Aurélien

@aurelien@hci.social
345 Followers
449 Following
1.2K Posts
Limites et fragilités du numérique – https://tabard.fr/
Limites numériques - infolettrehttps://limitesnumeriques.substack.com/
Limites Numériqueshttps://limitesnumeriques.fr/
Aurélien1d ago
Florence Maraninchi1d ago
Bon, rien de tel qu'une météo caniculaire et un bâtiment non rafraîchi pour expliquer encore une fois qu'un gros radiateur à 1GW (aka datacenter pour l'IA) en plein milieu de la cuvette grenobloise, ce n'est peut-être pas l'idée du siècle. Et que si on a le choix entre la clim de l'hosto et l'alimentation d'un machin qu'on nous vend comme faisant gagner du temps sur nos tâches admin pénibles, faudra bien peser le pour et le contre.
(Et admirez en passant le style stripes pour beamer de @fp )
Aurélien2d ago
Alderik3d ago
“Starting July 7, Gemini will gain access to four key [Android] phone services: Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, and Utilities [..] regardless of whether you’ve turned activity tracking on.” https://www.laptopmag.com/ai/gemini-phone-access-update
Google Gemini is about to control your messages and calls, even if you say no

Google’s AI assistant is about to get full access to your calls, texts, and WhatsApp — even if you’ve disabled activity tracking.

Laptop Mag
Aurélien2d ago
Runa Steinmüller4d ago

I'm looking for #neurodivergent people for an interview study on how they experience #gaming in public spaces – specifically in the zkm_gameplay exhibition at ZKM, #Karlsruhe.

What to expect:
– a ~60 min conversation, online or in Karlsruhe
– €20 compensation + free exhibition entry

Eligibility:
– 18+ years old, primary residence in Germany
– #Neurodivergence (e.g. #ADHD, #Autism, #dyslexia); no diagnosis required
– Have visited the zkm_gameplay exhibition

More info: https://hci.iar.kit.edu/467.php

KIT - Human-Computer Interaction and Accessibility (HCI) - Participate - Neurodivergent Experiences With Gaming in Public Spaces (at the ZKM, Karlsruhe)

Aurélien6d ago
Limites Numériques6d ago
On a trouvé de quoi faire nos prochains visuels. Plus qu'à trouver comment l'exporter...
(Powerbook de 1994 amené par @julieblanc)
#limits2025
AurélienJun 24
Alexis KauffmannJun 23

"La Ville de Lyon annonce qu'elle remplace progressivement les logiciels de Microsoft par des alternatives libres, dans un contexte de prise de conscience croissante des enjeux de souveraineté numérique et de dépendance aux solutions logicielles états-uniennes."
https://www.lyoncapitale.fr/actualite/la-ville-de-lyon-abandonne-la-suite-microsoft-office-pour-renforcer-sa-souverainete-numerique

cc @adullact @fnl @nicolasvivant

La Ville de Lyon abandonne la suite Microsoft office pour renforcer "sa souveraineté numérique"

La Ville de Lyon va progressivement abandonner la suite Microsoft office aux profits d'outils libres, afin de renforcer sa souveraineté numérique.

Lyon Capitale
AurélienJun 23
Stefan LindbohmJun 23

Today we’re quietly (and finally!) opening up Railfinder to the public! This is our beta version and - hopefully - the first step towards that one booking site for trains across Europe that we all dream of.

Lots of work has gone into this and equally lots still to do before reach that vision, but if you’d like to try what we’ve built you can now just go to https://www.railfinder.eu and have a go!

Any and all feedback more than welcome 🙏

AurélienJun 23
Patrick DubroyJun 23

You often hear that certain technological trends are "inevitable", so it's fascinating to read what people were predicting even just ~25 years ago: https://twentynine.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-216-know-your-place-headmap-manifesto-and-the-vision-of-locative-media/

Not wrong, really, but not right either.

(h/t to @genmon which is how I heard of headmap)

AurélienJun 23
NikitaJun 22

The street that my mum lives in is a one-way street, but wasn't marked as such on #Google Maps. This caused many drivers to drive the wrong way. I have tried to edit it on Google Maps (there is such functionality), but to no avail. No matter how often I submitted a change (with photos of street signs!), Google said "Sorry, we could not verify it".

Solution: Edit the street on #OpenStreetMap! A few months after I did this, Google seems to have stolen the data, as it regularly does, and now the street is correct in both datasets!

