• Jocker@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    This is a loser’s game US is playing. Historically it used to innovate above the rest, now “we ban them, because their tech better”

    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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      5 months ago

      Oh no! The USA will fall behind in terms of expensive hobbies unless it can make their own plastic toys for lonely adults! /s

      • JayleneSlide@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        This “lonely adult” uses drones for aerial mapping and survey. This Summer’s huge project is a workflow I developed to map the extent of PacNW bull kelp forests in order to provide year-over-year health metrics. Using sUAS for this is way more automated, economical, repeatable, and granular than using airplanes and satellites, therefore within reach of those communities monitoring kelp health.

        DJI hits the sweet spot of capabilities, compatibility, and cost. Skydio (go USA!) has abandoned the consumer/enthusiast market that built their business. And even before they turned their back on the consumer market, Skydio couldn’t come close to DJI’s hardware. Additionally, Skydio, in true capitalist fashion, locked capabilities away behind software licenses, capabilities that are already built into the drone.

        It’s important for countries to have domestic drone manufacturing in the current conditions. But the USA’s actions here smack of protecting companies that just can’t hang.

          • JayleneSlide@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Oh, right! I forgot about all of the LIDAR-equipped planes in maritime communities! Those are way more economical to fly than any sUAS. /s in case that wasn’t obvious.

            In case you, or anyone else, were vaguely interested in learning:

            -kelp extent mapping needs to be done in repeatable fashion, specifically at low tide; we can put up an sUAS any time

            -the communities most in need of monitoring absolutely cannot afford to send planes up monthly

            -many of the kelp beds in the PacNW are in restricted airspace; it is much easier to get an FAA clearance to perform low-altitude surveys using sUAS

            -that restricted airspace I mentioned? Some of these kelp beds are on approach paths for the airspace. Even if a plane were the preferred choice for surveying, the planes are unable to fly in the pattern we need

            -(drifting a touch off your point of LIDAR-equipped planes) satellite imagery with the required resolution is prohibitively expensive

            -most construction projects wouldn’t use a plane for tasks such as volumetric or area analysis

            Consumer drones are quickly becoming the preferred, economical means for kelp health analysis, especially for communities that can’t afford planes or purchasing satellite imagery.

            • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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              5 months ago

              I am in fact not interested in the hobbies of people who defend companies like DJI, TikTok, Kapersky, etc.

      • Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Yea, there is absolutely no reason to have a good drone industry at all. In Ukraine for example they don’t use any drones. /s

  • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Again like the tiktok ban: Rather than passing real privacy laws we’re passing racism laws and pretending this helps privacy and security.

    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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      5 months ago

      The CCP might be all Chinese and the Chinese Populace might be +91% Han Chinese but that in no way makes laws which target a hostile foreign dictatorship equate to “racism”.

        • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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          5 months ago

          I can see how this might seem like a hexbear or ml thread from the pro-ccp comments on this post, lol.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        the Chinese Populace might be +91% Han Chinese

        I’ll never understand how a country with 1.4B people gets labeled “homogenous” by race counters, but a continent with with 800M, like Europe, is able to recognize dozens of cultures and subcultures.

        Would you even guess that China has over 300 living languages inside its borders?

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          You are looking at it from the perspective of a westerner post springtime of nations. As I understand it a lot of Chinese people see it more like the Romans, wherein they may be different but they are all Chinese. Also China has been committing cultural genocide and assimilation against groups within their borders for millenia, this has resulted in what can best be described as a very broad cultural and ethnic identity.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            So you think the Chinese are just naturally genocidal? And that’s why the Yao and Zhuang and Bai and Mongolian people don’t count as distinct ethnic groups?

            Meanwhile, the Welsh, the English, the Irish, and the Scottish do count because… the English have been historically so peaceful and egalitarian?

        • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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          5 months ago

          I assume most race counters on a global would just consider Western European Descent as one, if they even differentiate between Caucasians at all, but if you go to Europe then you meet people with heritages from all over the world pretty regularly and if you go to China you mostly meet people from China whose family is Chinese going back many generations. Maybe it’s a cultural issue or maybe that’s just the result of their previous massive increase in population after industrialization and the legislative failures of the Mao regime meaning the naturally occurring ratio is skewed that far from the norm.

