8 ms·
Scrap (2006)
https://xcancel.com/moxie/status/2091218652133732491 https://xcancel.com/moxie/status/2091218652133732491
- slopinthebag 2mo agoI fear FIFTEEN CENTS A POUND is going to become a new vocal stim I will spam 50 times a day.
- cucumber3732842 2mo agoI known exactly what you mean. Drives me up the wall to see these stupid shibboleths ping pong around.
- phoronixrly 2mo agohttps://xcancel.com/moxie/status/2091218652133732491 https://xcancel.com/moxie/status/2091218652133732491
- dang 2mo agoThanks! Link added to toptext.
- oulipo 2mo ago[flagged]
- moralestapia 2mo ago[flagged]
- phoronixrly 2mo agoWhy 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.
- delish 2mo agoI'm open to correction on which rule to cite, or whether to cite a rule: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html 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.
- silisili 2mo agoI usually agree, but X has been pretty terrible as a medium. Not sure how OP meant it, obviously. I'd created an account a year or so ago just to be able to view posts that pop up here. 3 months later I was banned for inauthentic activity, whatever that means. I googled and apparently that happened to a huge swath of people this year. That was fine, I could still read posts. But now it gates me on wanting my biometrics for verification. Now clicking any link, including the above, asks me to submit biometrics. Assuming I'm not the unluckiest human alive, this feels like a terrible way to share content.
- jjtheblunt 2mo agoI'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. I'm guessing that's part of the cesspool but you may see different stuff.
- oulipo 2mo agoif 99% is a nazi cesspool and 1% is "interesting" you should just move to network where 99% is interesting
- jjtheblunt 2mo agothat breakdown is nowhere near descriptive of what i see; that's my point. the algorithm must be pushing cesspool at lots of people, and somehow that's not the normal stuff i see. i'm heavily, heavily, following hard science. is there a recommendable network with oncology and microbiology posts as well as math and computing? i'd definitely want to check it out.
- delichon 2mo agoA 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.
- kogasa240p 2mo ago> ~$5/lb Copper sells over $6 per pound these days: https://www.kitco.com/price/base-metals/copper https://www.kitco.com/price/base-metals/copper
- Computer0 2mo agoI’d say $6 is == ~$5
- Aurornis 2mo agoThe 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.
- tomjakubowski 2mo agoI would also think that unscrupulous scrap buyers would offer a lower price for copper which has obviously been stolen or stripped from public works, since they are taking on more risk by buying it.
- TacticalCoder 2mo ago> 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?
- mikeaskew4 2mo agoWe have them in Chicago, too. Call streets and san when you got something too big to fit in the can? Nah. Also nearly got a job in Pittsburgh this summer…
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoOne convenient fiction that many 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. I'm extremely grateful for what I have. [EDIT] Added "many" because it's more appropriate, and short-circuits the implied "all."
- gumby 2mo agoBeing poor is a lot of work, as is very well documented. When you have more money you can offload some (or in extreme cases pretty much all) of the labor.
- andsoitis 2mo ago> convenient fiction that wealthy people (in the US) tell themselves, is that poor people are "lazy" just like all poor people aren't lazy, so too all wealthy people don't think this.
- cindyllm 2mo ago[dead]
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoNever said they did. Interesting read of what I wrote…
- andsoitis 2mo agoYou wrote wealthy people tell themselves that poor people are lazy.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoYes, I did. There’s a word that was inserted into what I actually wrote.
- krupan 2mo agoWow, 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.
- nixosbestos 2mo ago[flagged]
- tonyhart7 2mo agoI mean twitter used to be a micro blogging website that people could use without maintaining real blog website what's the issue here ????
- nixosbestos 2mo ago[flagged]
- WalterGR 2mo agoI can read it fine. I’m not logged in to X. That you personally can’t read it doesn’t imply that everyone else here is a horrible person.
- nixosbestos 2mo ago1. I don't believe you. Or at best, they're A/Bing you and letting you read a tiny modicum of content before forcing you to login. Actually, I'll donate $250 to a charity of your choice if you show me you on x.com mobile browser, logged out, and then load that link. *Any charity you want.* 2. I never said that. Weird that you would feel the need to put words in my mouth. Why might that be? GOD I LOVE HN, I CANT REPLY NOW. WHY DO I BOTHER? Since I can't reply, and I was wrong: https://files.catbox.moe/kksyqz.png https://files.catbox.moe/kksyqz.png
- intrasight 2mo agoI live in Pittsburgh and I can tell you it's still like that - which is convenient when you want to get rid of things. I had some scrap aluminum that I put out with the trash the night before pick up and it was gone before I had walked back to the house. A guy pulled up in a Subaru Forrester and grabbed it. He asked me if he could have the wooden crate that I had also thrown out. I said sure. He asked me if I had any more scrap metal. I said not today, but I've got a 500 pound cast-iron tub that I need to get rid of soon. Last year I bought a fixer-upper house last year on a bike trail and river in a small town outside of Pittsburgh ($40k - still possible here). I got in touch with the town secretary to discuss getting a dumpster for a while and she volunteered "I know a good scrapper". I called him and he and his son came and cleared out several hundred pounds of metal stuff that wasn't going to be part of my house renovations.
