Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191211-crows-could-be-the-smartest-animal-other-than-primates <comment><USER2> When I was a child, I'd spend a lot of time at my grandfathers farm, and one summer he took in an injured crow that hurt its wing.

For some strange reason, he named all of his animals Jack, cats, dogs and now crows. So we'd go out in the morning and my grandfather would call out "Jack" and the Dog would come running down the yard, and then next thing you'd see the crow hopping down the yard after the dog. It would arrive and wait for him to pick it up with his hand and it would sit on his shoulder while he fed it nuts and seeds. Jack the dog and Jack the crow would also hang out together and play. It also would be very wary of other visitors and knew to leave the house if it was going to go to the toilet.

This went on for maybe a full year until it decided to just fly off, but throughout that time it really opened my eyes to how smart animals could actually be, and is a really fond memory of mine.

<comment><USER3> Crows also have vocal chords capable of producing human language, and - similar to parrots - they can learn human phrases in the right conditions.

My partner used to volunteer at the local Wildcare and they had an injured crow resident that they couldn't release named Da Vinci. Da Vinci would always greet visitors with "Hello! How are you? How are you?"

<comment><USER4> I was staying in a hostel in the Philippines and they had a pet crow that would greet you, but he'd also fuck with you - or at least me. He'd say "Come here" over and over until I went over to him, then he'd turn away from me when I got there. As soon as I turned back away he'd say "come here" again. Funny little shit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Crows are amazingly intelligent animals.

My GF and I went to the beach about a month ago and took our dog.

The crows weren't frightened at ALL of our dog. They realized they could basically just 'float' up in the air when he came by using the breeze.

The fact that they were amazingly calm about it was really telling.

Second. We hid our stuff under a blanket. They realize it's still there as they have item persistence. So they lifted up the blanket, went into our bag, then started opening up everything.

They opened up lids. They went through my girlfriends purse. They took out all the items from her purse. They took the socks out of my shoes. They opened plastic containers.

They systematically went through all our belongings.

And BOY did they score. All our dogfood. All of our leftover lunch, etc.

<comment><USER6> Yeap. Food and valuables have to be toddler-proofed around crows. They can also steal your wallet or your keys if you leave them unsecured.

And, damn, they're as good as human thieves at reading situations for opportunism.

<comment><USER7> I was in Nepal having breakfast. Some crows are sitting there watching me eat. I look down to read my book, and in not more than a few seconds, I hear the clinking of dishes. I look up and the crows are flying off with my toast and jam. It was right in front of me, but they were quick enough to get in and out before I could react.

I realized that they are probably aware of my lack of attention to my food and that their in-built modeling of other agents had given them an advantage in this situation. I thought it was pretty impressive.

<comment><USER8> I sat and watched a raven (majestic and BIG, if you've never seen one) at Yellowstone Park for a few minutes.

It was a big parking lot outside the gift shop, and some visitor had parked his motorcycle there. Pannier bags on the back.

The raven was sitting on one bag, actively working the zipper open. About a foot of zipper.

Which is pretty impressive, but the more impressive thing was _how_.

It would worry it for a couple seconds, tugging it a bit farther open, then stop, lift its head, and evaluate its surroundings.

If it didn't see anyone nearby, again with the zipper.

... I gained a new level of respect for corvids that day.

<comment><USER9> Speaking of corvids. Magpies are ones of the more social birds, I'm always amazed how vocal and varied their communications are. You could teach them to speak simple phrases. They can engage in gang violence (especially between two groups of juveniles). Magpies can establish "friendship" with crows if it helps them scavenge food.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We have crows and jackrabbits in our neighborhood. You drive down the road toward a bunch (I think they prefer the term "murder") of crows having a meeting in the middle of the road. They'll eventually start nonchalantly strolling to the side at a calm, measured pace perfectly timed to just barely get out of the way as you pass and stroll back again, no feathers ruffled.

Jackrabbits will be sitting safely in the grass on the side of the road, see you coming, watch until you're about to pass, have a panic attack, and sprint in front of your car just as you pass in order to "escape". I never slow down for crows. They know what they're doing. I slow down for my fellow mammals, jackrabbits, because they're nitwits. All I can say, looking at these birds and these rabbits, is: that asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and took out the competition sure was a lucky break for us.

<comment><USER11> To be fair though, birds have had to adapt long ago to evaluating the movement of very fast moving objects, while rabbits and most mammals have not really had to cope with fast speeds until humans invented cars just a century ago.

<comment><USER12> Are you forgetting the birds of prey?

<comment><USER13> Where I live, an island right by the mainland, birds of prey are not allowed. If one shows up, the crows will all take to the air, maybe fifty to a hundred of them, and will yell and chase the bird of prey until it leaves the island. Once it is over water, they will give a few last screams and turn around and go back to their business.

I've seen a bird of prey try to dive and swoop low over the land to evade them. They'll follow, some diving down low after it and some at a distance to keep an eye on it, until it's gone.

We basically have a crow air force keeping all the other birds and little mammals safe.

<comment><USER14> There are many bird species that do the same. Last year in Rotterdam, Netherlands they released a trained American bald eagle from a highrise building to fly to a designated spot across the river. It never arrived there as it was attacked from all sides by other birds, mostly seagulls, and chased across the city. It took hours to find the eagle, and when they did the poor beast was exhausted.

<comment><USER15> Well, a bald eagle is a glorified seagull, a golden eagle would've fared better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Previously I heard about crows in Japan leaving nuts on the way of the cars to crash them when traffic lights are red and collecting them the next cycle. This summer I witnessed the exact same thing when I was driving through a particularly jammy traffic light here in Europe.

Are these crows inventing the method over and over again independently, like scientists finding the same thing at the same time in different parts of the world? Is this some very basic instinct that the crows evolved into? Are they teaching each other and now the Euro crows using Japanise tech? Fascinating creatures.

<comment><USER17> I wonder if what makes humans "intelligent" is exactly this. Plus we have a 70-90 years of life. Which is long enough to learn and do stuff, compare that to 10-15 years for your average crow.

We start bombarding babies with information since a very early age. Parents, are incentivized to teach their babies how to talk, walk, read, write, do stuff, eat, sing, etc... The amount of cognitive exercise is insane. And a human will only be able to "say" something useful until he is 7-8 year old. He's kinda of a "retard" before that. That's 7-8 years of training just to get started.

Then humans get bombarded with education: Math, Physics, Language, Writing, Sports, etc... And they are a strict about going to school and performing well. That would take another 12-15 years of your life to, hopefully, learn something useful to society. Add to that 3-4 years of learning in the job, and a human is only able to bring food to the table after 25-26 years of learning and training.

That's a hell lot of time. No other animals in the wild are given this chance. Let alone their environments and their physical capacities are taken into consideration. We judge animal intelligence by comparing it to our self- architectured modern environment.

tl;dr: Humans might not be smart after all. It might be that we have been lucky that our ancestors have started the ball rolling and we have had enough time during our lifetime to make up for the initial investment of learning.

<comment><USER18> Sounds like a good theory, until you think about animals like parrots and turtles. Both of those have lifespans that are about as long as that of humans, and no doubt they are very intelligent (esp. pronounced with parrots), but not smart enough to be able to support your hypothesis.

<comment><USER17> How so? My hypothesis is that if a human is not exposed to this curricula of learning, he'll be close to these animals in intelligence. I don't know of any such humans. I also don't know of any such parrot that was given a learning program for 25 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Crows are known to give "presents" to humans they like, such as dropping small pieces of metal they picked up, or worms. Also, crows have very rich tribal behaviours going on. There's a town close to mine called Husum (in North Germany) where there's a multi-year battle going on between crows in the park. You immediately notice it by the noise, and in fact by dead crows lying on the ground.

<comment><USER20> Cats tend to bring gifts too.

My grandmother used to receive that of dead moles, freshly caught mice and what have you, invariably placed dead center on her pillow. She wasn't a fan of that cat before, and she didn't like it much better after. No idea why.

<comment><USER21> Cats are responsible for killing up to 25 billion animals annually and have directly contributed to the extinction of at least 33 different species.

Growing up our family cat brought us a constant stream of rabbits, birds, and moles. It is actually a problem that nobody talks about, because cats are cute.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife)

<comment><USER22> To me it seems like everybody talks about it. I've lived in the US, Australia, and now Sweden, and almost everyone seems to have some sort of awareness of and opinion on this issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's fascinating that intelligence exists in different clades & phylum of animals: crows, octopus, apes etc. It suggests intelligence is not very progressive, in evolution. It advances & recedes, and evolution can find multiple paths to it from various starting point. It doesn't take a mammalian brain.

Who know what other animal intelligence exists today, or in the past.

The current crop of species (us excepted) may not be the smartest to have existed, problem solving intelligence like the crow's could have existed 500 mya as easily as it can now. You don't need mammals, or even necessarily vertebrates.

The first thing I found fascinating in YNH's "Sapiens" was his "start of history" debate. When did people start _really_ standing out from the faunal crowd. He puts this at just around 40 kya.

That is, people were walking around with modern sized & equipped brain hardware for hundreds of thousands of years. They were obviously extremely intelligent. They would have performed as well as us on such intelligence tests.

If sapiens had gone extinct before 40kya, they would have left no indication that their intelligence such potential that it did. They would have just been a smart animal.

<comment><USER24> A wild untrained human animal isn't that bright. We can probably operate above the crow level, but maybe not by much.

What makes us special is persistent collective learning and abstract communication.

Unlike animals, generations of humans don't have to keep re-solving the same problems. As a species we have cumulative persistent memory for techniques and abstractions. That's the real game changer.

But it took a surprisingly long time - tens of thousands of years - for our brains to make this ability central to culture. And there's no guarantee that if we re-ran history we'd do it again on the same scale.

