The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done • Hacker News Board

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#291

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 2:44 AM UTC

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #287

Dylan16807 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You find the 'yr' confusing?

No, they interchanged miles with m, and in a weird unintuitive way at that. m isn't even standard for miles, it's standard for meters, and just before that miles was written instead of shortened - it's not just confusing it's also terribly presented. At least yr is intuitive, nothing about m is easily understood even given the context (which is why so many other people are complaining about it).

Okay, though that sounds like you're actually objecting for a different reason than inconsistency.

But I will note that "m" is used in the common distance-over-time unit of mph.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#292

Post by thaumasiotes » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 7:15 AM UTC

growlist wrote: post #262

thaumasiotes wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, "civil war breaking out somewhere in Africa" is news in the same way that the tide going out is news. If you're upset about how predictable it is to hear about a rapper's opinions, you should be more upset about coverage of a war going on in Africa.

> To be fair, "civil war breaking out somewhere in Africa" is news in the same way that the tide going out is news. Remarkably complacent view, and undermined by the fact that other channels will report on this stuff, but not the BBC. The point is firstly that the signal to noise used to be far higher in the UK - I've been watching it for 40 years - I know what I'm talking about - and secondly that it's extremely unl…

> undermined by the fact that other channels will report on this stuff, but not the BBC.

If you think the willingness of a news organization to publish something depends on how newsworthy it is, I guess all I can do is respond by quoting the Daily Mail Song:

    Pop stars take drugs
    Teen boys wear hoods
    Sports stars have sex
    Bears shit in woods

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI )

But that's still English news. I guess I can quote something else:

> the more lurid, titillating, sensational, or nationalistic, the better. Even the distinguished Xinhua News Service is not immune from this sort of thing. I couldn't help but chuckle when the podcast host Scott Peters worried whether or not the American press corps' obsession with non-stories like Kim Kardashian and Bruce/Catelynn Jenner would give it [Xinhua] a strategic advantage in the contest to control global media narratives. My guess is Mr. Peters doesn't read Xinhua too often. If I had few dollars [for] every time Xinhua placed a photo collage like "Beautiful Female Soldiers From All Over the World," "Singer Valen Hsu Poses For Fashion Shots," "Sleeping Babies With Their Cutest Pets," on their front page...

( http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2015/07/chinese-journalis... )

Newsworthiness is something that can force news organizations to begrudgingly give up space they would rather have allocated to -- going back to the song -- their photo feature on schoolgirl skirt styles. If you're watching the news because you're hoping to learn something, you're making a blatant category error; that's not what the news is for.

And "civil war in Africa" fits tabloid desires perfectly; it's lurid and violent, drawing readers or watchers, without being at all surprising or important.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#293

Post by Erlich_Bachman » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 8:32 AM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #283

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you see my point now? Not really, what is your point? Every car manufacturer uses parts sourced from other companies - software, parts of engines, whole engines, whole gearboxes, complete modules, raw materials... That's how the industry works...

> Every car manufacturer uses parts sourced from other companies > and engineered a real solution So, which is it? Did he outsource the parts like every other company or did he engineer a solution?

I assume that you have undertaken some engineering tasks in the past, and so then you have surely experienced that research, proper selection and setting up the sourcing chain for the parts is a big chunk of decisions that go into engineering a production line or even a single project/machine. Research that ultimately affects the choice of mechanical and otherwise building of the machines itself, because it depends on which parts are viable to source.

So not sure why you would focus on that superficial difference here, like what are you trying to prove? I don't understand your point. Elon Musk has a lot of results behind his companies to prove that he can engineer and a good ratio of technical terms and numbers he can spur off the top of his head in an interview to prove that he is not even mainly marketer, his brain is in engineering, he knows the technical stuff deeply down to revision numbers and decimal points and can give you an educated opinion on technical matters. So this shows you that he is indeed an engineer, not sure if that's your point even though?

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#294

Post by Can_Not » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

pjkundert wrote: post #266

pjkundert wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve got the wrong perspective. From the perspective of the city, the ROI of a subway train is high. From the perspective of an individual, the ROI of using my own car in a tunnel, exactly when I want to, without parking, waiting, embarking, smelling the vagrants, disembarking, walking or getting a cab, ... Priceless!

Hey, everyone — I (fairly) accurately expressed the points of view of some participants in this equation. Why are you spanking me for that? Or... were you looking for an echo chamber here on HN? Because if you keep downvoting every statement that you don’t agree with, that’s what you’ll soon have!