- soupfordummies 2mo agoHow do you like Pittsburgh? What are some pros and cons? I spent a day there a couple years ago and it seemed like a really cool lil city that was surprisingly affordable.
- tmoertel 2mo agoI'm not who you asked, but I moved to Pittsburgh for a job, figuring I would earn money for a few years then move to real city. That was over thirty years ago. Turns out, I love the place. Pittsburgh has most of the benefits of a larger city without most of the problems. Its infrastructure is in many ways over-provisioned, being built for past industry and a larger population (but the maintenance burden is catching up). Its unusually hilly and berivered geography has allowed its neighborhoods to escape homogenization and retain their individual ethnic characters. And the setting, with rivers, bridges, trails, forests, is beautiful. Plus the airport recently got overhauled to meet the region’s actual needs, making it way more convenient. Oh, if you're in to sports, Pittsburgh has some great teams and a great fan base. Yeah, I like the ’Burgh.
- intrasight 2mo ago
- brcmthrowaway 2mo agoRich guy mocks his hometown
- JuniperMesos 2mo agoMany hometowns are mockable, even if someone from them eventually becomes rich and talks about what it was like there publicly.
- rashkov 2mo agoHe certainly wasn’t when he wrote this, and I don’t see how you’d read this as mocking. He was a crust punk living in a squat, fixing it up with scrap lumber he salvaged from pallets. His financial position was not so different from the scrappers when writing this story.
- dgacmu 2mo agoI don't think he's mocking at all - the Pittsburgh scrapping culture is fascinating. (I've lived here for 20+ years now). I throw stuff on the curb all the time and like magic, it disappears before trash day. I've also picked up a bunch of stuff from neighbors - office chairs, desks, a really nice stash of PVC pipe I used to build a grey water system for my washing machine, etc. it's like a weird little no-internet freecycle. Everyone just knows it often works and goes along with it. There are people who focus on higher value items, people who grab metals, you name it
- pibaker 2mo agoApologize for not engaging with the post directly but holy fuck can people stop using Twitter as a long form blogging platform. I don't want a full screen pop up telling me to sign in or a persistent bottom bar telling me to open the tweet in the app or a reply section mostly hidden unless I log in. I can't even use reader mode because somehow the paragraph breaks all goes missing and the whole thing merges into one didn’t wall of text. Not to mention your post may or may not end up entirely behind a login gate depending on Twitter's temperament of the day. Please just put it on an old, boring web log. At this point I'll even accept substack.
- bdlowery 2mo ago> I don't want a full screen pop up telling me to sign in or a persistent bottom bar telling me to open the tweet in the app or a reply section mostly hidden unless I log in. make an x account then?
- hiddencost 2mo agoI really don't want to support a man who has killed so many people and advocates so aggressively for white supremacy and the elimination of trans people.
- molybd3num 2mo agono
- Arcuru 2mo agoBe nice, maybe this person isn't very tech-savvy and doesn't know how to setup their own blog? It's not like they are the highly technical founder of a very successful, privacy-focused messaging app....
- badosu 2mo agoFirefox and other browsers have extensions to automatically redirect to other sites that show things with less clutter like xcancel.
- zxexz 2mo ago
- jrmg 2mo agoNote that this post was written twenty years ago, in 2006 - it just wasn’t published until now.
- dang 2mo agoThanks! Year added above.
- QuantumNomad_ 2mo agoHe says it’s a journal entry from around 2006, but adding 2006 to the title feels slightly out of place to me in this case because this tweet in 2026 is publishing a journal entry that was from what I gather not previously published. (Assuming that when he says journal he is referring to hand written journals he has been keeping.) So it seems to me that authored year is 2006 and publication year is 2026. And usually when you guys or the users put the year in the title, it has to do with year of first publication. But I am probably overthinking it or I have an incomplete impression of how to interpret what you and others mean when you put the year in the title :p
- dang 2mo agoWhen the two are different, we prefer the authored year over the published year, since the purpose of putting years in titles is to cue the reader that (1) this is historical material as opposed to current-internet-firehose, and (2) the context it dates from.
