> But KJ’s treatment — which built on decades of federally funded research — offers a new path for companies to develop personalized treatments without going through years of expensive development and testing.
Really incredible story and I'd love to know the process for receiving this, for example FDA approval etc. It's nice to see such in-your-face results from Federal funding programs. Without being political, it's sometimes hard for regular people to appreciate just how much good actually comes out of Federal Funding. There was another thread where someone even said something along the lines of : "Well during war things get done faster" . This simply isn't true. It might be done louder but Federal Funding never stopped pushing things forward.
I'm not an expert, but I have learned that FDA approval is not actually necessary for treatments and drugs. Your doctor has a lot of leeway when it comes to treatment but she of course experiences more risk of accusations of malpractice when prescribing off label drugs or unapproved treatments. insurance will also rarely cover treatment that is not FDA approved. the requirement for FDA approval generally has more to do with your legal ability to market the drug, treatment, or product.
That's actually super interesting and kinda great to hear, I guess my follow up question is obvious but would insurance companies cover that kind of procedure in the US? I get the impression it wouldn't be.. but if out of pocket.. I know I'd absolutely do anything for my kid.
Here's the thing - likely few would have noticed. We are structurally blind to the places in which public investment would have made our lives better, especially when they are things like scientific research that the vast majority never think about until it produces results.
I mean, the article is explicitly written to put it on your mind:
"The implications of the treatment go far beyond treating KJ, said Dr. Peter Marks, who was the Food and Drug Administration official overseeing gene-therapy regulation until he recently resigned over disagreements with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services."
"But KJ’s treatment — which built on decades of federally funded research"
"The result “is a triumph for the American peoples’ investment in biomedical research,” Dr. Urnov said."
"The researchers emphasized the role government funding played in the development."
"The work, they said, began decades ago with federal funding for basic research on bacterial immune systems. That led eventually, with more federal support, to the discovery of CRISPR. Federal investment in sequencing the human genome made it possible to identify KJ’s mutation. U.S. funding supported Dr. Liu’s lab and its editing discovery. A federal program to study gene editing supported Dr. Musunuru’s research. Going along in parallel was federally funded work that led to an understanding of KJ’s disease."
"“I don’t think this could have happened in any country other than the U.S.,” Dr. Urnov said."
This is an article about federal funding of medical research with a cute baby as the human interest bit.
It would be nice, but you know how politics can usually turn into a bit of a toxic environment online. That said, I personally don't see the DOGE thing as anything other than a way to reduce the power of regulatory enforcement. I'm sure someone who would want that would never be conflicted with interests there...
I'd argue the opposite.. For example in this case of they roll it out without tearing and something catastrophic happens. The faith in the tech will not be restored for generations, regardless of how much testing is done. Better to have these things working out the door straight away Instead of risking literal lives.
We just need some major wars or implacable ideological enemies to force us to test in prod. The biggest tech leaps happen there, because there’s no alternative.
Would you rather be the world’s richest person in 1825 or lower middle class today?
I like antibiotics, MRI, anesthetics during surgeries, unlimited information and entertainment, and the ability to travel places in less than 8 weeks and without getting tuberculosis along the way.
Tech advancement has given the most people the most happiness, safety and prosperity.
And it’s still barely a drop in the bucket compared to what is plainly visible already as the next level up.
We've caused a mass extinction, we're warming the planet at a dangerous rate, we've covered it with harmful long lasting chemicals that are now in the bloodstreams of most living things, we've damaged the mental health of youth with social media, etc. All this because we don't test and think about the consequences broadly enough, the most important (if not the only) question we ask being "will this be profitable for the owners?".
If one of the things I mentioned doesn't cause our extinction, it's only a matter of time until one of our inventions does, if we don't consider the effects broadly enough before putting it in production at a large scale.
We didn't have better testing procedures and we got here.
With better testing procedures, would we have gotten here sooner, in the same amount of time, or slower?
My contention is slower. And this seems obvious, because in any Cold War sabotage handbook for slowing down a project, the first rule is to insist on more documentation, more consensus, more verification and validation: i.e. more "testing" and less "push to prod".
AI aided development has first class support in Zed.
Ie. it's not a "plugin" but built-in ecosystem developed by core team.
Speed of iterations on new features is quite impressive.
Their latest agentic editing update basically brought claude code cli to the editor.
Most corporations don't have direct access to arbitrary LLMs but through Microsoft's Github's Copilot they do – and you can use models through copilot and other providers like Ollama – which is great for work.
With their expertise (team behind pioneering tech like electron, atom, teletype, tree sitter, building their own gpu based cross platform ui etc.) and velocity it seems that they're positioned to outpace competition.
Personally I'd say that their tech is maybe two orders of magnitude more valuable than windsurf?
I don't dispite Zed is great, I actually am using it myself, but it's an editor first and foremost. The OP, to me at least seems to be asking more-so about the AI agent comparisons.
Yes very observant, modified forks with their agents built in. Zed does not have any built in, sublime does not have agents built in but if you like you can continue this disingenuous discussion.
Zed has it built in, it's called "agentic editing" [0] and behaves like claude code cli and other agents – mcp based editing, iterating on tests until they pass etc. – where you leave it in a background window and can do something else waiting for completion notification or you can follow it to see what changes it is doing.
