
German railways to test anti-graffiti drones - DiabloD3
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22678580
======
tripzilch
Whenever I travel in Germany (indeed usually by train), I marvel at how much
_prettier_ most graffiti is than it is over here in NL (basically, more &
larger colourful "pieces", rather than ugly "tags").

That makes me kind of ambivalent about this undertaking :) But I also
understand that for the Deutsche Bahn this means substantial damage and costs.
On the other hand, more effective enforcement is probably mostly going to
result in a larger ratio of quick-n-dirty tags, making the overall appearance
messier, uglier and more vandalised.

Now I don't think that people should just be able to paint their murals on
whatever property they don't own. That's not right. I just think it won't
really change the appearance for the better.

I also don't like drones, btw. Flying surveillance robots? Brrr. At least
ED-209 couldn't climb stairs ...

~~~
coldtea
> _But I also understand that for the Deutsche Bahn this means substantial
> damage and costs._

In what sense?

If the don't want repaint damages, then don't fucking repaint them.

People like them fine as they are. Young people at least. As for the older
people, they will give their place to younger people sooner or later.

~~~
ah-
>People like them fine as they are. Young people at least. As for the older
people, they will give their place to younger people sooner or later.

I doubt that. At least I am a young German and I prefer my trains to be clean.
And I'm absolutely certain most young people here think the same way.

There is graffiti that I enjoy, but the majority of it doesn't exactly improve
the looks of things.

Also, there is a slight problem with people feeling insecure when using public
transportation due to repeated incidents where people were beaten up or
stabbed in trains. Having graffiti all over the place makes especially older
people less likely to use public transportation and therefore reduces the
income.

~~~
coldtea
> _I doubt that. At least I am a young German and I prefer my trains to be
> clean. And I'm absolutely certain most young people here think the same
> way._

Were? In squareville? Because the young Germans I've talked to in Mitte sure
didn't think that way.

> _Also, there is a slight problem with people feeling insecure when using
> public transportation due to repeated incidents where people were beaten up
> or stabbed in trains._

That's orthogonal.

> _Having graffiti all over the place makes especially older people less
> likely to use public transportation and therefore reduces the income._

Huh? How is that conclusion reached? I hope not with the "broken window"
theory -- there are graffiti in affluent and well maintained city districts
too.

~~~
reportingsjr
squareville? Let's not act like we are five years old and calling each other
names. That makes for a terrible environment.

Remember that your opinion isn't The One and that everybody has different
likes. I agree that graffiti on trains normally looks terrible, but in other
places graffiti can be very interesting.

------
BjoernKW
This undertaking is absolutely ridiculous.

First, Deutsche Bahn simply could hire a security agency for a fraction of the
money.

Second, they're trying to solve a non-problem. Their trains are notoriously
and regularly late. Their fares are horribly complex and overpriced. They only
offer Internet access on two of their high speed routes through Germany. You
want Internet access while travelling to Germany's main startup hub Berlin?
Well, bad luck for you. No such service. Their trains fail regulary during
spring because of the rain, they fail during summer because the trains' air
conditioning can't handle more than 35 degrees centigrade, they fail during
autumn because their trains' wheels can't deal with wet leaves on the tracks
and they fail during winter because of a few snowflakes.

I couldn't care less what their trains look like from the outside if they
didn't smell like piss and sweat on the inside. Maybe, they should fix that
issue first before buying some expensive toy with their shareholders' money,
which happens to be taxpayers' money since Deutsche Bahn is still more or less
owned by the German state.

~~~
freyfogle
As someone who has lived in Germany for many years and experienced the pros
and cons of Deutsche Bahn and now lives in the UK, all I can say is you have
no idea how good things are in Germany.

~~~
BjoernKW
I have lived in the UK for some time, too. I can only tell about the Tube and
regional train services in South-East England and those were quite alright
back then (roughly 10 years ago), though not exactly better than German
regional train services either.

------
zalew
> Graffiti is reported to cost Deutsche Bahn about 7.6m euros (£6.5m; $10m) a
> year.

or leave it alone and it will cost you close to zero and still look better.
wholecars ara PITA for travellers so windows need to get cleaned, but I
thought that vandal squad hysteria after the 90s graffiti boom has ended. I
guess somebody needs to pump up their budget requirements.

~~~
mih
This might change your mind <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gLrwaXfeLg>.

While the problem is definitely less nowadays, the difficult to reach places
where graffiti appears around German stations sometimes makes you appreciate
how much motivation and effort the artists(?) must have.

