Would be nice if there were some actual alternatives about the same price range and not using proprietary softwares…
Unfortunately anything open will cost extra, just because of the nature of it. Not to mention the colossal scale of how much product DJI ship, to cut costs somewhere
The reduction of monitoring is worth it. DJI calls home with your location and even provides tools for police to view the location of drones and drone operators in real time.
I am confused then what is Congress’ problem here?
Aint this where they are taking us anyway? Or they are worried commie police also getting the same info?
I am confused then what is Congress’ problem here?
The data is also available to DJI, and through them the CCP.
I have to inform you that that US has some of the best spy satellite networks on the planet.
People shocked that other countries play the spook game too is amazing.
So they’ll be able to see that I recorded some footage of some boats near San Francisco?
This could be a severe national security problem if the drones sent back the video to DJI as well, then a foreign power would get geotagged high detail video of areas of the part of SF you flew over, VERY useful to a foreign intelligence service.
And I am not just talking about your drone and your flight, all other people who own and fly drones in the area would also supply data to sutch a system.
I am not saying that this is what they are doing, but please remember that the Brittish government asked the public to send in their holliday photos of the coast of France to help them plan the D-Day invasions. This kind of information is useful.
If they wanted to, they could just send a few Chinese “tourists” over with their DJI (or American) drones and record specific footage instead of metadata about general footage. Or use their satellites. It’s not the 1940s any more.
When I fly my drone it’s not connected to WiFi, and doesn’t even need to be connected to my phone. What network are they sending gigabytes and gigabytes of video data over when I’m recording people fishing on a lake in the middle of nowhere?
How realistic is this though?
I thought most people slap a GoPro on their drone (admittedly know very little about the hobby) and how would China secretly be transmitting so much data (4k video) without anyone noticing?
Plus if they want surveillance video, they can just have someone fly their own drone here and capture exactly what they want without having to wade through tons of junk that isn’t important to them.
They definitely do not send video though. That would be super obvious.
At least that was consentual. The UK government basically said "Hey guys, the nazis are bad. So help us plan an attack by sending us your family vacation photos of some beaches on Frances beaches.
And everyone was like “yeah, alright. That sounds good”
China is basically like “lets set up spying EVERYWHERE! Even in countries we don’t have claim to.”
https://www.theverge.com/22985101/dji-aeroscope-ukraine-russia-drone-tracking
Something that stuck out to me:
The AeroScope signals are not encrypted, despite what we wrote in a previous version of this post — even though DJI and an independent source both told us they were encrypted, and DJI insisted they were when we did a fact-check, DJI now admits that they aren’t encrypted at all. So they could be picked up by other kinds of receivers.
So the verge just took a foreign for profit company at their word, and called it “fact checking”???
Modern investigative journalism everybody!
DJI and an independent source both told us
And who is this independant source? How did they get their info? Did that independant source ALSO just call DJI?
Cold war politics is more important than the surveillance state.
I’m with you there. I opt into OSS and open hardware whenever possible
Oh no, not the location data that has to be shared publicly for safety reasons anyways! God forbid!
Every drone does that, since RemoteID got implemented.
Literally all of the alternatives are open and much more capable for it. You can go buy a pixhawk and basically any frame and have something much more powerful for much less money, you just have to be willing to bolt two or three parts together.
I’m adjacent to the industry. This is dumb but I understand the reasoning. We’re getting left behind in the electronics world. Nobody is creating hardware startups because every few months there’s a viral blog post with a “hardware is hard” title on HN and none of the VC assholes want to fund anything but web based surveillance capitalism ad tech because it’s a surefire way to make money. Even if you do get funded and you’re US based you’re absolutely doing all your manufacturing in China if you’re remotely consumer facing (b2big-b has different rules). That means Chinese companies get all the benefits of all the labor from your highly trained engineers when they get the design files. If you try to build anything at volume in the US you have strikingly few options for boards and parts. Everything is whole number multiples of fucking PCBway and half the time it’s lower quality unless you’re paying aero-defense prices which is the only business anyone wants.
