The US is the largest market for firearms, so the NRA can use the threat of boycotting a manufacturer within the states to prevent the technology gaining traction elsewhere.
To profit, they would first have to sell the goods. Who is actually in the market for a smart gun? Consumers aren't, surely. There is virtually no upside to your gun tracking you, at your own expense of buying a more complex piece of tech to boot. So that leaves something like (apparently) New Jersey where the government would compel purchases of smart guns because they were interested in the tracking. But eg. China simply don't allow citizens to purchase guns period. There may be some application to applying it to state-owned firearms to track military and police usage, but deploying that at Chinese scale would be an extremely expensive endeavour for what appears to be a solution in search of a problem. Not to mention the biometric lock concept, if implemented, is introducing an entire new axis of unreliability to a life-or-death tool.
Gun owners in the US probably wouldn't want their gun to be used against them in a home invasion, or by their child at a school. Seems like that could be a large-ish market. Especially if you can lobby regulators in favor of making it a requirement for all or some people.
Most of the world doesn’t need that whole setup because:
- Our cultural baseline around firearms is completely different. Countries like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic have plenty of guns at home - and historically, a lot of them were actual assault rifles, not “looks-spicy” semiautos.
- We treat guns like weapons. They live in safes, not nightstands, and kids get taught safety early, the same way you’d teach them not to put a fork in a power supply.
The Swiss do have a lot of guns at home. However, you cannot carry (or even transport guns that are not discharged). Just take them at a shooting range - a popular pastime for Swiss people.
Can someone explain how communication can take place using only magnetic fields? I thought that communication requires electro magnetic waves which require an oscillating electro magnetic field.
A changing magnetic field will always induce an electrical field and vice-versa. Even just moving a magnet with your hand will generate an electrical field. Near-field effects of an antenna still involve this interaction.
The key to the resistance of very long wavelengths of EM radiation (or equivalently, very slowly varying electric/magnetic fields) to attenuation when traveling through a metal is the nature of the way metals expel electric fields (they don’t generally block magnetic fields). When you apply a static electric field to a thin conductor, electrons will be pulled away from one side and toward the other such that the field inside is zero. However this migration of charges will actually result in the electric field on the far side of the metal being nearly the same as the field on the side closer to the source!
If the wavelength of some EM radiation is much longer than a metal obstacle is thick, the fact that the electric field is excluded from the interior of the metal won’t matter much. Even if the metal wasn’t there, the electric field strength wouldn’t vary much over that distance, and on the other side of the metal the induced charges will restore the roughly “correct” field. Since the magnetic component won’t vary much over that distance either, the fact that there’s no varying electric field inside the conductor to reinforce the magnetic field won’t significantly attenuate it.
If you’re familiar with Faraday cages, this will sound all wrong. Isn’t it long wavelengths they can block, and short wavelengths they can’t? This true when dealing with EM radiation in the “normal” radio bands and higher, but it turns out their ability to attenuate radiation falls off in the other direction too (once wavelengths get extremely long). When dealing with EM properties of materials, there are a huge number of different effects that apply in different circumstances, and it’s easy to forget one and confuse yourself.
I went into a slight hunt for more knowledge after reading this, and long story short you need to search NFMI (near field magnetic induction)[1]. As far as I can see from my limited reading the main use case of the tech is nfc (near field comm) and true wireless earbuds.
> I have at least a few readers for which the sound of a man's voice saying "government cell phone detected" will elicit a palpable reaction.
Can this be recreated as an audio clip for jumpscaring former govt employees?
Why not just rip the audio file off? Would make for a funny DC request
Edit: On second thought this could be an OPSEC problem. Sorry but I don’t know if anyone can help you :(
I bet the tts voice is public and something made by AT&T in the 80s or 90s.
Why can't the manufacturers market "smart guns" outside the US? Surely, the NRA's grip isn't world-spanning.
The US is the largest market for firearms, so the NRA can use the threat of boycotting a manufacturer within the states to prevent the technology gaining traction elsewhere.
Aren't there manufacturers that only really target local markets that could profit from this technology, e.g. in China, ex-USSR or South America?
