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DJI Mini 4 Pro

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Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro

#291

Post by PeterStuer »

rmbyrro wrote: post #232
snypher wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They're beaming back home whatever they want This claim is always thrown out like a life preserver without ever anything to back it up. Do you have anything to support this claim?

Given the history of China and its tech companies, the burden of proof shifted to their shoulders. So, I turn to them: is there anything that proves its a surveillance-free device? No, they cannot assure that. Someone may not like it, but China now has a very, very bad reputation among people in the West. Especially after the last pandemic and how they handled it.

Replace 'China' with 'USA' in your post, and for most of the world both would be identically true.

Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro

#292

Post by palata »

nebula8804 wrote: post #270
palata wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No because DJI, XPENG, BYD, and a ton of other Chinese companies have this 'move fast and break things' mentality X100 that most American firms don't have. Respectfully, that's ridiculous. The Silicon Valley has a long tradition of "move fast and break things". No no no, this time, it's just that the Chinese companies are simply a lot better than the Western drone companies. Yes, there are many excuses to make ("it…

>Respectfully, that's ridiculous. The Silicon Valley has a long tradition of "move fast and break things". Some companies do...like Tesla, SpaceX, and Netflix. Their iteration rate is amazing. >No no no, this time, it's just that the Chinese companies are simply a lot better than the Western drone companies. Yes, there are many excuses to make ("it's cheaper for them"), but even without considering the price, the Wes…

> Their iteration rate is amazing.

Sure, some companies do. Though what I see from the SpaceX launches I don't respect much. They just don't care at all about the impact on biodiversity around the launch site. I would be happier with slower but more sustainable.

> You haven't explained why? Move fast and break things mean to iterate fast, that includes finding way to cut the cost, improve specs, and just make the overall product better.

Difficult to say why. They have really good people and they have built a pretty solid technology, I guess. Their software really sucked in the beginning (10 years ago), but then it got much better.

"Move fast and break things" is also often an excuse to do bad engineering, IMO. "We hacked it because we need to go fast", and then the whole product is a piece of crap and people wonder why.

> Is it or is it not competitive what what DJI is selling on the market?

Nobody can remotely compete with DJI. I just meant "if you are ready to pay for something that is not DJI for ideological reasons".

> The fact they can offer all of that at a lower price point is (in my opinion) a sign of things to come in other industries: electric cars, space travel, renewable energy.

Electric cars and renewable energy are part of a much, much more complicated problem. We just don't have any viable way to replace fossil fuels entirely, so we will have to use less energy (and hence degrow, hopefully in a controlled and smart way).

Space travel is a joke. We need fundamentally new physics if the hope is to go live in another solar system, and I don't understand why people are excited about the idea of surviving in a spaceship. Instead of paying really smart people to work on that useless idea, we should pay them to find clever solutions to degrow. Use less, better, smarter, more sustainable technology everywhere in society.

Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro

#293

Post by Tronno »

trust_bt_verify wrote: post #153
jbm wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never done this, but if I was trying to be charitable; in bear country, I assume making noise to avoid startling the animals is best practice.

I have worn a bear bell on my backpack when I’m far out but that’s a bit different than a speaker as you could imagine.

Parks Canada says bear bells are not an effective deterrent against bears.

https://parks.canada.ca/pn-np/mtn/ours-bears/securite-safety...

Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro

#294

Post by PeterStuer »

corbezzoli wrote: post #240
okdood64 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I myself still wouldn't ever use DJI because of this reason, no can ever provide any concrete claim. Quite hilarious.

What concrete claim are you looking for? Is it not enough that Huawei was banned by the US? Do you know the reason why it was banned? The same reason could broadly apply to every Chinese company. TikTok is the software counterpart that isn’t allowed on any government phone. DJI does not produce infrastructure pieces so it hasn’t reached the same urgency to the US, so it’s still allowed.

Huawei was starting to be a serious player in 5G, and their handsets were eating Apple's lunch.

US understandably wants their spyware in the world's infra. The rest of the planet might not see it that black and white.

Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro

#295

Post by ramraj07 »

dilyevsky wrote: post #214
firen777 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do Ukrainian operators avoid exposing their own positions? Do they install custom firmware on their drone?