<comment><USER25> > A wild untrained human animal isn't that bright. We can probably operate > above the crow level, but maybe not by much.

That's such a misanthropic statement I don't even know where to begin.

Just sticking to the kinds of structures a human and a crow can build in the wild, it's still obvious to the untrained observer that the human is well beyond the crow in terms of intelligence.

<comment><USER26> What kind of structure would you build in the wild, if you'd never seen a house, or hut, or lean-to? Think you'd just arrive at these ideas on your own? Think you'd even consider building your own at all? Or would you just keep walking until you found a cave?

We depend more on our collective intelligence and teachings than you think.

<comment><USER25> > What kind of structure would you build in the wild, if you'd never seen a > house, or hut, or lean-to?

For an instructive example-- a crow's nest of sticks, leaves, etc. Especially if that human comes up happens to come upon a crow's nest in the wild. Notice that the human can probably scale that design to fit their own larger stature.

Now imagine a crow coming upon a little 1x1 dugout crawdad battle arena, or a little lattice-structure of sticks that encloses a caddisfly larva collection of a 9 year old. If you saw a crow observe and then build that you'd have quite a research paper on your hands.

But we're probably going to get stuck in physical differences so let's change the subject and just give both animals a stick.

One of them uses it to extract a morsel of food from a hard to reach area.

The other uses it to mark time according to either the moon cycle or possibly something else that lasts that long. I.e., this animal has created a calendar.

Using historical evidence please tell me which animal performed which feat?

The thing is-- I really do find the intelligence of crows fascinating! I just don't get the desire to pair that with the "human's aren't such hot shit" trope.

<comment><USER27> I think you are making of conflating how a socially raised human would behave in the the wild with how a feral human would behave. Despite nearly 8 billion people on Earth, we have very little data on human cognitive development when isolated from other humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Birds' intelligence is especially interesting because the ontogeny differs from that of primates and other mammals like the dolphins. Maybe it can help triangulate our views about intelligence and give parallax insight into what general intelligence is and what to expect of AI without resorting to anthropocentric Turing test arguments only.

<comment><USER29> cephlapods, primates, crows. I wonder if someone studied all three.

<comment><USER30> wonder no more [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%2Bc...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%2Bcephalopods%2C+%2Bprimates%2C+%2Bcrows&btnG=)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> They also like to annoy other animals. I have seen it now a few times that a crow or a group of crows would approach a dog from behind and nip their tail or butt. When the dog turns around the crow will jump back a little and pretend it has nothing to do with this. When the dog looks away they will do it again. I have seen similar behavior with swans. When my dog chases they get out of the way but only the minimum needed.

Very smart but obnoxious in a way.

Just found this on YouTube: [https://youtu.be/Y0xwX5iOFok](https://youtu.be/Y0xwX5iOFok)

<comment><USER32> They also do this to cats, which is much more dangerous. There's a video with a cat catching a bird (not a crow) that did this: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=nfIQifAcm0g](https://youtube.com/watch?v=nfIQifAcm0g)

<comment><USER33> I think that's different. I'd guess the cat was unknowningly getting near the bird's nest + kids so mother was panicking.

<comment><USER32> In that case, yes. It was just to illustrate that cats are eerily effective at catching birds mid-flight.

But I have seen a cat trotting along a wire fence with a concrete base. On that base, which was about the cat's height there was a hooded crow happily scuttering behind the cat and grabbing at its tail from time to time.

The cat mostly ignored it but it was apparent that it judges the chances of catching the pesky bird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The "Just for Fun" link[1] leads to some entertaining videos:

Skiing down a roof: [https://youtu.be/1WupH8oyrAo](https://youtu.be/1WupH8oyrAo)

My girlfriend's spirit animal: [https://youtu.be/Qt- pB1R64mI](https://youtu.be/Qt-pB1R64mI)

Teaming up to provoke a catfight: [https://youtu.be/WQd9kuXpUYU](https://youtu.be/WQd9kuXpUYU)

Nipping a sausage: [https://youtu.be/Y0xwX5iOFok](https://youtu.be/Y0xwX5iOFok)

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/10/scientists- investiga...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/10/scientists-investigate- why-crows-are-so-playful/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Not directly related, but some other bird behaviors that I find fascinating:

Shrike (A.K.A. butcher birds) are predatory but since they are song birds they don't have talons to rip apart prey into manageable bites. Instead they impale their pray on thorns or barbed wire so that they can tear off bits with their beaks. They also use this to store food and have been known to use this to wait until the poison in certain insects degrades. During mating season, the number of carcasses that a male shrike has hung up is used to demonstrate its fitness to females.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpRcc5jvRmQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpRcc5jvRmQ)

Killdeer nest on the ground, so when a predator approaches the nest the mother attempts to lead them away by pretending to have a broken wing.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJTt5I8K4Rk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJTt5I8K4Rk)

<comment><USER36> Shrike birds always remind me of the Shrike from Hyperion [1]. I guess the real thing inspired the character's thorny exterior.

[1] [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hyperion+shrike&ia=images&iax=imag...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hyperion+shrike&ia=images&iax=images)

<comment><USER37> The thorny exterior, as well as the character's propensity for impaling its victims on the Tree of Thorns and letting them hang there for eternity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Once I was sitting on a bench under a walnut tree and a walnut fell to the pavement near me and got cracked. I thought it fell from the tree and picked it up and ate it. Suddenly a crow appeared and started screaming and flying around me. I suspect the walnut didn't drop from a tree but it was the crow who throw it to crack it open. I said sorry, but it kept cursing :(, so I quickly left.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's very difficult to tell which is the smartest animal - or whether an animal is intelligent or not - because intelligence is a broad concept and there are many kinds of intelligence.

If you're interested in this topic a good book is "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?", by Frans de Waal.

<comment><USER40> I highly recommend that book!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Crows are social too, will hold a grudge... you's swear they were part Irish.

A crow once sneaked quite far into my mechanic's shop without being seen, got up on a rolling toolbox and stole a bag of sunflower seeds without being noticed. I found this because I saw a crow and their other crow buddies were having a sunflower seed party in the alley, and one of the mechanics lost their snack.

Also, crows will remember if you help them for years. People make a point to make friends with them because they have been known to bring gifts and visit year after year. Probably better company than the in-laws too. There's a number of documentaries and personal videos on YouTube about this topic.

PS: Davis CA has zillions of crows. An apartment I rented had large trees at the street containing easily several thousand in a dozen trees where they bedded-down for the night. The sidewalks and streets were coated white with droppings like it was SF's Fisherman's Wharf. Needless to say, no one used those sidewalks. And you could hear when they came back, because it sounded like a crow cocktail party.

</comment><comment><USER41> Here's another article about crow intelligence and crows in Seattle [1]. Some interesting topics from the article include crows have 'funerals', they can recognize individual humans, individual crows commute to the same specific areas during the day to forage and return to concentrated roosts with other crows at end of the day.

Living in Minneapolis with a home office overlooking the Mississippi River, I've noticed crows commuting in the darker, colder months. Hundreds of them at a time go up river in the morning, just as it's getting light, and then return down river before the sun sets. It's fun to watch.

[1] [https://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2017/5/17/the-secret- lif...](https://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2017/5/17/the-secret-life-of- urban-crows)

<comment><USER42> In the East San Francisco bay area, I have observed that the crows behave in an incredibly habitual fashion. Every evening, huge crowds of them gather near Lake Merritt in Oakland. I see them streaming over my apartment in Berkeley a little before dusk. Some contingent flies north over my apartment around dawn. It seems like they disperse to forage during the day. I really wish I knew how they decided who gets what turf during the day. Do they select where they are going based on where their friends will be?

<comment><USER43> > It seems like they disperse to forage during the day.

This is exactly what they do. They roost communally, with well-defined and enforced social hierarchies even in flocks hundreds of birds strong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> They know how to use glass. We had a rooftop area enclosed by glass and the crows would frequently corral pigeons there and kill them, either directly pecking them or indirectly chasing them into the glass. They may know how to use it, but what is it? This is another question..One morning i heard clicking / tapping coming from upstairs near this roof top; up the stairs i went, i peered over the top of the stairs toward the door to the rooftop, and saw two of them tapping the glass, then looking at each other, then tapping the glass again. They saw me and flew off in a panic. I may be anthropomorphising but it sure did look like they were sizing up this wonder material between them! I felt like i had seen a window into their world in that moment before i was spotted.

</comment><comment><USER45> [https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/revengeful-crows- refus...](https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/revengeful-crows-refuse-to- forgive-mp-man-after-death-of-chick-3-years-ago-1594753-2019-09-03) "Shiva Kewat, resident of a village in Madhya Pradesh's Shivpuri has been a target of a murder of crows that remembers him for causing the death of a chick."

</comment><comment><USER46> Country folk assure me that crows can also not only tell the difference between a gun and a stick, but they also have a pretty good idea of what the effective range of the gun is.

<comment><USER47> "What are you gonna do with that .22 pistol, human? Shoot me? At 40 yards? kra-kra-kra!"

<comment><USER48> That crow is a little over confident. 40 yards isn't all that hard on a crow size target with at .22 pistol, with practice. Back up about another 20 yards and the crow is probably pretty safe.

<comment><USER47> Crow of course knows how good (or rather, the opposite) of a shot the farmer is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I heard an interesting theory about intelligence while watching a documentary about jumping spiders.

Good eyesight tends to evolve first. In the case of jumping spiders, it was vital for safe landing. As a consequence, jumping spiders have the best eyesight among spiders. Anyway, initially brain gets a lot of extra information but is unable to take advantage of all of it. It's just for safe landing. Then those animals that find way to exploit the extra data become more effective.

Jumping spiders are devious, for example they can lure prey by mimicking gestures the insect uses.

