Boffins: Behold the SILICON CHEAPNESS of our tiny, radio-signal-munching IoT sensor Electronics boffins at Stanford University are putting their mark on the Internet of Things by way of a tiny radio-plus-computer that uses scavenged radio signals for its power. Instead of shrinking discrete components and patching them together, the Stanford team set out to create a single silicon component that integrates …
The electronic toll pass stuck to my car's windshield contains no battery. It is powered up by the high power, cancer-scare microwave beam aimed down into the car (towards my genitalia) as I drive through the toll at Mach 0.3.
It's no real challenge to power up electronics by remote RF power delivery. Crazy old Nik Tesla was working on this exact topic more than one hundred years ago. The high power RF didn't affect his mind in the slightest.
The magnitude of the accomplishment in inversely dependent on the field strength.
The RFID tag in your car's toll pass is not only a tad larger, but works via NFC.
These devices, while getting power via a radio signal, and can transmit via radio signal... albeit a short distance, doesn't require a large NFC field around the device.
Want to get paranoid... put these in to clothing. (shoes, jackets, whatever....) You walk around... they will know who you are, and will be able to track you without you knowing it.
Security is relative.
Think of this as a good way to be an intelligent bug.
It could lie 'dormant'... meaning it doesn't emit a signal ... unless it receives a correct encoded message, then it will respond.
So you could scan your clothing all day long, but unless while you're scanning, the chip happens to get the right hash tag... you'll never see a peep from it.
Oh whoop-de-doo! Bob Shaw's prediction comes one step closer.
Here we have a completely inert device, that is indetectably small and cheap enough to produce by the billion. Let's just wait for a version with a MEMS microphone (I suppose a camera is too much to ask for?) and you have the perfect bug. Better yet, it can be remain in its inert state for years, until needed.
It can be spread around like fairy dust, it won't transmit until it's illuminated by an RF feed and even if your bug-hunter discovers one - or ten - or a thousand in a room, it's a fair bet there will be many more not found. Even if "they" get them all, a couple of minutes will see a whole new batch introduced through the air-conditioning system. Or accidentally carried in on the clothes of people entering the room.
If that becomes a problem, then there are solutions. Using a portable RF source, pulsing output, integrated with a wideband receiver with a correlation system. Walk around illuminating various hiding spots, home in on one such bug using this. Put the device over the hiding spot and pull The Trigger of Death to impart a huge EM pulse. Check to make sure it's dead. Move to the next one.
next we will be fined for carrying a lightbulb home and not plugging it into a socket fast enough or they attach to laptops fridges hoovers and work out its been reliable for 366 days then the item its attached to breaks and a salesman is at your door with a £50.00 fix or a £300 pounds replacement.
now my ideas are starting to sound orwellian in the 2014`s
Queng Ho Localizers, here we come.
I first read Vernor Vinge's "A deepness in the sky" shortly after it was published, and this was the plot element I found hardest to believe in. And now, it's looking not just plausible, but achievable in the next decade or two.
Which should scare us. In the book, ubiquitous surveillance was described as the fastest way to kill a civilisation, and that's something which I found was not the least bit hard to believe in.
(Book strongly recommended to anyone who hasn't yet read it.)
Sounds like the localizers proposed in A Deepness in the Sky - one of Vernor Vinge's best novels.
And while you're at it don't forget the 'sequel' A Fire Upon the Deep. Possibly his best novel (IMO). Both novels do a great job of conveying the sheer size of the galaxy. The final 'chapter' of A Fire.. is haunting.
I'll also recommend the novel Outcasts of Heaven Belt written by his ex-wife. That's a lot shorter and less weighty tome but it does a good job of conveying what life is like in a fallen (or falling at least) advanced civilisation.
Related, yet unrelated, going to Stanford's link they put in the article prompts my AV to show me a "infection blocked" message.
Details tell me its a png image on that site that is the culprit.
Anyone else got this, or is it a false positive ?
Using Avast.
With all the security issue is everything the past few years, and the fact that I don't care to be surveiled all the time these things are a nightmare that will only get worse. I'm sure some good will come of them, and there's no doubt they were inevitable, but that doesn't mean I have to like them.
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