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As someone who works in this space, the headline is a bit of a stretch. The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theate
by pj_mukh 4mo ago
As someone who works in this space, the headline is a bit of a stretch. The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?).
The military contractor (Vantar/Maxar) in question basically admits so but just "reserves the right" to use the data which is the political battle line ala Claude and DoD.
This is mostly an ideological battle.
- mjanx123 4mo agoWill the drones at least look like Pikachu?
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone-driven Theaters of War would be a tiny sliver Is Pokémon Go not played in the Middle East, India, Taiwan, Korea or Japan?
- pj_mukh 4mo agoWhich of those are active theaters of war? Pokemon Go wasn't that big in Iran or Lebanon and even there, there aren't any reports of significant drones deployed there. The only place I can imagine is maybe Ukrainian drones in Russia. Still, not a tonne of data there to be useful (as compared to say Tokyo or New York).
- JumpCrisscross 4mo agoAs I’m thinking about this, I suppose Apple Maps and OpenStreetMap are about as problematic as Niantic’s data.
- tokai 4mo agoYes, and star maps can do the same when its night and clear. This is way over blown.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> star maps can do the same when its night and clear Works less well if you want to use structures for radar cover.
- lbrito 4mo ago>Which of those are active theaters of war? All of them but Japan? MEA has stuff going on beyond Iran, Lebanon or whatever country the US decides to invade this week. India has two nuclear neighbours with border disputes and weekly scuffles, sometimes a downed jet fighter or two. Taiwan is probably the biggest geopolitical tension/war/invasion possibility of our time. Korea is in a stalemate unfinished war for decades. Japan has its own very real dispute scenarios with China. I know drone scans from Pokemon Go probably won't help in the Himalayas or South China Sea, but those regions are far from trouble free
- saidnooneever 4mo agoor ukraine or russia, and ofc people in africa dont have phones or internet -_-. ofc going by the entire surface of the earth its not a lot of places, but i would never call such a thing statistically insignificant..
- hippietrail 4mo agoI was in Taiwan when it came out there. It was insanely popular. I was camping at some random place and it was crowded with random people and families even at 2am all collecting 'em all.
- oceansky 4mo agoAs a Pokemon go player, I would say it isn't. There's even a Pokemon exclusive to the middle east region: sandstorm pattern Vivillion. Lots of players there.
- pj_mukh 4mo ago"The Middle-east" isn't a war zone. Even the parts of the middle-east that are, don't have any drone deployments. Lebanon maybe? Reports are thin. Maxar is/was primarily a satellite data company, and to say Pokemon data would add any major value in any of today's active drone deployments with the level of Satellite coverage Maxar already has is a wide stretch. Moreover, ground forces in the area would need pretty heavy jamming tech in place too for this kind of data to be useful. It's a sliver of a sliver of a sliver situation.
- WmWsjA6B29B4nfk 4mo ago> "The Middle-east" isn't a war zone. According to Wikipedia, more than half of the Middle East countries are either belligerents or were otherwise attacked in the ongoing war.
- bluGill 4mo agoEven with the relatively small countries in the middle east, a country is a large place and so being attacked doesn't make the whole a war zone.
- idiotsecant 4mo agoI think pretty heavy ubiquitous jamming is absolutely a feature of modern warfare now. Ukraine is a model of what's to cone
- maratc 4mo agoObtaining it never means having to scan anything at any time.
- 4mo ago
- helsinkiandrew 4mo ago> The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?). But presumably the images/models at ground level can be used to train/improve the general performance of Vantor's aerial (satelite based) navigation system so it works better elsewhere?
- sysguest 4mo agowell the article writes AS IF the whole intention was to: "get data for drone warfare" ...in 2021 (before the russian invasion...) but did we even EXPECT drone warfare to influence the war THIS MUCH back then? well not me -- I actually thought russia would beat the crap out of ukraine within a month (even after the failed spetsnaz attack on zelensky) the article's assumptions only makes sense IF some people had time machines, or if CIA has some know-everything future prophet (not to mention: drones need TOP TO BOTTOM view, not bottom-to-top view) anyway, my verdict: sensational yellow journal article, nothing more/less
- roywiggins 4mo agoWell, define "drone warfare"- the CIA and the Pentagon has been operating Predators and friends for a long while.
- sysguest 4mo agothose predators and friends are really high-altitude drones, and for them these low-altitude (human) level pics don't give them any advantage
- roywiggins 4mo agoVery likely. I'm just saying, people in the CIA seeing where the tech might be going and hedging their bets is not that unlikely.
- dgellow 4mo agoDrone warfare has been discussed publicly since more than a decade, what Ukraine proved was just how effective that really is, but it was already known and understood. In any case mapping the world doesn’t only benefit drones, it’s something always valuable to the military. Drone navigation is just one use case
- muyuu 4mo agoIt's not like there's a moral high ground about not collaborating with the military. Unless you want to advantage America's adversaries, namely China, Putin's Russia and Iran's current regime. There's always this implicit, sometimes explicit, "war bad" childish political philosophy in posts like this. In reality war is a given and you have to be prepared to have the upper hand.
