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DJI Spark Owners Must Update Firmware By September, Or Their Machines Will Be Bricked (suasnews.com)
garymortimer shares a report from sUAS News: News has arrived of a mandatory firmware update from DJI. Owners of DJI's latest and smallest quadcopter must update their firmware by September the 1st or their machines will automatically ground themselves. The Firmware update apparently is to stop in flight shutdowns that have been occurring. So no bad thing to fix, a safety issue. Perhaps questionable is DJI's ability to brick other peoples property if required. The "Kill Switch" option is already causing consternation in user groups.
They're just begging to get hacked and have their firmware code leaked.
To ensure your firmware can't be updated without your explicit permission. See also, Win 10.
Anyone know how the kill is implemented? Was the original firmware set with an expiration date, in anticipation of it receiving an exciting and mandatory upgrade; so the deadline was baked in from day one? Did some earlier, smaller, update quietly add this 'feature' to be announced at a later time? Is there no change whatsoever in the drone's behavior; but some companion app does a version check before it issues any flight commands; and will be updated to refuse to talk to the older version?
Regardless of implementation, this is a fine testament to the advantages of products that spend their entire lives phoning home to the vendor; but some implementations are even worse than others.
What is the alternative? The DJI drones are a generation ahead of anything else on the market ... and with an 85-90% market share, they have enough revenue to extend their lead.
Disclaimer: I have a DJI Mavic Pro. It is very nice.
see here
What is the alternative?
Best drone ever... single motor, caged prop so you can safely bump into things, spherical shape so it can upright itself or even roll along the ground. Unfortunately the market has spoken, so there are very few of them.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Being the military, they can build (or contract out) their own.
The F-35 took 26 years to go from contract to production, and will cost a trillion dollars. But drones are props rather than jets, so maybe the V-22 Osprey is a better comparison. It took 32 years, and cost $36 billion.
Unless they have an unlimited budget and are building it for their great grandchildren, they need to go COTS.
No need to brag about living in a manor. We just have houses here.
I've pretty much had it with DJI and their anus sniffing techniques. The Mavic is my last DJI product. After that it's Fuck DJI and Fuck Apple forever!
There is a good Defcon talk about this. The software keeps track with a database file and you can edit the file on your phone and override any no fly settings.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Imagine you had bought a full-fledged aircraft. If the manufacturer finds a dangerous flaw, the FAA can ground the entire fleet; no recourse. I am not pleased with society's over-reaction to drones (getting hard to find places to fly them), but I do believe in making them safer (and limiting the ability of idiots to give drones an even worse reputation).
As for the "bricking" headline, I suggest the original poster stop hyperventilating. Requiring you to update the firmware before flying again is nothing at all like bricking your device. Get a grip!
The army already builds (contracts out the building of) their own drones.
The micro-UAVs, the ones closest to a DJI ~(4.5 lbs), cost the Army (These are the inexpensive ones) $35,000 each for a Raven RQ-11B. A complete system (controller, spare parts, and three UAVs) costs $250,000 for the Raven and over $400,000 for Puma (6 lbs, heavier battery, flies longer).
So yeah, for the price of one Raven, you could only afford to buy 25 DJI Phantom 4 Pro drones. The Raven can go farther faster, the Phantom has a better camera and can avoid obstacles on it's own and circle/follow a target on its own, so they have complementary uses, but one is obviously way cheaper than the other.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Does it get bricked remotely, or is there an expiry date built into the existing firmware?
They're controlled/flown by a smartphone app. The app checks the firmware's software hash against a hash the app gets from DJI using your phone. If the hashes don't match, the controller-app won't let the drone take off.
Not entirely clear on whether or not the app will let the drone fly if there's no cell/'net service to be able to check current authorized hashes. Likely there's a 'window' of time (24 hours? 72 hours?) where no cell/'net service is not an issue and the app will allow takeoff, because if it follows most updating patterns, it probably only has to check once every so-many hours (24?). It can get time stamps from the GPS it uses.
