[HN Gopher] Flying microchips size of a sand grain could be used...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Flying microchips size of a sand grain could be used for population
       surveilance
        
       Author : rolph
       Score  : 76 points
       Date   : 2021-09-23 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
        
       | betwixthewires wrote:
       | This 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.
        
       | noindiecred wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | toper-centage wrote:
         | We have covered the earth with nanobits to track air quality
         | and the results are astonishing. The atmosphere is full of
         | nanobots.
        
           | ronsor wrote:
           | "Nanobots Used to Track Air Quality Ironically Make Air
           | Quality Much Worse"
           | 
           | Sounds like an Onion headline honestly.
        
           | jnsie wrote:
           | How many nanobits in a nanobot?
        
             | matrixcubed wrote:
             | Depends on whether the last nanobit is used for parity or
             | data.
        
         | tonmoy wrote:
         | Neither the researchers nor the media outlet said anything
         | about pollution
        
           | monocasa wrote:
           | FTA
           | 
           | > It's neither a bird nor a plane, but a winged microchip as
           | small as a grain of sand that can be carried by the wind as
           | it monitors such things as pollution levels or the spread of
           | airborne diseases.
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | Someone is going to aspirate these things.
        
           | embedded_hiker wrote:
           | Including frogs and birds.
        
         | farisjarrah wrote:
         | There is a video that demonstrates and explains the nano bots
         | in the article and near the end of the video they stated that
         | the bots are made out of biodegradable materials that will
         | degrade with time/rain
        
           | EarthLaunch wrote:
           | No, it says "Some of the microfliers are built" with such a
           | material.
        
           | titzer wrote:
           | Everything degrades over a long enough timescale, even
           | plastics and metals. The question is what damage they do to
           | ecosystems on their long cycle to be atomized and recycled.
        
         | aomobile wrote:
         | What about magnets for collection?
        
           | lambdasquirrel wrote:
           | 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.
        
       | pulse7 wrote:
       | Imagine getting one of these flying microchips into your eye...
        
       | fabian2k wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | e40 wrote:
         | Not only that, more fuel for the "microchips in vaccines"...
         | ugh.
        
           | akomtu wrote:
           | You don't need microchips. Just some metallic dust that
           | dissolves into poison when radiated with proper frequency.
           | That's cheap and enough for crowd control. Just trying to be
           | pragmatic.
        
       | howmayiannoyyou wrote:
       | 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]
        
       | humaniania wrote:
       | They can only be defeated by... A STRONG BREEZE!
        
       | theshadowknows wrote:
       | Wouldn'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.
        
       | SavantIdiot wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | jmwilson wrote:
         | > 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.
         | 
         | After reading the article and watching the video, I think
         | that's what they are aiming for. The coil can couple data and
         | power through near-field interaction, so they'll release a
         | large number, hope to recover a sample of them, and extract the
         | data through field or lab instruments. I could see this being
         | useful for recording environmental data and forensic tracing,
         | but they look closer to RFID tags than a computing platform.
        
         | zokier wrote:
         | The whole article is massively misleading. The team used same
         | basic design at three different scales: micro, meso, and macro
         | (their terminology). They are 0.4mm, 2mm, 40mm in diameter
         | respectively. The "IoT flier" used the macro scale design; in
         | 40mm you definitely can already fit all sorts of antenna,
         | although power is still an issue. All the other, smaller fliers
         | did not have any microchips in them.
         | 
         | So the title "Flying microchips size of sand grain" is just
         | plain wrong here :(
        
         | rthomas6 wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | joshuajill wrote:
           | 6G communications is being prepared to use very high
           | frequencies.
           | 
           | Also, plans are to use directed energy, not classical wave
           | like RF.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6G_(network)
        
           | twofornone wrote:
           | The downside to high frequencies is that they generally
           | experience much more severe attenuation, which limits their
           | range in atmosphere. Now, if you could get these flying
           | microchips to simply reflect (with encoded data) a high power
           | input signal from a base station, you might be onto
           | something...
        
           | SavantIdiot wrote:
           | High frequency = high power. Energy harvesting is in the
           | femptoWatt range.
        
             | wyager wrote:
             | > 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 wrote:
               | > A near-optical laser transmitter
               | 
               | Do you have to aim that laser transmitter?
        