- beezlewax 4mo ago"War is a given" if your foreign policies dictate that outcome. It's not something always unavoidable but it isn't inevitable either. The United States is one pretty warmongerish nation by any account.
- bluGill 4mo ago> The United States is one pretty warmongerish nation by any account. Compared to other modern nations, but compared to history vary peaceful.
- drfloyd51 4mo agoWar is bad. And our reality isn’t some unchanging truth. Our actions and choices, or apathy, help shape our reality. It is not childish to aspire to be better.
- muyuu 4mo agoYou can explain that to the Ukrainians and tell them how they shouldn't have American technical superiority like Starlink and the American AI and data in their drones to survive another day.
- drfloyd51 4mo agoI reread my comment. Nowhere did I suggest countries don’t defend themselves. Nor did I say we shouldn’t make war. We should minimize war and try other alternatives. And maybe try diplomacy and longer term thinking. Plus governments should value the governed. But countries and people always have the right to defend themselves from attackers as they see fit.
- drfloyd51 4mo ago> The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver. Currently active theaters. And now there are detailed locations of our cities. We might not get killbots today but we will get pacificationbots.
- pera 4mo agoI remember reading in the news that Pokémon Go was quite popular in Palestine. If GP has access to this dataset it would be interesting to know how sparse is the data in that area.
- btbuildem 4mo agoIf the data was spatial - shapes and layouts of buildings and streets and such - that dataset is no longer current.
- SecretDreams 4mo ago:(
- ddejohn 4mo agoDeeply sickening that modern society is such that we have to make room in our brains for objectively outlandish connections like these. That a children's cartoon and game about cute little companions has to in any way be involved in the same sentence as the flattening of a city and genocide is just... pure insanity. The world has truly, collectively, lost its fucking mind.
- lukan 4mo ago"The world has truly, collectively, lost its fucking mind." What time you have in mind, that was really better? (I believe the 90s were at least way more optimistic)
- 4mo ago
- hsuduebc2 4mo agoSo by this conclusion we can assume, that these drones will be somewhere else. Somewhere in heavily populated areas right?
- chinathrow 4mo ago> The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?). For now.
- beAbU 4mo agoPretty sure Pokemon Go and Ingress was played in Kiev long before the war
- sciencejerk 4mo agoThis is a good point. Legacy data might be the most valueable here
- KaiserPro 4mo agonot really, in war, where there has been lots of changes, the maps degrade pretty quickly.
- pj_mukh 4mo agoGood thing we’re not selling this data to the Russians?
- iwontberude 4mo agoYeah they just exfiltrated it for free.
- moralestapia 4mo agoThis is a massively weak argument. It's like its own strawman, one does not see this often, lol. If you train a soldier in the US, is he unable to do those things outside the US?
- Aurornis 4mo agoEven the Pokémon Go world model headlines were stretching the reality of what the model captured. If you’ve played the game, the scanning function is only for what they call Pokestops: These are points of interest that you can walk to and get items in the game. The game gives you points if you walk in a circle around one and take a short video. They’re relatively sparse. At most, they captured some 3D models of some things like signs, small landmarks (up close) and the fronts of some buildings. The images captured by something like Google Maps are a million times more useful for someone trying to construct a world model with a lot of coverage. The Pokémon Go captures would be useful if you wanted something like a detailed 3D scan of the sign in front the student building or something.
- tim333 4mo agoAside from the scanning function, they likely have many geolocated images from people catching pokemon in AR mode.
- Aurornis 4mo agoSource? If this is happening it would be easy to detect by the upload bandwidth spiking during AR mode. The 3D scan mode is a specific feature you have to use in the app that uploads 100s of megabytes afterward. It advises you to go on WiFi to do it. If the AR mode was secretly uploading images that would be a scandal in itself.
- oe 4mo agoI don’t think people who play a lot use the AR mode when catching Pokémon. It’s easier without it, and saves some battery. But I could be mistaken.
- nonameiguess 4mo agoReaders here really need to learn how to cut through hype better than they do. Pokemon go data is limited in far more ways. Many points of interest couldn't even be scanned like this because they were mural on the sides of buildings and don't even have more than one side. At least at first, there was no punishment for not actually scanning anything at all. You could walk in a circle with your phone pointed at the ground and it would still count that and give you points. People played in the dark or in crowds that didn't want to be filmed and this was the only way Niantic could make a feature like this that awarded prizes palatable to everyone. Beyond that, the points of interest don't even all exist. Plenty of the original database from Ingress is still present on the PoGo maps in Dallas and much of it hasn't existed in the real world for a decade, but players have no incentive to remove them because the more that exist in the game, the more you can get from playing since they're the points that spawn everything you might want to collect while playing. This became especially noticeable during the Black Lives Matter hubbub a decade back when old monuments to Civil War heroes erected during the Civil Rights era were torn down. All of those were POI in Ingress and PoGo and they still are, but they're gone from the real world. I feel like users and readers instinctively know these limitations. We work with digital maps all the time that are out-of-date. Google and Apple don't and can't know any and all road closure and vehicle accidents in real time. Your car's radar road mapping service is as up-to-date as anything, but you still may be the first person to ever encounter a sinkhole or pothole that just appeared and it won't be on the map until you discover it. Satellite data is even more out of date because it can't be as frequently updated. There aren't anywhere near as many sensors in orbit or aerially as there are on the ground. I haven't played PoGo in a while, but Niantic used to have human moderators and also tried to crowd-source some quality control on these world models because they knew 99% of the scans they received were bunk, either of nothing, the wrong thing, the right thing but in the dark or from an obstructed angle. I have no idea how good a job they ever did of cleaning that up, but it's a difficult task and it's never done because the world is always changing. There's only so much you can do here. Technology isn't magic.
