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Comment by shmageggy | Hacker News Reader

> Is it brilliant or dystopian?

Please help me understand how this could be considered anything but dystopian? The night sky is a commons and a natural wonder that humans have communed with for millennia, and this pollutes it with an obnoxious and un-ignorable visual display that nobody asked for or wanted and that benefits virtually nobody besides its creators. What upside could there possibly be?

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This is same feeling I have at the beach and having to see a plane pull a banner over the ocean for Coors Light or the plethora of weed/casino billboards I see driving on public roads. We are forced into ads all around us. I'm not saying this to defend the drones, but to show the ubiquity of ads and how desensitized we've become to their invasion into our lives whether we like it or not.

It's not any more or less dystopian than a plane pulling a Coors Light ad.

However, I've noticed the negativity around anything China related, and it just triggers memories of the kind of double standards my family was subjected to when growing up as a minority in the US.

It's the same pattern as British news coverage of the two princesses, whether we like it or not.

Nobody on this site, I repeat nobody, has any animosity towards a random Chinese citizen for simply being Chinese in China.

What you call „negativity around anything China related“ is people raised in fairly free societies (most of HN) having a gut wrench reaction to whatever overstep-du-jour the Chinese communist elites (the CCP) have committed this week.

I think it is rather dumb and annoying. Dystopian? Far from it.

Do you consider a plane flying by with a banner behind it dystopian? Isn't this more or less the same kind of thing?

I do consider that similarly bad yes.

Bad, sure, we both agree.

Dystopian has a very specific meaning though.

From Cambridge dictionary: relating to a very bad or unfair society in which there is a lot of suffering, especially an imaginary society in the future, or to the description of such a society.

I fail to see how one can derive "a very bad or unfair society" and "a lot of suffering" from a QR code in night sky.

Using a loud and high visibility technology to inject an unignorable advertisement into a natural space is bad.

I don't know or care what flavor of bad the dictionary would call it. Dystopian works fine for me. Sorry it doesn't for you I guess.

You'd have to take an action to view the advertisement, otherwise, it's just dots.

I kinda wish all other ads were like that, tbh.

Wasn't there some sort of video played before the QR code was displayed? Acting as if it's an opt-in experience feels disingenuous.

And if it's specifically about the night sky and it's integrity, are starlink and iridium satellites distopian?

Absolutely. They take a common good that we have and use it for commercial purpose, Starlink should not be allowed to exist as a product, full stop. It pollutes the view of the sky for the entire Earth, even over countries which do not have access to the service, and for people who aren't happy to have their lives intruded by yet another American corporation.

Do they really "fly" those satellites over areas where they don't provide service and if so, do they have to?

Yes and yes. The stated goal of Starlink is to provide entire world coverage.

https://satellitemap.space/

Yes, the way these orbits work, in order to cover one area, they orbits cover the entire globe up at least to that latitude. A geostationary orbit can "fly" above one specific spot, but that's limited to being above equator and very, very far compared to these orbits (~35000 km vs ~1000 km) which makes it worse for communications.

Here's an illustration of the coverage - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#/media/File:Starlink_...

It's a balance I'd say. Arguably those satelites serve a purpose that ads don't.

Seems to me that some people use dystopian to mean “bad and like something you would see in a dystopian novel/movie.” Which in most cases cashes out to ‘bad and high-tech’

The brilliant night sky exists on 95% of the planet's surface.

Think you'll be fine here, suggest travelling outside of the city for better views.

its cool? common you don't have to take everything so serious. Yes oh my that marvelous night sky... in the center of Shanghai. Better stay clear of Vegas.

I mean isn't it kinda magical we're having coordinated drones form bits and bytes made of light in the sky, that people can scan using ubiquitous carry on computers?

It depends on the culture of the person experiencing it. We don't all share the same cultural values. So, there is no reason this is not dystopian for many many people.

My friend grew up in Shanghai and spent pretty much all of his time there, and told me he never saw a star until he went to western China.

What night sky are you talking about?

I think the big thing that will determine if this is brilliant or dystopian is whether it gets repeated. As a one-off stunt to show off the ability to do it, it's awesome.

If it now means the sky will be an advertising billboard every night, then it's very much dystopian.

It's painfully gimmicky if it's just a product ad.

Potentially very interesting as a way to find out how many IoT cameras in an entire region automatically and insecurely decode qr codes and have line of sight in a specific direction...

>The night sky is a commons and a natural wonder

In the middle of a big city?

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