I had to wonder how pigeons are trained. Turns out there's a nice wikiHow article about it[1]. Some highlights (copied verbatim):
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Good food, comfortable lodgings and being treated like royalty is what makes your pigeons want to come back.
Start by taking your pigeons 1 mile from home and releasing them. Do this several times a week.
Expand the training distance by 5 miles per week.
Pigeon clubs all have lost bird reporting processes that you can take advantage of if you lose a bird ... Some pigeons might simply get tired on their return journey and need time to rest. While they may normally come back to the loft in one day, it may take them a few days to return if they've stopped for a break.
Also keep in mind that large birds of prey regularly take pigeons. Inexperienced domestic pigeons will be especially vulnerable as they don’t have the same developed wariness as their wild counterparts.
The article is about the value the birds provide, and that they are getting used less and less, not that they are 100% obsolete and never used.
Seems like at least in 1999 they served a vital function that probably helped save bunch of people.
> the police pigeons of Odisha also proved to be the only dependable method of communication during devastating floods in 1982 and a 1999 super-cyclone that caused widespread destruction in the coastal state. Indeed, the handlers say pigeon post helped save many lives.
Maybe so, but could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
> The state government spends £4,900 a year for the upkeep of the pigeons and salaries of the staff ... The police handler, who does not want to be named, says: “Many government officials view the ‘pigeongram’ as a waste of resources.
launched in 1946. The area had no wireless or telephone links, so the state was given 200 Belgian homing pigeons and proved to be the only reliable means of communication during natural disasters in 1982 and 1999. Makes me wonder what more we could do to make sure vulnerable areas like this have reliable, essential, disaster-proof remedies that fit their needs/circumstances.
Well, I'm thinking more broadly than just communications.
Alaska has six times as many pilots per capita as other parts of the US because there are relatively few roads up there.
Some African country addressed one of its issues by created a service for drone delivery of blood for medical emergencies. IIRC, it was both cheaper and more reliable than trying to keep blood on hand in rural areas because blood expires and you need the right blood type.
There was a piece on HN yesterday about the labor and delivery department in a hospital in a town of 9000 people shutting down. Although small, it's a commercial hub for the region because the region is so rural.
I found that the area has a midwife service. Perhaps that's a superior service for that situation. I don't know, but do we really need to medicalize the birthing process in all cases? Seems to me that's not absolutely necessary.
But we seem to generally default to thinking that "big city solutions are best" and when those solutions are a poor fit logistically for some more sparsely populated area or simply financially unsustainable, the default seems to be that service is simply removed entirely rather than replaced with something more suitable.
We also routinely build housing in disaster-prone areas that doesn't withstand the type of disaster in question and then put people in trailers when they inevitably end up homeless. Seems to me we could do better.
The pigeon service costs $5k/ year for 155 pigeons and 3 staff, and is under threat because it's too expensive. A multisite Starlink installation won't beat that by much.
Average salary for government employees in India is around $1k/month. Just the 3 staff is around 36k/year, so I take that $5k/year number with a huge grain of salt.
One of the first computer scientist I remember learning about a decade or more ago when I started getting into FOSS and learning how these great tools work!
Thanks for bringing those memories back.
One SD card seems to weight about 2G. Considering the pigeon could carry 30-50G (depending on source), it seems they could carry about 15TB - 25TB in one go, flying up to ~100km/hour. Not sure how that would compare to a fiber-optic connection though. But for short distances it must surely have a higher bandwidth.
Sure, but you'd need to identify the bird as a messenger bird in the first place, which is made harder by the fact that pigeons live pretty much everywhere.
> Sure, but you'd need to identify the bird as a messenger bird in the first place
Why? Dragnet censorship doesn't care about collateral damage, assume all traffic is potentially "dangerous" and shoot every bird at sight. Or just capture them and release if confirmed free of harmful information.
I know are trolling, but I'll bite. India is very very different from all Western countries with it's own unique problems and requires unique solutions. If police were to prosecute every small criminal, the already overloaded justice system would come to a grinding halt. A lot of wanna be criminals stay straight fearing the police cane.
I'm sure a lot of poor Americans languishing in jails because they couldn't afford a good lawyer and just accepted the plea deal offered to them would rather have had a couple slaps and a cane to the calves.
Edit: also don't forget the police is doing what the general public wants. A lot of victims would rather see the perpetrator get beat up by police swiftly rather than wait 10 years to see them get sent to jail.
thanks for replying, it's an interesting POV. However, I was thinking about for example that case a couple of years ago: female workers for an Apple (?) factory kept in bestial conditions who went out in the streets to protest and were beaten by police, and their parents got admonished for raising them badly, with badly meaning unwilling to keep their head low and eat shit.
Also, the apparently many cases of women who go denounce a rape and police rape them themselves.
Is it really the general public that wants the police, or just the wealthy elites? because I suspect that the masses would rather be free to protect themselves on their own...
Oh sorry I didn't know I was arguing with a woke feminist, there is no winning here. However, I'll keep biting. Can you provide a citation for:
> Also, the apparently many cases of women who go denounce a rape and police rape them themselves
Do you have a citation or did you pull it out of the echo chamber subreddit called two x chromosomes?
And I am ready to bet my ass that police brutality against men in India is at least 100x as compared to women. But no, let's talk about the fictional narrative that you want to push.
Also, they were just examples. I have no doubts that men are affected too. And now you talk about "police brutality", weren't you saying they are good guys?
Police most often serves the capital owners through the politicians funded by capital owners. The farmers protest in India was a good example of this. Police tried to barricade, beat up the farmers who were protesting a law that would’ve benefited the agro companies and put small farmers on a weak position.
You know nothing about the laws, they were hugely for the benefit for the small farmers. Regardless, it's a lie that police beat up farmers. Yes they did put up barricades to stop them from entering the capital, but nobody was beaten, unless they broke the barricades and attacked the police. The farmers stayed on the border of capital for months, nobody said anything to them. Stop spreading propaganda.
Delhi police has a history of beating up protesters and Delhi police works directly for central government and not state administration. You would know if you follow Indian news.
> You know nothing about the laws
Personal attacks usually indicate defending a flawed position. The farmers participating in the largest protest in history definitely knew how the law affected them, as opposed to the govt who passed the laws without discussion.
> Regardless, it's a lie that police beat up farmers.
There are literally tons of videos police beating up farmers. So I’m not sure what you’re talking about.
> Stop spreading propaganda.
The Indian news media did propaganda against farmers. These news channels who never say a word against BJP govt tried so hard to undermine the protest that they were banned from covering the protest. They literally have a name “Godi Media” meaning media sitting in the lap of Modi.
""" Good food, comfortable lodgings and being treated like royalty is what makes your pigeons want to come back.
Start by taking your pigeons 1 mile from home and releasing them. Do this several times a week.
Expand the training distance by 5 miles per week.
Pigeon clubs all have lost bird reporting processes that you can take advantage of if you lose a bird ... Some pigeons might simply get tired on their return journey and need time to rest. While they may normally come back to the loft in one day, it may take them a few days to return if they've stopped for a break.
Create a second “home” for your pigeons. """
[1] https://www.wikihow.com/Train-a-Homing-Pigeon#:~:text=To%20f....