from the other-threats-to-your-hobby-besides-your-gov't dept.
El Reg reports
Christopher Schmidt said he was flying his hobby craft in Cambridge earlier this week when a hawk began to circle. Schmidt, who equipped the quadcopter with a GoPro camera, said he powered down the craft's propellers in order to avoid injuring the bird when it became clear that nature and machine were going to clash.
The hawk then struck, felling the copter in a single strike. Not, however, before the craft's camera caught some dramatic, up-close and personal footage of the bird of prey descending and swooping, talons-first at the mid-air droid.
The video has since become a hit on YouTube, and Schmidt said he will donate half of any ad revenues he receives to the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Both bird and craft were unharmed.
In summary, you can add hawks to the list of things to steer your quadcopter clear of.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday October 12 2014, @08:57PM
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @12:15AM
Thanks for posting
No sweat.
I noticed that my last 2 submissions [soylentnews.org] have goofy attribution [soylentnews.org] (to an AC).
An "improvement" to Slashcode? I wonder.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @09:17PM
Holy fuck! That hawk is just like systemd. It swoops down on a long established operating system project like Debian, sticking its filthy talons in, pulling apart everything that's good, causing the entire project to crash to the ground and bust up.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday October 12 2014, @11:25PM
Troll pls, if systemd were a bird it would have fixed wings, fly at mach2 minimum, require another bird bolted on top to emit mating calls , acquire the skills of a tap dancer and of a F1 aerodynamics expert, fly clockwise only and require a whole tree for nesting, so other birds are SOL. No way it matches the elegance of a hawk... nor a platypus with eating disorders,FWIW.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @01:16AM
I can't be the only one who finds the obligatory systemd bashing comment in every single news post annoying, right?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Monday October 13 2014, @02:04AM
Let's at least restrict systemd comments to Linux-related discussions.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @04:32AM
Trying to talk sense into anybody throwing a temper tantrum is a lost cause.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @01:33PM
Just like it is annoying having systemd making itself "obligatory" to every Linux subsystem is annoying, I guess.
Share the Pain!
(Score: 4, Informative) by dlb on Sunday October 12 2014, @09:34PM
Did I missing seeing it, or was the link not given?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhDG_WBIQgc [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @03:47AM
The point wasn't the real story, the point was to use it as clickbait for theregister
(Score: 2, Informative) by cngn on Sunday October 12 2014, @09:37PM
Christopher Schmidt, a decent human being who was okay with killing his props to not injure the bird....
Can't say that of many people nowadays.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @09:43PM
What gives the hawk more right to the use of the sky than some human's drone has?
I don't think anything does. It sure isn't the laws of nature, because the hawk would've been on the losing end if that were the case!
(Score: 1) by pnkwarhall on Sunday October 12 2014, @10:16PM
I don't know about "rights", but I, for one, would prefer the sky filled with hawks, ravens, and songbirds instead of drones.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Monday October 13 2014, @12:12AM
If the sky is filled with hawks and ravens, there won't be many songbirds. (Or drones, apparently.)
(Score: 1) by pnkwarhall on Monday October 13 2014, @01:54AM
In the natural world, that's not how ecosystems work... The ratio of predator birds to prey birds swings back'n'forth over an equilibrium over time. But bring in people and their machines, and those natural ecosystems get knocked out-of-balance incredibly quickly.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @02:10AM
In the natural world, species go extinct all the time, with no intervention from humans at all. What do you think kills them all off, if not starvation or predators?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday October 13 2014, @05:47PM
Here are some other possibilities: Suffocation, dying from thist, dying from cold, being covered by lava, being hit by a rock, being poisoned, or simply dying of old age without managing to mate before.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Horse With Stripes on Monday October 13 2014, @12:14AM
What gives the hawk more right to the use of the sky than some human's drone has?
Nothing gives the hawk more right, it just took it. And it did so in spectacular fashion.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday October 13 2014, @02:23PM
It sure isn't the laws of nature
Because RC copters are totally naturally-occurring.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by isostatic on Sunday October 12 2014, @10:42PM
The bird came so fast the guy had no chance to turn them off.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Monday October 13 2014, @01:43AM
Yeah, it sounded like the bird slowed the props, not him... To me, it sounded like he tried but with his reaction time it was actually after the bird had already tried to grab it. Good try, though! :)
(Score: 2) by iwoloschin on Monday October 13 2014, @12:12AM
Actually, if he cut power to the props, it'd be less power to him (and his toys).
In other news, we've got hawks in Cambridge? That's awesome. I'll have to tell my cats to watch out when they hang out on the porch.