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Exactly this; damaging a building or causing the death of a person can be 10x+ more costly for the insurer.

> this seems to have less than 80 structures (overpasses, bridges, underpasses etc.) whereas HS2 has 175 bridges and 52 viaducts.

Doesn't tunnel beat any of those structures in terms of cost/complexity?


Not necessarily because no one lives underground and there are probably no existing things like property, gas lines, electricity lines, sewers, pipelines, roads, etc to avoid or reroute. And very little in the way of habitat.

The longest road tunnel in the world only cost about 100 million in the 90s for 25km so tunneling isn't always a gigantic Big Dig style clusterfuck.

In terms of legal complexity, it's fantastically easier than picking your way across and near thousands of individual plots of very expensive land owned by people with solicitors salivating at the potential fees, expensive private infrastructure, nature reserves and so on.


> The longest road tunnel in the world only cost about 100 million in the 90s for 25km so tunneling isn't always a gigantic Big Dig style clusterfuck.

Big Dig style clusterfuck is because the simplicity and cheapness you're talking about only apply to tunnels through mountains, less so to those underwater and definitely not to tunnels under big cities i.e. land that people live on, which comes with all the complexity.


Yes, and the Austrian route is mostly in that category under the Koralpe Massif rather then the very politically awkward Home Counties (NIMBY Central, and very rich NIMBYs at that).

Hence why tunneling does not necessarily mean a stunningly expensive project. We just hear about the HS2s and Big Digs because they reverberate for decades with all the legal battles.


> Big Dig style clusterfuck.

The big dig is probably the last major success of American infrastructure. Referring to it as a clusterfuck is representative of why we'll never get another one.


Even if the end result ends up being a net positive, even by a wide margin, I think any project that goes over budget by 100% and lands 10 years late does reasonably merit the clusterfuck tag.

The Space Shuttle was one too and that was a marvel. A deathtrap politically-motivated pork-barrel hot-mess of a project, but also a shining black-and-white marvel of a glorious flying space Aga.


> The Space Shuttle was one too and that was a marvel. A deathtrap politically-motivated pork-barrel hot-mess of a project, but also a shining black-and-white marvel of a glorious flying space Aga.

https://archive.org/details/gil-scott-heron-whitey-on-the-mo...

The big dig directly benefits people producing value many, many, many times what the investment cost. Who gives a shit about the initial investment? Voters have proven time and time again that it's easier to lie to them than to get them to earnestly think.


IT is also correct - it costs way too much for what we got. It will be nice for future generations that don't have to pay for it, but it doesn't look like a good investment. Now if the costs were more reasonable it could be a great investment.

I don't see how you're justifying this. Yes the costs overran, but the investment would have been worth it at 4x the end cost. It made boston one of the nicest cities in the country, even if it still sucks ass to drive in.

The costs overran by a lot. Enough that my tiny city in the middle of nowhere would not benefit even though if the costs has been more reaonable we could get something. It might be worth it for Boston - I don't live there, but for a large number of places it makes such a large project something we will never do. The investment at a reasonable price would be wroth for more because it allows similar investments elsewhere and so the total pay off would be much higher.

I live way out in the bumfuck of nowhere, way west of western mass. It's still obvious the big dig was worth it at 4x the cost it actually ran. Yes, even though my taxpayer dollars haven't returned to me in any way I can straightforwardly estimate or point to.

Of course, the big dig is no excuse to not invest outside of the Boston metro area. But that's a completely different argument than saying the investment wasn't worth it.

> The investment at a reasonable price would be wroth for more because it allows similar investments elsewhere and so the total pay off would be much higher.

This is an insane way to reason about investments. No wonder this country is such a shithole. Obviously we should do similar big-dig style investments outside of Boston. Obviously investments like the big dig prompt investments nearby. But individualistic assholes like you force us all to commit suicide instead because you can't use your fucking brain to connect why investment now means we all eat good later.


HS2 does not go through the complex geology of the Alps.

I guess the problem is what if your competitor does take on that debt, and uses it effectively to put you out of business. Whether the competitor survives much beyond that is immaterial if your company has already closed.

What sucks, is when one company drives another one out of business, then fails, themselves, leaving end-users in the lurch.

Ditto on Brave 1.84.141 (macOS)

Same on firefox on Windows 11

I also want to be in the chain!

Working on mobile firefox and in-app browser firefox


Thanks guys. I'm glad my fuck-up is keeping this thread alive.

Interestingly I’ve seen YouTubers replace the fuse in a Tesla for about £40 and a few hours of labour (it’s under the rear seats). Maybe something they’re doing right.

You can replace the fuse (not that easly) but for approximately the same price in a BMW. You do have to put in more work but the problem is with re-certifying the battery. Tesla does not care if the battery was damaged in the crash, they will (more or less) happily re-enable it. BMW decided that the only safe way is to re-certify the whole battery. I'm not saying it's the right decision, I think they over did it and VW does it better - but I do understand WHY they chose to do it so, and the WHY is not nearly as outrageous as a lot of people here think.

Ah that's interesting, IIRC in the video I'm thinking of they did get a 3rd party engineer to come out with a laptop and re-enable the battery in Tesla Toolbox, so that fits with what you're saying.

> they will (more or less) happily re-enable it.

That's one more car they will happily milk for a subscription. Also, safety laws in the US are way more lax than Europe.


Tesla is the DIY's EV enthusiast car for a reason.

Yes mostly propaganda and being first/having a big driving base. They are notoriously closed/locked down from the diagnostic/reprogramming perspective.

What car isn't these days?

VW cars pre SFD lock

Didn't Klarna say they'd replaced all of their customer service reps with AI, and then had to backtrack and rehire them when the AI was doing a terrible job?


Yes. Although it seems they didn't rehire, but just reassigned people from other parts of the org.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/14/klarna-ceo-says-ai-helped-co...

https://www.businessinsider.com/klarna-reassigns-workers-to-...


Isn't it more like morphine or another opiate?


Ironically until fairly recently Nationwide required the little keypad authenticator thing, and everyone hated it!


I had one of those umpteen years ago with RBS. I hated it at the time too :)

However, I use a Yubikey as often as I can nowadays and authenticator apps too where possible.

I'd like the option to use one but I can't :(


I wonder if the higher-end banks, e.g. Coutts, let you use one.


I thought they still did for website flow at least. Bizarrely we seem to think that phone apps are infinitely secure and don't need the extra step because biometrics?


Isn’t it because the assumption is that a mobile device is personal in 99,99999% of cases while it’s common (less now than 15 years ago) with shared computers in libraries, schools, etc.


Canada, Australia and Germany are all big exporters; without tempting fate, I don't think the UK will have issues importing from those countries.


And that area of the sea is still known as "Dogger" in the shipping forecast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_Forecast#/media/File:...


That part of the sea as well as Doggerland itself are named afer Dogger Bank, a large sandbank that must have been some promontory on Doggerland.

Dogger Bank in turn seems to be named after a kind of Dutch fishing boat called a dogger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogger_Bank


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