<comment> saiya-jin In latest BBC seven worlds one planet, there is nice display of their mating dance... fascinating little buggers (like all other animals on the show, small and big)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I remember a few months ago I saw some crows in a park. They were going through a bin and pulling out McDonalds paper bags, and ripping them apart to see if there was anything inside.

Whenever someone came near they would move away from the bin and started looking around aimlessly, as if to say "there's nothing going on here".

</comment><comment><USER51> I really wish we had better definitions for "smart", "cognition", and "intelligence." With our current definitions, all comparisons are purely subjective. Maybe crows are the "smartest" today. Tomorrow it'll be dolphins, parrots, elephants, pigs, or cephalopods. Who knows?

<comment><USER52> I mean, there are pretty objective things to test for.

Object permanence.

How many things can they keep in working memory?

How many steps can they work through linearly to an objective?

How many dependent elements of a puzzle can be branched off for a single step?

Can they understand symbols as being representative of objects? Of verbs? Adjectives?

Can they understand counting, grouping?

Can they extrapolate solutions from one puzzle to another? How dissimilar can they appear for them to still recognize patterns?

Are they creative? Are they social?

<comment><USER53> One overriding question may be: Do they _need_ to?

There are things that other animals can do which humans can't, such as an octopus communicating with a grouper fish, two entirely different species, by changing the color and patterns of their skin, to corral and trap a prey (as seen on a segment of BBC's Blue Planet.)

Are humans "dumber" if we use that objective criteria to compare intelligence?

<comment><USER54> > Are humans "dumber" if we use that objective criteria to compare > intelligence?

We have advanced communication with our domesticated animals, especially dogs. Also have some communication with non domesticated animals like primates, dolphins, etc..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Does the title really fit the article? The article discusses how smart crows are. It doesn't compare them in any way to other smart non-primates like elephants, cetaceans and cephalopods. Of course their tool use is a pretty big deal, but it's not the only aspect of intelligence. Squids have shown to be amazing problem solvers too.

By the way, a while back I read that the tool-using crows of New Caledonia had their eyes more to the front than other crows, and someone used that to discover that another group of crows (on Hawaii I think) also used tools.

(edit: rephrased the last bit to make it more clear)

<comment><USER56> > a group of crows (on Hawaii I think) also used tools.

You're thinking of the New Caledonian crows.

[https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/00000161-1f5...](https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/00000161-1f56-d972-a3ff- dfde7b1d0000)

<comment><USER55> The New Caledonian crows are the original group of tool using crows that's already widely publicised. The more recently discovered group is indeed from Hawaii.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/09/this- cro...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/09/this-crow-nearly- died-out-before-we-knew-it-uses-tools/499724/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> When I was a kid a crow got it's head stuck in our gate. I ran and got my dad who got it free. For the next ten years the crows would attack magpies whenever they tried to swoop me in our street.

</comment><comment><USER58> Crows are astoundingly intelligent. If you're having a slow day, a quick youtube of "crows solving puzzles" yields some great videos of them solving complicated tasks like water displacement to reach food[0]. I believe raccoons share this achievement.

Additionally, there was a thread on here some time ago[1] by a Dutch Startup[2] about trying to teach crows to exchange cigarette butts for treats inside a tiny device place in parks, I always thought that was a funny idea if you could get the crows to teach one another.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15486368](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15486368)

[2] [http://www.thecrowbox.com/](http://www.thecrowbox.com/)

</comment><comment><USER59> I was playing golf once and was standing around eating lunch next to my golf cart with a friend.

A crow swooped in, perched itself on the steering wheel of the golf cart, evaluated there was no food there but then took my wallet and flew away. I chased it for like 200 feet and it dropped my wallet ~5 feet from a large body of water, looked at me and flew away.

I'm pretty sure it did that out of spite for not feeding him.

</comment><comment><USER60> Easiest animal the general public can interact with. In my area they will really try to do what you want, if they can figure it out, for cashews :-).

I have tried different ways to train them to bring me hobby drones or their parts. I figured it would make for a cheap defense against random drone surveillance.

</comment><comment><USER61> This article focuses mostly on problem solving, planning, and tool use as the primary hallmarks of intelligence. But what problem does writing a poem solve? Do you have to be intelligent to write a great poem? What about the intelligence need to compose a great whale song[1]? Or paint a great painting?

These are things not measured on intelligence tests and that don't fit well in to scientific experiments because they can't be "objectively" judged or quantified, but my intuition is that they do in fact have to do with intelligence -- just not the sort of intelligence that problem solving, planning, and tool use demonstrate. Though they may require problem solving, planning, or tool use to accomplish, there seems to be something else going on there.

I'm reminded of the Douglas Adams quote: _"... on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on--whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man --for precisely the same reasons."_

[1] - ...if such criteria could be applied to them -- we don't know, and that's part of the point. If we don't know how can we judge one animal who does one thing to be "smarter" than another who does something else?

<comment><USER62> Early humans didn't have poetry. Were they not intelligent?

<comment><USER63> >Early humans didn't have poetry.

[Citation Needed]

<comment><USER62> OK so speech has begun 100,000 years ago (perhaps earlier). My point stands: Would humans without poetry not be considered intelligent? Hardly.

<comment><USER64> I didn't know we had any idea when speech started or even what form of proto- speech preceded and when it could be said it evolved to speech.

Homo Erectus emerged 2 millions years ago, I'm not aware of anything that says speech couldn't have started during his reign.

Do you have any source for that 100,000 years figure?

<comment><USER65> That's a well known story. Speech beyond mooing means complex bones and muscles working together.

[https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/could- neandert...](https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/could-neanderthals- speak-the-ongoing-debate-over-neanderthal-language)

<comment><USER64> All I take from this article is that there's no consensus among experts whether speech was possible for homo sapiens' ancestors.

> Based on these results, most researchers agree Neanderthals were capable of > emitting and hearing complex vocalizations. However, they disagree over the > implications. While some consider the findings indicative of speech-based > language in Neanderthals, others propose these features could have evolved > for other reasons, like singing. Neanderthals may have lacked the cognitive > abilities for language, but possessed the physical anatomy for musical calls > to attract mates or sooth infants.

Seems to imply that speech was physically possible for neanderthals (and by extension, their common ancestor with homo sapiens), but there's no agreement among experts that it means that neanderthals did speak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> A pet crow is one of the most rewarding relationships you can experience.

Nothing will teach you powerlessness like the friendly, loving malevolence of a corvid.

<comment><USER67> I need that last sentence on a T-shirt. Bravo!

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> A bit off-topic: it's not just intelligence that's amazing about (some) birds.

I highly recommend the book "The wonder of birds" by Jim Robbins. One of the earliest insights in the book is that birds are the dinosaurs that survived. They are amazingly adapted.

The unusual thing is that each chapter is full of intriguing information and each one is a different topic.

Like, how could birds possibly evolve wings? A wing is only useful if it's a working wing, and if a bird evolved half a wing it would be pointless, right? It turns out half a wing is useful. It speeds up running birds, especially up a slope.

Feathers actually grow outside first, and the stem last.

The amazing efficiency and optimization of their hearts and respiratory systems.

Bird guano used to be so valuable that Incas punished bird killers with death. Natural fertilizers are very important if you try to make the most of poor mountainous soil.

</comment><comment><USER68> In Southern parts of India (at least in Tamilnadu state), there are lots of rituals involving crows. It's very common to see people calling crows (giving the cawing sound) and feeding them food on Saturdays. It is also believed that when people die, their soul supposedly comes back to visit the family as a crow, hence they feed the crows especially on the death anniversaries of family members. When visitors come to your home, the crows often inform the residents well ahead by cawing in-front of the home. I used to make fun of my Mom for believing in all such random events, saying crows are just stupid birds habituated to getting fed by humans and don't remember anything. Now that I see that crows can be smarter, I could have been wrong.

</comment><comment><USER69> We made friends with a lorikeet (parrot) we named 'Percy' 11 years ago, our first one. Him and his 'wife' (we named her 'Cruella' for obvious reasons) stayed with him for years. We then have had - and contining now - years of their offspring. Names are hard to find with so many offspring - But 'Buttons' is Percys' great-grand son, and is still here today with us. When I moved in 15 years ago, there was none of this. Now, we have a grand colalition of Magpies (corvids), Lorikeets and King Parrots that protect each other, and keep us busy if not entertained every day.

</comment><comment><USER70> I know someone who works at one of the London airports and is responsible for keeping the runway operational. One of the jobs is keeping the birds well clear, and if necessary, sadly, may resort to shooting.

The crows know the score though. This acquiantance says the crows know to disappear if they see the bird clearers. What's "clever" is that they only take flight if it's one of the shooters. They recognise the veichle(s) despite them being all the same fleet. So if someone else is driving round to check something else, the birds completely ignore. If it's the "bird guy" then off they go with little encouragement.

</comment><comment><USER71> There are also videos on youtube of crows that learned to wait for the walk signal to walk into a crosswalk to drop off a hard nut shell that car tires then crush and they then walk back out to pick up the now exposed food.

<comment><USER72> I've seen crows do this on my own neighborhood, both on side streets with little traffic, and on main streets on the crosswalk. I had heard of crows doing this in Japan but was impressed to see this in central Europe (although it's corvus cornix, the grey-black kind, not the full black one)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> This is a great Ted talk about crows and how their intelligence differs from that of other animals.

Lots of other comments talking about crows using cars to crack nuts. In this talk, he traces the behaviour to a driving school on the or skirts of Tokyo. The behaviour then spread across Tokyo.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_a_thought_experiment_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_a_thought_experiment_on_the_intelligence_of_crows/up- next)

</comment><comment><USER74> We also focus on the abilities of an individual.

There can be a fair amount of complex behavior of groups. Ants and plants for example

[http://web.stanford.edu/~dmgordon/](http://web.stanford.edu/~dmgordon/) [https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/09/26/the- intellige...](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/09/26/the-intelligence- of-plants/)

</comment><comment><USER75> If you haven't seen the CrowBox, a vending machine for crows, it's pretty cool.

