Climeworks is a Swiss company whose goal is to make it possible to capture CO2 from the air for below $100 per ton. They believe that by 2030 there will be a global average price on carbon in the range of $100 to $150 a ton. Currently only a few European countries have made progress in assessing a high price on carbon however Climeworks believe more countries will price carbon. Then a company that sells a product or uses a process that creates high emissions (an airline, for instance, or a steel maker) could be required to pay carbon-removal companies $100 per metric ton or more to offset their CO2 output. Or a government might use carbon-tax proceeds to directly pay businesses to collect and bury CO2. www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/magazine/climeworks-business-climate-change.html
The Women's Safety XPRIZE of $1 million was awarded to Leaf Wearables. The official challenge was to create a device costing less than $40 that can autonomously and inconspicuously trigger an emergency alert while transmitting information to a network of community responders, all within 90 seconds. Leaf had the advantage of having already shipped a product along these lines, the Safer pendant. https://safety.xprize.org/prizes/womens-safety/teams/leaf_wearables
An engineer has designed a Apple HomePod box that is "enticing" for any thief. It's GPS-enabled, so its journey can be tracked once it leaves his home perimeter. It records video with embedded mobile phones, no matter how the thief picked up the parcel. And, once triggered, it sprays half a kilo of glitter. To add insult to injury it includes a can of "fart spray," programmed to automatically spray after the glitter explosion is triggered. Reactions by the thieves are captured on the video. www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/thieves-stole-a-package-from-an-engineer-so-he-created-a-trap-using-glitter-and-fart-spray-20181219-p50n57.html
