Congress members warn that DJI drones 'register facial recognition data even when the system is off, and upload information to cloud storage'

[Droning on and on...]

what makes you think that?

USA companies could have out-engineered the Chinese on drones for the last 15 years but they didn't. Nobody really tried. They ceded the retail and recreational market to DJI and Autel

if Chinese drones are banned, where is the incentive for American companies to out-engineer Chinese drones in a protected market? I don't see any incentive at all. I see some incentive to rush some cheap, lower-tech products to the market to test it. But I'd think it would be at least 10 years or never that any American manufacturer would match the quality and function of the Mavis 3 or Mini 4

A more careful reading of my post shows I was suggesting this as an alternative to banning DJI. "Rather than ban Chinese drones...".

 

[Droning on and on...]

But these are few and far in between these days and I don't know why but it seems like we hit a roadblock, maybe something like writer's block. If the government sweeps the slate clean, I really doubt Americans will swoop in and innovate with consumer drones.

Just want to make sure I understand you. It's your view that, given the right incentives, the US no longer has sufficient entrepreneurial, brilliant engineers to take up those incentives, and blow the clogs off Chinese feet?

I must disagree. I've spent the last 40 years in high tech in Sillycon Valley, and while the Chinese have us by the short and curlies when it comes to cost, the largest pool of the best engineers in the world are found in the US.

You guys brought up cost as a counter argument. It irrelevant to the point i was making. Read my post again.

 

[mavic3usa]

Just want to make sure I understand you. It's your view that, given the right incentives, the US no longer has sufficient entrepreneurial, brilliant engineers to take up those incentives, and blow the clogs off Chinese feet?

I must disagree. I've spent the last 40 years in high tech in Sillycon Valley, and while the Chinese have us by the short and curlies when it comes to cost, the largest pool of the best engineers in the world are found in the US.

You guys brought up cost as a counter argument. It irrelevant to the point i was making. Read my post again.

When you add "given the right incentives" then of course, this is the case. If the government promises to not pass any new drone regulations that will derail the industry and pull the rug, if the government funds the new drone companies for the first 5 years so they don't have to make any profits, if the government subsidizes the US drone by 50% to cut the costs in half, if the government promised to go after the DJI knock-off or any other strategy DJI chooses to use to go around the ban, and if the government promises not to lift the DJI ban in the next 10 years...then yeah, the smart people in this country will walk away from the best jobs in mobile computers, computers, AI, chips, high tech etc and slide into this new fantasy world called "consumer drones" and in no time, sure we'll probably catch the Chinese as soon as we can change public opinion of drones.

I agree with you we are the best overall but those days are behind us. There is too much greed, lack of vision, no commitment, and the thirst for knowledge doesn't seem as great. Nobody wants to be the expert but only cares to know whatever little it takes to get by. There's no attention to detail and too much is sloppy. Look at the airline airplanes and the shoddy work, you can't trust them. You absolutely don't know anymore who's been working on your aircraft.

Dishonesty is destroying this country. I just don't see the integrity from long ago, you don't know who to trust anymore.

The customer no longer comes first, workers only listen to their bosses. It's almost as if some companies feel when they serve the American public, half of the people they are dealing with they have disdain for. Every single customer is not valuable but only some of them and it's a mirror on society. People only use to only hate cable companies and now they are not alone, they hate cellphone carriers, amazon, google...the list goes on. I remember the day when you didn't want to work for a Chinese or foreign company but now, it's ok. And if it doesn't work out, they move on. No commitment, people don't care if all the work they have done is for naught or just goes up into smoke when they walk away. And companies don't care if they lose the experience and knowledge they gained from someone. Together, this is not good for American companies. Looking back, it was the wrong move to allow the manufacturing and the factories leave this country. But somehow it's ok for an American company0 to have it leadership in America but all the goods are made and assembled and shipped and repaired in Taiwan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Thailand.

