I have a very slight problem in that I went to grad school when professionals still used calculators, and real professionals used HP calculators. And so I still own, and use, a variety of HP scientific calculators. I can quit any time I want, I swear.
The HP-48 line (for instance) transferred files via an LED/photodiode pair. You'd point the calculators at each other and let them flash away until they were done. This seems to be that, but much better. Or at least much faster.
They were quite popular before Bluetooth (Bluetooth file transfers are actually a different physical layer for the same protocol called OBEX) and quite ironically interoperable across phone and PDA manufacturers, as far as I remember.
It’s extremely sad that we’ve gone from being able to send a photo or business card across manufacturers to needing (incredibly clever!) contortions like this, on vastly more powerful hardware that can literally talk to satellites and run local LLMs.
Keep it handy. One day you won't have a computer or phone available and you have a need to multiply two large numbers together ... your SO is depending on you ... the kids are agog and probably gurning in slow mo as the situation unfolds.
... you firmly grasp your slide rule (its plastic is comfortingly warm).
You take the logs of the two numbers with swift aplomb note them down with your trusty crayon on the SO's thigh (first available place to scribe) and without wavering, you add them together.
Armed with the crucial sum you deliver the answer to the multiplication with a casual flick and a careful read of the slide rule.
Yes, we have progressed somewhat. However, there is something rather satisfying using a slide rule. You do somehow feel the numbers within your hands. With a slide rule you can deal with far bigger numbers than you feel comfortable within your noddle (head). You can do that too with a calculator but you "feel and touch" the numbers with a slide rule.
What I wouldn't give for a mobile>mobile or desktop/laptop>mobile cross platform file transfer that only required camera permissions at 2mbit/sec or similar speeds.
All of the non-internet ios > android file transfer options I've seen are very clunky.
I thought about this technology for bitcoin offline wallet. So like you'll get any mobile phone, install some bitcoin app, put it to aircraft mode (or even destroy all wireless chips if you can do that). Or just laptop. Then you'd use it to generate wallet, sign transaction and then QR this transaction and receive it via another phone which is connected to the internet. So private key is never leaving offline device and all communication with the outside world is through human-eye controllable channel. Should be impossible to compromise using digital methods (assuming that wallet application is trustworthy).
Coldcard does this with a microSD card which seems more secure than broadcasting light. Using open source wallet like Sparrow and running own Bitcoin node with Electrum server further improves security and privacy.
Wait why do the QR codes actually look like the video frames? I interpreted this as "convert the binary of an arbitrary file into a series of QR codes". Is that just a coincidence?
They overlayed the edges of the video frames on the QR codes, and then the built in error correction compensates for the missing data. It's explained in the paper.
I have a very slight problem in that I went to grad school when professionals still used calculators, and real professionals used HP calculators. And so I still own, and use, a variety of HP scientific calculators. I can quit any time I want, I swear.
The HP-48 line (for instance) transferred files via an LED/photodiode pair. You'd point the calculators at each other and let them flash away until they were done. This seems to be that, but much better. Or at least much faster.