[HN Gopher] Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow"
___________________________________________________________________
Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow"
Author : metters
Score : 303 points
Date : 2024-05-16 21:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.railtarget.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.railtarget.eu)
| esafak wrote:
| The quality of my life would be better improved through public
| transportation and these sound absorbers than almost any app I
| use. Hooray for basic infrastructure.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I would go further, and say that public transport improves
| quality of life far more than sound absorbers for public
| transport do. It's nice that these things exist, but we should
| be spending money on more public transport, not necessarily on
| making public transport more palatable to people. I realise
| that's an unfortunate necessity, but it's clear that people
| pushing back on public transport just haven't seen its benefits
| enough.
| Maxion wrote:
| I think you're missing the point.
|
| Many public transport projects are dependant on the community
| around allowing them to be built, mitigating the impact of
| said projects allows more public transport to be built.
|
| E.g. a tram doesn't go very fast and is also pretty quiet. A
| train usually runs a lot faster, and causes more noise
| pollution.
|
| If you can mitigate the noise, then you'll probably be able
| to build the railway instead of the tram. Allowing more
| capacity, higher speeds, and a better public transport
| solution.
| danhor wrote:
| I don't think that is really true. In principle, a slower
| train is quieter, but a tram usually has very tight curves
| in lots of places, resulting in screeching, as opposed to a
| (modern) mainline railway which has much wider curves. A
| tram also needs to run closer to the homes, to still be
| attractive despite the lower speeds, increasing noise
| levels at the homes and also requiring more road space near
| people. Meanwhile a mainline train is much faster, thus can
| run farther away from home as the access penalty is offset
| by higher speeds. Low-floor trams also often feature more
| screeching due to the inability to use conventional bogies.
|
| Anecdotally, in germany, projects to (re-)build trams in
| cities often fail over local protests, while rail
| reactivations don't usually succumb to that. HSR does get a
| lot of local protests, but (IMHO) not really because of the
| noise and fails less often compared to trams.
| callalex wrote:
| There is a balance to be struck though. For example where I
| live in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are millions of
| people whose commutes are objectively faster and cheaper on
| the BART train, but the vast majority of commuters still
| choose to drive a personal vehicle over a congested and
| expensive toll bridge. The primary reason for this is that
| the train is just so damn unpleasant for a multitude of
| reasons (including noise) that most people find the extra
| wasted hour worth it to them to have a more pleasant commute.
| Whenever the agency that runs the train proposes spending
| more money on things like human excrement abatement, noise
| abatement, etc. people complain and protest about
| mismanagement and money wasting, so nothing ever gets better
| and the infrastructure continues to be underutilized.
| lqet wrote:
| > a transparent noise barrier
|
| Most rail noise barriers in Germany are completely covered in
| graffiti [0], so I wouldn't expect them to remain transparent for
| more than a few weeks.
|
| [0]
| https://ga.de/imgs/93/8/5/9/3/0/9/1/9/tok_8596521c60eeaa53ee...
| andersa wrote:
| That's because the current ones are all ugly metal walls.
| Painting stuff on them makes it at least slightly less
| depressing.
| constantcrying wrote:
| It makes it more depressing to see them though. Who likes to
| be reminded that people will just deface public property for
| fun?
| muspimerol wrote:
| Do you think this "MetaWindow" is much more attractive?
| Here's a similar looking transparent sound barrier in a new
| building area that is already starting to be covered in
| graffiti:
| https://youtu.be/e7-Fd1HOw_g?si=OTNn_NyV_W7iJStz&t=265
|
| At least some light will still get through in the gaps
| between graffiti, but I don't think they will end up looking
| much different than non-transparent barriers.
| wiseowise wrote:
| No, it doesn't. Before it was a plain metal wall, now it's
| ugly metal wall with idiotic tags on it.
| umpalumpaaa wrote:
| If you dive into the graffiti scene a bit you will start to
| appreciate all those graffitis. The story behind some of them
| is super interesting. There is a lot of "competition",
| "collaboration", and group dynamics involved. It is truly
| fascinating. I was living in Cologne (Ehrenfeld) for a while in
| a place with awesome graffiti and every weekend there were
| people taking pictures "collecting" and documenting the
| graffiti.
|
| Edit: Not "all of those" but "many of those"
| lqet wrote:
| That's fair, but even interesting graffiti still won't let
| any sunshine come through. Also, I would rather look out the
| window [0] than appreciate artwork when riding on a train.
|
| [0] https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/rheinland-
| pfalz/trier/17134459...
| fcsp wrote:
| Considering the look of the train to the vast majority of
| people outside of it, I'm fine with not seeing anything -
| I'm staring at my book anyway for the most part, and
| there's another window on the other side. And I prefer it a
| lot over those ads that anyway otherwise contaminate the
| window with some random, probably sexist, racist, or
| otherwise shite nonsense.
| 2024throwaway wrote:
| When I ride my local rail, I look forward to getting to
| pass another train to see all the amazing artwork.
|
| It's far nicer and more interesting than yet another
| development or parking lot.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Oh lucky you. Most of the defaced trains I see are not
| amazing. They are hastily done and would hardly qualify
| as artwork. :(
| flemhans wrote:
| Sure but it's been like that since forever and doesn't change
| the original point that you may be ever so innovative but
| it's gonna be painted over
| flemhans wrote:
| I can also start a subculture about competing for the best
| type of bank robberies, doesn't make bank robberies a nice
| thing to do. But yeah fascinating
| vasco wrote:
| When graffiti is done on public owned objects or walls,
| it's impact is merely aesthetic. Not like a bank robbery.
|
| And I'd rather see graffiti, even if I find some ugly, than
| ads all over. And there's way more public ads anywhere than
| graffiti. I think local urban expressions like stickers and
| graffiti is pretty cool. The mainstream prefers ads I
| guess.
| germinator wrote:
| They're very cool until it's your apartment or commercial
| building, and you have to clean it up - because let's
| face it, for every clever graffiti, there are fifty that
| are just tags, swear words, or worse.
|
| And your framing is odd - can you only dislike one of
| these things? Graffiti _or_ ads? There are successful
| movements to rid cities and scenic areas of ads, or to
| tone them down.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| in toronto it's embraced to the extent that in areas
| where it's common, there's funding by businesses and even
| residences or local gov commission it or permit it and
| nice work by local artists is less likely to get tagged
| or covered. there's at least some upside to cooperating
| when there's a culture to it (to some extent)
| aeyes wrote:
| I solved this problem by contracting an artist to put a
| painting on the wall of my house. Sprayers are artists,
| they won't paint over it.
| GrayShade wrote:
| I've seen a lot of tags put on top of pretty nice-looking
| murals, many sprayers won't care.
| petre wrote:
| Tags always looks better on an empty wall.
| taskforcegemini wrote:
| but not better than the empty wall
| petre wrote:
| Of course. As opposed to over other grafittis I mean.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| If only. The murals under canal bridges in Worcester (UK)
| have been defaced beyond recognition with tags.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Fifty? More like fifty thousands.
| ldjb wrote:
| The impact isn't merely aesthetic.
|
| For one thing, it can be costly to remove graffiti. And
| when it's on publicly owned property, who pays for that
| removal? The public, of course.
|
| If, for example, a train is the target of graffiti, it
| will often need to be taken out of service. This, then,
| results in a degraded service to the travelling public.
|
| Furthermore, graffiti artists often put themselves in
| dangerous situations. Numerous people have been seriously
| injured or killed when doing graffiti. That not only
| sucks for them, but also has various knock-on effects.
|
| Some graffiti art can look really nice, whereas others
| have little artistic value. Regardless, the negative
| impacts of graffiti should not be overlooked.
| thuuuomas wrote:
| > The impact isn't merely aesthetic. For one thing, it
| can be costly to remove graffiti.
|
| The cost incurred here is a choice the owner makes when
| they disagree with the aesthetics of the graffiti.
| ldjb wrote:
| We're talking about public property here. Many
| authorities have a 'no tolerance' approach to graffiti.
| Even if it looks nice, it will be removed. There is a
| belief that removing graffiti quickly discourages it. If
| graffiti artists find that their work won't last long,
| they may be discouraged from doing it in the first place.
| Aesthetics doesn't really come into it.
| TillE wrote:
| I dunno about the entirety of Germany, but I don't think
| I've ever seen graffiti removed in Berlin, and there's a
| ton of it. It's fine, nobody cares.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Graffiti on trains in Berlin is very quickly removed.
| portaouflop wrote:
| Haha thanks for the light chuckle as I wake up
| wiseowise wrote:
| Is it fine or public just fed up constantly removing it?
| lloeki wrote:
| > There is a belief that removing graffiti quickly
| discourages it. If graffiti artists find that their work
| won't last long, they may be discouraged from doing it in
| the first place.
|
| Ephemerality is known, understood, accepted, and even
| leveraged in art. I don't think this is an efficient
| deterrent, or even a deterrent at all.
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| > There is a belief that removing graffiti quickly
| discourages it.
|
| It's the other way around, if it isn't quickly removed it
| will be encouraged:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
| Thorrez wrote:
| That's not really the other way around. That's 2 ways of
| stating basically the same thing.
| sircastor wrote:
| But that cost is not paid by the person creating the
| graffiti. The owner has a cost forced on them.
|
| The aesthetic argument here is trying to validate a
| violent act. A lot of graffiti is beautiful, but that
| doesn't mean it's okay.
| complaintdept wrote:
| What violent act?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Modifying someone else's property, or public property,
| without consent.
| TallTales wrote:
| This is a fascinating comment. How would you define
| violence?
| fragmede wrote:
| not op but violence is traditionally defined as physical
| force to cause harm. but now there's financial violence
| and social media violence and here the message in the
| graffiti causes harm. eg die techy scum. it's not
| physically violent, but some think it's helpful to frame
| it as a non-physical violent act because of the
| expression of dislike for a particular community. it
| doesn't cause any grave harm, but everyone who walks by
| and sees it is affected by it.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Violence has always extended beyond pure physical force.
| Calling someone a slur to their face, or spitting in
| their food, or defacing their clothes or home (especially
| with hateful symbols) would be recognized as forms of
| violence at many times in history way before modern
| times. Holding someone at knife or gun point is also very
| clearly a violent act.
| usrusr wrote:
| If I smash your car, is that violence or not? What if I
| take care to smash your car only so much that it will
| still be able carry you to work and back?
| mavhc wrote:
| What if I apply a protective coating to an unprotected
| wall, using my own money to supply the materials?
| usrusr wrote:
| Same as adjusting other people's tire pressure: perfectly
| fine if you have explicit approval.
| mavhc wrote:
| Definitely not violence though?
| usrusr wrote:
| You mean like how poisoning isn't violence?
| amenhotep wrote:
| Not. Was this supposed to be a hard question?
| helboi4 wrote:
| They definitely have a very hyper-capitalist definition
| of violence. It's sort of pathetic how much people
| somehow care about the property of the ruling classes
| that they will never own.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I am not at all a hyper capitalist. I would even consider
| myself anti-capitalist.
|
| But imposing your own preferred art on public commons is
| a (minor) form of violence, in any economic system.
| Especially when you do so with paints of questionable
| chemical composition, or with images/text that is likely
| to offend.
|
| I would also say that doing the same thing even on your
| own property can be reprehensible, as long as it is
| visible to the public. Just because you own a house
| doesn't mean you should be able to make it look however
| you want on the outside, especially not in ways that are
| actively unpleasant to those of us that need to walk by
| it every day: we the public should have a say in how your
| private property looks. A most anti-capitalist position.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Think about it this way, if we all owned all public
| structures, then we all have equal rights to paint it
| just as much as you have the right to paint your own
| house. The graffiti artist has the right to paint it, you
| have the right to hate it. You have the right to paint
| something they hate, or paint over their stuff. Nobody
| should be being prosecuted by a higher power for a minor
| disagreement about artistic taste. Unless someone is full
| on painting swastika-ridden explicitly racist murals or
| sth of that nature, it's not violent. The only reason the
| ruling class wants you to think it's violent is because
| property is important to them as a source of power, and
| therefore must be god above all under this system.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| No, this is completely wrong. If we own a public
| structure together, then _neither_ of us has any right to
| change it except if we _both_ agree to the change. You
| can 't take individual actions on shared goods: you need
| a process of attaining the consensus of everyone involved
| (such as voting).
| vasco wrote:
| I wonder how you think this works in practice. Do you
| think the public structures we have and how they look are
| not just basically whatever aesthetic taste the people we
| elect have?