          I don’t know, and I don’t really care, tbh.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            if you go to China you mostly meet people from China whose family is Chinese

            Where as when you go to Europe…

            • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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              5 months ago

              You will meet people with heritages from all over the world. For example, the UK has local heritage demographic around 74%, and of combined total white demographic of around 81%. That’s a much different number than the Chinese 91%.

              • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                You can cross the straight in from France or take a thirty minute flight from Spain and be counted as “non-local”. Meanwhile, traveling from Shenyang to Shenzhen means nothing.

                The islanders of Hainan are no different than the mountain men of Inner Mongolia.

                • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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                  5 months ago

                  Lol you brought EU into the conversation but didn’t state the statistics for them. The large majority of Immigrants to an EU member state are classified as “Non-EU Nationals” meaning they come from outside of the EU. About 5.3% of all EU population are first generation Non-EU immigrants.

                  TBH I can’t even tell you what the race, ethnicity, and heritage stats are for the EU because they’ve got the worst demographics tracking imaginable.

        • retrospectology@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          European countries aren’t totalitarian states. This isn’t a question of culture, it’s an issue regarding the one and only state power that’s making decisions.

          This is the danger of being lulled into thinking China is a normal country. Yes, there are long histories in China and are (vanishing) diverse cultures in China but that’s irrelevant when talking about the actions of the state, which is all encompassing and overrules culture and diversity every time.

          It’s the state that owns and controls these companies, it’s the state that dictates their policy and usage, and since the state is fascist and actively seeking to undermine democracy across the global, it is wise to treat the products of that state as a threat.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            European countries aren’t totalitarian states.

            I know some Irish Republicans, Spanish Catalonians, German anti-Zionist political prisoners, and … waves hand at Poland, Hungary, and Russia

            Quite a few native Europeans who would tell you differently.

            This is the danger of being lulled into thinking China is a normal country

            I don’t think the folks on Lemmy are at any risk of that.

            It’s the state that owns and controls these companies

            Imagine thinking government should dictate the terms of business and not the other way around.

            • retrospectology@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              I know some Irish Republicans, Spanish Catalonians, German anti-Zionist political prisoners, and … waves hand at Poland, Hungary, and Russia

              Quite a few native Europeans who would tell you differently.

              Europe has some authoritarian governments, not totalitarian dictatorships that approach anywhere near the all-encompassing control of the CCP. Hungary maybe I guess, which isn’t a country I’d recommend taking tech from either.

              Ireland is not comparable to China though, that’s an extreme reach. We’re not talking about right-wing groups seeking power within democracies, we’re talking about uni-party state control.

              I don’t think the folks on Lemmy are at any risk of that.

              Lemmy definitely has a tankie infestation already. I got banned from lemmy.ml for discussing Tiananmen and Hong Kong. Pointing out that the Great Leap Forward resulted in millions of deaths was labeled “cia misinformation” by the mods. It’s a throughly compromised instance.

              Lemmy users are not immune to tankie and Rusdian trolls, and thinking that they are is actually a weakness that gets exploited by those bad actors.

              Imagine thinking government should dictate the terms of business and not the other way around.

              Normal regulatory duties of a government are a far cry from the state having total ownership and control of business and using that control as part of a coercive campaign to suppress human rights, dissent and individual freedoms.

              Whatever authoritarianism is festering in other countries, China is still on an entirely different level, it’s not really a question.

              • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Europe has some authoritarian governments, not totalitarian dictatorships

                Totalitarianism is always when the other guy does it. Never question the modem day police/surveillance state at home. Certainly don’t ask about our colonies abroad, or their paramilitary death squads and torture prisons financed with domestic capital.

                Lemmy definitely has a tankie infestation

                It’s got an anti-war infestation that’s regularly accused of being tankies for failing to clap for the correct set of tanks.

                Normal regulatory duties of a government are a far cry from the state having total ownership and control of business

                Calmly explaining this to my US Postal Service and my Tennessee Valley Authority

                • retrospectology@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  Totalitarianism is always when the other guy does it

                  No…totalitarianism is an actual distinct system of governance when the state controls every aspect of daily life, communication and economic activity. It’s an actual word with meaning.

                  It’s got an anti-war infestation that’s regularly accused of being tankies for failing to clap for the correct set of tanks.

                  Ok, I’m not sure if we’re talking through a translator app or something, but I didn’t get banned from lemmy.ml for being “pro-war” I got banned for mentioning a historical fact about the Great Leap Forward and acknowledging other atrocities like the genocide occurring in Xinjiang.

