Comment by jakub_g
3 years ago
Buried in the comments are links to longer write-ups with additional details:
Polish:
https://zaufanatrzeciastrona.pl/post/o-trzech-takich-co-zhak...
https://wiadomosci.onet.pl/kraj/awarie-pociagow-newagu-haker...
English:
https://zaufanatrzeciastrona-pl.translate.goog/post/o-trzech...
https://wiadomosci-onet-pl.translate.goog/kraj/awarie-pociag...
For context: Poland is split into 16 voivodships, and after a reform from early 2000s, pretty much each of them has its own local railway company (which cooperate).
Basically "everyone knew" for over a year something was fishy with Newag trains, after a series of faults in trains owned by different companies which used a 3rd-party service company instead of servicing with Newag, so the service company hired the hacker guys, it took a while for the folks to reverse engineer things and understand what's precisely going on.
Awesome! I had to look the word "voivodship" up. I am Polish, so I knew what województwo meant. But I didn't know there was an English equivalent of that word other than governing state. An interesting read on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voivodeship
I think the best shot a modern Anglophone has at knowing the word is that it was used in Dracula for the title of Vlad the Impaler. [Voivode, that is, not voivodeship. But if you know the title voivode, the meaning of voivodeship is obvious.]
It is not immediately obvious why the word would have been adopted into English in more or less the native form as opposed to being translated into an equivalent title, the way we talk about German "dukes" and "duchies".
Knowing polish, russian, lithuanian and bits of other related languages, I find it interesting how the word directly assumes military leadership, the medieval feudal kind of way. It can be roughly translated as "led by a voivoda", with "voivoda" here meaning "military leader".
Probably comes from the original Commonwealth times..?