A single-fibre computer enables textile networks and distributed inference
nature.com58 points by walterbell 2 months ago
58 points by walterbell 2 months ago
Upshot: you can get a 32 bit microcontroller into yarn now; this is a pretty ‘full stack’ proof of concept including wireless charging, sensors and pose / activity estimation done remotely via wireless sensor data from the chips.
I read a sci-fi story in the 90s or so that mentioned the measurement of flops/cubic meter of space in our solar system as a way of thinking about how smart the environment was, and this reminds me of that.
Sadly the history of embedded devices shows that, as smart as my sweater gets, it will 100% be rootable by even moderately motivated 15 year olds while it simultaneously makes it impossible for me to use outside of a vendor controlled cloud walled garden.
Still. This is really cool.
> I read a sci-fi story in the 90s or so that mentioned the measurement of flops/cubic meter of space in our solar system as a way of thinking about how smart the environment was
You may be thinking of Accelerando, distributed as a free ebook under Creative Commons by the author [1].
1. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/acceler...
Goodness what a nightmare. I'll have to start microwaving my clothes
The day to day privacy intrusion of corporations are out of control and arguably a lot more exigent danger than authoritarianism.
And hoo boy am I concerned about AI processed ubiquitous monitoring super powering authoritarianism.
This is ridiculously cool hardware! Are there images somewhere?
There are in a previous paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23628-5