| ▲ | An Ohio Valley 100k-Watt FM Signal Is Severed in Broad Daylight – Radio World(radioworld.com) |
| 96 points by pkaeding 6 hours ago | 92 comments |
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| ▲ | geerlingguy 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Cutting a live transmission line is incredibly foolish, for many reasons, but I'm guessing the station has a modern(ish) solid state transmitter, which has great foldback protection. I've seen (and personally tested) AM transmitters dead shorting, and within less than a second (probably less than 100ms, but I haven't measured precisely) it will fold back on a dead short to like 1% of its operating power, lower if it still detects a short. This is to protect the (even more expensive) transmitter from lightning strikes or other weird eventualities (like the line leaking pressurized nitrogen, used to prevent shorts from moisture mainly). But replacing that 3" transmission line is not cheap or fast. Usually the runs are planned and designed, and every elbow / connection has losses that are accounted for. |
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| ▲ | aeonik 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Working backwards from clues in the article, thief maybe stole 200-400 ft of wire. Assuming between 3-1/8″ - 6-1/8″ diameter. Somewhere between $1,360 - $6,400 of scrap value. $70k-$100k to repair... Absurd. |
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| ▲ | sowbug 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That's the usual car stereo theft economics: cause $1,000 of damage to sell a $100 radio for $10. | | |
| ▲ | m463 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | probably $10 of meth to harm a body so that it eventually needs $50k of medical work, or $100k of dental work | | |
| ▲ | cevn 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | 10 dollars? Who's your meth guy? | | |
| ▲ | trympet 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | GP is talking out of his ass - he’s probably not up to speed on meth economics like you and me. | | |
| ▲ | NewJazz 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Methenomics say that you can step on product however much you need to reach the demanded price point. | |
| ▲ | DetroitThrow 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | HN constantly undervalues meth and this has been called out since at least 2009. Horrible. |
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| ▲ | johanvts 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. There has to be a better way when both sides would be better off by just paying the theif double. Some kind of proof of work system to show that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe. | | |
| ▲ | NewJazz 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The person needs to have a stake in the infrastructure OR there needs to be a high chance of them getting caught and losing something. People with little stake in a community will strip infrastructure bare. Inequality is a significant root cause here. | |
| ▲ | tshaddox 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Isn’t the most obvious response from economics that the crime needs to be made more expensive? In other words, the likelihood of being harmed while attempting the crime needs to be much higher. If a quarter of the people who tried a comparable theft got thrown in jail for 2 years and another quarter got shot by a security guard, I suspect attempts would be rare. The financial damage done by the thief is presumably irrelevant to the thief, beyond the fact that sentencing is probably stricter for bigger thefts. | | |
| ▲ | swiftcoder 10 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > In other words, the likelihood of being harmed while attempting the crime needs to be much higher Humans are notoriously bad at evaluating probabilities. They'll buy lottery tickets at 1:300,000,000 odds, and are upset when an 85% shot in XCOM misses... The likelihood of being harmed would need to be basically 100% before folks would stop taking the risk. | |
| ▲ | 47282847 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Criminal punishment research consistently shows that reality does not follow initial intuition here. https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annur... "Unfortunately, so far, the existing empirical work has not had a central place in policy, legislation, and political discourse.” (“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result”) | |
| ▲ | jmward01 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I highly doubt the people doing this look at crime and punishment stats before they do this. More punishment often just ends up costing society because courts and incarceration aren't cheap and no real rehabilitation so it often just makes the person do more bad things when they get out. I'm not saying 'no jail', but we do need evidence based criminal justice. | |
| ▲ | hiddencost 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There's another theory which says that if people have health care, food, shelter, education, and liberty, they won't commit crimes like this. Just a thought. | | |
| ▲ | jeffrallen an hour ago | parent [-] | | It's not a theory. It's socialism and it works fine in Scandinavia, Switzerland, and a bunch of other places. |
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| ▲ | close04 23 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That just leads either to disproportionate or cruel and unusual punishment (not every object has the inherent level of danger so your $200 property must be rigged to kill or severely injure on attempted theft), or to raising stakes where the criminal is willing to do much worse since the outcome could anyway be death or severely body harm. If getting shot for $1000 is on the table, might as well come with a gun and shoot first, and topple the whole tower while at it. When you punish a baggie of drugs with 20 years in prison or potentially getting shot dead in the street, drug dealers escalate to containers of drugs. Where are you going to escalate the punishment? For those who feel like they get nothing from society no punishment works effectively, they are already in a prison with no future. | |