[http://www.thecrowbox.com/](http://www.thecrowbox.com/)

</comment><comment><USER76> In highschool I worked at a pet food store, around 1pm everyday someone would drive behind our store dropping pet food to feed the crows. A neighbour thought we were doing it and was really upset, telling us they hated the crows and all the noise they made.

Anyhow, a week or two later, I heard all the crows in the back and heard a loud 'bang'. I thought the neighbour had grabbed a shotgun and shot a crow, so I went out back to investigate. After looking around I saw that a crow laid dead next to a power transformer up on a telephone pole.

At first there was one other crow cawing loudly. Then more and more crows showed up. They took turns flying up and pecking at the dead crow. Within an hour, there was probably 100 crows, in all the trees, powerlines and on apartment buildings nearby. It really impressed on me how social crows were, obviously the 'caw'ing was such that it called all the crows, and crows much have told other crows as well. You could almost say they were mourning the crow or perhaps learning how this one crow died.

It would be really interesting examining the communication patterns of crows, they have such control over their voice, they must be able to do some complex communication.

</comment><comment><USER77> I read that as "cows" and thought "I never woulda guessed, but suppose it makes sense". I think it's time to call it a day

<comment><USER78> Yeah, though cows are probably not completely dumb, either (maybe less intelligent than crows, but who am I to judge?). This one enjoys playing with a huge ball: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx- CxuAeVPo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx-CxuAeVPo)

Maybe they just seem dumb because they're usually bored to death standing on the grass with nothing to do but eat?

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> What amazes me about crows is the intelligence they achieve with such a small brain. That elephants and whales are highly intelligent is perhaps less impressive.

I can't think of any reasonable way to compare the intelligence of a whale with the intelligence of a crow. It's hard enough to compare the intelligence of two humans when they have different personalities and interests.

</comment><comment><USER80> When I lived in a second floor apartment, I trained the crows to sit on a particular spot of the fence below my balcony.

First, I would just throw nuts for them (they liked cashews best). Then, I gradually shaped their behavior by only throwing nuts when they were standing on then fence, then eventually only when they were standing on a particular spot of the fence.

Took about 3 months, was pretty fun.

Then, they started cawing to ask for nuts. They were in the right spot, why wasn't I coming out onto the balcony to give nuts? Had to ignore them for a while to avoid reinforcing their habit of demanding. Crows have no concept of weekend mornings being sacred sleep-in time and I didn't want to piss off the neighbors.

I'd like to train crows again, but I'm not sure of a good way to avoid them becoming demanding again. Also, they were much more comfortable picking up nuts when I was stuck on balcony, they seem fairly wary when offered food on the same level as a human.

</comment><comment><USER81> I remember this story from a few years ago: "the girl who gets gifts from birds"

[https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026)

Searching for the story just now, I came across this: [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/northwest/lawsuit-...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/northwest/lawsuit-against-seattle-crow-feeding-family-settled/)

Apparently they were sued by neighbors for encouraging wild life or something.

What an odd pair of stories. One so uplifting; the other a downer from the opposite perspective. Zeitgeisty!

<comment><USER82> The upper was discussed here in 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9112145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9112145)

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I kidnapped a baby crow thinking it was injured. My neighbor helped me capture it as the crow parents were honking at us from the trees.

At the animal clinic, i learned it couldn't fly because it was a baby, not due to an injury, so i offered to reunite it with its parents.

The minute i released the baby, the parents flew over and started barking. It seemed almost like they were trying to guide the baby away from me.

For the rest of the summer the crows would yell at my neighbor and I if they saw us.

That fall, I was walking my newborn outside and was dive bombed by one of the crows. I got the sense it was payback for kidnapping the baby crow.

They hold grudges.

</comment><comment><USER84> I love crows enough to put up with it, but it's sad that this page shows the header, the footer, and a giant sea of empty whitespace where the article should be until I allow Javascript from `bbcverticals.com`

</comment><comment><USER85> At my parents house crows pickup wallnuts, then fly to some altitude and drop them on the concrete to break them and eat them. Only problem is the dog who waits for them to drop the walnuts and eat them himself.

</comment><comment><USER86> For more on crows' ability to remember human faces, see:

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/09/bird-brains-crows- re...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/09/bird-brains-crows-remember- your-face-and-know-youre-hiding-in-there/)

NOTE: I can't find confirmation in the article or in the referenced study, but I could've _sworn_ when I initially heard this story years ago, the "threatening" mask worn was a Nixon mask. Perhaps that was a later embellishment.

</comment><comment><USER87> As a kid I loved watching hooded crows breaking snails' shells by picking up a snail, flying a 10 or so feet up into the air and then throwing the snail against a narrow stone path in the park. I've never seen even one crow making a mistake to throw a snail on the soft grass on either side of the path, they would aways carefully aim for the snail to hit the hard surface - which means it wasn't just an act of imitation, each of them perfectly understood the idea behind what they were doing.

</comment><comment><USER88> The article mentions that corvids don't have a "neocortex", which is true, however many believe that there is a part of avian brains which is their version of neocortex (see e.g. [https://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3184](https://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3184) ). So it's possible that the neural architecture of their intelligence is somewhat similar to ours after all.

</comment><comment><USER34> Story of a crow who adopted a kitten and nursed it back to health: [https://youtu.be/inbPgr8IMlM](https://youtu.be/inbPgr8IMlM)

</comment><comment><USER89> A couple of years ago we were holidaying in Kent, UK, and went for a walk on the South Downs. There was a guy in a hide shooting crows. He was at the edge of a field and had put some sort of lure in the middle of the field. Crows would fly down and he would shoot them. There were thirty or so dead birds grouped around the lure, but the crows continued to fly down, and continued to get shot. This makes me think that crow intelligence is as it were not general.

<comment><USER90> We need to put signs next to cliffs to remind people not to fall to their deaths while taking photos of themselves. Let's not pretend humans aren't incredibly stupid animals at times as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> I like to think about what would happen on a planet where the most intelligent species wasn't from a primate, but another animal. Can you imagine the societal nuances that a planet of human-level-intelligent crows? What kind of sitcoms they'd have? I mean most tv revolves around sex.. so having eggs and nests would change all their social taboos. How different would "Sex and the City" be if it was crows? So crazy.

</comment><comment><USER92> Watch and learn. - All animals are good at it. Man made world - A smart mans survival strategy so that he can sit back and relax for his future. But, another criminal monkey looks and thinks "Oh I can make money out of it"

Creates life hard for other human beings.

Whats survival in this man's world - "Learn what other human had created, because whole crowd is following."

wait a minute. Crows smarter than humans? Of course they are. They dont load bullshit in their head.

</comment><comment><USER93> I was recently reading the Wikipedia page about comparative neuron counts in the brains of various animals. The most notable observation to me at the time was that ravens have a similar neuron count that of to pigs and dogs--far more than cats, for example.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons)

<comment><USER94> It seems neuron counts matter, but at the same time they don't have a big effect?

Elephants are intelligent but not that much per the number of cells. Raccons are probably more intelligent than cats and have more neurons, ok. And why are Capybaras surprisingly high on the list?

<comment><USER95> This author seems a little too eager to attribute exceptional behavior, but they provide some interesting anecdotes and videos about capybara behavior: [https://capybaraworld.wordpress.com/2017/05/14/theory-of- min...](https://capybaraworld.wordpress.com/2017/05/14/theory-of-mind- capybara-intelligence/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> I just went on a Game of Thrones tour yesterday in Belfast, Northern Ireland (corny as heck, but fun if you enjoyed the show). I learned that they used trained ravens during the filming. One of the things they taught the ravens to do was simply hover over a giant fan used to provide lift. When they wanted to show a raven banking left or right, they'd simply have the crow hover & rotate the camera.

</comment><comment><USER97> There are reports of crows in South America using traffic to crack hard nuts. They wait for cars to stop at a traffic light, leave the hard nuts out, wait for the green light — and then collect the results on the next red.

The same birds will fly up and drop nuts to crack them. What is notable is they will fly in diminishing lower arcs to drop the nuts. It's a precise conservation of energy.

Remarkable stuff.

</comment><comment><USER98> When I was ~10 years old, I found a fake decorative crow (Halloween stuff) and I figured out that I could jump up and down with the fake crow and it would only be a matter of time before a few real crows would start circling... 15 minutes later there would be 100 circling, then thousands. It became a party trick that I'd show friends every now and then.

<comment><USER99> Why do you think they were interested?

<comment><USER98> I always assumed it was because they thought I was attacking one of their flock, like they were trying to intimidate me. They never came close or swooped down or anything. Just circled hundreds of feet above.

<comment><USER45> From my experience they have strong social connection, whenever a crow died within few minutes there would murder of crows circling that area like paying your final respects. Absolutely beautiful creatures!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> I am wondering where sulphur-crested cockatoo are on the scale. Before seeing some in freedom up close in Australia, I never realized they actually could grab objects with their claws like they are hands and put them in their mouth.

They seemed very smart to me. I wonder if they lose to crow only because they are less prevalent around most labs in the world...

<comment><USER101> Parrots get mentioned all the time in animal intelligence research. Normally the experiments take different forms: you keep one parrot in captivity and teach it to speak, while you observe the behaviour of groups of crows in the wild.

<comment><USER102> I highly recommend this book, written by two American ornithologists watching kea in the field for years:

[https://www.amazon.com/Kea-Bird-Paradox-Evolution- Behavior/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Kea-Bird-Paradox-Evolution- Behavior/dp/0520213394)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> Related: The Crow and the Pitcher, one of Aesop's fables. Apparently it has been known for some time crows were resourceful. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crow_and_the_Pitcher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crow_and_the_Pitcher)

</comment><comment><USER104> How do I go about gaining the trust of the local murder of crows? We've a group of them that hang around, and they do an great job of scaring off the 3-4 red tail hawks in the neighborhood too... we've got chickens, and I'd love to trade some aerial protection for food.

