Motherboard

Rhianna Lakin is the force behind the leading online community for women interested in drones. She’s proactively carved out a space for women in a male domin ated industry and is challenging drone pilots everywhere to use the technology for good. She’s hoping to use drones as a powerful tool to expose and combat d eforestation, aid in search and rescue missions and humanitarian relief, amplify the voices of protesters and inspire the next generation to do the same.

Pinball was once an American obsession. Now, the arcade classic is making a comeback, but the repair technicians skilled enough to repair these complex machines are limited. In this episode of State of Repair, Motherboard talks to two remaining pinball repair techs in New York to see what goes into keeping these highly specialized games running.

Douglas McCauley is a Santa Barbara-based marine scientist who is looking to technology for new ways to take on some of the ocean's biggest challenges. Along with his colleagues at the Benioff Ocean Initiative (BOI)—a UCSB-based collaboration between marine biologists, tech innovators, and citizen scientists—McCauley has helped develop numerous platforms to monitor threats to marine ecosystems.

When it comes to repair, farmers have always been self reliant. But the modernization of tractors and other farm equipment over the past few decades has left most farmers in the dust thanks to diagnostic software that large manufacturers hold a monopoly over. In this episode of State of Repair, Motherboard goes to Nebraska to talk to the farmers and mechanics who are fighting large manufacturers like John Deere for the right to access the diagnostic software they need to repair their tractors.

Every year there’s a race to become the first to tear down the phone, with teams from around the world flying to Australia—where it’s first released—to compete to be the first to look inside the world’s most coveted new phone. Motherboard embedded with iFixit, a California-based company whose primary mission is to make it easier for the average person to disassemble and repair their electronics, for its iPhone X teardown.

Every month for the past five years, Harlem residents have gathered to discuss digital privacy and how to best protect themselves from intrusive surveillance. Motherboard joined CryptoHarlem founder Matthew Mitchell at one of his crypto parties to see firsthand how he is empowering people of color, who he says are over-policed and heavily surveilled.

Living With Jaguars is a 360° film documenting wild jaguars in Brazil. Part documentary and part immersive game, Living With Jaguars explores historical and current tensions in a rural region where jaguars prey on ranchers' cattle and ranchers kill them in retaliation. Now, ranchers and jaguars must find new ways to co-exist - or risk the future of a species under threat.

Plattsburgh, NY is part of a long-standing power agreement that gives the city an allotment of some of the cheapest electricity anywhere in the world, but a recent influx of cryptomining companies and their energy-draining rigs have raised power prices at the expense of the general population.