8 ms·

I'm very ambivalent about this article. On the one hand, it's the first serious criticism of Hyperloop that I've seen on HN. The author has dived to the deepest

by zeteo 13y ago

I'm very ambivalent about this article. On the one hand, it's the first serious criticism of Hyperloop that I've seen on HN. The author has dived to the deepest levels of one section of the proposal, understood them, and found a serious problem. On the other hand, I'm disappointed with his attitude. It's the equivalent of "This open source project is very ambitious and planned in good detail. I'm an expert on memory management so I looked at the code there and had a good laugh. This will never scale to production levels because of X, Y and Z. You can probably fix it with sufficient development time. But I won't tell you how, because I think a problem with such important code shows you're dishonest and stupid."

mrt0mat0 13y ago
I agree with your assessment. I did appreciate the feedback he gave on Musk's idea, but I think he went about it all wrong. i think he should have proposed the problems as flaws to Musk's work and let someone in the spacex or just the growing hyperloop community come up with a solution to perfect the concept, not condemn it. no idea pops out of the head of someone perfected. that's naive. Now if anyone does respond to his points based on this article, they'll probably attack back with a equally negative tone, ruining the full concept of what the hyperloop is.
parhamn 13y ago
> The author has dived to the deepest levels of one section of the proposal > This open source project is very ambitious and planned in good detail Through reading the article I think his opinion is far from that. The vibe I got was along the lines of "this is so bad that a high school physics student knowing the thermal expansion laws, and a sophomore college student who knows how cantilever beams work could tell you this project is fundamentally fishy". Considering this perhaps his snarky comments are warranted. Musk dropped this project as a critical piece against current plans for this infrastructure and on a very basic level it comes off as 'snake oil'. Expecting a high level of polish doesn't seem too much of a requirement to me.
- vidarh 13y ago
  The problem with taking that tone is that it is by no means obvious that the article poster actually understood the part of the proposal he is criticising. That makes it very hard to take his criticism seriously, and doubly so when the tone is so condescending.
  - nickff 13y ago
    I have seen less criticism from the engineering community than from other groups, thought this may be due to a general reluctance of engineers to go on the record unless obligated.
- austinz 13y ago
  This. On one hand, we hate credentialism and criticize those who arrogantly wave their diplomas around as a substitute for making good arguments. On the other hand, we're enamored enough with SpaceX and Tesla to give Musk the benefit of the doubt, even though: - The Hyperloop is a very different type of engineering compared to anything Musk and his engineers have done before (competency in one field does not guarantee competency in a very different field), - The analysis has some serious issues. A trivial example: the thermal expansion issue in this blog post has been brought up in user discussion several times in previously posted Hyperloop articles on HN, and nobody was able to post a good response or justification.
  - lisper 13y ago
    And it only takes one unsolved show-stopper to make everything else you've done irrelevant.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - ash 13y ago
    > the thermal expansion issue in this blog post has been brought up The author missed the "not rigidly fixed" part when he was analyzing thermal expansion issue. My comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238022
6d0debc071 13y ago
I suspect the objection was more that it had such basic flaws that he takes it to have been designed to trick the naive more than as a serious project. On that assumption, investing his time in it would be a waste.
npalli 13y ago
No, his attitude is entirely appropriate. Learn your basics before you try to reinvent stuff. As Alan Kay keeps reminding us, the programming community doesn't really learn anything that is done in the past and is doomed to keep reinventing stuff or working on things that have been shown not to work. For example, if you study physics you are not going to go far if you show up to class and start dropping apples and say this shows some magic force is operating. Learn the basics of engineering first then try to change things. Otherwise you will just waste everybodys time. As for your programming example, the more appropriate case would be if someone showed up with a revolutionary proposal to allocate memory for a GC, you see the source code and there is a big array structure defined locally "char memory[10000000]". There is far more things wrong here than trying to figure out ways to scale this in production.
- arethuza 13y ago
  "Learn the basics of engineering first then try to change things. Otherwise you will just waste everybodys time." So what about SpaceX and Tesla? To me those indicate that Musk must be a pretty decent engineer, and perhaps more importantly, must be excellent at leading real hardcore engineers in complex domains.
  - simias 13y ago
    What's your point? Because you're good at something doesn't mean you're good at everything. That being said, I agree that the tone of the article is a bit too harsh for my taste, but then again Linux Torvalds is revered here for this kind of tone. It's always good to think outside of the box and bring new ideas to the table. Even if they're dead ends, they keep the brains working, if only to form counter proposals. N.B.: american friends, pretty please, consider including metric values alongside imperial, I have no idea what 1030feet means. Fortunately we have google for unit conversion...
    - Dylan16807 13y ago
      A foot is about a third of meter, and a mile is about a kilometer and a half. That's all you really need to remember. Heck, in a discussion like this you could pretend a mile equals a kilometer and be fine. Oh, and a pound is about half a kilogram. I won't expect you to remember all the stupid volume units, but those three tiny conversions are worth knowing.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 13y ago
This article is also a serious criticism of the Hyperloop, and makes a largely non-overlapping set of points; it has also been on HN: http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/loopy-ideas-are-fine-if-youre-an-entrepreneur/ http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/loopy... From this article: * Redefining SF and LA to Hayward and Sylmar allows the Musk proposal to make an extremely unfair trip time comparison, and, moreover, Musk's proposal can't easily do a "real" SF and LA because unlike HSR the Hyperloop can't repurpose infrastructure. * At the speeds and course plotting Musk alludes to, the Hyperloop will make its passengers very motion sick. * The costs Musk projects are unrealistic; for instance, if the Hyperloop can really construct elevated tracks at 1/10th the per-mile cost of existing viaducts, that cost improvement alone would be an equally important advance. Similar problems exist for the tunneling cost projections, and are exacerbated by the fact that a realistic course for the Hyperloop would probably require even more tunneling than projected. There's a good MeFi thread on this too.
kenrikm 13y ago
What strikes me is that author of the article did not take into account key data about the proposed Hyperloop system which in itself is lacking data. I wonder if this article would ever have been written if the author had talked to any of the engineers that had worked on the proposal for even a few minutes to ask how they expected to work around some of the issues he's attempting to hi-light. For example the fact that it's "mostly evacuated" or that it's covered in solar panels which have been shown to keep structures cooler (http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=1094 http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release....) taking many small details into account could have drastic effects on his "1030 feet" of expansion estimate. I'm sorry but this article smells of intellectual laziness just for the sake of having a counter opinion* I'm looking for honest criticism and in my opinion this is not it. *I'm not an engineer however I did stay at a holiday inn express last night.
Tloewald 13y ago
If you start from the assumption that Musk is awesome then you probably won't like the article. If you read the article you will likely come to the conclusion that Hyperloop is half-baked and the proposal includes "detail" that is little more than flim-flam. My problem with Hyperloop is that it's trying to solve the wrong problem. In less than twenty years the transportation landscape is going to be very different. The younger generation is not wedded to cars the way the last several generations were, and new transportation methods, such as self-driving vehicles are emerging. Assuming any kind of sane public policy, energy is going to get more expensive, speed of travel is going to become less of a concern, and connectivity will go through the roof. Why will I care about a fast tube for going from LA to SF? Whay's so great about fast? An inconvenient method for traveling really fast that doesn't let me chat or work might be far less desireable than a convenient method that is slow but doesn't disrupt my day.
etler 13y ago
I kinda felt that the hyperloop proposal was made in a know it all fashion, like "oh look how easy it is, why hasn't this been done yet?", so I feel like this response is appropriate to that tone.

