Interesting. What is the long term effect? Do the bad mosquitoes breed back to a sizeable population after some time and again good mosquitoes have to be injected in the target environment to keep the growth of bad mosquitoes in check?
A less high-tech way to reduce mosquitoes in your own back yard is to set up an attractive nesting location, such as a bucket filled with plant cuttings and water with protection from the rain, and putting Bti(Bacillus thuringiensis subspecies israelensis) in it. Bti will kill the larvae after they hatch. You can buy Bti pretty easily, usually in a dehydrated form called mosquitoes bits or mosquito dunks. Make sure to remove other potential nesting locations or add Bti to them too.
I am not an expert, but the last time I looked at this kind of thing what I took away from it was that you're not really doing anything to negatively impact the total mosquito population, you're just creating a new nesting site that won't produce adults. My understanding was that while it might feel good, it is not actually doing much to impact the population.
The domain name reminds me of the venerable DOS "debug.com" command, which managed to combine an interactive and scriptable debugger, assembler, and disassembler into a program weighing a few kilobytes. I spent many long hours in my youth using it to reverse engineering copy protection on games. I really wish we had a similar tool for the modern era.
WinDbg is just a debugger: it does not assemble or disassemble. It can't patch running programs in memory. Moreover, I don't consider Windows to be part of the modern era, as I haven't used a Windows machine for 20 years.
Okay, but is it not what you wished for, "a similar tool for the modern era"?
edit: I see I simul-posted with u/modeless, but I can't remove it now that there's a (duplicate) reply. Maybe mods can remove or at least collapse mine (their ID is one lower so they were first)
WinDbg is just a debugger: it does not assemble or disassemble. It can't patch running programs in memory. Moreover, I don't consider Windows to be part of the modern era, as I haven't used a Windows machine for 20 years.
If OP wanted to know whether WinDbg and debug.com can be considered feature-similar, they could have read my first comment [1], where I specifically said that debug.com is a "debugger, *assembler*, and *disassembler*". Of those three features, WinDbg provides one.
In the FAQ they discuss how in most of its range this particular species is invasive, feeds almost exclusively on humans, and is not believed to be a major food source for predators.
It's impossible to prove this (or really anything in human health/global ecology) is safe. We cannot reliably predict what the true short and long term outcomes will be, but by and large, this seems like one of the less unsafe ecological modification projects based on the underlying technology.
I was about to ask how the mosquitos survive long enough to make an impact if they can't "bite". I looked it up, and apparently male mosquitos survive off of nectar and are actually pollinators.
Eliminating mosquitoes sounds great to me on the surface, but I wonder if it will have any adverse effects on any plants that rely on them for pollination, or if it's expected that there are plenty of other insects ready to fill any void they leave.
It's more the latter - as far as I am aware, eliminating specifically the human pathogenic mosquitoes will still leave plenty of other mosquito-adjacent species that can't or don't bite humans, or can't / don't transmit the critical diseases.
I think for the releasing-sterile-mosquitoes angle, it's actually more interesting to me to use some kind of molecular clock, I think I read about a genetic modification that resulted in a generation or two of fertile males, but then the Nth generation is sterile as a result of the molecular clock unwinding.
The symmetry is amusing. This is really fighting fire with fire.
Mosquitoes are a vector that spreads disease-causing germs to a population. The proposed solution is to use different mosquitoes as different vector that spreads a different disease-causing germ to a different population.
> raise sterile males and release them into wild insect populations. When a wild female mates with a sterile male, her eggs won’t hatch. The population gets smaller with each generation.
They won't harm then it sounds like, but they'll not fertilize the eggs.
OK, you bring up a very good point. If the eggs fail to hatch because they are never fertilized, then the mosquitoes are not acting as a vector because they do not transmit the disease. I didn't even consider that possibility.
That wikipedia article says that there are embryos, but the embryos die.
However, the real question to ask, I guess, is whether the embryo is infected. As I read that article, it sounds like it isn't. Instead, the male parent is infected and this creates sperm which can fertilize the egg but in a way that creates an embryo that can't survive. In other words, the male parent has an infectious disease which causes the embryo to have a fatal genetic disease.