</comment><comment><USER53> Where are octopuses? Are they third smartest?

I don't think intelligence is a linear scale or gradient, or even a cube, more like a cluster of multiple features/drivers/daemons operating at different strengths in different species, all shaped by the needs of their bodies.

</comment><comment><USER105> Funny and interesting was a recent episode of RadioLab

[https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/world...](https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/worlds- smartest-animal)

</comment><comment><USER106> I found a related article on an other site today "A Dutch Startup Wants to Train Crows to Pick Up Cigarette Butts" that seems to use the crow box.

[http://www.thecrowbox.com/](http://www.thecrowbox.com/)

</comment><comment><USER56> Crows are pretty imaginative and playful.

For example, see this video of a crow tobogganing on a snowy roof.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dWw9GLcOeA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dWw9GLcOeA)

</comment><comment><USER107> that's a bad assumption that primates are the second most intelligent animal. i am personally convinced that dolphins, in particular orcas, a much smarter than any primate species.

orcas are almost always left out of intelligence of animals discussions, but they have a very refined intelligence that doesn't require leaps of faith to say, woah, that is very high level cognition going on.

at least the article includes this quote:

> Ranking the intelligence of animals seems an increasingly pointless exercise > when one considers the really important thing: how well that animal is > adapted to its niche

</comment><comment><USER108> My neighbour has a fancy Persian munchkin cat everytime she comes out on the apartment balcony all the crows from the neighborhood gather at the tree in front of our building and watch her until she leaves.

</comment><comment><USER109> In Marijn Haverbeke's "Eloquent Javascript," there's a great section describing how crows employ termite mounds to create information relay networks -- remarkable stuff

</comment><comment><USER110> Can I address the raven in the room here? How are corvids' future descendants going to use tools? Beaks? Standing on one foot? Re-evolution of articulation in the wings?

</comment><comment><USER111> How crows end up running all the tobacco companies: [https://www.crowdedcities.com/](https://www.crowdedcities.com/)

</comment><comment><USER112> I used to live near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and I could swear that the crows there are mimicking the sound of the fog horns.

</comment><comment><USER113> In france we have an amusement park that have dressed crow to pick up left over butt. They are doing quite a good job.

</comment><comment><USER114> I love good articles about crows, and even more stories about them in the comments! Please, don't hesitate to share!

</comment><comment><USER115> One of my favourite quotes:

"To a clever crow, a scarecrow is an opportunity" \- Alan Scott

(but he in turn may have been quoting someone else)

</comment><comment><USER116> the crows in western Australia know how to open a kids school bag (zip or buttons or both). then they know to pull the lunch box out and open that (clasps, zipped even to pop the vacuum button before popping off the lid). So now the kids have to keep their school bags in the room.

</comment><comment><USER117> speaking of skills: [https://twitter.com/Prokaryota/status/1132744852129636353?s=...](https://twitter.com/Prokaryota/status/1132744852129636353?s=20)

</comment><comment><USER118> smart, but kinda annoying. i guess when you understand that you're more intelligent than others you also understand that it's easy for you to outcompete others. that's what us humans do and also looks that crows are at the same page

</comment><comment><USER119> Glancing through the headers I read that as "Cows could be..."

</comment><comment><USER120> What makes us think that they aren't smarter than primates?

</comment><comment><USER121> It's interesting that in Qur'an 1400 yrs ago, it mentioned that the crow guided Adam's son to burying his brother after he killed him.

Adam is the father of all humans according to Islamic beliefs and his son killed his brother.

</comment><comment><USER122> Which tells you how smart dinosaurs could have been...

<comment><USER123> Birds _are_ dinosaurs, the only surviving clade of them. You don't have to watch Jurassic Park to see a living dinosaur, just look at a pigeon or crow!

<comment><USER13> Look at a chicken! They are incredibly dinosaur-like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER124> what about orcas?

</comment><comment><USER125> What!? Smarter than ravens?! The blasphemy!

</comment><comment><USER126> What a wholesome thread :-)

</comment><comment><USER127> I love Cheryl Crow!

</comment><comment><USER128> So they are at a top of the food chain, like us?

</comment><comment><USER129> something related: [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/science/26crow.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/science/26crow.html)

tldr: study suggests crows recognize human faces

</comment><comment><USER130> how to weight loss

</comment><comment><USER131> I really dislike misleading headlines, so it could, or could not, right? This says nothing.

</comment><comment><USER132> I hate these birds

<comment><USER133> Could this article explain why?

<comment><USER132> noisy, attack people without a reason, kill other smaller birds, eat their eggs and nestling and take over their spot. I used to live in a neighbourhood with such a beautiful birds, now Crows took over an all I near in the morning is CRAAW CRAAW

<comment><USER6> Live in Davis next to an active freight train track that shakes the ground and tens of thousands of crows landing in the trees in the evening, hundreds per tree, then let me know how you like that. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER134> Looking at the complexity and size of whale and dolphin brains, i suspect they are at least the equal of crows.

<comment><USER123> Agreed. Birds have an inheren limit on head weight, which limits their brain size. They do manage to use what they have quite well (parrots are also remarkable in that regard), but the limit is there. Ultimately intelligence is a tough nut to crack for such a stupid and limited thing as evolution: some have a big brain but no hands, some have hands but cannot have a big brain because space is used for something else (e.g. bears), some have hands and space for brains but cannot increase head weight because not erect walking etc. Once you're erect, there's a tendency for arms to atrophy (think T-rex and ostriches). Jaws and the nasal cavity tend to take up space too, so an intelligent species needs to have weak olfactory sense and be a meat/fruit feeder. It's a miracle that a species like ours could combine all the necessary, quite fragile, ingredients to develop intelligence.

<comment><USER135> > It's a miracle that a species like ours could combine all the necessary, > quite fragile, ingredients to develop intelligence.

The Anthropic Principle says this combination must have happened with probability 1, otherwise there would be noone to observe it not happening.

<comment><USER123> Nope, the anthropic principle does not imply that probability is 1. It's not even really a principle, just a post-factum observation. There may have been no one on Earth to write this stuff on a smartphone, ever. There might have even been no life in our Universe, ever. We shouldn't take these things for granted.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Atlas observes light scattering off light - <AUTHOR> https://atlas.cern/updates/physics-briefing/atlas-observes-light-scattering-light <comment><USER2> Light by light scattering was first observed at SLAC in the mid 90s by experiment E-144.

[https://physicsworld.com/a/light-is-seen-to-scatter-off- ligh...](https://physicsworld.com/a/light-is-seen-to-scatter-off-light/)

Link to paper from 1997: Positron Production in Multiphoton Light-by-Light Scattering

(published in Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 79, p. 1626 (1997).) [http://www.slac.stanford.edu/exp/e144/ps/positron_slacpub.ps](http://www.slac.stanford.edu/exp/e144/ps/positron_slacpub.ps)

<comment><USER3> Any potentially practical use?

<comment><USER4> Not a physics expert.

Projecting in the air without a screen could be a potential use.

<comment><USER5> Lol, no. Photon-photon scattering is very rare; you only expect it to happen in very high-energy situations. To scatter enough photons to create a visible image in the air you would need to pour so much energy into the air that it would turn into a plasma. A deadly radioactive plasma that explodes outward from your holographic display and kills everyone nearby. This would not be considered practical.

<comment><USER6> The lol isn't needed

<comment><USER5> I think an important part of our humanity is our ability to laugh. I literally laughed when I read the question, because of the absurd impracticality of it. That's an important part of the answer.

On the other hand, it's true that a purely text-based medium like a comment doesn't have room for a lot of nuance. So for the sake of clarity, I will say that it was a good question. We should always look for ways to use new discoveries to our advantage. Let's just stick to things which are possible, like Dyson spheres, and leave the impossible for science fiction.

See also [https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Light by light scattering is also why we can't see gamma rays above 80 TeV or so from far away (the gamma rays would pair produce e+/e- pairs with CMB photons).

<comment><USER8> How do we detect high-energy cosmic rays, which to my knowledge can exceed this "limit" by several orders of magnitude?

<comment><USER9> If you are talking about [1], I think nobody knows how they are possible.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My- God_particle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle)

<comment><USER8> That article links to a much better written one that appears to discuss this exact issue: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin_limit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin_limit). Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Dumb question but is this unexpected because photons are bosons?

<comment><USER11> This is not unexpected, QED (quantum electrodynamics) predicts this. Classically it does not happen because classical electromagnetic fields are in linear superposition. QED has loop diagrams involving virtual fermions that mediate scattering, this is also the reason why these events are rare.

<comment><USER12> I agree. More details:

The main problem is that photons only can interact with charged particles, but photons have no charge, so the photons don't interact (directly) with photons.

The gluons that are the bosons of the strong force can interact between them, so it's not a problem of bosons vs fermions. In particular, gluons have color that is the equivalent of charge for the strong force.

The idea is that the photons can sometimes create a virtual electron-positron pair that is very short lived [1], and the other photon can colide with the electron or positron before they annihilate. This is very rare, and you can ignore it unless you have a really huge amount of photons flying around.

[1] Insert here a technical remark about "virtual" and "very short lived". It's more complicated. Take this as a metaphor to hide a lot of math.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Quantum physics of this type has always intrigued me, but I've never been able to find a good resource to properly start learning it.

Could anyone point me to some good starting material? Thanks :)

</comment><comment><USER14> If you have two photons that have been emitted at different times, and no time passes at the frame of reference of the photon when they travel, what time is it when they interact?

<comment><USER15> > what time is it when they interact?

In which frame of reference?

