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Flying microchips size of a sand grain could be used for population surveilance

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Re: Flying microchips size of a sand grain could be used for population surveilance

#21

Post by awinter-py »

aaroninsf wrote: post #13
awinter-py wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eat your heart out pham nuwen

I 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. :(

amazing 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.

Re: Flying microchips size of a sand grain could be used for population surveilance

#22

Post by fabian2k »

Well, 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.

Re: Flying microchips size of a sand grain could be used for population surveilance

#23

Post by howmayiannoyyou »

No 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.

Re: Flying microchips size of a sand grain could be used for population surveilance

#24

Post by SavantIdiot »

These 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.

Re: Flying microchips size of a sand grain could be used for population surveilance

#26

Post by isoprophlex »

Filligree wrote: post #20
cryptoz wrote: post #11

Been wondering when this kind of thing will exist and be normalized. Idle thoughts, what happens if you swallow one? Seems possible and not good.

Lithium 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.

Doesn't lithium have antidepressant properties..? It's okay citizen, don't fret, breathe some more surveillance dust!

Re: Flying microchips size of a sand grain could be used for population surveilance

#27

Post by [deleted] »

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #23

No 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]

Re: Flying microchips size of a sand grain could be used for population surveilance

#28

Post by rolph »

there is a paywalled article submitted to nature

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.

Re: Flying microchips size of a sand grain could be used for population surveilance

#29

Post by carapace »

awinter-py wrote: post #21
aaroninsf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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. :(

amazing 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.

(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

Re: Flying microchips size of a sand grain could be used for population surveilance

#30

Post by rthomas6 »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #24

These 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, swe…

Or 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.
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