5 ms·

I raced a homing pigeon against the Internet [video]

ketanmaheshwari 3y ago
What if they used drones in place of pigeons? Much more reliable and leaving them birds alone.
- xyst 3y ago
  I think the speed of drones is mostly constant and known. Pick a model, get its top speed from the spec, and just calculate it. No need to perform any real experiment. Plus this is more fun to watch :)
  - gwill 3y ago
    wind would still affect the speed and direction of the drone.
- fdwlbs 3y ago
  I suppose it depends a lot on what drone one is actually considering, but I'll bet compared to most drones, the pigeon has much better range.
  - aziaziazi 3y ago
    Also - food may be easier to source than electricity in certain rural area - auto scale mating - no replacement part shortage
    - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
      I suspect that training time for a pigeon is a lot longer than programming time for a drone.
    - RoyalHenOil 3y ago
      There is a legality aspect as well. Drones are not permitted to fly in all places. Where I live, they can't fly above private property (without the property owner's permission) or near airports. Such rules, of course, do not apply to birds.
rkagerer 3y ago
Some examples of real world races, including one against an Australian ISP the pigeon won: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers#:~:text=The%20pigeon%20won%20the%20race,time%20and%20not%20coming%20back https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers#:~:te... If this tickles you, give Going Postal by Terry Pratchett a read.
kypro 3y ago
From the comments: > Time for a data transfer startup based on pre-programmed drones with relay terminals to recharge or change carriers. I know it's a joke, but I'd be interested in knowing if anyone knows of any theoretical or known commercial use cases of exactly this? If you're a corporate with a petabyte of data you want to send from the US to Europe to do some data analytics on, would you not back it up to tape and load it on a plane? Seems like this must happen from time to time, no?
- mhink 3y ago
  For terabyte-scale data it might make sense to send it along with a person, but for larger amounts there are definitely services to help handle the process. He mentioned AWS Snowmobile in the video, but they also have a lower-volume equivalent: AWS Snowball [1]. It's basically just a suitcase-sized device that you plug in, upload data to, and ship to the destination. They have some really nice features to help make the process smooth. But yeah, at its core the idea really is "pack up a lot of hard drives and have it shipped to the destination". 1: https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/ https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/
  - dr_orpheus 3y ago
    Also reminds me of the XKCD What-if: "When - if ever - will the bandwidth of the Internet surpass that of FedEx" https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/
    - GauntletWizard 3y ago
      What-ifs really need to be dated. Some of those assumptions are enough to date it; 160tb/kg is kind of laughable now, when talking about micro SD cards. Reasonably guessable using https://colin-scott.github.io/personal_website/research/interactive_latency.html https://colin-scott.github.io/personal_website/research/inte...
- gwill 3y ago
  i can't find a source for it, but i know nasa has done this in the past.
markdown 3y ago
A South African company tried to shame their Telecom provider by doing this way back in 2009 https://www.wired.com/2009/09/in-africa-a-pigeon-transfers-data-faster-than-the-internet/ https://www.wired.com/2009/09/in-africa-a-pigeon-transfers-d...
- tspike 3y ago
  He mentions that as the inspiration for the video

What if they used drones in place of pigeons? Much more reliable and leaving them birds alone.

xyst 3y ago
I think the speed of drones is mostly constant and known. Pick a model, get its top speed from the spec, and just calculate it. No need to perform any real experiment. Plus this is more fun to watch :)
- gwill 3y ago
  wind would still affect the speed and direction of the drone.
fdwlbs 3y ago
I suppose it depends a lot on what drone one is actually considering, but I'll bet compared to most drones, the pigeon has much better range.
- aziaziazi 3y ago
  Also - food may be easier to source than electricity in certain rural area - auto scale mating - no replacement part shortage
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    I suspect that training time for a pigeon is a lot longer than programming time for a drone.
  - RoyalHenOil 3y ago
    There is a legality aspect as well. Drones are not permitted to fly in all places. Where I live, they can't fly above private property (without the property owner's permission) or near airports. Such rules, of course, do not apply to birds.

Some examples of real world races, including one against an Australian ISP the pigeon won: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers#:~:text=The%20pigeon%20won%20the%20race,time%20and%20not%20coming%20back https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers#:~:te... If this tickles you, give Going Postal by Terry Pratchett a read.

kypro 3y ago

From the comments: > Time for a data transfer startup based on pre-programmed drones with relay terminals to recharge or change carriers. I know it's a joke, but I'd be interested in knowing if anyone knows of any theoretical or known commercial use cases of exactly this? If you're a corporate with a petabyte of data you want to send from the US to Europe to do some data analytics on, would you not back it up to tape and load it on a plane? Seems like this must happen from time to time, no?

mhink 3y ago
For terabyte-scale data it might make sense to send it along with a person, but for larger amounts there are definitely services to help handle the process. He mentioned AWS Snowmobile in the video, but they also have a lower-volume equivalent: AWS Snowball [1]. It's basically just a suitcase-sized device that you plug in, upload data to, and ship to the destination. They have some really nice features to help make the process smooth. But yeah, at its core the idea really is "pack up a lot of hard drives and have it shipped to the destination". 1: https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/ https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/
- dr_orpheus 3y ago
  Also reminds me of the XKCD What-if: "When - if ever - will the bandwidth of the Internet surpass that of FedEx" https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/
  - GauntletWizard 3y ago
    What-ifs really need to be dated. Some of those assumptions are enough to date it; 160tb/kg is kind of laughable now, when talking about micro SD cards. Reasonably guessable using https://colin-scott.github.io/personal_website/research/interactive_latency.html https://colin-scott.github.io/personal_website/research/inte...
gwill 3y ago
i can't find a source for it, but i know nasa has done this in the past.

markdown 3y ago

A South African company tried to shame their Telecom provider by doing this way back in 2009 https://www.wired.com/2009/09/in-africa-a-pigeon-transfers-data-faster-than-the-internet/ https://www.wired.com/2009/09/in-africa-a-pigeon-transfers-d...

tspike 3y ago
He mentions that as the inspiration for the video