1998

In 1998, Sony released a camcorder with a night mode. But people quickly realized that if you turned on the night mode during the day and covered the lens with a dark piece of glass, the camera literally became an X-ray. It could see right through thin clothing and dark plastics. Sony panicked and had to cancel all shipments entirely. They had to physically alter the new batch of cameras in the factory to stop you from using the night mode in daylight. But the originals are still out in the wild. Would you trade yours in? Or do you think you just leave it as is? I just leave it as is. I use that's not the main thing I bought it for. Here's what actually happens. There's a spectrum of light that's visible to the camera but invisible to humans. Infrared. For a time, they put a tiny physical filter over the sensor to block it out. But Sony's physically detached the filter out of the way. So the camera was able to see infrared. And the crazy thing about infrared light is that it passes through thin clothing and dark plastics. You would think the industry learned from this right? They didn't. In 2021, OnePlus dropped the 8 Pro. They wanted a dedicated color camera, so they removed the infrared sensor. So if you pointed the phone at an Apple TV box or a remote, you could look right through the plastic and see what was inside. And this is still happening today. Nothing dropped the phone 2a, and it has the same exact glitch. There's a second camera on the top that is only used for depth sensing, so you cannot take pictures with it natively. But reviewers found a third-party app that lets you access that camera. It's the same exact story over and over again. Wasn't easily available. For more interesting stories, follow.