The original stated goal was to 10x the speed of existing tunnel boring machines by bringing up the cutting head RPMs, automating liner installation, and speeding up spoil removal with electric sleds. Which would seem like a good bet, except that there are a million other bottlenecks to the process. On top of that, it doesn't seem like they even solved their core problems.
It would be cool if they'd post a postmortem or something, but I get the impression that reporting bad news is a good way to get fired in an Elon-run organization.
I get the sense that the goalposts get moved to wherever he kicks the ball, even retrospectively. His whole vibe feels like he’s just real-life cosplaying Ironman.
I’m not sure why anyone believed this load of lies, tunnel boring is a mature industry with multiple companies that make tunnel boring machines, and tunnel boring has been around for well over a hundred years. The cutting heads move slowly because they’re between 3 and ~50 feet in diameter (1 to 15 meters for non Americans)
Anyone claiming they can 10x the speed of a physical process that has been worked on by thousands of engineers over more than a century is full of shit. Anyone who bought that explanation is either far too credulous or just doesn’t understand what it takes to bore a large diameter tunnel.
> Anyone claiming they can 10x the speed of a physical process that has been worked on by thousands of engineers over more than a century is full of shit.
Metal machining processes had been around for well over 100 years when tungsten carbide tooling came along, and that increased cutting speeds by 10x over HSS. It happens.
Sure but no one founded companies saying they were going to do exactly that until they actually had tungsten carbide tooling in hand and it was a production engineering issue.
What technology or research was the Boring company sitting on that it expected to utilize to get this advantage?
Tunnel boring is only partly about boring the tunnel itself, bracing the tunnel and removing the spoils probably take as much time as boring the tunnel itself.
It’s a complex process with work crews, management layers, multiple subcontractors, multiple stakeholders, etc. Replacing the tool on a CNC mill with a tungsten carbide tool takes what, a few minutes? Assuming you already have the tool.
It’s also insanely easy to verify a tungsten carbide CNC tool is 10x faster at cutting metal than high speed steel vs. testing ‘This tunnel boring machine will be 10x faster.’
Space launch is a mature industry with multiple companies. Anyone who thinks SpaceX can lower the launch costs by orders of magnitude is either far to credulous or just doesn't understand what it takes to launch a rocket.
> I maintain the belief that Boring Company's purpose, first and foremost, is to confuse and derail (pun intended) local efforts to build real transit.
Same strategy at different scales, Boring Company is to local transit what Hyperloop is to regional.
The original proposal was squarely aimed at disrupting CAHSR, but existing bureaucratic dysfunction is more than sufficient to prevent anything being built at that scale in the US, so Hyperloop was proven unnecessary and abandoned.
> [...] when multiple employees reported that a representative of The Boring Company was soliciting them to bail on Shane and work directly for TBC [...]
> [...] noting that many prospective employees won’t work on the project because of Musk’s reputation.
It's a sad situation, but great to see workers being smart: knowing who deserves loyalty, and who is not to be trusted.
Yeah the fines are designed to provide incentive to operate like you value your worker’s and others’ humanity even if you don’t have the humanity to really do it. It’s useful because our business economy mostly incentivizes businesses to treat people like fungible economic units of potential profit and loss. If the business is run by someone more interested in stroking their ego rather than optimizing profit and loss, the whole thing breaks down. Yet another example of the real work not working like an economics thought experiment.
There is a high demand for negative reports on any organization affiliated with Elon Musk. It is unsurprising that a robust supply has developed for it. I got paid very slowly by Verizon once, and McKesson another time, but nobody cares. I'm perfectly willing to believe that Musk's companies are worse than usual in this regard, but I'll need something better than plural anecdotes. This isn't a court, and innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply. But neither does guilty until proven innocent.
The response from the Boring Company executive feels like gaslighting.
> Buss later clarified that he does not believe The Boring Company has a “common” practice of missing payments to vendors, but rather missed payments happen sometimes during “the normal course of business.”
I’m sure this small business owner spent a lot of time and effort trying to get this corrected, but got no cooperation from Boring Company. If Vice President Buss or others want to look trustworthy, they need to explain in a public post-mortem what happened, and how they’ll avoid it going forward, and how they’re making this company whole including for their lost time.
> The final straw that caused Shane to pull his crew from the site was when multiple employees reported that a representative of The Boring Company was soliciting them to bail on Shane and work directly for TBC on Monday.
And this is just deeply unethical. They’re basically holding a fraudulent business relationship with the purpose of poaching employees, it seems like.
So, the Greediest Person In The World [0] also cheats subcontractors and workers out of their pay, and poaches employees — who would have guessed?
[0] a far more accurate way to describe those who hoard wealth without helping the people or society who got them there, vs the usual praise as the "richest"
I maintain the belief that Boring Company's purpose, first and foremost, is to confuse and derail (pun intended) local efforts to build real transit.
Anything they do happen to build is incidental to that goal, and as such it's unsurprising that actual construction would be a shitshow.
The original stated goal was to 10x the speed of existing tunnel boring machines by bringing up the cutting head RPMs, automating liner installation, and speeding up spoil removal with electric sleds. Which would seem like a good bet, except that there are a million other bottlenecks to the process. On top of that, it doesn't seem like they even solved their core problems.
It would be cool if they'd post a postmortem or something, but I get the impression that reporting bad news is a good way to get fired in an Elon-run organization.
I get the sense that the goalposts get moved to wherever he kicks the ball, even retrospectively. His whole vibe feels like he’s just real-life cosplaying Ironman.