We let almost all manufacturing jobs go overseas just to cut labor costs and now we’re suffering the consequences and our government completely incapable of doing what’s necessary to bring that manufacturing capability back to the US. At this point basic Keynesians economic policy is tantamount to heresy for anyone but the far left. Its like we’ve adopted the economic policies we forced on third world nations, and found ourselves with a third world economy.
Being able to produce cheap drones as good as DJIs is far more important for national security than whatever espionage risk they pose. Cheap, easy to use, drones like the dji phantom are omnipresent in current wars. Banning them prevents us from learning via competition or basic reverse engineering.
Its like we’ve adopted the economic policies we forced on third world nations, and found ourselves with a third world economy
Foucault’s boomerang at work, just like US counter insurgency tactics now being employed by US police.
People shit on China all the goddamn time here but they’ve done a prolific job becoming the tech and manufacturing leader in a handful of decades.
Blame it on tech espionage if you want but there’s a reason the US is deadset on targeting Chinese imports, and it’s hardly for any of the security reasons they might be tempted to claim it to be. The US is about to be left behind and it’s noones fault but our own.
Tech espionage is a pretty big problem though, not something anyone should hand-wave away as irrelevant.
Maybe in a particular light, but I’m personally of the opinion that intellectual property and patent law is antithetical to good social policy… so idk. Ideally we’d all benefit from the knowledge and ingenuity of all mankind but in a capitalist economic world-view there’s no place for egalitarianism so…
If they can take the same tech and make it better/produce it cheaper then I think that’s great, go nuts.
But that’s obviously just me.
But why do we need to build stuff here? If it’s cheaper elsewhere, let them build it and we’ll do the higher paying work.
I guess there are national security concerns, but that sounds like we just need to make more friends and fewer enemies, as well as have redundancy in our supply chain (i.e. invest in other inexpensive labor markets, like LATAM, Africa, and India). The issue isn’t that the US isn’t making it, it’s that China is making most of it. Diversify and the problem mostly goes away.
Because it leaves the industry vulnerable in case China decides to start withholding sales to the US. Especially if they invade Taiwan and trigger a chain reaction of treaties that launches into a huge US vs China slugging match. One which China would likely lose painfully to, but would inflict crippling damage to our military. Anything coming out of China will be stopped for as long as the war goes on, and then even longer depending on how much of what I’m China actually got destroyed.
That’s what diversity in supply is for. If we’re at war with China, we can probably still ship stuff in from LATAM and Africa.
We don’t need to make stuff in the US to be secure, we just need to not rely on one country.
It’s already happening. Alot of manufacturing has moved from China to India already.
Also South Korean companies are divesting out of China. Samsung even produces TVs in Europe nowadays.
And that’s a positive development. The same is happening in Mexico as well, and hopefully more countries step up as well.
And that’s why only Chinese stuff is banned, not all ex-US drones / electric cars.
China only has themselves to blame. They intentionally break WTO rules regarding unfair subsidies for their domestic companies. Plus they steal technology and ideas from every company manufacturing there. It doesn’t matter for toasters or t-shirts, but high tech stuff is more important.
No other country does this, especially not with government support.
Plus they steal technology and ideas from every company manufacturing there.
Stealing is the norm for every developed nation. They didn’t just spin out of nowhere and became a super-power. Heard anything about hiring literal Nazis for space program? Does that count as unethical or stealing for you?
No?
I mean Nazis are bad, right? They were supposed to pay for what they did. But not these ones, these were the “good ones”, so it’s fine?
What about tech and knowledge stolen from colonial eras? Too old? it was the norm, not relevant anymore, it’s okay when we did it or any other bs reason you come up with. However, doing the same now is unethical because the colonials created the “WTO” to protect their interests, but others arent playing your game, you’re losing, and it’s just not fair?
