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If your country’s industrial and defense policy relies on individual consumers making choices that are worse for them on almost all metrics, it’s time to think about on worse payroll your politicians are.

Reads to me like it's free market doing its job, if you think of countries as companies. US just needs to step up its game.

People know it’s happening. What do you expect an average consumer to do about it? Pay more out of pocket due to the potential national security risks?

Perhaps a huge tell about national strategy is the fact that the owner has $10s of millions to loan to the company? US economic structure in post WWII era has increasingly focused on return on capital (and value extraction). How can that compete in long term with an economy which prioritizes reinvestment *in industry*?

> GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place.

What would the attack vector be? I’m not saying there isn’t any, I don’t know much about aerospace and this sounds interesting.

Also on Avinox motors on e-mtn bikes. Originally made by DJI, then spun off into their own company, and they are starting to eat the competition on all e-mtn bikes at this point. Bosch, TQ, Shimano, et al just can't compete, especially because Avinox is iterating at startup pace and all the rest are iterating at bike pace (slowly).

Simon Wardley has been shouting this from the rooftops, including detailed per industry timelines when China will take over, in 2015.

> the only good non-Chinese printer that doesn’t cost 10-100x as much is Prusa

They hardly have time to compete, busy as they are with foot-shooting practice.

I'm not sure what stops some of these industries from essentially being more nationalist like China, but more centrist as a company like Palantir. If these risks are as big as you claim, a centralized authority should reverse engineer the things that work done in China or where-ever and use open source/build a better software stack that supplants what's out on the market currently.

100%. It would strongly behoove the US to encourage domestic 3d printer manufacture (or friendly countries like Japan), to the point of bannning Bambu and Chinese companies. Obviously we are doing fine for industrial 3d printers, but the small scale consumer stuff is very important too.

If and when AI commiditizes professional services, it would be good to have modern industry to fall back on. With 3d printing the gap isnt insurmountable yet.

However, our country is run by lawyers, not engineers, so I dont have too much hope. At least a lot of our billionaires started out as engineers...

The western countries deindustrialized themselves though. That's just capitalism chasing ever increasing profits and moving production to where it's cheaper, i.e.from west to China. In fact this was cherished because it increased share holder profits.

As someone with both an Insta360 camera and a Bambu printer, I feel it, would love to buy GoPro and Prusa, but the value just isn't there.

For one, I had a GoPro whose sensor broke after about 20 minutes of recorded. I ended up getting 3 different replacements, all of which also broke. In the end I just forgot about it when my home burnt down in a wildfire. I got an Insta360 with better picture quality that's also been more reliable for a similar cost.

And I would have loved to buy a Prusa printer but I got a Bambu P1S combo for $600, an equivalent Prusa plus the $300 shipping to Canada would have been ~$2500 CAD. For making trinkets for my 3 year old son plus the few random other things I'd make it's not worth it to pay 4x the money.

Maybe it'll forever be this way due to the differences in cost of living but I do feel as though there's a million barriers to entry to building a business in North America, at least a business that's not fully online.

If GoPro is manufactured in China then it’s no more secure than Insta360.

If you’ve spent a life and the market being supreme then it’s a shock. China’s economic system is wiping the floor with the west.

The U.K. has just nationalised a steel plant which had been bought by China to stop it from being destroyed, and of course the economic right wing hate this as steel is far cheaper to import.

boo hoo china bad, buy my more expensive and shitty american product

China does not want to deindustrialize any country. Why do you think of everything in terms of war and domination ? China has built a industry capable of taking any product and make it better and cheaper. There is no psycho strategy behind it. They will do it till every chinese will live a comfortable life equal to an american. At that point america will be able to compete again.

The biggest attack vector against the world is is Israel and Zionism, not China. Stop bashing China. Its getting silly and infantile.

>People think this doesn’t matter, but GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place.

In what way exactly? The camera will magically communicate to the mothership?

> Garmin watches that have mapping support have an introduction price of >600 Euro. Even at that price point, zooming or panning maps is excruciatingly slow

I just got a Garmin Instinct 3 Solar. It does mapping, and cost me about $300 US.

You're right that it's slow due to a wimpy processor. But the processor isn't because they're too lazy to innovate, but because they have something sipping tiny amounts of power so that I can get a battery life of several weeks.

