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Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

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

#291

Post by lunchbucket »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #270
ddejohn wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deeply sickening that modern society is such that we have to make room in our brains for objectively outlandish connections like these. That a children's cartoon and game about cute little companions has to in any way be involved in the same sentence as the flattening of a city and genocide is just... pure insanity. The world has truly, collectively, lost its fucking mind.

> in any way You can connect any two things into a sentence regardless of the state of the world. This is way off of where the problems actually are. Edit: Some people have downvoted this without giving a reason, but I'm going to double down. Any time you have disasters or large crimes, you can connect them to children and children's things. Thinking there's anything to learn about the specific fact that you can make…

It's silly to compare an arbitrary connection to a non-arbitrary connection and as if it makes the former arbitrary. You're doubling down on a category error.

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

#292

Post by throw-the-towel »

jstanley wrote: post #227
fragmede wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet the targets don't feel like they're non-violent. The animal that was killed for food doesn't think anything, because it's dead. That's pretty violent. Shooting someone that attacking you in defense was necessary, but it's definitely violent. All uses of guns are violent. That's what they do. They make holes in things that didn't have holes in them before. There are uses for them that are justified but they're a…

If making holes in things that didn't have holes in them before is a sufficient condition for "violence", does that make drills violent too? Or is that taking words-mean-things too far? Or perhaps can we accept that it is possible to make holes in things without doing violence, and that an object that can make holes in things is not inherently a violent object even though it would be violent if you made holes in thin…

Listening to my neighbours drill every morning certainly does feel violent.

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

#293

Post by red-iron-pine »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #73
somelamer567 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting: the Russians are calling "our partners", "our would-be enemies" now. They're not even pretending anymore. Given that this steady parade of seemingly-planted and promoted derogatory anti-Western stories that has been happening for years originates from You Know Where, it's a revelation that the Russian establishment and secret services are not even pretending anymore. It should also be pointed out that Ki…

All very true, and an important point about ROC/KGB ties, but > the Russians are calling "our partners", "our would-be enemies" now. is a total wind vane which can flip 180° in a matter of days (if not minutes, as in Orwell's scene where they seamlessly switch from being at war with Eurasia to that with Eastasia)...

to channel lord palmerston, "no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, only interests"

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

#294

Post by cindyllm »

throw-the-towel wrote: post #292
jstanley wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If making holes in things that didn't have holes in them before is a sufficient condition for "violence", does that make drills violent too? Or is that taking words-mean-things too far? Or perhaps can we accept that it is possible to make holes in things without doing violence, and that an object that can make holes in things is not inherently a violent object even though it would be violent if you made holes in thin…

Listening to my neighbours drill every morning certainly does feel violent.

[dead]

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

#295

Post by gchamonlive »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #270
ddejohn wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deeply sickening that modern society is such that we have to make room in our brains for objectively outlandish connections like these. That a children's cartoon and game about cute little companions has to in any way be involved in the same sentence as the flattening of a city and genocide is just... pure insanity. The world has truly, collectively, lost its fucking mind.

> in any way You can connect any two things into a sentence regardless of the state of the world. This is way off of where the problems actually are. Edit: Some people have downvoted this without giving a reason, but I'm going to double down. Any time you have disasters or large crimes, you can connect them to children and children's things. Thinking there's anything to learn about the specific fact that you can make…

> Any time you have disasters or large crimes, you can connect them to children and children's things.

This time you have an actual connection, the state of the world notwithstanding. If you factor in the world however, with this many wars, I'd say it's pretty much linked, regardless of the way you assembled words to make it look like it doesn't, and doubling down doesn't make it less distant from reality.

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

#296

Post by throw-the-towel »

somelamer567 wrote: post #224
tim333 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Exactly. Russians seem to understand the word "Nazis" is a less-literate way than the rest of the world. "Nazi" -- in Russia -- means anybody that Russia hates, resents, is jealous of, or otherwise dislikes. Anybody not explicitly in Russia's thrall is "anti-Russian", considered an enemy, and is hence labelled a "Nazi". Coincidentally, this "Whoever isn't with us, is against us" thinking is a hallmark of fascist regi…

You're saying that calling people you disagree with "Nazis" was invented by Russia? Well, in that case, a lot of people better start paying royalties.

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

#297

Post by asdff »

drfloyd51 wrote: post #154
pj_mukh wrote: post #111

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. Currently active theaters. And now there are detailed locations of our cities. We might not get killbots today but we will get pacificationbots.

Don't worry about pokemon go. Worry about the lidar unit on top of the UPS truck.

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

#298

Post by KaiserPro »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #288
KaiserPro wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VPSs are much more effective at navigation at ground level in cities compared to GPS because of multi-path interference. However that data has a half life and needs to be refreshed. For flying drones, ground level data is really not that useful. mainly because you can't see it, because its obscured by trees, building and clouds. But, this is not a new thing. Google, Apple, facebook and niantic all have VPSs as do a b…

I had assumed this was referring to street level flying drones. Like you see in drone races. But with a little bomb attached. Even with half life. That could be years. Depending on changes. Old neighborhoods probably haven't changed.. And, not sure I read that deal had a cutoff, or not. Could they continue getting updates. ?

If they are, then SLAM/object avoidance is pretty much the way forward.

The issue you have there is you need a high shutter speed with no rolling shutter to get good reading.

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

#299

Post by KaiserPro »

vectorphresh wrote: post #276
KaiserPro wrote: post #83

I worked at a VPS competitor of niantic. I am conflicted on this report. 1) VPS is not new, the startup I worked at had a working public system in 2018. 2) The hard part about VPSs is not actually the navigation, its generating and querying the map. How does the VPS work? You build a point cloud of features (for us we paid people to go and record videos in cities, Tesla/Waymo/toyata/google drove cars niantic got it's…

I'm not sure they need the in between areas, so long as the landmarks are inclusive of similar features. In fact, they probably only need a high quality 3D scans of primitive features to perform classification (walls, building, intersections, etc). I haven't played recently, so I'm unsure how distinct each landmark is.

> I'm not sure they need the in between areas, so long as the landmarks are inclusive of similar features.

That gets you good navigation around landmarks, but when you go further away, you get less usable feature points, as they are closer together you get more position error/need higher resolution cameras.

The intermediate places gives you the precise consistent navigation.

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

#300

Post by john_strinlai »

appplication wrote: post #281
pj_mukh wrote: post #111

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.

Interestingly, I have some weirdly relevant direct experience to share here. Pokémon Go was released at the beginning of July 2016. A week later, the Air Force kicked off its Red Flag exercise in Nellis AFB outside of Vegas. For the several thousand active duty folks participating, this is a month-long TDY from their normal base to Vegas. The premise is a large-scale war simulation, and it encompasses essentially all…

military folk love their acronyms! i had no idea what "TDY" was. for others like me who may not know their military acronyms:

AFB = air force base

TDY = temporary duty

SCIF = sensitive compartmented information facility

OPSEC = operational security

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