AurélienJun 21
Dr. Cat HicksJun 20
Holy fucking shit I have just spent fifteen minutes reading social media reactions to that "chatgpt rots your brain" paper and absolutely no one understands brains or has read this paper
AurélienJun 20
Arthur PerretJun 20
J'ai présenté aujourd'hui au congrès de la SFSIC un article dont l'idée tient en une phrase : les programmes basés sur des LLM ne sont pas des outils appropriés pour répondre à un besoin d'information. Le texte avait été accepté après une évaluation en double aveugle ; je publie ici une version révisée suite à la présentation et aux discussions, qui servira de base pour les actes. https://www.arthurperret.fr/articles/2025-06-20-congres-sfsic-ia-impasse-informationnelle.html
L’intelligence artificielle générative dans l’impasse informationnelle

Site web d’Arthur Perret, enseignant-chercheur en SIC.

arthurperret.fr/
×
Stefan LindbohmJun 23

Today we’re quietly (and finally!) opening up Railfinder to the public! This is our beta version and - hopefully - the first step towards that one booking site for trains across Europe that we all dream of.

Lots of work has gone into this and equally lots still to do before reach that vision, but if you’d like to try what we’ve built you can now just go to https://www.railfinder.eu and have a go!

Any and all feedback more than welcome 🙏

Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 23

And for the nerds among us, we have a page on all the details that went into this - including our initial ticket coverage & how the search works: https://www.railfinder.eu/how-it-works

Ask me anything!

How Railfinder works

Railfinder
Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 23
I should also add that we’re actively working on some technical issues that happen a bit more often than we’d like. Hopefully we’ll catch and fix the more common of the errors in the coming days - this is one of the reasons we start as a beta and wait a bit before launching too widely 🤫
Show threadSobexJun 23

@stefanlindbohm Right now, I notices that Saarübrcken Hbf is missing (very weird it has secondary stations, but not the main one).

Also, I think it is worth mentioning you do charge booking fees. It would be nice to explain clearly the rates applied.

Last, any intention of supporting deutschland tickets, loyalty cards and discount cards ?

(I have a tricky test case with SNCF, you will need to run TER fare search with each applicable card separately as the SNCF backend is buggy and hasn't been fixed despite several reports).

Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 23

@Sobex Yes we have issues with stations that are on a country border. Thanks for the report, will fix!

Good point also on the fees! We also know we will to monitor and adjust to make sure they always make sense with min and max limits.

We definitely want to support reduction cards. Once we do, the SNCF issue should not be a problem for us as we request tickets for each segment independently :)

Show threadSobexJun 23

@stefanlindbohm Well, ticket for each segment independently is not enough to sort out issue when two cards are applicable to a single TER trip.

I'll PM the exact combo I use.

Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 23
@Sobex Ah I see. Thanks, very happy to have cases to test! 🙏
Show threadChris SamuelJun 25
@stefanlindbohm I thought this might interest you as a rail enthusiast @feorag! https://mastodon.social/@stefanlindbohm/114733502859245671
Show threadAlex SteenbrekerJun 25
@stefanlindbohm great website, nice work, I am adding this to my favourites! Already noticed one thingy: when untapping the "short transfers" button, nothing changes and it still shows travel options with 3m transfers 🏃‍♀️‍➡️
Show threadAlex SteenbrekerJun 25
@stefanlindbohm maybe because it doesn't have the short transfer label I do see with other routes, which do disappear when the button is untapped.
Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 25
@alexsteenbreker Indeed. We go by min allowed for regional trains usually, but maybe we should add a little margin to RE in the Netherlands?
Show threadAlex SteenbrekerJun 25
@stefanlindbohm oof, matter of choice really... maybe if the criteria are clear or you can set it yourself, it will not lead to any confusion. For some stations / people / transfers 3 mins is too little.
Show threadOliver BlanthornJun 23

@stefanlindbohm what data structures, path finding algorithms, infrastructure and tooling are you using etc 🤓

also, how big is your team?

Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 23

@bovine3dom Data is in Postgres. Journey planner is a custom-built one in Go based on RAPTOR and follow-up paper from KIT. Hosting on Render and Hetzner. Web app in Ruby on Rails.

Tech team is ..mostly me 😅. We’ve had some added oomph from a consultancy when money allows.

I have two co-founders, Zuzana who’s a marketing strategist and Veronica who is managing our partner relations. Some project-based consultants when possible/needed on a few non-tech things.

Show threadOliver BlanthornJun 24

@stefanlindbohm cool, thanks for the response! is it vanilla postgres or are you using postgis / column database extensions?

is "partner relations" a euphemism for "i really didn't want to talk to the SNCF myself" :) ?

do you modify RAPTOR to find "better" routes e.g. with night trains or do you use it mostly unaltered and score the routes afterwards?