"an echo chamber is when anyone disagrees with me"

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#295

Post by grp000 » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #201

grp000 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess we should have stopped at the wheel.

We have improved it a lot, but the wheel has been round for a very long time. We laugh at people who reinvent the wheel as opposed to doing incremental improvements on it. We do have ships, rockets, and a few other things that don't need wheels (tough they tend to have wheels of some form inside), but the wheel itself is still just incremental improvements on that first one way back...

NIH and 'reinventing the wheel' are phrases for questioning the need to spend time and money to develop a thing that has the same purpose as an existing thing and doesn't improve on it, which I agree with. But to use ships as an example, at some point people decided it would be useful to cross bodies of water without getting wet so they invented the boat, and as a new invention it improved quality of life immeasurably. It feels like you're saying people should exclusively stop making things which have new and novel purposes and just focus on improving existing things, which is the part I disagree with. Also, I think as an example, gears and wheels which have similar bases of design are two completely different inventions because they have different purposes, this might be where we disagree.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#296

Post by privateSFacct » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 1:29 AM UTC

MiroF wrote: post #191

privateSFacct wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope this is a joke, but if not please look into the cost and timeliness of subway maintenance costs by unionized workforce’s dealing with things like switching and signaling equipment - your claim is that this is drastically more efficient than some car mechanics? And if your number is low - you are not counting deferred maintenance which is huge in these systems

Yes, even counting "unionized workforce" cars cannot even remotely compete with mass transit rail on a per capita cost. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

The comparison here is to a transit system that uses vehicles which can be serviced by car mechanics. This will be cheaper.

And rail has otherwise struggled in the US.

The amtrak story is not great. I've tried to use them repeatedly, and outside of northeast corridor it is cheaper to fly then to take them anywhere. Let that sink in, the cost to get you up in air, and FLY is cheaper than rolling along on low friction rails. When you say why is it hard to understand that rail is cheapest it's because folks KNOW that things like buses are MUCH MUCH cheaper.

This is ignoring the absolutely stupid cost to build one mile of rail tunnel.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#297

Post by MiroF » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 1:39 AM UTC

privateSFacct wrote: post #296

MiroF wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, even counting "unionized workforce" cars cannot even remotely compete with mass transit rail on a per capita cost. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

The comparison here is to a transit system that uses vehicles which can be serviced by car mechanics. This will be cheaper. And rail has otherwise struggled in the US. The amtrak story is not great. I've tried to use them repeatedly, and outside of northeast corridor it is cheaper to fly then to take them anywhere. Let that sink in, the cost to get you up in air, and FLY is cheaper than rolling along on low friction…

Building a tunnel and then filling it with cars is a waste of space. The per capita gains don't just come from being underground, they come from density of people - which is abysmal for cars, multiplied by the fact that most people drive alone for most of the time.

Mass transit rail has hardly "struggled" in the US - it has high usage and conflating the distinction between mass transit rail and long distance rail is disingenuous when considering the usecases of Musks tunnels.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#298

Post by travisjungroth » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 4:39 AM UTC

fouc wrote: post #259

mbesto wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Tesla's Gigfactory is a JV with Panasonic and partially funded by taxpayers. I'd say the largest value add about Elon Musk is his ability to create a reality distortion field to convince large swathes of people to follow his dream. I'm actually not being critical of Musk here. Jobs did this and you can see how transformative certain technologies have been as a result.

Musk and Jobs having strong visions and making them happen so that we can all benefit is denigrated as "reality distortion field"?

That was a term Jobs’s staff used about him.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#299

Post by mc3 » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

sansnomme wrote: post #120

siquick wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen any breakdown of why it costs that much? It seems like an unfathomable amount.

All sorts of reasons, but corruption (along-side organized crime) is a big issue in the construction industry. Imagine Oracle-style of service and business approach coupled with an npm-deep level of dependencies/middlemen whose palms need greasing and to have their cut of the project. Then on the other side you are boxed in by physics, thousands of regulations, zoning laws, complaints, city council, government bureau…

"npm-deep" I love that phrase. anyone who suffers a dig around the node_modules folder knows the pain! Ugh! I also used Oracle in the early 2000's, I need hypnotherapy to get over that.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#300

Post by ClumsyPilot » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 1:31 AM UTC

dzhiurgis wrote: post #185

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rail moves a lot more people than a 10-line highway.

Absolute capacity is far from useful metric when you have so many options of commute.

On the contrary, it's all about capacity.

In London I have a thousand options, and every single one of them is clogged at 6 pm. People stay extra hour at work because there is no way for them all to get home.