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NYC subway closure canceled, Elon Musk’s Boring Company tapped for ideas to improve other systems

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The Governor of New York State, Andrew Cuomo, announced on Thursday evening that the current plan to shut down the 225,000 commuter-strong L-train tunnel in the New York City public transportation system for a 15-month-long repair process will no longer be necessary due to a plan implementing new reconstruction techniques. After consulting with a panel of expert engineers from Columbia and Cornell Universities, a new design was proposed to be used in the tunnel which would streamline the repair process and require closures during nights and weekends with partial train tunnel service still available. When asked in a conference call Friday whether other innovators such as Elon Musk of Tesla and The Boring Company were consulted, the governor said Musk had not advised on this specific issue, but was consulted on improvements to the subway’s signaling system. The Metropolitan Transport Authority (MTA), New York’s transportation network, accepted the Governor’s panel recommendations following the announcement.

The L train tunnel under the East River connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York, known as the Canarsie Tunnel, was damaged during Hurricane Sandy, the Category 3 major hurricane which affected the entire eastern seaboard of the United States in 2012. Its storm surge hit NYC on October 29, flooding huge portions of the island, including 9 of the 14 underwater tunnels in the city’s transport system. Of these, 6 have already been repaired. According to the MTA, the damage to the Canarsie Tunnel is comparable to tunnel damage experienced on 9/11, underlining the extent of the repairs needed and the reason behind the original required shutdown.

Saltwater flooding in from the East River during Sandy significantly damaged the infrastructure of the 7,100-foot-long tunnel, including tracks, signals, switches, cables, and lighting. The flood waters additionally filled protected cable tube pathways called “duct banks” throughout the tunnel, and once dry, the silt hardened to a cement-like consistency inside them, making it impossible to rip out and restore the damaged components. Canarsie Tunnel also opened in 1924, adding age to the brewing number of problems being amplified by the lingering effects of corrosive saltwater remnants from Sandy.

In 2016, residents were informed the tunnel was possibly going to be shut down for 15 months to address the extensive repairs, causing significant commute challenges for the approximately 225,000 riders depending on the service. The date for service closure was scheduled to begin April 27, 2019, but the impending deadline motivated Governor Cuomo to seek out alternative solutions. “I can’t tell you the number of people in Brooklyn who have looked me right in the eye and said, ‘Are you sure that there is nothing else that can be done and there’s no way you can possibly shorten this?’,” Cuomo stated in a recent press conference announcing the new subway repair plan.

The repair announcement was the end result of a review process Governor Cuomo began on December 14, 2018, wherein he and a consulting team walked through the damaged tunnel to assess the repairs needed first hand. While the plan will take longer than the original project’s timeline – 20 months instead of 15 – the ability to remain open during the repairs is a welcome relief for city residents. The technology that will enable the tunnel to remain open includes wire wrapping along with ultrasound and laser measurement (LIDAR) tools to assess and monitor damage. Engineers from Cornell University’s College of Engineering and Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science with expertise in the type of construction involved were the primary sources for the solutions chosen.

Similar to the innovations that came from Musk’s Boring Company tunneling project, the governor has hopes that the unique system planned for the Canarsie Tunnel will inspire other similar repair projects. “This could be a national model because it is a totally different way to reconstruct a tunnel,” Governor Cuomo touted at the press conference. Also, according to the governor, the techniques in the new plan have been implemented in projects in Europe before for bridge repair, but not in tunnel reconstruction. He hopes to bring more out-of-the-box innovations to the city’s transportation as well. In reference to Elon Musk’s companies, he said, “I don’t believe a time where they’re talking about flying cars and you can get into a car and drive 100 miles on the LIE and never touch the steering wheel, that there’s not a better technology that can regulate the trains!”

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For more about the announcement and repair plan, watch Governor Cuomo’s press conference below:

 

Accidental computer geek, fascinated by most history and the multiplanetary future on its way. Quite keen on the democratization of space. | It's pronounced day-sha, but I answer to almost any variation thereof.

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Tesla and SpaceX merger talks hit a new stage, and one hurdle remains

Tesla and SpaceX merger talks are reportedly advancing, and a deal could arrive by December.

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Tesla and SpaceX are moving closer to a combination, with a deal announcement possible as soon as December, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The companies have also discussed a scenario in which the announcement slips into early 2027.

Boards and advisers on both sides are now working through the terms of the deal and the governance structure of the combined company, according to the report. One open item is how many SpaceX shares Tesla investors would receive. Bloomberg had previously reported that the two companies were aiming to announce a deal in the first half of next year and close it before the end of President Donald Trump’s term, so a December announcement would pull that schedule forward by months.

Tesla shares rose as much as 1.9% to $398.35 after the report, while SpaceX gained 0.6% to $140.63. SpaceX carries a market value of about $1.9 trillion following its June IPO, and Tesla is valued at about $1.55 trillion, which would make a combination the largest corporate deal on record. Neither company responded to requests for comment.

The talks became official on October 20, when Elon Musk said on SpaceX’s third quarter earnings call that both companies had formed special committees of independent directors to study a merger, as Teslarati reported. Musk said he could not take part because he is “a conflicted party” and called the process “an odd kabuki dance.” He also noted that Tesla would need approval from 50 percent of all outstanding shares, a bar the company missed in 2025 when a board declassification proposal won support from only 39.4 percent.

China remains the biggest structural problem. Bloomberg’s sources said the companies still need to work out how to isolate Tesla’s large and profitable manufacturing business in China from SpaceX’s U.S. government and defense contracts. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta described those two factors last month as “key dynamics that are at odds with each other” for regulatory and shareholder approval. Musk has repeatedly said Tesla has no plans to separate its China business, a position he restated in August after ARK Invest predicted a merger announcement before the end of the year.