| ▲ | intended 20 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nope. The surest disincentive is knowing you will be caught, not the penalty. If you can get away with it, then what value the penalty? |
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| ▲ | themafia an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. They have. It's called insurance. The problem here might be the change in copper prices which possibly increased the value of the line and which were never properly reassessed for coverage. > better off by just paying the theif double. You could also just require a license to scrap copper. That people can show up with a suspicious pile of metal and convert into cash seems to be what creates the opportunity for the thief. > that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe. We shouldn't motivate people to extremes. We should probably just punish drug dealers far more harshly in this country. | | |
| ▲ | razakel 20 minutes ago | parent [-] | | >That people can show up with a suspicious pile of metal and convert into cash seems to be what creates the opportunity for the thief. The UK does that - a scrap dealer can only pay by bank transfer or cheque. That way there's a paper trail. |
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| ▲ | jcgrillo 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Or pay a guard a fair wage and comp them the $0.20 or whatever for each bullet.. EDIT: to be clear I'm not saying it should be that way, but there was a time not long ago when this was the normal way to handle the situation. I'd argue the present arrangement is more civilized. |
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| ▲ | xp84 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Other than those who commit grave offenses of bodily harm, I reserve my greatest disgust for the type of dirtbag who imposes these orders-of-magnitude greater costs on other innocent people for such a relatively low "reward." They'd burn the Mona Lisa for fuel, melt down the Statue of Liberty for scrap, anything if you let them. I agree with another commenter here, the overlap of this mindset with tweakers is large. | | |
| ▲ | bandofthehawk 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | In general I agree with you, but it also makes me wonder how these people got to this point. I think most people would burn the Mona Lisa if it meant surviving through a cold night.
Our society has failed these people in many ways. | | |
| ▲ | hyperhello 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don’t see how to blame our society for copper thieves. | | |
| ▲ | bandofthehawk 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Lack of healthcare, limited job opportunities, growing income inequality, are just a few reasons off the top of my head. | | |
| ▲ | bigbuppo 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Local copper thieves that were busted stealing telco lines... they were just looking to make a quick buck regardless of legality or care for the impact it had on other people. They're more like tech company CEOs, really. | | |
| ▲ | peddling-brink 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | And these thieves were already well cared for in a healthy society with all sorts of opportunities available to them regardless of social status, skin color, and mental heath? Crime goes down when the gap between the rich and the poor goes down. |
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| ▲ | paleotrope 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Drugs. It's usually drugs. |
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| ▲ | esikich 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Right, why didn't everyone just get good education, dental care, and healthcare, get a car when they're 16, have their parents help them go to college and work for a VC and get rich. Just can't understand it. Truly, an enigma. | | |
| ▲ | TurdF3rguson 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is what nobody wants to admit, whether it's nature or nurture doesn't matter because you're not in control of either of them. You were born into so and so of a family, and they brought you up with such and such care and values. The idea that you've been "force of willing" it through your whole life since infancy and are therefore solely accountable for your outcome is absurd. We know that at some level and yet still can't help taking credit for our nice things and passing judgment on others for their failings. | | |
| ▲ | Terr_ 8 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > taking credit for our nice things and passing judgment on others Do you think it's more Fundamental Attribution Error [0] (not exercising empathy or an incomplete view of others' problems) or more Just World Fallacy [1] (believing the universe works a certain way)? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_fallacy | |
| ▲ | esikich 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This site is so fuckin out of touch with the average American I can help but get pissed off after a few beers on the weekend. The tech stuff is good, but the social/political stuff here drives me nuts. | | |
| ▲ | gonight an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | As someone who grew up on food stamps, I'd fully believe the mean and median income on hackernews are six figure numbers. | | |
| ▲ | esikich 32 minutes ago | parent [-] | | At least. And also living in a metropolis, in a burrough where SaaS is the only way of life and all of the benefits of society come from NPCs. |
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| ▲ | georgemcbay 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > This site is so fuckin out of touch with the average American I can help but get pissed off after a few beers on the weekend. The tech stuff is good, but the social/political stuff here drives me nuts. A lot of people on this site have no concept of what it is like to grow up unprivileged (they think they do, but to them that means growing up merely upper middle class as opposed to ridiculously wealthy) but as bad as it can be sometimes it has actually gotten a bit better in recent years. There used to be an even higher concentration of ultra-libertarian "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" posters who clearly never had to do that themselves to anywhere near the extent they believed they had. |
