Hello again, I apologize, this is very much last minute, but that is how this works,
because some of the people with a hacker train just arrived today, so I only learned
how it went at noon, so I had until from noon until now to do slides from scratch.
Okay, so, um, hacker train, or, you know, the subtitle that we choose this year is
a quote from one of our participants this year, which is like, yeah, you know, train delays,
they're just bonding opportunities, why that is, you will soon see, um, so what's a hacker
train?
Well, I mean, obviously, it's a hacker, it's a train with hackers on some clearly some
plushies on it, um, so just a short intro for those who were not on last year's presentation,
so the main idea is, you know, we have around 10,000 people at Phosphum, many of them are
from Europe, many of people from Europe are going by train, which means there's likely a few
thousand people going to Phosphum by train every year during the same days, probably on
the same trains, so let's meet and possibly hack on those that trains, so that was the
main idea, um, so clearly as any reasonably thought out project, which we are, but we did
have some goals, so there's some short term goals, um, and the first one is clearly like,
make traveling fun again, so make it ecological and comfortable within reason, uh, to travel
and to meet other hackers along the way.
I think we succeeded that we proved last year during the beta run, which was, as a reminder,
was a single route from Lubljana, Prague, and then, to Brussels, Night Train, um, that is
possible, um, and this year we made it a bit more difficult.
So the Lanke term goals are to make it more efficient, affordable, convenient, and ultimately
book a whole freaking train, to hack on, to so have a hacker train on the way to Phosphum.
So compared to last year we actually have infrastructure now, uh, we have website, we have,
some task list, um, so this is the website, this is, you know, some information about
this trip, like Phosphum trip, so it was really useful, I think.
So, so, uh, of Frange also made a really cool map where people could register their interest,
so you see, like, how many people are going from which place, which helped, and planning,
how we have, uh, organization on Codeberg, um, this is how we manage our, um, our routes, so you
can see, like, for example, like the seal group is going to Phosphum, it's going through Belgium,
check check Republic, Germany, and the Netherlands, um, and, yeah, just, uh, it's going on
the 27th of January, so this is how you find your route if you're looking for it.
Uh, we also made it a bit more visual with, uh, with, you know, uh, with, with a Kanban board,
um, and yeah, we have contacts. Now we have, uh, IRC and Matrix channels, which are, which are
bridged together, um, XMPP, if there's a nice interest soon. So how did the infrastructure work?
It worked surprisingly well, all things considered, so and the things to be considered are,
this was the first distributed system, roughly 10, 20 routes in total, 80ish people,
and things happened. So the trip itself, like, so let's first set the baseline, because you
see a lot of very tired faces who were on the hacker train, so the baseline was, things happened.
Uh, my favorite quote from the things that happened were,
our train is not compatible with the Belgian electricity we need together to get on a different train.
And, oh, um, because of the Belgian, um, the railway strike, uh, we have railway placement,
transport, and Luxembourg just sent trains to replace the trains.
Which I think, in technical terms, is a cluster fuck.
So that baseline, but that said, so there's going to be some harsh words later on,
but we try to package those harsh words into constructive criticism.
So the report from the routes themselves, um, we had a fight calculated correctly 12 routes,
go to Brussels, plus a few routes that weren't technically train routes, so they don't count.
For returning routes, plus two routes that are not actually in fact returning.
So the p-fowl route over there, if anybody wants to go, uh, on a return trip through
knees and south, uh, I think you're going through south Italy.
I mean, there's a route for that going from Brussels to finish, um, and there's an even more
adventurous route, uh, the nightingale route, which is going from Brussels on, uh, on a hacker exchange with Kiev.
Um, we also had like two short meetups in Brussels, one was at the pinball museum, and one was
earlier today when I actually learned what happened, um, so that was fine, I think.
So if I summarized the route from, uh, the routes in ascending order of excitement of them,
I originally thought that we're going to pass the mic, but I'll just do it myself.
