131–140 of 365 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keep in mind that train schedules control what trains are on what tracks when, so while their are literally fail-safes in the system, this is not exactly far removed from being "safety critical".
That hasn’t been true in Europe for over a hundred years, and exceedingly rare in the US these days.
While having algorithms and computers dictating every aspect of train movements, crew scheduling, resource allocation is efficient and in a sense optimal, I think there's something compelling to be said about having a system that can survive with human-rememberable patterns when such an optimizer fails. That it can fall back on (or have at the core) simple patterns that people can still operate without algorithmic in…
I work within the train system of a European country (with ticketing, so I’m on the top and not the bottom of things). From my experience with station and onboard crew, I am very certain that the schedules and patterns are still very much human rememberable, at least collectively: People have to show up for work, drive the train and many other things. My guess is that the failure is related to signalling or some othe…
Do not forget that there might several companies running on the same track, cargoa and passenger trains etc.
Managing a busy track is hell.
My curiosity is killing me as to what exactly went wrong. And as someone living in The Netherlands I'm also kind of mad at the apparent fragility of this huge chunk of our infrastructure. If this had happened on a work day, it would have been a real national emergency, rather than just a huge national inconvenience. I would appreciate one of those post-outage "what happened" reports like with the AWS and Facebook out…
From the notice: > It affected the system that generates up-to-date schedules for trains and staff. ...boy oh boy did trying to look into what NS uses for crew scheduling ever send me down a rabbit hole. I don't know if the systems have changed but while poking around online I found this[1] doc about the Netherlands' timetable revamp around 2006 and it talks about the complexity of TURNI-- their on-the-fly crew sched…
I have a reflex repulsion for off-the-shelf "enterprise" software. You pay millions of dollars to subscribe to a suite of (seemingly) bad, bloated software that takes more work to customize and integrate than it would to fully replace. An army of developers trying to keep a business running with the world's largest Swiss Army knife.
My gut tells me that big names like SAP and Sales Force are easier to sell to executives, and it makes a company seem like it knows what it's doing. And maybe feeling pressure to choose a "respected" brand leads to fewer alternatives? Or maybe all the alternatives are quickly bought out by the behemoths. I really don't know. Maybe someone can enlighten me. It just seems like an enormous turd of inefficiency to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That hasn’t been true in Europe for over a hundred years, and exceedingly rare in the US these days.
The train schedule system data aren't fed into the Automatic Route Setting system in Europe and US?
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It's a relatively free election, there's a strong incumbent bias that undoubtedly helps him win but there's no evidence the entire thing is rigged. Dictators can be popular, the best example is Napoleon.
Each opposition party gets 5 minutes per 4 year election cycle by the state controlled media (and a lot of other media was bought from stolen EU money). I dare you to watch 5 minutes of news on the government media channel (the only channels that can be accessed in the free TV tear, that poor people are able to watch) and say that it's not rigged. 4 year ago the joke party used that 5 minutes for being a chicken to s…
This is not true. While most of the channels are government media, you also get RTL, which is very much opposition media. Source: https://mindigtv.hu/muszaki-segitseg-1/csatornak/csatornakio...
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They did it before the whole thing was automated. Surely they can do it again.
The automation allowed running more trains than ever before using less personnel than ever before. You want the train company to keep 2x-3x personnel on hand just for days like this? Not to mentioned transition time.
This reminds me of the story one of my university teachers used to introduce himself. He was the most brilliant educator I've had, really passionate about making sure people could actually follow and so humble. The course was called "Digital and Computer Technology" and it was a first year course teaching you to build a CPU starting from logic gates and then program it with assembly. He said that when he had recently…
'Those who can, do; those who can't, teach' -George Bernard Shaw
"Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach work here."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work within the train system of a European country (with ticketing, so I’m on the top and not the bottom of things). From my experience with station and onboard crew, I am very certain that the schedules and patterns are still very much human rememberable, at least collectively: People have to show up for work, drive the train and many other things. My guess is that the failure is related to signalling or some othe…
Try to run the pricing system in Denmark if it hasn't been changed over the years.... It was "deem" "impossible" for a human to calculate the pricing within a reasonable amount of time (with all the associated bonus). Do not forget that there might several companies running on the same track, cargoa and passenger trains etc. Managing a busy track is hell.
I live in Malmö so you have to understand I'm obliged to make a "well no wonder given the Danish counting system" joke here
> Fifty is halvtreds, which stands for halvtredje-sinds-tyve, meaning “third half times twenty”, or “two scores plus half of the third score” [2½ 20]*
https://www.languagesandnumbers.com/how-to-count-in-danish/e...
Reminds me of when the entire Swiss train network shut down in 2005[0] This was, however, not due to a computer glitch, but problems in SBB's electrical grid, which lead to overload of some of the lines and then to a complete shutdown of the entire grid. Warnings were displayed on control consoles, but were drowned in 1000s of other meaningless warnings (there's a lesson for an UI designer here). I was in the ICE fro…
Funny how the entire system has ground to a halt and the bartender is still worried that their cash register receipts and inventory won’t reconcile and shuts that part down too.
My curiosity is killing me as to what exactly went wrong. And as someone living in The Netherlands I'm also kind of mad at the apparent fragility of this huge chunk of our infrastructure. If this had happened on a work day, it would have been a real national emergency, rather than just a huge national inconvenience. I would appreciate one of those post-outage "what happened" reports like with the AWS and Facebook out…
From the notice: > It affected the system that generates up-to-date schedules for trains and staff. ...boy oh boy did trying to look into what NS uses for crew scheduling ever send me down a rabbit hole. I don't know if the systems have changed but while poking around online I found this[1] doc about the Netherlands' timetable revamp around 2006 and it talks about the complexity of TURNI-- their on-the-fly crew sched…
Those are pretty standard terms here in .NL. 36 hours is considered fulltime by most employers, including government and semi-government. Pension is offered almost everywhere and at least 4 weeks vacation is the legal minimum.
Maybe except for the _unlimited_ train travel but most employers do offer free train travel between home and work.
This also means that if an IT system goes down on a Sunday, a lot of employees won’t even pick up the phone until Monday 9 AM.