- red-iron-pine 4mo agoi thought Maxar was mostly 3d images based on satellite inference. 1/2 of a pixel difference in a morning vs. noon vs. night sat photo can determine shadow and therefore height, etc. etc. rapid 3d modeling of topography and cityscapes + supplementation with other data, e.g. pokemon. But ultimately that's supplementation, not the main effort.
- 650REDHAIR 4mo agoThe current drone-heavy theatres. That could change in an instant.
- fsckboy 4mo ago>As someone who works in this space, the headline is a bit of a stretch. The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?) are you saying that drone training in quiet residential neighborhoods is not training? are you saying self driving cars can only drive in theaters where they've been trained, because autonomous training is always specific by neighborhood? are you saying that if a particular region has some novel terrain that all previous training must be discarded?
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- doctorpangloss 4mo agoVantar: "None of these places in our training data are in active theaters of war!" Also Vantar: "The superpower of generative AI is that data in one task generalizes to other tasks!"
- FrustratedMonky 4mo ago""As someone who works in this space, the headline is a bit of a stretch. The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?)."" Can you elaborate? GPS can be faulty in cities. Pokémon Go scans, are primarily in cities. The mapping in the article, is specifically saying to use visual cues when GPS is faulty. How is this not directly 1-1 overlapping, the gap and the solution.
- KaiserPro 4mo agoVPSs are much more effective at navigation at ground level in cities compared to GPS because of multi-path interference. However that data has a half life and needs to be refreshed. For flying drones, ground level data is really not that useful. mainly because you can't see it, because its obscured by trees, building and clouds. But, this is not a new thing. Google, Apple, facebook and niantic all have VPSs as do a bunch of other startups. For Drones you will probably need SLAM to capture the map, and then once you have the initial map, you can keep it updated. You can experiment at home using https://github.com/colmap https://github.com/colmap
- FrustratedMonky 4mo agoI had assumed this was referring to street level flying drones. Like you see in drone races. But with a little bomb attached. Even with half life. That could be years. Depending on changes. Old neighborhoods probably haven't changed.. And, not sure I read that deal had a cutoff, or not. Could they continue getting updates. ?
- KaiserPro 4mo agoIf they are, then SLAM/object avoidance is pretty much the way forward. The issue you have there is you need a high shutter speed with no rolling shutter to get good reading.
- appplication 4mo agoInterestingly, I have some weirdly relevant direct experience to share here. Pokémon Go was released at the beginning of July 2016. A week later, the Air Force kicked off its Red Flag exercise in Nellis AFB outside of Vegas. For the several thousand active duty folks participating, this is a month-long TDY from their normal base to Vegas. The premise is a large-scale war simulation, and it encompasses essentially all major wartime functions. I was directly involved in supporting drone operations (including live strikes) during this exercise. The thing that’s funny about your comment is that because Pokémon go was just launched a week prior, a huge percentage of the participants were playing it in their downtime between exercises. You have to understand: these are thousands of 20/30-somethings (and occasionally even teenagers), meeting back up with friends from all over the world in Vegas. On and off base, people are socializing, having fun, and playing games. While phones were limited to outside of SCIFs, most of the base had no such restrictions. I recall wandering around base at 2am with friends playing it. What’s funny is the same was happening with our deployed friends as well at the same time. This was a game that all their friends back home were playing, and when deployed, you need all the morale you can get. There were technically OPSEC policies this all probably violated but this was before any blowback from Strava accidentally revealing military bases or other similar incidents, so there was no specific guidance or moratorium on it. All this to say, I understand what you’re trying to arrive at via deduction, but I think your understanding of the world in this case may be a bit too limited to meaningfully speak to this. That said, is the headline sensationalist? Probably.
- john_strinlai 4mo agomilitary folk love their acronyms! i had no idea what "TDY" was. for others like me who may not know their military acronyms: AFB = air force base TDY = temporary duty SCIF = sensitive compartmented information facility OPSEC = operational security
- appplication 4mo agoHa certainly, and thank you for translating! Weirdly my first experience with the term TDY came from an internship at the Red Cross, where I showed up and they informed me my manager would be gone for the entirety of my internship “on TDY”. I had no idea what I meant, until months later I learned she was on maternity leave. I’ve never heard it used that way since, but it’s always stuck with me. In the military it’s basically whenever they send you off on training or even deployment can be considered a type of TDY. Usually they’re pretty competitive to get selected for, as it’s a huge break from daily monotony, and often comes with some relatively significant financial incentive (hazard pay, tax free income, per diem, relocation $).