Ugh, the drones "might be" flown by eco warriors or terrorists. Thanks for the silly speculation, BBC. They might also be flown by Raelians, the Russian Mafia, Simon Cowell, the ghost of Napoleon, Nigerian 419 scammers, Snookie, or Kim Kardashian's butt.
I hope it's just some hobbyists having fun, but this is totally irresponsible. Whether they are trying to make a statement or just play a prank, they are making everyone look bad and giving the media all the reasons they need to run with it.
I think that repeatedly flying a UAV in contravention to well known law, over highly populated areas, at night is totally irresponsible. Both to the people below and the UAV community at large.
The media reaction has nothing to do with my decision.
This isn't a highly populated area. There is little chance that if this drone fell at any time it would hit someone or land in a street. A highly populated area is a soccer stadium during a match.
And what's wrong with night time? That's when the streets are least populated.
You could make many of these bogus arguments about a variety of new technologies ... maybe cars should only be driven during the day? Or film noir rejected because people have an expectation of privacy at night?
> This isn't a highly populated area. There is little chance that if this drone fell at any time it would hit someone or land in a street.
Only if you consider the only failure mode to be a descent straight down. These 'consumer' multirotors do have a nasty habit of buggering off in random directions when they feel like it: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dji+flyaway
> And what's wrong with night time?
Maintaining line of sight with the vehicle becomes very difficult when its dark. In some jurisdictions the law actually makes no reference to it being daytime or night-time, only that you able to maintain direct unaided line of sight with the vehicle.
When you're in control of what is essentially a 1-2kg flying blender, it is your responsibility to err on the side of caution. Just like when you operate any other device which could significantly harm another.
> You could make many of these bogus arguments about a variety of new technologies ... maybe cars should only be driven during the day?
You'll probably find laws and rules already exist to protect the public from other new technologies. Take cars for example:
- You must be qualified by a government body to use them.
- The car must be certified as safe to use on the road, and routinely checked.
- You may only use them in specific segregated areas.
- You must be able to maintain control over the car at all times.
- At night your car must be well lit and must provide you with enough light to see what you are doing.
- If you do something stupid/dangerous with your car you are punished.
>The media and authorities' reactions do not make this action irresponsible.
It is irresponsible because they are flying a dangerous vehicle in an area where if they lost control they could cause harm to members of the public. And they are doing so under conditions that make harder to maintain clear line of sight to the vehicle, increasing the chance of them losing control.
Drones drones drones. What drones? Did someone flew a Predator, or was it just a Phantom bought from the "Accessories for GoPro cameras" shelf of the local RadioShack equivalent? There is an important difference between the two, and I don't really like how media and people in general conflate together the whole spectrum of UAVs and RC copters.
Radio controlled quadcopters, whether navigating automatically or not, fall under the definition of "drone". The terminology is fine, and the attempt at redefinition is a losing battle.
The terminology is not fine when used in an article - this word can mean:
- a cheap Chinese $10 toy that goes out of range after 300m
- a racing quadrocopter built at a hackerspace to research autonomous operation, with a tracking GPS, hour-long battery life and first-person-view camera
- a professional, thousands-of-dollars, remotely controlled photo rig
- a military machine designed to kill human beings in a semi-autonomous manner
If I saw one of these near my house I wouldn't so much as blink. If I saw another I would be immediately relocating to another country.
And you really read this article and think "Oh, they might be talking about a missile-equipped military drone"?
Of course you don't. This is pedantry nonsense that, while becoming common, is really that someone wants to argue, in utter futility, about the definition of a word. For years HN was caught up naval gazing about the difference between hacker and cracker. Now it is this drone garbage.
It is important, because it shines light on the seriousness and meaningfulness of the issue. Of course I wasn't thinking about an armed Predator (I mentioned it only to highlight the high end of the scope of things that people call "drones"). But here are some questions I'd like the article to answer:
- Was it a helicopter or a fixed-wing aircraft?
- Was it something small or the kind of fixed-wing that companies use to do terrain imaging (think 3x4 meters, $10k+/piece)?
- Was it a cheap radio-controlled toy or something capable of flying BVR or autonomously?
- If fixed wing, was it a proppeler plane or a jet?
A lot depends on those answers. If that was just a random dude who bought a Phantom off eBay, then it's not really worth even writing about. On the other hand, it that was a model jet, it has very serious safety implications related to both speed and the noise its engines generate. Furthermore, if that was just an RC heli then again it's probably nothing, while if it was a long-flight-duration BVR/autonomous vehicle, it could be anything from a shady company doing something illegal to criminals scoping places for a strike.
Reading this article, I can't really be sure if that "mysterious drone" was any of the above, or if someone just strapped few LEDs to a pidgeon.
As for lumping everything under the name "drone" - for the last few years when you saw a news article with the word "drone" in it, it was usually followed by either a causalty count or remarks about police power abuse. People are scared of this term. Also, it feels sort of weird to call a cheap toy-quadcopter "a drone", much in the same way as calling a tank "a car".
You know it wasn't fixed wing. You know it wasn't a helicopter. These are both absurd misdirections to try to justify the nonsensical demands for specificity.