Um, so it's not going to be as, from the heart as it would have otherwise been.
So the hedgehog line had no issues. The shadow route, uh, which is was unannounced, but was like a very
late show, um, they also had no issues. Uh, the pigeon route, which went from London, had no issues,
but there were a loan. Um, so where things started happening was duck route, which was the one I was on.
Uh, we ended up with a three hour delay, but it was partially on us because we could have
catch, we had to change a train in cones, so in the night train stopped in cones instead of going to
Brussels. Um, but we could have just took, take the first icy that popped up, but we decided to not.
So that's on us. Um, the seal route had a completely different route. They went with the European
sleepers from Prague to, uh, to Brussels, and they had a three hour delay with
something's happening, but not too much. And the boring people route, uh, emerged at some point, and they
also had a three hour delay. They were also a European sleeper route. Um, they there was some
technical issues involved. Um, I saw in the morning when I was scrolling on my phone on the toilet,
somebody was said, who the, er, triggered the fire alarm on the night train at four in the
front morning, uh, and five. Yeah, so three hours later, I saw somebody else saying, oh, so that's
what it was. So, and then we have the unfortunate Diplodocos line, which I will not be able to
summarize in a correct order, but there were technical issues, including three hours waiting for
a bus. There was a knife, but knife have fight on the tracks, which caused a severe delay,
which eventually caused the train to go backwards to Munich. I think then they had to wait for a bus.
Some people went, um, and tried the different approach. Um, and in the end, they didn't get the
tickets back for the night train, which is going to be a problem eventually. So, what did we actually
do any hacking on the trains, right? So, there was some improvements on the, somebody improved,
like the pigeon line improved some matrix stuff, the snail line, uh, finished some really fancy
malware detection things that I have no clue of to tell you what it is actually. With it, some
discussions, and conferencing, um, and the most important part is we suddenly saw our
matrix IRC chat suddenly became the go-to help line for the 80 plus people that were traveling
on the hacker train, plus all the dozens of people around them. So, again, like the Diplodocos line,
was officially two people, um, and when 10 hours after, they had a 10 hour delay ultimately.
So, 10 hours, uh, 11. So, within those 11 extra hours, they've done a lot. Um, and one of those things
was when I talked to one of the guys on the, on the Diplodocos line, he was like, yeah, we were officially
two people, but we had like 20, 30 people rely on us to get them to Brussels or home.
There were, there were young kids involved. So, again, I mean, this is the baseline plus what
happened. So, you know, you do with the clusterfuck, what you do with the clusterfuck, a clusterfuck
is by definition, several things going wrong that together caused a big chaos. So, we're not going
to blame anybody, um, but we had some suggestions for the future. So, the one, some, there's some
for organizers. So, for the hacker train project itself, um, some groups would be really good
to start planning sooner, especially the euro star ones, because you have to reserve. So,
you cannot just find people on the train, you have to plan in advance. Um, we'd like to
simplify group bookings with more operators. So, if anybody can help with very happy to
do that, um, the map is kind of cool, but not as useful as we thought it would be. So, there will
be some improvements there. Um, also how we use the issues could be improved, but what we figured
out would be really good is to create the travel train travel beginner tutorial that we would put
on the website, because there's a lot of people, I mean, when you tell people to go with the train,
you know, you people think, oh, you buy a ticket, you hop on a train done.
There's something happens. And then, I mean, even when you're book when we're buying a
train ticket, there's, you know, options where do I band a train ticket? What if I'm, you know,
using different lines or different operators, et cetera? It's a bit complicated. So,
we hope to, if anybody can help, we would like to write a short tutorial and, or at least some
links for people starting to put it on the website so they can start with traveling. Um, again,
we would still love sponsors or any other way to subsidize the trip. And yeah, we would also
expand to other conferences, so we're already talking about CCC and so the infrastructure is there.
So, if you have any conferences you would like to use the hacker train for, just join,
we'll share whatever we know. It's not that hard. And for the railways,
it would be a need to fix the rest of the mass notification. I'll just leave it here for a few seconds.
