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So you want to build a tunnel

practical.engineering

91–100 of 119 posts

Re: So you want to build a tunnel

#91
post #51

I can’t wait till world models are good enough that you can ask robots to work autonomously to geo transform spaces.

You more or less can if you can afford the robots. Technically you need a dozen people or so to run the machines, but if you can afford the machine and costs to run it the costs of the people isn't going to phase you. Now if the robots were affordable to someone on a minimum wage income that would be a big deal.

The important thing is there are no people in the loop so it’s truly scalable.

Re: So you want to build a tunnel

#92
I'm probably not the only person who thought this was about ssh and possibly handrolling something

that said, I've been latently fascinated by this kind of project. I've seen a couple of how-things-work/maker/dare-me-to-do-it type shows from UK and US where folks single handedly do stuff like this, though they're all hairy dudes unlike Kala, whose channel looks pretty cool

This is a very cool frontier for a homeowner, to not just have dominion over your terranean space by growing edible veg and habitat for animals but also use your below ground asset for who knows -- domicile extension or DIY geothermal or ...?

Gemini tells me in the US, land ownership theoretically extends to the Earth's core

Re: So you want to build a tunnel

#93
post #64

You can't talk about hobby tunnels without mentioning the Moleman of Hackney :-) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lyttle - The house was later brought back to life in an amazing way https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/sue-webst...

I haven't seen the Public Image Ltd logo in a very long time.

Re: So you want to build a tunnel

#95
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As they say, the rules are written in blood Basically nobody ever died from leaky pipes or substandard weatherproofing. The code is as much about a) homogenizing the industry so big business can statistically reason about it at scale b) turning the subjective into the quantitive so that things can be done, checked, sight off on, etc, etc, without anyone using "judgement" as it is about protecting life and limb. Just…

> Basically nobody ever died from leaky pipes or substandard weatherproofing Famously, moist wet areas only grow molds that are safe for humans to live amongst, and absolutely never rotted away wooden structural components of a building.

Sounds like a tacit admission that those bits are written in rotten wood rather than blood.

The part I take issue with isn't the building code in principal or that non lethal things can be regulated. It's that the people being to lie though their teeth and pretend it's all written in blood when a whole bunch of it isn't are essentially stealing credibility from those parts that are. A few bad apples (handouts to industry) spoils the bunch (very clearly important stuff, like floor and roof loading).

Re: So you want to build a tunnel

#96
post #34
post #2

When my wife was diagnosed with cancer and eventually went into remission, I didn’t really process what was happening at first. I was completely focused on getting her through it. The grief hit me later. What helped me more than anything was going out into the garden and digging. I made sure to do it safely, since I know it can be risky, so I dug wide and with wooden supports, but there was something about just diggi…

Winston Churchill famously used to build brick walls to deal with the "black dog" of depression.

The International Churchill Society has an pretty fun read about his bricklaying "career".

https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest...

Re: So you want to build a tunnel

#97
post #68

Was hoping this was about network tunnels…

My thoughts exactly. I’ve been using them for exposing local services to the public internet from my home network. Super convenient for initial proof of concept work…

I use them as cheap-man's VPN. A ssh server on a public IP but a non-obvious port brings you into the network, and port forwarding allows you to connect to relevant endpoints in your remote network via localhost:12345.

Re: So you want to build a tunnel

#98
post #64

You can't talk about hobby tunnels without mentioning the Moleman of Hackney :-) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lyttle - The house was later brought back to life in an amazing way https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/sue-webst...

[deleted]

Re: So you want to build a tunnel

#99
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You more or less can if you can afford the robots. Technically you need a dozen people or so to run the machines, but if you can afford the machine and costs to run it the costs of the people isn't going to phase you. Now if the robots were affordable to someone on a minimum wage income that would be a big deal.

A Chinese 2 ton mini excavator is like $8k, and electronic solenoid valves could be added for like $2k. I've got to re-convince myself I don't need to take on this project like every other month.

That is the easy part.

However you just made a robot that will happily kill anyone who happens to wonder into the dig zone - we know from experience that people like to watch excavators work and they have no clue where the safe zone is. As such I have to discourage you from trying it - not that you couldn't make it dig the holes you want in a short time, but because you need someone trained watching for people walking in the unsafe zone and so you gained nothing. Waymo/Tesla have put a lot of effort into this type of detection, if you don't have similar backing you have no chance of doing it - if you do have that, there is likely a lot of money to be made.

Re: So you want to build a tunnel

#100

I don’t like these posts because they’re just transcripts of a video. It’s a form of slop which predates AI.

There's a lot of value in transcripts of videos being provided next to the original content. It improves accessibility for a lot of people and helps out those of us who might be searching content or not in a place where they can watch a video but can read. Why would it be considered slop?
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