It’s fine when you steal tech and talent (even if they were helped cause genocide) and US isn’t shy supporting Israel do genocide again.
But as soon as other country uses what’s made made available to them, use spies, and steals, It’s unethical. The IPs that few countries arbitrarily created after looting through the whole world? How fucking convenient, eh?
Suck it!
I don’t particularly like China but it’s hilarious to think they’d be western puppet and do as they were told forever. Every other nation would do the same if roles were reversed.
That’s what tariffs are for. If a country is doing unfair pricing, force the pricing up to account for their subsidies. They can shoot themselves in the foot if they want.
If we can prove they steal trade secrets, we should sue them and block business with them until they pay or prove innocence. But just blocking products isn’t the way, we need clear rules for when and how we do such things.
The country that makes ALL your shit has nothing to fear in a trade war. Unless you want to forgo ALL your shit?
Who would have thought that sending all those jobs overseas to increase company profits and depress wages would have a downside?
Retaliatory tariffs are not really allowed by the WTO. They are really destructive for trade and just create scenarios where a third country is used to bypass the tariffs.
China has been proven to steal technology for years, it’s just that the benefits of manufacturing there outweigh the costs on an individual company level. No one company can “sue China” as you suggest. They’re too big and can just ban that country from manufacturing anything there. So most companies put up with it.
Your comment actually illuminates the need for US government action. Since no particular company is actually hurting China, they can’t be individually retaliated against by the Chinese government.
I’m not a fan of retaliatory tariffs, I’m a fan of corrective tariffs. The tariffs should be calculated from transparent facts, or at least good estimates. And they need to be consistent regardless of origin country. If we tariff Chinese EVs and drones due to being subsidized, we should also tariff AirBus airplanes for the same reason.
Tariffs are a problem when they target a country as a punitive measure, I think they can be effective when they correct unfairness in the market. I’m a fan of carbon tariffs, for example, where estimates of carbon emissions are used to calculate a tariff on an imported good so local products with higher regulatory expectations are competing on an even field. Maybe high income areas compete with low labor cost through automation and better QC, but they shouldn’t need to compete with subsidies.
Welcome to Marx 101.
“Property is theft”
China has a bunch of the world by the balls thanks to the world using Chinese manufacturing for everything from chips to medication. That alone is a national security problem. Sure, it maintains some stability due to economic ties, but the flip side is that we can only exert so much pressure on China before it will bite us in the ass, and we’re fucked if all-out war started and we got cut off.
Sure, and that’s why we should diversify to other countries, not why we should bring manufacturing back to US soil.
Honestly. This is why fair trade cert or taa compliant or just know trusted country is ok with me when I buy things.
I just don’t want to be complict in known slavery. I don’t want to support oppressive regimes. Etc, etc, etc.
There is no ethical consumption while living a capitalist way of life.
I mean sure, but supporting explicit slavery is bad, so I’m gonna do my best to not.
Without a foundation, you have no foundation.
Effectively, China has been acquiring a monopoly on manufacturing, which is an absolute necessity for modern life. We have been acquiring the higher-paid, but less numerous and less critical industries.
Sure, but it doesn’t need to happen here. If we get into a WW3 situation, we need to be able to protect our supply lines, and that can happen with friendly countries. We’re unlikely to get into a situation where our navy is outmatched, so I don’t think it’s totally urgent to bring production back here.
That said, we do have a lot of critical manufacturing capacity. Intel has chip fabs, we produce lots of oil, we build cars, etc. We import a lot more than we used to, but we could probably make it through a major war with only domestic production, provided it doesn’t drag on too long until we can reestablish supply lines.
I’ll only get worried when China catches up in tech. That’s certainly happening faster than I’d like, but I don’t think China is ready to compete head to head on tech just yet. If they’re at parity, that’s when we need to worry about domestic production. Ideally we can improve diplomatic ties by then.
