this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
368 points (99.7% liked)

A Boring Dystopia

17551 readers
329 users here now

Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.

Rules (Subject to Change)

--Be a Decent Human Being

--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title

--If a picture is just a screenshot of an article, link the article

--If a video's content isn't clear from title, write a short summary so people know what it's about.

--Posts must have something to do with the topic

--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.

--No NSFW content

--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Privacy groups warn that flying plate readers could expand surveillance far beyond roadside cameras.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world -1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I think you're assuming the police would use the drones to kamikaze blow things up, leaving the fiber-optic behind.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

In practical terms, drones can't respool their fiberoptic tether - in any dynamic environment, the fiber will at some point become entangled preventing it from being retracted. While there are prototype systems that use Power Over Fiber to keep a drone (and usually it's cable to prevent entangling) aloft indefinitely, all of those I'm aware of have an extremely limited weight capacity (far too little to support a decent optical setup) and aren't much of a concern.

Otherwise, a pursuit drone with an optical tether is a poor solution; it will leave fiber strewn behind it, the fiber is extremely vulnerable to accidental damage from something like a car or being wrapped around a sharp edge, has limited range and requires the base station to be static (so one could simply Hit Da Bricks their way out of a pursuit). There's also almost never a concern about wide area jamming in the civilian locales that these might be deployed in, so there's no real reason to use fiber instead of military style frequency-hopping radios.

That hypothetical microwave cannon would be an equal threat to both (if it exists), and if someone deploys a jammer to evade pursuit you can simply identify the epicenter of the disruption and follow them that way (something the FCC does regularly). And that's ignoring that there are AI-enhanced systems that can follow a target autonomously until the drone is able to reestablish a connection to the controller.

Honestly, birdshot and other drones are probably going to be the best counter to these systems.

[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I wish you made this comment a while ago, because at this point I'm done discussing this due to all the bad faith shenanigans I've been getting here, so I'm not even going to bother reading it purely due to exhaustion.

Have a good one.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Eeh, fair enough I suppose. Basically optical fiber is impractical for police use, but these drones are a great use case for frequency hopping radios like what's used in Ukraine.

Unfortunately, that means the most likely counter to these available to the average person is going to be shotguns and flying other drones into them.

[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My main irritation that spurred the comment you replied to is in response to "heheheh drone interception is so easy, I personally invented 500 techniques."

I'm not a drone expert. Maybe you are. But that person clearly is not.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Oh no for sure, that guy's talking nonsense. You can build a directed and relatively quite high power microwave antenna at home no problem - but building an n-tron (I'll be fucked if I can remember which type of '-tron' it is, I confess. Gravitron?) with enough power to take out a drone from more than a few meters away is well beyond what's feasible to construct by yourself at home.

[–] greedytacothief@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think you're assuming that fiberoptic isn't going to get caught on shit all the time.

[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Is there nothing to get caught on in Ukraine? Or are you just introducing an irrelevant point?

[–] greedytacothief@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

??? We're talking about the feasibility of using fiberoptic cables to control drones that can survey entire communities. How is that not relevant? Yes there are systems that can recover the cable. But there's lots of shit for it to get caught on in a town. Like I don't know what you're arguing for.

[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You seem to be asserting fiber optics are impractical for drone use. I point to the entire invasion of Ukraine in recent years.

Your move.

[–] greedytacothief@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Flock drones are equipped with wireless modems (4 of them), because it's significantly more practical for the use case. Maybe that will change if people start jamming them. But then it will be up to municipalities to decide if it's worthwhile to use fiberoptic in their town.

[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago

Yep, we'll see how it goes.