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pj_mukhtoday at 10:40 AM13 repliesview on HN

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.


Replies

Aurornistoday at 12:59 PM

Even 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.

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drfloyd51today at 11:45 AM

> 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.

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helsinkiandrewtoday at 11:27 AM

> 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?

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JumpCrisscrosstoday at 10:41 AM

> 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?

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beAbUtoday at 12:49 PM

Pretty sure Pokemon Go and Ingress was played in Kiev long before the war

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oceanskytoday at 10:59 AM

As 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.

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chinathrowtoday at 12:14 PM

> 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.

red-iron-pinetoday at 1:14 PM

i 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.

650REDHAIRtoday at 1:53 PM

The current drone-heavy theatres.

That could change in an instant.

fsckboytoday at 2:17 PM

>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?

moralestapiatoday at 12:55 PM

This 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?

hsuduebc2today at 12:02 PM

So by this conclusion we can assume, that these drones will be somewhere else. Somewhere in heavily populated areas right?

muyuutoday at 11:38 AM

It'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.

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