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As Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) continues to reshape the U.S. governments digital infrastructurescrapping websites, eliminating jobs, and dissolving entire departmentsarchivists have been racing to preserve a vanishing record of public history. For months, volunteers have worked to undo the damage caused by DOGEs mass deletion and rewriting of federal websites. But now they face a different challenge: not destruction, but misguided innovation. Earlier this month, DOGE announced on X it would save $1 million annually by converting 14,000 magnetic tapes of government records into permanent modern digital records. The problem? No digital medium is truly permanentand the tapes DOGE discarded were already well-suited for long-term storage. Unlike past changes to government archives, this move doesnt appear to be malicious. Instead, it seems driven by a tech-bro fondness for the new and a disregard for the old. (Musk did not respond to Fast Companys request for comment.) Many assume cloud storage is infallible, but it still relies on physical hardwarehardware that can fail. Typically in my experience . . . you do this kind of decision based on a cost-benefit analysis, which Im not seeing, says Roberto Di Pietro, professor of computer science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. The saving is $1 million, but what is the cost [of the overall project]? (One commentator likened it to archiving the Declaration of Independence on CVS receipts to save ink.) Cloud systems experience 1% to 2% hardware failure annually, with hard drives wearing out in three to five years. In contrast, magnetic tapes have error rates four to five magnitudes lower than hard drives and last around 30 years. Tapes have a very long life. If you have SSDs, data decays much faster, Di Pietro says. Every five years you need to move data . . . and thats a cost. Others say DOGEs announcement lacks clarity. When it comes to archiving, you well may have different goals, says Peter Zaitsev, cofounder of the open-source software developer Percona. Offline magnetic tapes are more secure and long-lasting, but harder to access than cloud storage. For data which must be kept forever but also needs to have easy on-demand access, storage both in the modern cloud . . . as well as on tape may well make sense. The digitization push may come from the same enthusiasm that led DOGE to announce plans to rewrite government systems still running on COBOL, a 1950s-era computing language. It may turn out that taxpayer money gets spent on buying new equipment that is . . . not an actual upgrade, warns Mar Hicks, historian of technology at the University of Virginia. Just because a system is old doesnt mean it needs to be replaced.
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E-Commerce
During his family’s annual summer vacations on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, high schooler Ajith Varikuti began to notice something concerning. Homes on the narrow line of barrier islands that Varikuti had grown up visiting from his hometown Charlotte were no longer there. I started seeing more and more news articles about entire houses being completely destroyed. And it started clicking, because some of those houses that were being destroyed I’d seen in my previous years there, he says. Varikuti, who was then a 9th grade student, knew there had to be a solution. So, as part of a student design competition organized by the design software company Autodesk, Varikuti put his mind to coming up with a design for a home that could better withstand the extreme conditions of the Outer Banks. (This year’s student design competition, Make it Home, is open until June 30 for students 1321.) Ajith Varikuti [Photo: courtesy Autodesk] His design is a modular, 3D printed home that sits on flood-resistant stilts and can be disassembled and moved if its site becomes untenable. The design was the grand prize winner in Autodesk’s 2024 Make it Resilient design competition, with a $10,000 prize. To create the design, Varikuti taught himself how to use computer-aided design, or CAD, software, starting with an entry-level educational version called Tinkercad before moving on to Revit, the industry-standard 3D design program used by architects and engineers around the world. Using online tutorials, he learned how to use the software to develop a structurally sound design that could be segmented into individual parts or modules. I broke down each of the individual drawings into its own box, so that way you could build various combinations of houses with of the same set of modules, he says. I thought that was the most intuitive and allowed for the most freedom to design whatever house you wanted to. [Image: courtesy Autodesk] The resilient home design was influenced by his own interest in engineering, and specifically 3D printing, which he’d begun exploring during the pandemic. Before even starting high school, he had designed and printed his own toy, a knight on a horse. That experience made him think that 3D printing parts of the house could be a viable way to make its individual modules, and allow them to be both assembled and disassembled. Varikuti’s resilient home design also accounts for the extreme conditions of the Outer Banks, using simulations within the software tools to test its capability to withstand hurricane-force winds. He even reached out to a structural engineer at the firm AECOM to fine-tune his design. He pointed out various inefficiencies and inadequacies in my design, Varikuti says. I had too many pillars that were way too big originally. This input also led him to redesign the footings for the house’s foundations so that they wouldn’t be affected by potential frost heaving. [Photo: courtesy Autodesk] For a design created by a teenager, Varikuti’s is a surprisingly buildable concept, and one that could be a solution for the extreme conditions faced by the Outer Banks. There are currently no plans to get the house built, but Varikuti, who’s now in 10th grade, says the process of designing it has got him excited about creating projects that could get built one day. This entire experience has made me realize how big of a world the engineering world is, and how there’s so many opportunities, he says. It’s led me to want to pursue a career in engineering, hopefully using CAD tools one day to make projects that will be implemented in real life.
