trainyperson

I used WebSerial + WebSockets during hardware to prototype some connected hardware (on boards that didn’t have WiFi).

Plug in to USB, fire up the web app, and then press a button in NY to light up LEDs in SF – it was exciting stuff!

I never tried actually programming the boards over WebSerial; that obviously opens up many more use cases. I’m thinking about the success that p5.js has had in the creative coding community, largely driven (I think) by a low barrier to entry since it just requires a web browser to get started.

This just blocks AI features within Firefox.

The feature I would really want here is a switch that blocks AI summaries, overviews, etc. on any websites you browse.

The financials of open access are interesting.

Instead of journals getting revenue from subscribers, they charge authors an “Article Processing Charge” (APC) which for ACM is $1450 in 2026 and expected to go up. Authors from lower-middle income countries get a discount. [1]

Authors are often associated with institutions (e.g. universities) who can cover the APC on behalf of the author through a deal with the journal. For the institution, now instead of paying the subscriber fee and publishing for free, they pay a publishing fee and everyone reads for free.

1. https://authors.acm.org/open-access

I like how the author mentioned typing speed tests as a “warm up” to the day. I frequently find myself going to do a typing speed test when I’m at my desk but unable to work, and have often wondered why I do that and if anyone else does that.

The Barbican is one of my favorite places on Earth and this post in a simple way does such a good job of capturing the beauty and wonder I associate with it. Others have mentioned the greenhouse and the concert hall; I’ll the exhibition space which consistently hosts great exhibits including the only good AI-themed museum exhibit I’ve ever seen (and it was back in 2019).

For those interested / invested, they recently launched a Barbican renewal project: https://www.barbican.org.uk/our-story/press-room/barbican-un...

Doing the puzzle with “pencil and paper” logic is actually quite approachable and fun! I recommend it. Hint: you don’t need to run constraint satisfaction! There are some insightful shortcuts to be made

The “Robber Barons” name is used now for the sketch comedy group on campus: https://youtube.com/@stanfordrobberbarons

Same, although I know Shazam does most of its work on very high frequencies so it’s possible we’re not able to hear the part that got matched.

The “Not Like Us” snippet (09/29 2:43pm) is easily recognizable though. And “Rockabye” can be heard at 3:05pm.

I also love this visualization and remember being blown away when I first saw it!

Two notes: 1. These “stringlines” are also known as Time-Space Diagrams in the transit industry, and they’ve been around for a while. e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Time-space-diagrams-of-t...

In fact Vibien cites as inspiration the official NYCT stringline paper: https://www.worldtransitresearch.info/research/5936/

2. I’ve noticed that at least on the A, the viz is inaccurate? It’s missing a lot of trains.

Are there any tools that employ LLMs to fill out the Semantic Web data? I can see that being a high-impact use case: people don’t generally like manually filling out all the fields in a schema (it is indeed “a bother”), but an LLM could fill it out for you – and then you could tweak for correctness / editorializing. Voila, bother reduced!

This would also address the two reasons why the author thinks AI is not suited to this task:

1. human stays in the loop by (ideally) checking the JSON-LD before publishing; so fewer hallucination errors

2. LLM compute is limited to one time per published content and it’s done by the publisher. The bots can continue to be low-GPU crawlers just as they are now, since they can traverse the neat and tidy JSON-LD.

——————

The author makes a good case for The Semantic Web and I’ll be keeping it in mind for the next time I publish something, and in general this will add some nice color to how I think about the web.

Does Patreon let you see what percentage of your subscribers signed up through the iOS app?

The term (I think) is “automatism”, popularized by Surrealists.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealist_automatism

This article reasons that it is not a coincidence because of the “seconds pendulum” definition of the meter, which would necessitate the values being equal because of the pendulum time period equation.

That all makes sense to me, and I agree.

But here’s what’s odd to me:

We ended up not choosing the seconds pendulum approach (for reasons mentioned in the article). Instead they chose to use “1 ten-millionth of the Earth’s quadrant”. Now, how is it that that value is so close to the length of the seconds pendulum? Were they intentionally trying to get it close to seconds pendulum length, and it just happened to be a nice round power of ten? Is that a coincidence?

The 1-minute (or less) headways on London Underground are precisely because of signal modernization over the past couple decades that has moved certain lines beyond purely fixed-block signaling.

Much of what you’re describing (besides the live hitching and unhitching) is made possible by Communication-Based Train Control (CBTC) [see link below]. This has been implemented in many rail systems globally, mostly urban rail. It helps reduce headways a lot. However:

1. It’s not just a software problem - installing the hardware is time-consuming and expensive. The engineering requirements are much stricter when human lives are at stake so you can’t just strap on a radio to each train. You still need additional infrastructure along the tracks to manage communications.

2. There are other limiting factors in reducing headway - having enough trains and having enough train operators. Somewhat easier to solve perhaps but still costly and non-trivial.

———

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications-based_train_con...

Assuming you mean TrainTime (which does both LIRR and Metro-North). That app is one of the best transit apps I’ve used (public or private).

TrainTime has different requirements though - it’s focused on schedules and ticket-buying (and does both of those things really well). The relaunched MTA app seems more about way-finding, trip planning, service status. For those functions, I’m not sure it does much of a better job than Transit app or Citymapper app (although certainly an improvement over Apple or Google Maps).

I wasn’t around during the heyday of Demoscene but everything I see always blows me away.

I think these days, Dwitter has a similar vibe. 140-character JavaScript demos: https://www.dwitter.net/

I first learned about this piece in a college art class. Reading about it again, I’m intrigued by how much of the surrounding discourse (including the artist’s own comments) talks about “audience” and “public” and “humanity” in the abstract.

It seems to me that the outcome would have been heavily dependent on _who specifically_ was in the room. In that way, the piece speaks more to the psyche of _an_ audience and _a_ public, rather than _the_.

I’m also curious what people think of the name?

Although in this scenario, there’s (theoretically) an externalized benefit of improved fuel efficiency. So it’s possible that it is a net positive for society?