               | wyager wrote:
               | Depends 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
        
             | joshuajill wrote:
             | "Frequencies from 100 GHz to 3 THz are promising bands for
             | the next generation of wireless communication systems
             | because of the wide swaths of unused and unexplored
             | spectrum."
             | 
             | "Also, new results that give insights into power efficient
             | beam steering algorithms".
             | 
             | From "Wireless Communications and Applications Above 100
             | GHz: Opportunities and Challenges for 6G and Beyond"
        
         | blacksmith_tb wrote:
         | Doesn't that ring-like structure in the center look like an
         | antenna? I suppose it could just be traces between the 'lobes'
         | of the circuit on each wing. That said, it does seem like a
         | tall order to pack in useful sensors and some way to transmit
         | into tiny particles like these.
        
           | zokier wrote:
           | The ring is a NFC coil.
        
         | snek_case wrote:
         | All you need to transmit data is one LED.
        
           | SavantIdiot wrote:
           | Yes. In a nice confined lab. Now do it in daylight with
           | millions of these things all pointing different directions.
           | 
           | EDIT: Unless you meant for downloading after retrieval. That
           | could work...
        
           | squarefoot wrote:
           | With the power available and in sunlight that would be
           | impossible. I'd put a mini mirror behind a mini old-style b&w
           | LCD screen and use the LCD to modulate reflections on the
           | mirror, making it purely passive except for driving the LCD,
           | which however would draw 3 orders of magnitude less power
           | than a LED.
        
       | rolph wrote:
       | full title == [Flying Microchips The Size Of A Sand Grain Could
       | Be Used For Population Surveillance]
        
         | happytoexplain wrote:
         | How about "Flying Microchips Size of Sand Grain Could Be Used
         | For Population Surveillance"
        
           | onemoresoop wrote:
           | How about falling (or gliding) microchips could be used for
           | such and such niche.
        
       | jvanderbot wrote:
       | Obligatory 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 wrote:
         | With noted consequences like nano-scale warefare among the
         | bots, and wasting diseases caused by chronic exposure to
         | "toner".
        
       | mike_d wrote:
       | Remember 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 wrote:
         | Everyone agrees that they could; the question is whether they
         | did.
        
           | dragontamer wrote:
           | This.
           | 
           | 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 wrote:
             | The 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 wrote:
             | > 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.
        
               | dragontamer wrote:
               | But Bloomberg didn't show an SOT-23 package. They showed
               | something like an 0402 or maybe 0201 capacitor on the tip
               | of a pencil.
               | 
               | Could China be hacking motherboards and then shipping
               | them to the USA? Maybe. I'm certain that they're trying
               | to figure out a plan at least. But the Bloomberg article
               | was fully bunk and just FUD from the start.
               | 
               | And I think we all know how we'd hack Supermicro
               | motherboards anyway: those BMCs are well known to be
               | poorly updated, proprietary chips with full access to the
               | keyboard / mouse / display of every single Supermicro
               | motherboard ever made.
               | 
               | One would _assume_ that a Supermicro motherboard hack
               | would involve a BMC attack, if it were to exist at all.
               | If there's news that some hacker is using some other
               | means than the "obvious" BMC, it'd be news, but you gotta
               | be really, really technical and explain just how it
               | works... so that you know, it'd be useful to IT
               | departments to know how to defend against? (Ex: put BMC
               | on its own VLAN at least)
        
               | mike_d wrote:
               | It sounds like you are having difficulty drawing a
               | distinction in your mind between the journalist who did
               | the reporting on the story and the art department that
               | had to come up with something that conveys "small chip"
               | to an average reader without having actual photos.
               | 
               | Most stories about COVID include inaccurate artistic
               | renditions of the virus, but that does not discredit the
               | reporting.
        
