More interestingly is the timeline. Broke ground in 2022, finished in 2025, and likely operational before the end of the year.
Now sure, it likely took some years in the planning as well, but it shows that infrastructure can be built in reasonable time lines when politics and nimbyism don't get in the way.
And this isn't a simple bit of construction- it spans a serious bit of active highway.
However you slice it, the time it took for this project to complete is absurd. Project started in 2002, it took 20 years to plan this, then it took 3 years to build this low-tech bridge.
Even without looking at China and Middle East - in Texas they build entire highway intersection in a year.
Morbidly curious, I'd love to see a full cost and time breakdown of these projects to understand exactly where the $100M and 3 years goes. How much of that is actual people wearing boots and hardhats, and how much of it is paperwork, and waiting for this inspector to inspect that thing and then unblock this other bureaucrat to stamp onto that other paper. I'd bet the actual amount of time and money spent actually building was a single digit percentage vs. the amount of time and money spent on process and paperwork and waiting for clerks to go through their 1,000 item backlog of forms to fill out and stamp.
This bridge is not low tech. It utilizes a number of construction techniques and materials that weren't avaliable in 2002. It also spans a major freeway. It was never going to be cheap.
in Texas they build entire highway intersection in a year
California can and has rebuilt bridges in a weekend. And based on the TX Dept of Transportation website, construction on the Dallas High Five took 4 years from start to finish, after a decade of planning. And cost more than this bridge despite requiring less infrastructure to be constructed.
A bridge for deer isn't any easier to build than a bridge for pedestrians, even if you don't care about deer being on a bridge that collapses there's a highway underneath. Cars would be crushed and traffic disrupted. So we're just talking about a bridge. It's built to the same standard as any other bridge. (Also it's more like a bridge for mountain lions but whatever.)
If the Empire State Building had been built across a highway, and had to schedule construction around avoiding disruptions to traffic, than it would've taken three years too.
Typical pedestrian bridges aren't 150 feet wide, though. Nor do most have grass growing on them (at least, not intentionally). This is, in fact, a fairly unusual infrastructure project.
Pedestrians also happen to be much denser than cars though, since cars are mostly air, while humans are mostly water, which can lead to some interesting situations (and Wikipedia articles)
My dad worked for a while as an accident investigator for the Air Force. One time there was a crash where a pilot deliberately flew into a cliff at top speed.
The only evidence they ever found of his body was a finger joint. My dad said the body just turns into spray at those speeds.
We went faster when human life had less value. It has more value now, both in labor time (and therefore cost) and harm potential/reduction, so it takes more time and money than it used to. Similar story about disposable workers when the Hoover Dam was built.
We should expect this math to continue as prime working age cohort shrinks over the next century due to structural demographics.
For deer? It's much more for the endangered wild life like mountain lions. I loved in so cal and we had multiple passes like this and it was incredibly helpful in maintaining the mountain lion population
That's funny. Some NDAs I've signed prohibit you from mentioning any contact with the company involved (thus you're not allowed to mention the NDA) so my answer would be;
"Under the terms of NDAs I have signed I am not free to disclose that list."
Except it's not "for life". It's until they feel free to lift the non-compete. My guess is that most information you take from a company is irrelevant in a couple years. Maybe 5 tops?
Plus it'd almost certainly end with zero notice. You'd get a email saying "you're free to go". Suddenly. After say 26 months.
So it's not like a "pension for life" - just a gap in your employment history.
Oh no, ah jeez, slightly more than one year of income for zero effort, darn.
Any employment gap can be easily explained by saying "I was under a non-compete and being paid garden leave while working on personal projects to keep my skills fresh". It's very common in e.g. the finance world, I believe.
I suspect most people with that sentiment don't have a mortgage/kids/etc. I have known youngish people who got a very nice severance package back in the day and essentially took a 6 month sabbatical. I don't really see a problem for getting future jobs so much. But it is a loss of significant income (assuming you were well-compensated even if you're still being paid something) and may not have great alternatives for income though, if you're in the position to do so, you can of course travel or whatever.
There's perhaps significantly lower total compensation and potential uncertainty. A lot of people just aren't in the position to travel the world (or whatever) for a year. Or even work on an open source project that may or may not even be within the bounds of the non-compete depending in the company.
