Kurt Raschke
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kurtraschke.com
Kurt Raschke
@kurtraschke.com
120 followers 46 following 140 posts
they/them

Transit and technology, mostly. Prone to ranting.

Reposts and favorites are not endorsements. Posts are solely my own.

ABATE NOXIOUS STIMULI.
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kurtraschke.com
So, I've gone and built another widget: Data Lake Merritt, real-time stringlines for BART.

data-lake-merritt.choochoo.systems
October 12, 2025 at 3:33 AM
kurtraschke.com
I was recently in the Bay Area again, and each time I find it a little bit harder to leave behind.
A Muni J Church light rail vehicle passing Mission Dolores Park at night. Some motion blur is visible. Street furniture at a Muni streetcar stop. The following text, a quote from Harvey Milk, is visible: "HOPE FOR A BETTER WORLD. HOPE FOR A BETTER TOMORROW. HOPE WILL NEVER BE SILENT. YOU GOTTA GIVE THEM HOPE." A wide view of the San Francisco skyline at night taken from the outer end of Pier 14. The Salesforce Tower is prominently visible.
October 12, 2025 at 3:33 AM
kurtraschke.com
Does it still count as a “burrito taxi” if it’s a robot?
July 27, 2025 at 1:14 PM
kurtraschke.com
They’re moving in herds!
An image of four food delivery robots lined up on a sidewalk.
July 20, 2025 at 1:53 PM
kurtraschke.com
I try generally to be civil online. But this...this just pisses me off. To be clear, this sentiment is not directed at the commenter, but rather the circumstances which have led people to think this way.

You see, I use em dashes and en dashes, and words like "delve".
Screenshot of a comment on a blog post. The text has been blurred except for the following sentence: When you see the telltale signs of ChatGPT (em dash, bullet points, bold font, words like “delve”), just close the ticket and stop reading.
July 15, 2025 at 3:13 AM
kurtraschke.com
In 1999 a Fujitsu task force formed to reduce the backlog of outstanding defects in the software found code which they described as follows: "[w]hoever wrote this code clearly has no understanding of elementary mathematics or the most basic rules of programming"
Although parts of the EPOSS code are well written, significant sections are a combination of poor technical design, bad programming, and ill-thought out bug fixes. The negative impact of these factors will continue and spread as long as the PINICL fixing culture continues. This is partly due to the nature/size of the bug-fixing task and partly due to the quality and professionalism of certain individuals within the team. The problem is probably best illustrated examples : Example 1: This extract from EPOSSCore.dll has been written to reverse the sign of a number and is equivalent to the command : - d=-d Public Function ReverseSign(d) If d < 0 Then d = Abs(d) Else d = d - (d*2) End If Reverse Sign = d End Function Whoever wrote this code clearly has no understanding of elementary mathematics or the most basic rules of programming.
July 11, 2025 at 10:34 PM
kurtraschke.com
I neglected to mention this in the blog post, but writing code to parse the "Location" field into semi-structured data led to quite a bit of fun with regular expressions.

(I actually really enjoyed this! Really!)
A screenshot of a block of Rust code, containing the following six lines: static ref RELATIVE_PATTERN: Regex = Regex::new(r"^(?P<location_type>Approachih?ng|Arriving At|At|Around|Departed|Departing|Leaving|Left|Near|(?:North|South) of) (?P<location_name>(?:.(?!Depot))+?)(?:(?:,? (?:p|P))(?:lat?form)?(?: ?(?P<platform_number>(?:[0-9 ]|(?:and))+))?)?$").unwrap(); static ref AREA_PATTERN: Regex = Regex::new(r"^(?P<area_name>.+) [Aa]reao?(?: fast)?$").unwrap(); static ref BETWEEN_PATTERN: Regex = Regex::new(r"^(?:In b|B)etween (?P<from_station_name>.+) ((?<!Elephant )and) (?P<to_station_name>.+)$").unwrap(); static ref LEFT_BETWEEN_PATTERN: Regex = Regex::new(r"^Left (?<from_station_name>.+)(?: Approaching |, heading to(?:wards)? )(?<to_station_name>.+)").unwrap(); static ref SIDINGS_PATTERN: Regex = Regex::new(r"^(?:(?:In|(?P<prefix>Siding at)) )?(?P<location_name>.+?)(?(<prefix>)| (?:S|s)idings?)(?: (?:Road |(?P<lparen>\())(?P<road_number>.+?)(?(<lparen>)\)))?$").unwrap(); static ref DEPOT_PATTERN: Regex = Regex::new(r"^(?:At )?(?P<depot_name>.+) Depot(?: entrance road)?$").unwrap();
June 2, 2025 at 12:25 AM
kurtraschke.com
We generally call this a “bus”, and have since the days of Blaise Pascal.
May 15, 2025 at 10:09 PM
kurtraschke.com
Shared autonomous rides? They’re called SkyTrain, and the DLR, and a whole host of other GoA3/4 systems.
May 15, 2025 at 10:09 PM
kurtraschke.com
“Transportation Hub”
May 15, 2025 at 10:02 PM
kurtraschke.com
To give you a sense of the impact this has had on me, I registered a domain and spent several weeknights fixated on building oddsfavorprogress.now, despite my great distaste for CSS!
A screenshot of the Web site oddsfavorprogress.now. It contains the following blocks of text overlaid on an image of the Statue of Liberty: “I understand the frustrations of New Yorkers who find themselves alternately confronted by problems and progress. One subway train is a brand new adventure in 21st-century transportation but the one right behind is a disheartening ride with grime and graffiti. But slowly, yet steadily, we are gaining ground and the odds favor progress. “New York today is what it has always been: it’s the world's No. 1 arena for genius, it’s the battleground of new ideas. New York is the city where the future comes to rehearse, where the best come to get better. We’re the leading city because we are the city of leaders. If you're trying for the top, you cannot top New York. The background image is described as follows: Aerial view of Lady Liberty's left side, face, torch, and tablet looking west.
April 12, 2025 at 5:40 PM
kurtraschke.com
Well, how else are you supposed to get your BLÅHAJ home?
An IKEA BLÅHAJ stuffed shark in the luggage rack of a Metro-North Railroad M8 train.
April 5, 2025 at 10:32 PM
kurtraschke.com
This is why I do what I do. This city is what it is because of transit. It exists because of, not in spite of transit. Without mass transit, this city would not exist. It’s simply impossible to move the volume of people who travel in this city without mass transit.
April 5, 2025 at 12:04 AM
kurtraschke.com
catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/34/51#...