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| ▲ | RcouF1uZ4gsC 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > We know that at some level and yet still can't help taking credit for our nice things and passing judgment on others for their failings. Is that blameworthy? | | |
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| ▲ | arjie an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Realistically, if these are the minimum conditions to reduce this kind of low-gain amplified damage, then I suspect that most people will rapidly conclude that the cost-benefit leans in the direction of immediately severing these people from the rest of society. Since the cost to deliver a sequence of events like you describe to everyone is extraordinary (and realistically unavailable even to the richest nations today) a more feasible solution is incarceration of people for a first offense for a sufficiently long time that they are simply not present to commit the crime again. | |
| ▲ | hyperhello 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | My general rule for posting sarcasm is to phrase it seriously first and see if it's something I still want to post. | | |
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| ▲ | vostrocity 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A topic I'm interested in that is upstream of what you're saying is the propagation of meaning. If somebody has no idea what the Mona Lisa or the Statue of Liberty are, then we can't really bemoan that they would not ascribe any value to it beyond its raw material. | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I could understand looking at the Mona Lisa and not being impressed that it's something considered of great value. On the other hand, the sheer size of the Statue of Liberty makes that impossible to misconstrue. |
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| ▲ | themafia an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They didn't ask to be born and have never been given an opportunity to approve the society they're born into. The price of non-conformance is deprivation, punishment and incarceration. We should rethink this. | |
| ▲ | NoMoreNicksLeft 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This could be made a serious felony. If the thief doesn't plan for or attempt to get say, 25% of fair market value or replacement cost (whichever is higher), multiply the penalty by 5 years, no chance of parole. Though I don't know if there are enough prisons for all those stealing catalytic converters. | |
| ▲ | mslt 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I’d suggest considering empathy once you get past the anger, their former selves would be equally repulsed by their behavior, and for many I expect their current selves feel similarly despite their lack of control. The villains here aren’t the broken people. | | |
| ▲ | jdross 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The villains are the people who let these people continue to commit crimes and make life worse for others in the name of empathy instead of quickly and forcefully moving them into compassionate care where they have any chance of recovering and joining the vast majority as contributors to society. | | | |
| ▲ | laughing_man 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The villains are those of us who tolerate this kind of behavior in the name of compassion. | | |
| ▲ | TurdF3rguson 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | You shouldn't tolerate the behavior, but announcing disgust for people who are struggling is just not helpful. | | |
| ▲ | laughing_man 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Lots of people who are struggling don't become thieves. | | |
| ▲ | TurdF3rguson an hour ago | parent [-] | | Right, like I said don't tolerate the behavior, but that doesn't mean every thief is an irredeemable piece of shit who doesn't deserve help or empathy. There should be something in the middle, I hope we can agree on that. We're talking about addiction and property damage here, not a homicidal psychopath. |
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| ▲ | cucumber3732842 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >Somewhere between $1,360 - $6,400 of scrap value If it's a "normal" wire specification that someone else can use it was likely sold for ~50% of retail. | | |
| ▲ | tonyarkles 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It was gas-filled presumably ultra low loss RF cable, but the thief cut it into small sections so that they could take it away. You might be right about the 50% number of they had somehow managed to steal it as a single intact spool. As-is, the station even said that they wouldn’t be able to use it even now that it’s been recovered because of fears of gas leaks. | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I doubt they would attempt to sell it as is. They'd break out the copper portion and trade on that alone |
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| ▲ | bragr 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Thieves typically burn off the insulation so it's not likely to be easily reused. |
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| ▲ | rmason 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| In Detroit copper theft was an epidemic a few years back. Once the easy stuff in abandoned houses was gone thieves went further afield. . A few brave thieves went after power substations. For some thieves a lack of knowledge was fatal. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2017... |
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| ▲ | enoint 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | An example shown when I worked around a 7000A rail was also two men. One formed a circuit and the other tried to pry him off. |
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| ▲ | userbinator 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This isn't just any regular copper cable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_cable#Hard_line |
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| ▲ | legitronics 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| How is this person alive? That’s a terrifying amount of relatively high frequency energy. And pressurized gasses of some sort. |