Clearly different markets have quite different requirements and comparisons to air travel.
For example a "night train" maxes out around 12 hours. A train from 6pm to 6am is functionally equivalent to a 8pm flight, arriving at midnight, checking into a hotel, getting some sleep etc.
How far you can go in that 12 hours (give or take) depends on the speed of the train etc. In Europe you can go to a lot of places in 12 hours. In the US not so much.
Much longer and other factors come into play. You have to balance the time cost of "getting there" to the time benefit of "being there".
But thats OK. This solution doesn't have to work everywhere. It can start where it works well and grows from there.
That is like comparing range in gas cars and EVs. Some do that but there are other major benefits.
The lengths I will go through to avoid air travel is much higher than a 1:1 ratio in comparable time. When I have to get the cattle treatment I prefer cattle cars over cattle cans.
And even with 1:1 remember that layovers are a completely different beast. If Münich was a hub between Northern an southern Europe I would be happy to spend a well rested day before continuing on. Especially in spargel season!
...but only a fool does not fear German railroads. They could really learn from the Austrians.
The reason night trains are not a thing is because there is no real network. Looking for tickets in Europe it is often once or twice a week departures on specific routes. No real good north south interconnected corridor from Scandinavia.
And as a proper geek I have even sought them out but often found them sold out.
When traveling I often consider trains, and especially overnight trains. It's by far the most comfortable way to travel. Innovation in this space is a good thing.
While I'm aware that feature creepy is the enemy here, I would suggest a way to "combine " two pods for those traveling as a couple. If I'm traveling with my wife we don't want to be in "separate pods".
A retractable "wall" between 2 pods would be fine. It doesn't have to be elaborate, but you wanna point to something outside and say 'look at that' etc.
We considered connecting pods. The orientation „behind“ each other makes interaction difficult.
They way this issue was „resolved“ more less naturally during testing is that the pods all have The same orientation, so pods across the aisle approximately face each other. In our lab we had two iterations of the pods set up to face each other, and tester and testee interacted quite naturally —- once we set up our test rig like that, the questions „what about couples“ reduced a lot, most understood the vis-a-vis intuitively.
Our bigger cabins have two ppl versions, but a lot (if not most) travel is individua anyway, especially if night trains will be used for work travel.
I see your thinking here. Lots of people have ideas, or desires, and if they want the same thing they can validate a market. People looking to make things can pick a known market.
Logically it makes sense. Practically though it won't work, there are too many hurdles to overcome.
Firstly, you need a large group of consumers, and a large group of producers. It's hard to build things that need one large group - building 2 is very difficult.
Of course most ideas will be between nonsense and very niche. Because "good" ideas are fewer anyway, but also more obviously marketable. As in that every product ever made exists without your portal, so you'll provide an outlet for every other daft idea. Yes there'll be good in there. But it'll be drowned in noise from the bad.
It's not clear how you fund this sort of thing. You can't charge consumers. And producers can read the site for free. And of course given that it's public if you like an idea, chances are 10 others do to. So plenty of clones.
Companies that make things already have large, effective, market research teams. This sort of "random collection of people" isn't terribly appealing.
Product development is a complex dance. Having a random community "drive" product development, is basically "built my committee ". That never ends well.
In short. I'm not your target market. I don't think you have a target market. I think your product idea has problems... now if only there was a website where you could post ideas and get this sort of feedback ... :)
Keep thinking, and keep asking. You have a good idea in there, and you're smart enough to get some feedback before building. So you're on the right track.
I don't use a lot of apps. The ones I do are "not optional" (like my banking app etc.)
Frankly, I couldn't care less about the UI looks or whether it's native or whatever. I get in, perform a task, get out.
As long as I can do what I need to do, the buttons can be anything.
I think developers care deeply about this. I think if you're in a competitive space then it matters. But I don't think Joe Public cares in the slightest.
Performance yes. Usability yes. Ability to quickly do what I want, yes. Whether it uses native check boxes or owner-drawn check boxes? Nobody cares (for some definition of nobody. )
Put another way, Usability is important. Yes it should look "nice". But at this point I probably don't know what the 'native UI' looks like. Nor do I care.
I hear you, and your concern is real for your context.
