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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the articles-for-the-birds dept.

Spotted at Hackaday is a story on positive reinforcement to train crows to pick up litter:

A Dutch startup wants to teach the crow population to pick up cigarette butts in exchange for bird treats.

The whole Corvidae family of birds is highly intelligent so it shouldn’t be a problem training them that they will get a reward for depositing something the Hominidae family regularly throw on the street where the birds live. This idea is in turn an evolution of the open-source Crow Box.

For some, leveraging the intelligence of animals is more appealing than programming drones which could do the same thing. A vision system mixed with a drone and a manipulator could fulfull[sic] the same function but animals are self-repairing and autonomous without our code. The irony of this project is that, although it's probably fairly easy to train crows to recognize cigarette butts, the implementation hinges on having a vision system that can recognize the butts in order to properly train the crows in the first place.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @03:45AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @03:45AM (#580269)

    More like the lack of the additives and poisons that the Capitalist Pigs put into their cigs to make them more addictive.

    It's the Tobacco Industry's version of crack nicotine: http://www.npr.org/2012/09/07/160752629/the-secrets-in-a-cigarette [npr.org]

    Diammonium Phosphate=freebasing agent: http://www.rjrt.com/commercial-integrity/ingredients/cigarette-ingredients/ [rjrt.com]

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2424107/ [nih.gov]

    I'm wondering if they would do similar stuff to marijuana...

  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 11 2017, @11:04AM (3 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday October 11 2017, @11:04AM (#580387) Homepage Journal

    Yup, which is why I roll my own from largely un-fucked-with "pipe tobacco". That and the fact that it costs me roughly $25 a month.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday October 11 2017, @02:05PM (2 children)

      by Aiwendil (531) on Wednesday October 11 2017, @02:05PM (#580468) Journal

      Wait.. you are telling us you do all-plant cogarettes and also use pipe-tobacco? You might just be the one cigarette-smoker I like then.

      A few questions then.
      1) Do you still drag the smoke into your lungs? (Only crap quality (cigarette) tobacco needs this, other kinds is enough to keep in the oral cavity)
      2) What stops you from starting to roll your own cigarrs?
      3) Why not smoking pipe instead=
      4) Do consider looking into growing and curing your own tobacco.
      4b) The leaves are great instead of paper (classical wrapper)

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 11 2017, @02:31PM (1 child)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday October 11 2017, @02:31PM (#580480) Homepage Journal

        1) Yep. The feel of smoke entering your lungs is essential to smoking. I could never smoke anything and not inhale.
        2) Nothing except the lack of wrapping leaves and skill.
        3) I do. "As well" rather than "instead of". I'm a bit snobby about what tobacco I put in a pipe though, so it's too expensive for an hourly vice.
        4) I've looked into it but I'm currently renting rather than buying, so I don't want to till up the yard and plant crops.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday October 11 2017, @03:06PM

          by Aiwendil (531) on Wednesday October 11 2017, @03:06PM (#580501) Journal

          1) Try it, especially with new blends. It will allow you to fully experience the flavour of some blends since some subtleties otherwise will be lost (At least try it for a few puffs of the pipe - kinda like how one rolls a new beer on the tounge to fully experience it before going into enjoyment mode rather than exploring - if nothing else just to whet your apetite for the first "normal" inhale :)

          2+4) Tobacco is remarkably easy to grow and can be grown and cured even in apartments (some snus-users do it over here) - try growing 2-4 plants in pots (quart-sized are enough) for leaves for cigarrs (or cigarrilos). Youtube has some quite useful videos on rolling cigarrs.