5 ms·
Flying microchips size of a sand grain could be used for population surveilance
- rolph 5y agofull title == [Flying Microchips The Size Of A Sand Grain Could Be Used For Population Surveillance]
- happytoexplain 5y agoHow about "Flying Microchips Size of Sand Grain Could Be Used For Population Surveillance"
- onemoresoop 5y agoHow about falling (or gliding) microchips could be used for such and such niche.
- carapace 5y agoAKA "smartdust" > The concepts for Smart Dust emerged from a workshop at RAND in 1992 and a series of DARPA ISAT studies in the mid-1990s due to the potential military applications of the technology.[2] The work was strongly influenced by work at UCLA and the University of Michigan during that period, as well as science fiction authors Stanislaw Lem (in novels The Invincible in 1964 and Peace on Earth in 1985), Neal Stephenson and Vernor Vinge. The first public presentation of the concept by that name was at the American Vacuum Society meeting in Anaheim in 1996. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartdust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartdust
- awinter-py 5y agoeat your heart out pham nuwen
- orthoxerox 5y agoThere are people who unironically like the Emergence out there in the wild.
- aaroninsf 5y agoI have given up hoping he will ever finish the "zones" series. It's been ten years since _Children of the Sky_. Better almost that he never wrote CotS and left us hanging. :(
- awinter-py 5y agoamazing author IMO. came out of nowhere, wrote very little, kubrickian in that he doesn't want to repeat himself, idea quality is astounding in that his ideas are new, influential, and fully formed. You can read true names every 5 years and still be like 'oh that piece came true'. Rainbow's End is the icing on the cake. Everyone has N novels in them, maybe he just reached N.
- carapace 5y ago(Not to nitpick but it's "Rainbows End", without apostrophe. More evocative, eh?) And yeah, he's amazing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge
- floren 5y ago> Rainbow's End is the icing on the cake. What Silicon Valley keeps forgetting is that Rainbow's End wasn't supposed to be aspirational. Except for the robot EV taxis, that's pretty cool I guess.
- awinter-py 5y agono user serviceable parts within
- addaon 5y ago"Rainbows End" (no apostrophe) -- different meaning.
- rolph 5y agothese are larger than dust, they actually have a small "propeller" https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/09/23/microflier1-013bcb9dc9bbd61b03a1151d2c5492ac144fc905-s1100-c50.png https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/09/23/microflier1-013b... https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/09/23/microflier_sq-3e556954d8b0774be92d35108a4feb23ba9f250e-s1100-c50.png https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/09/23/microflier_sq-3e...
- hinkley 5y agoVernor Vinge's first use of that concept in a book was published the same year as that workshop. I wonder how the timing of that works out. It's not uncommon for the stage to be set by previous work and multiple actors putting 2 and 2 together in a fairly short period of time. I can never keep track of who has published works as serials or as short stories prior to novelization. I don't see anything in Wikipedia about that for A Deepness in the Sky though.
- brandonmenc 5y agoAnother interesting old reference is the two-part "Utility Fog" article in Extropy magazine from 1994 and 1995: http://fennetic.net/irc/extropy/ext13.pdf http://fennetic.net/irc/extropy/ext13.pdf http://fennetic.net/irc/extropy/ext14.pdf http://fennetic.net/irc/extropy/ext14.pdf
- smackay 5y agoThis is an idea that has been extensively explored since 1996, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_sensor_nodes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_sensor_nodes It's a pity that the theme is now surveillance as the utility of sensor networks is rather high. Perhaps larger devices that could roam the planet and especially the oceans would be to better to spend money on. There's so much to learn yet we waste the opportunity snooping on each other.
- 8eye 5y agoall the perverted governments out there who can’t get enough of our hard coded data. if this tech existed then, then how much behind the curtain is still yet to revealed. it’s pretty common for governments not to show off advanced technologies right away. in reality, that would probably be a breach of security revealing any of those secrets.
- withinboredom 5y agoReminds me of the "snarks" in Off Armageddon Reef.
- noindiecred 5y agoWe will monitor pollution by (checks notes) dispersing a huge swarm of tiny robots, themselves made of heavy metals, that are infeasibly difficult to recover or recycle.
- toper-centage 5y agoWe have covered the earth with nanobits to track air quality and the results are astonishing. The atmosphere is full of nanobots.
- ronsor 5y ago"Nanobots Used to Track Air Quality Ironically Make Air Quality Much Worse" Sounds like an Onion headline honestly.
- jnsie 5y agoHow many nanobits in a nanobot?
- matrixcubed 5y agoDepends on whether the last nanobit is used for parity or data.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- aomobile 5y agoWhat about magnets for collection?
- lambdasquirrel 5y agoPretty sure any magnet strong enough to attract one of these from the distances required would also induce a voltage on any sufficiently long wire that’s moving through the flux lines. i.e. might cause problems for your car, for airplanes, etc.
