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breck | on: Dynamicland 2024
> with a unique set of fiducials along the edges

I suspect each piece of paper, if examined with a good enough camera, has a unique fingerprint, like a snowflake, and perhaps this could be used in the future for an "Isomer Addressed Filesystem". In other words, all pieces of paper ship with a UUID already, woven into their atoms.

shoxidizer | parent
I would suggest instead convincing every printer manufacturer to embed in every printer a routine that encodes a unique identifier on every print and then reading that using more typical cameras. The hard part has already been done.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots

jf | root | parent | next
I'm pretty sure that I mentioned the printer tracking dots to the researchers at the lab and certainly mentioned DataGlyphs. So they were aware of alternatives. The trick is to get a workable system with cameras that have the resolution to pick out those details from a dozen feet away, as well as a software stack that can recognize them at ~60fps.

The goal has always been to move away from the dots, you can see this in the progress report: https://dynamicland.org/2019/Progress_report/

That said, and this is purely my opinion, the system works well enough as it is, and there is so much fun stuff to build on top of what works, that it's hard to prioritize a better object recognition system over the myriad of other interesting things to be done.

shoxidizer | root | parent
I imagine it would very difficult to read these dots from a distance and dynamically. I just mention it because most printed documents already have indentifiers printed on them that don't require seeing individual fibers.
jf | root | parent
Ah, noted! With that in mind, did you know that those printer dots are what the team that won the 2011 DARPA Shredder Challenge used to win?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Shredder_Challenge_2011

Fun fact: Otavio Good, who led the winning team, learned about the printer dots on this very site. As I recall, he said that the dots were like a map that let them reconstruct the shredded documents.

Jerrrrrrry | root | parent | next
I would had thought, even then, that this was not only commonly known, but not the sole only annulment/rule among a generally "rules-free" competition, having been rather obvious, especially to the audience these competitions attract.

Thank you for reminding me, and others, how immediate and obvious success can be.

cma | root | parent
Is there a better source that talks about it? Didn't see it mentioned on that page.
jf | root | parent
I'm not sure if there's a source online as I learned about it from Otavio directly. The slightly longer story, as I recall it, is that their team basically built a "game" to help humans unshred documents, and was using that approach until Otavio happened to read about the printer dots on HN. He updated his code to take those into account and was astonished at how helpful they were.
sedatk | root | parent
Oh, that’s why my HP inkjet refuses to print a black & white page when it’s low on yellow.
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