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E-Commerce
The Flying Sun 1000 is exactly what its name implies: a very powerful light source that flies. It is not as strong as the sun, but fitted with a powerful 3,333-watt light sourcethe equivalent of a typical flood lamp in a stadiumit is enough to turn night into day instantaneously.This drone is aimed at commercial and government users for the rapid deployment of industrial-level lighting solutions, such as construction and engineering jobs, area security, and disaster relief efforts that require 24-hour operation. A single operator can deploy the Flying Sun in minutes, instantly illuminating as much as 130,000 square feet.According to its manufacturer, Freefly Systems, the drone solves the problem of having to use traditional light towers for illumination. The Woodinville, Washington-based company designs and builds camera movement systems and stabilizers for cinematography. It says these are bulky, slow, and costly to set up, often leaving gaps in area coverage. But since the drone-mounted spotlight can move around, the Flying Sun can provide continuous aerial lighting that moves with work crews and rescue teams as they progress through an area. Furthermore, by eliminating the need for extensive installations of towers and cabling on the ground, the Flying Sun avoids risks in disaster areas, where theres often flooding and other potential electrical and trip hazards. The company also points at a less critical but potentially game-changing use: lighting for film and television productions, which can benefit from the drones ability to turn night into day in a split second.Not like a helicopterPerhaps a spotlight doesnt sound like a game changer for these industries. After all, you can light up the ground using a helicopter and a spotlight. But helicopters have huge associated costs and generate thundering noise and wind (not to mention that their operation time is limited). The Flying Sun can fly tethered to a power source in the grounda 5kW generator, batteries, or electric vehicle will workwhich allows it to fly virtually forever. This is a lot of power, so the drones lamps get hot. Freefly says it designed a system in which the LED light panels are kept cool by the drone operation itself. It utilizes the downwash from the Alta X drones propellers to actively cool the LED lights. This efficient cooling system is crucial for enabling the LEDs to operate at high power levels without overheating, which could damage the components or reduce their life span. This effective thermal management contributes to the manufacturers claim of thousands of hours between light service. [Image: Freefly Systems]How bright is it?The system consists of four panels of 72 LED lamps mounted on an Alta X heavy-lift quadcopter, an industrial drone platform manufactured by Freefly Systems. Thats a total of 288 high-power LED lamps that can generate an astonishing 300,000 lumens, which is a typical amount for modern LED lights used in football stadiums, baseball fields, or large concert venues.The Flying Suns lamp array offers a 60-degree spotlight, which translates into a wide coverage area even at low altitudes. At about 100 feet, the system covers approximately 14,000 square feet at 10 foot-candles, which is the typical lighting of a hallway or a mall parking lot (for comparison, urban street lighting goes from 2 to 5 foot-candles). Thats enough intensity to work seamlessly as if in daylight. As the drone gets higher, the coverage area gets wider. But that comes at the expense of light intensity: At 316 feet, the drone will light a 137,000-square-foot area but only at 1 foot-candle (more than moonlight, less than a streetlight). So while it is dim, its usable. And theres the option of combining several Flying Suns to cover more area with more intensity. Granted, at $60,000 a popincluding the tethered power cables and control systemthat wont be cheap. But it beats the cost of the installation of posts and flood lamps. While the Flying Sun 1000 drone may have higher up-front costs (10 lamps and poles cost about $20,000), it offers significant long-term savings due to lower operational expenses, reduced labor (theres no setup crew required), and minimal maintenance. The drone also provides superior coverage, instant repositioning, and enhanced safety by eliminating ground hazards. While traditional systems are cheaper for small, fixed installations, this droneor similar solutionswill be the best choice in dynamic environments like emergency response, construction, or large-scale events, where mobility, rapid deployment, and energy efficiency outweigh initial investment. Also, the drone will have a lower environmental impact, since no installation and removal are required. The more I look at the video, the more it feels to me like this is the typical how the hell didnt anyone think about this until now idea that is both brilliant and truly game-changing for a lot of industries.
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E-Commerce
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