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points by yowayb 1 day ago | 0 comments

i personally think that incompetence is actually the norm. that such things like trains even exist, imo is very much due to extraordinary people being incentivized to do extraordinary things. trains are extraordinary to me. this is not to diminish your sentiment in any way.

in fact, i think your sentiment is fundamentally the same that drives extraordinary people to do extraordinary things! it's a deep dissatisfaction with the way things are, and when it's coupled with resources, support, etc., that's when impressive things happen!

this also means that i don't think it helps much to shame people broadly or politicize the matter.

[–] athrowaway3z 1 day ago

Who wants to design a basic cryptographic p2p lock between trains that limit their speed 30km/h if they're not able to get proof they're alone on a track; when the alternative is to debate endlessly about whom to blame, and which billion-dollar conglomerate has the technical prowess to sit on the committee to debate the specs for a much worse system.

[–] baobabKoodaa 1 day ago

Of course HN wants to fix train crashes with a "cryptographic p2p lock". On a blockchain, presumably.

[–] athrowaway3z 19 hours ago

I could have been more precise, but it's the same ideas underpinning HTTPS and git - long before blockchain became a hype.

Did you instead want to build some central hub that grounds all train traffic if unreachable, or create a bunch of semaphores that anything can overwrite by accident or on purpose?

I'm genuinely curious here.

I can understand being intimidated by concepts outside your wheelhouse, but if you have a simpler solution you'd feel safe with i'm all ears.

I'm not saying this is all there is too it, but I am saying all the other design choices like recovery modes, operator experience, etc - should build around cryptography between tracks and trains.

We can call them cryptographic semaphores if that makes your brain turn on again.

[–] baobabKoodaa 17 hours ago

I don't know anything about trains so I can't really propose a solution. I just thought your proposal was funny in that it was very "HN flavored" in a domain that is somewhat far from typical HN domains. Not saying if it's good or bad, just saying I thought it was funny.