Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

dronedj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 742 posts

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#321

Post by [deleted] »

kuschku wrote: post #310
nostrademons wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California's tech industry works because there is a long-established tradition of lawbreaking in California. We pass all these regulations, and then ignore them. Sometimes the more enlightened legislators put in explicit carve-outs for businesses of less than 50 employees or a $B in revenue, so that startups don't have to actually break the law, they can just ignore it. But they're going to ignore it anyway, so the c…

Sure, but that's not any different in EU. Lobbyism exists here, too. But the social differences of the two markets remain.

[deleted]

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#322

Post by throwaway_j12 »

questhimay wrote: post #259
throwaway_j12 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this seem at odds with the facts? China isn't militarily supporting Russia or Ukraine. Ukraine's drone army is built from cheap Chinese drones. China is neutral. The argument that it hasn't sanctioned Russia means it is a party to the war on Russia's side is an argument of the form "if you aren't with us, you are against us." But then, you'd think the US would levy the same kind of vitriol at e.g. India. Chin…

China is not neutral China supporting Russia in massive military expansion, US says. Beijing helping with drone production, space-based capabilities and ballistic missile production https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/12/china-supporti... China is lead by a dictator Biden calls Xi a dictator https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-calls-xi-dictator-after-... Germany's foreign minister called Xi Jinping a “dictator…

The Guardian piece is one of many quoting US officials who were trying at the time to argue that China was involved in the conflict. The purpose of the timing of these arguments was to put pressure on German Chancellor Scholz before he made an economic interrelations trip to China (https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-en/news/scholz-trip-to-c...). Notably that failed to gain the American officials what they wanted, as Europe continues to engage economically with China. That time and the time for that misinformation argument has since passed. We're on to other "assessments".

"Biden calls so-and-so a mean thing" is not evidence of mean thing. Using it as evidence is a logical fallacy ("argumentum ab auctoritate"). To help you understand why the US president said this, leaders call each other mean things (and even sometimes vaguely call of other's assassinations) as provocations, and in order to shape public opinion (yours).

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#323

Post by FpUser »

hooverd wrote: post #54
gwbas1c wrote: post #11

What is DJI, why is it being banned, and why should the general public care about this? (In all seriousness, nothing I've read about "DJI" even explains the basics of the issue.)

The consumer market has had it too good for too long.

Yeah, they have to suffer and pay through the nose. That'll teach them right

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#324

Post by segasaturn »

chme wrote: post #308
henvic wrote: post #28

DJI is, by far, the best drone equipment brand for photography, industrial usage, etc. It's disheartening to witness the US embracing protectionism for high-tech. If the United States does this, it might as well join the European Union's decadence in killing tech startups by stifling the competitiveness of their market...

Most hardware has no reason to require direct internet access or an account with the manufacturer to work. If some device requires internet access, then it cannot be trusted to not transmit personal data, therefore it should be possible to replace the software on that device, so that something that is trusted by the consumer can be installed. While DJI here might create good hardware, their internet and account requi…

While I agree with you, I doubt banning Chinese tech will remedy this problem. My experience is that American brands are much, much more aggressive about making you connect to the internet, install our apps, create an account, subscribe to our newsletter etc.

Look at the difference between iRobot and Chinese robot vacuums on Amazon - the difference is night and day.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#325

Post by kube-system »

squarefoot wrote: post #59
Sparkle-san wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DJI arguably makes the best consumer camera drones on the market. Why ban them? Because they're Chinese probably. https://www.dji.com/camera-drones

Probably yes. The industry can fight with quality or price against Chinese bad products and non Chinese good products, but products that are both Chinese and top notch quality are going to dominate the market because of comparatively lower costs. Now, that law can indeed have some basis, in theory, but tailoring it to a single brand won't achieve much as the Chinese industry can rebrand products at a cost and in time…

> they can't make a generic law against say suspicious code running on consumer devices that could be used to exfiltrate personal data, as it would potentially hit every connected device out there, including western branded ones. My impression is that they (the law makers) are almost facing the wall where they should admit that closed proprietary devices are generally unsafe and bad

The issue is even bigger than that. It doesn't matter what the device does now, nor does it matter whether it is open or proprietary.

