Trillhouse posted:

https://x.com/edzitron/status/1778840883363803438

Eeyo posted:

why would you want an llm to compose a tweet for you? isn't the whole point that you're shouting your voice into the void?

...! posted:

buried the lede, smdh

Luigi Thirty posted:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1778970344872955914

Powerful Two-Hander posted:

I'll give SpaceX credit that the self landing thing is pretty cool so I'm gonna assume that musk actually had nothing to do with it

ah, the terrible days when he appeared to be smart

in a well actually posted:

mcdonell douglas developed it in the 90s with dc-x (dod / nasa funded). there was also a wave of successful ones in the late 00s while sx was still loving around with parachute recovery

...! posted:

elon batting 0 for 2

...! posted:

elon batting 0 for 2

Luigi Thirty posted:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1778970344872955914

...! posted:

...! posted:

elon batting 0 for 2

Not a Children posted:

the point isn’t to win its to harass the org and drain their resources to discourage further action

winning lawsuits isn’t free even if you get attorneys fees through SLAPP laws or whatever

Beeftweeter posted:

douchebags with these decals on massive gaudy trucks are all over florida. i hate it and want to leave

Roosevelt posted:

hit da bricks

gschmidl posted:

We can all learn from Vietnam on how to deal with billionaires.

quote:

"There has never been a show trial like this, I think, in the communist era," says David Brown, a retired US state department official with long experience in Vietnam. "There has certainly been nothing on this scale."

Juul-Whip posted:

goddamn commies abusing our beautiful billionaires

...! posted:

elon batting 0 for 2

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-boring-company-caused-vegas-monorail-shut-down-fortune-2024-4 posted:

The Boring Company, the startup owned by Elon Musk that is expanding its network of tunnels under Las Vegas, was issued several violations from Clark County and accused of creating a "potential hazard" by exposing structural foundations of the Vegas Monorail, according to a new report from Fortune.

The Boring Company opened a 1.7-mile tunnel project in 2021 to transport passengers beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center in Teslas. Now the company is expanding the tunnel system to create the Vegas Loop, which is set to include the LVCC loop and the airport, downtown Vegas, and more, with 68 miles of tunnel approved by the county and city.

However, the expansion has not been without hiccups. Fortune, in part through a Freedom of Information Act request, obtained documents showing workers for the Boring Company mistakenly dug too close to pillars holding up the monorail, a 3.9-mile public transit system along the Vegas Strip.

Clark County issued three violations to the company related to two incidents in June and October of last year, in which the base of monorail pillars had been exposed, the outlet reported.

For the incident on June 15, the county ordered the monorail system to be temporarily suspended. Fortune reported that an engineering firm was brought in to assess the risk, and the following day, a construction company poured a cement mixture over the pillar base area. The monorail reopened on the evening of June 16.

[…]

"We put the public at risk for anybody who was on that monorail at that time," a former Boring Company employee working near the June incident told Fortune.

[…]

shackleford posted:

drat when prosecutors get shut down in the investigation phase by a court in spite of their "prosecutorial discretion" that must mean they really hosed up

shackleford posted:

"They delved too greedily and too deep"

Luigi Thirty posted:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1778970344872955914

Beeftweeter posted:

i think the fortune report they're talking about was from ~last month? or was that something else

e: actually thinking about it i'm pretty sure the other report was bloomberg businessweek

shackleford posted:

the fortune article they're linking is from yesterday but it's paywalled, dunno if this was previously reported

lol that i can look up every code violation posted online in real time in my little municipality of 30K people but in nevada it apparently takes investigative reporters filing FOIA's

shackleford posted:

the fortune article they're linking is from yesterday but it's paywalled, dunno if this was previously reported

lol that i can look up every code violation posted online in real time in my little municipality of 30K people but in nevada it apparently takes investigative reporters filing FOIA's

...! posted:

quote:

Ford looks to convert Tesla owners with 'Conquest Bonus Cash,' offering $1,500 rebates for F-150 Lightning and Mustang Mach-E electric vehicles

The market for electric vehicles has slowed down recently, and Ford is taking aim at the top EV maker, offering a special rebate to lure Tesla owners.

A new Ford incentive dubbed the “Tesla Competitive Conquest Bonus Cash” offers existing Tesla owners an additional $1,500 off the price of a new Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck, Ford Authority reported on Thursday.

A Ford source confirmed the rebate to Yahoo Finance, which added that it also applies to the Mustang Mach-E electric SUV and runs through July 8 for both 2024 and 2023 model years. In addition, Tesla owners don’t have to trade in their EVs to claim the cash, and only have to prove ownership, the report said.

Ford told Business Insider the “Conquest” bonus was launched on April 3. A representative for Tesla didn’t immediately respond the Fortune’s request for comment.

Ford’s rebate for Tesla owners comes as the Michigan automaker recently cut the price on certain trims of the F-150 Lightning, which has a starting sticker price of just under $50,000. Meanwhile, the Mustang Mach-E starts at just under $40,000.

To be sure, Ford hasn’t just singled out Tesla owners with its rebates. Ford Authority reported earlier that it has also targeted Chevy and Dodge owners as well as Jeep owners.

quote:

Workers at Elon Musk’s Boring Co. accidentally dug too close to a supporting column of the Las Vegas monorail last year, forcing officials to briefly halt service

Workers at the Elon Musk–owned tunneling startup the Boring Company accidentally exposed the foundations of two pillars supporting Las Vegas’s elevated monorail train last year, forcing county officials to temporarily halt service on the public transit system on at least one occasion, according to documents obtained by Fortune.