                  If someone is anti-war they would be against those types of things as well. Tankies instead deny that those events occurred/are occurring, that’s why they’re so easy to spot and how people know they’re on Lemmy – they literally can’t condemn the CCP for any of the things they purport to be against when it comes to other countries, since it’s counter-productive to their true goals to criticize the CCP.

                  By contrast an honestly anti-war progressive type of person would be just as clear-eyed about their own government as they are the CCP. That’s being anti-war, you can’t be selective or try to ignore degrees of difference just because it’s politically uncomfortable, that’s just being a mouth-piece for a specific flavor of authoritarianism.

                  Calmly explaining this to my US Postal Service and my Tennessee Valley Authority

                  Again, running public services is not the same as the state owning and controlling all businness and industry. If the Post Office was used to control speech, that would be totalitarian use of a public service.

                  I think you’re just being obtuse at this point. You might be down for totalitarianism and the abolishment of individual freedoms, most people are not. Since, you know, having no rights kind of suck ass.

  • m-p{3}@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    Would be nice if there were some actual alternatives about the same price range and not using proprietary softwares…

    • dinckel@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Unfortunately anything open will cost extra, just because of the nature of it. Not to mention the colossal scale of how much product DJI ship, to cut costs somewhere

      • BombOmOm@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        The reduction of monitoring is worth it. DJI calls home with your location and even provides tools for police to view the location of drones and drone operators in real time.

        • sunzu@kbin.run
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          5 months ago

          I am confused then what is Congress’ problem here?

          Aint this where they are taking us anyway? Or they are worried commie police also getting the same info?

      • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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        5 months ago

        Copyright and Trademark symbols basically mean the same thing, the R symbol means Registered Trademark and is much more enforced.

  • AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    This is honestly ridiculous. The security concerns are unwarranted. Any surveillance that these drones could accomplish if hacked can just be bought off of any GIS website.

    “But military bases” go fly a drone by one and see what happens. This already isn’t a surveillance concern.

    This is going to set the hobbyist and professional drone market back a decade.

    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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      5 months ago

      Idk if you vastly overestimate the available data on GIS or underestimate the data which can be obtained by drones.

      Also, DJI has 70% of the global drone market share, so banning this company might actually help innovation.

      • dan@upvote.au
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        5 months ago

        DJI has 70% of the global drone market share, so banning this company might actually help innovation.

        That’s… Not how innovation works. Why would other companies want or need to innovate if their main competitor disappears? If anything, the opposite will happen - they won’t have to try as hard to make a great product, since they no longer need to be better than the market leader.

        • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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          5 months ago

          Lmao you think destroying a global monopoly will decrease competition?

          You heard it here, folks, drone production is over forever. Nobody will ever make drones again without the Chinese and their superior cheap plastic and tiny electric motors. It’s all joever. /s

          • dan@upvote.au
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            5 months ago

            Show us one example where shutting down a company increased competition among the remaining companies. That’s just not something that happens.

            Smaller companies compete by building products that are better than the current market leaders. If the market leader disappears, they no longer have that incentive, as people are going to buy their products even if they don’t improve them in any way, since the customers don’t have a choice.

            I’m not saying there won’t be drones any more. I’m saying that they won’t be competitive with DJI in terms of quality or value of money because they don’t need to be.

            • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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              5 months ago

              Show me one example of shutting down a company who held a monopoly? Generally they just get broken up into smaller companies which directly increases competition but that is in no way analogous to our current situation.

              We know that in every single example so far that Monopoly and Competition inversely correlate by definitions.

              • dan@upvote.au
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                5 months ago

                We know that in every single example so far that Monopoly and Competition inversely correlate by definitions

                A direct (not inverse) correlation between them happens all the time in tech. Smaller companies get sick of the market leader or monopoly for some reason, produce a better product, and people switch over.

                For example, Internet Explorer had a web browser monopoly. Around 98% of web users used it. It lost that monopoly not because it was shut down, but because other, better browsers were released and people organically switched over. Increasing the competition reduced its monopoly.

                The same could be said about Teamspeak users moving to Discord. Teamspeak had a monopoly on real-time gamer chat, but people moved to Discord because it was better.

                • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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                  5 months ago

                  So you’re saying it stopped being a monopoly when competition was created, and you somehow construe that as “monopoly equals competition” ??