It’s interesting that you mention Garmin - they’re a good example of pivoting from your original market (standalone gps units for cars) once you see a nimble competitor eating away at it (gps-enabled smartphones). Garmin would be dead if they had held fast on the standalone GPS market.

About 10 years ago I was looking for a rugged small camera. Found some by Garmin that were on a closeout sale. Excellent quality, never owned a GoPro so can't compare but I used them in similar applications and they never had an issue.

I have a love/hate relationship with Garmin.

As a motorcyclist and sailor, their hardware is second to none in terms of build quality and robustness. The ability to look down at my Zumo GPS on my motorcycle in a rain storm on a dirt road and have it respond to my wet dirty glove is a close to magic as you will get.

Then there's the watches, the Instinct range is ok but I have a button that doesn't pop back out, my wife's vivoactive suffered the well known touch failure.

However, as a UXer I will say that across all products the software interaction model sucks balls. "China" can and will produce hardware to meet a price point, its not that they can't build good products.

As soon as "China" figures out how to do good UX, the last moat western companies have will fall.

As someone who watches a reasonable amount of PoV outdoor activity footage shot on helmet cams and the like (base jumping, mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding, etc)… I don’t love watching 360 videos uploaded in the raw because of the perspective distortion.

I’m assuming it must be possible, if the resolution is good enough, to post process a portion of each overall frame into an undistorted 1080p (or better) view of the key view of the action, but a lot of people don’t do this (perhaps it’s much more difficult or time-consuming that I’m imagining, or perhaps many viewers enjoy the distorted 360 view more than I do).

Just my two cents, YMMV, etc.

If you're willing to put a little time into video editing, a 360 cam is great. The insta360 tools can make that a little easier if you want something simple.

If you just want to store a snapshot of the moment as it was captured, a regular camera that you pointed in the right direction is better.

It's mostly FUD and/or paid reviewers. Both DJI and Insta have good products, but also very good at sponsoring in a way where things get reviewed very in their favor, making people have an impression that doesn't quite match reality. So the meme one constantly read online about how gopros are so much worse is false. They have their issues, but mostly trade offs.

Eh, I have a Hero 4 black. And if you as the other commenter only think about resolution it can look like that, but the difference is enormous.

4k on a gopro 13 is far far far clearer. And the stabilization is night and day. Half my hero4 videos are mostly blurry shakes and quite jarring to watch, with a bad fov. The stabilization on modern gopros is magical. The bitrate and quality is orders of magnitude better. You can now pull good quality stills from the video if you want. Hero4 can't handle anything but perfect blue sky in the middle of the day. Etc etc

> Then they started literally falling out of the sky.

Yep, something must have gone horribly wrong with QA.

Apparently (checked with AI), Hero 4 Black was the first camera with 30 fps 4k video and was released 12 years ago already (how time flies)

Frankly, after 4k/30 and 1080p/60, there are strong diminishing returns, because most people these days watch videos on their phones in suboptimal conditions (or older desktops that may still be on 1080p), so what are they going to do with your 5k/6k video?

Sure, you can keep doing minor improvements to sensors and optics, but for a consumer it will not justify getting a new model for $500.

Also, competing with smartphone cameras which have gotten better over the years. I bet 99% of people would not be able to tell a gopro video from a phone video.

DJI Osmo cameras are good, I still have my original Osmo action and while the quality is a bit behind now, the battery life and general stability and menus are better than GoPro IMO.

I've found DJI cameras also don't discharge their batteries when sitting, my gopro 11 black is somehow always dead when I grab it even after a few weeks, but my osmo action is still at ~70% after a year.

Insta360 also has some neat offerings, but their software/app is absolutely abysmal, it's crammed full of ads and takes up several GB of space. It also requires an account login.

That’s really impressive - to anyone passing through, the video is with a watch.

Thank you! This looks like it might be the ticket.

Does it?

You would think it would be that straightforward. However, accurate synchronisation on GPS or temporal attributes would be required.

Judging by the paucity of software to do this, historically, it is not a straightforward problem, or all the devices involved don't generate all the data points required.

The real mess is when you have 26 clips from a long event to string together. It can easily take a day and a half to make a 3 minute montage out of that.

Yeah I had a little script to do something similar (no video, but merging data) just for Strava recording a while back. Had forgotten all about it until this description & 'FIT files'.

Video's a bit more complex no doubt, but like you say all the pieces are there, SMoP.

