trainguyrom

I'm a nerd, railfan, and a dad. I fix servers for fun and profit! I've been biking a lot, and sometimes I manage to say something witty

Last Notes

2026-09-26 12:07:59 UTC

- reply

the thing that always floors me (hehe get it?) is seeing thousand year old stone floors like this one worn smooth by a thousand years of foot traffic

2026-06-18 02:00:19 UTC

- reply

willow trees might not be invasive (depending on where you are of course) and have extensive root systems that can damage pipes and building foundations. It's generally advised to leave 50 feet of distance between a planted willow and any buildings, pipes or septic systems to avoid long term damage by their root systems

2026-02-13 13:59:42 UTC

- reply

so coming from a background as an avid model railroader, a hobby that has for as long as I've been alive basically been pretty much exclusively a retiree's hobby due to its time, patience, indoor space and budgetary requirements, Wikipedia contributions could simply become a hobby that's similarly only attractive to retirees with the time, patience and mental bandwidth to pour into it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as people generally live longer and may even spend nearly as long retired as they did in the workforce now, but it does require some amount of retooling to ensure that it is an attractive hobby to those who might enjoy it

2025-12-03 17:42:50 UTC

- reply

a friend of a friend is a student at Cornell and going through exactly this right now (and working on transferring out of their dream college) they shared a document where the administration defended their AI policies and in the defense cite "AI Copilot" output as their source. I'm kinda disappointed I'm not seeing some malicious compliance source checking where they apply the same battery of checking sources one would to citations of obscure books for made up Wikipedia edits. Would an AI model be a primary or secondary source?

2025-09-11 16:57:14 UTC

- reply

"TomTom’s latest traffic data paints a striking picture of change. Comparing January through mid-March 2025 to the same period in 2024, congestion in the tolled area of Manhattan dropped from 24.7% to 16.9%. Average travel times per 10 kilometers improved from 33 minutes and 53 seconds to 30 minutes and 48 seconds, while average speeds increased from 17.6 km/h to 19.4 km/h."
https://www.tomtom.com/newsroom/explainers-and-insights/the-data-behind-nyc-s-congestion-pricing-success/
Tomtom notably found it's niche in commercial vehicles so they'd have good data related to how delivery traffic is flowing into and out of places like New York City. Other data from other sources that I'm seeing on a quick Google suggests even more dramatic travel time reductions for peak times and public transit users

2025-07-31 22:58:31 UTC

- reply

There's a gigantic wildfire in northern Canada burning through hundreds of thousands of acres of uninhabited land. The smoke from that wildfire currently stretches from North Dakota to Ohio for the worst air quality
https://fire.airnow.gov
https://files.techhub.social/media_attachments/files/114/950/297/327/205/538/original/3e03c388a0a768b6.png

2025-07-31 15:57:26 UTC

- reply

I just walked outside and saw wildfire smoke from a wildfire thousands of miles away settling onto everything. My eyes are itchy just from a quick step outside to grab mail. This is the new normal. In fact this will only get worse. It's depressing especially when I see politicians attempting to not just stifle the paltry climate action that's been taken but they attempt to turbocharge investment into industries that are already well-known to rapidly destroy air quality

2025-06-23 14:00:46 UTC

- reply

what the actual fuck. They want to make their community worse just to spite homeless people? I guess suburbanites truly do never go to parks anymore

2025-02-12 13:17:10 UTC

- reply

at least the space laser thing is kinda creative. It completely falls apart if you have the most basic knowledge of the space industry or even just ask "but why? What's the motivation exactly?" But it does get half a point for creativity