[HN Gopher] Carrier pigeons used by police in the Indian state o...
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Carrier pigeons used by police in the Indian state of Odisha
Author : pseudolus
Score : 57 points
Date : 2023-03-28 12:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| unixgoddess wrote:
| headline made me lol, isn't indian police famous for harassing
| and beating people up?
| throw93 wrote:
| Not that different from American police. They also work with
| less toys and much less salaries than American police.
| unixgoddess wrote:
| I would have reacted the same if it were American police.
| zapdrive wrote:
| 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.
| unixgoddess wrote:
| 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...
| iamerroragent wrote:
| Latency might be a tad bit high but with a 2TB SD card Pigeon
| internet has great bandwidth.
| textread wrote:
| Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of
| tapes hurtling down the highway.
|
| ~ Andrew S. Tanenbaum
| iamerroragent wrote:
| Love Tanenbaum.
|
| 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.
| capableweb wrote:
| 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.
| iamerroragent wrote:
| Now is it a European pigeon or an African pigeon?
|
| Kidding aside, I really appreciate that you got an accurate
| estimate on how much data a pigeon could potentially deliver
| today.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| And it's highly censorship resistant - birds are ubiquitous.
| kenferry wrote:
| Ahem.
|
| https://birdsarentreal.com/
| walrus01 wrote:
| In this case censorship might be a 12 gauge shotgun with #8
| birdshot shells
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Jokes aside though this form of communication would be very
| difficult to disrupt or intercept even in times of crisis.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| 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.
| capableweb wrote:
| > 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.
| ale42 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| I'm surprised this isn't considered a bargain.
|
| > The state government spends PS4,900 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.
| anoncow wrote:
| On a related note, passenger pigeons went extinct in the 20th
| century.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _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.
| zapdrive wrote:
| Starlink dish with a solar panel?
| dmurray wrote:
| 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.
| zapdrive wrote:
| 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.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| 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.
| akamhy wrote:
| Clickbait title, these birds are now pretty much obsolete. They
| infact themselves mention it it the article.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| most propaganda ass title re: role of police as well
| dang wrote:
| 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.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be
| grateful.
|
| (We've changed the title to be more neutral now btw)
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It was substantial enough for you to take action related to
| it in the title but not substantial enough for me to post?
| dang wrote:
| I changed the title because it was linkbait, in keeping
| with the site guidelines.
|
| I'm asking you to stop posting flamebait, in keeping with
| the site guidelines.
|
| I don't think this is hard to understand, if you've read
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I think I'm too autistic to understand the rule as
| written but I will try dan.
| dang wrote:
| Thank you!
| capableweb wrote:
| 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.
| lazide wrote:
| So 'people who depend on the perception that an obsolete tech
| isn't obsolete say tech is not obsolete'?
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| I had to wonder how pigeons are trained. Turns out there's a nice
| wikiHow article about it[1]. Some highlights (copied verbatim):
|
| """ 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....
| gus_massa wrote:
| Somewhat related: " _Inside the Quirky World of Competitive
| Pigeon Seduction_ "
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/article/doo-p...
| HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21954982 (2
| points | Jan 4, 2020 | 0 comments)
|
| (I remember a similar article posted here with more discussion,
| but I can't find it.)
| chongli wrote:
| 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.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers
| [deleted]
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