Welcome to the lovely landlocked land of Luxembork, where the fares are free, and the terminals are techno

There ain't no party like a tap-in party, as nobody ever said. And so it is that one of Luxembourg's mostly redundant tap-in / tap-out terminals is amusing itself by putting on a light show for passing passengers. The terminal is an INIT unit, rolled out on the country's public transport network and now mostly idle since fares were zeroed out in 2020. First Class and cross-border trips still attract a charge, but for everything else (trains, trams, and buses) there is no fee. Eagle-eyed Register reader Dominic spotted the terminal doing its thing at the Rout Bréck / Pafendall rail station in Luxembourg City. "Maybe it's got bored," he suggested, "and is trying to attract attention by cycling through video test patterns." Perhaps. Or perhaps it's the first wave of the AI takeover – activating unwitting undercover agents via the medium of flashing lights and colors (we've seen The Ipcress File – we know how it works), or maybe, just maybe, the terminal has got itself into a self-test boot loop and is awaiting an engineer who is probably in no rush to attend. After all, flashing screen or no flashing screen, nobody will bother to tap in and tap out when transport is free. The mundane reality is that this is indeed an INIT PROXmobile terminal with its knickers in a twist. It looks like it is going through a cycle to check out the performance of the LCD screen; checking that the red, green, and blue subpixels are working ok, showing a solid white screen, and then a grid pattern to check contrast and alignment are all tippety-top. And then it should boot into whatever it is supposed to be doing. However, that is, alas, not running quite as expected, so it goes back to the start of the diagnostic test. The terminals are managed remotely, so an alarm is doubtless going off somewhere to inform an administrator that something is amiss. Unless this really was some guerrilla marketing for Luxembourg's rave scene. The next Holy Rave was on Friday (October 9). Or perhaps loud music in dark rooms is not your thing? A flashing screen at a train station could therefore be a worthy substitute. ®