Reading this article, I can't really be sure if that "mysterious drone" was any of the above, or if someone just strapped few LEDs to a pidgeon.
99.9% of readers read the article and knew it was quadcoptors. The 0.1% knew it was quadcopters, but want to engage in a ridiculous bit of nonsense on HN, playing to the crowd.
much in the same way as calling a tank "a car"
Hardly, and that analogy is absurd. More like if a bomb went off in a cafe you would be declaring that "IS IT A NUCLEAR BOMB? WAS IT A PLASTIC BOMB? A TNT BOMB? A BLACK POWDER BOMB? A REPURPOSED ARTILLERY SHELL WARHEAD? A...."
It's just noise. Noisy bullshit that is ruining HN.
> You know it wasn't fixed wing. You know it wasn't a helicopter. These are both absurd misdirections to try to justify the nonsensical demands for specificity.
I really don't know. It's nowhere in the article - neither stated nor implied.
> 99.9% of readers read the article and knew it was quadcoptors.
[citation needed]
> The 0.1% knew it was quadcopters, but want to engage in a ridiculous bit of nonsense on HN, playing to the crowd.
Excuse me for trying to get a coherent picture out of that article. Also, you realize that contemporary journalism is mostly misleading mixed with blatant lies? I'd be wary of accepting as a fact whatever is not stated but what you're led to implicitly belive.
> "IS IT A NUCLEAR BOMB? WAS IT A PLASTIC BOMB? A TNT BOMB? A BLACK POWDER BOMB? A REPURPOSED ARTILLERY SHELL WARHEAD? A...."
Nope. Try a headline "a mysterious explosion occured, no one got hurt" and me asking whether it was a gas explosion, a conventional explosive, or just some random kid who discovered that mixing potassium nitrate with sugar leads to fun things happening.
> If I saw one of these near my house I wouldn't so much as blink. If I saw another I would be immediately relocating to another country.
So one is not a threat, but two are? (Pedantry begets pedantry.)
Overloading the term "drone" with all of the meanings above may not be optimal, but if enough context is given to roughly determine the class of drone under discussion then there is no reason to complain. The article mentions the following:
"Small drones are inexpensive and easy to buy but their appearance in recent months over sensitive locations has worried French authorities."
No, it's not even remotely "fine." Would you consider it "fine" if the media couldn't distinguish between an Airsoft gun and a bazooka? That's exactly what's happening when the term "drone" is applied to everything in the air that doesn't have a pilot on board.
They clarified specifically what they meant. Zero reasonable readers came out of that article confused to any degree.
This is classic HN autism, and this "hurr durrr drone" bullshit appears in each and every thread that mentions "drones", even if every single participant knows what they're talking about, without specifically declaring that it's an XYZ.
Don't be the problem. Don't be the noise. Don't be the stupidity.
Since I'm apparently not a reasonable reader, please correct me and answer the questions I seek answers to that I mentioned elsewhere in the thread[0].
This illustrates something that might be a significant future problem for law enforcement, etc. - how to enforce anti-drone laws. Perhaps this will lead to an anti-drone technology industry with drone-tracking equipment and drone-capture drones. With radio-controlled devices, direction-finding equipment could work but with autonomous drones...?
There is an interesting south park episode about this.
It ended up with police drones brutally destroying civilian drones. I think it was parody of violence occurring during protests.
However it still made me wonder, whether drones will become avatars for people who don't want to leave home, and how much history simply repeats.
Is there a way to track & regulate these? e.g. if drone operators are breaking the law by flying too low, then do police have the means to cite violators? If so, I don't see what the issue is - they're not enforcing their own law very well. If not... well that's a whole other problem.
When writing offenses into the law that are malum prohibitum, it would be wise to expend a bit of effort in deciding whether such laws are practically enforceable.
Parisian authorities would probably have done better to mandate an amateur radio operator's license, identification requirements, and liability insurance.
When it's equally illegal for an otherwise innocent hobbyist and for a malevolent bogeyman, it becomes much harder to impute motives to the unseen operator.
35 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 70.5 ms ] threadIs it unlawful? Apparently, yes.
Is it immoral? That depends on the purpose, but it is not intrinsically so.
The media reaction has nothing to do with my decision.
And what's wrong with night time? That's when the streets are least populated.
You could make many of these bogus arguments about a variety of new technologies ... maybe cars should only be driven during the day? Or film noir rejected because people have an expectation of privacy at night?
Only if you consider the only failure mode to be a descent straight down. These 'consumer' multirotors do have a nasty habit of buggering off in random directions when they feel like it: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dji+flyaway
> And what's wrong with night time?
Maintaining line of sight with the vehicle becomes very difficult when its dark. In some jurisdictions the law actually makes no reference to it being daytime or night-time, only that you able to maintain direct unaided line of sight with the vehicle.
When you're in control of what is essentially a 1-2kg flying blender, it is your responsibility to err on the side of caution. Just like when you operate any other device which could significantly harm another.
> You could make many of these bogus arguments about a variety of new technologies ... maybe cars should only be driven during the day?