|
| Sometimes councils put up several designs to be voted on
| by the public, but they will largely follow a bunch of
| design norms that will be whatever the architecture firms
| they hired think is trendy, for example.
|
| And how many election programs even talk about artistic
| taste? That's not why we elect people, and making that an
| election point would be a distraction from real problems,
| so why not let society be and if people are more artistic
| in one area and make more public art, let them make it?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| While I agree that public control of public buildings is
| relatively vague in modern times, it still exists to some
| extent. If a mayor wanted to tear down a beloved building
| and replaced with an ugly one (as judged by the esthetics
| of the public in the town), they would face significant
| backlash and may lose a future election based on that:
| people in certain places care _a lot_ about the look of
| their town (and in others, only vaguely).
|
| Even beyond electoral politics, many cities have public
| NGOs and other organizations that seek to shape this sort
| of thing from an early stage through various legal means
| (and sometimes even through civil disobedience, like
| tying themselves to a building to protect it). If they
| are broadly in line with the tastes of the people, they
| tend to thrive; if they are not, they will often die out.
|
| And yes, in certain cities and towns, people actually
| like the way grafitti looks and are bothered when someone
| goes and whitewashes a beautifully painted wall. That's
| perfectly fine, and is a part of the culture and
| esthetics of that place (and here, destroying the art
| that people enjoy is an act of violence against the
| public and/or the artist). But it's also perfectly fine
| for other places to want neat walls with clean textures,
| and marring their beautiful walls with grafitti would be
| an act that goes against the public.
| helboi4 wrote:
| I concur that sounds really good. That's not how it works
| now though, which is why graffiti artists reclaim the
| space as the people that use it. Right now, the space is
| decided by people in power and with money. Rarely do we
| ever get real say about how it looks, and we never will.
| If we did own the public spaces and could make these
| decisions together, then I'd be down for that, and
| graffiti probably wouldn't be the same sort of subculture
| that it is.
| rep_lodsb wrote:
| As opposed to people who define words written on the
| internet and not even directed at a specific person as
| "violence"?
| helboi4 wrote:
| I never said anything like that so why are you implying
| that I am? Nice strawman bro, I'm not crying over things
| people say to me on the internet. Anyone who sees a mean
| comment on the internet that doesn't actually threaten or
| incite violence as violence is just as pathetic as people
| who think art they don't like on a wall is violence. Can
| you please argue against points I actually made, thank
| you.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| What are you referring to? I don't see that in this
| discussion.
| tpm wrote:
| No, the owner or rather operator (if the carriage is
| publicly owned) might be legally obliged to remove it
| just for the carriage identification to be clearly
| visible, the windows to be clean etc.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Nice.
|
| I'm going to spray a can of paint on your car and explain
| to judge that "it's thuuuomas's problem now, since he
| disagrees with aesthetics of his new car color".
| subjectsigma wrote:
| This has got to be the most insane comment in this
| thread.
|
| "Hey, I'm going to hold a gun to your head. If you don't
| give me $100 I'll shoot you. Remember though that the
| cost incurred here is a choice you're going to make if
| you disagree with my actions. I can't truly force you to
| do anything..."
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Why remove it?
| stormking wrote:
| Because 99.99% of it is shit and the rest is barely above
| shit.
| matrix_overload wrote:
| Why does this comment read like it's written by AI?
| walterbell wrote:
| Observations affect the observer?
| saagarjha wrote:
| Because the only other group of people who use
| transitions so often are third graders making sentences
| from templates.
| ben_w wrote:
| Possibly because AI was trained on humans.
|
| The "furthermore" and the "Regardless, the negative
| impacts of graffiti should not be overlooked" do feel a
| bit AI-esq these days, but it was only yesterday that I
| myself felt like I was writing like an LLM by responding
| to a "you misunderstood, I meant ..." with an "ah, now I
| understand":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40380692
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| I don't think the reason that ads are allowed is because
| people prefer them.
|
| The reason is that whoever puts an ad does so on their
| own property. You don't put an ad on someone else's wall
| against their will.
|
| Graffiti, on the other hand, is usually done without
| authorization from the owner of the wall or facade being
| graffitied.
| saagarjha wrote:
| People do this all the time...
| gradschoolfail wrote:
| This debate over graffiti aesthetics seems like it's
| semantically adjacent to the rift between political left
| and right. And so: Have you seen Japanese graffiti?
| Compared to Japanese ads? Average tokyo ads/grafs are at
| least more aesthetic than the median in Western cities.
| With graffiti strangely better than ads by most measures.
| No , it's not eye of the beholder, more like the soul of
| the despoiler.
|
| EDIT, for the mods, artificial or not: Japanese
| spoliation aesthetics are a safe-ish counterexample for
| rightwingers as they localize the field of contention to
| the high local effort-high social payoff quadrant, where
| existing metrics are not questioned. You really want to
| constrain debate to the low local effort-high global
| payoff quadrant, which triggers all stripes, but are most
| relevant for humanity. Consider a GPT7 that requires only
| 10 dollars to train. Its worthwhile to think about but
| scares the bejeezus out of most folks.
|
| Analogously, left wingers want to move the debate to low
| local effort-low global cost quadrant, because it seems
| straightforward to redefine cost metrics... moat and
| bailey dynamics really, quite curious.
| Nathanba wrote:
| Private individuals should not get to decide what public
| building aesthetic I need to accept
| constantcrying wrote:
| Yes of course they should. Youth gangs on the other hand
| shouldn't.
| vasco wrote:
| Who are these public individuals that can decide? All
| choices are done by some person.
| edejong wrote:
| One bad does not legitimize another.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Most of the graffiti I see is on bridges over the
| freeway. This is distracting while driving, especially
| because freeway signs are also hung in that same place,
| so I look up there for relevant information and instead
| am distracted by various phrases that I don't understand.
| Often there's even graffiti on the freeway signs,
| sometimes covering up the text, making it unreadable.
| Yes, billboards have some similar problems, but that's
| somewhat mitigated because those are on the side of the
| road, not directly above it.
|
| But you're right, certainly not as bad as a bank robbery.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > And I'd rather see graffiti, even if I find some ugly,
| than ads all over.
|
| How about neither?
| Hugsun wrote:
| Implying that graffiti is as bad as bank robberies is wild.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Dunno dude. If my bank is robbed there's no real impact
| to me - all the money is insured. If someone graffitis my
| house then it looks horrible and I have to spend time and
| money cleaning it up.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Most houses in Germany are not covered in graffiti.
| buster wrote:
| Except in Berlin. My house front is covered completely
| with ugly tags. Not even nice graffiti. My 2 year old can
| draw better.
| vasco wrote:
| > My 2 year old can draw better.
|
| Seems like you got the idea. Give her some stencils and
| have some fun.
| buster wrote:
| I actually wouldn't mind if the house would be covered in
| _nice_ grafiti! Get some cool artist and have him spray
| the front, i don 't mind. The bullshit tagging is just
| the worst and stupidest thing to do.
|
| It's the difference between vandalism and art.
| wiseowise wrote:
| So your solution to vandalism is to give in to vandals
| and vandalize your building yourself?
| vasco wrote:
| You're typing vandalism to make it seem like I also
| support breaking stuff or something? I have no problem
| with living in a building with stuff scribbled on it, and
| it sounds cool to have a customized building by the
| neighbours. Imagine all the kids that live in the
| building leave their name somewhere, it'd add to the
| history. Right now my building is white, and has bright
| orange metal bars. Is white with orange bars better? I
| don't know, it's just what it is and I didn't decide it
| either. I really don't see scribbles as counting as
| vandalism. I know it counts by law, but I don't have to
| agree to the law I just have to follow it, and out of all
| the laws that can be broken, it's one that never lost me
| any sleep when I see people doing it.
|
| My university for example, in every single room, every
| single table is scribbled on and marked for years and
| years. When I arrived there as a fresh faced student I
| saw scribbles that were 30 years old. Some people left
| their names, some people said they didn't like professor
| X, some people left Maxwell's equations on there. I'm so
| glad the university didn't consider it vandalism. This
| could be applied to so many more things. It had zero
| negative impact on my education or experience in the
| classroom, so how can it be considered vandalism?
| helboi4 wrote:
| fr breaking things and making them not unfunctional is
| not the same as drawing on them. you make a great point.
| I really doubt that most of the people writing here have
| ever even painted the outside of the building they live
| in. We don't actually choose any of these things. But if
| we all DIY customised everything, we would actually have
| more agency. And I love seeing evidence of actual public
| interaction with things around me.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Same here, especially since they put scaffolding for
| construction work on our building.
| 2024throwaway wrote:
| How many times has that happened to you?
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| I don't know, it's not like the bank publishes heist
| metrics :)
| 2024throwaway wrote:
| Touche.
| Hugsun wrote:
| I was thinking about societies in general. Bank robberies
| are absolutely worse.
|
| They can involve multiple lives being at much greater
| risk and a large amount of resources allocated to
| criminals. The fact that it doesn't come from the bank
| but an insurance agency doesn't change anything. The
| money comes from somewhere.
|
| The context was the graffiti subculture around the German
| rail system, although I didn't specify, that's what I was
| referring to. Of course graffiti on private residences is
| practically just vandalism. There aren't subcultures
| around that though, besides subcultures that just revolve
| around general vandalism.
|
| In that vein, you should probably get graffiti insurance
| if that's a concern.
| jhhh wrote:
| The point of the post was that merely having a subculture
| attached to something doesn't make it good or bad. The
| addition of the bank robbing was to make that point
| obvious by attaching a subculture to something obviously
| bad. If you thought they were saying that graffiti is bad
| because it's like bank robbery (which is bad) then you
| misunderstood the point of the post.
| Hugsun wrote:
| Two of my replies just said that graffiti was worse than
| bank robberies. That's hilarious and crazy to me.
|
| I get your point though, on reading the comment I replied
| to, after reading yours, it's clear to me that the
| equivalence implication is fairly weak. Your
| interpretation seems more accurate.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I am not sure I agree. You are making the life a little
| worse to hundred of thousands of people by making them
| feel like they live in a trash city every day.
|
| I am for tough penalties on the authors of grafitis. At
| least make them pay the full cost of cleaning them up
| plus heavy fines.
| Hugsun wrote:
| I was thinking about this in the context of the graffiti
| subculture around the German rail system. It's pretty
| interesting and different from random tagging.
|
| I somewhat agree with you if we are talking about low
| effort tagging, especially on homes.
|
| However if I had to choose between some ambitious
| criminals being given a large amount of money or if some
| wall getting a bad piece of art on it, I would always
| choose the latter.
| tshaddox wrote:
| But in a bank robbery you're taking someone else's property
| _no no no do not have a moral philosophy argument on HN_ in
| conclusion, that's why a Georgist land value tax is one of
| the most economically efficient forms of taxation.
| lifeofguenter wrote:
| Comparing Graffiti with Bank robbery is crazy.
|
| Its Art.
|
| I would like to understand why people take offense in it -
| especially if done on places that are so non-important.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Because at best it is ugly. On average you are defacing
| someone's property and worst case you are causing serious
| economic damage to someone.
|
| It's a reason it is a crime, although sadly it doesn't
| seem to be really enforced or punished, given the
| prevalence.
| damsalor wrote:
| It's a coping mechanism for youth culture. Your distain
| has already lost
| tpm wrote:
| Some of it can be art, but 99.9% is not, it's territory
| marking.
| stormking wrote:
| No, it's not.
| wiseowise wrote:
| 99% of it is not art, sorry, just litter on the walls
| made by delinquents.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Bank robberies also are art.
| ozim wrote:
| If you want a realistic example look at football ultra
| fans.
|
| There is whole subculture, competition and collaboration
| networks between fan groups.
|
| Some call it bestial street fighting where people lose
| lives and health but some might find it fascinating...
| HPsquared wrote:
| Or, on a larger scale, military history.
| wongarsu wrote:
| In our city graffiti is allowed on a couple select bridge
| pillars and retaining walls. Those often have excellent
| artworks that anyone can appreciate.
|
| Not that illegal graffiti can't produce great art too, and
| the illegality is a part of what fuels the culture. But I've
| come to the conclusion that if a place is likely to be
| "vandalized" by graffiti anyways you are better off just
| allowing it and see what people do without the time pressure
| of avoiding arrest.
| pizzalife wrote:
| Highly recommend the movies by the 1UP crew to get a feel for
| why this is actually great art.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| My city is filled with horrible graffitis. Some types of ugly
| signatures, even on historical buildings. It takes only a few
| weeks after walls are cleaned up to see new graffitis
| reappearing. It's really sad.