(much love for Hetzner)

Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 24

@bovine3dom Postgis (used mostly at import time for now) and the official hstore extension for localised names of things. That’s all.

Haha! She’s working on a massive pipeline of new contracts we will be able to add so I couldn’t do her job whether I wanted to talk to SNCF or not :)

Our RAPTOR implementation is pretty far from the variant in the paper. The authors would potentially call us crazy for some of the shenanigans we’re doing 😅😅

Show threadUwe TrenknerJun 24
@stefanlindbohm What was the reason to partner with SNCB for the ticket sales? Were the technically best suited? Most welcoming toward your project? Cheapest?
Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 24
@utrenkner We love all our children equally :). Seriously though, SNCB have been super helpful and supportive. We do have more contracts signed though and for the most part it’s just a matter of boring details that affected the different timelines.
Show threadJulianJun 24
@stefanlindbohm a new booking site in 2025 that does not rely on OSDM?🤨
Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 24
@julian_b We don’t decide what tech the distribution systems offer us, and it doesn’t particularly affect the functionality much. But the Swiss integration that we’ll have soon is partly OSDM based and we look forward to more as more systems are switching in the coming years!
Show threadJulianJun 24
@stefanlindbohm but why aren't you adopting a direct OSDM connection where it is already available (e.g. with DB)? As far as I understand it this would allow a better coverage of the special ticket types?
Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 24

@julian_b OSDM is a good standard, but for the most part it’s not enabling things that were impossible before. It does help reduce technical costs of integrating with multiple systems if all support OSDM though.

The limiting factor is the contracts. We’re working on signing on as a reseller for more operators, and even already have some more on the way that we aren’t ready to share just yet. More to come!

Show threadcartotrainJun 24

Bravo!

@stefanlindbohm Proposing routes in France with more than 2 connections could be a game changer (as SNCF API doesn't allow that).

But how are passenger rights going to work? Isn't there a risk of losing users after a bad experience (i.e. missed connection, and no possibility to hop on the next train) ?

Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 24

@cartotrain And transfers longer than 2.5 hours, I learned recently :)

But yes indeed, for these cases we need to split the tickets and that puts all responsibility on the passenger. We try to combine as much as possible, but don’t hide results if it’s not. We will improve the info shown on the consequences of this though.

And hopefully we can do more to protect the transfers in the future, but that’s for later

Show threadbitbonkJun 24
@stefanlindbohm I imagine it would make a cool blog post on what goes into aggregating all the train data from presumably many different sources in many different formats.
Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 24
@bitbonk We rely on the international timetable database called MERITS for the majority of times we have, so we don’t do this work ourselves. It is indeed an interesting project to run - but sadly not our blog post to write :)
Show threadÁronJun 24
@stefanlindbohm works impressively already! I really like how you included stopovers for long journeys, nothing else I know does that. Do you query DB etc. for itineraries as well or do you have your own router solution from raw open data?
Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 25

@aronkvh Thank you!

We run routing entirely in our own systems. Data is the industry’s international timetable (MERITS). Open data is not good enough to do this across Europe sadly. A number of countries don’t publish at all or update the feeds extremely infrequently.

Show threadLuke_VaderJun 25
@stefanlindbohm
Absolutely awesome.
My apologies if you already answered this, the thread has become very long.
Why create your own routefinder, instead of taking Transitous/MOTIS and extending it according for your needs? Not re-inventing the wheel and all that.
Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 25

@Luke_Vader Thank you! No worries, this wasn’t specifically asked.

We built our own because our criteria and optimisations are very different to ensble us doing full day searches with massive (multi-hour) detours in the name of a number of comfort related criteria. Plus we tightly integrate the display with the rest of our app. There’s a lot of complexity in other planners we don’t use and vice versa.

Was it a 100% correct decision? 🤷🏻‍♂️ But that’s why :)

Show threadLuke_Vader6d ago
@stefanlindbohm
Fair enough.
Are you planning on making it accessible to developers? and how?
Would a developer be able to use your route finder? Be able to find prices for specific trains or routes? Ability to purchase from you?
Show threadStefan Lindbohm6d ago
@Luke_Vader I’ll have to say we don’t know (how) yet. First priority is to build a site that delivers a good experience for travelers that people actually want to use. It would be great to open up use to developers to some extent in the future to reach further than our own channels and generally for openness. We’ll have to get back on details once we get there!
Show threadLe ChepJun 23

@stefanlindbohm kudos, you've found decent solutions to my go-to riddle "Paris to Kaunas" on the very first try, no fiddling.

I may use that next time !