So this also brings up another question: what exactly is a vector? In this scenario, the embryo has a disease it would not otherwise have gotten, if it weren't for this germ. However, the embryo doesn't have the germ itself. Is being a vector defined by whether some disease is caused, or is it defined by whether the germ is spread? I don't know.
It looks like the project has been decoupled from Verily (based on my poking about on the website) and is hosted within Google (the project lead, Linus Upson, worked for both Google and Verily simultaneously; he was mainly an eng manager/project lead, but had some historical experience with biology in school). Linus played a critical role at Google and built an awful lot of goodwill with the leadership.
Linus's LinkedIn indicates debug moved from verily to google in Dec 2024 (I missed this at the time). Debug was always a passion project (unlikely to make a huge amount of money compared to ads, AI, and cloud) and Verily's transition to something that lost less money probably required them to move Debug back to Google.
No thanks. I’m very concerned some short term thinking behind a plan to alter the biology of our environment will have various side effects no one anticipated. It has happened many, many times before. Same with geo engineering in general - hard to trust the incentives, competency, and long term side effects.
If you mean that seriously: homo sapiens came into existence in Africa, existed solely there for a long time (generating lots of genetic diversity) and then spread throughout the world in multiple waves. It's complicated by the fact that there was no single location and population that became homo sapiens- it was more like a network of locations and populations that evolved concurrently (there was genetic exchange between them as they evolved from their predecessor species).
Depending on how you define it, I could see "parts of Africa" as being "native" but that doesn't really help this discussion.
Yes but you’re assuming that whatever they put into our environment will target that perfectly. I’m concerned there’ll be other effects and that such releases aren’t reversible.
They are releasing sterile males of one specific species, infected with a naturally occurring bacteria that naturally infects them in the wild as well. It's hard to imagine a more targeted or less objectionable method than this. If you won't accept this method then you're essentially arguing we should never attempt to reduce the invasive mosquito population by any means, which I will have to respectfully but strongly disagree with.
For too many seconds I really did think this was an initiative using the metaphor of good/bad mosquitos to make the case that they were going to release "good" malware (bonware?) into the internet ecosystem in order to disable bad malware or install security patches, or something.
Interesting. What is the long term effect? Do the bad mosquitoes breed back to a sizeable population after some time and again good mosquitoes have to be injected in the target environment to keep the growth of bad mosquitoes in check?
A less high-tech way to reduce mosquitoes in your own back yard is to set up an attractive nesting location, such as a bucket filled with plant cuttings and water with protection from the rain, and putting Bti(Bacillus thuringiensis subspecies israelensis) in it. Bti will kill the larvae after they hatch. You can buy Bti pretty easily, usually in a dehydrated form called mosquitoes bits or mosquito dunks. Make sure to remove other potential nesting locations or add Bti to them too.
I am not an expert, but the last time I looked at this kind of thing what I took away from it was that you're not really doing anything to negatively impact the total mosquito population, you're just creating a new nesting site that won't produce adults. My understanding was that while it might feel good, it is not actually doing much to impact the population.
The domain name reminds me of the venerable DOS "debug.com" command, which managed to combine an interactive and scriptable debugger, assembler, and disassembler into a program weighing a few kilobytes. I spent many long hours in my youth using it to reverse engineering copy protection on games. I really wish we had a similar tool for the modern era.
WinDbg?
WinDbg is a cool, but debug.com predates it by quite a bit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debug_(command)
Thus making it "a similar tool for the modern era" as you were asking for, IMO.
My favorite thing about WinDbg is that many people pronounce it "Windbag".
WinDbg is just a debugger: it does not assemble or disassemble. It can't patch running programs in memory. Moreover, I don't consider Windows to be part of the modern era, as I haven't used a Windows machine for 20 years.
So, no, WinDbg has nothing to do with debug.com.
I'm not sure what you think a (native) debugger that can't disassemble would look like; I assure you it disassembles the instructions you debug.