To profit, they would first have to sell the goods. Who is actually in the market for a smart gun? Consumers aren't, surely. There is virtually no upside to your gun tracking you, at your own expense of buying a more complex piece of tech to boot. So that leaves something like (apparently) New Jersey where the government would compel purchases of smart guns because they were interested in the tracking. But eg. China simply don't allow citizens to purchase guns period. There may be some application to applying it to state-owned firearms to track military and police usage, but deploying that at Chinese scale would be an extremely expensive endeavour for what appears to be a solution in search of a problem. Not to mention the biometric lock concept, if implemented, is introducing an entire new axis of unreliability to a life-or-death tool.
Gun owners in the US probably wouldn't want their gun to be used against them in a home invasion, or by their child at a school. Seems like that could be a large-ish market. Especially if you can lobby regulators in favor of making it a requirement for all or some people.
I could not locate credible evidence of a major firearm manufacturer that completely refrains from selling into the U.S. civilian market. (ChatGPT)
Glock, Koch, Taurus, even Czech Zbrojovka all sell to US.
Kalashnikov can’t atm, but also probably doesn’t share the safety concern.
I see at least two problems with smart guns though:
1. Temper resistance is not temper impossibility 2. If a tag allows tracking, bad actors might track good actors?
There are barely any civilian gun markets outside the US. US is really really unique in their relationship to guns.
Because it’s just a bad idea.
Most of the world doesn’t need that whole setup because:
- Our cultural baseline around firearms is completely different. Countries like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic have plenty of guns at home - and historically, a lot of them were actual assault rifles, not “looks-spicy” semiautos.
- We treat guns like weapons. They live in safes, not nightstands, and kids get taught safety early, the same way you’d teach them not to put a fork in a power supply.
The Swiss do have a lot of guns at home. However, you cannot carry (or even transport guns that are not discharged). Just take them at a shooting range - a popular pastime for Swiss people.
I would imagine that any manufacturer being seen doing so, would face US consumer boycotts.
smart guns is future dystopian
> the firearms lobby is very influential on police departments, as are police unions which generally oppose technical accountability measures
A lot of what’s wrong in surprisingly few words
Any idea where the name came from?
Can someone explain how communication can take place using only magnetic fields? I thought that communication requires electro magnetic waves which require an oscillating electro magnetic field.
A changing magnetic field will always induce an electrical field and vice-versa. Even just moving a magnet with your hand will generate an electrical field. Near-field effects of an antenna still involve this interaction.
The key to the resistance of very long wavelengths of EM radiation (or equivalently, very slowly varying electric/magnetic fields) to attenuation when traveling through a metal is the nature of the way metals expel electric fields (they don’t generally block magnetic fields). When you apply a static electric field to a thin conductor, electrons will be pulled away from one side and toward the other such that the field inside is zero. However this migration of charges will actually result in the electric field on the far side of the metal being nearly the same as the field on the side closer to the source!
If the wavelength of some EM radiation is much longer than a metal obstacle is thick, the fact that the electric field is excluded from the interior of the metal won’t matter much. Even if the metal wasn’t there, the electric field strength wouldn’t vary much over that distance, and on the other side of the metal the induced charges will restore the roughly “correct” field. Since the magnetic component won’t vary much over that distance either, the fact that there’s no varying electric field inside the conductor to reinforce the magnetic field won’t significantly attenuate it.
If you’re familiar with Faraday cages, this will sound all wrong. Isn’t it long wavelengths they can block, and short wavelengths they can’t? This true when dealing with EM radiation in the “normal” radio bands and higher, but it turns out their ability to attenuate radiation falls off in the other direction too (once wavelengths get extremely long). When dealing with EM properties of materials, there are a huge number of different effects that apply in different circumstances, and it’s easy to forget one and confuse yourself.
I went into a slight hunt for more knowledge after reading this, and long story short you need to search NFMI (near field magnetic induction)[1]. As far as I can see from my limited reading the main use case of the tech is nfc (near field comm) and true wireless earbuds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-field_magnetic_induction_...
Thanks, this will be an interesting read.