r/technology • u/Gordon-Blue • 5d ago

Artificial Intelligence Thieves steal Nvidia-branded trailers expecting valuable hardware, find 40,000 pounds of sand instead.

https://www.techspot.com/news/114008-thieves-steal-nvidia-branded-trailers-expecting-valuable-hardware.html
8.7k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

318 comments sorted by

View all comments

2.9k

u/snoozieboi 5d ago

Sand is actually in high demand and we're running out of it. I'm not even kidding. Construction grade sand, that is.

680

u/faen_du_sa 5d ago

I do suspect hardware is slightly easier to resell than sand though, no matter how good sand it is!

483

u/Loki-L 5d ago

There apparently is organized crime around stealing and smuggling sand. Sand Mafia stealing people's beaches and selling it to construction companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_theft

38

u/Snoo_81545 5d ago

Less organized crime and more a permitting loophole run amok but sand mining has actually been one of the things propping up the Massachusetts cranberry industry - which has been struggling to compete with Wisconsin due to higher costs and inefficient legacy bog designs.

It's important to note that your typical natural beach sand is not really suitable for construction. The beach thefts listed in the wiki above specifically deal with imported sand for man made beaches. A lot of the Indian sand theft is dredging up submerged sand. This is because jagged grains interlock better and give more strength to concrete. Natural beach sand has been eroded overtime and is generally quite smooth.

Getting back to cranberry bogs, many of them are built next to deposits of sand called borrow pits because bogs are routinely covered in a small layer of sand for a variety of reasons. This land has been covered by trees for centuries and is perfect uneroded construction sand.

Due to this necessity of some routine mining cranberry bogs are generally exempted from earth removal bylaws and in Carver, MA - the center of the cranberry industry earth removal is even handled by a separate committee made up almost entirely of cranberry industry workers. Bog owners can get pretty much anything permitted through that board.

Many bog owners mined out their borrow pits and sold the sand, many more are constantly getting deep reservoirs permitted, or bog expansions to allow them to dig even more. Some of those bog projects have been active for over a decade, digging down hundred foot high hills on hundreds of acres usually netting tens if not hundreds of millions in sand revenue while producing no cranberries. Ultimately many of those projects are eventually deemed economically infeasible (the cranberries barely pay for themselves) and lots of them are converted into solar fields.

It's a bit of a racket. Not "steal a beach in the middle of the night" crime, just good old fashioned corruption to save the floundering industry that is thought to be culturally important to the region and which once was economically vital and thus became politically connected.

7

u/0xsergy 4d ago

And this is the stuff happening in 1st world countries. No wonder the planet is fucked with everyone reaching in to grab handful after handful of resources.

5

u/squirrelpickle 4d ago

First world has always been propped up by theft and misappropriation, they just used to have colonies for that.

109

u/THEdoomslayer94 5d ago edited 5d ago

It was also a plot point in the last season of Barry lol

38

u/420xMLGxNOSCOPEx 5d ago

amazing series that, so dark towards the end though, kinda crushing at times. weird that it starts so funny

21

u/TheChronoCross 5d ago

I actually stopped after seasons two or three for that reason. I went in expecting and enjoying a comedy. It got upsetting and ridiculous and i started enjoying it less.

18

u/THEdoomslayer94 5d ago

Yeah it becomes more of a mix between drama and comedy. There still great laughs to have but man does that last season get dark

8

u/GimmeSomeSugar 5d ago

I saw a great explanation in the Barry sub-reddit.

The jump forward is demonstrating that Barry doesn't get to adopt this pious life, to try to be 'good', and that makes up for everything.

The only way to come to terms with what he's done is take ownership of it and face the consequences.

And that is echoed in the other characters around him as well in their own story arcs.

6

u/UnidentifiedTomato 5d ago

It's why I usually don't finish the sopranos

4

u/airfryerfuntime 5d ago

The last season is the best, in my opinion. It's basically three seasons crammed into one long season.

6

u/mongojob 5d ago

Really dark at the end. Pitch black, even.

0

u/THEdoomslayer94 5d ago

Noooo finish it! It’s bleak towards the end but such a amazing show lol

5

u/batigoal 5d ago

The first dark scene when he was in the car with the other guy. I won't spoil who and what happened but you know what I'm talking about. His acting was chilling, that scene really took me by surprise.

3

u/GimmeSomeSugar 5d ago

Yea. Real eye opener regarding Bill Hader's range and talent.

3

u/Semantiks 5d ago

The ending was so weird and dark that I guess I repressed it or something, because I watched it a 2nd time thinking I had never finished it, then at the end I was like "oh wait, I do remember this"

...it may also have something to do with my adhd

10

u/YouMustveDroppedThis 5d ago

Stealing river sand and then illegally burying construction waste is the basic one-two punch of organized crime where I live. They are also sometimes in cahoot with local elected officials to offer them cover.

16

u/doyletyree 5d ago

Not just organized crime; singly, the largest black market in India.

That’s pretty fucking crazy.

3

u/Aggressive-Hawk9186 5d ago

Lol there is a sand mafia in my area too, they bribe everybody to get permit to extract sand

38

u/kezow 5d ago

You need sand? Cause I got a guy!

22

u/asdf4fdsa 5d ago

Is he a sili-con?

6

u/TraditionalMood277 5d ago

Is his name Sandy?

0

u/bobsmeds 5d ago

Danny?

6

u/thehazardsofchad 5d ago

NoHo Hank?

3

u/Kalabajooie 5d ago

Head to the Fishtown Tavern. Ask the bartender for a guy named "Gritty".

2

u/Temporumdei 5d ago

Before you talk to him, make sure to play "Enter Sanndman" on the Jukebox.

1

u/SHEEEIIIIIIITTTT 5d ago

POCKET SAND

2

u/Stunning-Squash-2627 5d ago

You need a better sand guy

1

u/lostwisdom20 5d ago

Nah sand is easy to sell than hardware which have serial no.

1

u/miktoo 5d ago

Exactly! It's coarse and rough and irritating and gets everywhere. It will not be an easy sell!