You'll probably find laws and rules already exist to protect the public from other new technologies. Take cars for example:
- You must be qualified by a government body to use them. - The car must be certified as safe to use on the road, and routinely checked. - You may only use them in specific segregated areas. - You must be able to maintain control over the car at all times. - At night your car must be well lit and must provide you with enough light to see what you are doing. - If you do something stupid/dangerous with your car you are punished.
It is irresponsible because they are flying a dangerous vehicle in an area where if they lost control they could cause harm to members of the public. And they are doing so under conditions that make harder to maintain clear line of sight to the vehicle, increasing the chance of them losing control.
It's like saying that a hot air balloon sighting is a mystery, just because we don't know who's flying it.
Hot air balloons are not mysteries, and neither are "drones".
- a cheap Chinese $10 toy that goes out of range after 300m
- a racing quadrocopter built at a hackerspace to research autonomous operation, with a tracking GPS, hour-long battery life and first-person-view camera
- a professional, thousands-of-dollars, remotely controlled photo rig
- a military machine designed to kill human beings in a semi-autonomous manner
If I saw one of these near my house I wouldn't so much as blink. If I saw another I would be immediately relocating to another country.
Of course you don't. This is pedantry nonsense that, while becoming common, is really that someone wants to argue, in utter futility, about the definition of a word. For years HN was caught up naval gazing about the difference between hacker and cracker. Now it is this drone garbage.
- Was it a helicopter or a fixed-wing aircraft?
- Was it something small or the kind of fixed-wing that companies use to do terrain imaging (think 3x4 meters, $10k+/piece)?
- Was it a cheap radio-controlled toy or something capable of flying BVR or autonomously?
- If fixed wing, was it a proppeler plane or a jet?
A lot depends on those answers. If that was just a random dude who bought a Phantom off eBay, then it's not really worth even writing about. On the other hand, it that was a model jet, it has very serious safety implications related to both speed and the noise its engines generate. Furthermore, if that was just an RC heli then again it's probably nothing, while if it was a long-flight-duration BVR/autonomous vehicle, it could be anything from a shady company doing something illegal to criminals scoping places for a strike.
Reading this article, I can't really be sure if that "mysterious drone" was any of the above, or if someone just strapped few LEDs to a pidgeon.
As for lumping everything under the name "drone" - for the last few years when you saw a news article with the word "drone" in it, it was usually followed by either a causalty count or remarks about police power abuse. People are scared of this term. Also, it feels sort of weird to call a cheap toy-quadcopter "a drone", much in the same way as calling a tank "a car".
Reading this article, I can't really be sure if that "mysterious drone" was any of the above, or if someone just strapped few LEDs to a pidgeon.
99.9% of readers read the article and knew it was quadcoptors. The 0.1% knew it was quadcopters, but want to engage in a ridiculous bit of nonsense on HN, playing to the crowd.
much in the same way as calling a tank "a car"
Hardly, and that analogy is absurd. More like if a bomb went off in a cafe you would be declaring that "IS IT A NUCLEAR BOMB? WAS IT A PLASTIC BOMB? A TNT BOMB? A BLACK POWDER BOMB? A REPURPOSED ARTILLERY SHELL WARHEAD? A...."
It's just noise. Noisy bullshit that is ruining HN.
I really don't know. It's nowhere in the article - neither stated nor implied.
> 99.9% of readers read the article and knew it was quadcoptors.
[citation needed]
> The 0.1% knew it was quadcopters, but want to engage in a ridiculous bit of nonsense on HN, playing to the crowd.
Excuse me for trying to get a coherent picture out of that article. Also, you realize that contemporary journalism is mostly misleading mixed with blatant lies? I'd be wary of accepting as a fact whatever is not stated but what you're led to implicitly belive.
> "IS IT A NUCLEAR BOMB? WAS IT A PLASTIC BOMB? A TNT BOMB? A BLACK POWDER BOMB? A REPURPOSED ARTILLERY SHELL WARHEAD? A...."
Nope. Try a headline "a mysterious explosion occured, no one got hurt" and me asking whether it was a gas explosion, a conventional explosive, or just some random kid who discovered that mixing potassium nitrate with sugar leads to fun things happening.
So one is not a threat, but two are? (Pedantry begets pedantry.)
Overloading the term "drone" with all of the meanings above may not be optimal, but if enough context is given to roughly determine the class of drone under discussion then there is no reason to complain. The article mentions the following:
"Small drones are inexpensive and easy to buy but their appearance in recent months over sensitive locations has worried French authorities."
The objection is against vagueness, not inaccuracy.
This is classic HN autism, and this "hurr durrr drone" bullshit appears in each and every thread that mentions "drones", even if every single participant knows what they're talking about, without specifically declaring that it's an XYZ.
Don't be the problem. Don't be the noise. Don't be the stupidity.
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9107812
Parisian authorities would probably have done better to mandate an amateur radio operator's license, identification requirements, and liability insurance.
When it's equally illegal for an otherwise innocent hobbyist and for a malevolent bogeyman, it becomes much harder to impute motives to the unseen operator.
Though in reality, the authorities are likely far more concerned about unauthorized, copyright-violating photographs ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower#Image_copyright_cl... ) than about terrorism.