Its assembler is sadly stuck in the pre-x86_64 era (and refuses to do arm at all), however it disassembles all of those fine.
Signed: someone who does pronounce it wind bag
> I don't consider Windows to be part of the modern era, as I haven't used a Windows machine for 20 years.
I don't consider France to be part of the modern world, since I haven't visited Europe lately.
Okay, but is it not what you wished for, "a similar tool for the modern era"?
edit: I see I simul-posted with u/modeless, but I can't remove it now that there's a (duplicate) reply. Maybe mods can remove or at least collapse mine (their ID is one lower so they were first)
WinDbg is just a debugger: it does not assemble or disassemble. It can't patch running programs in memory. Moreover, I don't consider Windows to be part of the modern era, as I haven't used a Windows machine for 20 years.
So, no, WinDbg has nothing to do with debug.com.
Fun! So how was OP supposed to know your very personal and weird definition of what is part of the modern era?
If OP wanted to know whether WinDbg and debug.com can be considered feature-similar, they could have read my first comment [1], where I specifically said that debug.com is a "debugger, *assembler*, and *disassembler*". Of those three features, WinDbg provides one.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48362927
Shoutout to the 12 of us who remember debug> g=c800:5
This is a great initiative. HOWEVER, THIS IS NOT NEW. This has already been tried and tested successfully in Singapore.
https://www.nea.gov.sg/corporate-functions/resources/researc...
More generally, it's known as the sterile insect technique and you'll find plenty of campaigns with some googling.
Seems like you’re referring to the same initiative - https://blog.debug.com/2026/05/debug-expands-in-singapore-bu...
Glad to see movement here!
It's been so long since I've heard about Debug that I was afraid it was cancelled.
No, check these videos which are 4-6 years older.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4k5xfrkR4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH57Oo-FYQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAcxBNcAV00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGiCO_4EqoU
Original Singapore results from Debug in 2019 - "greater than 90% reduction in release areas":
https://blog.debug.com/2019/11/singapore-collaboration-achie...
This must have been inspired by Mass Effect :)
(probably the other way around, but what's the fun in that)
The Krogans got punitively infected with the genophage to drastically reduce successful births after their rebellion.
Quick NPR Short Wave episode about this https://www.npr.org/2026/05/27/nx-s1-5806598/disease-science...
Cool project! And, surely, absolutely not what I expected to see when I clicked the domain "debug.com".
Is this safe? I hope it doesn't affect the ecology in worse ways we won't foresee, it has happened before
In the FAQ they discuss how in most of its range this particular species is invasive, feeds almost exclusively on humans, and is not believed to be a major food source for predators.
It's impossible to prove this (or really anything in human health/global ecology) is safe. We cannot reliably predict what the true short and long term outcomes will be, but by and large, this seems like one of the less unsafe ecological modification projects based on the underlying technology.
What a domain name !
I was about to ask how the mosquitos survive long enough to make an impact if they can't "bite". I looked it up, and apparently male mosquitos survive off of nectar and are actually pollinators.
Eliminating mosquitoes sounds great to me on the surface, but I wonder if it will have any adverse effects on any plants that rely on them for pollination, or if it's expected that there are plenty of other insects ready to fill any void they leave.
Less mosquitoes, more bees please :)
It's more the latter - as far as I am aware, eliminating specifically the human pathogenic mosquitoes will still leave plenty of other mosquito-adjacent species that can't or don't bite humans, or can't / don't transmit the critical diseases.
I think for the releasing-sterile-mosquitoes angle, it's actually more interesting to me to use some kind of molecular clock, I think I read about a genetic modification that resulted in a generation or two of fertile males, but then the Nth generation is sterile as a result of the molecular clock unwinding.
Relevant write up about this: https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/google-mosquitoes
Google Mosquitoes - Debugging Florida
The symmetry is amusing. This is really fighting fire with fire.
Mosquitoes are a vector that spreads disease-causing germs to a population. The proposed solution is to use different mosquitoes as different vector that spreads a different disease-causing germ to a different population.