But to be fair, not every product has to perfectly fit every context. To be successful a product can fill a small niche, or it can appeal to a large market- it doesn't have to satisfy every use case.
So you're right - driving 1000 miles with no downtime is not an EV strength. But the percentage of the market doing that is tiny. Conversely the proportion of people who live in a house (home charging) and drive < 100 miles a day, is huge.
Even for those doing a "once a year road trip" - well, hire cars exist.
So I completely agree that an EV is not useful to you. I would suggest though that a product can be massively successful, while at the same time appealing to a subset of the market. And appealing to a subset does not limit validity or indeed profitability.
Lipstick seems to be a successful product, despite only appealing to something less than 50% of the market.
>> I do not want to download another messaging app. I mean, how annoying is it that your friends and family didn't download that last three apps you told them were better than WhatsApp
Um, you want to communicate better, but you exclude apps to download? I'm getting mixed messages here.
However you identify the core of your "problem". You can't really pick anything in isolation since network effects dominate.
Plus, it seems like you're a jumper, always looking for the next shiny thing. You've offered 3 apps, which is apparently 3 more than your social group need.
I also notice you're ready to jump shop based on an announcement, not on any actual harm or inconvenience to your group. This is a hard sell.
I say none of this to criticize you, but rather so you can see a bigger picture. Social Media is about Social, not Media.
I seem to recall one or two doing this. But i suspect the reason they don't is cause they don't need to.
They all have a pot already. The benefits of more pots seems low. Conversely the calorie cost seems high (if only just collecting clay and cutting wood to fire it.)
On Alone thd priorities are shelter and food. Clay pots seems like a luxury in terms of utility use and energy cost.
This is the correct answer. Alone is not really a how to live in the woods show, it's a managed starvation show. The contestants are limited to about a 1 sq mile area which may or may not have a good source of clay. They purposely set them out just a few weeks before winter so they do not have a long time to prep. Conserving and replenishing calories is the name of the game.
Humanity didn’t really take off until we figured out how to make use of inedible calories though. Making lots of tea and thin soups in the winter should have been a target for many of them.
One person did quite well finding wild onions but as I recall got some stomach distress from them. Raw onion doesn’t agree with people when you aren’t eating much else. But those greens would have made soup for days.
A big thing that enabled that was having a community.
It's really hard to make a pot if you are trading making that pot with finding food for the day.
That's why when they did the season with couples, they were able to get a lot more done simply because 1 person could spend the day building a shelter while the other person foraged.
The moose guy that won did so because he had a huge calorie surplus from killing the moose. That freed him up to spend pretty much all his time foraging for plants or building shelter.
> Making lots of tea and thin soups in the winter should have been a target for many of them.
Most plants have almost no calories. Soups are useful as a preservation technique but only work if you are constantly adding fairly calorie dense items (like meat) into the mix. If you haven't sourced beans, potatoes, or rice plants then a soup won't really do much to improve your survival.
The benefit of tea or soup is you are boiling the water which prevents a good number of diseases.
Most of them did a simply terrible job of building a fireplace, from poisoning themselves with the smoke to literally burning their shelter down. Some built a bed up off the ground, which is smart, but never seemed to consider heating up rocks in the fireplace during the day and slipping them under the bed at night.
Anyhow, some mud and clay skills would help make a decent fireplace.
Staying warm is a crucial skill, not a luxury. Some of them got frostbite.
Also, most of them had food storage problems where their meat would get robbed. Some went to great effort to make their meat inaccessible, to no avail. I imagine that would make a storage pot useful.
P.S. I've learned to spot the losers early on. They always try to build a monumental log cabin, which drains away their energy and they cannot replace it and tap out. Others spend their time carving toys for their kids instead of looking for food.
To win you need to make a minimal cabin and spend all your time looking for food.
I haven't watched the show but I watched the first season and loved when the guy from my homestate (GA) did the right thing and just wallered in a mud pit for the whole thing to win. One random dude was trying to build a kayak or some shit. lol
Am I wrong that the first few seasons the pot was an option they could choose among others? They upped the kit over time. Early on they had very little.
Now sure, it likely took some years in the planning as well, but it shows that infrastructure can be built in reasonable time lines when politics and nimbyism don't get in the way.
And this isn't a simple bit of construction- it spans a serious bit of active highway.
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