While ending closer to a hapless Justin Hammer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3JCdchkNSY&t=9m53s
I’m not sure why anyone believed this load of lies, tunnel boring is a mature industry with multiple companies that make tunnel boring machines, and tunnel boring has been around for well over a hundred years. The cutting heads move slowly because they’re between 3 and ~50 feet in diameter (1 to 15 meters for non Americans)
Anyone claiming they can 10x the speed of a physical process that has been worked on by thousands of engineers over more than a century is full of shit. Anyone who bought that explanation is either far too credulous or just doesn’t understand what it takes to bore a large diameter tunnel.
> Anyone claiming they can 10x the speed of a physical process that has been worked on by thousands of engineers over more than a century is full of shit.
Metal machining processes had been around for well over 100 years when tungsten carbide tooling came along, and that increased cutting speeds by 10x over HSS. It happens.
Sure but no one founded companies saying they were going to do exactly that until they actually had tungsten carbide tooling in hand and it was a production engineering issue.
What technology or research was the Boring company sitting on that it expected to utilize to get this advantage?
You can't actually assess these things without hindsight. At any given time there's a dozen promising looking things but most of them never work out.
Lithium batteries were "coming soon" for like 30yr.
Tunnel boring is only partly about boring the tunnel itself, bracing the tunnel and removing the spoils probably take as much time as boring the tunnel itself.
It’s a complex process with work crews, management layers, multiple subcontractors, multiple stakeholders, etc. Replacing the tool on a CNC mill with a tungsten carbide tool takes what, a few minutes? Assuming you already have the tool.
It’s also insanely easy to verify a tungsten carbide CNC tool is 10x faster at cutting metal than high speed steel vs. testing ‘This tunnel boring machine will be 10x faster.’
One takes minutes, the other takes years.
Space launch is a mature industry with multiple companies. Anyone who thinks SpaceX can lower the launch costs by orders of magnitude is either far to credulous or just doesn't understand what it takes to launch a rocket.
That this is being built instead of “Let’s Move Nashville” is a shame.
They should rebrand Screwing Company.
This is my favorite HN comment of the year. Thank you.
> I maintain the belief that Boring Company's purpose, first and foremost, is to confuse and derail (pun intended) local efforts to build real transit.
Well that was the purpose of the Hyperloop too
Same strategy at different scales, Boring Company is to local transit what Hyperloop is to regional.
The original proposal was squarely aimed at disrupting CAHSR, but existing bureaucratic dysfunction is more than sufficient to prevent anything being built at that scale in the US, so Hyperloop was proven unnecessary and abandoned.
Which transit effort did they derail in Nashville? There was nothing on the horizon.
> [...] when multiple employees reported that a representative of The Boring Company was soliciting them to bail on Shane and work directly for TBC [...]
> [...] noting that many prospective employees won’t work on the project because of Musk’s reputation.
It's a sad situation, but great to see workers being smart: knowing who deserves loyalty, and who is not to be trusted.
Come with me And you'll see A world of OSHA violations
TFW you realize real-life Tony Stark is actually Willy Wonka.
Musk is Justin Hammer.
xAI notched up EPA violations for running a mountain of gas turbines illegally
Tesla collects a variety of regulatory violations like they're paid for it.
SpaceX...OSHA, FAA, EPA
Boring company...
etc.
Yeah the fines are designed to provide incentive to operate like you value your worker’s and others’ humanity even if you don’t have the humanity to really do it. It’s useful because our business economy mostly incentivizes businesses to treat people like fungible economic units of potential profit and loss. If the business is run by someone more interested in stroking their ego rather than optimizing profit and loss, the whole thing breaks down. Yet another example of the real work not working like an economics thought experiment.
There is a high demand for negative reports on any organization affiliated with Elon Musk. It is unsurprising that a robust supply has developed for it. I got paid very slowly by Verizon once, and McKesson another time, but nobody cares. I'm perfectly willing to believe that Musk's companies are worse than usual in this regard, but I'll need something better than plural anecdotes. This isn't a court, and innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply. But neither does guilty until proven innocent.
I hate to moan, but in my professional career ( whatever that was) - nothing is more of a red flag than a missed payment
I thought those were part of "the normal course of business" (quoting VP of Boring Company).
The response from the Boring Company executive feels like gaslighting.
> Buss later clarified that he does not believe The Boring Company has a “common” practice of missing payments to vendors, but rather missed payments happen sometimes during “the normal course of business.”
I’m sure this small business owner spent a lot of time and effort trying to get this corrected, but got no cooperation from Boring Company. If Vice President Buss or others want to look trustworthy, they need to explain in a public post-mortem what happened, and how they’ll avoid it going forward, and how they’re making this company whole including for their lost time.
> The final straw that caused Shane to pull his crew from the site was when multiple employees reported that a representative of The Boring Company was soliciting them to bail on Shane and work directly for TBC on Monday.
And this is just deeply unethical. They’re basically holding a fraudulent business relationship with the purpose of poaching employees, it seems like.
I believe Twitter (after the Musk purchase) also regularly refused to pay its bills: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/musks-unpaid-bil...
So, the Greediest Person In The World [0] also cheats subcontractors and workers out of their pay, and poaches employees — who would have guessed?
[0] a far more accurate way to describe those who hoard wealth without helping the people or society who got them there, vs the usual praise as the "richest"
Just like the president he looks up to.
Maybe that's the American Way? (/s but not really).
I love the comparison with fictional characters that we all agree are evil and overly rich: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2012/04/20/billionai...
Somebody worked out that Smaug would be the 14th wealthiest American.
[dead]
He should have thought more about the liar at the top when he considered reputation.
[dead]