MIT's Epstein-Funded Media Lab Accused of Faking Hydroponic Plant Experiments (businessinsider.com) 62
An anonymous reader quotes Business Insider:
An ambitious project that purported to turn anyone into a farmer with a single tool is scraping by with smoke-and-mirror tactics, employees told Business Insider. The "personal food computer," a device that MIT Media Lab senior researcher Caleb Harper presented as helping thousands of people across the globe grow custom, local food, simply doesn't work, according to two employees and multiple internal documents that Business Insider viewed. One person asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation...
Ahead of big demonstrations with MIT Media Lab funders, staff were told to place plants grown elsewhere into the devices, the insiders said. In other instances, devices delivered to local schools simply didn't work. "It's fair to say that of the 30-ish food computers we sent out, at most two grew a plant," one person said...
One worker told the site that at one school the students "would joke that the plants they were growing in plastic cups were growing better than the ones in the personal food computers."
That pilot program "ended shortly thereafter."
Ahead of big demonstrations with MIT Media Lab funders, staff were told to place plants grown elsewhere into the devices, the insiders said. In other instances, devices delivered to local schools simply didn't work. "It's fair to say that of the 30-ish food computers we sent out, at most two grew a plant," one person said...
One worker told the site that at one school the students "would joke that the plants they were growing in plastic cups were growing better than the ones in the personal food computers."
That pilot program "ended shortly thereafter."
Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
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Now they got the microscope on them, all sorts of nonsense will come to light.
It seems nonsensical to me that the Media Lab was researching, marketing, and commercializing the growing of crops in the first place.
Shouldn't that be done by the ag or bio departments?
I can't imagine any topic where the Media Lab would have less inherent expertise, so it is unsurprising that they failed.
Clickbait headline. (Score:2)
The headline "EPSTEIN FUNDED!" really has nothing to do with the story.
This is clickbait.
The MIT media lab budget is about 75 million dollars a year. Epstein is said to have been given $1.7 million to Media labs, so the clickbait should more accurately be "2.26% funded by Epstein ..."
(but it was over several years, so even that is high.)
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Even MIT has (Score:3)
Can not fight reality, credentials do not make/prove your smart, important or productive.
Just my 2 cents
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I would say most of the "smart" people in MIT are poseurs. However, it beats getting a real job.
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But the statement does strike me as more true than false.
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You would be surprised. There is so much crap that gets passed off as "research" in Universities today (especially Computer Science).
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That goes for all science nowadays. Most studies being put out today are flawed can't be reproduced. Circular peer-reviews where they're all uncritically reviewing each other. That's what makes it so dangerous to treat them like priests in a religion.
It's always all about the money.
Re: Even MIT has (Score:2)
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Sure buddy, MIT has always been known for its English Literature studies
Yet another new name for the MIT Media Lab (Score:1)
Yesterday, because of the shenanigans concerning covered up funding from pedophile Epstein . . . I suggested that the MIT Media Lab change its name to MIT Redacted Media Lab.
OK, with this report, they will need the name of the lab to MIT Redacted Fake News Media Lab.
Having exensively grown plants... (Score:5, Informative)
... with both hydroponics and soil, I can assure you that the former is much harder to do right.
There certainly are advantages. In theory, if done right, hydroponics provides a "perfect" environment for your plants, with perfect nutrition and unlimited moisture and everything. But between oxygen deprivation, nutrient imbalances, pH imbalances, bacterial buildups, failed pumps, and a whole range of other problems, it's easy to kill off your plants unintentionally.
Nutrients are a particularly challenging one. You may start with some simple Hoagland solution, but plants uptake nutrients at different rates, and it inherently goes out of balance. You can use an EC meter to at least roughly maintain a constant "overall" nutrient concentration, but not of specific nutrients; that requires a far more complicated, expensive setup to tell which specific nutrients are needed. But even that's not really right. The amount of nutrients you should add to the solution is not about the nutrient levels in the solution, but rather the nutrient levels in your plant tissues. Even if the solution measures dead-on for your target for some nutrient, if its levels are too high or too low in your plant's tissues, you should adjust the solution.
Most people don't even bother trying to fix specific nutrients. They just simply maintain a given EC and pH for a fixed length of time, then throw away and replace the solution assuming that it's getting out of balance.
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I have seen many different 'grow boxes' being sold and wondered if they are effective (seemed like not enough light, etc...), and now we know... not so much.