| damsalor wrote:
| The money would probably be better spent in community
| outreach than cleaning services
| HPsquared wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
| wiseowise wrote:
| Some people just want to see the world burn, no amount
| community outreach will fix that.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| It's not clear to me the profile of the people making
| these graffitis. At least some of them are made by left-
| wing anarchists given the slogan. Also, I suspect it's a
| very small number of people who are responsible for most
| of them: when paying attention, it's clear that a lot of
| these "signatures" refer to the same groups or persons.
|
| So not sure community outreach would help with those.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| Shiny pile of shit is still pile of shit, I'm glad people are
| starting to remove the graffiti. Nobody except hippies likes
| it.
| constantcrying wrote:
| There is exactly nothing about defacing public infrastructure
| which elicits the tiniest spark of "admiration" or "interest"
| in me.
|
| If you want to live out your "artistic ambitions" do it
| somewhere away from public property.
| brnt wrote:
| Can't tell if you speak about architecture of graffiti
| artists...
| oaiey wrote:
| Unfortunately, life is not black and white. Even without
| knowing anything about graffiti culture, there is a border
| between defacing and improving. And graffiti artists are
| moving over that border back and forth.
|
| Some of the most beautiful art I have seen are graffiti
| constantcrying wrote:
| I have never seen a good looking graffiti which was
| defacing public property.
|
| Granted, I have seen competent images which obviously
| were commissioned by building owners. All of it was bad
| art though and immensely displeasing.
| kichimi wrote:
| Defacing is your opinion, I think a city without graffiti
| is a dead city, it's an improvement.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Good for you. Keep it to your backyard.
| yardstick wrote:
| Have you seen any Banksy? Do you consider his work
| graffiti?
|
| Most of his work is graffiti'd onto public property
| without permission.
|
| https://www.artsy.net/artist/banksy
| kmmlng wrote:
| Of course you can find stuff that's high quality, but
| that is rare. Rather than looking at outliers, it might
| be more sensible to look at the average and the reality
| is that the average graffiti does not have any artistic
| value.
| constantcrying wrote:
| I grant Banksy that he has some technical competency and
| is able to do something somewhat visually interesting
| (his use of color works quite well and makes his pieces
| stand out within the medium), but I _really_ hate him as
| an artist.
|
| There is basically no one who makes greater kitsch than
| him. Everything he makes is steeped in the middle class,
| liberal, mediocrity of someone who points out that
| things, which everyone agrees are bad, actually are bad.
| It seriously is something of the worst "art" I have ever
| seen and actually makes me quite sympathetic to the post
| modernists whose movement is a reaction to people like
| him.
|
| The middle schooler, scribbling on canvas, is at least
| not trying desperately to impress the most bourgeois
| group of people the world has ever seen. That alone puts
| everything he does a serious step above Banksy.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Have you seen any Banksy? Do you consider his work
| graffiti?
|
| Yes and yes. Overhyped "I'm 14 and this is deep" energy.
| highcountess wrote:
| Of course it's graffiti and it's still imposing on others
| against their will, regardless of whether it's peak
| narcissist Banksy or someone else. Is very much about
| transgression and imposition and sadistic domination for
| personalities like Banksy and graffiti artists in
| general; it's precisely why they put their "art" in other
| people's things against their will.
|
| So if I graffiti your car because I believe it improves
| your car; would that be ok with you? It's art. You should
| be happy, right?
| charamis wrote:
| In what kind of city do graffiti happen on cars and
| households? mostly it's on public property
| constantcrying wrote:
| Certainly in the cities mentioned in the Article, e.g.
| Berlin and Hamburg.
| TapamN wrote:
| There are a few here that are actually pretty good:
|
| https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid
| =40...
| carstenhag wrote:
| Ahh yeah, the typical reason people hate forums nowadays.
| Registration-wall/paywall. Amazing
| kalleboo wrote:
| "Nowadays", Something Awful has required paid
| registration since like 2001
| TapamN wrote:
| I didn't realize that thread was totally paywalled. Here
| are direct links to two of the images:
|
| https://lpix.org/4545647/IMG_8335.jpeg
| https://lpix.org/4545648/IMG_8336.jpeg
| charamis wrote:
| Life would be meaningless if it was just black and white.
| Fortunately there are times that we're reminded that
| people do live in cities and do stuff other than just
| minding their own.
| z500 wrote:
| > Life would be meaningless if it was just black and
| white.
|
| Someone should probably tell that to the graffiti
| "artists" in my town
| rangestransform wrote:
| I really wish people minded their own more, then my ears
| wouldn't be assaulted by boomboxes on the subway and I
| wouldn't be accosted at an atm vestibule
| 72deluxe wrote:
| What a strange argument that seems to romanticise this
| "border" called "the law".
|
| It is black and white: someone is defacing something that
| doesn't belong to them. You can call the result whatever
| you want ("art","expression" etc) but the fundamental
| issue doesn't change.
|
| Would you be happy to wake up and see your car covered in
| paint? What about the windows on your house? Would you
| see this as an "improvement" too?
| nicolas_t wrote:
| I think I'd be relatively happy if I woke up one day and
| saw a banksy or an invader mosaic on my wall.
|
| I've seen graffiti art that definitely improved grey ugly
| walls and barriers. I've also seen ugly tags that are
| nothing more than letters. It's relative
| LoganDark wrote:
| Honestly, I would too. Illegal or not, whether it's
| "defacing" is definitely subjective.
| highcountess wrote:
| Is not relative at all to rational people.
|
| Let me just put it this way, do I get to just move into
| your home and take it over simply because I believe that
| I can make it a better home than you can? Do I get to
| steal your car/property because I believe I can make
| better use of it?
|
| Stop rationalizing narcissistic behavior and people
| trying to impose themselves on others. It's not relative
| at all. You or the narcissistic graffiti vandals have no
| right to impose themselves on others.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| The nice thing is that in democracies you can influence
| what is done against graffitis. Don't like graffitis? try
| to push your local representatives etc to be stricter on
| them or move to a country that has no graffiti like
| Singapore. One of the most sterile, boring city in the
| world.
|
| For whatever reasons, Germany is rather lenient towards
| graffiti artists which, in my eyes, makes Berlin more
| enjoyable than it would be otherwise.
|
| I've lived in a lot of places and I've learned that I
| hate grey boring walls a lot, I much prefer it when
| they're covered by colorful graffitis. It seems I'm not
| the only one so some localities tend to be rather lenient
| towards graffiti artists and even invite them, other
| places are much stricter and so you can enjoy bleak
| concrete walls unblemished by any graffitis.
|
| As to your example about homes, well, in France and in
| some other European countries, in the 90s there was a bit
| of a left leaning political push for "right to lodgings".
| This movement made squatting much easier (in France, it
| was extremely difficult to get rid of squatters if they
| moved in past 48 hours). I've always personally thought
| those laws were stupid and they were eventually repealed
| and amended recently. But that's the way it is with
| governments, you don't get to agree with all the
| decisions made. If it's a democracy you have some
| measures of influence.
| broken-kebab wrote:
| >or move to a country that has no graffiti like
| Singapore. One of the most sterile, boring city in the
| world.
|
| People who pretend to make art on walls are absolute
| minority compared to those who'd prefer to keep walls
| clean, or painted, or whatever (there are plenty of
| options between gray, and wannabe artists spraying
| smileys). But somehow you offer the majority to leave. I
| don't think that's how it can work really
| nicolas_t wrote:
| I don't offer the majority to leave. Like it or not,
| currently in most European countries, the law and
| application of laws is done so as to either encourage or
| at least not discourage graffitis. A lot of cities even
| give space to graffiti artists to paint and try to entice
| them.
|
| If the actual majority wanted to get rid of this problem,
| then it would be stopped, I'm not the one making the laws
| or deciding whether to apply them.
|
| As for grey walls, there are plenty of gray boring walls
| in any city in the world, usually those tend to be
| painted on, in my experience, not colorful walls nor
| brick walls nor older buildings.
| broken-kebab wrote:
| >If the actual majority wanted
|
| Well, no offence, but you idea of how society works is
| not particulatly correct. Both individuals, and
| institutions have to prioritize thousands of issues
| against limited resources. Because of that majority
| opinions doesn't necessary become policies. Only those
| urgent/emotional/tribal enough to become election fuel.
| Apparently, graffiti cannot compete with plenty of pains
| citizens experience now.
|
| >A lot of cities even give space to graffiti
|
| Try researching where it came from, and you'll see it's
| an attempt to civilize behavior cities found impossible
| to control.
|
| So reality is that graffitists are active, and numerous
| to extent it's hard to fought them off the walls so to
| say, and while majority doesn't like it, it's not ready
| to re-allocate resources from other issues. This leads to
| equilibrium we are in at the time.
|
| >plenty of gray boring
|
| It makes a good excuse in the internet discussion, but it
| doesn't correspond to street reality. I'm in a nice
| medieval quarter now, and see lots of graffity across
| buildings which neither gray, nor boring. It is as if
| people who do that don't care about beauty, other humans,
| and all those good things usually claimed to legitimize
| the phenomenon
| hgomersall wrote:
| What are property laws if not an imposition? Do I get to
| decide what laws to follow because I don't like being
| imposed upon?
| broken-kebab wrote:
| It only emphasizes the problem. There's only one Banksy,
| and millions prolific wall-defacers. You are unlikely to
| get the former, and almost guaranteed - the latter
| user_7832 wrote:
| > What a strange argument that seems to romanticise this
| "border" called "the law"
|
| Just because something is illegal, does not make it
| immoral or unethical by itself.
|
| I do understand the argument against graffiti, but
| there's also something to be said about any kind of
| expression that's inherently rebellious and counter-
| culture.
|
| > Would you be happy to wake up and see your car covered
| in paint? What about the windows on your house? Would you
| see this as an "improvement" too?
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong but the vast majority of graffiti
| is on public walls and facades, and not on houses or
| cars. At least here in the Netherlands that's what I've
| seen.
| broken-kebab wrote:
| Graffiti tends to appear on every surface which is not
| actively guarded. Including beautiful historical
| buildings, and including private properties. "Public"
| walls are just a visible example of a property which
| nobody cares about strong enough, and nobody is held
| responsible for (compared to a private owner who often
| can be fined for keeping vandalized facade as it is).
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Where do you live that you see that? I see it in places
| that are isolated, and as a proportion of urban surface
| area, very small.
| broken-kebab wrote:
| You apparently read only part of what I wrote really. You
| see it in places which are not guarded, or cleaned. So if
| there are not a lot of them - kudos to you city
| administration, and businesses. It's not because
| grafffiti is inherently benign. It isn't, and cost if
| keeping public spaces tidy is higher because of it
| tichiian wrote:
| An ugly beton brut building defaces the landscape and the
| view that should belong to everyone. A beautiful graffiti
| can improve that view and landscape. Under those
| circumstances, a graffiti can be legally wrong but
| morally right.
|
| However only very few graffiti "artists" rise above the
| skill level where their work could be considered
| beautiful. Usually it's just plain old dick measuring
| contests like spraying political slogans and overspraying
| the opposition's, putting your name on as many places as
| possible or proving their "worth" in the danger of
| getting caught, with no aesthetically relevant outcome
| whatsoever.
| broken-kebab wrote:
| If it should belong to everyone as you claim, then every
| aspiring graffiti maker must ask everyone's opinion
| before starting spraying.
| tichiian wrote:
| Basically, in my ideal world, whoever builds an ugly
| enough building should be liable to remove it or improve
| it if it is deemed too ugly by a majority.
|
| Graffiti is (partially) just the consequence of not
| living in that ideal world, but because of all the other
| problems with graffiti, I'd rather just treat it as the
| vandalism it usually is in all cases. No sense holding an
| election before every prosecution or clean and paint job.
| close04 wrote:
| People wouldn't need to outright show they're bigots,
| they can just vote your house too ugly to be on their
| street...
| rangestransform wrote:
| > Basically, in my ideal world, whoever builds an ugly
| enough building should be liable to remove it or improve
| it if it is deemed too ugly by a majority
|
| This sounds like the words of a "community oversight"
| committee obstructing the construction of housing, and we
| already know the effects of that on the housing market.
| Society has swung too far into allowing other people to
| tell someone what to do with their property already.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| In a way you are just debating who gets the power, and
| saying the people you like should have it. The fact that
| you or I like someone isn't a reason to give them power.