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Washington adds another layer. Democrats took control of Congress in this month’s midterms and have pledged to investigate Musk’s business and political activities, which could bring added scrutiny to a deal involving one of the Pentagon’s most important launch and satellite contractors.

The report also lands three weeks before Tesla’s December 3 annual meeting at Giga Texas. That ballot has only three items, led by the re-election of Musk, board chair Robyn Denholm and JB Straubel, and includes no merger proposal. Any deal announced in December would likely require a separate special meeting for Tesla shareholders to vote on it.

The two companies already share a growing list of projects, including the Terafab semiconductor plant in Texas. Tesla’s next generation Roadster, which uses cold gas thrusters built on SpaceX hardware, turned up on display at SpaceX headquarters last month and has become one of the clearest public examples of that overlap.

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SpaceX hid behind another name in the Arizona desert, and now it’s going big

SpaceX puts a $50 billion price on its Arizona supercompute campus ahead of December’s hearing.

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SpaceX has put a price tag on the supercomputer campus it wants to build in the southern Arizona desert. In a statement Thursday, the company said it is pursuing a roughly $50 billion supercompute campus in Cochise County, about 80 miles east of Tucson. Together with a separate facility planned at Starbase, Texas, the two projects add up to more than $74 billion in planned investment.

The Arizona figure had not been disclosed before. SpaceX’s involvement only became public on November 4, when company representatives hosted a packed town hall at Cochise Elementary School for an application filed under the name Tombstone Resources LLC. A SpaceX representative told residents the filing used another name because putting SpaceX on it “draws attention” from outside the county, local station KVOA reported.

The application describes a 747-acre site near the Willcox Playa with up to nine buildings of about 493,000 square feet each. SpaceX plans to bring the campus online in four phases of roughly 1.5 GW, reaching 6 GW at full build, backed by a 24 GWh battery system and about $3.6 billion in grid upgrades. At that size, it would draw about 2.5 times more power than every data center in Maricopa County combined, according to an Arizona Republic analysis.

SpaceX says the project will create about 5,500 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs, and that it could cut electricity bills for members of the local cooperatives by up to 20 percent. The campus would use dry cooling with no industrial groundwater use. Its application estimates ongoing water needs of 7 to 10 acre-feet a year, roughly what 20 to 30 homes consume.

Power is the bigger question. The site sits next to the Apache Generating Station, a coal and natural gas plant with about 1 GW of capacity that had been slated to retire by 2028. SpaceX told residents its investment could expand the station to more than 6 GW.

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Local opposition is organized. A petition asking the county to deny the permit has gathered about 2,400 signatures, and the nearby playa is a landing spot for federally protected sandhill cranes, which SpaceX says its design accounts for. The Cochise County Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing on December 9 in Bisbee, with written comments due November 27. If approved, construction could start in March 2027.

The Texas project faces a vote the same day. The Starbase City Commission will consider a property tax abatement for SpaceX’s $24 billion gas plant and supercompute facility at its own December 9 hearing, as Teslarati reported. SpaceX said Thursday the Starbase site has already generated more than 3,000 construction jobs, and it committed $220 million to Brownsville’s water and wastewater systems, $40 million of which has been paid.

Both campuses would expand a footprint still centered on the Memphis area, where SpaceX’s Colossus data centers run largely on gas turbines and the company won a permit for a power plant in Southaven, Mississippi earlier this year. SpaceX ended the third quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute. The Arizona campus alone, at full build, would be more than three times that size.

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Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer

Elon Musk says it would be an honor to hire Jensen Huang amid Nvidia turmoil.

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Elon Musk says he would welcome Jensen Huang at one of his companies if Nvidia’s board decides to push out its longtime chief executive.

On Wednesday evening, the financial account ZeroHedge posted “Elon please hire Jensen” on X. Musk replied roughly two hours later: “That would be an honor.” Neither Huang nor Nvidia had responded publicly as of Wednesday night.

Musk’s reply came as Nvidia’s board met to decide Huang’s future. The Wall Street Journal reported that directors were preparing to oust him following reports of two extramarital relationships. One involves Alice Huang, a Singapore-based businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe was working for China’s Ministry of State Security. The New York Times separately reported a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care. Huang acknowledged being unfaithful in a memo to employees on Sunday but gave no details.


Under Nvidia’s bylaws, a majority of its 11 directors can remove the CEO with or without cause. Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm on possible replacements and may name an interim chief, with CFO Colette Kress seen as the likely pick. Nvidia shares fell more than 8 percent in extended trading, according to CNBC, and the company is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on November 17.

Musk has more riding on Nvidia’s leadership than most tech executives. In August, he told investors on SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company that it would build its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware, calling Vera Rubin “the best architecture.” SpaceX is also working with Nvidia on the compute payload for Starmind, its planned orbital AI constellation. In October, SpaceX said it had a binding commitment for a roughly $40 billion lease of Vera Rubin GPUs and related equipment, with the leases expected to begin in the first half of 2027.

The scale of that dependence is already enormous. On its Q3 call, SpaceX said it was bringing roughly 200,000 to 220,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs online each month and expects 2.5 to 3 GW of nameplate compute by the end of the year. That buildout is now reaching new sites like the proposed $24 billion power plant and supercomputer campus at Starbase.

The relationship between the two executives also goes back nearly a decade. Huang has often told the story of personally delivering Nvidia’s first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to Musk in 2016, when no other customer wanted one. “Nobody wanted to be part of it, except for Elon,” Huang said on the Joe Rogan Experience last December.

Musk did not say what role Huang might fill, and his reply stops short of a formal offer. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and still owns about 3.6 percent of its stock, so any move to a Musk company would depend on whether, and how, he leaves the chipmaker he has run for more than three decades.

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