Autonomy here means the person in Texas is a supervisor, not a driver. The software plans the build, precisely picks & places each segment, and repeats until complete. The best compliment this code gets is when it runs without any human intervention — which is shockingly frequent (automation in action)! Incredibly proud of the team! There’s still a long way to go and we are actively building: DM me or apply at boringcompany.com/careers

A foundational principle for automating complex machines operating in unstructured environments is what I call Tele Op-to-Autonomy. All this means is that you should start off with 100% remote control (tele operation) and progressively add automations until the human is eventually 100% removed.  Why this works so well: 1) It allows you to get a product into the field crazy fast, which means you can start learning where all of your wrong assumptions are much sooner. This is by far the fastest path to test out product market fit, test tech efficacy, etc.  2) There is significant overlap in the tech needed to teleop and automate so the amount of “wasted work” towards the ultimate goal of full automation is actually quite low. In both cases, you will require: - A fully drive by wire system - A sensing suite capable of giving full situational awareness  - A remote support function for when things inevitably go wrong.  3) Development/iteration speed skyrockets when devs don’t have to eat the entire elephant at once. Imagine being a developer asked to automate some function for machine that is mission critical for the customer and you have the following two options:  Scenario 1 - Focus on automation first: The devs are well aware that if they don’t deliver a solution with 99.9…% (pick your number of 9s) the customer will be impacted, their work will have caused relationship damage, and they effectively will have failed.  As a result, devs start to focus on solving for the long tail of exceptions which exponentially increases time to market. Scenario 2 - Focus on awesome teleop first: You built your remote support systems first and thoroughly enough that someone anywhere in the world can strap into an awesome UI, get full situational awareness through strategically located streaming camera and sensor feeds, and take control over every aspect of the operation.  If you did this right there is also a mechanism to alert someone that a machine or process is “stuck” so the person can just get an alert, switch the UI over to that machine and seamlessly take control. In this scenario, someone watching the machine wouldn’t even know that control was handed off to a remote operator as the system keeps operating without the need for any local interventions. In scenario 2 the automation strategy can start to be viewed through the metric of “# of support personnel per machine”. On day one that ratio will likely be 1:1. As you incrementally add automations that ratio can go to 1:2, the. 1:5, then 1:20, etc. and it can happen fast because each step of the way the developers writing the automations know that there is a graceful fallback plan for any exceptions so they don’t need to solve the long tail of potential issues before releasing the new feature.

Team photo inside the tunnel - Nashville has great rock! Come dig with us. Open positions: boringcompany.com/careers

Vegas Loop is a proven public transit rethink — huge potential in Nashville! Excited to see it in action 🚀

🤔💭🥉 #SWE fans are dreaming of enjoying a long hot summer just like 1994. Having topped Group F, they're not letting their lack of household names dampen their big #WorldCup dreams. We take a closer look as their journey continues into the last 16 👉fifa.to/IHYEsTrk6N

Confirmation #SWE and #MEX progress to Round of 16. How many of you predicted this table at start of the #WorldCup?

🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪 Swede dreams are made of this. #MEXSWE

#SWE #SWE #SWE Simply sensational from Sweden! #MEXSWE 0-3

I forced a bot to watch over 1,000 hours of Olive Garden commercials and then asked it to write an Olive Garden commercial of its own. Here is the first page.

Thanks @oscarspen3 for the new profile photo!

If anybody saw @LastWeekTonight and wondered what they can do to help here is a great organization my sister worked with last summer working on this issue: @RAICESTEXAS . They do amazing work and unfortunately the show didn't give justice to the truly heart wrenching problem.

Do you attend @MemorialU @CNA_News @Northeastern? Interested in building the 5thmode of transportation? Then stay tuned for Fall recruiting!

Congratulations & best of luck to @waterloo_hyper and @paradigm_hype at this week’s @SpaceX @Hyperloop Pod Competition!

It's been a great first day & the briefing team stopped for a quick shot with the Falcon 9! Stay tuned as we progress through testing week!

As we go through another day of tests, here's a pod fact: The pod rides on 4 independent custom designed high speed air bearing assemblies!

And we start digging the tunnel tonight

Verifying myself: I am edhurtig on Keybase.io. 9QQmc_gVoyC4wRdB8Uu-0m8hyxXrYgVyJ2-T / keybase.io/edhurtig/sigs/9QQ…

Oops: $MSFT leaks key to Windows Secure Boot, exposing the danger of @FBI backdoors $AAPL appleinsider.com/articles/16…

Forever reminder that this is an amazing time to be working in Operations.