It was Muni, not BART, and anyway, the Second Generation VCC can boot just fine off a floppy emulator (this was proven on JNUP), and...oh well.
Indiana bakery still used Commodore 64 in 21st century (Boeingboing) "Jim" <jgeissman@socal.rr.com> Thu, 19 Dec 2024 12:56:51 -0800 https://boingboing.net/2024/12/19/indiana-bakery-still-used-commodore-64-= in-21st-century.html [This reminds me of BART booting off a floppy. It works.]
December 30, 2024 at 5:46 PM
kurtraschke.com
now I somewhat want to figure out how to make a time series out of this...

(maybe with a slider for different vintages?)
October 14, 2024 at 5:10 PM
kurtraschke.com
The lesson here is "if you really care, make your own copy".
September 30, 2024 at 6:05 PM
kurtraschke.com
"Microtransit" is not transit, it's not an "upgrade", and it's not how you "get riders back on board".

instagram.com/p/C-blPhiN8fM/
September 4, 2024 at 12:36 AM
kurtraschke.com
Well, this should be fun!

www.rssb.co.uk/standards-ca...
RIS-6702-DST Iss 1 Time and Date in Railway Systems Synopsis This document sets out requirements and guidance for the use, interpretation and formatting of time and date information in railway systems.
July 3, 2024 at 5:22 PM
kurtraschke.com
What?
June 22, 2024 at 1:06 AM
kurtraschke.com
foaming at sunset
March 23, 2024 at 10:49 PM
kurtraschke.com
I guess it's a bit soon to expect computer science curricula to be on board with the White House report on memory safety?

www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...
March 22, 2024 at 1:25 AM
kurtraschke.com
I had a PC Engines apu2 and a spare NVMe SSD sitting around, and eventually realized I could put the SSD in the apu2 with an M.2 to mini-PCIe adapter...or not. It's decidedly unhappy. It'll work for a short while, then drop off the PCIe bus.
March 16, 2024 at 12:32 AM
kurtraschke.com
My first thought upon seeing this (aside from “what the heck is that”) was “is that a Bookland EAN?”.

Dear reader, that is indeed a Bookland EAN (i.e. ISBN-13).
February 25, 2024 at 1:32 AM
kurtraschke.com
I'm glad to see civil servants aren't the only ones thrust into absurd situations by their organizations' gift policies...

www.nytimes.com/2023/11/25/m...
In the absent glow of the patio’s still-dormant fire pit, Courtney and I considered the dinner menu, which included a small quantity of caviar costing a sum of American dollars ominously, discreetly, vaguely, alarmingly, irresistibly and euphemistically specified as “market price.” Hours earlier, my supervisor had told me pre-emptively — and demonically — that I was not to order and expense the market-price caviar. Somehow, Courtney learned of this act of oppression, probably when I brought it up to her immediately upon being seated for dinner. To this, Courtney said, “I love caviar,” and added that my boss “can’t tell [her] what [she] can have,” because she doesn’t “answer to” him, “goddamn it.” She charged the caviar to her own personal credit card and encouraged me to eat it with her — even as I explained (weakly, for one second) that this is not allowed (lock me up!). Subsequently pinning down the exact hows and whys of my consuming a profile subject’s forbidden caviar took either several lively discussions with my supervisor (my guess) or about “1.5 hours” of “company time” (his calculation). In his opinion, this act could be seen as at odds with my employer’s policy precluding reporters from accepting favors and gifts from their subjects — the worry being that I might feel obligated to repay Courtney for caviar by describing her favorably in this article. Let me be clear: If the kind of person who purchases caviar and offers to share it with a dining companion who has been tyrannically deprived of it sounds like someone you would not like, you would hate Stephanie Courtney. In any event, to bring this interaction into line with company policy, we later reimbursed her for the full price of the caviar ($85 plus tip), so now she is, technically, indebted to me.
November 30, 2023 at 12:02 AM
kurtraschke.com
Oh, so does this mean that IPv6, which has been broken since the _last_ outage, a few weeks ago, might start working again?
We’ve detected a network performance issue in your area and will be working to make improvements starting 07/21/2023 01:00 AM (Eastern). You may experience a temporary Xfinity service interruption during this time, which could affect all of your services. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding.
July 18, 2023 at 11:33 PM