13 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29255511 ("How to grow sodium chloride crystals at home")
How is this relevant to the conversation? Did you see salt grain and assume it was a dupe?
Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
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Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#32So privacy will evaporate. Imagine dropping millions of these from a drone, carpeting a city. They'd be carried everywhere on clothing, animals, wind. Go to any location and scan for local cameras, download. Privacy will have to be redefined. We've done this lots of times. You hear what goes on behind the bathroom door, you don't say anything, you actually forget it. Because it's not polite to snoop. So in future eve…
This is just the camera mechanism itself, not a recording or transmitting device nor, as sister comment points out, a power source. So, a few more steps to smart dust.
Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#33The article keeps saying "camera", but we only see the lens. How big is the sensor and cabling?
The full setup is in the supplementary information (available at the bottom of the main paper website [1]), Figure 7. After this small lens, there are a couple more large lenses before the final camera/sensor, apparently an AVT Proscilica GT1930C (which is not tiny---the full setup would be maybe ~200mm in length).
So basically, yep, this work is just about a better tiny lens; the press article is misleading (the paper [1] is better written). I don't know enough about optics to comment on how it compares to previous work, or how small a full lens + sensor system can currently be.
Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Imagine dropping millions of these from a drone, carpeting a city. Doesn't it still need a source of power?
RFID tags have no power source, and can do significant processing. As others mention, ambient electromagnetic fields can be harvested with a loop antenna.
What processing can an RFID do?
AFAIK RFID can only store and send data, and are pretty "dumb".
Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#35Could two of these cameras create stereoscopic videos that can let us feel what it would be like to be so tiny?
Conversely, imagine dual orbiting telescopes feeding into VR glasses giving us the perspective of a planet-scaled monster
relevant xkcd : https://xkcd.com/941/
Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#36[deleted]
Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#37Completely unsurprising of course, but still the second-scariest thing I've read this morning and actually for quite a while.
The scariest is sophisticated, well-informed and higly intelligent HN commenters in this thread who seem to be bubbling over with unbridled enthusiasm.
Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#38... and use it to photograph a "close ad" button.
Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#39Re: Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
even if banned legally, the amounts of illegal surveillance will be mindboggling. It'll only keep shrinking, until it is the size of dust particles, just another order of magnitude. How do you prevent dust-cameras from being around? a pre-emptive EMP pulse lol?
You are overthinking here: 1- Actually, the main problem with privacy is that most people still doesnt really care and many more underestimates its current reach, if this were somehow to happen, proably it would raise awareness and that is of topmost priority. 2- Its is already mindboggling. 3- A spy needs privacy to spy.
It goes further than this. Most people know about Airbnb creep cams. Everyone cares about it when asked. And yet they are still a huge problem because they are so easy to hide.