Twitter bans QAnon; CRISPR gene tech

Nicholas Thompson, Editor-in-chief of WIRED, provides his perspective on technology news:

Twitter has said it will knockout QAnon. How will that work out?

QAnon is a strange, mysterious, far-right conspiracy theory. Twitter removing it will actually make a difference. It's very easy to say, "oh, we'll just migrate to Facebook or elsewhere," and that is partly true, but Twitter is a central node in how the conspiracy theory is spread. Remove it, and it will spread more slowly.

How close are we to CRISPR agriculture?

Well, this is in response to a story we just ran in WIRED about the first CRISPR born cow, a cow whose genes had been adjusted using the technique of CRISPR to make it then male, which is better for beef cows. Dairy cows, you want female. Beef cows, you want male. It didn't work out perfectly. The cow is a boy but has all kinds of other problems suggesting for this particular use of CRISPR, it's going to be a long time.