|
| The buildings have a lot more impact then the graffiti,
| and arguably should have more community voices involved.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| People tend to apply such hard-core legal standards to
| those they don't like. As the corrupt dictator says, 'For
| my enemies, the law! For my friends, everything!' Law-
| and-order leaders almost exclusively mean it for people
| they dislike.
|
| Let's apply some strict law-and-order to the wealthy and
| powerful, to corporations, to government officials. Then
| to all adults. Then I think it would be reasonable for
| kids with spray cans.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Most of the time this is a black and white matter.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Then let us buy them some large white boards so they can
| paint on it and move them somewhere else later
| p_l wrote:
| Some areas had, if not fully formally, dedicated areas
| for graffiti.
|
| As in, "we will leave this unadorned wall, and we won't
| clean up the graffiti unless it's truly an eyesore, and
| we won't chase you for it". The wall I most recall was
| close to quite utilized road, so yes it was very "public
| facing".
|
| The end result was that it was the one place where I
| would see actually impressive graffiti, with competition
| to make better stuff, instead of random vandal tags.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Bah, sorry, but most modern concrete buildings do indeed
| look better with graffity, no matter whether you see it as
| art or not. Every bit of color helps on those grey/dirty
| glass and concrete monstrosities.
|
| (the OPs photo is actually a perfect example of that,
| without graffity it would just be a depressing grey wall, I
| much prefer the colorful "defaced" version)
| krona wrote:
| _Everything has been vandalized but we shouldn 't blame
| the vandals. [They were] built by vandals and those who
| added the graffiti merely finished the job._ - Scruton.
| muditsahni wrote:
| It's always a struggle for me to accept that many people
| actually like graffiti. Maybe graffiti can add flavour to a
| city if it's really drab and ugly (although I'm not too
| sure about this), but it only defiles cities which are
| aesthetically pleasing and beautiful. The technicality of
| graffiti has little to do with its appeal or it's
| appropriateness. Something can be hard to make but still be
| garbage and/or misplaced w.r.t it's surroundings.
| danieldk wrote:
| Most so-called 'pleasing' cities are full of
| advertisement pollution. If I have to choose one of them,
| I'd choose art over advertising.
|
| I wish people would be as much against advertising as
| they are against graffiti.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Fr. Its so wierd for me when people get super mad about
| graffiti like they own any of these walls and could
| choose what was on them. If the graffiti wasn't there it
| would just be an ad, but I guess we're okay with that
| because consumerism is good because the our overlords
| tell us to like it.
| kalaksi wrote:
| Most graffitis I've seen are on empty walls or buildings
| with no ads. Brick wall looks way better without them.
| And to me it looks more like it's the graffiti maker that
| thinks that they own the wall and can choose what should
| be on it.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Property that is used by the public should be owned by
| the public. By that logic, graffiti artists as regular
| people who use public infrastructure in the area should
| as much right to paint on the wall as you do to paint the
| wall in your house. And you can paint over it if you hate
| it so much. But its all down to the community. It should
| not be a crime enforced by a ruling class who nominally
| owns the wall but doesn't use it, so is totally not
| actually inconvenienced by it being painted. You are part
| of the community. So is the artist. The person who owns
| the wall is mostly likely not. Stop pretending you're on
| the same side because you think you may also become a
| millionare by osmosis.
| kalaksi wrote:
| I'm not thinking that I'm on some side or defending some
| class. As you said, I'm part of the community, the
| public. Why should the right to have wall painted
| override the right to have the wall as it is? I'm betting
| most would want it without graffitis, but apparently one
| person can decide themselves how it should look. It's a
| simple conflict of opposing tastes.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Again, they have the right to have that taste and you
| have the right to hate it. You both should have equal
| ownership over the wall. Therefore you should also have
| the right to paint something they don't like on the wall.
| Or paint over their art. Or paint a different wall in a
| way you like. Nobody should be prosecuting anyone for the
| case of a minor disagreement over personal artistic
| taste.
| kalaksi wrote:
| What if I'm not skilled enough to paint it back to how it
| was? Or don't want to break the law. Or some other
| barrier. My point is that if given equal rights, it isn't
| clear cut if you should paint at all. For example, on
| dedicated graffiti walls the situation is different since
| people generally agree how they should be used. Sure, one
| way to solve a conflict is to let everyone do what they
| want and see what happens, but it's just a version of
| "might makes right", imo.
| helboi4 wrote:
| If we decided on all public use of space collectively,
| then yeah sure that would probably be better since it
| would be fairer. Unfortunately, this is not the system we
| live under. Therefore graffiti is a legitimate way for
| the community to express themselves in the face of
| undemocratic rule.
| subjectsigma wrote:
| Yeah this seems on-brand. Graffiti artist imagines
| himself as the hero in some epic class struggle, anyone
| who opposes him must be an enemy sympathizer!
|
| In reality we just want to live in a city that doesn't
| have ugly graffiti all over it.
|
| It's OK, when you grow up you'll understand. Walking
| little kids past a wall that reads FUCK because "the
| community" (aka a single edgy teen) decided it should is
| not a comfortable experience.
| helboi4 wrote:
| I have nieces and nephews and if I walked past a wall
| with them that reads FUCK i'd probably laugh and tell
| them its a bad word and move on with my life.
| subjectsigma wrote:
| Would it still be funny if it was a swastika? Or the
| n-word? Is that also a part of your glorious fight
| against evil capitalists? If not, why is it any less
| legitimate? Clearly the "community" must want it there if
| it was left up.
| helboi4 wrote:
| If it was a swastika or the n-word I would be very
| concerned about the nature of the community in that
| neighbourhood and if I'm in danger. But in terms of how
| i'd deal with kids seeing it, I'd take it as a teachable
| moment. I don't have to hide my kids from everything I
| don't believe in (besides they probably see crazy shit
| online anyway), I just need to teach them how to deal
| with it. Anyway, theres a wall near where i live where
| someone has made a massive mural making a political
| statement. People keep defacing it with the opposite
| opinion, and people keep painting back over that. If you
| really need the authorities to tell your community that
| swastika graffiti should make them angry and call them to
| action, then your community is screwed already. Either
| way, yeah just as we have laws to deal with incitement to
| violence and hatespeech we can have that with walls if
| you'd prefer, it just has to be sth actually extreme and
| targeted.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| A "teachable moment" like this is not how childless
| people imagine it to be, with the parent didactically
| educating the child with words of wisdom. Instead, the
| kid absorbs what they see or hear and it appears later on
| in their drawings or what they say on the playground.
| Children understand the power of transgression and all
| ideas are eligible for them to play with.
| subjectsigma wrote:
| Your comment is baffling, bordering nonsensical.
|
| > If it was a swastika or the n-word I would be very
| concerned about the nature of the community in that
| neighbourhood and if I'm in danger.
|
| If you lived in a large city like NY or London and you
| saw a random swastika, your immediate reaction would be
| to blame your neighbors? How do you know it wasn't
| someone from somewhere else?
|
| > If you really need the authorities to tell your
| community that swastika graffiti should make them angry
| and call them to action, then your community is screwed
| already.
|
| Hopefully nobody _needs_ the authorities to tell them
| things, but they do need authorities to help them enforce
| already agreed-upon laws. I can't spent my time running
| around cleaning up all the graffiti.
|
| Do you think it should be the duty of citizens to stop
| bank robbers, too?
|
| > Either way, yeah just as we have laws to deal with
| incitement to violence and hatespeech we can have that
| with walls if you'd prefer, it just has to be sth
| actually extreme and targeted.
|
| We literally already have this which is why vandalism is
| ILLEGAL, but your previous comments were completely
| dismissive of this!
|
| ---
|
| Seriously, this is like Basic Empathy and Human Emotions
| 101. Imagine yourself seeing the n-word written several
| times around your city. Contemplate the anger that you
| would feel, the desire for someone to do something about
| it, the realization that even if you dedicated all your
| free time to finding and stopping these people you
| probably couldn't do it yourself. Now replace "n-word"
| with something someone else finds deeply offensive and
| imagine yourself as them. Do you STILL think graffiti is
| totally harmless, or justified as long as you're
| vandalizing a megacorp?
| aloe_falsa wrote:
| > Property that is used by the public should be owned by
| the public.
|
| Not sure why that follows, or how it would avoid the
| tragedy of the commons, or why we should act as if that's
| already the case.
|
| That all aside, how would you feel about people
| reclaiming public space, parks and public transportation,
| by blasting loud music in there?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > It's always a struggle for me to accept that many
| people actually like graffiti.
|
| It's a struggle for everyone to accept different
| perspectives on art and aesthetics, but we need to accept
| that others' perspectives exist and are as legitimate as
| our own.
| atoav wrote:
| As someone with an art degree (with no great admiration for
| street art per se) I have to ask one question:
|
| Could you imagine that one person's "defaced" is another
| person's "finally some colors"?
|
| The destruction of property, trespassing etc. is obviously
| on the wrong side of the law, but on purely aesthetical
| terms this could be argued either way making it for that
| narrow category a subjective thing. Proponents of graffiti
| could argue you cannot deface a faceless thing, opponents
| would argue they like their lawn short, their fence white,
| the sky blue. One persons order is another persons prison.
|
| Note that I tried to look at the aesthetic question while
| ignoring the legal question -- mainly because you made an
| aesthetic argument. For many people the two would be
| entangled however: Something being illegal makes them look
| at the result unfavourable, even if a similar _legal_ wall
| mural would strike them as aesthetically superior to the 10
| years weathered white wall that it was before.
|
| As an art person I really see truly good graffiti, yet I
| have to notice that heavily graffitied parts of my city are
| tourist magnets -- so many people tend to like those
| "defaced" walls.
| soco wrote:
| Let's be honest, 99.999% of graffiti is smeared black
| lines barely recognizable as tags, over more smeared tags
| and curse words and just dirt. If that is aesthetic, we
| might have a very different definition of aesthetic than
| the art schools you mention. Do I see sometimes street
| art? Yes, but almost never on such places - the real
| street art is one done on commission (I assume) on some
| private house walls, while the rest is at best ignored.
| There's a reason you never see trains stations on
| Instagram.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| There is a word missing in the English language that
| confuses this discussion. Graffiti has come to mean air
| brush, whether it's art or vandalism. Other languages
| have separate words for these things.
| wiseowise wrote:
| That's easy:
|
| Was the graffiti made with approval of the owner of the
| building? Does it fit general aesthetics of the city? Yes
| and yes - it's finally some colors. Otherwise it's a
| vandalism.
|
| If it's a public building - it's vandalism, unless it was
| decided by all people living there.
|
| > As an art person I really see truly good graffiti, yet
| I have to notice that heavily graffitied parts of my city
| are tourist magnets -- so many people tend to like those
| "defaced" walls.
|
| Yeah, way to make life hell for residents of the
| neighborhood.
| kalaksi wrote:
| Many cities here also have walls dedicated for graffiti
| and such to give street artists some space and bring some
| color. Some small infra-related buildings also have
| street art done on commission and they look great! But
| shitty tags and graffitis still exist and my impression
| has always been that the maker probably wasn't thinking
| about art or anything deeper for that matter...