by zeteo 13y ago

mrt0mat0 13y ago

I agree with your assessment. I did appreciate the feedback he gave on Musk's idea, but I think he went about it all wrong. i think he should have proposed the problems as flaws to Musk's work and let someone in the spacex or just the growing hyperloop community come up with a solution to perfect the concept, not condemn it. no idea pops out of the head of someone perfected. that's naive. Now if anyone does respond to his points based on this article, they'll probably attack back with a equally negative tone, ruining the full concept of what the hyperloop is.

parhamn 13y ago

> The author has dived to the deepest levels of one section of the proposal > This open source project is very ambitious and planned in good detail Through reading the article I think his opinion is far from that. The vibe I got was along the lines of "this is so bad that a high school physics student knowing the thermal expansion laws, and a sophomore college student who knows how cantilever beams work could tell you this project is fundamentally fishy". Considering this perhaps his snarky comments are warranted. Musk dropped this project as a critical piece against current plans for this infrastructure and on a very basic level it comes off as 'snake oil'. Expecting a high level of polish doesn't seem too much of a requirement to me.

vidarh 13y ago
The problem with taking that tone is that it is by no means obvious that the article poster actually understood the part of the proposal he is criticising. That makes it very hard to take his criticism seriously, and doubly so when the tone is so condescending.
- nickff 13y ago
  I have seen less criticism from the engineering community than from other groups, thought this may be due to a general reluctance of engineers to go on the record unless obligated.
austinz 13y ago
This. On one hand, we hate credentialism and criticize those who arrogantly wave their diplomas around as a substitute for making good arguments. On the other hand, we're enamored enough with SpaceX and Tesla to give Musk the benefit of the doubt, even though: - The Hyperloop is a very different type of engineering compared to anything Musk and his engineers have done before (competency in one field does not guarantee competency in a very different field), - The analysis has some serious issues. A trivial example: the thermal expansion issue in this blog post has been brought up in user discussion several times in previously posted Hyperloop articles on HN, and nobody was able to post a good response or justification.
- lisper 13y ago
  And it only takes one unsolved show-stopper to make everything else you've done irrelevant.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- ash 13y ago
  > the thermal expansion issue in this blog post has been brought up The author missed the "not rigidly fixed" part when he was analyzing thermal expansion issue. My comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238022

