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Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

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Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#71

Post by bawolff »

ETH_start wrote: post #66
hvb2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does left or right even matter? This is ordinary stuff that should be covered? If you've read the article, you can see how - they were told to stop, and refused - lied about what they did to make the problem look smaller - reversed corrective action as soon as they thought the inspectors left This has nothing to do with bias. A right wing outlet should've covered this too. They might have used some different word…

The systematic bias arises from story selection, not from whether a specific investigation is accurate. So I am absolutely not suggesting this story is not accurate or that Boring Company isn't at fault. In the long run selective coverage creates an inaccurate picture of reality: constant stories about private greed, almost none about institutional self-dealing within the state.

Given that the current president is right wing, wouldn't the left have a vested interest in talking about self-dealing in the state?

Regardless, we are on a news aggregator here. Whatever selection bias this source has should be counteracted by hn drawing from many sources. At least on the source level. HN is going to of course be biased towards stories hn finds interesting.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#72

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Timshel wrote: post #70
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Be specific. Which article and which citation? Otherwise this is insinuation or even slander I’m literally calling out a liar. Not sure how you missed that. But sure. This is the article [1]. Excerpt from my e-mail to the author: “I came across your post through Dealbook today. In your article you mention that it is ‘argued that [Sarbanes-Oxley] would hurt initial public offerings, which it didn’t.’ You link throug…

Not sure where you extract is supposed to come from, the paper argue that > Many have blamed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and the 2003 Global Settlement’s effects on analyst coverage for the decline in IPO activity. We find very little support for the conventional wisdom, and offer an alternative explanation No wonder you got ignored .. Edit: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1954788

> Not sure where you extract is supposed to come from

The paper. The one that was cited. (It was a working paper at the time.)

Nevertheless, your quote drives the point home. The paper rejects “the conventional wisdom” which “states that low public market prices are due to either lower valuations caused by the lack of analyst coverage, or to lower earnings as a public firm because of SOX and other costs.”

The Pro Publica article says that paper shows SOX did not reduce IPO volumes. That’s false. The earnings channel is rejected. But otherwise, the paper is about acquisition versus IPO.

It’s understandable incompetence. It turns into a lie when one digs in after the error is pointed out.

> No wonder you got ignored ..

If a journalist ignoring me means I can let their work be ignored in multiple state and national capitals, I will take it as a win.

(And with the benefit of hindsight, the article was dead wrong. I built a bit of a career on the private markets starting in 2012, as it happens.)

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#73

Post by dns_snek »

charcircuit wrote: post #22
bawolff wrote: post #6

How is that only a $500,000 fine??? Stopping when inspectors are there only to restart once they leave is willful enough that you wonder why this doesn't go into criminal liability?

To be fair it's over 3 times the amount of damage they caused, so that is a pretty big profit margin on cleaning up the mess.

Let's take this bizarre worldview to its logical conclusion, is the amount of damage that a school shooter causes equivalent to the sum of funeral costs and school repair costs?

Should they also get to walk away if they just pay 3 times the cost of "cleaning up the mess"? That's a pretty big profit margin, no?

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#74

Post by charcircuit »

dns_snek wrote: post #73
charcircuit wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair it's over 3 times the amount of damage they caused, so that is a pretty big profit margin on cleaning up the mess.

Let's take this bizarre worldview to its logical conclusion, is the amount of damage that a school shooter causes equivalent to the sum of funeral costs and school repair costs? Should they also get to walk away if they just pay 3 times the cost of "cleaning up the mess"? That's a pretty big profit margin, no?

Yes, they should be able to walk away from the damages of destruction of property and funerals. They would not be able to walkway from the murder charges.

In this scenario disposing of the waste = dealing with the bodies and property damage and digging a tunnel = shooting people within a school. I don't the scenario is a good analog since it was legal to dig the tunnel.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#75

Post by k4rli »

testing22321 wrote: post #12
AlexandrB wrote: post #5

The Boring Company seems like a total nothingburger at this point. The Las Vegas Loop is not particularly impressive and it's taking a long time to expand it. Nothing about this feels revolutionary or even evolutionary. Just novelty. The fact that Teslas can't navigate autonomously even in these controlled, enclosed environments is also quite embarrassing.