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Could you imagine that one person's "defaced" is another
| person's "finally some colors"?
|
| No. The graffiti I have seen in my life was clearly put
| there as narcissistic self expression by (usually
| criminal, if only by trespassing) youths, very rarely I
| have seen something which comes close to presenting an
| attempt at improving the environment.
|
| I grant you that I can emphazwith _the idea_ of clearing
| withering concrete slab with anything at all. But the few
| times I have seen it be an improvement were when it was a
| commissioned piece. But even then it was a small
| improvement at best.
| flakyfilibuster wrote:
| call it whataboutism (not directed towards your comment,
| but related): every time i'm in a discussion involving
| graffiti and people complain about it i ask about
| advertisements plastered though the city - people just
| shrug
| JW_00000 wrote:
| This is pretty ironic to read on a forum called "Hacker"
| News, which also originated as a counter-culture that
| considered itself creative but was regarded as criminal by
| the general public.
| waihtis wrote:
| lol, the hacker in hacker news is not in reference to the
| blackhat, but a tinkerer
| helboi4 wrote:
| Fr. God you have to be so boring and pro-authoritarian to
| really be offended by buildings you don't own and will
| never have the power to own, being drawn on by the
| public. Sometimes I think graffiti is nice looking.
| Sometimes I think its ugly as shit. I would never
| begrudge someone doing it though, since I appreciate the
| spirit of reclaiming public spaces by the people who
| actually live there, who will often never be able to own
| spaces of their own. I am not offended for the ruling
| classes when their property, that they do not use, gets
| some paint on it. That's some crazy bootlicking
| behaviour.
| constantcrying wrote:
| This website is literally run by a venture capital
| corporation.
|
| "Hacker" can have different meanings, but certainly in
| this case it isn't meant to reference the tech enthusuast
| anarcho communist subculture.
| mejutoco wrote:
| I found an example of graffiti that both sides of this
| conversation can agree on.
|
| As always, reality has some nuance, and we need to be
| careful about assumptions.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_graffiti
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Meanwhile in non-defaced public property: https://upload.wi
| kimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/1_times_...
|
| The thing about a big city is it's not just about the
| people who own the stuff you look at, it's about all the
| other people who have to look at it. I'll take graffiti
| over advertising any day. At least graffiti isn't trying to
| sell me anything or make me depressed or addicted or
| whatever.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| Everybody is selling something, especially graffiti
| artists. You just aren't the target demographic.
| Loughla wrote:
| What are they selling
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| Usually their personal brand or gang affiliation.
| sureIy wrote:
| Apples to oranges. The issue with graffiti is not that
| there are too many, it's that they're illegal. I doubt
| you'd admire an unrequested graffiti war over every wall
| and window of your house.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| People do lots of illegal things. When some tech titan
| does it, many on HN decry the laws, the government, etc.
| Painting graffiti is relatively, completely, harmless.
| close04 wrote:
| Maybe it just boils down to the right to property and
| having your own stuff just the (legal) way you want it.
|
| It's all great until _your_ stuff gets destroyed because
| someone thinks it 's better a different way. And when the
| graffiti is truly spectacular you can find some
| consolation in the result, maybe truly appreciate it. But
| that's not the case 99.99% of the time. Most graffiti is
| just trash, some rando spraying their name somewhere.
| Takes 10 seconds and 0 talent. It causes extra expense
| for people or the city to clean up, or it stays there as
| an eye sore for everyone.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It's usually on public property, or sometimes on
| corporate property. I don't think I've seen much graffiti
| on some private individual's property. It's not on the
| front of people's houses.
|
| > Most graffiti is just trash
|
| People say that about modern art, and about that crazy
| 'rock'n'roll'!
| stuffinmyhand wrote:
| Berlin is colorful, live with it. If you place a gray wall
| somewhere, it will first be sprayed by some noobie. Then
| later by a better artist and a few years later, no one even
| dares to cross it because someone put a beautiful piece
| there.
|
| Every shitty graffiti is about to be replaced by a better
| one!
| tichiian wrote:
| Berlin is also trying to improve it's standard of living,
| social structure, economic outlook and overall
| cleanliness. Graffiti vandalism will have less and less
| of a place there, and have a lessening acceptance.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > exactly nothing ... tiniest ...
|
| I know it's commonplace, but let's consider whether extreme
| expression has any rational substance to it, whether it's
| somehow more meaningful than an argument with actual
| reasons.
|
| Outrage is a weapon. Do we want it to be? I think
| (apologies to the parent comment) it should be
| disqualifying, shunned, excluded. It's a demonstration that
| they have no reasoned basis and will not contribute.
| yongjik wrote:
| I'm from a country where they once called up the fucking
| Interpol when someone vandalized a subway car and ran away.
| There are many things I complain about my country, but this
| isn't one of them.
|
| You wouldn't admire it if you were in a coffee shop and
| someone decided to unload their artistic ejaculation on your
| MacBook. Public infrastructure belongs to the public, no
| single person is the owner, and you don't get to deface it
| just because you think it's pretty that way.
|
| Cleanly maintained public infrastructure sends a message:
| that this is a place where people take these things
| seriously.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Are graffiti artists not part of the public?
|
| What makes a billboard, for example, more legitimate than
| graffiti?
| yongjik wrote:
| > Are graffiti artists not part of the public?
|
| In the same sense bike thieves are.
| fragmede wrote:
| consent. same as the difference between a shower and
| getting caught out in the rain
| doctor_eval wrote:
| I never consent to billboards.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| majority of ppl voted for some party, a party that gave
| consent to place/allow billboards, so indirectly, you
| gave consent. In the graffity's case - even the ruling
| party didn't gave consent, it's that they don't have
| resources to penalize and clean this mess
| helboi4 wrote:
| That implies that there was a party available that would
| ban billboards. There isn't, so graffiti is a way of
| actually taking back agency over our public spaces by
| underrepresented counterculture. Deal with it.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Deal with it.
|
| Incentivizing violence? Bold strategy.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Painting a wall is not violence. That is an extremely
| pro-authoritarian, hyper-capitalist viewpoint that is
| useful for the state and the property-owning ruling
| classes to enforce their rule. It has no basis in fact.
| Painting a wall does zero harm. If you own a massive
| building that is not your home, you can afford to paint
| over it. You don't need to though, because it is used by
| members of the public, not you, so it's actually
| meaningless to you. It's not the same as if graffiti
| artists painted over the front of your house as a middle
| class person. So there is no reason for you to be mad for
| uber-rich people who do not care about you. Walls that
| are used by the public should be owned by the public, and
| by that logic we all have the right to paint it whenever
| we want to. Just as you could paint a wall in your house.
| vasco wrote:
| It's scribbles on the wall, it's hardly violence.
| stormking wrote:
| Yes, you did.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Who are you to say what I consented to and what I did
| not?
| wiseowise wrote:
| Go deface them then.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The kids painting street art have no power to consent or
| not consent to anything. If they had access to art
| supplies, a loft, and a gallery, they'd probably use
| them.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Planning permission.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Permission is not remotely the same as legitimacy.
| wiseowise wrote:
| What does have billboard to do with ugly graffiti?
| They're not defacing billboards, are they?
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Billboards are an ugly smear on the face of the urban
| environment, whose sole purpose is to enrich the owners
| of the billboard, and those that rent them.
|
| The difference between billboards and graffiti is that
| one is "OK" and the other is not. But in neither case do
| we get a real choice.
|
| I don't think billboards have much political legitimacy
| at all, but there is lots of money behind them, so
| they're probably here to stay.
| xandrius wrote:
| If you only call graffiti the so-called "street art" then
| yeah but when most are bullshit tags from teenagers in the
| same cliche style with 0 creativity then it's trash.
|
| And the problem is that 99% of the graffiti in the world is
| trash tags in stations/trains which has the direct impact of
| giving a rough feel to any well-meaning location.
|
| So to me, that kind of graffiti is the result of a "me
| important" mentality which totally disregards the rest of the
| community who just loses in all fronts (including aesthetics
| and monetary).
| tetris11 wrote:
| Once you've seen "Becky and Stace" written large on every
| train station from Basel to Frankfurt, you can't help but
| admire the effort.
| edejong wrote:
| If you dive into: [wine, jazz, modern art, craft beer,
| tennis, ...] (pick one), you'd also appreciate it more.
|
| Thing is, if I decide not to do that, the impact on my life
| is relatively minor. What gives graffiti artists the right to
| impose their personal predilection unto others?
|
| In other words, given your reasoning, what's stopping me from
| playing John Coltrane at 110dBA the whole day and night?
| zo1 wrote:
| This entire sub-thread has me worried about society. People
| that thinks this way about the common good is why we can't
| have nice things. This is why it'll always be "50% vs 50%"
| and why we can't all get along and need to be separated.
| a-french-anon wrote:
| Some people actually have to live in your decadent cyberpunk
| wet dream, you know?
| 72deluxe wrote:
| Would you be happy to wake up to your car covered in
| graffiti? It's "art" after all! If not, why not?
| wiseowise wrote:
| Ugly defacement of public property.
| cubefox wrote:
| The vast majority has no aesthetic value to 99% of people and
| certainly not to the owner of the property.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I mean, if they appreciate the effort going into the keeping
| the infrastructure working, they can have some (un)written
| rules like not spraying identification numbers, street signs,
| transparent surfaces (like windows), I think many people will
| appreciate what they do and the story behind more.
|
| I'm all for street art, but not fond of not being able to
| navigate because some group decided to let me they were here
| by making a road sign unintelligible.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| The same can be said about cartel killings.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Everybody can see the difference between graffiti art and
| graffiti vandalism. No need to look into the story behind it.
| Most people appreciate beautiful graffiti and hate the ugly
| tags and other untalented crap.
| callalex wrote:
| The "competition" associated with the MS13 "artwork" that
| covers up stop signs and street names in my neighborhood sure
| seems to involve a lot of guns and human rights violations.
| phyzome wrote:
| Reminder: You're replying to a comment about graffiti
| potentially covering something that's supposed to be
| transparent.
| wongarsu wrote:
| With the goals stated in the article they only really need to
| stay transparent in concept renders of new projects. Once built
| they only need to fulfill the noise insulation targets and be
| less of an eyesore than their solid counterparts
| ghostly_s wrote:
| [0] https://ga.de/imgs/93/8/5/9/3/0/9/1/9/tok_8596521c60eeaa53e
| ea42eea57c8b7dc/w1200_h630_x662_y525_GA_85197421_2005565667_RGB
| _190_1_1_2d14a73e871971ed95a819ea6b69b342_1593349745_2005565667
| _77b22cacaf-f8bed87dc312e74a.jpg
|
| looks much nicer than a blank wall to me.
| labster wrote:
| I don't know, I doubt I would want a URL this long on my
| wall.
| damsalor wrote:
| The aesthetics of qr codes are sublime
| mtmail wrote:
| The article ends "the potential for faster planning approvals
| and reduced objection rates from communities, ultimately
| speeding up project completions." so their goal might be to
| build faster regardless how they'll look soon after.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Isn't vandalism an offense in Germany?
| Maxion wrote:
| I'm pretty certain it's an offense in most developed
| countries.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| In many places in Europe there is a de-facto truce between
| graffiti artist and the local governments: You can paint/tag
| some areas.
|
| Typically noise barriers are such, while trains themselves or
| stations are not.
|
| Harder persecution both by authorities and self-policing in
| the subcult community after some prominents were persecuted
| and agreed with to help normalize the situation has led to
| the current status quo, which for example in Hungary has
| normalized the situation pretty much, public transport and
| stations are generally not vandalized, and some larger well
| exposed areas were designated as local "legal walls".
|
| I guess the panopticon (cameras becoming cheap and
| ubiquitous) also helped
| HPsquared wrote:
| I think if it was put to a vote, most people would be
| against graffiti.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Almost everywhere, but it's fairly low priority and
| impossible to prosecute without Orwellian levels of
| surveillance.
| HPsquared wrote:
| We already have those levels of surveillance. It's just an
| unwillingness to do anything.
| tiagod wrote:
| Honestly, it's just paint, it has no direct victims. With
| most police departments understaffed and underfunded (at
| least where I live, Portugal), I would rather they
| focused on more serious problems.
| carstenhag wrote:
| These guys know the city in and out. Only in cases where you
| already expect them, you could be able to catch them. Also,
| police always has to prove _you_ did it, and not some other
| member of the group.
|
| https://youtu.be/Y9Lm0dkkVAw?si=NDHBYtciFPDhp78I
| highcountess wrote:
| Many things are covered in graffiti in Western Europe. It
| always baffles me that people are in such a defeated state of
| mind that graffiti is just simply accepted and seemingly
| nothing is done about it.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, one way to look at it is just that graffiti is
| just... fine, really. It's not generally a huge deal in the
| scheme of things.
| Zanneth wrote:
| And this attitude is why there is so much of it.
|
| Why don't you call it what it is: destruction of public
| property?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Factually, the property isn't destroyed. Beyond that, I
| think the street art often enhances it and otherwise is
| easily ignored.
|
| You may see it differently, but what you see isn't "what
| it is", it's just your perspective.
| andersonklando wrote:
| In Portugal you can see poetry being embedded in graffiti
| which is awesome, TBH
| Vinnl wrote:
| At some point someone made me realise that almost anything
| that can be said about graffiti can also be said about
| outdoor advertising.
| dgfitz wrote:
| One is vandalism, which is a crime, and one is not.
|
| There, we have at least one delta now.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| If it were up to me, billboards WOULD be a crime - and in
| some places that take pride in their land's beauty, they
| are!
|
| Another difference is that one of them is intentionally
| designed to capture my attention, usually while I'm
| driving, to try and get me to fork over my money. So
| that's another delta.
|
| I don't love graffiti, but I do hate outdoor
| advertisements.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > It always baffles me that people are in such a defeated
| state of mind that graffiti is just simply accepted and
| seemingly nothing is done about it.
