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Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

dronexl.co

211–220 of 334 posts

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

#211
Reminds me of that sci-fi short film where kids are playing a VR game controlling virtual avatars looking for and shooting virtual enemies, while in the real world, unbeknownst to them, they are actually piloting robots that are hunting down and killing dissidents.

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

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well the article writes AS IF the whole intention was to: "get data for drone warfare" ...in 2021 (before the russian invasion...) but did we even EXPECT drone warfare to influence the war THIS MUCH back then? well not me -- I actually thought russia would beat the crap out of ukraine within a month (even after the failed spetsnaz attack on zelensky) the article's assumptions only makes sense IF some people had time…

Drone warfare has been discussed publicly since more than a decade, what Ukraine proved was just how effective that really is, but it was already known and understood. In any case mapping the world doesn’t only benefit drones, it’s something always valuable to the military. Drone navigation is just one use case

yeah if the article was about "helping the infantry", then I would have 100% agreed.

but... drones? that's just yellow journalism optimized for SEO keyword (and anyone who clicks an article with 'drone')

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

#213
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, Russian "страна наиболее вероятного противника" (the country of the most likely enemy) was always the military name of the US since the Cold War. Now used in military texts and also as a sarcastic cliché

Moreover, it's adversary, not enemy.

The Russians seem to refer to most people not helping them as enemies. Often as nazis too.

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

#214
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the Pokémon Go world model headlines were stretching the reality of what the model captured. If you’ve played the game, the scanning function is only for what they call Pokestops: These are points of interest that you can walk to and get items in the game. The game gives you points if you walk in a circle around one and take a short video. They’re relatively sparse. At most, they captured some 3D models of some…

Aside from the scanning function, they likely have many geolocated images from people catching pokemon in AR mode.

Source?

If this is happening it would be easy to detect by the upload bandwidth spiking during AR mode.

The 3D scan mode is a specific feature you have to use in the app that uploads 100s of megabytes afterward. It advises you to go on WiFi to do it.

If the AR mode was secretly uploading images that would be a scandal in itself.

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

#215

I still feel like this is a perfect example of why we should be asking for our data to be disclosed to the public. If I take a picture of some public point of interest, they end up tagging it with their metadata and selling it, well, that's what I agreed to by not reading 20 pages of T&C's right? But the value in that data is in the liveliness right, so at some point, would it not make sense for that data to be consi…

It's quite obvious that data is what pays the game. A lot of data about the players )daily routine, commute to work/school, social circles to other players, etc. which allows to derive Job, wealth, etc.), data about surroundings (where do people actually walk, drive, ... etc.) The story here however I'm not too sure about: Isn't the game mostly played in dense urban areas? - by the time you need military drones there…

I had assumed the purpose of the data was more in generalising across variegated input sources to better allow the drones to fly on their own in urban settings, aka, adapt more readily to randomness? Better datasets for multimodal training etc.

I am not joking though, I really would consider any data generated on public assets to be considered "releasable" to the public. How many people should get killed by self-driving cars because the company making the cars didn't have enough data to train proper models?

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

#216
post #21

August 2016: Iran Becomes First Country to Ban Pokémon GO https://www.avclub.com/iran-becomes-first-country-to-ban-pok... Really smart decision, in hindsight.

This is what censorship looks like. This is what should get people angry. Not localization changes, but actual government-mandated changes or bans. By censoring the internet, Iran is not protecting its citizens but rather the ruling government.

Or maybe sometimes censorship actually DOES protect its citizens?

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

#217
One of the reasons I stopped playing Pokémon GO.

Anyone who checked the origins of the company knew where this was going to go. Your data for sale.

There were already questions about what they were doing with the data of their prior game in the security and privacy space prior to Pokémon.

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optimistically, it sounds like the USA data could be used to assist USA domestic defense drones, fighting against an invading foreign nation. Pessimistically, maybe democracy's days are numbered

> Pessimistically, maybe democracy's days are numbered that was in the cards in the early 2000s when the Patriot Act got passed, mate. now they just have the muscle (drones) to back it up. welcome to the cyberpunk dystopia

Dunno - if you look at the graphs https://ourworldindata.org/democracy the long term trend over a couple of centuries has been towards democracy, though with a bit of a reversion over the last 15 years or so. A lot of the bad has come out of Russia which is struggling a bit these days.

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

#219

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 current drone-heavy theatres.

That could change in an instant.

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

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Details?

from 1 day ago: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2529849-fully-autonomou...

  “We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,” says Kokhanovskyy. “There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed.”
Because there are never any civilians caught in the middle of two warring armies, right? I think the ICC will be getting real busy soon.
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