3 ms·
If you’re interested in this kind of thing, look up plainly difficult on youtube. He has more videos on train crashes than I’ve seen, and I’m embarrassed how ma
by sillysaurusx 9mo ago
If you’re interested in this kind of thing, look up plainly difficult on youtube. He has more videos on train crashes than I’ve seen, and I’m embarrassed how many I’ve seen. Here’s one to get you started: https://youtu.be/VV2rIHEp5AM?si=sSBT9s49PqbLTGbt https://youtu.be/VV2rIHEp5AM?si=sSBT9s49PqbLTGbt
There are a lot of safety lessons embedded in these videos, which is why I like them. I also did a double take when I heard "semaphore"; its history goes back far longer than the ~century of software engineering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore
- bigmeme 9mo agoOh you silly duck! Semafor is a common word in a handful of other languages for things like traffic lights and such. I had to do a double take when I first saw it in a programming class. Also hope you’re doing well it’s been a minute since our paths crossed on gdnet.
- seanmcdirmid 9mo ago[flagged]
- karmakurtisaani 9mo agoCopy pasting AI vomit is like leetspeak or all caps. Should not be used in online discussion.
- seanmcdirmid 9mo agoI disagree, but we are all entitled to our own opinions, and I get that there are a lot of luddites on HN these days. The fact that you consider it vomit rather than useful information just says more about you than me. If there was just a wiki page on how railway terms were used in computing, I would have just linked that (search didn't turn up anything in the first few pages).
- orwin 9mo agoAt least ask it to summarise. I'm not against reading AI text, but the more verbose it gets, the worst reading it feels.
- karmakurtisaani 9mo agoYeah a summary is fine. Or a paragraph from the relevant part.
- rob74 9mo ago"Semaphore" is (old) Greek and means "sign (sema) bearer (phore)", and actually the meaning in railways and computing is more or less the same: in computing, a semaphore signals if a resource is in use; in railways, the resource is a segment of a railway line, and the user is a train.
- anthk 9mo agoIt does the same role in plain roads between pedestrians, cars and similar vehicles.
- cyode 9mo agoNo cause is known yet, but based on the videos, what’s the most likely reason for crashes? Bad tracks? Some human error resulting in collision?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- anonu 9mo agoI don't want to speculate on this crash but my mental model for these things is that there's always a handful of factors that all align and converge to create an accident. Some factors are deep-rooted - and point to decisions made years ago - sometimes related to company culture. Theres always an element of operator error: someone ignored something due to inattention or sleepiness.
- scoot 9mo agoWhat's the befit of speculating at this point? Let the investigators investigate, and hopefully some lessons will be learned.
- embedding-shape 9mo agoSocial? A lot of the bars/restaurants people go to in the morning for coffee/breakfast usually have news on the TV, and people usually talk with each other when big news happens. This morning, big debates about what happened, whose fault it is, how safe/dangerous trains are, anecdotes from the past and jokes. Somber but lively discussions. Benefit is social cohesion with your neighbours and compatriots :)
- delta_p_delta_x 9mo agoThe basics of mutual exclusion algorithms were developed for railway timetabling and track signalling.
- anthk 9mo agoIn Spanish a traffic light it's called a semaphore too.
- spixy 9mo agoIn Slavic countries as well. Traffic lights for cars as well as for pedestrians.