|
| As usual, the answer is found by examining assumptions: 1)
| It's somehow bad, and 2) People strongly want it removed.
| (And by accepting those two assumptions as true, and it's
| also true that the street art remains, that argument infers
| despair.)
|
| I and many people don't think it's Bad (avoiding a specific
| definition, an endless discussion). I don't mean it's always
| Good or never Bad, but generally IMHO it ranges from easily
| ignored to decent to some really inspiring stuff.
|
| And I find it generally inspiring that some kids have the
| spirit, creativity, initiative, and determination to do it;
| to express themselves and not be suppressed by society.
| Adults have so much agency; it's great to see kids seize
| some, and in a harmless way (they aren't injuring people,
| risking anything, etc.). I see the suppression of graffiti as
| telling kids to be 'seen and not heard'. People embrace
| billionaires who break rules and then kill and impovrish on a
| mass scale; all these kids are doing is painting something.
|
| I'd almost advocate that kids have free reign to paint public
| property (that would seem to get out of control, and any
| announced limit may be an invitation to break it). It's their
| city too, and adults should have to live with what the kids
| have to say. (Still - how could that work? Any undecorated or
| unfinished surface?)
|
| I understand you may not agree; we need to find a balance.
| kredd wrote:
| You're right, but let's be honest, most of "spray painting"
| is just tagging. Even as a kid I found big spray painted
| murals "cool", but thought tagged places as "ran down". I
| met a guy a few years ago who told stories about spray
| painting large murals in underpasses, but gave up when
| others started to tag over his creations.
|
| I obviously don't have a solution to this, but it's hard to
| argue how spray painting is net good even for kids.
| Propelloni wrote:
| Sad, but true. Some people even spray paint the windows of the
| actual passenger cars [1]. It's not rare and most sprayers do
| not have the skill of the person who painted this car. I don't
| get it.
|
| [1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/kami68k/50329760658
| tuukkah wrote:
| DB is also deploying robot dogs against graffiti painters:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40388114
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| God I hope they graffiti the robot dogs as well because that
| would be so funny.
| tiagod wrote:
| They will. We're talking of poeple that have no problem
| stopping a train in a busy station to completely paint it
| from one side to the other. They'll spray the dog, put a
| couple stickers on it, and run away.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Your tax Euros at work: Buying expensive useless robot
| dogs.
| sib wrote:
| I'm confused - how do the vandals stop the train?
| _tk_ wrote:
| Like this:
|
| https://youtu.be/vg5OrytF_a0?t=65
|
| TL;DW: Basically, the conductor alerts the police and
| stops the train, once they realize that the train is
| being decorated. If they started moving forward, it could
| seriously endanger the graffiti sprayers. So that's
| really the best course of action here.
| rangestransform wrote:
| If one graffiti artist delays my train for one minute,
| that's one minute too many
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Is outrage somehow a rational reason for anything?
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| ego much? if they get hurt, train is delayed, if they
| don't get hurt, train is delayed. you cannot win.
| vdsk wrote:
| Well, you might assume that they only get hurt once.
| Maybe it would make their co-conspirators re-evaluate
| their actions too...
| mithr wrote:
| Whoa, TIL that suspension railways exist!
|
| My first thought after seeing the end of the video was
| "why is this video flipped?" until I realized that it was
| only the train that was "upside down".
| djeastm wrote:
| But who do they deploy when the robot dogs get out of hand?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| It's interesting to read this conversation about graffiti
| happening on a hacker forum, yet it seems stuck in a polarised
| stand-off around aesthetics and ownership rights.
|
| That's a shame, because the root issues are in information
| warfare, the battle to control information spaces.
|
| To the extent The Internet is still considered a "public
| space";
|
| Is spamming and trolling not a form of digital graffiti?
|
| Is the creation of products and apps that have a negative
| impact on society not a "narcissistic imposition"?
|
| Is the appropriation of the commons or other private property
| to spread messages (advertising or graffiti) not the same in
| the digital realm?
|
| And those who "clean up" graffiti... do we not call then
| "censors" or "like down/up-voting" when we wish to amplify or
| make other people's communications in the world disappear
| because we disagree with them?
|
| At the end of the day we are all still animals shouting to be
| heard the loudest in our jungle. Online or offline we're party
| to the same personality traits of quiet orderliness or
| disorganised expression. What happens in cyberspace hardly
| seems different from what happens IRL with spray-paint.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Yeah I'm deeply disappointed that these so called "hackers"
| are so united on such a tired, pro-authoritarian view on the
| use of public space.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| TBH I didn't really mean to situate the remark on an
| authoritarian-liberal axis, rather to comment on the
| congruence between meat-space and cyberspace in regard to
| these themes.
| thih9 wrote:
| > MetaWindow, a transparent noise barrier boasting unparalleled
| sound-absorbing capabilities
|
| This is about a physical product. Not a software window; and
| unrelated to Meta, of Facebook and Instagram fame.
| yau8edq12i wrote:
| Nobody outside of tech circles actually cares about how
| facebook's parent company is called this month. It's still
| facebook, it's still google, it's still twitter. Not meta,
| alphabet or x.
| thih9 wrote:
| This is a tech website though. It's not unusual to see
| Facebook's parent company mentioned in a hn submission's
| title.
| lionkor wrote:
| Now the trains have to actually arrive and depart within, say, 5
| minutes of the planned time, and we will be in the 21st century
| finally.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| A startup with wrong product focus would be insolvent in a few
| months. Deutsche Bahn can rot for decades spending money on
| technology that would not make any difference when a quarter of
| its trains is delayed or cancelled.
| thewarpaint wrote:
| Care to explain how trains being delayed or canceled is related
| to a new technology reducing sound pollution?
| tschwimmer wrote:
| The article posits it could make approvals to build new rail
| lines near noise sensitive areas easier.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| The prospects of building something new with this tech are
| very distant. Just to get an approval for construction in
| Germany it can take years and then there will be traditional
| delays along the way. We won't see it in any meaningful
| quantities before 2030-2040 - whether this project will
| survive until then is an open question. The acute service
| problem on the other side could be addressed by simpler means
| like investment in IT and better internal processes. My last
| trip was cancelled one hour in advance, despite that they
| knew it couldn't happen days before. I had to visit their
| travel center, because the app couldn't apply my seat
| reservation to alternative route, and that experience was
| awful. It is very hard to understand why some tech that may
| never see the light due to bureaucratic hurdles deserves
| investment at the time where service doesn't show any signs
| of improvement.
| microtherion wrote:
| My understanding is that some of the mitigation for delayed or
| cancelled trains will involve new construction, and that might
| be facilitated by reducing the noise impact.
| usr1106 wrote:
| Deutsche Bahn is not a startup, but provides public service.
| Are the Autobahns profitable?
|
| That they have problems with service quality does not mean
| other problems should not be addressed. Noise pollution has
| massive health consequences for those living in affected areas.
| yau8edq12i wrote:
| A decades old national train company is about as far from a
| startup as can be. That's a really strange comment.
| Lorin wrote:
| Ok, now they have an excuse to employ a crew to keep them clean
| like any other window-like product... instead of it just being a
| wall? I don't get it.
| fcsp wrote:
| There's maintenance management fees to be earned!
|
| I don't know about how this stuff works, but as a matter of
| fact there's management bonuses for new development for DB
| execs, whereas nothing is gained from plain bleak maintenance.
| So guess why many major train stations in Germany have been
| undergoing major, multi-billion relocations and redesigns
| (often with worse throughput metrics).
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Complaining about train noise is a national hobby, so the
| legal rules for noise protection have been significantly
| tightened up in the last decades and now multi-metre high
| noise barriers (up to four, five or even six metres) are a
| _legal_ requirement. The end result being that people still
| complain about fear of more noise when infrastructure
| upgrades are proposed, but new they complain about visual
| blight, too. Even where local property owners would be okay
| with somewhat more elevated noise levels (or having sound-
| insulating windows installed) in return for lower noise
| barriers, the infrastructure operator is legally required to
| build the full-height wall even against the wishes of the
| adjacent property owners /local municipalities.
|
| In the absence of national sensibilities on noise returning
| to e.g. Swiss levels (where AFAIK balancing noise protection
| vs. its visual impacts actually _is_ an official planning
| goal), less ugly noise protection barriers are a worthwhile
| development. (They 've also managed to make freight train
| noticeably quieter by requiring composite-materials brake
| shoes, which don't roughen up the wheel treads so much, but
| beyond that there aren't many more easy gains in noise
| reduction to be had...)
| eternauta3k wrote:
| Best way to make a city look crappier is replace a dirty wall
| with a dirty window
| ggm wrote:
| I can't find it any more but I read a paper decades ago on the
| sound modulation effects of different plants, at scale and how
| designed planting around motorways can help reduce local resident
| impact.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Okay it's clear-ish...but where's the noise level sample vs. the
| alternatives?
|
| edit: I did find this cool demo of a similar product of theirs,
| but seems to be nothing more online about the noise barrier.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUee93HcPVQ
| vezuchyy wrote:
| Cool, one day CP will install those along their tracks and my
| high-rise will shake silently every time
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMD_F59PH#F59PHI departs from the
| station.
| mbforbes wrote:
| A semi-related surprising fact I only learned recently is that
| the ultra-long nose of Japanese bullet trains is not for
| aerodynamics, but to reduce noise. Specifically, "tunnel boom."
|
| Random source: https://www.jrpass.com/blog/why-shinkansen-bullet-
| trains-no-...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| this is only a problem in japan because the shinkansen is the
| oldest high speed network in existence.
|
| new train tunnels built in Europe are wider and flare out at
| the end so that there isn't a tunnel boom.
| mbforbes wrote:
| Fascinating, and now I learned another new thing! Thank you
| for sharing.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| yup. for a more detailed explanation, there's this segment
| of the article:
|
| > Basically what happens is when a train enters a tunnel at
| high speed, the air in front of it is compressed and does
| not have enough time to flow past the trains body. When all
| released at once, the pressure causes a shockwave that goes
| boom!
|
| This is basically a very rudimentary version of the piston
| effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piston_effect
| danielfoster wrote:
| Now they just need to be on time.
| croemer wrote:
| Terrible press release. The first picture shows an
| _intransparent_ barrier. Is that a before after picture? And what
| is "meta technology"?
| addandsubtract wrote:
| Seems to be a before picture. There's an "after" picture
| further down the page. Meta technology maybe because it's not
| actual train related tech, but meta tech related to trains.
| metters wrote:
| This [1] is the official press release by Deutsche Bahn. I
| wanted to post this instead, but it is in German.
|
| [1]
| https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/presse/pressestart_zentrales...
| croemer wrote:
| Thanks that one is better! At least it says: "m Bild:
| Herkommliche Larmschutzwand und MetaWindow im Vergleich
| (Visualisierung)"
|
| They should just use the new picture and not make the
| previous way of doing things so central. If one just looks at
| the picture it could appear as if the wall changes
| translucency dynamically.
| wiml wrote:
| My guess is it's related to "metamaterials", which are
| materials engineered to have interesting properties by
| including structures smaller than the wavelength of whatever is
| going through them (sound, microwaves, even visible light if
| the structures are fine enough). There is quite a lot of
| research into sound-absorbing yet porous acoustic
| metamaterials.
|
| (Related, but maybe not technically a metamaterial, previously
| on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38678415 )
| croemer wrote:
| Sounds like it, yes. I remember negative refractive index
| materials, now that I think about it. The press release
| should not invent its own term (meta technology) just to
| sound fancy. Just say meta material.
| pimlottc wrote:
| This is such a pet peeve for me too, images in articles should
| always have captions!
| mindwok wrote:
| Lots of negative comments on this. I, for one, am glad to see
| work that supports better transport infrastructure while not
| being insanely ugly like a lot of transport infrastructure is
| (like the giant concrete birds nests of highways in US cities). I
| want to live in cities that are visually appealing.
| mikeiz404 wrote:
| This article goes into a little more detail:
| https://www.heise.de/en/news/MetaWindow-Laermschutz-an-Gleis...
|
| And the PhotonicVibes site is here: https://phononic-
| vibes.com/metawindow-for-railway/
|
| Here is a demo video for a meta material made by them:
| https://youtu.be/NElK8qKRrBU?si=CfBjUESlu_XUvnn_
| riffraff wrote:
| That's a really cool demo!
| Etheryte wrote:
| Honestly, that demo alone would be enough to get funding at
| any demo day, really cool stuff.
| kierenj wrote:
| Weirdly it says "up to 10dB" attenuation.. which isn't
| actually that much at all. 10dB would be a halving/doubling.