~~~
odiroot
This is really painful to watch. Stupidity like this saddens me. Hope they'll
figure out how to catch these people or at least teach them a lesson.

~~~
probably_wrong
> Stupidity like this saddens me

Then here's something a little sadder: this guys are more or less considered
heroes. I've never seen the video, but I've heard the story from a tourist
guide, who made it clear that this was an awesome stunt that should be
admired.

Then again, keep in mind that Berlin has a rather complicated story with
Graffiti (the city owes a lot to its starving artists), so the Western point
of view is not the only one to keep in consideration.

~~~
odiroot
Well, I'm from the eastern bloc and we have (had?) similar problems in Poland.
Though I doubt anyone here would glorify or even excuse these guys. Really
thought vandalism is rare and less tolerated west of us.

------
venomsnake
They should just declare the graffiti as an act of terrorism and rent few of
Mr. Obama's drones for a few days. They are battle tested with good track
record and nice infrastructure.

My opinion - the only proper way to deal with this is to commission some
street art on the walls and cars themselves.

In a few places where the artists have been officially sanctioned it worked
acceptably.

~~~
coldtea
> _They are battle tested with good track record_

If by "battle" you mean one-sided murder attack, and "good track record" you
mean "including killing tens of kids in weddings and such".

~~~
venomsnake
That is exactly what I meant... the HTML spec really needs sarcasm tag by
default. But from purely engineering viewpoint they have performed
marvelously.

As a rule I hate purely technical/financial solution that helps someone to
isolate himself from a social problem and not solving it.

~~~
coldtea
> _As a rule I hate purely technical/financial solution that helps someone to
> isolate himself from a social problem and not solving it._

I'm totally there with you on this.

We cannot solve social problems by just piling technology on them.

Just an an example (OT), it's like the thing with the right to privacy: no,
cryptography ain't gonna solve the issue.

For one, they could outlaw the use of cryptography and force you to provide a
passkey or be jailed. Second, that might work for a tech savvy person
communicating with another tech savvy person -- if he's paranoid all the time.

What about when his non tech-savvy friend mentions his secret on a plain text
email to another friend? And what about the culture of hiding, instead of a
proud culture of "this is not the fucking government's business" that this
creates?

------
jordanlev
Couldn't the graffiti artists just wear ski masks to avoid being identified?
(Which reminds me of this story which appears on HN from time to time:
[http://cs.txstate.edu/~br02/cs1428/ShortStoryForEngineers.ht...](http://cs.txstate.edu/~br02/cs1428/ShortStoryForEngineers.htm)
)

~~~
zcam
A lots of them now wear gas masks, or at minimum put a piece of cloth (scarf
or something) on their mouth+nose, breathing paint and what comes with it
isn't good for you. So yeah...

------
JimBodat
A bitcoin to the first successful tag on the drone itself.

~~~
coldcode
What if people started using drones to do the graffiti? It seems like a
possible future. Then you will need anti graffiti-drawing drone drones.
Eventually you will wind up with a giant Skynet graffiti problem.

------
coldtea
"German railways to test anti-graffiti drones"

Yes, take every bit of freedom and artistic expression in the urban
environment -- just because there's technology to enable it.

When there'll be technology to enable having people zapped if they do or think
anything those in power don't like, they'll employ it too.

~~~
sliverstorm
If you consider graffiti to be freedom of expression, you missed that boat
when it was made illegal in the first place. Arguing we shouldn't enforce the
laws we have generally won't get you very far.

------
salimmadjd
>German media report that each drone will cost about 60,000 euros and fly
almost silently German police should look through kickstarter. This whole
thing should not cost more than 10,000 even with IR video equipment added.
Looks like some company is going to make a healthy profit

------
mhd
The Deutsche Bahn, who's still using floppy disks for reservations? And who
knows what to power their train station displays (including some 286s with
Xenix, if I remember correctly)...

~~~
brunnsbe
They also have a route planner for almost whole Europe that is super-fast.
Would be interesting to read howabout it's built.

~~~
mhd
Isn't that all still done by Hafas? I remember when their web site redirected
the search to "reiseauskunft.hafas.de" (late 90s?)... Where you actually got a
Postscript _program_ when you used the print function in a Linux browser.

Sadly it's pretty rare to find something like a "technology blog" on any
German corporate website, apart from a few startups.

