This just seems like a silly hoax... Carrier pigeons don't go to arbitrary destinations, they're capable of going to 2 places that they've already been familiarized with, maximum.

I was about to write exactly this; I thought that the way messenger pigeon delivery worked basically boiled down to "pigeons are obscenely good at finding their way back 'home' from an arbitrary distance." I didn't think you could just tell them a latitude and longitude or address and have them go there.

However topology may be restricted.

"Connection oriented service is available in some cities, usually based upon a central hub topology."[0]

[0] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1149

They can, but you need to speak pigeon.

Or embed a microchip in their brains

-- https://www.marketplace.org/2015/09/30/mail-wing-and-prayer/ - link from their twitter that is mostly weird tweets about trying to get into YC --

pigeons don't tweet.

Yes, and in fact, pigeons coo! See: https://pigeonpedia.com/what-sound-does-a-pigeon-make/

Side-note: When i looked up what sound pigeons make, i was pleasantly surprised to learn that there exists a Pigeonpedia! :-)

Good find. I have a pet pigeon. This looks like a good resource.

Actually, pigeons go multiple places each day and keep a schedule. I used to have this neighbor who would feed a bunch of wild pigeons and they would be there all lined up on the roof over his door waiting for him to get home from work. After he moved they quit coming around, probably because these other neighbors were feeding about a dozen feral cats at the same time (who all mysteriously disappeared).

So, yeah, train the pigeons well enough and they can set up delivery routes.

This is true. I have a pet pigeon, and you can pretty much set your watch by some of his behaviours.

I suppose you could set up a network of pigeons. After all, an ethernet cable merely connects two points. Maybe you could train additional pigeons to route the messages somehow.

Perhaps they can pivot to avian delivery of one-time passwords — turn the inability to access arbitrary destinations from a bug to a feature.

Pigeons are smarter than you realize.

Go on

Clever birds just salivating at the potential for seed funds

This reminds me of RFC-2549 in all the best ways.

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2549

IP over Avian Carriers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers

After they burn through series A and have upset investors, expect a drone delivering a dead pigeon with a message tied to its foot and a statement about pivoting.

Hoax — we all know birds aren’t real.

ACtually, I'd say this is PROOF... if pigeons can be programmed they must be drones..

This is clearly a joke website but I think we could make this happen with gps neural link to pigeon translator. China will probably beat us to it http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2049569,00...

Seems to be getting a hug of death. Signup form is just sitting for a bit then spitting out 504 errors.

Edit: Finally went through

This seems fake but what if pigeons are replaced by drones -- then it should work.

Like drones which are shaped like pigeons? Like pidrones?

So pigeons.

or, pigeonbots? :-)

> Pigeon is completely immune to cyber interception

Have you considered drone attackers?

Or just people on the ground rattling a can of seeds. Or with guns. Etc.

With all due respect, and at the risk of splitting hairs, i would think that "rattling a can of seeds" is more like social engineering, right? ;-)

Unless the can is rattled by a cyborg

birds of prey are basically packet loss and pidgins are a UDP packet stream too

"Pigeon is completely immune to cyber interception, and all messages are deleted from memory once sent."

So, not completely immune to cyber interception. :)