- neilv 2mo ago> I went down with them, to supervise, but was quickly roped into the heavy lifting. If you ever find yourself in a situation like this, politely bow out. As I suspect the author would advise. It's an easy -- even likely -- way for someone to get an adversely life-changing injury. Besides the good writing, it was easy to visualize that playing out, because I've seen it before. Also, don't let anyone do a risky thing like this on your property, unless you know they're both capable professionals, and that they have sufficient insurance covering anything that could plausibly go very bad.
- ramgine 2mo agoI’ve had a perpetual back injury because my small business owner boss had his tech support people move a piano of his while on the clock. Then he has a doctor buddy of his look at it and try to tell me I have hepatitis. Which multiple follow ups proved I didn’t. Don’t do labor outside of what’s expected for the position.
- baruz 2mo agoReminds me a bit of some of Dave Secretary’s TIME FOR SOME STORIES.
- walrus01 2mo agoI'm ordinarily loathe to post a link to reddit, but here is a very recent example of copper scrapping on an entire cargo ship that's been abandoned by its crew (it took a hit from some kind of munition) in the hormuz area: https://www.reddit.com/r/SeaEmploy/comments/1vum7fj/the_footage_appears_to_show_the_heavily_damaged/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SeaEmploy/comments/1vum7fj/the_foot... It's a little bit like the scene in the movie Lord of War where an entire cargo airplane is reduced to its skeleton. more details on the ship in question: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=cma+cgm+san+antonio https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=cma+cgm+s...
- Arubis 2mo agoKind of an aside, but I’m genuinely surprised Moxie is still on Xitter. Feels misaligned.
- calmbonsai 2mo agoBeing poor has zero correlation with being “lazy”. Being poor is highly correlated with having little to no access to financial “leverage” so it’s very difficult to earn any sort of non-linear return on capital. Additionally, the vast majority of your capital is solely the current market price of your individual labor.
- dannyobrien 2mo agowell that and the claustrophobia and the sugars
- bad_username 2mo ago> Being poor has zero correlation with being “lazy”. This doesn't sound right. If that were literally true, and the level of industriousness didn't affect prosperity at all, why would anyone bother to work?
- calmbonsai 2mo ago[dead]
- cucumber3732842 2mo agoThis is a dishonest take predicated on bucketing everyone who isn't rolling in it from investmet income as "poor" You won't be "live in an inner ring suburb, shop at whole foods, and peddle ivory tower takes on HN" level rich by working. But with a little care in avoiding big money sinks you can have stable access to basically all the necessities plus some, own your own home and eventually retire. See for example most construction industry professions.
- zxexz 2mo agoI used to scrap to make an extra buck, it was super fun. I did it for about half a year as my primary income. That was wicked fun, and exhausting. I’ve never been anywhere near that strong at any point in my life, before or after and did not work out once. Did not pay tech wages, but if you’re Smart about it and not unlucky, or if you’re just lucky, you can make a fair bit more than people here seem to expect. I’m back mostly to doing it here or there, mostly for fun, when an interesting opportunity presents itself. Every scrapper is different. How they source, tracking yards or private buyers, how much they strip down what items (how do they value their time, with a modifier of how much they enjoy it). I’m sure it varies a lot geographically. I enjoy scrapping retired public/municipal electrical infrastructure/equipment municipal very enjoyable, and if you ask around enough you’ll find auctions or even towns willing to let you do their dirty work. Always be scrapping.
- dang 2mo ago[stub for offtopicness]
- dredmorbius 2mo agoYay no offtopicness‽
- dang 2mo agoWhoops! I must have gotten distracted.
- tclancy 2mo agoNH rolls like this too and I didn’t understand it for a decade after moving up to my wife’s territory from … Rhode Island. There was a time in the nineties where the whole economy here ran on used cars on the side of the road. One of the reasons I have not fixed my alcoholism, beyond the obvious, is there is a retired Mainer who depends on my empties as best I can tell. Who am I to stop drinking if some company will pay me too much to write code? We are all part of a larger system. Sorry, meant lager.
- zkmon 2mo ago> "FOUR CENTS A POUND." It's never about money. It's a life style, belief system, social group or community that drives that kind of passion. It happens everywhere, all the time with everyone. It's about how they feel about what they do. When they were successful in moving the furnace out, they get a feeling that is 1000 times more precious than the value of that piece.
- fenestella 2mo ago[flagged]
- rphv 2mo agoOk ok ok
- RetroTechie 2mo agoFun excercise: look up some prices for various popular types of plastic (pellets, $/tonne), and compare with common metals like steel, stainless, alu, copper etc. Next, wonder why no scrapper bothers to collect plastic waste. It's out there, for free, in any amount you want! Hint: it's the recycling process (and cost of the steps involved) that would get you. Plastics' low density doesn't help either.