Hey, there has to be a legitimate use-case somewhere. Thank you!

Got any you'd recommend? I've been paying the Hue tax because they're the only bulbs I've had with zero connectivity issues ever across several years, whereas every other brand I've tried has been very unreliable.

Hue also peaks at 20 W sources which leave even small room in the dark (for comparison, I have 70 W of LED lighting in the kitchen central light).

That’s a great list of targets to kill. Things like Vitamix should get undercut by 300 % with same or better quality.

Most of those appliance brands have become expensive enshittified garbage, or are legendary brands that have been bought up (e.g. KitchenAid used to be a Hobart brand, it's now owned by Whirlpool. Their stand mixers used to last generations; the new ones have a lot of plastic parts inside them). I have one of the original Cuisinart food processors that my mom bought in the 1970s. The base/motor unit is heavy and it still works today. The brand today is now just a label on Conair kitchen gadgets.

Some have held out. Speed Queen are still made in Wisconsin. I will be looking at them when I need to replace my laundry machines, which I expect in the next couple of years.

The GoPros aren’t manufactured in the US either.

At the manufacturing level it largely isn't, no, though as others have pointed out Apple at least still has the ability to explore options outside China. But Apple represents a lack of vertical integration for its big Chinese suppliers like Foxconn, an American middleman taking a big slice of the revenues and profits which come from the customer. One thing to note is that Android isn't all that different, as phone makers still have to tithe to Google.

One factor (mentioned at https://bsky.app/profile/rajakorman.bsky.social/post/3mqubnh... for instance) is Western distrust of the Chinese government and the regulatory barriers erected from both sides. TikTok's probably a good case study. There was a conspicuous lack of Chinese software companies having success in the Western consumer market before TikTok. Building TikTok involved creating a new product aimed at RoW which was separate from its original Chinese model, Douyin. And then after TikTok Western success was still elusive, to some extent, as the US government snatched away Bytedance's toy.

Though even beyond tech and other politically sensitive areas China's generally been pretty slow at generating RoW-consumer-facing products and brands. There's also the slightly remarkable fact that historically (and even to some extent still today) GUIs have been extremely, mysteriously hard for large companies worldwide to do well. The main exception have tended to either be called "Apple" or have dedicated themselves to copying Apple's homework: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22288221 .

(I am not an expert on anyhthing.)

Mac Mini will be made in Houston (they already make their own servers there) https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/02/apple-accelerates-us-...

Huawei had spyware and backdoors in their gear, and they use forced labor in their factories. I think they earned a ban.

Manufacturing is primarily in China - that's true for Go Pro & everyone else and almost needless to say. The point is China usually eats the design layer too, making Apple a little unique in that they survived Chinese competition completely unscathed.

Mac Mini will be made in Houston (they already make their own servers there) https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/02/apple-accelerates-us-...

I don't really use the software, not even for updates.

I copy out the footage directly using a USB-C cable (wish it had USB 3.0), and do firmware updates by just dropping the update file into the microSD card.

It's friggin' fabulous that everything is doable without having to use an app. (Also the app takes up somewhere between 1-2GB of storage on my phone, and I don't have that kind of space.)

Your statement is so broad that it cannot be true.

not on the macos. Hero9 (or 10 i dont remember) owner here.

"Ah so that's why I kept losing money!"

But seriously, safe to assume they meant to say calls and just accidentally wrote the wrong one.

it’s very much like iRobot vacuums - more expensive and less performant than the chinese competitors that have totally overtaken the market. iRobot sad story, but so behind. i have a chinese robot from 3i that fills its mop water tank from humidity in the air. and my action camera is an Insta360 that does great 360 video underwater without a case.

No, that's precisely my point. It's only an action camera, and you assert that the market is massive, but I don't see it. Just how many millions of units can you sell to YouTuber spelunkers, YouTuber mountain bikers, YouTuber paragliders, YouTuber divers, and so on?

The reality is that even in "action" situations - the situations where normal people want to capture memories of hiking, biking, boating, etc - normal cameras, including cell phones, are usually more than enough and GoPro somehow managers to be worse.

> treat it almost like a disposable

And that's why GoPro is dying: they are selling a premium product in a market of disposables.

Are you looking for Good or Great?

If you just need Good, there are dozens of no-brand options on Amazon and Ali that do 4K60fps with output that is more than sufficient for any non-professional use.

