A tiny forest tribe built a DIY drone from YouTube to fight off illegal loggers | Hacker News Reader

A tiny forest tribe built a DIY drone from YouTube to fight off illegal loggers

qz.com

150 pointsvezycash33 comments

Here's hoping that the government actually does something about the logging."You can't prove it's happening" sounds like more of an excuse than a reason.

I'm sure the tribe has their doubts too, but I wish them luck.

TLDR: They're using a drone to take video of the illegal logging.

I'd guess a couple of questions come to mind. The first is, wouldn't satellite imagery identify illegal logging? I guess that might be too expensive?

If those images are not detailed enough, what kind of information do they need, other than where/when logging is taking place.

Registration plates of vehicles involved would be useful, and generally this needs to be taken from an angle rather than above and requires high resolution.

I'd guess that it's better for them to have as much in their hands (literally) as they can. I think that creating a satellite has a much higher entry level, and if they need to pay someone for the images, it may be much harder for them. It also may not offer as real time as they need, whereas they can directly control when and where to fly this drone.

Satellite imagery would likely show that it is happening, but it would not provide any evidence as to who is doing it.

Much of the Amazon basin is covered in clouds most of the time. Landsat 8 doesn't have good coverage.

This is really cool.

I guess it's sort of obvious, but surveilling large areas of land in order to cultivate or manage seems like such a great use case for drones.

Wow, it's been a while since I've seen ethnocentrism displayed in such an obvious manner.

The article seems to equate indigenous people with a lack of intelligence for some reason - yet in many of the photos in the article, you clearly see technology they have is current and are able to use it effectively (they have a FB page?).

This really comes across as, "Look at the these rain forest people, isn't it cute they built something with "our" technology?"

Am I the only one who thought this article took a condescending tone by referring to this as "incredible?"

If a 15 year old white kid in Nebraska built a drone following directions on YouTube to monitor land use around him, I don't think this would be seen as incredible.

The difference is a lot of people have very demeaning views of indigenous peoples - they believe they are frozen in time (usually at the time of first contact with white people) and therefore they are surprised to hear that, no, this nation (like any other) is in fact able to use technology.

I think you're looking for something to take offense to without any reason. A tribe from a poor country building these things from videos they saw on internet is certainly more impressive than a 15 year old american kid doing the same. The reason is not that they can't be that capable, the difference is that these people have not been exposed to education, environment, schools, infrastructure, computers etc like a kid from the most developed country in the world. That is what is impressive here. You can't compare the two because of the background they come from, not because they are inferior.

I can definitely see why the GP (er.. I'm not sure if that's correct term here on HN - I mean the post to which my reply is in reply to) would feel that way, and it was almost my own reaction. I appreciate your explanation as to why, looking deeper, that it is actually well framed.

True; but this isn't some "stone age" tribe from the Amazon that shoots arrows at passing helicopters.

They are exposed to the modern world; even if they don't have access to its amenities all the time.

They understand the concepts of flight, electricity, the internet and modern techonology at large.

The village in question has a facebook page, if you google it you'll see that there are enough results like this one http://www.gy.undp.org/content/guyana/en/home/presscenter/ar... to show that whilst it's fairly undeveloped it's not exactly "backwater".

People in that village seem to have cell phones, internet access, and are not really cut off from the world, the article seem to frame it like they went from sharpening wooden arrows on stones to building drones which they clearly haven't.

So yeah, I don't really see what is so amazing about a few people in a remote village constructing an over the counter drone[0] I would actually be insulted by the fact that I'm expected to be "amazed" by that and I find the entire notion very condescending towards those people.

If you strip down the fluff of the article it almost boils down to "How quaint, look at these savages constructing RC aircraft"....

[0]http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/phantom-fx-61-flying-win...

Counterpoint: they are operating a drone in the jungle around illegal loggers who probably aren't happy about it.

I can't seem to keep my drone in one piece without constant deliveries of new parts to my doorstep, and I'm just dinking around in empty parks and parking lots.

Theirs sounds more impressive ("incredible" if you will). I would even be impressed if it was a big official government program.

"impressive" at the end this is a case where an NGO got them a few RC foam aircraft with cameras that the fly and maintain.

These aren't some stone age people, they can keep the foam parts together with duct tape; they aren't manufacturing electronics.