Yes they root the device and set operator coordinates to 0,0 so they are not picked up by aeroscope, etc

Its not impossible that DJI could have failsafe phone home systems in there that'll still send info back home after rooting. My guess is that the products they produced before the Ukraine war were more naive and now that they've learnt consumer drones will be used in warzones no matter what, I'll bet they have started incorporating such failsafes. Imagine being able to know where every mavic in the frontlines are and selling that info to the Russians.

Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro

#296

Post by palata »

corbezzoli wrote: post #288
palata wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you know the reason why it was banned? For the infrastructure, for legit strategic reasons (without even considering they are abusing it, you generally don't want to rely on foreign infrastructure on your territory). For the smartphones, that's pure commercial war. Huawei was a big competitor.

> For the smartphones, that's pure commercial war. Huawei was a big competitor. Big competitor of what? There’s no popular Android phone OEM in the US. Sounds like you’re making stuff up.

To... Apple. First time I heard about a Huawei ban of smartphones was also the year where I heard that Huawei was about to sell more than Apple in the US, if I remember correctly.

Many people around me liked Huawei because they were seeing it as the Android brand that "is closest to Apple".

> Sounds like you’re making stuff up.

Don't get me wrong: I am not part of the US government and I was not part of the official decision. I'm just sharing my opinion :-).

Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro

#297

Post by WendyTheWillow »

brindlejim wrote: post #135
cheesemayo wrote: post #47

Beware that DJI's software to control these craft is super sketchy to install and use. It doesn't exist in the Google Play Store, to avoid inspection.

DJI is fully compliant with China's policy of civil-military fusion. Anyone flying anywhere sensitive should not use them. They're beaming back home whatever they want, and China is using both tech and data to give an asymmetric advantage to allies like Russia in the Ukraine war.

Good luck using my backyard data to fight in Ukraine…

Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro

#298

Post by WendyTheWillow »

rmbyrro wrote: post #232
snypher wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They're beaming back home whatever they want This claim is always thrown out like a life preserver without ever anything to back it up. Do you have anything to support this claim?

Given the history of China and its tech companies, the burden of proof shifted to their shoulders. So, I turn to them: is there anything that proves its a surveillance-free device? No, they cannot assure that. Someone may not like it, but China now has a very, very bad reputation among people in the West. Especially after the last pandemic and how they handled it.

Horse shit. If you can’t show specific data traffic flowing from Mavic software back to China that could conceivably be drone footage, this claim is bogus and borderline libelous.

It would be trivial to prove this to be true, and there is zero of that proof. Hell, at this point it would be valuable to even see small phone homes by Mavic software from the last year, but I doubt you even have that.

There are plenty of other reasons not to buy this drone, so the lies are completely uncalled for.

Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro

#299

Post by trailbits »

kortilla wrote: post #229
snypher wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They're beaming back home whatever they want This claim is always thrown out like a life preserver without ever anything to back it up. Do you have anything to support this claim?

Does the app function without an encrypted connection to DJI controlled servers? If so, then there is nothing else needed. People forget how sketchy closed source software is.

You can turn off all the phone radios or you can block all network traffic and the app still works fine. You only need a connection to get an unlock code in certain airspace.

Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro

#300

Post by magnat »

palata wrote: post #269
Aurornis wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video quality degrades at longer distances. You can't get the full bandwidth at the maximum distance, but you might see enough to navigate. Communicating with a drone up in the sky is easier than something like your WiFi or your cell phone because you have a nice, clear line of sight to the drone. Fly behind a hill, building, or some trees at distance and the drone will lose connection and go into safety mode. Th…

That's super interesting! Would you have resources to recommend to learn about that? For instance: where do you get that "the free space path loss at 20kM is 126dB at 2.4GHz in perfect conditions, or 134dB at 5.8GHz"? And why does 1 Watt translate to +30dBm?

https://www.antenna-theory.com/ is a good starter for apprentice-level RF voodoo.

30 dBm = 30 decibels wrt to 1 milliwatt. 10 decibels = 1 bel = 10-fold increase of the base quantity, so 30 decibels = 10 x 10 x 10 = 1000x increase, so 30 dBm = 1000x 1 mW = 1 W.

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