Haha, your username is ironic, you’re not even honest to yourself!

No… You need a phone you can fix if you don’t break your phones all the time. That’s how you use the same phone for 6 years, like my pixel 4a. I haven’t upgraded to another pixel because the newer ones all have some deal breaker, no SD card slot, or a non removable battery, or no 3.5 mm headphone port.

But if you keep a phone for 6 years, they need maintenance. A speaker stops working, the battery life drops to nothing, the touch screen digitizer fails, etc. And then you need to be able to open it up.

Do they work on US networks?

That’s not what I said, before or after my edit.

Did you read my comment? My entire point was essentially that I don’t care. I’m not weighing in on that.

Edit: Though, I take that back now, just because you made such a big assertion, I’ll play devil’s advocate.

Let’s say you were using a drone for surveillance, what kind of range can you get in a drone? Looking around online, it appears that 200 km is considered extreme range for commercial drones, it’s hard to find anything greater than that. That said, military drones tend to have much greater range upwards of 1500 km.

On the other hand, I see no maximum range for a pigeon, at all. There’s a maximum distance it can travel per day and a maximum distance between landings that will keep it from crossing oceans. But that’s it.

Secondly, a drone can be shot down. If spotted it will be targeted. So they’re vulnerable. The pigeon on the other hand, if spotted, it will be ignored - because it’s a pigeon. It’s essentially a perfect stealth platform.

So there are two potential advantages if someone got this to work. There would of course also be drawbacks, and ultimately, who knows if it would turn out to be a viable system. But saying there’s “no benefit” is silly.

Sure, fine. At no point was I making any argument for or against this technology. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, maybe it’s a waste of time, maybe it’s the future of aerial surveillance, maybe it’s just propaganda.

The only argument I’m making here is that there’s nothing far fetched about a pigeon flying thousands of kilometers, that’s totally normal. I’m pretty confident in this because I have first hand evidence that birds are actually really good at flying, and sometimes they fly very long distances.

Cruise missiles often use pre-programmed guidance systems, or total automation with just set of GPS waypoints to reach. That’s a pretty sensible appropriate because the nature of the device is as a long range weapon that often ventures far into enemy territory. If you needed to stay in constant communication, radio jamming would become a serious liability. I’d imagine this is very similar in its design goals, so they’d likely use a similar approach.

At any rate, I don’t expect the guidance to be the hard part, GPS navigation is not that hard to implement. (or GLONASS, in this particular case)

Also… If the US were doing this, they actually could use star link. Star link direct to cell phone connectivity is actually in beta right now and it works. If the pigeon could carry a striped down iPhone (it doesn’t need a screen, speaker, microphone, etc), then it could actually carry a communications device that could be in constant contact. I wouldn’t recommend Russia try that on starlink though, given that it’s an American company.

I have no idea, controlling an animal’s brain is obviously the hard part too believe. But I don’t see how that affects their range. It’s a bird, birds naturally migrate thousands of miles.

Well… The electronics are solar powered, so it’s not like batteries would run out. I’m not sure there are really limits on the flight range of a pigeon. I have to assume they’d be allowed to eat.

I don’t think they could cross an ocean.

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Only sane post on the page.

Those are the facts. I believe the pi 4 is what people are whining doesn’t exist.

Guybrush has it right.

That’s a very good analogy. Yeah, this is stupid. What’s even dumber than the concept itself, is freaking out over it and selling stocks. This technology should not intimidate anyone, it’s impressive by some limited metrics, but it’s not in any way effective at creating a video game.

Here’s what’s weird about it, when you have that much money, you don’t tend to work for anyone.

Why get involved in some complicated spy game? You’re rich, you don’t have to do shit, and in fact you’re so rich you can do whatever you want… with children… I mean can you picture those same people who feel they are above the law, being beholden to anyone?

Well it’s rather than being about effort, it’s more like, in the end, which of these people best understands how to make a table?

I’ve got some anecdotal evidence to suggest that people who go to the gym a lot also tend to be stronger. You know, there could be some connection between exercise and muscle growth… Someone should probably investigate that link, could be something there.

I don’t know, it’s possible that the number of people already interested in sideloading and savvy enough to do it, but not savvy enough to get over this new hurdle, may be a very small number.

I mean there are already some roadblocks to sideloading and scary system messages about safety and security risks.

And it won’t work nearly as well as most people would think.

Well that’s wrong, because I would think this wouldn’t work at all.

Yeah sure, the os gets regular updates, banking apps get updates.

But when it comes to digital devices, convenience and security are in a constant tug of war, ultimately we have to make a choice. And when I make that choice I remember that this isn’t a company phone, there’s no customer data at risk, no important info to be breached. And still the number of times I’ve been hacked: 0

Nova launcher works great for me, I haven’t let it update in years. Looks like that isn’t going to change.

I’ve been burned so many times that I’ve finally learned my lesson. When I find that I like an app, that it does everything I want, the first thing I do is turn auto updates off. It can stay frozen in time forever, just working normally.