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Comment by probably_wrong | Hacker News Reader

The German train system uses TTS in all stations to announce (among other things) delays and cancellations. Cancellations are usually followed by the phrase "we apologize". This has always been for me the most infuriating part: that the fakest of apologies was attached to it.

In contrast, getting actual information about the delay works for me, precisely because it feels more honest.

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The most infuriating part for me with the local transport agency in Cologne (KVB) is the verbosity. They use a 90s style unbearably slow ticker display. So if you catch a glimpse at the wrong moment you're stuck reading all the unimportant garbage while trying to figure out whether the message is even relevant to you.

This is especially bad with cancellations because it lists every major stop (with station name and time) for the canceled tram. So instead of getting the important information instantly you are stuck waiting for the message to end and then repeat to the point that's actually important. I realise this is a technical limitation because apparently all affected stations get the same message but this seems fairly archaic while at the same time also being an obvious cost-cutting move over having actual announcements.

In general however the infuriating part about the apologies is that instead of "we apologize for the inconvenience" a more literal translation of the one you see most often -- "Danke für Ihr Verständnis" -- is "thank you for your understanding", which comes off as super passive-aggressive compared to the more apologetic but much less frequent "Wir bitten um Verständnis" ("we ask for your understanding"). Sure, they're both hollow phrases but thanking you seems extremely condescending.

> They use a 90s style unbearably slow ticker display. So if you catch a glimpse at the wrong moment you're stuck reading all the unimportant garbage while trying to figure out whether the message is even relevant to you.

BART in the SF Bay Area is the same. The tickers slooowly scroll through repeated public service announcements and ads before eventually showing the train ETAs and current time for five seconds. They should show that important information all the time.

The American subways I've been to seem to all suffer from the realization that you can put advertising anywhere you could put a map.

I, and many others I'm sure, would appreciate it if you would actually put some effort into your half-hearted America slams. All the subways I've been in, EU and US, have plenty of both ads and maps.

How about the English one, copied from [1] with an example train included:

"May I have your attention please on platform 1. We are sorry to announce that the nineteen-fourteen South West Trains service to Windsor and Eton Riverside has been cancelled. This is due to a failed train at Richmond. South West Trains apologises for the inconvenience caused."

At least some parts of that one are useful. I found hearing things like "This is a safety announcement. Due to today's inclement weather, please take extra care whilst on the station. Surfaces may be slippery." and "Security personnel tour this station 24 hours a day." very annoying.

(And I said "English" intentionally. You can at least double the length of these, Welsh first, in Wales.)

[1] http://automatedannouncements.wikia.com/wiki/Generic_Station...

The best display technology IMHO is the old electro-mechanical split-flap. They update pretty fast, and they make one hell of a racket when they do so everybody in the train station knows when something updated (this is a feature). They're sufficiently versatile to display information a train station needs to. They also have a certain aesthetic that simply cannot be touched by modern LCD/LED displays.

You must be one of those hipsters who lugs around a typewriter to cafes.

- They are very slow compared to digital. - They aren't versatile, they can't display arbitrary information. Each message has to be crafted individually and fit in among the rest. Which makes it nice for station lines since there are a small number that never change. Anything else? Not so much. - The noise is not intentional, it's more of a bug than a feature for sure. In a busy train station they change every minute or more so as an alerting mechanism it's near useless.

We're talking about train station displays, not arbitrary displays. Nobody has ever done word processing on a split-flap display so obviously I'm talking about a restricted domain. They don't need to display arbitrary information and the range of information they need to display rarely changes since that typically involves construction. The noise, an unintentional consequence of the mechanism, provides utility to train travelers and is therefore a feature.

In a busy train station the duration of the split-flap change provides an auditory clue to what's going on. If you hear one or two rows update then nothing out of the ordinary is happening. If you hear several rows update that might be a good indication that your train is now on the board, or it could signal mass delays. For many years I went through 30th Street Station in Philadelphia with a split-flap board in the middle and I loved that board. When I'm at airports with LCD boards, I always miss it. LCD boards are trash, you don't notice them changing unless you're staring at them, almost always have text too small to read unless you're standing directly in front of it, and are completely soulless.

I learned to type on a Selectric years before my family bought our first computer. I haven't touched one since.

> Nobody has ever done word processing on a split-flap display

You say that, but I'd be willing to bet that this guy has: https://scottbez1.github.io/splitflap/

Oat Foundry Split Flap displays do real-time typing, real-time display of 3rd party data, and oh so much more.

I wonder if that's a limitation of the (likely ancient) systems they pull the data from, or just a terrible convention. Even a vertical refresh, one complete line at a time, would let you show a lot more updates to the passengers than a horizontal scroll.

Using the DB app is really helpful to me. All delays are near real-time. It makes using public transport so much easier. Now the German ticketing machine, please fix that so it includes the stops instead of just end points.

Isn’t this “fake” politeness part of the German culture? I see it in everything related to business communication, from banks, insurances, public services, etc. Even from retail stores. That has been explained to me as being part of the etiquette for proper communication, which seems to be quite important in Germany, even if everybody I asked agreed that it was empty and meaningless.

It indeed is, in a way German culture is very similar to something like Japanese culture, where the social form is way more important than actual intent/content.

For the same reason, the German language has very complex honorifics [0].

Some Germans take real offense if you don't address them with the proper honorific or forget to list one of their, oh so important, honorific titles on some text communication.

Because of this, there exists quite a lively market to sell honorific titles, specifically aimed at German-speaking users [1], in that regard there still exists a very real "class distinction" in Germany.

Stuff like that always makes me wonder how much influence population density has on the evolution of such strict social dynamics.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B6flichkeitsform#Die_H%C3...

[1] https://title-town.eu/

When living in Germany, I found that the Germans were quite blunt in comparison to the United States and discarded a lot of the word fluff and fake friendliness that I often see people using in the United States. They prefer to be direct and get to the point. There was no need to beat around the bush and hint politely at something. So the attitude of getting rid of the meaningless words and stick directly to the information seems like a very German attitude to me.

However, I also found (particularly in written contexts) that the Germans were really big on formality. If you don't use their proper titles, they'll get very upset. If the paperwork doesn't have an official stamp on it, it's meaningless waste paper. If it does have an official stamp on it, then it's holy and undisputed, no matter what nonsense is written on it. I'm surprised that there isn't a flourishing fake official stamp black market because of the importance people place on those things.

I find that all the fluff in German written documents revolves around formality, rather than fake politeness. I always got the feeling that all those extra, meaningless words and phrases were more about doing it the proper, formal way (no matter how meaningless that was), whereas in the United States, the people are much more informal, but use a lot of fluff words to convey fake friendliness.

German academic writing is ridiculous. There's so much formality and academic vocabulary involved that they'll write long, complex sentences with fancy vocabulary to convey a simple concept. It's about as formal as you can possibly imagine, so it's wordiness and complexity has to compensate.

I feel like they increasingly inform about causes of delays too though. It has been worse in the past.

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