- jvanderbot 5y agoObligatory plug for Diamond Age, in which wealthy aristocracy used clouds of smart pollution ( oops I mean dust ) to protect citizens and wage war.
- the__alchemist 5y agoWith noted consequences like nano-scale warefare among the bots, and wasting diseases caused by chronic exposure to "toner".
- cryptoz 5y agoBeen wondering when this kind of thing will exist and be normalized. Idle thoughts, what happens if you swallow one? Seems possible and not good.
- wila 5y agoHow about breathing one in?
- Filligree 5y agoLithium ion battery toxicity is… Why is this a thing? I shouldn’t need to worry about swallowing gnat-sized batteries! But it’s Not Good, yes.
- isoprophlex 5y agoDoesn't lithium have antidepressant properties..? It's okay citizen, don't fret, breathe some more surveillance dust!
- danellis 5y agoLithium carbonate.
- theothermatt 5y agoDevices similar to this were a major plot point in the second book of the 'Zones of Thought' sci-fi series by Vernor Vinge[1]. It is a really great series that is often recommended on HN. My favorite thing about the series (as it relates to this story) is the way Vinge writes about about the consequences of uncovering code/programs/hardware that was developed thousands or millions of years in the past. There are so many layers to these ancient programs that you never truly know what you are unleashing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky#Localizers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky#Localize...
- romwell 5y agoMy first thought was about A Deepness in the Sky. Like, the implications of these things are fascinating and scary.
- dudeinjapan 5y agoI for one welcome our new nanobot overlords.
- fabian2k 5y agoWell, maybe dystopian SciFi turns out to be not as much fiction as we had hoped ;-). Ubiquitous surveillance together with artificial intelligence are probably one of the most powerful tools for authoritarian regimes you can imagine. They already have the physical power to hurt their opponents, now they also know exactly where they need to apply this power to keep themselves at the helm and quash any resistance before it can get too organized. And the artificial intelligence doesn't need to be all that intelligent if you have enough data, it's not as if authoritarian regimes would care if they locked up a few more people than required.
- howmayiannoyyou 5y agoNo inside information, but from what I glean reading between the lines in various podcasts, books, etc. this tech has been used already in Afghanistan & Iraq by US special assets. I would expect it is in use elsewhere in the intelligence community. If so, that's all fine with me provided it doesn't become a warrantless tracking method employed by DHS/FBI either directly or indirectly.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- passing_by_and 5y agoWhy is it fine?
- ghostly_s 5y agowhat possible application could this have in warfare?
- toss1 5y agoe.g., sensing where enemy troops go that isn't being otherwise watched, discovering what radioisotopes or chemicals are in a plume from an otherwise disguised building...
- SavantIdiot 5y agoThese devices don't even have space for an antenna (limited by physical size). The power required by the sensors is dwarfed by RF transmit. The current challenges of powering a radio device with an MPU at this size are far too great for this to be useful. Unless there is a breakthrough in radio physics, drones need to be a certain size that is much larger than this. Unless they plan to release a billion of these, sweep them up, and then have interns/grad students probe each one to extract the collected data.
- rthomas6 5y agoOr just, you know, use a high frequency. There are tiny antennas. You can just power it via induction (like RFID) and you're set. It still couldn't transmit super far but I bet it would work.
- SavantIdiot 5y agoHigh frequency = high power. Energy harvesting is in the femptoWatt range.
- wyager 5y ago> High frequency = high power This isn’t true in any sense applicable to this discussion. For example a near-optical laser transmitter can be as or more efficient in joules per bit than an RF transmitter, depending on the situation.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago> A near-optical laser transmitter Do you have to aim that laser transmitter?
- wyager 5y agoDepends on the application, but if you do, it won’t pose a problem: * you have more options than with RF (optics or phased array) * you’ll get better angular precision at a given transmitter size
- rolph 5y agothere is a paywalled article submitted to nature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03847-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03847-y the abstract and its references are visible for examination. theres a lot of links to follow up on if anyone wants to thumb through the background.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y agoThere are days when I genuinely wonder if Transmetropolitan was a prophecy of sorts. Naturally, it had those, but it also had very robust anti-censorship movements.
- mike_d 5y agoRemember when HN collectively lost their minds and questioned journalists integrity for suggesting that the Chinese government could have put a backdoor chip gasp the size of a grain of rice on Supermicro motherboards?
- wmf 5y agoEveryone agrees that they could; the question is whether they did.
- monocasa 5y agoNo, everyone did not agree with that. Phrases like "against the laws of physics" were being thrown around. And for nearly every other computer security issue, simply the presence of the possibility is enough to take action.
- dragontamer 5y agoThis. Those Bloomberg reporters showing pictures of lol capacitors did them no favors. We know the difference between processors and capacitors around here. ------- The picture in this article is actually plausible. It's not just a capacitor that is getting hyped up by ignorant reporters.
