Wow, I didn't realize how much I missed blog posts like this. Is there any way we can get the version of the Internet where people posted like this on their personal blogs back? It's the reason sites like hacker news came to exist, you couldn't just scroll social media to find stuff, you had to sort of stumble upon (that used to be a website too, didn't it?) stuff like this and pass it around word of mouth. It was awesome.
One convenient fiction that wealthy people (in the US) tell themselves, is that poor people are "lazy"; and that's why they're poor.
I know lots of folks without a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out, and not one single one, is "lazy." In fact, a few have more than one (difficult) job.
I am old enough to see a few of them getting into the back nine, with no cushion.
A friend was a property manager in Sacramento. His biggest headache was replacing the electrical equipment thieves would demolish to get to the copper, that currently pays ~$5/lb. If people are really working this hard for steel at $0.04/lb, then transformers and air conditioners will have to be installed in vaults.
> His biggest headache was replacing the electrical equipment thieves would demolish to get to the copper
It's one of the reason trains get stuck in Europe: thieves stealing copper cables. They've been found to steal, too, heavy road grate if they were of any value: which created actual serious accidents (where a car's tire falls into the hole).
Regarding the electrical cables for trains, one solution is, slowly , replace them with cables with basically the same properties but 1/10th the copper.
Other funky solutions have been implemented: chemical sprays with a composition that is watermark and that cannot easily be removed. So when caught the thieves cannot deny because for x weeks the watermark stays, invisible and harmless, on their skin.
One question of course is: what does society think we should do with thieves who create road accidents and who render trains inoperable?
> It's one of the reason trains get stuck in Europe: thieves stealing copper cables.
Even worse. Sometimes, the dumb fucks think something has copper in it, but actually it's fiber... once two copper thieves simultaneously took out the primary and secondary fiber for the GSM-R network, leading to a complete standstill in Northern Germany [1]. (Personally: given the timing, I think it was Russian throwaway agents, and I do not believe that "copper thieves" cover story for a single second)
The scrap price is what you get for bringing scrap copper to a recycler.
Not an expert, but I assume $5/lb is the peak value for dropping off nearly perfect condition copper. Not sure how much they’re actually getting for stripped copper wire.
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
I understand the partisan juxtaposition of "X" and Moxie Marlinspike, and the partisan appeal of commenting on it, but to me it is a tangential annoyance.
I'm curious what cesspool you mean, because i can see cutting edge true hardcore science publication announcements on X better than elsewhere.
i ask because i evidently have tuned my account parameters somehow way the heck better than you experience.
I _do_ still see what look like rage-bait nonsense that people post for clicks, totally unrelated to medicine or biology, so i block or mute that nonsense.
Why do you think Moxie Marlinspike is not the type of person that would stay on this cesspool of a network that is X? From what I've seen I'd have been very surprised to see him anywhere else.
It is ironic that the founder of maybe the most popular privacy-conscious IM app is actively contributing to his and his followers' data being harvested on X though.
I know lots of folks without a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out, and not one single one, is "lazy." In fact, a few have more than one (difficult) job.
I am old enough to see a few of them getting into the back nine, with no cushion.
I'm extremely grateful for what I have.
It's one of the reason trains get stuck in Europe: thieves stealing copper cables. They've been found to steal, too, heavy road grate if they were of any value: which created actual serious accidents (where a car's tire falls into the hole).
Regarding the electrical cables for trains, one solution is, slowly , replace them with cables with basically the same properties but 1/10th the copper.
Other funky solutions have been implemented: chemical sprays with a composition that is watermark and that cannot easily be removed. So when caught the thieves cannot deny because for x weeks the watermark stays, invisible and harmless, on their skin.
One question of course is: what does society think we should do with thieves who create road accidents and who render trains inoperable?
Even worse. Sometimes, the dumb fucks think something has copper in it, but actually it's fiber... once two copper thieves simultaneously took out the primary and secondary fiber for the GSM-R network, leading to a complete standstill in Northern Germany [1]. (Personally: given the timing, I think it was Russian throwaway agents, and I do not believe that "copper thieves" cover story for a single second)
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM-R-Ausfall_bei_der_Deutsche...
Copper sells over $6 per pound these days: https://www.kitco.com/price/base-metals/copper
Not an expert, but I assume $5/lb is the peak value for dropping off nearly perfect condition copper. Not sure how much they’re actually getting for stripped copper wire.
Also nearly got a job in Pittsburgh this summer…
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Picking:
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
I understand the partisan juxtaposition of "X" and Moxie Marlinspike, and the partisan appeal of commenting on it, but to me it is a tangential annoyance.
i ask because i evidently have tuned my account parameters somehow way the heck better than you experience.
I _do_ still see what look like rage-bait nonsense that people post for clicks, totally unrelated to medicine or biology, so i block or mute that nonsense.
It is ironic that the founder of maybe the most popular privacy-conscious IM app is actively contributing to his and his followers' data being harvested on X though.