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DARPA's 1.8 gigapixel camera

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Haha, they said 1,000,000 TB of storage is the equivalent to 5000 hours of HD footage. What video format are they referring to that takes up that kind of space 😵. Even bluray discs only use around 40Mb/s.

I hate when documentaries pull comparisons like this out of their ass.
 
Sure storing all that data is feasible under current technology. But no one asks how much money its costs or what we gain as taxpayers. Especially when drone cameras can't see what inside a building, or in terms of of military psychobabble a compound. Because ordinary people live in houses and terrorists only live in compounds.

Which means, if some idiot on flawed drone technology intel blows up some compound, and instead mainly kill a bunch of innocent woman and children instead, they deserved it because they lived in a compound and are therefore fair game.

As we wonder why Nato wins second prize in a beauty contest with the Taliban.

Are we winning yet? Or will the American taxpayer finally say the cost far outweighs the benefits.
 
Wyndru said:
Haha, they said 1,000,000 TB of storage is the equivalent to 5000 hours of HD footage. What video format are they referring to that takes up that kind of space 😵. Even bluray discs only use around 40Mb/s.

I hate when documentaries pull comparisons like this out of their ass.
Click to expand...
Probably raw video.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Yep same. I read somewhere not too long ago this was the goal too, they want to build drones to spy on people. This is probably it. These aren't just for military.

While the technology is amazing and all, this is a complete abuse of technology. Yet another instance of the government wanting more control of what people do.
Click to expand...

Red Squirrel said:
Anything unmanned for the purpose of evil.

Rise, drone overlords! The war has begun.

As for the storage, didn't some agency just build a huge data center? Was it the NSA? Probably for this.
Click to expand...


Couple things here:

first, DARPA projects like this are rarely under the order of any government agency. Rather, they are projected proposed, from civilian/private corporations, and ARPA/DARPA approves a certain allocation of funding and resources.
It looks like the company working on this project is BAE Systems, Inc.
Here's the worst part: BAE Systems, Inc is a subsidiary of BAE Systems plc - a British multinational corporation.

The brits are coming to take us back! One goverment-funded research project at a time, but they'll do it alright! They want our.... err, debt! Yeah! :biggrin:

But seriously - most of the best advances conceived of inside the DARPA research wheel are entirely dreamed up by corporate minded/profit-driven assholes, who LOVE to sell the government (and military) some awesome new technology and equipment, and do so at a much higher profit rate than they'll ever achieve on the civilian market. The prices the government pays the contractors for some equipment is just asinine (or, the prices the contractors dream up is asinine, the fact that the government doesn't even look at the bill is beyond words of expression).



The other thing:

NSA's data center isn't to house this kind of content. It's to act as a kind of cache as it grabs pretty much everything of a personal nature that it can snag on the internet. Human eyes (supposedly) will rarely see most content, as they'll (supposedly) only scan anything that trips the sensors.
If it's grabbing literally everything, I'm not sure, but at the least it'll be grabbing/tracking foreign correspondence, any communications from anyone who has otherwise landed on a "track list" due to previous "suspect" activity, and any kind of communication that seems suspect.

I, uh, suspect, that all communication data will have to flow through those servers before those servers can even recognize if it fits the criteria of "suspicious data"... but I'm not really sure how it's all supposed to work.
 
Wyndru said:
Haha, they said 1,000,000 TB of storage is the equivalent to 5000 hours of HD footage. What video format are they referring to that takes up that kind of space 😵. Even bluray discs only use around 40Mb/s.

I hate when documentaries pull comparisons like this out of their ass.
Click to expand...

Uncompressed, I have no idea how much space uncompressed HD video takes. But I know when I use to work with uncompressed 480p video years back 10 seconds of it was something like a gig.
 
lxskllr said:
I'm interested in seeing anti drone tech from hobbyists. I fully support shooting those fuckers out of the sky, and that needs to happen. Something fast with a mounted .22 would probably do it.
Click to expand...

That wold be a tall task to track, intercept and aim well enough to shoot one down, if you ever got caught attempting something like this the''ll throw you in a room and throw away the room, goodbye life, is it worth it??.
 
QueBert said:
Uncompressed, I have no idea how much space uncompressed HD video takes. But I know when I use to work with uncompressed 480p video years back 10 seconds of it was something like a gig.
Click to expand...

Why would they not compress it? The compression technologies these days are amazing and extremely efficient. Even standard security camera systems use compression. If they are sending it back uncompressed, they are doing it wrong (and wasting a shit-ton of bandwidth transferring it back).
 
I'm sure if the have the technology to make this happen, they have a way to store the memory in something that normal society has never heard of.
 
Lifted said:
The high end would be 20GB/hour x 368 sensors x 24 hours = 176TB/day (44 4TB HDD's plus overhead and parity).
Click to expand...

Bits

1,800,000,000 pixels

32, 24, 16, 8 bits per pixel

32, 24, 16, 8 frames per second

86,400 seconds per day

equals

9.95 x 10^15 to 1.59 x 10^17 bits per day

It appears his claims are true.

Fuck his storage, I want his bandwidth.
 
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