 

[MS Coast]

When you add "given the right incentives" then of course, this is the case. If the government promises to not pass any new drone regulations that will derail the industry and pull the rug, if the government funds the new drone companies for the first 5 years so they don't have to make any profits, if the government subsidizes the US drone by 50% to cut the costs in half, if the government promised to go after the DJI knock-off or any other strategy DJI chooses to use to go around the ban, and if the government promises not to lift the DJI ban in the next 10 years...then yeah, the smart people in this country will walk away from the best jobs in mobile computers, computers, AI, chips, high tech etc and slide into this new fantasy world called "consumer drones" and in no time, sure we'll probably catch the Chinese as soon as we can change public opinion of drones.

I agree with you we are the best overall but those days are behind us. There is too much greed, lack of vision, no commitment, and the thirst for knowledge doesn't seem as great. Nobody wants to be the expert but only cares to know whatever little it takes to get by. There's no attention to detail and too much is sloppy. Look at the airline airplanes and the shoddy work, you can't trust them. You absolutely don't know anymore who's been working on your aircraft.

Dishonesty is destroying this country. I just don't see the integrity from long ago, you don't know who to trust anymore.

The customer no longer comes first, workers only listen to their bosses. It's almost as if some companies feel when they serve the American public, half of the people they are dealing with they have disdain for. Every single customer is not valuable but only some of them and it's a mirror on society. People only use to only hate cable companies and now they are not alone, they hate cellphone carriers, amazon, google...the list goes on. I remember the day when you didn't want to work for a Chinese or foreign company but now, it's ok. And if it doesn't work out, they move on. No commitment, people don't care if all the work they have done is for naught or just goes up into smoke when they walk away. And companies don't care if they lose the experience and knowledge they gained from someone. Together, this is not good for American companies. Looking back, it was the wrong move to allow the manufacturing and the factories leave this country. But somehow it's ok for an American company0 to have it leadership in America but all the goods are made and assembled and shipped and repaired in Taiwan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Thailand.

Given your dissatisfaction with the people in the United States, your distrust of the U.S. government, your low opinion of American technological capabilities, and your pessimism about the country's future, have you not considered living somewhere else?

 

[mavic3usa]

Given your dissatisfaction with the people in the United States, your distrust of the U.S. government, your low opinion of American technological capabilities, and your pessimism about the country's future, have you not considered living somewhere else?

Make America Great Again, not my slogan but it applies for different reasons. That's what I am about to do.

Back on topic please.

 

[AnzacJack]

what is voter suppression? Are you talking about the US and democratic nations or others?

Lots of passion in this thread and interesting to read the various points of view

 

[MS Coast]

Make America Great Again, not my slogan but it applies for different reasons. That's what I am about to do.

Want me to hold your beer while you single-handedly save the nation?

 

[Felix le Chat]

Given your dissatisfaction with the people in the United States, your distrust of the U.S. government, your low opinion of American technological capabilities, and your pessimism about the country's future, have you not considered living somewhere else?

I don't think it's dissatisfaction, I read it more as angst. I can understand the sentiments expressed in the last paragraph perfectly because this has been the situation in the UK since the early 1980's during which time a university lecturer told me openly to steer clear of any form of engineering which he saw as a dead end because of third world countries abilities to provide dirt cheap products built to first world standards... and he was right, which is why if you buy anything with a western brand name now: it's made from Chinese or Indian materials in sweat shops by underpaid workers.

Skydio doesn't want the consumer market because Skydio doesn't want a consumer market of drones any more than your government or mine, or any other in Europe. To them: free-range drones like ours are an annoyance and a liability to the freedom to commercially exploit 'our' new sub-400' airspace, which Skydio would like to dominate with their hellishly expensive enterprise, civil surveillance and 'defense' products... why else sell them to the Ukrainians? The same with the designers of delivery drones (planning/strategy committee: UK Midlands based), which I have had first hand experience talking to.

Not paranoia: pragmatism... First Rule of Policing: Follow The Money.

 

[moldorf]

Just want to make sure I understand you. It's your view that, given the right incentives, the US no longer has sufficient entrepreneurial, brilliant engineers to take up those incentives, and blow the clogs off Chinese feet?

generally, the US may have more great engineers....but they won't be working on producing consumer drones.

