Hacker News

New stories

Live mirror
30 storiesupdated just nowView source snapshot
  1. EVs being trialled as giant batteries to power homes for less in Auckland (rnz.co.nz)
    —discuss
  2. Come Try the Srena (thearena.rip)
    —discuss
  3. Mark (colossus.com)
    —discuss
  4. Modern Warfare 2, Skate 3 and Minecraft in one game, on IW4L, MW2 Rust rewrite (github.com/chasmlol)
    —discuss
  5. WSJ reports OpenAI scrapped GPT-6.1 Astra over safety concerns (runtimewire.com)
    —discuss
  6. US finalizes new lower fuel economy standards (reuters.com)
    —discuss
  7. Google seemingly confirms plans to kill ChromeOS in 2034 (arstechnica.com)
    —discuss
  8. Agent token spend distribution: coding versus legal work (lexifina.com)
    —discuss
  9. Show HN: Tiny e-ink display for your portfolio (snaptra.de)
    —discuss
  10. Show HN: MuseTogether – let Meta's Muse agents coordinate plans with each other (musetogether.ai)
    —discuss
  11. MoE Analysis Qwen[3.5|3.6]35B-A3B (gslaller.github.io)
    1comments
  12. When we talk about traffic violence (maxmautner.com)
    —discuss
  13. Check twice, cut once with LLM search relevance eval (softwaredoug.com)
    —discuss
  14. AI tools generated nearly $1B in extra costs, Blue Cross insurers say (reuters.com)
    1comments
  15. Block US sanctions on ICC, EU lawmakers tell Commission (politico.eu)
    —discuss
  16. Training NanoGPT in 39.9 Seconds (hyperstition.cc)
    1comments
  17. Show HN: LLMs Play Chicken in Realtime (wildcardlabs.tech)
    —discuss
  18. Sonnet 5.5 scores just behind Opus 5.5 on Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (artificialanalysis.ai)
    —discuss
  19. The Ratchet (rubick.com)
    —discuss
  20. Tech OpenAI abandons plan to release upcoming model as safety concerns escalate (cnbc.com)
    —discuss
  21. Joseph Henrich's Report on Anthropology (vanderbilt.edu)
    —discuss
  22. Mosquitoes Are a Choice (worksinprogress.co)
    2comments
  23. Go Pace Yourself (an example of what AI films done right looks like) (reddit.com)
    1comments
  24. Electronics in U.S. homes by income [pdf] (eia.gov)
    —discuss
  25. Rogue Agent Investigation by Asymmetric Security (asymmetricsecurity.com)
    —discuss
  26. The Transparent Society (1998) (wikipedia.org)
    —discuss
  27. Duet For The End Of Math [pdf] (caltech.edu)
    —discuss
  28. OpenAI Scrapped Newest Model Release (bloomberg.com)
    —discuss
  29. Taking 'execute logging' a bit too literally CVE-2026-88771 (europa.eu)
    —discuss
  30. The Edge of California Is Falling into the Ocean (theatlantic.com)
    —discuss

Mosquitoes Are a Choice

3 pointsby 32m agoworksinprogress.co
2 comments
25m agoHN ↗

The lethal gene

Genetic engineering can suppress mosquitoes: researchers insert a gene into male mosquitoes that means their offspring will not survive, and then release them into the wild, where they mate with females, prevent those females having any surviving offspring, and collapse local populations. In 2000, biologists at the University of Oxford demonstrated that this idea could work in fruit flies. They engineered the flies to carry a gene that makes a protein called tTAV, harmless in small amounts but lethal when it builds up. In the lab, the insects are reared in a medium laced with the antibiotic tetracycline, which keeps the gene switched off. But, in the wild, where there is no tetracycline, the gene switches on, and the offspring die before adulthood.

The fact that this is discussed like this so simply, means it's probably being done to Humans too. I tend to think anything that applies to one thing will apply to all the things at some point. And not because the person writing this is evil - but because at some point someone evil will get their hands on this technology and deploy it at scale.

17m agoHN ↗

The paper is well written and seems to make sense. Bioengineering genetically modified mosquitoes so the males can't reproduce

Has been done and works in major cities just needs to be taken up on a large enough scale to have an effect before the mosquito population have a mutation

I would say making a super sqeeto is the concern of the operation. But overall more efficient(and probably safer) than the slew of pesticide usage over the decades