<comment><USER14> I think that's the detail underlying my question. Does the interaction collapse the frames of reference into one? I guess it doesn't have to.

<comment><USER15> The time of collision is not a problem, it happens at a different time depending on which photon's frame of reference we're talking about.

Which frame of reference the resulting particles might "inherit", well, that's a very interesting question that I've never thought about!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Looking for technical partner(s) - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a technical partner in helping to add some additional complex features to a site.
Are there any recommended resources for doing this already?
Thanks <comment><AUTHOR> The tasks are primarily back-end oriented and focus mainly on areas of scaling. An understanding of Java is needed and it would be nice to know Groovy as well.

I'm the sole developer of this site which is not funded so it would be an equity position initially which is why I was mentioning partner. I know this is a big turn-off for most but it is what it is.

</comment><comment><USER2> You should mention what exactly you need in terms of features, so people can judge if its within their skill set.

Also do mention what sort of arraangement you want with them as in cash, equity etc?</comment>


An Introduction to Graph Theory and Network Science - <AUTHOR> http://architects.dzone.com/articles/graph-theor-and-network?mz=111665-bigdata

<comment><USER2> You're better off directly reading the Wikipedia entries for NetSci[1]. Except a brief mention to "energy flows", the linked article fails to mention the study of information diffusion, which ought to be the most critical and active area of network analysis.

In case epistemology and history are your kind of thing, I most highly recommend reading [2], one of the best book I read on the subject.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_science>

[2] L. C. Freeman, The development of social network analysis. Booksurge Llc, 2004.

<comment><USER3> There's also stuff under "Network theory"[1] at Wikipedia. I feel like those two articles should probably be merged, but it hasn't happened yet, and I haven't had time to take a stab at it. But anyway, both articles contain some useful info.

I also recommend these few books as a good starting point:

 _Network Science: Theory and Applications_ [2]

 _Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means_ [3]

 _Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age_ [4]

 _The Wisdom of Crowds_ [5]

 _Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks_ [6]

 _Diffusion of Innovations_ [7]

Of course - being that Network Science is a multidisciplinary field, that touches a lot of other areas - it can be hard to get a handle on what to study. But those few books - between them - cover a lot of the basics and would give somebody who's interested in this stuff enough background to figure out where to start digging deeper.

For a little bit more on the technical side, a couple of good resources at:

 _Introductory Graph Theory_ [8]

 _Introduction to Graph Theory_ [9]

 _Algorithms in Java: Part 5 - Graph Algorithms_ [10]

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_theory>

[2]: [http://www.amazon.com/Network-Science-Applications-Ted- Lewis...](http://www.amazon.com/Network-Science-Applications-Ted- Lewis/dp/0470331887/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344869262&sr=1-3&keywords=network+science)

[3]: [http://www.amazon.com/Linked-Everything-Connected-Else- Means...](http://www.amazon.com/Linked-Everything-Connected-Else- Means/dp/0452284392/ref=pd_sim_b_11)

[4]: [http://www.amazon.com/Six-Degrees-Science-Connected- Edition/...](http://www.amazon.com/Six-Degrees-Science-Connected- Edition/dp/0393325423/ref=pd_sim_b_3)

[5]: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Crowds-James- Surowiecki/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Crowds-James- Surowiecki/dp/0385721706/ref=pd_sim_b_5)

[6]: [http://www.amazon.com/Nexus-Worlds-Groundbreaking-Science- Ne...](http://www.amazon.com/Nexus-Worlds-Groundbreaking-Science- Networks/dp/0393324427/ref=pd_sim_b_11)

[7]: [http://www.amazon.com/Diffusion-Innovations-5th-Everett- Roge...](http://www.amazon.com/Diffusion-Innovations-5th-Everett- Rogers/dp/0743222091/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344869677&sr=1-1&keywords=diffusion+of+innovations)

[8]: [http://www.amazon.com/Introductory-Graph-Theory-Gary- Chartra...](http://www.amazon.com/Introductory-Graph-Theory-Gary- Chartrand/dp/0486247759/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344869881&sr=1-3&keywords=introduction+to+graph+theory)

[9]: [http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Graph-Theory-Dover- Mathem...](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Graph-Theory-Dover- Mathematics/dp/0486678709/ref=pd_sim_b_4)

[10]: [http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Java-Part-Graph- Pt-5/dp/020...](http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Java-Part-Graph- Pt-5/dp/0201361213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344870008&sr=1-1&keywords=graph+java)

<comment><USER4> I would add near the top of your list the awesome (and free[1]) book by David Easley and Jon Kleinberg that accompanies their Cornell undergraduate course:

Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World.

[1] <http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/>

<comment><USER3> Oooh, good call. I hadn't read that one, but it looks very good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cheap SEO: An Introduction - Take a blog post from 7 months ago ([http://thinkaurelius.com/2012/01/10/graph-theory-and- network...](http://thinkaurelius.com/2012/01/10/graph-theory-and-network- science/)) that contains nearly nothing beyond short summaries and links to Wikipedia articles, republish it on some other platform and make sure it is submitted to HN and pushed.

<comment><USER6> Ha. DZone contacted me last week asking if they could index/republish the blogs at thinkaurelius.com. Of course, I agreed and well, here we are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Marko's website has more information on graphs including lectures, papers, blog posts and the graph traversal language, Gremlin:

<http://markorodriguez.com/>

<comment><USER8> And some Gremlin screencasts and presentations are here: <https://github.com/tinkerpop/gremlin/wiki>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for submitting this!</comment>


An app that  breaks the reality and fantasy boundary - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yyxixi.xiximobile If your chair can speak? If your dog can say? If the past ones can talk? Curious what are their responses.<p>Here comes XiXi, an app for you to find out the answers! <comment><AUTHOR> If your chair can speak? If your dog can say? If the past ones can talk? Curious what are their responses.

Here comes XiXi, an app for you to find out the answers!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The initiative motivation for XIXI is to help the people who lost loved ones to feel better by using a denial coping mechanism.</comment>


Even physicists are 'afraid' of mathematics - happy-go-lucky http://m.phys.org/news/2016-11-physicists-mathematics.html <comment><AUTHOR> The title is totally misleading. This is more of the fact that I can gather what the author intends with the equation by words than with the mathematical symbols. Even better are graphs. Who would want to read your paper if it was just straight up a proof? Can't really scan that for the quick points to see if you want to investigate further.</comment>


Can you play Scrabble over a video call? - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaXo_i3ktwM <comment><AUTHOR> tldw; A mathematician devises a method for consistently shuffling sets of 100 letters such that all players have the same "bag" to pull unseen letters from. Clearly the method is vulnerable to players not shuffling in the same way, thus destroying the entire premise. A commentor suggests a different method where one player is chosen as the "letter chooser" and shows it to the camera only, the other player then finds that letter in their own bag and places it on their rack. This method is limited in that it only works for 2 player games.

What indeed then is the most practical solution?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep up with tech development and having personal life? - <AUTHOR> I have 10 yrs of software dev. experience. I am already working with all hot technologies - Hadoop, Hive, AWS etc. Lately, I feel like there is so much stuff created everyday, I just can't keep up. I spent my 20s keeping my head in books and missed out all fun.
Machine learning and AI is becoming another buzz word like big data. Suddenly, there are thousands of people with ML knowledge in last few years. Although, I studied engineering I lost mathematical touch. I used to be best in math, but by the time I graduated I hated it.
I dont know where to start? Following are top things on my list.
1. Learn ML and AI - i don't know underlying math so its a long journey.
2. Earn master's degree- A master's is new bachelor's degree in US. Almost everyone I know has it.
3. Get a life - talk to people and talk to women. Be little fun and smile a bit. Exercise more to avoid low energy.
4. Startup - It looks like  despite working for well known companies, I haven't got much wealth. I would like to do startup, earn big and become financially independent.
How do you keep up with so much stuff? If I get married and have kids, I don't know if I will be able to ever do these things as kids take a lot of time.
What's your secret to productivity and becoming secure financially (on US west coast)? <comment><USER2> Don't make the mistake of abstracting your life's meaning from what other people value. You don't live their lives.

If you don't care about ML and AI then don't learn it.

If you don't care about education then don't get a masters.

If you don't care about a social life then don't talk to women.

If you're asking if you should do a startup, the fact that you asked means its no.

You need to figure out what you truly value and want, all the details are just noise.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if this is going to help you, but one of the biggest mistakes I did in the past was that I constantly tried to keep up with "cool" programming kids and technologies and wanted to learn everything. You see, you learn something and then 1 month later a new hyped framework comes, and all hipster startup programmers are switching to it (so do you) and you abandon the previous framework you have learned, then try to learn a new one and so on because you don't want to be out. It is like a neverending circle :). So when I finally realized this I decided to stop folllowing trends so much and focus on a certain technology/part of programming and get good at it.

The result is that today I have more free personal time and I am still able to create basically anything with PHP and React by today's standards, even though I realise I probably don't use the coolest technology on the market.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe get a therapist and figure out what you actually want out of life first.

How do I keep up with so much stuff? I learn to set boundaries. If my company slack goes off at weird times and I dont want to deal with it, I turn notifications off.

I get up at 5AM to exercise. Then I do all the work that requires a fresh brain. Until 10AM tops. Then I read things I want to read. Then I babysit whoever needs babysitting at work. By 2PM I'm done with work. I could pretend to be busy until 7PM but I won't be productive anyway, so why pretend? If someone calls me out on it I show them the things I've built while they were putting in "longer hours".

The remaining hours, until 11pm can be spent whichever way I want.

Fitting your 1-4 into one schedule isnt difficult at all. You just have to learn to say no first.

Nobody in the world "needs" access to you 24/7\. Not really. If you tell people that you are available during X hours, they will learn to communicate efficiently. It'll be painful at first. For both parties. But they will learn to deal with it after the third time they had to wait for a response for 20 hours because they tried to be inefficient again.

