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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2026
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Sometimes, sure. It depends on the speed of the connection, the distance, and the number of files and their sizes transferring. In some cases transferring from a USB stick can be barely faster than than downloading to the point of being not worth the effort of walking in to another room to get the stick laying there with the data already on it.
Obviously. We've all used the internet. Everyone knows it takes a few milliseconds to ping someone on the other side of the planet. No one thinks a pigeon can travel that fast. Also, yeah, transferring off the device may take longer, but we don't include unpacking files in download speed, for example. It just counts when the data arrives.
Some people see clickbaity headlines like that and think it means that using a pigeon would always be faster, since it's the implication the headline gives.
If the files are packed on the pigeon delivered USB we'd need to transfer them to the drive and then unpack them as well. That's a step that would be needed regardless of delivery method, but transferring the files to the computer is a step only needed for the pigeon delivery method.
Who is faster definitely depends on speed yes
The point is it's not just speed of the delivery method, it's amount of data per delivery. You can average it to bit/second, but you also have to understand that driving 100 TB 5,000 km means no data for the entire drive/flight and then all the data all at once.