Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas • Hacker News Board

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#111

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:52 PM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #96

sleepybrett wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well isn't the boring company trying to build his dumbass single lane tesla road? Is this really infrastructure or just 'trains with extra steps and no safety'

This seems intrinsically safer than trains, or so it seems to me (although I am not an expert). It seems safer because trains derails regularly. Tires can blow, but blowing a tire is unlikely to damage the whole train like a derailment is. At the least, the operator has the option to increase safety against blown tires by increasing the separation between cars. Instead of bringing up safety, I'd bring up the micropla…

> actually seems intrinsically safer than trains because trains derails regularly. Tires can blow

Trains don’t “regularly” derail. And when they do, they aren’t as fatal as the median highway crash.

There are unlikely to be too many fatalities in this system because it runs slowly. (Unless Li-on batteries cascade combust somehow.)

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#112

Post by ETH_start » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:52 PM UTC

skopje wrote: post #93

ETH_start wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the U.S., McKinsey estimates that large infrastructure projects typically take 4 to 5 years to go through federal permitting before construction can begin. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-sector/our-insigh...

Offtopic: an infrastructure project isn't innovation.

Deployment is necessary for innovation. You can't iterate on designs if you don't deploy them in the real world and if you don't scale up their production.

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#113

Post by thegreatpeter » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:52 PM UTC

skopje wrote: post #23

freedomben wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Many regulations are terrible and serve as a huge hindrance to innovation, and effectively restrict certain things to only the already-massively-rich entrepreneurs. However, (IMHO) there are a lot of regulations that are important and absolutely should be enforced up front. Finding the right balance is kind of impossible, and I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,…

>> >Many regulations are terrible and serve as a huge hindrance to innovation What is an example of a regulation that was a "huge" hinderance to innovation? Looking at the past 40 years of the US technological progress and the only thing I seen hindering innovation are the tech companies themselves through monopoly, monopsony, patents, and regulatory capture. (Unless the last one is what you meant, but that's a regul…

– Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform: Intended to stabilize the system post-crisis, but its complex compliance requirements made it difficult for small and mid-sized banks to offer new products or compete with large incumbents.

- State by state money transmission licensing: Fintechs like PayPal and Stripe had to get 50+ separate state licenses, creating huge compliance costs and delaying product launches.

- FDIC De Novo Bank Rules: caused a collapse in new bank formation for nearly a decade (only a handful of new banks were approved between 2010–2016).

– Over 20 state laws restricted cities from building their own broadband networks, protecting incumbents and stalling fiber deployment.

- Slow spectrum auctions and rigid allocation by FCC delayed rollout of 5G infrastructure compared to countries with faster processes.

- State-based regulation patchwork for insurance: each US state has its own insurance regulator requiring 50+ separate filings for new products, slowing national rollout of innovations

- ACA: while expanding coverage, created heavy administrative burdens for smaller insurers and startups trying to innovate in plan design or digital enrollment

- Conflicting state laws and lack of federal standards created uncertainty for companies like Waymo and Cruise, delaying scaling of self-driving technology.

- Drone FAA rules: heavily limited commercial drone use, slowing the rise of delivery and mapping applications until modernized rules came into effect.

- California's recent, very nuanced "Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act" targeting frontier models and "safety" and "risk reporting" like "critical safety incidents"

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#114

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:53 PM UTC

Moomoomoo309 wrote: post #99

testing22321 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ridden the existing Vegas tunnel? Tens of thousands of riders when I was there and not a spec of dirt. Very far from perfect, but a long way from useless.

Tens of thousands of riders in what time period? Please, look up how many people it is capable of moving per hour, and compare that to any light rail or street car service in any city. There is no way the loop makes sense to build.

> Please, look up how many people it is capable of moving per hour

…what is it?

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#115

Post by hollerith » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:53 PM UTC

AlienRobot wrote: post #109

hollerith wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems intrinsically safer than trains, or so it seems to me (although I am not an expert). It seems safer because trains derails regularly. Tires can blow, but blowing a tire is unlikely to damage the whole train like a derailment is. At the least, the operator has the option to increase safety against blown tires by increasing the separation between cars. Instead of bringing up safety, I'd bring up the micropla…

>From the very first run of the Tōkaidō Shinkansen on October 1, 1964, until the present day, there has never been a single derailment or collision on the entire full-standard Shinkansen rail network resulting in a passenger fatality https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d01045/#:~:text=Zero%20Fa... Sounds like trains are pretty safe to me.