Show threadIanJun 23
@c_chep
Ha! A routing from Kaunas was my first trial run.
Warnings of tight connections exactly where I have already taken the same view myself.
I think I have a better workaround than railfinders was able to suggest (EIP then LeoExpress), but what it said was accurate and relevant.
#EuropeanRail
Show threadMeercat ✅ 
Jun 23
@stefanlindbohm best of luck
Show threadGeorg RußJun 23
@stefanlindbohm The connection from Zürich to Bodø is nice, also possible with night trains. As a company registered in Sweden, it's funny that you can't sell tickets through Sweden, though. What about passenger rights? If I buy dedicated tickets for every part of the journey with a railfinder surcharge, what happens when I miss a connection?
Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 23

@datacyclist I know!! Don’t get me started :). But we will add SE tickets very soon!

Passenger rights is the same as otherwise - meaning you have separate tickets and in some cases can rely on AJC for connections between. This is something we want to help with in the future, but it’s a little complicated and we need to do it right. But we really want to fix that as soon as we can!

Show threadorangerkaterJun 23
@stefanlindbohm it would be nice to offer a selector for departure/arrival time. 😘
Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 23
@orangerkater Indeed! We search the full day and for longer journeys it’s often not needed to filter that much. But we have it on our list to add as soon as we can for when it’s needed!
Show threadorangerkaterJun 23
@stefanlindbohm currently it seems that searches start at the current time. So I need to enter the day before the desired travel date in order to find connections.
Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 23

@orangerkater Are you judging by the departure time of the top result? We order by default by a ranking of comfort, not time. All results between 05-24 are included for the day you search. You can sort by departure tile by clicking the ”all departures” option above the list.

If not, you might have found a case that trips us up, care to send me a screenshot if so? I’ll look into it!

Show threadorangerkaterJun 23
@stefanlindbohm indeed, you are right. I am so used to sorting by time that I didn't check whether the next connection is on the desired date or not.
Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 23
@orangerkater We maybe should make this clearer just because it’s a bit unexpected for a lot of people. Adding it to our notes of feedback. Thank you!
Show threadFiete StegersJun 23
@orangerkater @stefanlindbohm The „short changing time“ feature is useful, but it would be even more useful it would suggest if there are any alternatives (same route, but take the following train for example)
Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 23

@fiete It does! For any result that has that flag, there is another with a similar departure time that has transfers that we do recommend. Maybe we should think of a way to clarify which result is the alternative for a specific one that is flagged with the warning?

@orangerkater

Show threadFiete StegersJun 23
@stefanlindbohm @fiete @orangerkater Thrill seeker vs comfy mode toggle
Show threadorangerkaterJun 23
@stefanlindbohm Buchs SG is missing. @jon will not be happy about this. 😉
Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 23

@orangerkater Ah, yes. Some stations are also border points (for ticketing purposes etc) and we get a little confused by these right now. Will fix, it’s on the list!

@jon

Show threadEgon KastelijnJun 23

@stefanlindbohm
Hi Stefan,
Great work !! This looks very promising indeed.

I quickly tested the application, and it selects the correct train.
The only thing is that the pricing seems to be a bit different if I compare it the the bahn.de website?
(€ 99,99 vs € 29,99)

Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 23
@egonkastelijn I think you have a discount card added on your search on DB? The normal pricing is €99.99 on DB when I cross check - same as us minus our booking fee.
Show threadEgon KastelijnJun 23
@stefanlindbohm
Oh, sorry. You’re completely right. My bad.
I selected a different age for the traveler.
Show threadTrainfo.euJun 23

@stefanlindbohm "Travel at night" and "nighttrain" feels a little odd. I understand that "travel at night" means "sit in whatever train that runs at night", but it might need some thought on wording / explanation.

Being able to avoid "daytrains at night" is huge improvement over other sites 👍🏻

Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 23
@interrailinfosvenska Thanks, good point! We’ll review the wording 🙌
Show threadLuca WeissJun 23
@stefanlindbohm Wow, it gives me really good results for multi-day travels. Congrats!
Show threadRia GlasJun 23
@stefanlindbohm wow. If I ask for Wenen, it comes up with Vienna. Super!
Show threadChristian StadelmannJun 23
@stefanlindbohm Question: What's the benefit over using trainline.eu?
Show threadStefan LindbohmJun 23
@genodeftest We have our own journey planner that prioritises comfort even when traveling multi days. Ticketing is done separately, after we identified your trip. So we’re also not limited by having to offer tickets each and every segment to show the results - for example trains that are only sold at the station we can still include with instructions and sell the rest right there. Hopefully more details as we improve as well :)
Show threadChristian StadelmannJun 24
@stefanlindbohm Thanks!