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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

We had a really bad year of mosquitos and got one of the spraying services in.

An hour later, monarch having a seizure on our porch. Oops. Never again.

Yep, its clever how well chemical companies have sold us general poisons as being highly specific to certain plants/insects/animals.

That's not to say something can't work better on one particular type of biotic, but its still harmful to the others as well.

Mosquito dunks and clear standing or pooling water.

This stopped working in the mid-Atlantic when invasive tiger mosquitoes arrived. They need like a bottle cap sized amount of water so even things like a flower can hold enough water for them to reproduce.

We’re using scented lures which have the right salt + lipid combo to attract mosquitoes. It helps but I still wish Nathan Myrvold had seriously developed that “photonic fence” product.

I think the next best thing is an automatic turret that fires salt bullets or something, maybe AI. Hopefully it doesn't take an eye out, but if it took out like 1million mosquitoes for 1 eye, worth it?

I think you would run out of eyes before running out of mosquitos.

Fuck it, everyone wear safety goggles outside and try not to make any jerky movements.

I guess he was busy photographing hamburgers or hanging out with criminals.

There’s a swamp near us and a bunch of neighbors.

The only things that work around here are the thermacell repellents (they have a little butane fire that evaporates stuff off a mesh pad). Their effect seems pretty localized in time and space, but I wonder what's in them, and how problematic it is.

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