Live data from Hacker News

Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

dronexl.co

161–170 of 334 posts

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#162

As someone who works in this space, the headline is a bit of a stretch. The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?). The military contractor (Vantar/Maxar) in question basically admits so but just "reserves the right" to use the data which is the political battle line ala Claude and DoD. This is mostly an ideological battle.

So by this conclusion we can assume, that these drones will be somewhere else. Somewhere in heavily populated areas right?

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#163
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Pokemon go player, I would say it isn't. There's even a Pokemon exclusive to the middle east region: sandstorm pattern Vivillion. Lots of players there.

Obtaining it never means having to scan anything at any time.

That's true, it's obtained from gifting.

But what I mean is that there are enough players there to be significant part of the ecosystem. The war made obtaining those Vivillion harder.

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Just like editing wikipedia will help train models that are used for data classification in north korea or whatever. It's a feature of open data, it's open and usable by anyone .

... for any purpose .

Yes. Or you can license it for specific purposes. But in general open data refers to data that is open to use by anyone, for any purpose, without restrictions except in some cases attribution.

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#165

As someone who works in this space, the headline is a bit of a stretch. The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?). The military contractor (Vantar/Maxar) in question basically admits so but just "reserves the right" to use the data which is the political battle line ala Claude and DoD. This is mostly an ideological battle.

> The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?). But presumably the images/models at ground level can be used to train/improve the general performance of Vantor's aerial (satelite based) navigation system so it works better elsewhere?

No the tech doesn’t work like that AFAIK. The most common use case is exactly localization (think “HD maps” for autonomous cars).

It almost 1-1 data correlation, n-phone Pokémon go scans of a location helping a drone locate itself in the same location in correlation with Maxar’s satellite data.

There maybe some hyper corner case uses. Maybe the billion scans in New York City help them generalize across different phone lenses characteristics, but phone and drone lenses are so different.

Would love to hear some specifics if I’m wrong here.

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#168

As someone who works in this space, the headline is a bit of a stretch. The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?). The military contractor (Vantar/Maxar) in question basically admits so but just "reserves the right" to use the data which is the political battle line ala Claude and DoD. This is mostly an ideological battle.

> The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?).

For now.

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#169

If you are looking for something to channel that energy into, you could help improve open street map using streetcomplete: https://streetcomplete.app/

I assumed that in urban USA the map would be fairly complete and opportunities for edits would be somewhat rare. My assumption was very wrong. The app showed a dozen quests just outside of my office building. Thanks for suggesting it!

There’s always things to improve or to add. Road surfaces, benches, trash bins, table tennis spots, etc. StreetComplete on Android helps make some common tasks really easy to do.

Re: Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

#170
post #150

As someone who works in this space, the headline is a bit of a stretch. The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?). The military contractor (Vantar/Maxar) in question basically admits so but just "reserves the right" to use the data which is the political battle line ala Claude and DoD. This is mostly an ideological battle.

It's not like there's a moral high ground about not collaborating with the military. Unless you want to advantage America's adversaries, namely China, Putin's Russia and Iran's current regime. There's always this implicit, sometimes explicit, "war bad" childish political philosophy in posts like this. In reality war is a given and you have to be prepared to have the upper hand.

I guess nuclear weapons were just inevitable the moment the first quarks were assembled into a proton, right?
Post reply on HN