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

Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

dronexl.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 334 posts

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

#221

Post by sciencejerk »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #47
malux85 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compred to what? Datasets at this scale are rare. You're not comparing against another ideal dataset, you're comparing against having nothing.

There are so many companies these days doing recording for self driving cars and/or street view like applications. Also sites like Flickr collect huge sets of geo tagged photos, as do companies like Meta where tons of geo tagged images are shared each day via their different outlets. Niantic has the benefit that they can steer "volunteers" to specific points, though.

Maybe Niantic intentionally steered players towards remote locations only reachable on foot, understanding that this data is more scarce and therefore more valuable?

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

#222

Post by sciencejerk »

close04 wrote: post #88

> The games went to a Saudi sovereign wealth fund. The map went to defense. The map went to offense . Nobody needs scans of someone else's country for "defense". At this point it's a given that any data source that can bring an edge in a conflict is being used for exactly that. Things that film and scan surroundings are the newest addition. When a fleet of cars is taking cm or mm resolution scans of entire cities or…

Eh, the maps could be used for true domestic defense...but examples of foreign invasions on USA soil are scarce...

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

#223

Post by bluGill »

WmWsjA6B29B4nfk wrote: post #158
pj_mukh wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Middle-east" isn't a war zone. Even the parts of the middle-east that are, don't have any drone deployments. Lebanon maybe? Reports are thin. Maxar is/was primarily a satellite data company, and to say Pokemon data would add any major value in any of today's active drone deployments with the level of Satellite coverage Maxar already has is a wide stretch. Moreover, ground forces in the area would need pretty hea…

> "The Middle-east" isn't a war zone. According to Wikipedia, more than half of the Middle East countries are either belligerents or were otherwise attacked in the ongoing war.

Even with the relatively small countries in the middle east, a country is a large place and so being attacked doesn't make the whole a war zone.

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

#224

Post by somelamer567 »

tim333 wrote: post #213
orbital-decay wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moreover, it's adversary, not enemy.

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 regimes like the actual Nazi Germany, where it was an article of faith.

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

#225

Post by bluGill »

beezlewax wrote: post #151
muyuu wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"War is a given" if your foreign policies dictate that outcome. It's not something always unavoidable but it isn't inevitable either. The United States is one pretty warmongerish nation by any account.

> The United States is one pretty warmongerish nation by any account.

Compared to other modern nations, but compared to history vary peaceful.

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

#226

Post by Muromec »

krunck wrote: post #220
red-iron-pine wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That alone doesn't cut war crime definition to get attention to ICC and isn't really different from the usual aerial bombing. You drop the bomb from a plane or 100 of them somewhere around the densely populated area and don't know who they kill, as there is no connection to the drone.

Civilians dying in an armed conflict doesn't cut the definition of warcrime by itself. Deliberate targeting and intentional destruction of civil infrastructure that supports life or something like it is.

Then of course there is stuff that ICC isn't getting busy about which is clearly above the threshold -- the regular drone safaris in and around Kherson (city with pre-war population circa quarter million people) happening for the last few years.

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

#227

Post by jstanley »

fragmede wrote: post #172
newsclues wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shooting guns for target practice is fun and non violent. Guns feed families and protect people too. They are dual use like all tech from knives to nukes.

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 things like people or animals, or in property without permission.

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

#228

Post by bluGill »

SahAssar wrote: post #164
dotancohen wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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.

A license only means something if you can enforce it. This means you can catch violations, and get courts to enforce it in a way that means something. If you can't catch a violation it is de facto allowed. What a license can restrict is limited by law, and so depending on the terms the court may say "you are not allowed to restrict that: they are allowed, go away". Or the court may impose a fine that is small enough everyone considers it a cost of doing business. How this plays out depends on the violation as well: if the violator can show they did their best to not violate that is very different from intentional violation. (I'm convinced the GPL will be broken - when a company shows they have lots of process to prevent the misuse, but a "rogue employee" hid their actions - the company will pay a fine but won't have to give their source code.)

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

#229

Post by maratc »

krunck wrote: post #220
red-iron-pine wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ICC will be getting real busy soon

How likely is your opinion to change in the light of the information that, according to the article, it's Ukraine who uses these drones?

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

#230

Post by fsckboy »

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.

>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?)

are you saying that drone training in quiet residential neighborhoods is not training? are you saying self driving cars can only drive in theaters where they've been trained, because autonomous training is always specific by neighborhood? are you saying that if a particular region has some novel terrain that all previous training must be discarded?

Post reply on HN