Not wrong, but the issue is complex. Drones are very obviously one of the bullets in any upcoming conflict. It’s not really about spying and phoning home, it’s that it would be insane to try to tell China “hey, don’t invade other countries mkay?” And then say “oh also we need ammo to stop you but we don’t have the ability to make brass cases or gunpowder anymore, can you send us some”.
Now, while we “can”, to some extent, manufacture components and complete systems, the thing about a war is that it’s basically a wizard duel but with money hoses. You can’t win if the Chinese are producing slaughter bots for $500 ea and the US equivalent is $100,000 (literally). Congress is praying that this will light a fire under US and more friendly foreign manufacturing supply chains to invest more because they might have a chance of breaking into a lucrative market. That said, it probably just paves the way for a two tiered market where China makes their slaughter bots for $500 and the US makes them for $50,000 but all the civil use cases get caught in the cross fire for the short to mid term…so everyone still loses, just harder.
hey, don’t invade other countries mkay?
Considering recent history, you’d better say that to US more, don’t you think? or is it that your country is free to invade other countries but others doing the same is where you start considering human rights?
Talk about hypocrisy. fuckin hell, read a history book.
Everybody Sucks Here
Again like the tiktok ban: Rather than passing real privacy laws we’re passing racism laws and pretending this helps privacy and security.
This is honestly ridiculous. The security concerns are unwarranted. Any surveillance that these drones could accomplish if hacked can just be bought off of any GIS website.
“But military bases” go fly a drone by one and see what happens. This already isn’t a surveillance concern.
This is going to set the hobbyist and professional drone market back a decade.
Only in the US. The rest of the world buys them. It still is a major market lose, but China still makes Huawei phones.
Good point. Unfortunate that US consumers keep getting screwed by these bans
I have a DJI drone and I agree. I would know if it’s collecting weird telemetry I have a DNS filter which would spot it all. It doesn’t. Just normal shit.
I have pulled mine apart too. I have an old one from before the tracking law and I didn’t find anything nefarious. The one I have from after the tracking law went into effect is transmitting its location and ID but I didn’t find much else even on a network intercept.
Maybe there is some way to open a stream to China buried deep in the firmware, but I don’t see what use China would have for that. They have other methods of surveillance
Sry for the late response but agreed!!
Not hobbyist. There is high chance hobbyists drone makers will benefit from it.
I can assure you that we won’t. There has not been a time in the history of this country that lower competition has resulted in improved products or prices.
There is zero US based competition in the hobbyist and consumer spaces unless you DIY. US companies mostly do products for emergency services, large commerical operations like spraying pesticides, or military. There are a handful of brands making smaller drones, but they’re all a decade behind DJI in features and quality control, or they cost $20,000.
I’d be fine with a ban if there was a legitimate security concern, but there isn’t, this is just part of the trade war and it only stands to harm US consumers and small businesses. The entire aerial photography industry is going to collapse and one’s only option will be large companies with hex rotor drones and Red cameras.
unless you DIY.
I was thinking about DIY.
but there isn’t, this is just part of the trade war
True.
Oh if you’re thinking diy then yeah this won’t affect DIY at all. DIYs are all Frankensteins anyway
makers maybe, but what about users?
Maybe they will learn drone making at least from off-the-shelf parts. Making own drone gives greater freedom than buying prebuilt.
This is a loser’s game US is playing. Historically it used to innovate above the rest, now “we ban them, because their tech better”
Regulatory capture go brrrrrrrrrrr.
Capitalists hate competition.
Competition for the labor market on the other hand? Hell yeah fucking let’s use slaves in a prison or other country!
On one hand, the CCP fucking sucks. On the other hand, the US alternatives to some of these banned / tariffed Chinese products also really suck - especially when it comes to bang for your buck. ugh.
On the other hand, with more money going to the US alternatives, there’s more potential for a US company to step into that niche once it’s open.
Not that it’ll necessarily happen obviously, but it does make it a bit easier at least.