| I'm not sure how the apparent loudness / change in waveform
| amplitude display is so great, considering that actual hard
| stat...
| axytol wrote:
| 3 dB would be halving/doubling. With 10 dB, you would get a
| ratio of 10x.
| harha wrote:
| I mean it's cool, but how about getting some basics like
| punctuality and cleanliness right first.
| donw wrote:
| I cannot be the only person that read this as "MetalWindow",
| a.k.a. "walls".
| throwaway4good wrote:
| This is an international site and I think people don't understand
| just how big Deutsche Bahn's problems with delays are and how
| incredible dissatisfied its customers are. The situation with DB
| is really unique compared to its neighbors in any direction.
|
| While the tech described probably has merits, anyone who has been
| near DB lately would instinctively go: why are you doing this
| when you cannot get the basics right?
| lukan wrote:
| Or basic information about when and where a train comes late or
| not at all. Sometimes the information is there and correct -
| sometimes not at all or is wrong and 100+ people waiting for a
| train that is never coming. Experienced that way too often. But
| hey, the Bahn management achieved all their self proclaimed
| targets (non of them related to reliable trains) so they surely
| deserved their fat bonus.
| marsRoverDev wrote:
| I fly to germany when I can, or take any other operator's
| train. I am way, way more familiar with Karlsruhe than I would
| like to be.
| jamil7 wrote:
| It's also gotten so expensive and unreliable that some people
| I've spoken to are just driving again instead whereas years ago
| they would have always gone by train. I can't help but feel
| that the weird ownership model contributes to this and the
| whole company should just be properly nationalised.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Hell I used to bike 20km to work to avoid it
| panick21_ wrote:
| DB is a gigantic organization. Do you think it is reasonable
| for them not not make progress or advancement in anything as
| long as the ICE delays are not fixed? They can never change a
| train interior, improve the food menu, or 1000s of other
| things? This is a totally unreasonable suggestion.
|
| The reason for DB reliability problem is 50+ years of
| infrastructure neglect, fixing it will not be improved by
| shutting down every other group at DB.
|
| Personally having traveled threw Germany many times, its a
| mostly amazing. Yes sometimes trains are late sometimes, but
| the trains themselves are great and travel in them is a joy.
|
| I think what Germans don't understand is how good they have it
| compared to many places in the world.
| tetris11 wrote:
| But they had it better only a few years ago. DB has really
| crumbled.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| Someone turned on the DB signal[1] so here I am.
|
| > _sometimes trains are late sometimes, but the trains
| themselves are great and travel in them is a joy._
|
| "Sometimes"? Let me tell you about my friends in the German
| area of NRW. The one that commutes far away regularly gets
| stranded on the way because the trains arrive so late that
| there's no connection home till the next day and because, of
| the two lines that take her home, one is closed. The second
| one commutes within the city and has decided to buy a car
| because the SBahn was closed for over a year with a repair
| that took longer than planned. The other two don't even
| consider trains in their daily life. My GF at the time had a
| year-long line closure, we moved to a place with a year-long
| train closure and I'm living now in an area where my regular
| train won't run until November (assuming no delay).
|
| Yes, DB trains are pretty nice on the inside. Quiet, too. But
| what good is a nice train that doesn't take me to where I
| need to go, or at all? If anything, I think those that don't
| rely on the trains daily fail to realize how bad the
| situation is. Ten minutes delay on the one ICE trip on
| holidays? Sure, whatever, it's fine. Ten minutes delay on a
| five minutes connection to work? Enjoy wasting half an hour
| of your life every other day, like I did during my studies.
|
| Switzerland has cut DB off [2] and Scottish fans received
| warnings [3] about how unreliable German trains are. It is
| _bad_.
|
| [1] The DB signal is like the bat signal for comments
| downplaying DBs issues, but you often don't see it because
| there's a "Signalstorung" and it shows up an hour later. They
| usually apologize for the inconvenience.
|
| [2] https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-
| news/deutsch...
|
| [3] https://www.indonewyork.com/m/science/european-football-
| cham...
| panick21_ wrote:
| Look I understand all that. And Im all for fixing it. But
| its still objectivly better then in many other places. Rail
| overall in Germany is great. ICE are the weakness for sure.
| But its still much better then many other places in the
| world.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Under normal circumstances I would agree with you. But is DB
| and they really need to go all hands on deck and fix their
| reliability problem.
| braza wrote:
| > I think what Germans don't understand is how good they have
| it compared to many places in the world.
|
| They should care about how other transportation systems are
| around the world as a coping mechanism?
|
| I mostly travel around DACH region +
| Nordics/Spain/Netherlands and sometimes the contrast in terms
| of reliability, maintenance, and integration makes me feel
| that Germany is 10+ years back in time.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > While the tech described probably has merits, anyone who has
| been near DB lately would instinctively go: why are you doing
| this when you cannot get the basics right?
|
| DB is facing the problem that the network needs substantial
| overhaul - the problem is that when you do a large-scale
| renovation, you gotta adhere to _current_ code, not late 19th
| century code (which is when quite a few of the railways had
| been built). And that means noise protection anywhere where the
| tracks are adjacent to residential areas, but NIMBYs will
| launch intensive protests if they get presented with a massive
| wall of steel in their backyard - understandably so, these
| things are an eyesore.
|
| So, it's a prerequisite for DB to tackle its problems...
| because most of them are caused by the aged infrastructure.
| Right next to Munich, on the route to Muhldorf, there are still
| mechanical switches in place, built around 1900 [1].
|
| [1] https://www.merkur.de/lokales/erding/der-bahnausbau-nach-
| mue...
| iggldiggl wrote:
| > And that means noise protection anywhere where the tracks
| are adjacent to residential areas, but NIMBYs will launch
| intensive protests if they get presented with a massive wall
| of steel in their backyard - understandably so, these things
| are an eyesore.
|
| Though to some extent people got themselves into that
| situation of their own fault by constantly screaming about
| noise and nothing else - politicians listened and tightened
| up the rules for noise protection, with the result that
| legally noise protection is now weighted 100 % and visual
| aesthetics 0 %. Whereas to my knowledge the Swiss still take
| a somewhat more balanced approach, and don't completely
| disregard the visual impact of noise protection barriers.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Though to some extent people got themselves into that
| situation of their own fault by constantly screaming about
| noise and nothing else
|
| It's not like they don't have a point... _a lot_ of former
| switchyards were converted to residential use in the early
| 90s and ever since then, but of course the rail tracks that
| these yards were laid adjacent to still kept operating, and
| freight trains make an awful lot of noise.
|
| Silent-brake requirements (basically, composite brake pads
| instead of the old metal-on-metal pads) have eased the
| noise emissions quite a bit, but damages in the wheels
| ("flat spots") or in axles still cause persistent and
| annoying noise. Unfortunately, 99.999% of freight cars are
| still dumb as fuck and have no sensorics on-board to detect
| issues, so it takes a loooong time until such cars are
| taken out of service. Maybe with the adoption of the new
| automated couplers ("DAK") that are in research at the
| moment, this will change as all cars have to be retrofit
| with electricity and smart components anyway so it is cheap
| to install monitoring on wheels and axles, but that will
| take another few years.
|
| Additionally, the tracks themselves can cause ungodly
| amounts of noise due to neglected maintenance. Where rails
| aren't (properly!) welded together, they cause a bump
| noise, switches need to be properly lubricated and the
| wheels need lubrication as well to prevent those horrible
| screeches... but DB hasn't had the money to properly take
| care of that for decades now.
|
| > Whereas to my knowledge the Swiss still take a somewhat
| more balanced approach, and don't completely disregard the
| visual impact of noise protection barriers.
|
| The Swiss have more silent rail in the first place. Lots of
| rail-side detectors to check for damages on passing rail
| cars (an absolute necessity due to the high amount of
| tunnels, you do _not_ want a train de-railing due to an
| axle or wheel issue inside a tunnel and catching fire) and
| about 5-6x the amount per capita invested into their rail
| system every year.
|
| On top of that, Germany has to deal with rail cars (and
| trucks) from across the entirety of Europe passing through
| it - basically all transport from the Dutch and German sea
| ports towards Eastern and South Eastern Europe goes through
| Germany, the Swiss have to deal with far less traffic than
| we do.
| jonp888 wrote:
| No other railway has to deal with with so much traffic on
| infrastructure that is so old and out of step with the demands
| placed on it.
|
| People tend to obsess over DB and it's management, but they
| only control maintenance. All decisions about renovations are
| made by the government.
|
| So what do you want?
|
| - Wait years for large renovation projects on all major routes,
| including lengthy closures for work(the current strategy)
|
| - Cancel 25-50%% of all trains permanently, if then people
| can't travel because it's impossible to get through the door,
| tough
|
| The latter one is the French solution - just run very few
| trains, regardless of demand. The last time I wanted to travel
| by train in France, I simply couldn't because all trains on the
| route for the entire day were 100% sold out.
|
| Then there's Spain. The last time I wanted to travel there, I
| didn't because the first(!) train of the day left at lunchtime
| and arrived mid-afternoon.
| felsokning wrote:
| They don't give any numbers on the amount of resistances to the
| expansion of the infrastructure, based on noise alone.
|
| This reads like a "we did a cool thing" but without qualitatively
| demonstrating the merits for the need.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Qualitatively speaking it definitely is a problem in Germany.
| DB planning rules used to include a guidance note that noise
| barriers higher than the typical lower edge of a train window
| should only be considered in exceptional cases. Two or three
| decades of constant complaints about train noise have led to
| legal rules and planning regulations having been significantly
| tightened up and now mean that four, five or even six metre
| high noise barriers are nothing out of the ordinary for new-
| built infrastructure.
|
| The result being that people still complain about fear of more
| noise when new infrastructure is proposed (despite freight
| trains having gotten quieter, too, due to the introduction of
| new brake shoes), but now they're also complaining about the
| visual blight, too. (And nobody cares about the views of the
| train passengers.)
|
| Meanwhile in Switzerland for example the current state is that
| balancing noise reduction needs vs. the visual impact of noise
| barriers still is an official planning goal because apparently
| people haven't been screaming so loudly about noise and nothing
| else, so the Swiss tend to build fewer and lower noise barriers
| even today.
|
| (Also purely empirically from my visits there, the UK also
| doesn't seem to build as many and as high noise barriers, even
| on infrastructure that has been newly built or rebuilt within
| the last two decades.)
| smokel wrote:
| My hart jumped when I initially thought that they had implemented
| an idea that I had once.
|
| Turns out MetaWindow is _not_ an augmented reality display in the
| train 's window, where one can read information on the scenery
| that one passes through while traveling. What is that city in the
| distance? When was that church built? How many cows are in that
| meadow? Stuff one has to know.
| tetris11 wrote:
| A public institution doing this, fine fire away. A private
| train company? This will be an obnoxious video ad space.
| culturestate wrote:
| DB is still a 100% state-owned enterprise; it's "private" in
| name only.
|
| Sort of like Singapore Airlines, which is listed but
| majority-owned by one of Singapore's sovereign wealth funds.
| crote wrote:
| A large fraction of trains and buses in Europe are already
| equipped with large full-color monitors. They are primarily
| used to show trip progress, potential transfers, and basic
| informative messages. Ads are rare, and are usually static
| images advertising the transport company's own products.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Some aircraft designers have proposed doing this, because a
| screen can be lighter than a pressure resistant window.
| reportgunner wrote:
| Just sit at home and stare at a video of the scenery at that
| point.
| smokel wrote:
| The (highly recommended) Belgian television series "In de
| gloria" [1] had a teleshopping sketch in which one could
| order VHS tapes of their favorite tracks. The target audience
| was pensioners who had traveled the same boring track for
| years.
|
| The irony is that some years later a television channel
| started broadcasting railway videos all day long.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_de_gloria
| reportgunner wrote:
| I had to read like 5 times to understand that "favorite
| tracks" is the train tracks haha.
| JR1427 wrote:
| I don't think this would make looking out of (or at) the window
| as enjoyable as with a normal transparent window.
|
| Unless you mean that there would still be a normal window, too?
| smokel wrote:
| The idea is to install only a few of these, possibly only in
| designated railway carriages. It would make for a great
| conversation starter, which might be an improvement over
| people staring at their own screens.
| JR1427 wrote:
| Ah, I see. I thought the idea might be to replace windows
| completely, like on the fridge doors of some supermarkets.
| smokel wrote:
| Also, the envisioned displays are transparent, as in
| science fiction movies.
|
| Edit: partially transparent, obviously.
