I can’t speak to the person you’re responding to, but I can share that in the time period they’re discussing geocaching was harder for many caches.

I don’t remember ever not using gps for geocaching of course.

But I do remember that the phone gps of the time, especially in more remote areas, was semi accurate for car navigation, but all over the place at times when talking about 10-100 ft accuracy.

However, I also never really Experienced any major geocaching community in person outside of people I was already going with.

Any community would have been online.

In 2012-2015 ish, I was building FPV quads, planes for universities.

(I say quad because at the time we were staunch drones kill people….)

I really don’t think you need ai for any of this.

The stuff today is so easy plug and play. There’s so many groups you can connect with.

It’s also much more durable.

I don’t see a lot of discussion by the author about transmitter (TX) or receiver (RX) choices. Which are important.

Fatshark goggles are a great choice for most people.

If someone is having fun though, I don’t want to dissuade them. But focus on the fun. Practice flying. Practice flying line of sight. Then focus more on fpv.

But focusing on how the things work (and less worry about the batteries… quality charger, quality battery - high c rate for most small quads…)

Brushless motors help a lot for longevity.

All that said, in the hobby I’m back to los nitro planes, as that’s what I find most relaxing and enjoyable.

I’ll occasionally fly 200-450mm size quads, sometimes even fpv, but it’s just not as much fun to me.

In fact, I think the most fun fpv flying is with something more akin to a sky surfer, up a bit higher, longer flight time, etc.

But again— everyone’s fun is different - however I would still encourage not using ai, and trying to understand how different components are working together.

Truly the stuff today is so much easier , no bind plugs usually, no crystals, no lengthy manual pid tuning.

But I will stand by understanding the transmitter receiver tech, both for controlling and for video, and not so much focusing on what’s needed battery storage, but instead on how the power system as a whole is working, along with things like prop pitch, your motor type, etc will lead to a better grasp of what’s going on.

Simulator time as well, while good for some initial practice, tends to be very detached from The real world experience at the RC level.

So, today was my second day piloting drones ever. I am absolutely not sure what I would need any bit of AI for... it is quite enjoyable to zip around the trees here.

I did the same process as the "author", namely Joshua Bardwell's videos and tutorials Liftoff using a remote, and now I have a tinywhoop and analog goggles.

But it was mostly just normal practice and learning in the sim (I have maybe 25-35h of time in that) which has translated pretty well to the actual drone. I was able to fly around my yard pretty well. I don't think I'd have had as much luck if I'd not crashed many hundreds of times in a simulator.

For me, the amount of thought outsourced to LLMs has been a bit strange lately. Like, I just puzzled this stuff out and followed a couple of videos other folks had made on Youtube. It's just not that complex these days and there are plenty of (human intelligence) resources already.

I remember building my first quadcopter with kk5.5, it was a fun time indeed, and the technology has gone really far

I have fond memories of SCSI. I by chance had purchased a workstation, using almost all of the money I had saved at the time as a kid. While dated, and late in the SCSI days, the SCSI HDD and AGP video slot seemed mind blowing in their capabilities.

Though, I remember a lot of turmoil at times getting certain software to work on the processor configuration and the originally installed video card which was distinctly not meant for gaming despite huge amounts of memory. (Huge in context of the times..)

Long time member / supporter / donator of Longwood Gardens here… it’s a wonderful place to visit if able - while their Christmas display is well known - I personally prefer spring / early fall to be able to more easily walk around outside / when the fountains are open.

When they have larger bonsai displays they have been some of the best I have seen anywhere.

The Philadelphia Flower show recently had a bonsai display. I also know there is a bonsai focused garden somewhere near Philadelphia that I have yet to make it to.

As someone who has tried to grow bonsai and never quite succeeded - I always find them enthralling.

Through my professional / personal network, I know someone who advertises himself as being a “Best Selling Amazon Author in XYZ category.”

It is semi niche, but I did some ballpark math, and about 72 sales rapidly would put him in the top spot for that niche.

That number sounds about right when he’s mentioned the gross $ sales of his book.

Pretty common for authors to get people to pre-order their books so when they go on sale they top the chart for that day (the book's release day) in their category.

Not even just for their category. "NYT bestsellers" has been manipulated like this since inception.

NYT bestsellers is also not a sales volume chart, there is an editorial lens to it as well

I send and receive between work and personal probably 1,200-1,500 packages a year.

I’ve stopped using UPS except when I absolutely have to. I would say 10-20% of UPS packages have some delivery issue from damaged to lost.

USPS is sitting at 0 packages lost.

The 5D mkii (or mkIV) are fantastic cameras - the Mkii when coupled with magic lantern is a fantastic camera still in my opinion.

Glass is of course important, but I’ve taken nearly all of the digital shots I’m proud of on a mkii.

(Most of the images I’ve captured that I’m truly proud of were on tmax or ektar… various camera bodies usually coupled to decent lenses )

I started to write a stupid comment about how insanely fast the focus on the EOS R5 C is- only to remember it’s a non reflex !

The difference in focal time between my 5D mkii even with the best lenses, and the R5 C with a cine servo or vcm is insane. The R5 feels instant and only ever searches if it’s been locked to an inappropriate point.

I’ve self hosted a server for various things going back to somewhere around 2006/7? Whenever I finally had access to a non dial up connection.

I’ve not always used it for anything amazing, over the years it’s been just an ftp server, just http, just a Remote Desktop, a Minecraft server, email server, etc etc. (obviously sometimes combinations, and the hardware has changed from the original - the original being a motherboard without an enclosure I would start by shorting the pins with a butter knife ….)