- monocasa 5y agoThe picture in the Bloomberg article was obviously thrown together by some graphic designer because they didn't have actual pictures, and modern journalism wants many forms of media for a front page article. That doesn't take away from the claims the article made.
- danellis 5y ago> We know the difference between processors and capacitors around here. Maybe for a two-legged device like a capacitor, but for something in, say, a SOT-23 package, you can't be sure what it is from the outside. Then again, maybe even something in a capacitor-like package could both communicate and be powered.
- kgc 5y agoWhere "flying" actually just means falling slowly.
- ghuin 5y agoThis is not news - some vaccines are known to contain these.
- mfer 5y agoSide thought... I know numerous people who are concerned about nanobots in vaccines. When I see stories like this I expect it will reinforce their concerns.
- tonmoy 5y ago> "We think that we beat nature," Rogers said. "At least in the narrow sense that we have been able to build structures that fall with more stable trajectories and at slower terminal velocities than equivalent seeds that you would see from plants or trees." I don’t think nature had the same goal. As long as the local minima is good enough for survival nature would be happy
- Filligree 5y agoTo the contrary, erratic seed dispersal would be an advantage.
- mpva 5y agoGreat, thats all I need to breathe in every day
- Borrible 5y agoCould? Hitachis RFID-'Powder' was developed almost twenty years ago. https://thefutureofthings.com/3221-hitachi-develops-worlds-smallest-rfid-chip/ https://thefutureofthings.com/3221-hitachi-develops-worlds-s...
- titzer 5y ago> The scientists say they could potentially be used to monitor for contamination, surveil populations or even track diseases. The complete lack of awareness in this whole endeavor is absolutely gobsmacking. They want to manufacture these things by the billions and then throw them into the wind with no plan to collect them and dispose of them afterwards (because that'd basically be impossible)? Uh, these things aren't monitoring for contamination, they are contamination.
- ChrisLomont 5y ago>The complete lack of awareness in this whole endeavor How do you know what awareness these groups have? Even this tiny article demonstrated that they already make bio-degradable versions. The main person mentioned, John Rogers, has an ungodly number of publications and patents, including lots on biodegradability and related issues. Or did you simply assume?
- titzer 5y ago>> The complete lack of awareness in this whole endeavor I'm sticking with my original assessment. Assuming you can just make a billion of anything and dump them into the environment is a totally different mindset than literally any conservationist philosophy[1]. I'm sure these things are biodegradable in the same sense that plastics are "recyclable". Microchips aren't made out of sawdust and sugar. Junk always has consequences. [1] This philosophy motivates the "leave no trace" rule that hikers, climbers, conservationists, and nature lovers all follow. Don't throw anything into the ecosystem, not even "biodegradable" stuff like banana peels. Invasive parasites aside, just offering more foodstuff for anything doing the biodegrading disturbs the environment.
- humaniania 5y agoThey can only be defeated by... A STRONG BREEZE!
- pulse7 5y agoImagine getting one of these flying microchips into your eye...
- danellis 5y agoFlying Microchips Size of a Sand GRAIN Could be Used by Citizens to Keep Authorities In Check
- excalibur 5y agoI bet these feel really great when they get in your lungs
- betwixthewires 5y agoThis reminds me of the nanoparticle smog from The Diamond Age. If these things come into heavy use they're going to be the new microplastics and we can all see it coming.
- zokier 5y agoBefore jumping to conclusions, note that the microcontroller equipped flyer is reported to be about 5cm in diameter. Not exactly size of sand grain. From the article: > Mechanical simulation results and photograph of a 3D IoT macroflier with a circuit to measure fine dust pollution through the light dosimetry method. The weight of the IoT flier is 19.7mg (d≈5cm), with payload 198mg (Supplementary Fig.23
- isoprophlex 5y agoAmazing! Your comment renders a couple of train emoji on my device! Edit: screenshot https://ibb.co/sKw7tqt https://ibb.co/sKw7tqt I thought posting emoji wasnt possible on hn?! This one seems acceptable:
- zokier 5y agoFun. Apparently HN does not filter private area unicode, and nature.com reader for some reason includes those in copypaste...
- isoprophlex 5y agoIf I search for that train in the emoji keyboard on my phone and post that, it doesn't stick... weird.
- zokier 5y agoLooking at the supplementary material, the "IoT macroflier" is pretty close to https://www.ti.com/tool/TIDM-RF430-TEMPSENSE https://www.ti.com/tool/TIDM-RF430-TEMPSENSE with some wings stuck to it.. The scale is pretty similar too, that patch is about 35mm maybe. The sensor is different (photodiode vs temperature) but that doesn't really change the overall design much.
- theshadowknows 5y agoWouldn’t it just be easier to dust food sources with tiny probes and then scavenge them from the sewers? That way they don’t need to fly and I’m sure you could build them in such a way that for specific foods no one would notice.