Huh. Thanks.

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#116

Post by spankibalt » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:53 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #51

spankibalt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The truth is somewhere in the middle." Another day, another invocation of the golden mean fallacy.

Another day, another invocation of the false dichotomy fallacy. If the truth isn't somewhere in the middle, then by definition it must be on one of the two extreme edges. That's a pretty bad (and ironic) fallacy to commit, unless you think everything in this world (or at least all regulations) are binary (either perfect or completely worthless)

> If the truth isn't somewhere in the middle, then by definition it must be on one of the two extreme edges.

Just because accurate results aren't to be found "somewhere (unspecific!) in the middle" doesn't mean that one a) finds them precisely in the (extreme) edges, or fringes, and b) that the middle is completely excluded, especially in the analysis and comparison of dynamic systems (e. g. macroeconomic analysis).

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#117

Post by AlienRobot » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:53 PM UTC

ETH_start wrote: post #69

I think the big picture here is much more important. If tunneling technology is radically improved, we're going to see massive improvements in urban living, including: • Cleaner air at street level because vehicle exhaust stays underground and can be filtered, which would have massive health and environmental benefits • Quieter cities with most traffic noise eliminated • Cooler temperatures since asphalt and vehicle…

You can achieve the same by taking a bus, though.

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#118

Post by bobthepanda » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:53 PM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #96

sleepybrett wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well isn't the boring company trying to build his dumbass single lane tesla road? Is this really infrastructure or just 'trains with extra steps and no safety'

This seems intrinsically safer than trains, or so it seems to me (although I am not an expert). It seems safer because trains derails regularly. Tires can blow, but blowing a tire is unlikely to damage the whole train like a derailment is. At the least, the operator has the option to increase safety against blown tires by increasing the separation between cars. Instead of bringing up safety, I'd bring up the micropla…

Derailments are really rare in properly maintained railroads; even the NYC subway with a century of chronic underinvestment derails rarely (think one every few years).

Cars get into accidents way more frequently. The American freight rail system derails at a more frequent rate because the private operators are incentivized to really not do any maintenance at all.

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#119

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:54 PM UTC

skopje wrote: post #93

ETH_start wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the U.S., McKinsey estimates that large infrastructure projects typically take 4 to 5 years to go through federal permitting before construction can begin. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-sector/our-insigh...

Offtopic: an infrastructure project isn't innovation.

> an infrastructure project isn't innovation

What? The Pyramids, Roman aqueducts, domes, et cetera weren’t innovations?

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#120

Post by DrewADesign » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:55 PM UTC

astroflection wrote: post #74

3D30497420 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > Workers have complained of chemical burns from the waste material generated by the tunneling process, and firefighters must decontaminate their equipment after conducting rescues from the project sites. The company was fined more than $112,000 by Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration in late 2023 after workers complained of “ankle-deep” water in the tunnels, muck spills and burns.…

I wonder what chemicals were involved. Probably nothing that you wouldn't find in any other construction site with heavy machinery. Fuel? Grease?

> I wonder what chemicals were involved. Probably nothing that you wouldn't find in any other construction site with heavy machinery. Fuel? Grease?

It was a chemical to speed up grout curing. I don’t know which one. I looked up a few and they were corrosive petrochemicals with like 20-letter-long names and an acute health exposure rating of 4 on the MSDS. They also didn’t provide PPE or instructions on what PPE was necessary. And have you ever gotten any significant amount of gasoline on your skin? It burns and it is not safe. Here’s a list of chemicals in common gasoline mixtures: Gasoline, Toluene, Hexane, Xylene, Octane, Ethanol, Trimethylbenzene, n-Heptane, Pentane, Cumene, Ethylbenzene, Benzene, n-Hexane, Cyclohexane.

Even if it was just the water in the tunnel — how about you try 8+ hours of heavy work in steel toed boots with damp feet, let alone standing in ankle deep water filled with corrosive chemicals. Even standing still in clean water, your skin basically turns to paste after not too long.

With the way the job market is trending in tech, you might have the opportunity to find out one day while someone sitting in a Herman miller chair in a climate controlled office building dismisses your pain as petty griping.