> raise sterile males and release them into wild insect populations. When a wild female mates with a sterile male, her eggs won’t hatch. The population gets smaller with each generation.
They won't harm then it sounds like, but they'll not fertilize the eggs.
OK, you bring up a very good point. If the eggs fail to hatch because they are never fertilized, then the mosquitoes are not acting as a vector because they do not transmit the disease. I didn't even consider that possibility.
However, it turns out the eggs are fertilized. Note that the FAQ says the males are effectively sterile and links here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytoplasmic_incompatibility
That wikipedia article says that there are embryos, but the embryos die.
However, the real question to ask, I guess, is whether the embryo is infected. As I read that article, it sounds like it isn't. Instead, the male parent is infected and this creates sperm which can fertilize the egg but in a way that creates an embryo that can't survive. In other words, the male parent has an infectious disease which causes the embryo to have a fatal genetic disease.
So this also brings up another question: what exactly is a vector? In this scenario, the embryo has a disease it would not otherwise have gotten, if it weren't for this germ. However, the embryo doesn't have the germ itself. Is being a vector defined by whether some disease is caused, or is it defined by whether the germ is spread? I don't know.
This is cool, but wasn't this a "Verily" project about 10 years ago? What is new here and what has happened since then?
It looks like the project has been decoupled from Verily (based on my poking about on the website) and is hosted within Google (the project lead, Linus Upson, worked for both Google and Verily simultaneously; he was mainly an eng manager/project lead, but had some historical experience with biology in school). Linus played a critical role at Google and built an awful lot of goodwill with the leadership.
Linus's LinkedIn indicates debug moved from verily to google in Dec 2024 (I missed this at the time). Debug was always a passion project (unlikely to make a huge amount of money compared to ads, AI, and cloud) and Verily's transition to something that lost less money probably required them to move Debug back to Google.
The effect of this could make some mostly uninhabitable areas more habitable.
(2017)
Unless there's been some new announcement that I don't obviously see here?
There was an update to the blog on May 11, 2026, referring to this up-to-date press release: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/debug.com/en//pre...
The current news:
Google wants to release up to 32M good mosquitoes California and Florida
https://ktla.com/news/google-wants-to-release-up-to-32-milli... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48351077)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/01/google-pe...
(perhaps one of these should be the submitted link)
This is a Google project?
No thanks. I’m very concerned some short term thinking behind a plan to alter the biology of our environment will have various side effects no one anticipated. It has happened many, many times before. Same with geo engineering in general - hard to trust the incentives, competency, and long term side effects.
The species is not native. Surely we can agree that eradicating non-native species is a good thing?
> Surely we can agree that eradicating non-native species is a good thing?
So...which areas is humanity native to?
If you mean that seriously: homo sapiens came into existence in Africa, existed solely there for a long time (generating lots of genetic diversity) and then spread throughout the world in multiple waves. It's complicated by the fact that there was no single location and population that became homo sapiens- it was more like a network of locations and populations that evolved concurrently (there was genetic exchange between them as they evolved from their predecessor species).
Depending on how you define it, I could see "parts of Africa" as being "native" but that doesn't really help this discussion.
Yes but you’re assuming that whatever they put into our environment will target that perfectly. I’m concerned there’ll be other effects and that such releases aren’t reversible.
They are releasing sterile males of one specific species, infected with a naturally occurring bacteria that naturally infects them in the wild as well. It's hard to imagine a more targeted or less objectionable method than this. If you won't accept this method then you're essentially arguing we should never attempt to reduce the invasive mosquito population by any means, which I will have to respectfully but strongly disagree with.
This project has like 10 years of history behind it right? Originally powered by Verily Life Sciences (inside Alphabet's Google X research div)
Some previous discussion:
We’re trying to stop bad mosquitoes by raising and releasing good ones (2016)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12657034
Google Has a Plan to Eliminate Mosquitoes (2018)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18551465
For too many seconds I really did think this was an initiative using the metaphor of good/bad mosquitos to make the case that they were going to release "good" malware (bonware?) into the internet ecosystem in order to disable bad malware or install security patches, or something.
I might be an idiot.