This is great to see but also reveals some failures around patents: Intellectual Ventures patented the idea a couple decades ago, did a TED Talk, decided it wasn’t as cost-effective for malaria prevention as bednets and apparently sat on it.
I wanted to buy one back then and still do, and it always seemed short-sighted that they didn’t sell them here for quality of life improvements and use that to get volume and R&D to drive down the cost to use them in public health campaigns. It feels like we lost a lot by not having patents be a “use, license, or lose it” situatio
Anyone who is bothered by mosquitos should look into how to build a “bucket of doom”.
Basically you deliberately create the best mosquito breeding habitat in your yard (stagnant water), then spike it with a a bacterial larvicide to kill the larvae at the source.
Since mosquitoes don’t travel long distances, you end up creating a small mosquito free zone around your trap where they were never able to breed. It’s extremely effective
It would be much better for all if the mosquito saliva vaccine would just come out already. It causes the immune system to blindly attack everything they carry, and stops nearly all of it. I've read that as a fun side effect it causes mosquito bites to not itch. If the diseases and itching go away, mosquitoes can stick around as food for other critters as far as I'm concerned.
Sorry. I don't want immune system hacks. I don't want to throw a monkey wrench to some system that was created by random tweaks over millions of years and cost millions and millions of lost lives to perfect.
No, the stuff it encountered during its millions of years of evolution is not the "monkey wrench". That is its legitimate input. Those are the things that it evolved with. Those it can handle fine.
And instead I meant all the stuff that is used to elicit a specific response using some incidental behavior. Those were not part of its evolutionary journey. Those it won't be able to handle and would result in un-predictable regression. That is the monkey-wrench throwing.
>And it's far from perfect at all.
A large number of living things on earth live to their entire lifespan. I think in those cases the immune system did a perfect job.
While I don't have a remedy for house flies, I do have a remedy for fruit flies! Take a cup, fill it with 25% water, 25% monster energy drink original flavor, and leave the other 50% air. Put one small drop of soap in it. Then cover with plastic wrap and poke holes in the plastic wrap the size of pencils.
Fruit flies will be attracted to the monster, fly in expecting to land on the water's surface tension but the soap broke the surface tension so the flies end up drowning. It is surprisingly effective.
This is great to see but also reveals some failures around patents: Intellectual Ventures patented the idea a couple decades ago, did a TED Talk, decided it wasn’t as cost-effective for malaria prevention as bednets and apparently sat on it.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123680870885500701
I wanted to buy one back then and still do, and it always seemed short-sighted that they didn’t sell them here for quality of life improvements and use that to get volume and R&D to drive down the cost to use them in public health campaigns. It feels like we lost a lot by not having patents be a “use, license, or lose it” situatio
Anyone who is bothered by mosquitos should look into how to build a “bucket of doom”.
Basically you deliberately create the best mosquito breeding habitat in your yard (stagnant water), then spike it with a a bacterial larvicide to kill the larvae at the source.
Since mosquitoes don’t travel long distances, you end up creating a small mosquito free zone around your trap where they were never able to breed. It’s extremely effective
It would be much better for all if the mosquito saliva vaccine would just come out already. It causes the immune system to blindly attack everything they carry, and stops nearly all of it. I've read that as a fun side effect it causes mosquito bites to not itch. If the diseases and itching go away, mosquitoes can stick around as food for other critters as far as I'm concerned.
Sorry. I don't want immune system hacks. I don't want to throw a monkey wrench to some system that was created by random tweaks over millions of years and cost millions and millions of lost lives to perfect.
Your immune system evolves every minute with everything throwing monkey wrench to it. And it's far from perfect at all.
No, the stuff it encountered during its millions of years of evolution is not the "monkey wrench". That is its legitimate input. Those are the things that it evolved with. Those it can handle fine.
And instead I meant all the stuff that is used to elicit a specific response using some incidental behavior. Those were not part of its evolutionary journey. Those it won't be able to handle and would result in un-predictable regression. That is the monkey-wrench throwing.
>And it's far from perfect at all.
A large number of living things on earth live to their entire lifespan. I think in those cases the immune system did a perfect job.
Related:
China’s AI-powered laser mosquito zapper goes viral after crowdfunding success - https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3358508/c... - June 27th, 2026
(Photo Matrix Lab is building a device based off of the concept previously patented by Intellectual Ventures)
This bug-zapper has laser-guided precision - https://www.wired.com/story/intellectual-ventures-bug-zapper... - June 23rd, 2017
I’d love this for house flies.
While I don't have a remedy for house flies, I do have a remedy for fruit flies! Take a cup, fill it with 25% water, 25% monster energy drink original flavor, and leave the other 50% air. Put one small drop of soap in it. Then cover with plastic wrap and poke holes in the plastic wrap the size of pencils.
Fruit flies will be attracted to the monster, fly in expecting to land on the water's surface tension but the soap broke the surface tension so the flies end up drowning. It is surprisingly effective.