| dgellow wrote:
| I get the idea but I'm glad I can look through windows without
| being distracted by animated digital information
| callalex wrote:
| This historical fact is brought to you by McDonalds(tm)! _flash
| flash flash_
| codemusings wrote:
| Now could Deutsche Bahn please also invest in some actual
| infrastructure, trains and make them go on time?
|
| That'd be great! Thanks.
| locallost wrote:
| Deutsche Bahn pays for the usage of the infrastructure just
| like any other company using it (e.g. Flix or any of the
| regional carriers). The infrastructure is the responsibility of
| DV InfraGO (formerly DB Netz).
| codemusings wrote:
| What are you talking about? DB Infrago is a subsidiary of DB
| and is as such governed by the board. The fact that they are
| separate entities has purely corporate legal reasons.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > Now could Deutsche Bahn please also invest in some actual
| infrastructure
|
| The main "problem" currently is not that they modernise too
| little, but too much.
|
| For the last 5 years or so, during the summer months I need to
| add one or two hours to nearly all my connections because of
| construction work that slowly seems to move from cities into
| the rural regions (I'm not complaining though, no matter what
| the Bahn does, travellers will be affected one way or another,
| and I bet most of the delays you are seeing are caused by
| construction work somewhere at the 'leaf nodes' of the
| network).
|
| Of course a couple of decades of the "kaputtsparen" mentality
| didn't help, it would obviously have been better to spread out
| the required maintenance work and modernization over those
| decades of infrastructure negligence.
| codemusings wrote:
| Yes that's why track redundancies are important. And not just
| for construction. Local and Intercity connections would
| benefit as well.
| eigenspace wrote:
| In the article they say that one of their main motivations for
| this is that they hope it will speed up the approval times for
| train routes, because it'll lessen the noise and visual
| complaints.
| earthnail wrote:
| I love this. I read so much criticism here, but noise pollution
| is a main issue when it comes to railroads in residential zones.
|
| Yes, punctuality is an issue with Deutsche Bahn. No, this doesn't
| fix that instantly. But as an organisation you can work on two
| things at the same time.
|
| This invention is spectacular. I wish more people would work on
| noise pollution. It makes a huge difference.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > I wish more people would work on noise pollution
|
| Absolutely agree.
|
| It's one of the most insidious kinds of pollution that has big
| effects on mental and cardio-vascular health, and is
| accumulative.
|
| Everything from aircraft, to emergency vehicle sirens, to
| construction and poor housing, is slowly killing people.
|
| In Europe we've actually made big leaps forward with
| regulation, building standards for isolation, and abatement
| laws. But these often go unenforced or even flippantly
| dismissed and mocked because people don't recognise the harm
| pathways and effects.
|
| Whenever this topic comes up I am reminded of this (very funny)
| curmudgeon's screed "On Noise". Although Arthur Schopenhauer
| was "serious" about this, his acerbic style only gets more
| funny with time [0].
|
| [0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10732/10732-h/10732-h.htm
| throwy348734 wrote:
| Some progress in Europe yes but the harms are still far from
| getting enough attention and policy responses. One problem is
| that there's so little organized effort against noise
| pollution, there's need for a movement with grass root
| organizations that puts sustained pressure on this issue.
| tichiian wrote:
| Also, the noise pollution regulations that are in place
| exempt trains.
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| It's all about whip cracking! Who knew that was such a thing.
| Like the mindless honking horn of the past. Thanks for
| sharing :)
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Contrast with John von Neumann, who "could not work without
| some noise or at least the possibility of noise. Some of his
| best work was done in crowded railroad stations and airports,
| trains, planes, ships, hotel lobbies, lively cocktail parties
| or even among a bunch of shrieking very minor minors whooping
| it up."
| aloisdg wrote:
| People can be different
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| A very good point. I find myself helped by having the radio
| (quietly) on for certain tasks. But for others, only
| silence will do. I'd love to see more modern and detailed
| cognitive studies of this sort of thing. Many years ago my
| audio/acoustics students did some bachelors final projects
| on "distraction" (focus, concentration and annoyance of
| noises) and that was interesting. Some people scored higher
| on SATS style tests while pumped up on drum'n'bass, others
| were totally destroyed by it, IIRC the most devastating
| soundtrack was random cartoon SFX :)
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I'm more impressed if his best sleep was done in noise
| areas.
| sseagull wrote:
| I think this is the classic introvert/extravert axis.
|
| Introverts are chronically overstimulated, and seek to
| reduce stimulation.
|
| Extraverts are under-stimulated, and therefore work better
| with even more stimulation.
| cataphract wrote:
| Unfortunately, where I live, more and more people have dogs.
| It's now a risky proposition to live in an apartment in a
| closed city block, because it's almost guaranteed that
| someone will leave a dog barking outside for hours.
| lukan wrote:
| Noise reduction with trains is probably best done with
| improving the trains. I live next to a frequent trainline, so I
| can say:
|
| There are modern long electric passenger trains, that barely
| make a noise at all. And then there are old freight trains,
| that can be heard from miles away. Since I doubt this noise
| barrier will be placed everywhere except at some very special
| key areas, I rather want the Bahn to focus on better trains in
| general.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| For intercity trains it doesn't matter what the propulsion
| method is though, since every train will make a lot of noise
| at speed. It's improved with aerodynamics and better wheel /
| tracks, but ultimately noise will be an issue. Consider also
| cars where at speed the noise is not due to the engine, but
| to wheel / road noise.
| lukan wrote:
| I live outside the city, so I know the difference in sound
| at high speed when they pass by. It makes a great
| difference. Combustion vs electric but also the
| manufacturing and damping of the wheels etc.
|
| Steelwheel on steel can be very silent.
| versteegen wrote:
| Yes, there are many components to train noise.
|
| I used to live by rails with a small incline, and the
| diesel locomotives made a loud low noise accelerating
| uphill from a station, while downhill the trains moved
| far faster and the engines were quite insignificant
| compared to noises due to speed: mainly the wheel noise
| and going over the expansion joints.
| patates wrote:
| huh. rubber on asphalt is very loud on high speeds, could
| steel on steel really be quieter? (for downvoters: this
| is a real question, I'm not trying to suggest it can't
| be)
| lukan wrote:
| Yes, because rubber and asphalt do not really have a
| smooth surface unlike polished steel. So all the little
| bumbs give your car grip, but also cause friction, which
| is noise.
|
| One of the reasons, why trains are better suited in
| theory for long distance transport, than trucks. Little
| friction, so more energy efficient.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Friction produces heat, not sound...
| lukan wrote:
| Both. What are the rapidly heated molecules going to do?
| Create turbulence in the air. That is sound.
| cafard wrote:
| We lived fifty yards from a railroad embankment, just
| where it bridged a street. It was very loud.
| dkekenflxlf wrote:
| you see, why? ;-)
| adrianN wrote:
| Rolling stock lives for many decades and replacing it early
| is cost prohibitive. So I don't think changing something
| about the trains is the best option for reducing noise.
| lukan wrote:
| Building noise barriers everywhere is probably expensive as
| well.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| could the old wagons have noise canceling skirts?
| adrianN wrote:
| You only have to build them were tracks are close to
| homes.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Yet up-post said "miles" from homes. That means a lot
| more tha just close to houses. It means miles from towns.
| adrianN wrote:
| ,,Can be heard" is not the problem we're trying to fix,
| and no reasonable amount of engineering can fix that .
| Maybe if you converted everything to maglev and limited
| speeds to 20mph.
| lukan wrote:
| If something can be heard miles away, it usually means it
| is very loud close by. And this could be reduced.
| infecto wrote:
| What evidence other than your anecdotal evidence that a
| lightweight passenger train creates less noises then a heavy
| load freight? I am sure there are some differences in regards
| to design and age but wouldn't you imagine the majority of
| the difference is in weight? Passenger trains weigh nothing.
| lukan wrote:
| "Passenger trains weigh nothing."
|
| A bit more than that. And old freight trains are loud, even
| when empty.
|
| Another example, there is a small local passenger train
| with a combustion engine. Very loud, whether slow or fast.
| Unlike the mentioned modern electric one from Alstom, who
| are so silent, that they are dangerous when they pass by a
| train station and you are too close to the track. You only
| notice them moments before they wooosh by.
|
| And if you want more than my anecdota of everyday
| experience, there are tons of youtube videos of different
| trains to see that trains can be loud, if that was not a
| manufacturing concern, or silent. Usually, the older the
| louder.
| infecto wrote:
| Sorry I don't do youtube anecdotes.
|
| I think you missed my point, my fault. Passenger trains
| and individual train cars do indeed weigh considerably
| less than fully loaded freight. So yes....its not nothing
| but they are easily double the weight. Leading to my
| point that when you are 2.5x+ the weight, its a different
| engineering problem along with an issue of economics.
|
| Freight cars are not loud only because of age but also
| because of weight and the challenges on both engineering
| and cost to remedy it. It is hard to compare a passenger
| train with a freight train, entirely different beasts.
| lukan wrote:
| "It is hard to compare a passenger train with a freight
| train, entirely different beasts."
|
| Hm, for me they are quite simimlar. Just one was build to
| be more silent mainly for passenger comfort (it is inded
| nicer in the modern silent ones) and the other for most
| weight. But you could optimize freight trains for silence
| as well. All the loud metal scratching noises for example
| are avoidable, even with more weight. The ones I am
| talking about were just not build with noise in mind.
| popol12 wrote:
| Just adding my own data: I've been living next to a train
| station for a few years now, I'd say that freight is
| insanely more noisy than passenger trains, 100% of the
| time. I live in France btw, so it's all electric trains.
| eru wrote:
| They specifically mention railway noise. I wonder whether there's
| something special about railways, or whether it would work for
| other noise as well? Especially roads with cars on them?
| metters wrote:
| I think there are noises specific to railways. And from what I
| believe this "MetaWindow" targets relevant frequencies.
| However, I am sure this also works for the frequencies
| generated by car traffic.
|
| At least the linked youtube video in this comment [1] does not
| mention anything about frequencies.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40384778
|
| EDIT: I was wrong about the video. There is _no mention_ about
| frequencies.
| crote wrote:
| Railways are unique because they go right through the densest
| part of towns and cities. For them to be most effective, they
| should be within biking or ideally even walking distance of a
| significant number of homes and offices. If you place a railway
| on the outskirts of a city, nobody is going to use it. This
| means you're going to have to use _very_ significant noise
| reduction to keep the area livable.
|
| Highways care a lot less about location. Place them a one-
| minute car ride outside the city, and its noise becomes
| basically irrelevant. The city grows and swallows the highway?
| Just place an industrial area or mall between the highway and
| any homes. When homes aren't an arms-length away you can get
| away with far more primitive noise reduction.
| FearOfTheDuck wrote:
| A train does not make noise if it's cancelled
| surfingdino wrote:
| Or you could follow the way of thinking practiced by planners in
| London:
|
| Analyst: "We could really use a bridge here..." Decision Maker:
| "I hear you, let's dig a tunnel!"
| tichiian wrote:
| I think the reason DB introduces this kind of measures over the
| obviously superior first steps like "building a quieter train" is
| this: Walls are paid for by the state or community annoyed by the
| train noise. New or improved trains would be paid for by DB (a
| nominally private company).
|
| Which is why stuff like "putting quieter brakes on freight trains
| that don't sound like fingernails on a chalk board" will take at
| least 20 more years if it will happen at all.
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| Ask the typical DB customer if they want their trains to be on
| time or more silent and I promise you, the answer will not be
| surprising.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| This project was probably very cheap compared to the cost of
| fixing the Deutsche Bahn's horrendous problems with delays and
| cancelations.
|
| The Deutsche Bahn has literally decades of maintenance to catch
| up on. Even if the Deutsche Bahn does everything right from now
| on, the next decade is going to be very painful for German
| train commuters.
| dgellow wrote:
| Both problems are unrelated
| Bluestein wrote:
| The startup behind the tech: - https://phononic-vibes.com/about-
| us/
| noja wrote:
| _This new system integrates meta technology_
|
| What is meta technology?
| mateus1 wrote:
| I assume it refers to metamaterials
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial
| rangestransform wrote:
| germany gets this while NYC still has to grit our teeth and plug
| our ears for the rickety 100+ year old metal elevated structures
| with lead paint
| bradley13 wrote:
| How about replacing antiques with modern trains? Repairing
| tracks? Electrifying all tracks? Those steps would not only
| reduce noise, but actually make their service usable.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-05-17 23:02 UTC)