When it comes to national security, ask yourself "what could happen in a time of war?" Some obvious answers are:

1. If it connects to foreign service providers, those services could be shut off or changed to be malicious

2. If the device uses parts/support/updates from foreign service providers, those could be discontinued, or changed to be malicious

3. If you need the product, but don't make them locally, they may no longer be available.

etc.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#326

Post by deepGem »

DJI's response (a bit dated)

https://dronedj.com/2024/03/02/dji-response-drone-ban-us/

The allegations are so subjective that they sound like some middle schooler complaining to their mom.

“DJI drones are collecting vast amounts of sensitive data – everything from high-resolution images of critical U.S. infrastructure to facial recognition technology and remote sensors that can measure an individual’s body temperature and heart rate.”

DJI's response Technically, DJI suggests using drones for body temperature checks is unfeasible.

https://www.thedronegirl.com/2020/05/06/dji-coronavirus-dron...

US politicians have totally lost their minds to even propose something like this.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#327

Post by danielspace23 »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #126
ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #63

US is spiralling down and I feel like I am in a Truman Show with egregious presidential behaviours, dragging the world into wars which it doesn't need, banning chips, even sanctioning open source (RISC) software. And this is further making the rest of the world enraged, china more so. Today they released Open source Deep Seek which beats GPT 4o in coding problems. The train has left the station and the US is stuck. O…

Haha sure. Let me guess, the train is to a third tier Chinese city no one is interesting in going to, on tracks that the local government can't afford to pay the construction financing on, let alone future maintenance.

Which is an ironic comment to make, considering the difference in high-speed rail development in China vs in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_the_United_... (TL;DR: China's high speed rail network is the longest and most used in the world, as well as cheaper than the US's)

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#328

Post by TheChaplain »

I don't trust DJI.

I was looking to replace my GoPro with the DJI Action, but their app was not on the Play-store. It can only be side-loaded on Android, because their app breaks a number of policies on privacy and data gathering.

I believe I saw a site that decompiled their app and found a number of worrisome things.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#329

Post by rallyforthesun »

lawlessone wrote: post #47
henvic wrote: post #28

DJI is, by far, the best drone equipment brand for photography, industrial usage, etc. It's disheartening to witness the US embracing protectionism for high-tech. If the United States does this, it might as well join the European Union's decadence in killing tech startups by stifling the competitiveness of their market...

>If the United States does this, it might as well join the European Union's decadence in killing tech startups by stifling the competitiveness of their market... I can still buy a DJI drone here in Europe. What stifling are you referring to?

That someone can buy new DJI drones in europe is right, but only the latest releases. You cannot use any of the drones you might have purchased over the last years anymore in europe because of the new regulations.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#330

Post by mardifoufs »

mrtksn wrote: post #208
lawlessone wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the United States does this, it might as well join the European Union's decadence in killing tech startups by stifling the competitiveness of their market... I can still buy a DJI drone here in Europe. What stifling are you referring to?

It's a meme on Twitter, essentially libertarians are pushing the idea that EU killed its tech industry through heavy reagulation and by tech they mean online advertisement. They keep posting graphs of market capitalisation claiming that Europe must be failing because doesn't have speculative public trading stocks. There's also the top-list theme, making list of top-10 companies by market cap, claiming that if your co…

There's no speculative stocks in Europe? Seriously? I guess if you ignore all the stock markets in Europe, sure?

Also, it's funny that you mention Goebels. It's ironic even when you repeat the same tropes about the US and how it's supposedly beholden to the capital markets and speculators.

Europe has its giants. Europe usually does not attack its giants. That's why you get megacorps like Maersk or Airbus or Volkswagen. The entire point is that it only attacks other giants (ie, not homegrown giants), hence the focus on legislation that mostly affects them but leaves European corporations mostly unscathed. Or why green legislation curiously doesn't affect German coal extraction (what a coincidence!) that much. Or all the other double standards Europe and some Europeans love so much.

The delusion here is this weird narrative of good, noble Europeans who are somehow only guilty of not being greedy.

Post reply on HN