5 ms·

This is reminding me of the movie Real Genius. A must watch for hackers. Anyway the guys build a really big laser under pressure from a professor and realize

by MCRed 12y ago

This is reminding me of the movie Real Genius. A must watch for hackers. Anyway the guys build a really big laser under pressure from a professor and realize at one point that there's a reason the laser needs to be that big-- it's not just research there's a clear use case. So we have here a camera that can take pictures regularly over long periods of time, doesn't need to be hooked up to power, yet it's unlikely to match or catch up with consumer cameras any time soon. What possible purpose could there be for this camera? Ubiquitous surveillance. Build millions of them, put them everywhere. It's a lot cheaper to just tack them on buildings and give them a super capacitor and radio and let them sit there and take pictures for years -- then come by and activate them, download the pictures when needed. Imagine vans drivign around the city downloading the data from the previous day from all the cameras. These will never be good for your cellphone but they are good for 1984.

karmacondon 12y ago
I apologize for being "meta", but I feel like your comment might be a bit off topic for this thread. I read the article and thought "Wow! Cool!" and wondered what the hn community had to say about this technology. I was dismayed to see that your top comment (at the time) was yet another warning about surveillance and big brother and 1984 and etc. I get it, man. You and others value privacy highly and feel that it's important to discuss it. But every single thread? Can't we have just one day without the dystopian science fiction? There are plenty of stories on the home page dedicated to the issues of privacy, surveillance and government bad behavior. Would it be possible to limit the discussion of those issues to the relevant articles? It's good to point out non-obvious uses or potential unintended consequences for new technology. And I understand that the hn zeitgeist is what it is. But the repetition of certain ideas is getting a little old.

by MCRed 12y ago

karmacondon 12y ago

I apologize for being "meta", but I feel like your comment might be a bit off topic for this thread. I read the article and thought "Wow! Cool!" and wondered what the hn community had to say about this technology. I was dismayed to see that your top comment (at the time) was yet another warning about surveillance and big brother and 1984 and etc. I get it, man. You and others value privacy highly and feel that it's important to discuss it. But every single thread? Can't we have just one day without the dystopian science fiction? There are plenty of stories on the home page dedicated to the issues of privacy, surveillance and government bad behavior. Would it be possible to limit the discussion of those issues to the relevant articles? It's good to point out non-obvious uses or potential unintended consequences for new technology. And I understand that the hn zeitgeist is what it is. But the repetition of certain ideas is getting a little old.