As far as hydroponics go, how you would get away from replacing the nutrient medium on a weekly basis? What are the essential sensors beyond EC and Ph that would let me stretch it further and at what point is salt buildup going to require a change anyways?
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Balance out the cycle. Add fish [drlorraine.net]
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bacterial buildups,
I've had serious problems with this and other diseases in my plants. It hits them so fast.
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"... with both hydroponics and soil, I can assure you that the former is much harder to do right."
Nonsense. My very first time ever doing hydro was so pathetically easy that I switched almost exclusively to it for everything excepting my succulents and already-planted stuff, and then got a gig around the globe doing it and lighting design a couple years later. Don't over-dose your nutrients and cause salt burn, keep your acidity levels right, keep the nutrient mix at the level appropriate for your plants st
Re: Having exensively grown plants... (Score:2)
I have never grown, but just reading about aeroponics as even more efficient. Have you tried it? Is it something an amateur could pull off?
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Aeroponics is not really more efficient and has a host of extra maintenance problems that lead to system failures. An amateur can pull it off but it's really a hassle. The easiest hydroponic method is the bucket in bucket/net pot in bucket system, also known as deep water culture. Just a bucket full of hydroponics solution that is constantly aerated with an air pump and air diffuser, plants sit in it and get whatever they need as they need it as long as everything remains balanced. Next easiest is the NFT s
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Re: Funny thing about Epstein (Score:3)
The current answer is 27 times from on-the-record flight records. Who knows how many meetings were not at Little St James island.
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Good Lord you _are_ dense, or were you going for 'Funny'?
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"conspiracy" -> some people have a secret plan to do something illegal or harmful.
I don't understand the mentality of those who think those in government, or those who are rich and powerful, often wouldn't be involved in conspiracy. History and the daily news show they are. Some here mocked the idea of leaders in FAA being in the pockets and/or under the control of big corporations, when there is ongoing story in the news about that.
Of course there are conspiracies involving government people, it's
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"conspiracy" -> some people have a secret plan to do something illegal or harmful.
If at least two people "conspire" to commit a crime against one or more people it's a "criminal conspiracy", whether it's secret or not. But people engaging in criminal conspiracies want everyone to think "X-Files" and/or "batshit wingnuts" when they hear the word[s].
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"Personal food computer". Right. (Score:1)
Metaphors are baked into human communication; you can't avoid them. But you can avoid drawing the wrong parallels between a metaphor's imagery and its subject.
The thing that made personal computers revolutionary wasn't that they're *small*; it was that they were *miniaturized*, which is not the same thing. They were the equivalent of what a decade earlier would have been a big computer, but in a physically small and more affordable package.
A small hydroponic system isn't *miniaturized*, it's just *small*.
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In other words, the metaphors that apply to processing information which is massless and weightless don't apply to physical objects?
You're saying we're not colonizing the galaxy just because computers got better?
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The thing that made personal computers revolutionary wasn't that they're *small*; it was that they were *miniaturized*, which is not the same thing.
There were two stages of computing's popularity exploding. One was due to them becoming affordable, and the next was when you could put a good one in your pocket. Size was a major factor the second time around, but not the first.
(You might say the first thing was really two separate stages; desktop computers first became affordable to people with a lot of money, and then quite a bit later, to pretty much anyone.)
Re: Nothing new (Score:2)
Cut the suggestive crap. (Score:2)
I mean, the guy was a convicted sex of
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If you take money from a child rapist then basically yes, you are evil. The MIT Media Lab knew they were taking money from a child rapist and attempted to hide the fact. So yeah, basically it shows the type of scum associated with the Lab.
Re:Cut the suggestive crap. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sources (Score:2)
Epstein seemingly made his money by scamming rich people. So these guys scammed Epstein out of his money. Karma.
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Evil only if the money came from molesting children,
We don't really know where else he's made money, maybe he was into some other loathsome shit we're not even aware of yet.
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Well the high expense combined with the laughable execution and severe implausibility of success even in the best of circumstances seems to paint this as some sort of boondoggle. So, the real question is: Where did that money really go?
Epstein-Funded (Score:5, Funny)
A backpacker is traveling through Ireland when it starts to rain. He decides to wait out the storm in a nearby pub. The only other person at the bar is an older man staring at his drink. After a few moments of silence the man turns to the backpacker and says in a thick Irish accent:
"You see this bar? I built this bar with my own bare hands. I cut down every tree and made the lumber myself. I toiled away through the wind and cold, but do they call me McGreggor the bar builder? No."
