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To save you the click through: > This may be a great obscure fact, but it is not an example of European regulations gone mad. To keep track of where all the tr
by jt2190 7y ago
To save you the click through:
> This may be a great obscure fact, but it is not an example of European regulations gone mad. To keep track of where all the trains are on the Swiss rail network, there are detectors positioned around the rails. They are simple detectors that are activated when a wheel goes over a rail, and they count how many wheels there are to provide some basic information about the train which has just passed. Unfortunately, they keep track of the number of wheels using an 8-digit binary number, and when that number reaches 11111111 it rolls over to 00000000. Any trains which bring the count back to exactly zero move around undetected, as phantom trains.
From: "Humble Pi: A comedy of maths errors" by Matt Parker (https://mathsgear.co.uk/collections/books/products/humble-pi-a-comedy-of-maths-errors https://mathsgear.co.uk/collections/books/products/humble-pi...), page 191.
edit: Added quote attribution.
- balabaster 7y agoSo if you want to move around Switzerland undetected, commission a train with 256 axles and bam! You're invisible :P
- ryanmarsh 7y agoI want to see the Snowpiercer / Speed reboot based on this concept.
- scarejunba 7y agoHaha one can imagine this will be rapidly bred out of the species since it's such a significant maladaptation. Like dressing in Vantablack and running on a rural expressway.
- kijin 7y agoTo catch intruders dressed in Vantablack, you'll need one of those devices they use to find exoplanets.
- H8crilA 7y agoOr, you know, infrared cameras :)
- TeMPOraL 7y agoOr just more light, and focus on shooting the dark spots.
- MagnumOpus 7y agoOr just _more_ light, and you don’t need to shoot because everything vantablack will be aflame...
- TeMPOraL 7y agoWhat if we tried more power? https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/
- mannykannot 7y ago"There have been plenty of times where a hardware issue has been covered by a software fix, but only in Switzerland have I seen a bug fixed with a bureaucracy patch." That's an amusing perspective, but it actually looks like it might be a hardware issue that cannot be patched purely with software, as it arises in the trackside devices that detect passing trains. I hope the method for verifying compliance with this rule does not suffer from the same problem (it may be moot: a train of 64 20 meter wagons would approach 1.5 km in length; not unusual in some places, but perhaps not Europe.) It is a bit of a stretch, but Boeing's MCAS problem might be also classed as a software issue 'fixed' with a bureaucracy patch, as the failure to make use of the available hardware to make the MCAS software fault-tolerant was 'patched' with an FAR directing pilots to the existing trim runaway procedure.
- lonelappde 7y agoIt's also a silly quote because people workaround broken software all the time.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoAnd if you see bureaucracy as software, it's full of bugs and processes that work around those bugs.
- sseth 7y agoBureaucracy fixing software issues is quite common. One story i have heard is that in the early days of railway reservation computerization in India, there were storage issues on the servers. The solution : cut the advance booking time from 90 days to 45, where it stayed for many years.