They will threaten you. Absolutely. The social norm is that you shit people tell you to do. Just don't do it. You'll be amazed.

The primary reason a startup consumes ALL your time is because the guy at the top, the CEO, is a 22 year old bumbling idiot who hides his inefficiency behind requiring his employees to be available to him at all times. Kick his butt a couple times and he will learn faster how to be a better boss.

<comment><USER5> How long have you been a morning person and is it easy to get into the habit of waking up early?

<comment><USER4> no its not. its painful every day. when my alarm rings, i'd rather not get up and my brain comes up with a million reasons about why I should really not get up. just like everyone else.

the trick is to accept that life is not about comfort. when you get out of your comfort zone and do things that make you feel uneasy, you feel a lot more alive, though. you have to force it hard for 3 weeks. then you're hooked.

<comment><USER5> Do you still have late evenings at all, or is it easy to get "out of sync"?

<comment><USER4> its hard to stay in sync either way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Productivity is about producing something. You can read up on "all the latest" all you want but until you actually produce something with it, consider it just entertainment reading.

You may start to notice that technologies don't change all that much. Sure you may hear about some new shiny thing - the question to ask yourself is will it help you produce something faster, with more quality or help in some way? Or is it just new and shiny?

A lot of your questions focus on what other people are doing... what is it that you want to do?

Specific answers: 1\. Learn ML and AI for what? what are you going to produce with it? How would that apply to your field? My guess is 95% of software engineers have no use for this since we are doing Information Systems, not science. Where is the line between logic tree and ML/AI?

2\. Master's Degree. This is a good way to get into debt. Sure you can tick a box on the resume that states Masters Degree. Try to get your employer to pay. I doubt this will advance your career at all.

3\. Get a life - yes - do more of that. There is way more to life than writing software. Find things that interest you outside of tech.

4\. Startup: not a way to financial independence. Read stuff on this site - talk to people about what % of companies get to an IPO/buyout stage vs ones that fail (if that is your measure stick)

Keeping up with stuff I answered above - a lot of it is just noise. The way to become financially secure/independent is to reduce your spending and save money. Google Mr. Money Mustache for some good reads on that.

</comment><comment><USER7> 1\. Stop trying to keep up with other people. Coralreef's comment is to the point. I know many successful programmers with no bachelor's degree, for example.

2\. Having a broad set of technology tools is a useful job skill. But often it doesn't require you to spend all your free time on it. Often just knowing it exists is good enough and that can be done in very little time ([https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/04/15/40-hour- programmer/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/04/15/40-hour-programmer/)).

3\. Working for a startup is not a good way to become wealthy. It's a gamble. If you want to be secure financially you should live below your means and save money.

In general it's perfectly possible to have a reasonable workweek, do fine as a programmer, and still have a life outside work (more at [https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/](https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/)).

</comment><comment><USER8> I make time for the things important to me. This has meant letting some tech things go. I'm on the US West Coast and am working on my own business as a path to financial security for my family (wife and daughter depend on my technical and business success).

When you have kids, you MAKE time for them. It's my favorite time.

</comment><comment><USER9> Don't have kids so I can't comment on that, but I reserve time for fun. I almost without fail reserve friday night as a night out with either my wife or friends doing something that's not related to work/tech/programming.

I love programming, sometimes I even want to spend friday night doing it, but none the less it's good for my long term mental health to get away and do something else.

I spend a few hours on the weekend learning 'long term' stuff, like math or technology not related to my job. I try to do this in a coffee shop or outdoors so it's a pleasant experience. A little over half the time I eat lunch while wokring but I never work through dinner. That's time for socializing or with friends, even if I have to go back to work.

</comment><comment><USER10> I actually started asking myself a different question. How do you keep up with tech without having a personal life?

In my case, the answer was, you don't. Unless you want to burn out fast.</comment>


I need a product - <AUTHOR>

I need a product. It's like Evernote, but with the interface of sublime. It syncs my notes automatically, and gives me a diff when there is conflict. Lots of hotkeys for fast typing, and switching between tabs. Better yet, with a complete history like git. I'll pay $30/year for this service. <comment> dan-compton Why don't use use git and sublime? Or better yet: Why don't you use git and vim.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do not want the add/commit/pull cycle.

<comment><USER2> So, git hooked up to inotify?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Note taking apps for programmers" is an awfully tough space to build a commercial product in.

Sublime doesn't really look like a business success story, and it seems like the asymptote for a product like you're asking for.

</comment><comment><USER4> What about an interface for taking notes-as-code like this: [http://fs_previews.kumpf.cc/](http://fs_previews.kumpf.cc/)

Scroll to the bottom for some of the syntax highlighting features I'm working on. Also try the fold/unfold buttons at the bottom.

Any feedback/thoughts would be great :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Neat idea, but I'm afraid it may interfere with certain type of documents. I want it to be versatile first. Probably different modes? like normal text, auto text, ext.

It still needs a native client!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Onenote will give you a diff. And it has some hotkeys. It's a good program, but in its core it is made to be used with a mouse - so it might not be what you are looking for.

</comment><comment><USER6> Have you tried Quiver? [http://happenapps.com/#quiver](http://happenapps.com/#quiver). Unfortunately it's OSX only.

<comment><AUTHOR> it's actually pretty close to what I need. Will try.

<comment><USER7> I currently use Quiver and save my notes to a google drive account. It gives me a similar workflow to what you're looking for, sans the ability to diff changes (unless I manually commit).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is what the world needs to focus on right now.

</comment><comment><USER9> Dropbox + git with some auto-commit scripts+ emacs + org-mode?

Or OneNote with Microsoft SkyDrive features?

</comment><comment><USER10> 1.

[https://code.visualstudio.com](https://code.visualstudio.com) \- use the new lite visual studio

2.

Save the folder on dropbox. Do you know dropbox has history version

3.

Create one script to commit to git. Call it from IDE

The best part is this is support on all platform

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone else need something?

</comment><comment><USER12> Seems like you could set this up yourself using just Vim and Git(Hub).

</comment><comment><USER13> Emacs + Org-mode</comment>


Startups in Canada - <AUTHOR>

I have been following the posts on remote jobs, US jobs and H1B jobs. Is there some reason why Canada is not the preferred destination? For people like me, Canada seems to be a good choice - similar culture to US, liberal immigration policies and proximity to US market. Let us hear it once for the canadian startups (esp. ones willing to hire ;) ) <comment><USER2> Coming from a Canadian entrepreneur/hacker, I can say despite our best efforts it's still sort of hard to be taken seriously by _some_ investors. Where I live there is still a huge focus on oil and energy, so unless your technology is applicable to that industry you have only a handful of angels who understand tech who haven't already moved on to silicon valley, etc.

The brain drain effect is pretty serious here. Why wouldn't I want to go somewhere where the other smart people are, and where I can pretty much wear shorts 10 months out of the year? Culture/politics aside, the US is still one of the best places to live if you have money.

</comment><comment><USER3> The payscale for computer professionals in Canada is 1/4 to 1/2 the salaries in the US. But the dollar is now par which helped a bit.

There is little venture capital available to computer/software startups. The few incubators in Canada have ridiculously terrible terms -- eg. 20% equity for a seed investment. Most Canadian startups look to the US for investment, or move to SV if possible.

The TSX and TSX Venture stock markets are entirely geared toward energy & alternative energy companies. If you intend to go public you'd probably have to move and re-incorporate in the US.

The Canadian government is generally not very supportive of (non-energy) technology companies. Most small business incentives are only for large-ish companies that want tax breaks for investing in solar & wind energy.

</comment><comment><USER4> The proximity to US market means many of the "best and brightest" workers + companies end up migrating south of the border, resulting in an overall lackluster tech environment when compared to any of the major US cities.

If you look at many SF and NYC startups, as well as Facebook, Yahoo, and Google's rosters, you will find many Canadian tech entrepreneurs - maybe even moreso than within Canada itself :)

There was also historically issues with Canadian startups getting foreign investment / selling to a foreign company, although that situation is now changing.

For general info about the Canadian startup scene check out <http://www.startupnorth.ca/>

</comment><comment><USER5> If you have good technical skills, the Montreal market is going to explode in 2011. Two new incubators (Real and Year One Labs) will be providing seed money - successful companies will have trouble hiring.

Salaries aren't as high as NYC or SV, although the cost of living is also much lower.</comment>


Pics from 8th graders successful 100k foot high flight, $200 ballon - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/07/12/ST2010071205351.html?sid=ST2010071205351

<comment><USER2> This is truly great. I hope the teacher(s) are doing a bunch of follow-up work teaching about how and why this worked. Also use that interest to drive into other topics such as how the balloon gets its lift versus a rocket engine.

This type of out of the ordinary teaching gets kids excited about learning. And the best part is because it is exciting, they probably do not even realize that they are "learning", they just go home and talk about all the awesome stuff they did putting a balloon into space. And the talk of that "stuff" is all the stuff they learned without needing to sit and study from a book or have a teacher lecture at you while you stare out the window.

</comment><comment><USER3> _And the experience of launching and tracking the device was like a scene right out of Hollywood, Wiley said, as the kids tracked the device in real- time using a student's iPad._

Because, you know, it wouldn't be real or exciting if it wasn't like a scene out of Hollywood.

But the school has a nice page on this here with video: [http://www.potomacschool.org/campus-life/campus- life/interme...](http://www.potomacschool.org/campus-life/campus- life/intermediate-school/is-ballon-visits-the-edge-of-space/index.aspx)

<comment><USER4> Really futuristic would be if the Washington Post would let my iPad show the photo gallery.

<comment><USER5> Here's the best photo, imho, courtesy of skitch. [http://skitch.com/aarond/dcjnd/kidspost-the-edge-of-the- eart...](http://skitch.com/aarond/dcjnd/kidspost-the-edge-of-the-earth)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Someone should keep a list of exciting projects like this that schools could undertake - somewhere teachers could go to for inspiration.