He continued "Do you see that stone wall out there? I built that wall with my own bare hands. I found every stone and placed them just right through the rain and the mud, but do they call me McGreggor the wall builder? No."
"Do ya see that pier out there on the lake? I built that pier with my own bare hands, driving each piling deep into ground so that it would last a lifetime. Do they call me McGreggor the pier builder? No."
"But ya fuck one goat.."
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Replace "goat" with "children" and maybe you will understand.
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Replace 'goat' with 'Epstein', and 'McGreggor' with 'MIT Media Lab' and 'fuck' with 'taken donations from' and maybe you'll understand the actually point being made because apparently you need it spelled out for you.
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Your metaphor is both crude and incorrect. It would only hold up if the punchline was "but you fuck goats systematically for years, and run a goat-fucking service so major it requires its own island" but that would do nothing for the impropriety of the comparison.
Complete Scam (Score:2)
I am glad the MIT media lab and the associated "AI researcher" crap is finally getting exposed. The fact that they were so heavily associated with Epstein just lowers my opinion of them.
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Re: How dare they fail! (Score:2)
Rife (Score:3)
University grant programs tend to be rife with dodgy grants like this. The latest fad is using dehumidifiers to generate water for arid areas. The obvious problem that any physicist will tell you, is that arid areas are arid because there is not a lot of water in the air, and for less than cost of building a enough of these machines to be effective, you could just truck in water more efficiently.
https://www.popsci.com/this-de... [popsci.com]
See also: Solar roadways, portable solar generators, etc...
The personal food computer (Score:4, Informative)
Since so far, no link to the project page of the Personal Food Computer was provided, here it is:
https://www.media.mit.edu/proj... [mit.edu]
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BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Yea there was no way that was going to fucking work. Just watching the GIF of the construction, there was literally no place for roots to actually go. What were they gonna do, sit around on the heat sink and let hydroponic salt-laden solution just drip all over that fucking computer?
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They're not complete idiots. Look more closely - the entire bottom section is an empty tank compartment, the heat sink and computer end up in the top section with the lights. They do seem to have had some slight teething troubles [mit.edu] with electronics and humidity not mixing among other things, but nothing that stopped them growing stuff.
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All that for one plant? Why not just go out and buy an AeroGarden or some other commercial unit? I have an AeroGarden unit that lets me grow up to nine plants at a time (some plants such as tomatoes are larger and I can only grow six at a time) or I can start up to 50 seeds at once for transplanting.
If I was going to do anything bigger I think that I would probably build something myself but AeroGarden does have larger units available that hold 24 (or 48) plants. They are pricey but you pay for the convenie
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Had to take a second look - that tiny reservoir in the bottom (the computer goes up top and that's not plainly visible in the construction video in the background) isn't holding enough solution for you to do anything for more than a day. You'll spend more time servicing these than you would getting any worthwhile yield.
Even potheads had better luck with stealth PC case grows.
Son, I am disappoint (Score:2)
I was looking forward to salacious stories of experiments with young plants.
Nothing to do with Epstein (Score:2)
Premise is based on a pipe dream (Score:3)
Somehow people have gotten this fantasy into their heads that they can grow enough food in their backyard garden to live off of. The reality is that it takes about 2 acres of land to feed a family of 4 [treehugger.com]. And tending and managing all the crops and animals on that land is close to a full-time job.
The reason we've moved away from everyone growing their own food is because it's horrendously inefficient. It's much better to concentrate everyone's food production needs into a single location (a farm) tended by just a few people (farmers). They produce enough food for thousands or tens of thousands of people, and sell/distribute the food to them. That frees up all those people to do other, more productive things with their lives.
If you want to help people in developing nations rise above a subsistence existence, economic development and creation of an organized farming industry is the way to do it. Encouraging people to grow their own food is a step backwards. (This is also why we have to be very careful with food aid. If you keep dumping free food into a developing country, you make it impossible for local farmers to remain profitable. They go out of business and quit farming, thus stalling the country's economic development, and leaving them unable to grow enough food to feed their own population leaving them completely dependent on the charity of developed nations to survive.)
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Your last point, about food aid, is not obvious to most people unfortunately. Very frequently the misallocation of food aid to make a country dependent seems to have been done deliberately. I remember riding a bus through the Bolivian countryside with mile after mile of empty farmland and abandoned towns, and commenting to the fellow sitting next to me that on the Peruvian side of the border the farms were all being worked and the towns were prosperous. He turned out to be a government economist and repl