Yeah, and, but, well, it's, it's a mess. So, like, like, there's like, apart from the colors,
like, there's half of words are missing. So, you cannot figure out what sentences mean because
there's no sentences. Um, Deutsche Bahn, when the cluster fuck happened, you know, one of the,
one of our members was trying to help, and it couldn't reach Bomb Day because it's
trying to, it's telling him he's a bought and he cannot access it. And then this happened to,
again, unfortunately, Plodocosline. So, they didn't get the night train tickets back. So,
they eventually got a paper written by hand that they actually have tickets and the tickets are on
a different train. So, they can continue their travel, but I don't know how this is going to go
when they're trying to get some reimbursement for the things that happened. Um, European sleeper,
there was an issue with the referral link. So, they need to make sure that it works throughout
the time, not just, you know, initially. Um, Trenitalia, this was a pain point. Um,
again, PFO, um, tried to, you know, got noticed that they have to be a cancellation or change,
and that he can only do it with phone or in-person visit in an Italian train station.
Here's from India. So, this is where he started. So, this was a problem. Um, generic wishless
is the same as last year more or less. So, I'm not going to, not going to waste time on it.
Um, so future plans. Yeah, what's still like to do this. Um, and you can already use our infrastructure
for other events. Um, if anybody wants to use it for other continents, um, you can also use it,
but I think there would need to be some tweaks. So, let's discuss, but it's something that we can do fairly
easy. Um, this is the QR code to the, to our new website. And if we have some time left, I can just
let some slideshow roll in the background. Um, and questions. If there's any, if we still have time,
I don't think we do, but. So, this is just some random, yeah, this looks great. Um, some random
pictures from the, the, the, the trips. So, questions, comments, tomatoes.
Um, don't think so. I mean, there's people that I know there's people in this room who were on a
hacker train who would be able to do that, but at least when we originally pitched the idea,
we had, we didn't document that on the website yet, but when we originally pitched the idea,
we already said, training for structures of limits.
Yeah, no, no, it was, we, we also decided that the penalty would be will throw you off the train,
the moment we learn about it. We don't care where that place is to your problem.
Not this year.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I, I mean, I, as I, again, I was on one of the more lucky lines,
but I think like some people, you know, that the, the unlucky lines had like the 20, 30 people
attached to them that were not the had no clue of the hacker train before they started relying on
people who knew about it. Um, I think those, some of, I've heard from some of those people that
they had like stories, how people went, you know, all different routes to try to get to place
and then he went somewhere and went back and then they all ended up on the same train and, you know,
four hours afterwards, they met on the same train again.
It says something about how you do great, so I'm going to make it easy for the population
of what to do in case the late issues. I would say this is so complex that there's like a huge
blow chart in line so I'm going to think, like, not necessarily out of what the house
is going on. So I don't think it's simple to throw it all this. I mean, even that, I mean,
in, in the case that we were in the past few days, having that flow chart, I'm pretty sure,
like some of the people in the room would have loved to know that there is this flow chart
and have a direct link to it. So just, if you have a flow chart, please send it to us and we'll
put it on the link on the website for future reference.
Yeah, to, to, on the, when we aligned that our locomotive was broken, we even tried calling
the company that I'm still a locomotive, which is not European-slipper and, like, yeah, it was
a huge last traffic in Tostan, which also ties into the questioner. So would we do this again
and how was it? It's like, yeah, it was a cluster fuck, but I think, like, everybody,
like, including the unfortunate Diplodocos line, when they finally arrived, they were like,
I'm so fucking tired, but this was pretty nice.
Right, yes, but still, you know, traveling alone, plus cluster fuck is not fun, but now only,
now we actually have a nice story, not just paying, right. There's another question if we have time,
but okay. So thank everyone for sending time for the last today. Hope you have a good time.
I think there will be some, thank you. Thank you to all the others who helped with this. So it's up to
anything.