<comment><USER7> _somewhere teachers could go to for inspiration._

Unfortunately, a lack of inspiration is only part of the problem. My middle school science teacher would do stuff like this all the time, and it was great. In high school I had a teacher try similar things, but after a while they were asked to stay in the classroom and teach from the book. Tragic, if you ask me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, high altitude balloon flying is not on the standardized test that all government schools are judged by since the "No Child Left Behind" act.

All government school teachers now have to "teach" to the test and can't waste time on projects like this.

<comment><USER8> > All government school teachers now have to "teach" to the test and can't > waste time on projects like this.

Those tests are a fairly low bar, so competent teachers have no problem making sure that their kids pass and doing things like high altitude balloon flying.

The problem is the teachers who don't manage to get their kids over that low bar. They don't do high altitude balloon flying, but they will do pointless field trips and never get around to teaching kids to read.

Feel free to argue that high altitude balloon flying is more important than reading.

<comment><USER9> "Feel free to argue that high altitude balloon flying is more important than reading."

I would rather that 20 kids be able to fly a balloon, and the 21st kid who can't read be shuffled off to some other program/classroom to learn to read, than for 21 kids to sit in a classroom learning to read when 20 of them already know.

That wasn't so hard. All I had to do was reject the idea that children are all identical and if they aren't being exposed to the _exact same education_ each then they are being misserved.

This is yet another argument that, in order to make sense, has to take as axiomatic that the current school system is already optimal and anything that isn't perfect must be because we're not applying the current system correctly. I find it astonishing how many arguments about school fit this classification.

<comment><USER8> > I would rather that 20 kids be able to fly a balloon, and the 21st kid who > can't read be shuffled off to some other program/classroom to learn to read, > than for 21 kids to sit in a classroom learning to read when 20 of them > already know.

So would I, and there's nothing in NCLB that stops that from happening.

> All I had to do was reject the idea that children are all identical and if > they aren't being exposed to the exact same education each then they are > being misserved.

Good for you, but again, this has nothing to do with NCLB.

> has to take as axiomatic that the current school system is already optimal

Strawman. No one claims that.

I'm not saying that NCLB can't be improved, let alone that it is perfect. I'm merely pointing out that it doesn't have certain flaws.

In some sense, I'm "old school" - I think that it helps a lot if you know where you actually are and where you want to end up before you decide what direction to go. Heck - I even think that it's useful to know what has been tried before and what happened.

No, that's not nearly as much fun as describing utopia's outcomes as a plan but ....

<comment><USER9> "So would I, and there's nothing in NCLB that stops that from happening."

I don't care what's causing it, because something is. What label you stick on it, I don't care. NCLB was merely a small course correction sitting on top of a fundamentally broken system and I reject your attempt to frame my argument as anti-NCLB. I'm talking about the whole _system_.

<comment><USER8> > I reject your attempt to frame my argument as anti-NCLB.

That "framing" was yours; if it wasn't what you intended.... I'll quote.

> Right, high altitude balloon flying is not on the standardized test that all > government schools are judged by since the "No Child Left Behind" act. > All > government school teachers now have to "teach" to the test and can't waste > time on projects like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1505799>

This isn't a duplication, it's out own jgc attempting to do the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER11> I prefer the weaponized version myself:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon>

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow, if you visit the gallery without Javascript enabled of Flash enabled you get a simple single page with all the content. Time to thank the webmasters.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is great and all, but I'm not sure how they managed to get a cell phone with GPS, a digital camera and an iPad all for under $200.

<comment><USER14> I assume they had all those (all really common) and the $200 was for the stuff like balloon and gas that aren't common and/or reusable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it's great that kids are learning like this but what is the chance of danger to aviation out of curiosity?

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty slight. The whole thing had a mass of around 2 lbs and the electronics were mounted in a Styrofoam cooler. Although it is probably not a good idea to launch it right at an airport.

As long as your payload is under 4 lbs there are virtually no requirements. Here is an excerpt of FAA FAR 101 <http://www.eoss.org/pubs/far_annotated.htm>

Canadian geese are demonstrably a much greater threat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _With help from iPad_

Does apple actually _pay_ them to print things like this?

<comment><USER17> Of course not, people will do it for free because of the RDF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow, I did a double-take while reading this; I just moved back to Chambersburg, PA, the town they launched this from. Awesome stuff!

<comment><USER19> Ok, now I have to read the article. My wife has family in Shippensburg...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> s/ballon/balloon/

</comment><comment><USER21> Nice job, but the headline is somewhat misleading... it is _not_ a 100k foot balloon, but a balloon that reached 100k feet.

My first impression was of a really long balloon tube. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I edited the headline

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What a great school project!</comment>


A programming language based on the one-liners of Arnold Schwarzenegger - <AUTHOR> https://lhartikk.github.io/ArnoldC/ <comment><USER2> Here's the hello world of technical interviews in ArnoldC:

        IT'S SHOWTIME
        HEY CHRISTMAS TREE JOHN
        YOU SET US UP @NO PROBLEMO
        HEY CHRISTMAS TREE SARAH
        YOU SET US UP @I LIED
        GET TO THE CHOPPER SARAH
        HERE IS MY INVITATION JOHN
        LET OFF SOME STEAM BENNET 100
        ENOUGH TALK
        STICK AROUND SARAH
        GET TO THE CHOPPER SARAH
        HERE IS MY INVITATION JOHN
        HE HAD TO SPLIT 15
        YOU'RE FIRED 15
        GET DOWN JOHN
        YOU ARE NOT YOU YOU ARE ME 0
        ENOUGH TALK
        BECAUSE I'M GOING TO SAY PLEASE SARAH
        TALK TO THE HAND "FizzBuzz"
        BULLSHIT
        GET TO THE CHOPPER SARAH
        HERE IS MY INVITATION JOHN
        HE HAD TO SPLIT 5
        YOU'RE FIRED 5
        GET DOWN JOHN
        YOU ARE NOT YOU YOU ARE ME 0
        ENOUGH TALK
        BECAUSE I'M GOING TO SAY PLEASE SARAH
        TALK TO THE HAND "Buzz"
        BULLSHIT
        GET TO THE CHOPPER SARAH
        HERE IS MY INVITATION JOHN
        HE HAD TO SPLIT 3
        YOU'RE FIRED 3
        GET DOWN JOHN
        YOU ARE NOT YOU YOU ARE ME 0
        ENOUGH TALK
        BECAUSE I'M GOING TO SAY PLEASE SARAH
        TALK TO THE HAND "Fizz"
        BULLSHIT
        TALK TO THE HAND JOHN
        YOU HAVE NO RESPECT FOR LOGIC
        YOU HAVE NO RESPECT FOR LOGIC
        YOU HAVE NO RESPECT FOR LOGIC
        GET TO THE CHOPPER JOHN
        HERE IS MY INVITATION 1
        GET UP JOHN
        ENOUGH TALK
        GET TO THE CHOPPER SARAH
        HERE IS MY INVITATION JOHN
        LET OFF SOME STEAM BENNET 100
        ENOUGH TALK
        CHILL
        YOU HAVE BEEN TERMINATED

<comment> Iwan-Zotow You forgot KOKAINUM and HOOLIGANY

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This could be a new genre of highly experimental cinema. Turn a program into a short film by replacing each one-liner by its corresponding video clip. You'll need to figure something out for variable names, strings and numbers, though. Maybe just use those that can also be sourced from Schwarzenegger clips.

</comment><comment><USER4> Was hoping there was a "who is your daddy and what does he do?"

<comment><USER5> That will be added when they do a unit testing framework

<comment><USER6> Used to find the superclass of a type, surely?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some possible language extensions:

NewObject = IT'S NOT A TUMOR

DeallocateObject = YOU'VE JUST BEEN ERASED

WriteToFile = COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE

</comment><comment><USER8> whatIsBestInLife = [ "Crush Your Enemies", "See Them Driven Before You", "Hear The lamentation Of Their Women" ] If ItsJudgementDay then...

I can get into this, it's what JavaScript should have been. Much better then that Samuel L Jackson language with only one statement...

</comment><comment><USER9> So wordy they must have name it CONAN.

</comment><comment><USER10> Someone should tweet this at Arnold (but not sure he'll understand)

<comment><USER11> He only speaks 6502 Assembly Language.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Does "I'll be back" equate to a do-while loop? :)

<comment><USER12> "I'LL BE BACK" is "return". "STICK AROUND" is "while", according to the list of keywords: here:[https://github.com/lhartikk/ArnoldC#brief-overview-of-the- ke...](https://github.com/lhartikk/ArnoldC#brief-overview-of-the-keywords)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> All PR requests should require the comment "I'll be back".

</comment><comment><USER14> all that's left is to hook in audio files so we can review code in arnold's voice

</comment><comment><USER15> I would like to know what "consider that a divorce" does.

<comment><USER16> Fork()

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> When is SamuelJackson++ coming out?

</comment><comment><USER18> Hastala Vista to exit the program!

</comment><comment> Iwan-Zotow Kokainum!

should generate exception, I would guess

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this production ready?</comment>


Ubuntu on a MacBook Pro - <AUTHOR> https://lobotuerto.com/blog/ubuntu-on-a-macbook-pro/ <comment><USER2> so ubuntu has the broadcom drivers for wifi baked in?

I'm thinking of nuking OSX for Solus on my 2013 MacBook and the drivers for wifi are the only things I care about right now. Usage hacks listed in the article are worth noting once I get that working.

<comment><USER3> Yes, WiFi work out of the box on Ubuntu. At least for the Mid 2014 version (the one I have).

<comment><USER2> Dang. That's pretty compelling.</comment></comment></comment>