The incidents, which affected the monorail linking some of the most popular casinos and hotels adjacent to the famed Las Vegas “strip,” caused officials to briefly declare a portion of the monorail an “unsafe structure” in one violation notice issued in June.

The Boring Company is in the process of trying to dig a network of underground tunnels that will crisscross Las Vegas and, it hopes, eventually become a futuristic public transportation system for the city using autonomous electric vehicles. The revelation of the collateral damage to the monorail, which the Boring Company and county officials quickly fixed, comes on the heels of Fortune’s previous reporting about unsafe working conditions for employees of the privately owned Boring Company, which, according to its website, “creates safe, fast-to-dig, and low-cost transportation, utility, and freight tunnels.”

The first incident involving the Las Vegas monorail occurred on June 15, when Boring workers were searching for an irrigation pipe as they worked on the Boring Company tunnel between the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Westgate Resort and Casino, which has since been completed.

Near the valet entrance to the Westgate’s casino, a Boring employee was using a SANY machine, approximately the size of a small excavator, to cut through the gravel, earth, and landscaping, when a worker cut earth away from the base of one of the monorail columns—exposing the base of a column that supports the public transit system, according to violation and county records obtained by Fortune via a Freedom of Information Act request, photos taken before and after the incident that were shared with Fortune, and a former Boring employee who was working nearby at the time.

“You could see the corner of it,” says a former Boring Company employee who was working just nearby and arrived on site a few hours after the incident. The employee recalls a handful of men in suits arriving on-site some time after the incident, pointing and looking at the column.

Clark County regulators ordered the monorail, which had been running and transporting passengers that day, to cease operations while a third-party engineering firm was brought in to perform a structural assessment of the monorail and make sure the column wasn’t at risk, records show. The following morning, on June 16, a construction company covered the exposed area of the column with a cement mixture, according to the records. County officials kept the monorail shut down until 7:30 p.m. on June 16.

But a few months later, a similar incident occurred while Boring workers were attempting to grade the land—also on the Westgate property—this time exposing the base of Column 47, another monorail column nearby, according to another notice of violation that was issued mid-October. In total, Clark County issued three violations related to the two monorail incidents, accusing the Boring Company of doing grading work without a permit and creating a potential hazard by exposing the base of two monorail columns.

“Staff inspection findings include an exposed pilecap for Monorail,” one of the notices of violation regarding the October incident reads. “An existing structural foundation has been exposed, a potential hazard has been created.”

A spokesperson for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which purchased the monorail in 2020, said that in October, its monorail operations contractor “raised a concern that turned out to be unfounded” and that “there was no shutdown in October.”

“In June 2023, TBC was fixing a broken irrigation line and inadvertently exposed a Monorail foundation, so we took the correct steps to repair that, including pausing operations for a day,” the person said.

Both incidents add to a series of safety episodes that have taken place since the Boring Company began work to expand its existing tunnel system — currently a 2.4-mile, one-way underground conduit in which chauffeured Tesla cars transport tourists underneath the Las Vegas Convention Center — throughout the rest of the city of 640,000 people and the broader county. A Fortune investigation published in February found that an enormous concrete bin had collapsed right in front of the Las Vegas Convention Center after being overfilled, and that more than a dozen Boring Company workers have been burned by chemicals or otherwise injured in the tunnels during construction of a tunnel to the Wynn and Encore Resorts. Former Boring employees, including its safety manager, described how pressure to meet Musk’s lofty goals led to a disregard for safety, and employees reported incidents when employees could have died.

‘We put the public at risk’

The Las Vegas Monorail, which first started service in 1995, is one of the city’s most well-known public transit systems — transporting locals and visitors along 3.9 miles of the Las Vegas Strip between the MGM Grand Casino and the Sahara Las Vegas, including stops at the Convention Center and the Westgate Resort. Approximately 4.7 million people ride the monorail each year — equating to about 90,000 people per week, according to the LVCVA.

The former employee, who spoke to Fortune about the June monorail incident, had been working at the Westgate project site and was disturbed by the company’s error. “We put the public at risk for anybody who was on that monorail at that time,” the person said, noting that they felt that Boring managers seemed subsequently to be more focused “on getting things up and running to dig than [fixing] the problem that we caused.”

Clark County provided violations, permitting, and engineering letters, as well as photos associated with the incident, but had not responded to specific questions by the time of publication. A spokesperson for the Westgate Resort declined to comment. Boring Company and a representative of the engineering firm that worked at the site did not respond to Fortune’s requests for comment.

According to the Boring Company’s latest permit applications, submitted earlier this year, the company is seeking to dig two tunnels between the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, near the Las Vegas airport, and the Convention Center. There are also several permits pending within the city limits of Las Vegas.

shackleford posted:

"They delved too greedily and too deep"

Not a Children posted:

the point isn’t to win its to harass the org and drain their resources to discourage further action

winning lawsuits isn’t free even if you get attorneys fees through SLAPP laws or whatever

Beeftweeter posted:

ah here we go https://apple.news/AxttCyFXnTnWFGlGouL2Jxg