> Nothing about this feels revolutionary or even evolutionary. They were trying hard to make a TBM that was faster than the current literal snails pace and cheaper than existing ones. It doesn’t appear they’ve had much success, though I’d rather they tried than just sticking with the status quo forever. > The fact that Teslas can't navigate autonomously even in these controlled, enclosed environments is also quite em…

Regulations about using their own tech to drive inside their own property?

The problem rather appears to be with the tech itself being unable to perform "full self-driving".

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#76

Post by charcircuit »

hvb2 wrote: post #43
charcircuit wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair it's over 3 times the amount of damage they caused, so that is a pretty big profit margin on cleaning up the mess.

Profit margin? What a weird point of view. They should just follow the rules, period. And any fine should be larger than the amount of money they saved by their illegal behavior and cover the corrective actions. Here's a thought experiment. They're tunneling beneath your house and, because they skip all normal precautions, your house collapses. Sure, you don't mind as long as they're fined a decent amount, right?

>What a weird point of view.

It's not weird. It would be bad if the government was unable to have the funds to clean up the damage. And when someone is charging you with >300% profit margins, that's a sign that you should find another way to solve the issue.

>Sure, you don't mind as long as they're fined a decent amount, right?

I would mind, but I would feel that I was made whole if they paid me >3x the damages to the house.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#77

Post by dns_snek »

charcircuit wrote: post #74
dns_snek wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take this bizarre worldview to its logical conclusion, is the amount of damage that a school shooter causes equivalent to the sum of funeral costs and school repair costs? Should they also get to walk away if they just pay 3 times the cost of "cleaning up the mess"? That's a pretty big profit margin, no?

Yes, they should be able to walk away from the damages of destruction of property and funerals. They would not be able to walkway from the murder charges. In this scenario disposing of the waste = dealing with the bodies and property damage and digging a tunnel = shooting people within a school. I don't the scenario is a good analog since it was legal to dig the tunnel.

They dumped toxic waste that causes chemical burns into the system which runs to the natural waterways.

> Our largest treatment facility, the Flamingo Water Resource Center, ensures wastewater is treated to the highest standard allowing the reclaimed water to be discharged back into Lake Mead. Lake Mead is the drinking water source for more than 95% of the population and businesses in Clark County.

https://www.cleanwaterteam.com/about-us/who-we-are

They keep walking away from attempted murder charges by just paying a fine.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#78

Post by ryanmcdonough »

rkagerer wrote: post #42

Separate from the fines, why doesn't CCWRD litigate to get their cleanup costs back? CCWRD says that its crews ultimately had to clean 12 cubic yards of “drilling mud, drilling spoils, and miscellaneous solid waste” from one of its sewage treatment facilities due to Boring’s discharges across two of its project sites

The clean up costs were referenced in the article and noted that they made up around $130,000 of it.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#79

Post by port11 »

ETH_start wrote: post #65
CursedSilicon wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Don't dump toxic waste into fucking manholes" is "left-wing" now? You're gonna have a real head spin moment when you find out who founded the EPA!

Of course not. But there are a myriad of wrong-doings from all sectors of the economy. Choosing to focus exclusively on the wrongdoings of interests that are obstacles to the coalition of unions, bureaucracies, and allied media that economically benefit from ever-increasing public spending (from 20% of GDP in 1950 to 38% today) is a case of shaping public opinion by selection.

Pure whataboutism, come on. Yes, other things deserve investigation, but so does this. And there's plenty of right-wing media — in fact I'd argue too much such that there's a lack of balance in US media.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#80

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #59

Just for comparison, here's how real tunneling companies deal with sludge.[1] There's a small portable plant that separates sludge from water. It's about the size of two shipping containers. The water usually gets re-used in the tunneling operation. The Boring Company, on the other hand, has been dumping their wet sludge on a vacant lot near a mall and waiting for the sludge to dry out. The mall doesn't like that. No…

[deleted]
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