               | dragontamer wrote:
               | There's a big difference between a physical hardware
               | attack (that is fully unspecified and fully FUD), and an
               | actual threat to IT departments (ex: insecure BMC that
               | needs to be isolated into its own VLAN).
               | 
               | The minute you start thinking about "how do I protect my
               | company's computers from this attack?" is the minute the
               | Bloomberg article falls apart. Asking for further details
               | just resulted in Bloomberg clamming up and remaining
               | silent on any additional details.
               | 
               | Bloomberg has had multiple years at this point to provide
               | the details needed to be useful to IT departments
               | everywhere about their purported attack. At some point,
               | we just gotta assume that they were making things up.
               | 
               | -----
               | 
               | Lets say Bloomberg is correct about these hypothetical
               | chips being placed into ill-specified motherboards. No
               | attack is perfect: this is all computer equipment after
               | all. It needs to be powered, it needs to have
               | communications to the outside world, it needs to have
               | spy-information (aka: taking information from the
               | motherboard).
               | 
               | Its unlikely that a small chip with low-power could
               | interface with high-speed components (ie: RAM, PCIe,
               | Southbridge, SATA), it wouldn't have enough power. Etc.
               | etc. Whatever the hypothetical attack is, there would be
               | physical requirements it needs to satisfy.
               | 
               | All point back to the BMC: a low-bandwidth interface with
               | huge amounts of information, with highly proprietary /
               | likely insecure code running. So we think about how
               | hardware could be used to hack this interface.
               | 
               | At which point, we immediately enter the realm of
               | ridiculousness, because BMCs are CPUs in their own rights
               | and simply run software to do their job. For a "zero-
               | hardware" attack, China could just be rewriting BMC
               | firmware or something way, way, waaaaay easier than what
               | was described in the Bloomberg article.
               | 
               | Now China doesn't have to worry about replacing chips at
               | all, and they still get all their spy-craft working.
               | 
               | ------
               | 
               | But guess what? I think most IT departments are well
               | aware of the proprietary and possibly insecure BMC
               | interface. That's why there's a lot of discussions online
               | about how to protect that interface.
        
               | monocasa wrote:
               | Right, so a small chip sitting on the SPI bus for the
               | flash would fit all of what you said and give attackers
               | another capability: persistency in the face of replacing
               | the flash itself. And yes, it'd probably be something
               | small, like rewriting one of the keys stored in flash.
               | 
               | And BMC networks are extremely high value targets. Tons
               | of exploits from running ancient code, and DMA access to
               | the the rest of the system, often without even an IOMMU
               | in the way.
        
               | dragontamer wrote:
               | The Bloomberg article doesn't talk about BMCs however.
               | That's __me__ talking about BMCs.
               | 
               | I don't need the Bloomberg article distracting the
               | discussion. Its clear that the Bloomberg article was just
               | fully and completely useless. It contributed no useful,
               | technical details to the discussion.
               | 
               | We're sitting here arguing about how Bloomberg might have
               | written the article better. At some point, we just gotta
               | realize that Bloomberg wasn't helpful at the discussion
               | at all.
               | 
               | Which is fine: Bloomberg is primarily a trading /
               | commodities / financial newspaper. To expect expertise in
               | technical issues (better than typical Hacker News
               | discussion) is probably expecting too much from that
               | group of journalists. But lets not pretend that the
               | article under discussion was useful to any of us here.
        
               | monocasa wrote:
               | > The Bloomberg article doesn't talk about BMCs however.
               | That's __me__ talking about BMCs.
               | 
               | You are not the only one talking about BMCs. The entire
               | discussion has centered on that since the beginning. I'm
               | not sure how you thought that you invented that line of
               | discussion.
               | 
               | > We're sitting here arguing about how Bloomberg might
               | have written the article better. At some point, we just
               | gotta realize that Bloomberg wasn't helpful at the
               | discussion at all.
               | 
               | > Which is fine: Bloomberg is primarily a trading /
               | commodities / financial newspaper. To expect expertise in
               | technical issues (better than typical Hacker News
               | discussion) is probably expecting too much from that
               | group of journalists. But lets not pretend that the
               | article under discussion was useful to any of us here.
               | 
               | People coming forward about a successful foreign state
               | sponsored attack on AWS and Apple server infra is a
               | pretty big story for HN, even if it doesn't have all the
               | details you'd like.
        
