the former could be the foundation of the latter. Also, the science behind biology can inform nanotech. Transforming mechanical energy into chemical processes and viceversa are common processes in cells (e.g., motor proteins.), this is very similar to the type of processes molecular nanotech aspires to make.

Another thing is that cells are capable of correcting errors in DNA synthesis to a substantial degree, 1 mistake for every 1 to 10 billion nucleotides. Reliability isn't an insurmountable problem in biology.

"This is not atomically precise, mechanosynthetic manufacturing."

But we can agree that biology can do atomically precise synthesis. And enzymatic catalysis can sometimes be described in terms of mechanical bending of molecules, such as the ATP synthase.

If biochemistry were so irrelevant to molecular manufacturing, Drexler wouldn't have written so many pages talking about it or suggesting it as way to develop nanotech.

This means that beta oxidation (the metabolic pathway where those reactions take place) of fatty acids involve manipulation of molecules at the atomic level. Drexler describes a path from biochemistry to molecular manufacturing in Engines of Creation. In fact, part of his argument is that biochemistry is similar to a great extent to the molecular machines he envisions.

So, strong enforcement of intellectual property laws means problems to... free speech and society's progress, if that involves filtering or censoring content on the internet.

Apple could keep this curated marketplace and at the same time allow sideloading of applications, like many Android phones do. By taking that simple step, concerns about censorship would be ameliorated.