It's not only that they have it built in but it seems to be currently the best open replacement for tools like claude code cli because you can use arbitrary llm with it, ie. from ollama and you have great extension points (mcp servers, rules, slash commands etc).
Thank you for your kind offer, I shall take you up on it. Zed does have it built in. Now, please continue your disingenuous conversation by repeatedly claiming something that is demonstrably not true.
Nah, I can see a losing argument when I see one. In my eyes, the OP was asking about the LLM/AI side and not the editor. But okay, zed now has one built in. I know now.
Agentic editing was released recently yes, llm integration was there for much longer. It supported editing but it was more manual – context of conversation from chat was basically available in in-line editing so you could edit code based on llm output but it was more manual process, now it's agentic.
If those tattoo's had meaningful sentiment for the owner, and you knew that sentiment, would you view that person different than a "fashionista tattoo seeker" ?
edit : I have a few tattoo's my first at 18, my best friend killed himself, so I took his scratch he made on his guitar and make a tattoo. it's not astetic by any means but now I build a collection of memories of the people important to me who are around and meld them all together.
I like this, means the most to me. Can look horrible to others. But tattoos are not all born equal.
You are right and my answer is yes. (I elaborated my thought in another reply under my parent comment; the essence being that tattoos with the function of fashion likely lead to regret, while other tattoos don't.)
Owning a mistake is amazing, actually I do believe it's one of the most important skills you need to learn in any profession. You won't learn it in University, only when you think the world is on the line.
It's a super nice example. Explain the situation as early as possible, don't be afraid and roll with it.
: Edit : The OP has history until recently - My message is off base and in the wrong context. Apologies.
I feel like I'm in crazy town...
Hi - I'm new here. I did something dumb and
set up a mail alias so that steve@next.com
would go to me.
This was a bad idea, I'm sorry.
I've changed it to steve@next.com goes to you,
not to me. I think that makes more sense.
My apologies.
Signed, new guy.
This was
> That is one of the most beautifully crafted “I did something dumb” emails
Why ? What is happening if you can't email your boss/upper on the regular like that ?
"Hey, I'm gonna be late today, ate too many burritos last night and had to visit the hospital"
> What is happening if you can't email your boss/upper on the regular like that ?
In a 40 person startup or small company, sure. In a 400 person company, the guy at the top is a few levels removed from "your boss" to be emailing with "on the regular".
OP had Jobs as his CEO for 20 years (hired in 1991, until Jobs passed in 2011), and says this was the only time Jobs directly emailed with him (of course, 400 people in 1991 was the smallest the company would be during that time, it would only grow from there).
> OP had Jobs as his CEO for 20 years (hired in 1991, until Jobs passed in 2011), and says this was the only time Jobs directly emailed with him (of course, 400 people in 1991 was the smallest the company would be during that time, it would only grow from there).
You're right, I had to dig into OPs history to find that. I take back what I said. He gets every pass he wants, and now it makes sense.
Idolizing steve jobs, or anyone running such an evil corp is honestly just evil as well. Apart from bullying potential competitors, Apple is at top of the list for running an extensive mass surveillance on all of it's users
It's a really cool story, but I can't help but feel a lot has be idealized around regular people who did extraordinary things.
I mean, Steve Jobs had to work with people, but he wasn't some prophet. He was a talented guy, who had his failures and successes, more of the latter.
It is a cool story, but if my boss of 15 years ago becomes world famous, I'm not going to personally treasure the email he sent with 4 words, possible 2 automated, write a blog post about it.
I'm just going to giggle to myself a little. Again, I might be in the minority here.
I’d hypothesize you would if you thought he was a great boss, and the opportunity to work there was unique.
Just reading that email felt magical to me - to get something so visionary on your first day at a company in the early 90s would’ve convinced me they were leading me in the right direction.
> Just reading that email felt magical to me - to get something so visionary on your first day at a company in the early 90s would’ve convinced me they were leading me in the right direction
I have a vision, not 20/20, but it involves you working for me. Good idea.
Similarly, my home country Sweden also has a bunch of civil defense shelters, built during the cold war if I remember correctly, as we've been scared of the Russians for a long time too.
> There are around 64,000 civil defence shelters in Sweden, with space for around seven million people. Shelters can be found in various types of buildings, such as residential and industrial properties, and are marked with a special sign. In peacetime, a civil defence shelter can be used for other purposes.
Anyone growing up in Sweden would recognize these orange/blue triangles indicating a shelter, and the large metal doors in your apartment-building cellar, where you store old shit you no longer use.
Can you give any examples of IP piracy (outside of China) because IP in the US doesn't automatically transfer outside the US, they need to be registered in other regions also..
Really incredible story and I'd love to know the process for receiving this, for example FDA approval etc. It's nice to see such in-your-face results from Federal funding programs. Without being political, it's sometimes hard for regular people to appreciate just how much good actually comes out of Federal Funding. There was another thread where someone even said something along the lines of : "Well during war things get done faster" . This simply isn't true. It might be done louder but Federal Funding never stopped pushing things forward.
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