Angry gentleman possibly inebriated, breaks $1,350 multicopter

No they’re just much easier to see and address than drunks on the sidewalk near the beach.

Also people are much less nervous about flying things in a large open park rather than on the streets it seems…

I think this would be a reasonable reaction to getting repeatedly buzzed, though an overreaction to one flight at a fair distance. It is also possible that this guy had been repeatedly buzzed, and this was their first time calibrating their drone. It is also possible that this guy has a migraine and/or sensory issues - I have a hell of both right now - and took arms against the slings and arrows of sensory bombardment, and with a swipe, smashed one.

As a society, we tolerate far too much noise, and some of us suffer health problems from the noise, and some of us suffer hell.

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Who’s buzzed, the drone or the guy?

Trick question: the drone AND the guy.

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Did you even watch the video? The drone was in the street, the man approached it, not vice versa. There’s a lot of irrational hate going on here that clearly isn’t even bothering to investigate the facts before cheering on ignorant and malicious destruction of private property for quite literally no reason. That’s not how to gear yourself up for the ever changing world you live in.

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Surely I’m not the only one impressed that it almost recovered from such an unexpected flight altercation, if not for the attacker’s leg getting in the way.

For everyone cheering on the property destructor… You do realize you’re supporting a concept of “property destruction when public space usage occurs in which I disagree?” This is such a slippery slope! If you think the operators are violating some ordinance, support the fellow requesting police intervention (or, goodness, starting a dialog to work out differences)… not violence.

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I get your gist, but what you’re saying is that the operator should have flown it in the park, closer to the half-naked man? If you don’t want to hit people, then an empty street devoid of pedestrians seems the safest place to fly. Bonus points for using the cars to physically shield onlookers, but points taken away if those cars weren’t owned by the operators.

Rule 9 seems to have been followed … it looks like from the GIF that the man was over 25 feet away before he approached to toy.

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Right on, brother! Next, we go after people on motorcycles. Loud, obnoxious, always weaving in and out of traffic, smash them all I say! And those kids with their straight-billed baseball caps and their “pimped out” cars, burn them all! Smash the radio of anyone who’s playing music you don’t like! Because you have the sovereign and legal right to wantonly destroy the possessions of anyone that annoys you, personally.

This message brought to you by the Committee for People Who Love Watching The World Burn.

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Once again has anyone bothered to even read the article before launching into an assessment of the situation? While certainly not the final word on “the law,” the police responding to the complaint concluded that the owners of the drone violated no ordinance or law and were the wronged party.

Seriously, if your position on the matter is to skimp over the actual facts so you can call people you don’t know “spoiled hipsters” for owning some piece of technology you apparently don’t approve of then I would argue it’s safe to conclude that there’s no meaningful argument or reasoning presides in your comment. As near as I can tell hating drones is less a rational position and more just a pretentious fad, like claiming you’re scared of clowns.

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Maybe, but I doubt the quadcopter was the noisiest thing on that public street (for example, Huntington Beach is a popular area for motorcyclists). Even if he did have a migraine it seems like “asking them to calibrate their drone elsewhere” would have been a much better approach.

Thought experiment: would this guy be getting any sympathy if he’d smashed a kid’s RC car that was operating in a public street?

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Of course, 4 cyl of pure boxer power!

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For all the GRRR DRONES people here calling this guy a hero for wandering up and smashing someone else’s equipment that was in no way threatening him or intruding on his space, could you perhaps provide an objective, rational reason for this position, something a little more substantial than anti-pretension pretentiousness or lynch mob overreactions to drones as a thing?

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That brings to mind xkcd’s solution to this problem: http://xkcd.com/1523/

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Indeed. The proper thing to do is keep your head down and walk away if the children of privilege are being loud, dangerous and annoying with their toys. After all, it’s a public space and if the angry hobo drunk thinks it’s unfair, he should just buy hisself his own $1350 multicopter and make life unpleasant on another street or summin.

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What, anti pretentious-drone-owners-and-their-sense-of-entitlement sentiment isn’t enough? You really think not wanting these irksome, dangerous, and noisy toys in your face is NOT a substantial argument? Hell with that. I for one salute angry drunken hobo as the new hero for our age. He may not be the hero we want. But by damn, he sure is the hero we need!

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What’s the difference between a multicopter drone and a microbus?

Anyone, even a drunk, can make a multicopter turn over.

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Loud compared to what? A car driving by? Dangerous? Didn’t look dangerous to me. Annoying? What about these things are so annoying to you? The reaction seems like an arbitrary, knee jerk one with the “loud and dangerous” being ridiculous exaggerations tacked on to try and make an otherwise blindly subjective personal opinion somehow carry any weight.

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No, this is not a substantial argument. This is vitriol, exaggeration and hyperbole. The whole “sense of entitlement/hipsters” nonsense is the worst kind of blind ad hominem attack on people you don’t know. If your idea of providing a substantial position is to insult and slander strangers then at that point the discussion ends.

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These drone fliers learned not to calibrate their drone in the street. Or maybe not. A park would at least have provided a softer crash landing that wouldn’t have damaged the camera.

The entitled hipsters that fly drones out of our local hackerspace use the abandoned freight docks across the street, which provides a buffer from random passersby.

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“If they didn’t want their drone smashed then they shouldn’t have been dressed that way!” Nice!

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On the bright side, now I don’t feel so bad for wanting to (but not actually) throttling the dog that came up to me in the laundromat, put its chin on my leg and smeared shit or some other brown substance onto my trousers.

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