               | dragontamer wrote:
               | https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-supermicro/
               | 
               | Bloomberg's followup article (and probably the original
               | article) doesn't seem to discuss BMCs at all.
               | 
               | I'm not saying that I invented the line of argument. I'm
               | saying that Hacker News, the community, brought up BMCs.
               | Its not a talking point of the Bloomberg article at all.
               | 
               | The fact remains: we're already in a fully tangential
               | point compared to Bloomberg's "facts" (of which there are
               | very few. Its largely just allegations and FUD).
               | 
               | --------
               | 
               | The most frustrating thing is that Bloomberg very well
               | could be correct. But the articles they wrote are
               | absolute crap on this subject.
               | 
               | > People coming forward about a successful foreign state
               | sponsored attack on AWS and Apple server infra is a
               | pretty big story for HN, even if it doesn't have all the
               | details you'd like.
               | 
               | Without the details of how it happened or the mechanism,
               | then it doesn't matter.
               | 
               | We exist in a zero-day world: there are attacks I will
               | never understand in my lifetime, happening today. Welcome
               | to modern computer security.
               | 
               | What's important is understanding as many of these
               | attacks as possible, so that we can build the proper
               | security mechanisms and policies to defend ourselves
               | correctly. Without an action plan, the news is basically
               | null and void. It doesn't matter if China hacks us per
               | se, it could be Russia or Iran tomorrow. There's always
               | state actors trying to do things.
        
           | monocasa wrote:
           | No, 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.
        
       | kgc wrote:
       | Where "flying" actually just means falling slowly.
        
       | zokier wrote:
       | Before 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
        
         | zokier wrote:
         | Looking at the supplementary material, the "IoT macroflier" is
         | pretty close to 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.
        
         | isoprophlex wrote:
         | Amazing! Your comment renders a couple of  train emoji on my
         | device!
         | 
         | Edit: screenshot https://ibb.co/sKw7tqt
         | 
         | I thought posting emoji wasnt possible on hn?! This one seems
         | acceptable:
        
           | zokier wrote:
           | Fun. Apparently HN does not filter private area unicode, and
           | nature.com reader for some reason includes those in
           | copypaste...
        
             | isoprophlex wrote:
             | If I search for that train in the emoji keyboard on my
             | phone and post that, it doesn't stick... weird.
        
       | ghuin wrote:
       | This is not news - some vaccines are known to contain these.
        
       | mfer wrote:
       | Side 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.
        
       | rolph wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | cryptoz wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | wila wrote:
         | How about breathing one in?
        
         | Filligree wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | isoprophlex wrote:
           | Doesn't lithium have antidepressant properties..? It's okay
           | citizen, don't fret, breathe some more surveillance dust!
        
             | danellis wrote:
             | Lithium _carbonate_.
        
       | carapace wrote:
       | 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 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
        
         | brandonmenc wrote:
         | 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
        
         | smackay wrote:
         | This is an idea that has been extensively explored since 1996,
         | 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.
        
         | rolph wrote:
         | these are larger than dust, they actually have a small
         | "propeller"
         | 
         | https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/09/23/microflier1-013b...
         | 
         | https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/09/23/microflier_sq-3e...
        
         | awinter-py wrote:
         | eat your heart out pham nuwen
        
           | orthoxerox wrote:
           | There are people who unironically like the Emergence out
           | there in the wild.
        
           | aaroninsf wrote:
           | 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.
           | :(
        
             | awinter-py wrote:
             | 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.
        
               | carapace wrote:
               | (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
        
               | floren wrote:
               | > 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 wrote:
               | no user serviceable parts within
        
               | addaon wrote:
               | "Rainbows End" (no apostrophe) -- different meaning.
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | Vernor 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.
        
       | titzer wrote:
       | > 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 wrote:
         | >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 wrote:
           | >> 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.
        
       | tonmoy wrote:
       | > "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 wrote:
         | To the contrary, erratic seed dispersal would be an advantage.
        
       | theothermatt wrote:
       | Devices 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#Localize...
        
         | romwell wrote:
         | My first thought was about _A Deepness in the Sky_.
         | 
         | Like, the implications of these things are fascinating and
         | scary.
        
       | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
       | There 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.
        
       | mpva wrote:
       | Great, thats all I need to breathe in every day
        
       | danellis wrote:
       | Flying Microchips Size of a Sand GRAIN Could be Used by Citizens
       | to Keep Authorities In Check
        
       | Borrible wrote:
       | Could?
       | 
       | Hitachis RFID-'Powder' was developed almost twenty years ago.
       | 
       | https://thefutureofthings.com/3221-hitachi-develops-worlds-s...
        
       | dudeinjapan wrote:
       | I for one welcome our new nanobot overlords.
        
       | withinboredom wrote:
       | Reminds me of the "snarks" in Off Armageddon Reef.
        
       | excalibur wrote:
       | I bet these feel really great when they get in your lungs
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-09-23 23:01 UTC)