The consumer drone market, in the USA in 2023 was 1.48 Billion. Tablets and laptop sales topped 30 billion. Smartphones were over 110 billion. Total global PC sales were around 240 billion. Software sales in the US was over 120B last year; globally over 400B. Appliance sales were nearly 700B. TV sales in US were over 20B

those are where the engineers and designers and entrepreneurs will land. They won't be rushing in to fill the void in the consumer market left after banning DJI and Autel. There's not enough cheddar for the smart little mice to chase. Besides that, the rest of the world will be dominated by DJI, and no, I can't believe that any American company will be able to compete for that market in Europe and Asia. Not a chance

I'd think for the next 5 years, or longer, there will be some cheap, lower-tech drones coming out of USA companies. Like Holy Stone, BWine, Potensic, etc.....assuming they aren't Chinese made

 

[AnzacJack]

Market is always the biggest player, not capability
Australia has some of the best engineers in the world, but we are never going to start manufacturing drones for a consumer market

 

[Meta4]

since the early 1980's during which time a university lecturer told me openly to steer clear of any form of engineering which he saw as a dead end because of third world countries abilities to provide dirt cheap products built to first world standards... and he was right,

Any form of engineering?
I've worked with a lot of engineers over the last 40 years who would suggest that was very poor advice/

 

[MS Coast]

Any form of engineering?
I've worked with a lot of engineers over the last 40 years who would suggest that was very poor advice/

I was an engineer for 40+ years and I disagree with that advice.

 

[anotherlab]

Any form of engineering?
I've worked with a lot of engineers over the last 40 years who would suggest that was very poor advice/

I'm a software engineer and I work with hardware engineers. That's horrible advice.

 

[anotherlab]

It wasn't that long ago that Karma flopped and even GoPro is probably still feeling the pain 8 years later. They can consider "re-entering" the market all they want but they'll never get anyone smart to come over and work for them (on drones) after that first fiasco; fool me once....that's the problem. Who would do that? Yeah, let's go work for GoPro and make a "drone" now that DJI is gone....

The Karma had too many issues. GoPro pulled the plug instead of fixing them. If they wanted to get back in, they have the camera expertise needed. They are capable of learning from their mistakes.

 

[Droning on and on...]

And the US landed on the moon in 1969 because there was such a robust and thriving market for travel to the moon, driving technology and innovation.

Everyone seems to missing my point, again and again... Maybe this approach will be enlightening?

 

[moldorf]

And the US landed on the moon in 1969 because there was such a robust and thriving market for travel to the moon, driving technology and innovation.

Everyone seems to missing my point, again and again... Maybe this approach will be enlightening?

why would a really weird and ridiculous comparison change any minds?

let me know when the president of the US makes it a priority of federal government, and the nation, to build a consumer drone as good as the Mavic 3. In fact let me know when the federal government directly allocates one dollar toward consumer drone technology

 

[Droning on and on...]

why would a really weird and ridiculous comparison change any minds?

let me know when the president of the US makes it a priority of federal government, and the nation, to build a consumer drone as good as the Mavic 3. In fact let me know when the federal government directly allocates one dollar toward consumer drone technology

Went right over your head.

 

[moldorf]

Went right over your head.

well, then, maybe you should trek down off of your mountain and explain it to all the less-enlightened people here. You just said "Everyone seems to missing my point, again and again". You might want to consider the possibility that your "point" is too obtuse or makes little sense if nobody can see it

 

[Droning on and on...]

well, then, maybe you should trek down off of your mountain and explain it to all the less-enlightened people here. You just said "Everyone seems to missing my point, again and again". You might want to consider the possibility that your "point" is too obtuse or makes little sense if nobody can see it

Naaahhh, the view's pretty good up here.

As for my point, it's simple and easy to understand. Those who are unwilling to simply read what I posted, nor can understand the simple point I'm making I'm not interested in wasting any more time on.

But please don't vote, okay?

 

[mavic3usa]

But please don't vote, okay?

Why would you ask someone to not vote? What if your candidate lost by one vote and his vote would have made the difference? Frankly, there is quite enough effort in trying to take away and prevent people from voting, you should want people to vote (if they are eligible) not trying to discourage them.

This is an example of voter suppression:

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