Also, I feel like I should add the disclaimer of “I’m not American.” I wish I could show my country next to my username or something lol.
Problem is that, especially with the automakers, is that a lack of competition becomes an excuse to not invest in innovation. For example, General Motors is throwing billions into stock buy-backs, when they probably should be throwing that into EVs.
Competition doesn’t really exist anymore. Instead, via regulatory capture, the big players simply change the rules to exclude competition.
Yeah, that’s the stuff that makes this difficult. I can talk all day about what “makes sense”, but you throw one corporate executive into the mix and everything falls apart.
That only works if you have competition. We don’t really have free markets. The consolidation is so extreme that auto makers for example really don’t care if consumers want a high value budget EV. Why should they? They can make you collectively buy something else when you need a car to get to work.
I wish I could show my country next to my username or something lol.
You could use a vanity username with a flag emoji in it, if you really wanted to.
Not sure if I’m able to change my username (and too lazy to check right now), but that’s honestly not a bad plan.
I have yet to see that happen. If anything they’ll just raise their prices because they no longer have any competitors.
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Yeah they aren’t going to invest in their product. They don’t have any reason to now. They’re now the best product you can buy and they raised the price to reflect that.
You could register to your local Lemmy server, if there is one.
sh.itjust.works is Canadian last I checked, though it isn’t readily apparent.
And there are plenty of non-Canadians on it too, like me from America. It’s a pretty big instance, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more non-Canadians than Canadians.
Oh absolutely, I just meant to say that technically I am on a “local instance”.
I thought the technical Canadian based instance was Lemmy.ca even if yours is also Canadian lol
I mean, there isn’t really one singular instance for Canada lol.
That’s because, on one hand, the United States fucking suck. And on the other hand, if America produces anything well, you probably can’t afford it.
Honestly, if there was american branded stuff I would prefer it to made in China stuff. I want to stimulate our own economy not China. For example: computer stuff, small microprocessor stuff like arduinos, circuitry components, rubiks cubes, audio stuff. All of those are dominantly Chinese, if I want to find good American stuff I can’t. Someone needs to take the fucking risk and do it.
*Land of the free!
- ™
©®™
Free to exploit the working class.
Yeah, it’s real nice and all to say you want to combat chinese business interests threatening to swallow american ones whole, but then I can’t buy a house, and my rent is going up because these same business interests are buying houses in every major city by the thousands.
Then, they either renovate them, or let them sit vacant. The renovated ones get rented out at exorbant rates. And since they own such a significant number of these homes, the rents EVERYWHERE rise dramatically. And then you see all these vacant houses. Never rented. Never sold. They become drug havens for the cities homeless. But it doesn’t lower property values, because it’s all artificially high.
So now you’re paying higher city taxes, and living near a house that has regular gunshots out onto the streets. The cops won’t address it, because they know how dangerous those houses are. But you still have to rent an apartment near one.
But it’s ok guys. The government is banning tiktok, and drones.
Can’t find it now but there’s a website that lets you search airbnb listings by city. In my city it was quite interesting to sort those listings per owner… the top 5 were mostly corpos.
Those are all legitimate concerns, but I’m not sure the effort required to fix real estate prices, crime, and income equality is comparable to the amount of effort required to ban a social media site and some drones from a country that might not have our best interests in mind.
I’m trying to be optimistic about the ban, I’d love to see the drone industry take off in the us and I’d love to see what we could accomplish. It’s not a huge industry and I honestly can’t name a single US drone manufacturer, but I really hope that won’t be the case in a year or two.
Passing a law? Yeah it’s pretty much the same workload.
I don’t know about the other states/cities, but in my city it would be real simple. Just ban companies from buying real estate. Maybe an individual can own 6 houses. I’m not saying that people can’t own and rent out houses. I’m saying ban it so that company can’t buy entire neighborhoods, and then monopolize the prices.
