Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 109 posts

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

#31

Post by floren »

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.

> 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.

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

#33

Post by snek_case »

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…

All you need to transmit data is one LED.

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

#34

Post by jnsie »

toper-centage wrote: post #10
noindiecred wrote: post #7

We 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.

We have covered the earth with nanobits to track air quality and the results are astonishing. The atmosphere is full of nanobots.

How many nanobits in a nanobot?

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

#36

Post by awinter-py »

floren wrote: post #31
awinter-py wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

no user serviceable parts within

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

#37

Post by lambdasquirrel »

aomobile wrote: post #35
noindiecred wrote: post #7

We 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.

What about magnets for collection?

Pretty 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.

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

#38

Post by brandonmenc »

carapace wrote: post #3

AKA "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…

Another 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/ext14.pdf

Post reply on HN