6d0debc071 13y ago

I suspect the objection was more that it had such basic flaws that he takes it to have been designed to trick the naive more than as a serious project. On that assumption, investing his time in it would be a waste.

npalli 13y ago

No, his attitude is entirely appropriate. Learn your basics before you try to reinvent stuff. As Alan Kay keeps reminding us, the programming community doesn't really learn anything that is done in the past and is doomed to keep reinventing stuff or working on things that have been shown not to work. For example, if you study physics you are not going to go far if you show up to class and start dropping apples and say this shows some magic force is operating. Learn the basics of engineering first then try to change things. Otherwise you will just waste everybodys time. As for your programming example, the more appropriate case would be if someone showed up with a revolutionary proposal to allocate memory for a GC, you see the source code and there is a big array structure defined locally "char memory[10000000]". There is far more things wrong here than trying to figure out ways to scale this in production.

arethuza 13y ago
"Learn the basics of engineering first then try to change things. Otherwise you will just waste everybodys time." So what about SpaceX and Tesla? To me those indicate that Musk must be a pretty decent engineer, and perhaps more importantly, must be excellent at leading real hardcore engineers in complex domains.
- simias 13y ago
  What's your point? Because you're good at something doesn't mean you're good at everything. That being said, I agree that the tone of the article is a bit too harsh for my taste, but then again Linux Torvalds is revered here for this kind of tone. It's always good to think outside of the box and bring new ideas to the table. Even if they're dead ends, they keep the brains working, if only to form counter proposals. N.B.: american friends, pretty please, consider including metric values alongside imperial, I have no idea what 1030feet means. Fortunately we have google for unit conversion...
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    A foot is about a third of meter, and a mile is about a kilometer and a half. That's all you really need to remember. Heck, in a discussion like this you could pretend a mile equals a kilometer and be fine. Oh, and a pound is about half a kilogram. I won't expect you to remember all the stupid volume units, but those three tiny conversions are worth knowing.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

tptacek 13y ago

This article is also a serious criticism of the Hyperloop, and makes a largely non-overlapping set of points; it has also been on HN: http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/loopy-ideas-are-fine-if-youre-an-entrepreneur/ http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/loopy... From this article: * Redefining SF and LA to Hayward and Sylmar allows the Musk proposal to make an extremely unfair trip time comparison, and, moreover, Musk's proposal can't easily do a "real" SF and LA because unlike HSR the Hyperloop can't repurpose infrastructure. * At the speeds and course plotting Musk alludes to, the Hyperloop will make its passengers very motion sick. * The costs Musk projects are unrealistic; for instance, if the Hyperloop can really construct elevated tracks at 1/10th the per-mile cost of existing viaducts, that cost improvement alone would be an equally important advance. Similar problems exist for the tunneling cost projections, and are exacerbated by the fact that a realistic course for the Hyperloop would probably require even more tunneling than projected. There's a good MeFi thread on this too.

kenrikm 13y ago

What strikes me is that author of the article did not take into account key data about the proposed Hyperloop system which in itself is lacking data. I wonder if this article would ever have been written if the author had talked to any of the engineers that had worked on the proposal for even a few minutes to ask how they expected to work around some of the issues he's attempting to hi-light. For example the fact that it's "mostly evacuated" or that it's covered in solar panels which have been shown to keep structures cooler (http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=1094 http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release....) taking many small details into account could have drastic effects on his "1030 feet" of expansion estimate. I'm sorry but this article smells of intellectual laziness just for the sake of having a counter opinion* I'm looking for honest criticism and in my opinion this is not it. *I'm not an engineer however I did stay at a holiday inn express last night.

Tloewald 13y ago

If you start from the assumption that Musk is awesome then you probably won't like the article. If you read the article you will likely come to the conclusion that Hyperloop is half-baked and the proposal includes "detail" that is little more than flim-flam. My problem with Hyperloop is that it's trying to solve the wrong problem. In less than twenty years the transportation landscape is going to be very different. The younger generation is not wedded to cars the way the last several generations were, and new transportation methods, such as self-driving vehicles are emerging. Assuming any kind of sane public policy, energy is going to get more expensive, speed of travel is going to become less of a concern, and connectivity will go through the roof. Why will I care about a fast tube for going from LA to SF? Whay's so great about fast? An inconvenient method for traveling really fast that doesn't let me chat or work might be far less desireable than a convenient method that is slow but doesn't disrupt my day.

etler 13y ago

I kinda felt that the hyperloop proposal was made in a know it all fashion, like "oh look how easy it is, why hasn't this been done yet?", so I feel like this response is appropriate to that tone.