How would that work for, say, apartment complexes? Allow co-ops (which are typically corporations)?
I’m specifically talking about houses. Although you do raise a good point that companies shouldn’t be allowed to own out of market apartment buildings. Meaning if your company is based in Chicago (for example) you can only buy apartment buildings in your area. And there should probably also be a limit on what percentage of your market you should be allowed to own. But either way they couldn’t also own buildings in NYC, L.A, Miami, ect.
That’s the problem, you’re only talking about houses (and probably in an expensive part of the country). Apartments are a simple solution to that in expensive places. Also there are lots of houses under $300K , just not where you’re looking.
I had a better idea that would allow people to buy their own homes that they are currently renting:
- Every home gets appraised to determine what it would sell for. This is done by the county and is used for property taxes too.
- Every renter is allowed to buy a percentage of their primary residence from the owner. The owner has no choice in this. It’s a requirement for being able to rent a property.
- Renters can pay as little as $100 extra per month and the county puts their percentage ownership on the deed. If the home is sold, the renter can’t be kicked out involuntarily. If they do leave, they get the percentage of home value they own.
Pros:
- This would avoid the issue of high interest rates hurting primary homeownership.
- This would blunt the impact of corporate landlords having a monopoly where they refuse to sell. They are forced to sell at a fair price.
- This would create a simple decision between owning their home and spending money on luxuries or eating out.
Cons:
- This would hurt small landlords who would have their property bought out from under them. This is actually a good thing because the benefits of rising property values are now shared.
- The implementation is hard. This is actually a good thing because bad landlords would sell property they didn’t want to manage, lowering prices for renters who want to buy.
- It would cost the county money to hire appraisers. But this could be paid for by increased property taxes due to better appraisals.
- Property taxes would go up for landlords. But this would be good, as it encourages them to sell the property. This appraisal process and increased property taxes wouldn’t affect people who just lived in their home without charging rent.
- If the house is sold and the renter doesn’t have to leave then how is the new owner going to deal with that? In either case how would eviction work?
“We can’t work on problem because something unrelated is worse and broken”, then? We can only talk about that when discussing any problem?
No, in this case it’s the same problem.
We’re talking about banning DJI because the Chinese government subsidizes manufacturing useful things, whereas the US’ approach to corporate policy is to ban anything that prevents a billionaire from getting richer, and now the US is mad that China mysteriously got a better drone industry.
Either the US should reform itself until it prioritizes building useful shit cheaply instead of enriching finance industry assholes or it should shut. the. fuck. up.
I’m viewing it more as “We have problem, and other related problem. We’re only going to do surface level solutions to be able to say at least we tried when elections come up”.
“We have a hole in the side of the ship, but I, your elected leader, have liberally sprayed a can of flex seal on the hole.”
How’s all that freedom doing over there?
It’s pretty nice, I do mostly whatever I want every day.
I’m so glad they are focusing on the things we really need
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I used to not be political but seriously fuck these people
The class war continues, weather or not you fight back.
“The Chinese oligarchs are taking over!” - American oligarchs probably
Meanwhile Ukraine: more drones for us
Ukraine isn’t really using DJIs as much (if any at all) as they are custom built FPV drones.
FPV drones are being used as kamikaze weapons. DJI drones are being used as spotters because they can hold position easily and zoom from far away.
Ah makes sense.
Software problems require software solutions.
//not affiliated, not endorsing
Paid and not foss :/
Paid is minor inconvenience, not foss is major problem
This is true I agree but it’s a chance at least… something always > nothing.
Thank you friend. I like flying my drone to help me with a lot of anxiety and stress I have I fucking broke my arm eating shit on my bike I can’t do too much physical shit but flying drones I can do it has kept me sane I swear to God almighty I used to be a “fuck politics” blah blah person but I can’t take this anymore
If we had a real SCOTUS then both this and the TikTok ban would be dead on day one for clearly violating the prohibition on Bills of Attainder in the Constitution.
