[COFF] [TUHS] Wikipedia anecdotes - LLM generalizations [was On the unreliability of LLM-based search results

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Alexander Schreiber wrote in
 <aEbbRayc6SoAJmaf at mordor.angband.thangorodrim.de>:
 |On Mon, Jun 02, 2025 at 03:14:30PM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
 |> Alexander Schreiber wrote in
 |>  <aDxwjRhrUNJ5-Dm- at mordor.angband.thangorodrim.de>:
 |>|On Sun, Jun 01, 2025 at 12:00:11AM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
 |>|> There are surely useful tasks for AI, when it is driven with green
 |>|> energy, and after is has been fully understood.
 ...
 |>|There are plenty of use cases where a well setup pattern matching engine
 |>|is exactly what you need. My favourite example: SBB (Swiss Railways)
 |>|uses "AI" (an in-house trained pattern matching model) to sift through
 |>|the massive incoming stream of noise recordings from rail mounted
 |>|vibration sensors, to identify (by matching known qualified patterns)
 |>|those caused by damaged train carriage wheels. Additional support
 |>|infrastructure then identifies train, carriage, wheel and notifies
 |>|the owner/operator to fix the wheel - before gets worse and does
 |>|more damage to the rails.
 |> 
 |> That is possibly a great thing.  I can assure everybody that Swiss
 |> freight trains pass by here in the many dozens / hundreds each
 |> day, and they are very well maintained.  Most often they are
 |> quieter than even the much light German passenger trains.
 |
 |Ah, but there is a difference: Swiss (SBB & Co.) passenger trains
 |are very quiet by design - because they carry passengers (aka
 |"cargo that can complain"). Swiss cargo trains are slowly getting
 |there as the rolling stock is replaced, but they were _not_ designed
 |to be quiet, as cargo tends not to complain.

Ah -- trains have an inside?  Interesting.
Hmmm, talking at least a decade.  SBB and also, i hate private
companies, BLS.  Mostly i guess chemicals via tank wagons, and
containers, lots of containers from an Austrian haulier.  I mean,
it is only snippets of time, when i am wandering in between, so
numbers are scaled at bit, but from impressions of all day and
night times.

Here pass by quite a lot, Swedish double-deckers, French TGV (they
renamed them, but slow german crawling..), German DB ICE of all
sorts, of course, but still normal ICs with mostly 2nd class, for
me it is Schnellzug and Eilzug but that cannot be helped,
wonderful Austrian trains with two red locomotives (great ones
which still aimed in record breaking performance, and deliver for
the quarter of a century), and in between them dove gray waggons
with red roof -- i love these trains, i think four times a day,
surely good cake and coffee within, their Nightjets.
BASF trains with Diesel and not FuelCell technology; we are back.

And lots and lots and lots of private freight train companies
which surely do not pay enough for being able to use the rails,
just for the sake of allowing "competition" .. at the cost of the
people, effectively.  And for ruining the name of the DB, which
actually pays for it.  Tax payers that is.

Loudest passenger train thinkable is by the way FlixTrain who
seems to run generators or what at one pair, but their bearings
and wheels scream to heaven "i have to live a long life" or what.
They surely spend not enough for using the rails, let alone for
the ear pain i have to suffer when that shit passes.  Whatever.
Luckily they pass by quick and do not brake, i cannot comment on
their brakes.

Swiss freight trains run smoothly and to a very large extend very
silent, and they break silent, too.  (Squealing happens at times,
for practically anything.  All the development for isolation, aka
decoupling, and materials technology aside.)

So, that is that.

 |> I say possibly because i could imagine sensors in the locomotive
 |> should be capable to detect vibration irregularies?
 |
 |Won't work, because a sensor in the locomotive will have a hard time
 |recording noise from the end of the train that might be 100+m away.

Mostly americans on this list i presume, and they still remember
the Wild West listen-at-the-rails trick, for whatever purpose.
Our rail bus with its diesel engine btw does not use engine
bearings.  "Boy the rail hums" quite a bit in advance.  So to say.

 |The setup described about grabs a vibration recording of every wheel
 |as it passes the rail-mounted sensor and (with the help of other data
 |sources) the system then can identify the train/carriage/wheel.

Well, .. sure.  I mean, in summertime i would consider talking the
job for an hour at weekdays, but i need tea, and i surely would
not be as exact.  For freight trains in particular, they are put
together at classification yards, often at little hills so that
they start rolling after some initial moment.  You know.
In Germany we say (or used to say, when we were still Germans)
"Where there is a will, there is a Way".  Something like that..

 |>  Not that
 |> i know.  But vibrations is understated given the hammerings.  Does
 |> this really need sound recordings?  Interesting.
 |
 |Well, it's vibration recording .. which is what sound is, just at possibly
 |a different frequency range that what humans hear.

It seems to me in rails it ranges further than in the air.

 |Kind regards,
 |           Alex.
 |-- 
 |"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
 | looks like work."                                      -- Thomas A. Edison
 --End of <aEbbRayc6SoAJmaf at mordor.angband.thangorodrim.de>

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)