Bug-Bashing Drones

Confession: I’m a huge quadcopter nerd and have played around with drones for years. The use of drones in agriculture is nothing new — farmers have been deploying them for surveying and monitoring purposes for years. What’s new, however, is the way that increasingly smart drones are being used to deliver fertilizers and insecticides to crops in highly targeted ways, drastically reducing the use of harmful chemicals while improving yields. Case in point: an enormous drone swarm was recently deployed in China’s Guangxi region to combat a crop-devouring monster known as the fall armyworm. The autonomous, AI-guided devices delivered a low-toxicity insecticide, killing 98% of the worms without the use of dangerous chemicals. Bloomberg has more details.  

Un-Liking Facebook

By now, we’ve seen that social media is far from just something we flip through on our phones to pass the time. Real impacts on privacy, personal well being and the political landscape have led to some serious soul searching among the major platforms. The reality is that as much as social media brings us together, it can also divide us, with algorithms that inadvertently isolate groups inside their own echo chambers. All of which is why it’s so encouraging to hear this week that Facebook is experimenting with removing the “Like” count from posts, following similar steps on Instagram. The idea is that “Likes” breed a sort of simplistic, mob mentality — we “Like” posts because other people have “Liked” them, rather than truly engaging with the content and judging for ourselves. More on this unofficial beta test in TechCrunch.

Earth’s Hard Drive

We all back-up our hard drives (or, at least, we should). So why not have a backup of planet Earth, just in case? This is the idea behind a non-profit called Arch Mission, which recently assembled a global “back-up disc” that’s no bigger than a DVD and comprised of 30 million pages of info (including nearly all of Wikipedia), human DNA samples and thousands of dehydrated tardigrades, tiny bugs that can survive almost anything. This was all meant to be deposited on the moon for safekeeping earlier this year by Israel’s unmanned Beresheet spacecraft. Just one problem: Beresheet crashed while attempting to land. The back-up disc likely remained intact, which raises an interesting question: What happend to all those tardigrades? Speculation is that a little water and the right atmospheric conditions might bring them back to life. More details on EarthSky. 

Dissecting TikTok

You may have never heard of TikTok, but chances are the kids in your life have. Since January, the China-based social network known for its 15-second videos has consistently ranked among the top three most downloaded apps in the U.S., behind Facebook-owned duo WhatsApp and Messenger. What’s amazing (and quite revolutionary) about TikTok is its use of AI to predict users’ preferences. It harvests insights based on what its users actually click on, read, and watch — right down to the type of music, faces, and voices in videos — learning as it goes. While Facebook was revolutionary because it tapped into our social grid of friends to serve relevant recommendations, TikTok goes right to the source using AI to map out interests we may not even be able to articulate to ourselves. I took a deep dive into TikTok recently for Fast Company. 

Feedback from readers

Starting a dialogue is what this newsletter is all about. So I’m always appreciative for input and engagement. I received this comment (edited for length and clarity) recently from a reader in Southern California in response to an article I shared about Tesla’s new initiative to rent solar panels for as little as $50 a month. 

I love that Tesla is encouraging homeowners to rent solar panels as a way to reduce the financial barriers to solar power. As a Southern California homeowner, I took notice last week when I heard the announcement. Unfortunately, I also noticed this newsy bit yesterday (about Walmart suing Tesla for solar panel fires). Am I alone in feeling like Tesla often takes a step forward along with a half step back, lately?

Interesting question. I did a bit of sleuthing and found that there are competing theories on Walmart’s lawsuit — with one commenter speculating that Walmart may have just wanted out of a costly long-term contract. Whatever the real issue was, I will say that entrepreneurship is rarely a smooth ride. In Elon Musk’s case, Tesla is disrupting a number of paradigms — how we fuel our cars and power our homes — that have been in place for more than a century and have powerful interests behind them. Tesla’s progress to date, while admittedly rocky at times, has actually been quite amazing. If their solar panels are anything like their cars, design and engineering are probably top notch. If the Rent Solar program were available here in British Columbia, I’d sign up!