The article made it sound like they are doing something super special beyond their natural ability which is condescending, i really loved the part about the "bowstring" and the "lollipop stick" as a drill, I've built a similar airframe and it actually comes with lollipop sticks to fit the holes and to be inserted into the foam for support, and the bowstring well they tell you to tie somethings with a lightweight string in the manual ;)

Yes I know it's not easy to get these things all over the world, but these aren't stupid people; they are aware of modern technology and clearly can use it and they have the same ingenuity as anyone else.

Someone calls their accomplishment "incredible" and you immediately jump to the conclusion that the author finds it "incredible, because these backwards folks are from the stone age"? You don't think: Maybe, just maybe, the author finds it incredible because it's an inspiring story & technical accomplishment? That, given their own experiences as an average joe, the author (like me) can't keep their own drones together with duct tape... and it is "incredible" that in 2016 individuals and small communities can band together using insanely-awesome technology to solve problems like this? (The "stone age" argument seems like a strawman to me.)

Using a drone to successfully solve any real, practical problem is an accomplishment in my book. I don't care who they are or where they do it. Add extra challenges and it makes it even more awesome -- eg. Geography: unlike me, they don't have Amazon Prime 2-day shipping on replacement parts. I think their accomplishment is incredible. But maybe I'm easy to impress...?

FYI, to use GP's analogy: If a 15 year old from Nebraska (Go Huskers!) used a drone to stop illegal logging or pollution, I'd call it incredible too! We are capable of some serious SciFi "magic" these days!

EDIT: Or to put this another way... have you done anything half as incredible as stopping illegal loggers with your drones...?

Calling something "incredible" means you are saying it's difficult or impossible to believe. That is very easily not a compliment, depending on context.

Anytime a little guy, who is being treated unfairly, can stand-up to corporations and governments who have far more resources, then that's awesome. I think that's all the article meant to convey.

And skin color does not matter. Every little guy is pulling for all the others.

Personally I would find the 15 year old from Nebraska impressive. Especially if they were using it to monitor something like the extent of buffer zones between farmland and streams and rivers to prevent fertilizer runofff. The application is more impressive than the technology.

Sometimes the "incredible" part of the story is getting around all the logistical issues in getting simple things done in a third world country which would be a no brainer in a first world country.

The story talks about tribal people getting access to drones, fabricating them and then maintaining them in the face of shortage of the sophisticated supply chain that we take for granted is accessible to a 15 year old white kid in Nebraska.

It also talks about help from a California based NGO in getting these things off the ground.

Sometimes what we take for granted here as "simple technology" is incredibly hard to source in other parts of the world.

The phrase you're looking for is "the soft bigotry of low expectations". Once you start looking for it, you start to see it everywhere. There are entire ideologies built on top of this structure of condescension. It's really insidious!

Its impressive because they overcame more obstacles to reach the same goal as the 1st worlder who started with more advantages.

A guy digging his own pool with a hand shovel is more impressive than a guy doing it with a backhoe. It doesn't matter who they were to start with. (or how much they knew about pool construction)

>If a 15 year old white kid in Nebraska built a drone following directions on YouTube to monitor land use around him, I don't think this would be seen as incredible.

You don't say? Quite the astute observation.

Would you say that's because the '15 year old white kid' is more...privileged? :)

I note that the "incredible" language is from the URL this article originally pointed to, http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-a-tribe-is-fighting...

And what they were referring to as incredible is that they built the drones following directions on YouTube.

My comment was modded up to +9 or before the link changed, now it's been modded down to +4 or so as my comment lacks it's original context. Not that I care, but it looks like I'm criticizing word choice that TFA isn't using.

We changed the url from http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-a-tribe-is-fighting..., which points to this.

Submitters: Please follow the HN guideline that asks you to submit the original when one story points to another. Besides giving credit where due or at least further upstream to the source, the articles tend to get fluffier the further downstream you are.

> built a DIY drone from YouTube

No, they just assembled a chinese kit by watching an instruction video, like every other amateur UAV owner out there.

Very cool!

Amazing. If most of the human race were wiped out by a meteorite then we need more of such engineering minds to get us back to the advanced civilisation we are :)

Ironically it's also precisely those engineering minds who have built weapons capable of wiping out the human race.

I don't think that's ironic. I, inspired by Kardashev [1], believe a civilisation's level of technological advancement can be measured by how much energy it controls.

Thus, a civilisation that can control an energy source at a low-power level (e.g. boiling water reactors) can presumably also deploy it at a high-power level (e.g. atomic bombs). If anything, especially as sources become more energetic, control capabilities will be preceded by deployment capability.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

What exactly is the amazing engineering here? buying an off the shelf toy and using it to film illegal logging?

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