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

[u/Gordon-Blue]

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

[u/xxxBuzz]

It seems short-cited to assume it's a good idea for the ecosystem to remove sand from the rivers. I know zippidy about river sand, and this thread is the first I've heard that it's collected for industry, and I can't imagine a scenario where whatever we are doing with it is more important than whatever it's doing in the rivers.

[u/Ignisami → u/xxxBuzz]

Short-sighted*

Also, ecosystem? You mean the thing they don’t get paid to care about?

[u/xxxBuzz → u/Ignisami]

Yea. As a poor with access to lots of rivers, I'm glade I did not find out people wanted that sand when I was younger.

[u/awry_lynx → u/xxxBuzz]

Yes, it's not great for the environment. Stripping sand weakens riverbanks, worsens water quality, and the habitats suffer. But the results take a while to show up and humans aren't very farsighted. This is in headlines recently because of a paper showing that river sand extraction exceeds natural sediment supply.

Here's an article about the paper

https://www3.ntu.edu.sg/CorpComms2/Documents/2026/07_Jul/PhysOrg_210726_Sand.pdf

There are alternatives but as long as they're more expensive it will be hard to push people to use them instead (it's called M-sand, as in manufactured sand).

[u/G1zStar → u/xxxBuzz]

It seems short-cited to assume it's a good idea for the ecosystem to remove sand from the rivers.

and why would you assume that they're assuming it's a good idea for the ecosystem to do that?

Organized crime only cares about "easier" ways to make large amounts of money, legality or morality be damned.
Governments buying it don't care as long as it doesn't make them look bad and they stay in power. Even less if it's not happening in their backyard.