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

DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

dronedj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 742 posts

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#581

Post by seanmcdirmid »

solardev wrote: post #574
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really true. Western drone companies haven't bothered competing in the consumer space, but they have made lots of advancement in the non-consumer space, where, arguably, the profits are better. Why try to compete with DJI for mail order drones going to kids when you can get a multi-million dollar contract with the Pentagon?

That didn't use to be true. There was once several Western consumer drone companies (3D Robotics, Parrot, GoPro, Intel, etc.) as recently as the mid-2010s. They gave up on the consumer space because DJI just totally ate their lunch, releasing better, cheaper drones year after year. I still remember how in any given year, the annual DJI drone releases would be smaller, cheaper, better, and fly longer than the other co…

They competed until they were undercut, and then just didn't bother pursuing more profitable business instead. That is to say, if you can make a drone for $200, and DJI puts one out for $50, you don't really stand chance, so get out of the way and find more profitable businesses.

Anyways, DJI seems to just publish its revenue ($3.83b in 2021) but is it actually making money (profit, not revenue)? I'm not finding anything on Google. If they are selling each drone at a loss and just burning through VC still, that could be a huge problem.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#582

Post by dzhiurgis »

merpnderp wrote: post #243
bri3d wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High volume single-use drones and DJI drones are almost completely orthogonal in terms of technology, production, and procurement. The only thing they really share is MEMS gyroscopes and brushless motor windings. Making a million FPV bomb drones and making a million consumer camera drones are such dramatically different tasks that there is not a chance this theory holds water.

You should look at see what kind of drones are dominating Ukraine's skies. You'd see some water being held. And you probably should have googled this before making this comment.

Most of the kamikaze drone videos I see use Betaflight OSD. DJI is kinda expensive for suicide missions.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#583

Post by snypher »

dji4321234 wrote: post #433
hackernewds wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sufficient product telemetry is indistinguishable from surveillance malware Isn't this mandatory given the restrictions required of them to disallow flying in banned areas?

No; this functionality is actually accomplished in a reasonable way, with a local database stored on the drone and checked by the drone's flight control software, and exemptions granted by uploading a signed payload to the drone detailing an unlock region and timeframe. It's also worth noting that these restrictions aren't government imposed in countries besides China, and aren't government-linked besides a request-b…

No-fly zones and unlocks is exactly why we went over to Autel and I hope they aren't next.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#584

Post by snypher »

montag wrote: post #553
Workaccount2 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think they're explicitly a CCP data-collection front In China you cannot not be explicitly a CCP data-collection front. China doesn't bring evidence to a judge in order to get a subpoena for data. They just go to DJI an get it. DJI has zero legal recourse if the CCP wants access to all DJI's stored data. Doesn't matter where that data is stored. Same thing for tiktok and why legislators are killing that too.…

> In China you cannot not be explicitly a CCP data-collection front Unintelligible. Rewrite as “in China it’s very hard to avoid turning over data to the CCP.”

It's a written rebuttal mirroring the original wording. This is a common writing and debate style; please don't ask people to rewrite their posts when it is fairly clear what they meant¡

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#585

Post by snypher »

jiggawatts wrote: post #516
dji4321234 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It can only be side-loaded on Android, because their app breaks a number of policies on privacy and data gathering. I don't think this is the reason, I think it's more that they're just too lazy to jump through the approval and maintenance hoops that come with an app store, especially because their home market (China) doesn't even use the Play Store. The iOS version of their app is Apple-approved and present in the…

> there were bugs in the opt-in toggle. > clean, barring a few versions with small bugs. Juniper also had a “small bug” in their implementation of the NSA-mandated Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator algorithm that just so happened to leak the exact number of state bits onto the wire required to hack any VPN connection. I don’t know if you’re an optimist or just a kind soul, but the rest of us are…

I fly over 55lbs drones for a living and they all have manufacturer black boxes, mandated by regulation, to say "A drone company has ZERO business collecting flight log information" is wrong.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#586

Post by snypher »

chipt4 wrote: post #558
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impossible, especially for drones, because it would allow people to trivially flash firmware to drones which can bypass restrictions like no-fly zones and reporting requirements which allow the FAA or other LE to answer questions like "who was flying a drone playing chicken with a low-flying Cessna"

Err, while it takes a little more technical know-how and some electronics experience, this already exists and is still extremely easy to do.. https://betaflight.com/ or https://github.com/iNavFlight/inav or https://ardupilot.org/ among others

I hope they don't start asking questions about where the px4s are made!

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#587

Post by Sabinus »

lmm wrote: post #560
rainsford wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple famously told the FBI to go pound sand when asked to help access an iPhone in an actual terrorism case (i.e. it wasn't about going after dissidents or journalists or anything), even though such help was definitely within Apple's technical power. Now, while admitting that I am no way claiming the US is perfect, does anyone actually think something even remotely similar would ever happen between a Chinese company…

> Now, while admitting that I am no way claiming the US is perfect, does anyone actually think something even remotely similar would ever happen between a Chinese company and the Chinese government? Yes. We've seen the back and forth with e.g. Jack Ma. It doesn't happen as publicly because it's not such good marketing in China, but of course it happens.

Wasn't the result of this that Jack Ma disappeared for a while and when we reappeared he sang the praises of the government?

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#588

Post by langsoul-com »

jasonsb wrote: post #40
langsoul-com wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worked with Huawei. Look at the smartphone market pre and post Huawei ban, immediate crater.

I'm sorry, but what exactly happen after Huawei ban?

Pre Huawei ban, they had 30% smartphone market. Each year that looked like it was trending upwards without any sign of stopping.

The year after? Poof, very small percentage of the global market.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#589

Post by theo0833 »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #563
dheera wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "being in the Play store" means something is trustable, it just means you trust Google Play Services and Google with all of your data, and by extension, the US government. Being located in the US, I am arguably far more concerned about the US government tracking me than the Chinese government. The US government has jurisdiction over me, the Chinese government does not.

This is an incredibly naive view.

State your reason - I'm in the same boat as dheera and I'm curious.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#590

Post by Teever »

lupusreal wrote: post #297
Teever wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they weren't able to stop people from growing and distributing marijuana then I doubt they'll be able to stop this.

Doesn't stop them from making marijuana illegal and putting people in prison, does it? That said, I think enforcement would be more effective for drones. Marijuana can be effectively enjoyed in the privacy of your own home, but that's only true for a limited extent of drones. They're noisy and usually flown out in the open where annoyed neighbors can narc on you. Furthermore, just my subjective guess, I think people…

No, but them making marijuana illegal and putting people in prison for it didn't really stop millions of people from having regular access to it.

And it'll be the same here in this context. If the government wants to make drones illegal because people are using them domestically for vigilante/terrorism purposes that'll be quite difficult.

People regularly ran clandestine grow operations that used 100kw+ of power for years and were never caught. If there's a desire for drones to commit crimes than someone will easily be able to make a clandestine drone factory.

Post reply on HN