Sylvain Miermont @miermont@qoto.org

People with experience with nightjet ÖBB trains: I have booked a night train that arrives at 10:01 at Munich.
What are my chances of making a 10:48 train?

What about a 14min connection in Mannheim?
I remember making shorter ones in Mannheim, but have German trains become that (un)reliable?

#NightTrain #NightJet #Obb #Zug #Interrail

@freakonometrics @aaaabbbb French here. There are testimonies now of zealous controllers giving 70€ fines to 20 years old under poverty line students for minor violations. Something which previously would call for a polite reminder.

French rails is an historic national monopoly and strong Union, key to past century social struggles.

For the past 20 years it has been privatized, dismentled, deprived of due fundings. It is now agressively pitting the working class against the working class.

STUDY: ‘Dual-mode households’ (cars & ebikes) can reduce their car use by 19% compared to those solely reliant on cars, particularly affecting shorter trips. This supports households moving to one car and adopting a ‘car light’ lifestyle. Via @MomentumMag https://momentummag.com/study-shows-how-e-bikes-are-shifting-the-transportation-landscape/

Meta is the Gold Sponsor of an alt-right climate denying conference, headlined by the guy who helped create the moral panic around transgender people and critical race theory.

https://www.desmog.com/2024/08/12/meta-and-koch-industries-to-sponsor-event-featuring-climate-denier-barry-cooper/

Before I begin my magic of matching parties to parties - I have been entrusted with finding a home to a personal print shop that is in a basement in the NYC area. Are you a legit, serious, interested party who promises the family you will continue to make it work, alone or with your group? printshop@textfiles.com

Generosity and dedication have led to over 250 issues of MicroTimes magazine to be scanned in.

https://archive.org/details/microtimes

But now we're looking for missing issues to scan in. Do you have: MicroTimes Volume 2 Number 12, Volume 3 1-3, 6-12, Issue 78, 151-152, 154-155, 159-160, 162, 165,182-199, 201-215, 217-end? Reach out.

Another lesson in "Don't Use An App for things that should be a Website":

https://news.patreon.com/articles/understanding-apple-requirements-for-patreon

Basically, Apple is going to steal 30% of Patreon's money that's supposed to go to creators. Because... Apple. If it's an app and it's in their store, they will squeeze you for every penny they can get.

Note: Android isn't innocent in this, either. Use the website whenever you can.

Everybody hates cookie consent, but you should really be directing your anger at websites who are being legally forced to disclose their use of tracking and advertising.

Essential cookies don't require consent. Whenever you see a prompt, it's being they're doing something shady. Don't get mad at the EU for GDPR, get mad at the shitheads packing so much crap into modern sites.

Also, in-source your janitorial staff, in-source the people making food at the canteen, in-source your receptionist, in-source your IT support.

Every person working for a company should be working for that company.

You will have mid-term gains with outsourcing some functions, but in the long term, you will pay.

Stop listening to McKinsey telling you to outsource all that stuff. Their very business model relies on you outsourcing your brains. Ignore them.

Companies contract out small parts manufacturing, then big parts, then engineering and design, and only retain a "people and culture" organization that sits far from any factory, and before you know it you have two astronauts stranded in space and windows blowing our of planes because no one feels responsible for your overall product anymore.

IN-SOURCE YOUR ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The task of a healthy publicly owned rail company is this:

To run as many trains as possible, within the financial constraints under which it operates

Note trains. It’s not “transport as many passengers as possible on the fewest number of trains”

That 5am train with a dozen building workers on it, or the last train home in the evening *matter for the trust and reliability of the system*, even if those individual trains make heavy losses and are largely empty

"After a June 27 Goldman Sachs report finally said that the emperor, AI, had no clothes in a language tech grifters understand, the bubble has been starting to pop. OpenAI, valued at $80 billion, revealed it might be bankrupt by the end of the year, because AI is valueless and makes no money, while studies showed that products that mentioned AI in their marketing did less well, we may be witnessing the end of what tech reporter Ed Zitron calls The Rot Economy. And today it is tech--in the US, Japan, S. Korea and Taiwan--that is driving the market collapse."

Great analysis from @VickyACAB on today's #stockmarket news.

https://all-cats-are-beautiful.ghost.io/lets-all-watch-the-tech-economy-die/

"3 Degrees More" https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-58144-1
- Shows the consequences of a global warming of +3°C
- Demonstrates that we still have it in our hands to ensure that global warming is limited to at least +2°C
- Details the plan of what politically feasible, cost-effective measures should now be taken
- This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access

Some fun with reaction diffusion and cell noise

People larping in the city park on a summer evening as an ice cream truck rolls past

What's amazing to me about this article/study is that after discovering mentions of "AI" make people less interested in products, their recommendation is "so you should not call attention to the AI in your marketing". The idea of simply *not doing* the thing that people don't want is apparently never considered. We cannot conceive of a way of constructing software other than "develop for the investors" https://xoxo.zone/@vwampage/112881383051537497

If computer hardware innovation frozes today we would still have decades before we exhaust all possible performance improvements on software.

The software industry needs to smart up. The free ride has been terribly wasteful and harmful to the planet. Update cycles needs to slow down and we need to relearn how to code with performance in mind.

"One crawler downloaded 73 TB of zipped HTML files in May 2024, with almost 10 TB in a single day. This cost us over $5,000 in bandwidth charges, and we had to block the crawler. We emailed this company, reporting a bug in their crawler, and we're working with them on reimbursing us for the costs."
https://about.readthedocs.com/blog/2024/07/ai-crawlers-abuse/

RIP @HackSpacemag 😔

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/a-farewell-from-hackspace-magazine/

Seeing some #fieldtelephone stuff here again, which brought up an older thought again

Are there any DIY field telephone kits/PCBs/schematics out there, possibly open source hardware?

I know there are schematics for most field telephones out there but it doesn’t seem like parts would be easily available. I was thinking of something like a PCB you could just plug a POTS phone receiver into. Anyone ever seen something like that? Or do I have to keep it on my project list 😅

#Feldtelefon #oshw