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I think the "successful arrival" framing isn't accurate. Or at least not comprehensive. Granted, "Commuter travel" vs "Leisure travel" are probably two quite different products.

Marketing guy Rory Sutherland talks about the product of the train journey a lot. I think there's a lot of wisdom in the idea of spending finite budget trying to make the travel experience more enjoyable rather than trying to make the journey quicker. (excuse the shortform slop) https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Bywe3NUOB1I


Tell me the percentage of passengers that get on a train not intending to arrive at their desired destination ..

>Granted, "Commuter travel" vs "Leisure travel" are probably two quite different products.

The distinction is irrelevant, since both groups are travelling and, presumably wish to effect the end result of that travel: to arrive.

Sure, travelling in style and class and comfort - for sure, these are secondary sub-products/-services. But I don't get on the train for its food or for the disco car - I do, eventually, actually want to arrive in Hamburg.


People sometimes take leisure train trips that drop them off at the same location they boarded the train. That destination can be reached faster if the trip never occurred, so that’s not what people are paying for.

Similarly leisure trips can be vastly less sensitive to moderate delays, thus some sleeper trains stop at night so people can get a better rest even if it defeats the purpose.


Yeah, but those are edge cases and are in no way representative of the final services and products of rail companies across the world.


Everyone is looking for a slightly different product, but edge case can tell you a lot about market conditions.

A highly optimized overnight train to Disneyland should look different than an optimized overnight train to Chicago.


Yet .. both cases have a destination.


A stop sure, but the vast majority of people would want a round trip to Disney.

Chicago is likely a stop along a longer journey and a significant number of passengers would happily skip it allowing for more freedom in timing.


Cool. Now you’re no longer discussing the nature of the product of rail transportation, but rather the nature of consumers’ free will.

Either way, if you got on a trip to Disney and ended up in Chicago, would you say that the rail company delivered the product as promised?


For people starting in Europe probably not, but the trip may have been wacky enough they don’t mind.

Leisure isn’t about the destination.


huh I find this totally incomprehensible. Is this easier to read if you spend a lot of time looking at wiring diagrams?


As someone who spends a lot of time looking at wiring diagrams: not really.

I think the concept of the map is neat (the arrival/departure times let you plan transfers!), but it is way too busy to be practical. It has at the same time too many details to give you a high-level overview, and not enough details for trip planning.

For a general idea a map like [0] would be better: it shows the stations and track layouts, so it gives you a general feeling of where to go. Want to go from Utrecht to Zutphen? You'll have to go either over Arnhem or Amersfoort. Want to go from Amsterdam to Groningen, but there are issues in Zwolle? Yeah, you're screwed.

For planning purposes a map like [1] is better: it shows you the actual services being run, with a vague indication of their frequency. It tells you that an issue in Alphen isn't a big issue for your journey from Utrecht to Leiden, as there are six trains an hour going Utrecht-Schiphol-Leiden. Want to go from Utrecht to Amsterdam? Don't bother planning, there are trains every 5 minutes. Want to go from Den Haag to Groningen? A direct connection is possible - but only once an hour, so don't be late or you risk having to transfer in Zwolle!

But honestly? They are more for nerds than practical use. Transit planner apps are far easier to use, will be more accurate, and provide exactly the information which is relevant to your journey.

[0]: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0e/f9/2b/0ef92b7c4f2cf4d1b0c1...

[1]: https://nieuws.ns.nl/download/c10b58e3-54fc-4577-bf95-931b03...


It's a technical diagram - it's really not supposed to be that comprehensible, but more of a reference. The passenger-facing publications use regular timetable layouts.


Is it? What problems do you face?


have you ever googled a simple maths question? I often come back to that and realise we've been in this era for quite a while. Calculator would probably be 1000x more efficient!


Sure, but I have to launch the calculator, instead of just typing it into the ever present search bar of my persistent open browser.

If I could just type it into my shell, that would be nice. I’m sure there’s some command (or one could be trivially made) to evaluate an equation, but then you get to play game with shell expansions and quotes.

In emacs I have to convolute the equation into prefix.

All minor stuff but it adds up.


> I’m sure there’s some command (or one could be trivially made)

bc

https://www.gnu.org/software/bc/manual/html_mono/bc.html


why does it need access to my private repositories?


You can select the repositories you give access to, give access to private if you want to print them.


I changed the scope to be "public_repo", better to be safe and just work with public repos only for now.


counterpoint - Sometimes I do this for myself to prompt myself into a reply when I'm finding it hard to compose the message. Once I've said something, no matter how small, I know I have to follow up within in a couple of minutes. It's like a kind of short-term Ulysses pact.

Also I'd say this depends on your existing work culture - I've been in places where the expectation is that everyone has Slack messages muted. If anything was really that time sensitive it's still possible to pick up the phone.


Huh. I literally never have my phone ringer on. If you want to contact me, slack is a much better chance.


If people who say “Hello” would follow up with the question in a couple of minutes, I wouldn’t care. They don’t.


what is a .less Docker Container


What's the domain?


the name of the project is 'pointless' so the logo and the branding is '.less'


They're point dot less.

Docker? I hardly know her!


this is incredible - my mind is completely blown at the idea of synthesising audio using full blown fluid mechanics.


indeed - and because it's a special character you need to do something like this to replicate the ?? shortcut.

  alias \?\?="gh copilot suggest"


Nice! I prototyped a manual version of this a while ago. https://twitter.com/conradgodfrey/status/1712564282167300226

I think the thing that strikes me is that the default for chatGPT and the API is to create images in "vivid" mode. There's some interesting discussion on the differences between the "vivid" and "natural" here https://cookbook.openai.com/articles/what_is_new_with_dalle_...

I think these contribute to the images becoming more surreal - would be interested to compare to natural mode - it looks like you're using vivid mode based on the examples?


what if your great grandmother had Alzheimer's


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