I don't have a brand recommendation off hand, because the ones I've bought have been random names, but they've all been more than enough. As a reference, I've used them for capturing footage for training machine vision systems, and some general purpose marketing videos. I'm not a "creator", so I paid no attention to editing features, clip hosting, or any of those things.

Amazon sometimes gets some hate here, but I usually just buy there because the returns process is so simple. In the random case I get a product that turned out to be deceptive advertising, I drop it at Whole Foods and have a credit before I leave the parking lot. And I have the product in hand in 48 hours at most.

This sounds like a choose your path story…

You are a country. You have to decide on your country’s economic model before starting the game. Choose:

- a free market economy. Companies are unhindered by the state to make their own decisions to maximize shareholder value. Decisions therefore lean towards short term profit margins rather than long term success. Influence of the state via elected politicians on a short term is expensive but effective to ensure you are unhindered by regulation. Success here is not aligned with the long term success of the state.

- a quasi free market where there is partial state ownership and control, but also supports free market principles to encourage private investment. The state will heavily subsidize your economy and decisions can be made to prioritize long term global success rather than short term shareholder value.

- a state controlled and state owned economy. All decisions are made by committee. There are no shareholders apart from the state. Success benefits all within the state. Failure also tied directly to the state. Long term goals are preference over short term goals.

Choose carefully. Once your have made your decision the costs to change it are extremely high and will result in societal and economic collapse.

This article is not very satisfying to read, because it doesn't explore the reasons why GoPro is on the ropes.

From the financials, it's a little of both?

Memory is the acute issue causing their struggles; their most recent quarter saw a gross margin of 4.5% (that's revenue minus the direct cost of producing the cameras, divided by the revenue). That's a hefty fall from their previous margin of ~31%. This contributed to their operating loss of $57M in the last 3 months.

Thag being said, they haven't had a positive quarterly operating income since the last quarter of 2022, even when the margin was higher than 4.5%. So it's not like they were succeeding before the memory crunch, just losing money slower.

Adventure cams lose a market when people can’t afford to go on adventures?

Well that is pretty much true. It's founder was a marketing director for a consumer goods brand.

yep, and there's no reason why a company with that brand couldn't be selling action cameras, or shoes (Nike), or anything adjacent to extreme sports

It’s not just the cash flow, it’s the margins.

Redbulls gross margins are probably 90%. It’s basically just water, sugar, and caffeine sold for $3.

You can do a lot of great promotions if the cost of your product is a rounding error.

> and their software is horrible

As a long-time GoPro owner who recently added an Insta360 X5 to his collection, I can't really see any meaningful difference in software horribleness. They are both really really bad, with ads everywhere constantly pushing subscriptions to their cloud services.

At least with the normal cameras the software can be entirely ignored, I can take video from my Hero5 straight in to any ordinary NLE and go from there, but the 360 camera requires their software to convert from the native format to anything usable, even if I'm keeping it as 360 footage.

The worst part IMO for both is that they prioritize mobile apps over their PC software so if you want to edit on a computer like a normal reasonable person you lose features compared to idiotically doing things on a phone.

Not surprising, it's a commoditized sector.

On top of that, when GoPro first launched mobile phones generally did not have cameras capable of producing production-quality images, and especially video. 20 years later, the game is much different.

Remember the Flip video camera that was all the rage for like 2 years and then just disappeared when cellphones could shoot video? GoPro is like a rugged Flip, so it took a little longer for the world to catch up to them, but now there are lots of options, and a "cheap" sports camera that is 1/4 the price of a GoPro is good enough, even if it only lasts 1/2 as long.

It's honestly embarrassing that our leaders still haven't realized why this is happening, and still aren't taking any actions to prevent it from getting worse.

Giving billions of free money to shareholders of Intel & friends is going to do absolutely nothing to change the tide. Want domestic manufacturing? Invest in building a JLCPCB alternative: automated to the fullest extent possible in order to save fractions of a cent on ops, then operated on a razor-thin margin but making up for it in volume.

Chinese people aren't the lazy dumb manual workers we have long pretended they are. After we have freely given them all of our engineering knowledge with outsourcing, they are now beating us on the free market. If we don't internalize this, stop with the silly competition-destroying tariffs, and try to compete again, we are doomed to slide into irrelevancy - and we've got only ourselves to blame.

I would want to put stuff on the camera, which this SDK doesn't do. But it's good it is part of their DNA.