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Snap launches its first drone

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281–290 of 420 posts

Re: Snap launches its first drone

#281
post #137
post #36

Refreshingly honest about the video quality you should expect in the main promo video. Typical problems like dynamic range, color profile, light bleed and tracking problems with the top of the head being cut off at one point. Pretty typical unless you spend more money on your drone or camera equipment. There are so many companies that fake the footage or pick much easier shooting locations.

That is nice, but there is still intentionally misleading marketing fluff like this: >Each rechargeable battery allows you to capture content for 5-8 flights, depending on the flight mode(s) selected. Rechargeable batteries can be swapped for easy use... Why phrase it like that? That gives zero impression of what the actual battery life is because I have no idea what a "flight" means as a unit of measurement. Just te…

If you're using this for Snap, one "flight" is actually a pretty reasonable time unit. Snapchat videos can be a maximum of one minute.

Re: Snap launches its first drone

#282
post #190
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was very surprised to hear the rotor buzz. Most drone promo videos pretend that when the motors spin, it makes moody beats sound.

I was too busy being deafened by Frank Sinatra a split second after the rotor noise played to even remember hearing the rotor noise; rather than faking the silence they just over-wrote my memory of it in the advertisement with shock-and-awe style Sinatra -- I guess that's okay.

And that's pretty much the idea - they expect you to put music over whatever you've captured anyway.

Re: Snap launches its first drone

#283
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am so tempted to start a hardware company that makes auto aiming bbguns, slingshots and one more thing... predator drones (in-app purchase doom metal and eagle noises).

It's against the law.

I think if people are allowed their buzzing flying camera doodads everywhere my nose diving metal eagle raining sudden drone death from above is in good fun. Now I am the law.

Besides the killer bird will obviously be powered by an AI, can't blame me for nothing.

Re: Snap launches its first drone

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sure would suck to have to engage in some kind of discussion with my own children.

What does this have to do with my comment? Or are you saying it should be a gift to go “some people smoke but you shouldn’t smoke because it’s breaking the rules and yes they are breaking the rules and no I can’t make them stop” is really fun. A blast.

A gift? Maybe depending on how full you are seeing the glass at any given time. But perhaps OP was trying to say:

When you bring a human into the world, you are going have to explain a lot of it to them.

Re: Snap launches its first drone

#285
post #232
post #197

The one thing that drives me up the wall is being on a beach, or on a hike, and somebody brings out a drone. The whine of the rotors carries much farther than people would like to admit. The ambient screech makes a beautiful natural landscape feel like an anxious techno nightmare. Now make them cheap, connect it to social media, and target them at teens. Let's hope these don't take off (pun intended). At least they c…

drones make unwanted noise and ruin the atmosphere of natural settings. does the world need your boring selfies from an aerial perspective? No. absolutely not. Only worse than these snapchat plastic teeny drones would a V2 with built-in flood light, for added light-pollution. Let's spoil star-gazing, too! I feel the sudden urge to pick up a book about falconry...

Drones are banned in National Parks and State Parks (in CA) anyways. So this sounds like a strawman.

Re: Snap launches its first drone

#286
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, because you defined a line where the vast majority of people would agree. But you can slide the line over to a point where people would be more split on the issue. E.g. say you're alone on a public beach playing your music, and one other person walks up to also enjoy the beach and who doesn't want to hear your music. Should you turn off the music? Is there a db level that's acceptable? Should the other person b…

Use headphones.

What about when it is a small group playing very low music such that it is quickly drowned out by the sound of the waves and the birds after 10 feet of distance. Headphones are actually impede their enjoyment of the situation there because (a) they cannot easily talk to one another with headphones in (b) they cannot enjoy the mixing sounds of nature and music. In many cases, folk music or classical music at low volume mixed with nature can be very enjoyable for people.

The problem here is you see no value to their enjoyment of these things and thus weight their enjoyment of such experience at zero while their interruption of your situation as an invasion. But if you force them to stop listening to music, you too are disrupting or invading their lives. That's the two-sided nature of any negative externality and attempts to internalize it. We all need to view this from the perspective of social costs and social benefits (i.e. a utilitarian perspective across all people's happiness). The result is almost always a compromise between the two extremes.

Re: Snap launches its first drone

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Destruction of light/sound pollution sources in places otherwise free of such pollution is totally morally justified IMO. What do you mean by "destruction"? If you mean actually breaking someone's speaker, then you're wrong and fundamentally don't understand externalities. If you read the original Pigouvian and Coasian theory behind externalities, you'll realize that inherent to the nature of an externality is each…

> If you mandate silence, you're forcing that silence on others just as much as them playing music is forcing that sound on you. Except that personal audio sources are much more feasible than personal noise suppression, especially if you also want to be able to carry a conversation.

That is very true and a reason why an individual listening to music alone should bias towards a personal audio source to internal his sound externality. That is because there is virtually no additional benefit to the individual to play music loudly than to play it in headphones when it is just for his benefit.

But you are ignoring that a substantial percentage (if not majority) of music enjoyment situations are simultaneously social situations. Personal audio sources are objectively sub-optimal in that situation. Thus, there is a cost to those enjoying the music of using a personal audio source. Silent discos result in a total inability to talk to one another. If you are playing ambient music as you have conversations, then a personal audio source simply doesn't work.

Re: Snap launches its first drone

#289
post #246
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More people want to enjoy a peaceful outdoors than those who want to play with loud fads in shared spaces. Deal with it.

Source? I think the want to take a cool shot from a drone could actually make alot more teens go outdoors. I don't like drones either but incentivizing going outside through social media is an interesting concept and certainly beats them staying indoors.

Why do you want them to go outdoors, though? You could get more teens to go to the library by turning off all the lights and playing dance music at high volume, but it wouldn't serve the reasons that made you want them to go there in the first place. Instead of spreading the benefit of the library to more people, it would destroy the benefit of the library for everybody (and it would probably make a pretty poor nightclub, too.)

If you want kids to get a little bit of exercise and breath clean air, clean up urban air quality and create walkable cities with park space. Then people who want a busy social outdoor space and don't mind a lot of mechanical noise will have a place to go where their enjoyment won't interfere with the enjoyment of people who want to hear birds and insects and trees moving in the wind.

Re: Snap launches its first drone

#290
post #36

Refreshingly honest about the video quality you should expect in the main promo video. Typical problems like dynamic range, color profile, light bleed and tracking problems with the top of the head being cut off at one point. Pretty typical unless you spend more money on your drone or camera equipment. There are so many companies that fake the footage or pick much easier shooting locations.

I think this is going to be one of those things where we learn that nobody actually cares about any of that outside these forums. MP3s were garbage, early camera phones were garbage, Snap picture quality generally is garbage, bluetooth headphones suck, all of these things were and are decried by the tech community, and it turns out that people just don't care, because even at garbage quality it's still cool to have a…

Even without the robot angle "cool" aspect of a drone, it's a step along a progression that's shown clear demand: first selfies, then selfie sticks, then no-stick-needed non-selfie selfies.
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