I'm sure someone here more familiar with DJI-brand quadcopters in particular can provide more/better information.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I'm afraid your argument, whatever it is, makes absolutely no sense. The F-35 has been in constant development for a quarter of a century and there is no sign whatsoever that it will ever be fully combat ready in any way shape or form. Certainly not in a way that meets its requirements. We're now into territory where you're looking at it being cancelled if some serious progress is not shown within a very short period of time.
Lockheed has desperately tried to get it combat ready with a list of caveats as long as your arm because the programme would otherwise be in serious jeopardy of getting cancelled. There are always software updates on the horizon so that the plane can complete this mission or that mission, at some point in the future. The planes are constantly flown with a whole load of capabilities turned off or severely restricted. But hey, it's flying so things must be fine!
The hacking community have been pulling apart DJI drone software and firmwares for a while now. And the more they learn, the worst it gets. For example both the iOS and Android versions of the DJI GO 4 app have built in hot patch functionality (Tencent Tinker / JSPatch), then enables DJI to make unrestricted app modifications outside of the users control. This is in direct violation of app developer policies on both platforms. And after the community found out, DJI has been scrambling hard to avoid getting their apps banned. It is also speculated this is one of the primary reasons why DJI drones recently was banned from US military usage.
But the very fact that the maker of your product can now KILL IT via remote software? How is this NOT a major strike against this company?
Probably because it's not true and media reporting is going down the shitter making everyone angry for no reason.
The DJI drones frequently need to check for updates to the no-fly zones or they don't take off. Updates are mandatory and this will be pushed like every other one. Aside that it is in the media this is just situation normal for owners of DJI drones (which need mobile phones to fly anyway).
While my first response to this situation was outrage, sober second thoughts have prevailed, and I now see some sense in DJI's actions. They have a moral obligation to the public, (and a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders - I don't give a shit about that, but some people do), to ensure that the products they sell remain both safe, and compliant with changing regulations. The problem here is not in their ability to enforce updates that correct safety shortcomings and allow for changes in legal requirements, no-fly zones, etc. The problem is the lack of a regulatory framework with teeth - one that would ensure continued functioning of the products if the company folds, and would also forbid them from charging for post-purchase updates, stop them from force-updating random shit in order to siphon more money, data, or whatever out of the buyer, etc.. (We'll likely never see that regulation, because the gubmint pays allegiance to the corps, not the voters - but that's a whole 'nother topic).
In the old days of amateur radio, when home-built transmitters could screw up TV reception, aircraft communication, and emergency services more easily than they can now, the technical barriers to entry were such that by the time most people knew enough to build such a transmitter, they also knew enough to build it correctly and use it responsibly. Today, in the case of drones, any fuckwit can buy one and wreak all kinds of havoc. In short, irresponsible people who would use drones unsafely or illegally, are the reason we can't have drones that we truly own. Unless we make 'em ourselves... ;)
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Anybody tried to use the app store on their wii lately?
When Netflix updates there codex Netflix will no longer work because there is no way to update on the wii.
Sure purchased games still work but the device has certainly lost some of it's functionality, including the ability of most games to network. That is a company that didn't even go out of business. Just stopped supporting their own product.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
The F-35 has been in constant development for a quarter of a century and there is no sign whatsoever that it will ever be fully combat ready in any way shape or form. Certainly not in a way that meets its requirements. We're now into territory where you're looking at it being cancelled if some serious progress is not shown within a very short period of time.
For real? What government has the balls to back out of the F-35 now? Australia has pretty much decided not to buy anything else, so the existing fleet is getting older and older. The US (from what I can see) has gone the same way: if it's not F-35 then it's obsolete. Heck; look at the stink when the A-10's where being considered for mothballing.
In my personal, armchair general view of the fighters, the F-35 program is so far into escalation-of-commitment group-think territory the only way out is to cancel the fighter and dismiss every single person involved with the aircraft where ever they are in whatever capacity they serve. Well, maybe not dismiss; maybe reassign. But whatever. The "we can't start again because we're too far behind" argument must be drowned out by "you're so far behind the opposition is almost a generation ahead" at some point. But that's not going to happen.
A Delta Fan isn't a quad. It's a fucking jet turbine masquerading as a computer cooling fan.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.