Whether intentional or not, it seems like the trend is increasingly locked-down devices running locked-down software, and I’m also disturbed by the prospect of Big Tech gobbling up hardware (see the RAM shortage, for example), making it unaffordable for regular people, and then renting this hardware back to us in the form of cloud services.

It’s disturbing and I wish we could stop this.

It's really strange how he spins off on this mini-rant about AI ethics towards the end. I clicked on a video about UI design.

There have been other attempts to use genetically-modified fungi (Trichoderma) for protein production, where they secrete in the cultivation medium a water-soluble animal protein, e.g. a cow whey protein or chicken egg white protein.

Then, through filtration and ultrafiltration, the desired protein is separated from the fungal cells and the cultivation medium, producing a protein powder in the same way how one makes whey protein concentrate or milk protein concentrate.

If done correctly this method produces only healthy protein without contaminants.

However, searching right now online if there has been any progress with this, I see that against a startup company that has already produced such whey protein powder from a fungal culture there is a lawsuit that alleges that they have not separated properly the whey protein and that what they have sold contained more fungal protein of uncertain quality and safety than the good whey protein that they claimed to sell.

Even if that company might be guilty of trying to exploit the technology before being perfected, the principle is sound and there is no doubt that this can be done, producing pure high-quality protein.

I actually use whey protein concentrate to provide a significant fraction of my protein consumption, so I hope that its production from fungi will succeed in a not too distant future.

Trichoderma is among the fungi that secrete enzymes in their environment, so the genetic modification that replaced its enzyme with whey protein or egg albumin is much simpler than the many modifications described in the parent article in order to make the whole cells more palatable, without really achieving this.

For producing a protein powder that can be used as an ingredient in cooking food from vegetable sources, the approach used with Trichoderma is sufficient. The techniques used in the parent article are justified because they do not want to make a healthy food, but they want to make a meat imitation. For myself, enhancing the quality of vegetable food is a much more important goal than attempting to simulate meat, but at least in USA it is likely that the second goal might make more money.