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| ▲ | defrost 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | My first thought also .. possibly pulled a breaker rendering cable inert, or perhaps rigged a remote cutting tool - drop saw poised to cut on a long extension cord ready to be turn on ... (problematic). I'm leaning toward killed the current first somehow, but very location detail dependant. | | |
| ▲ | cucumber3732842 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | You can buy high voltage gear online cheap. Just this one job would pay for the complete setup if you're buying cheap brands. |
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| ▲ | CamperBob2 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The transmitter will have a VSWR trip for just this sort of eventuality. It would likely be damaged severely if allowed to operate into an open circuit for more than a brief moment. | |
| ▲ | api 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Meth induced superhero powers? |
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| ▲ | dylan604 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm looking for a Kalshi bet that the perp is a tweaker. They say it could cost $70,000 - $100,000 to repair, but I also wonder if they'll have to refund ad buys while they are running at 10 watts and such reduced coverage. Makes me also wonder what kind of insurance broadcasters might have for such incidents when they can't broadcast. |
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| ▲ | grahamburger 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Oof, that's a bad day. I've had cable stolen from a tower site like that, but it was cable we had spooled out for installation the day before, not in active use. |
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| ▲ | asdefghyk 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The photo shows a cable ( with insulation ) that looks at least 4 inches thick ... (from a distance ) |
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| ▲ | CamperBob2 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The alleged perpetrator — Paul Crisp Nominative determinism in action. |
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| ▲ | fwipsy 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Or subverted in this case, I suppose. Can't have been very crisped if he could flee from the police. | |
| ▲ | arthurcolle 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | any paulcrisp on HN want to discuss? |
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| ▲ | helterskelter 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Darwin awards should give this guy an honorable mention. |
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| ▲ | trick-or-treat 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Reads like a super-villain origin story. Welp, I guess he doesn't have to worry about getting the electric chair. |
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| ▲ | AndrewKemendo 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That’s wild. Radio transmission power is no joke. I replaced the 100W FM transmitter on our college radio tower and got in front of the emitter beam for like 10 seconds and my head rung for a week. The amps and power aren’t to be messed with. I can’t even imagine messing with 100K line that’s a solid block of copper |
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| ▲ | 7402 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm surprised. Consulting an exposure limit calculator (https://www.arrl.org/rf-exposure-calculator) suggests a safe distance (FCC controlled exposure limit) for continuous (30 min) exposure from a 100w FM transmitter antenna at 100 MHz with, say, 5 dB gain is around 5 ft. For a brief exposure it's much less. Amateur radio operators need to know this, since 100w is quite a typical power level, and they have bands (50 MHz and 144 MHz) not far from commercial FM. How far away from the antenna were you? The antenna is usually far away from the transmitter that you were replacing. | |
| ▲ | sidewndr46 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You think exposure to 100 watts at ~100 MHz is going to cause your head to ring? | | |
| ▲ | fc417fc802 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Are you saying it won't? What sort of RF power density in the FM range can the human body tolerate without noticeable effect? |
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| ▲ | asdefghyk 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Very lucky not to have been killed by the high voltages or intense RF energy and or suffer severe burns / blindness .... | | |
| ▲ | AndrewKemendo 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Come to think of it it wasn’t even 10 seconds, more like 2 or 3 before my ears and eyes were burning | | |
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| ▲ | Vaslo 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The trash thief will never be able to replace that. I guess insurance will help but that’s just another excuse for them to raise rates. That thief should be indentured until he pays it back in full. |
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| ▲ | CamperBob2 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Is it too soon to talk about regulating the $#@* out of scrap-metal dealers? |
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| ▲ | SoftTalker 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | They already are. You need to show ID to sell scrap metal. The thieves use a fence. | | |
| ▲ | gacgacgac 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Furthermore, going after scrap metal sites makes an important business harder and fails to be inquisitive enough about the reasons why the thefts happen at all. Maybe we should try to understand why people are stealing copper. (Presumably poverty, drug addiction, lack of opportunity) | | |
| ▲ | xp84 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you believe we can just fix poverty and drug addiction with some government program, I have a bridge to sell you. So far, no one has, anywhere in the world. Many people (and once they get themselves addicted to something bad, that rises to "most") are just terrible and care only about their own short-term gain. They'd do any amount of destruction to others for some small temporary profit or fix. | | |
| ▲ | gacgacgac 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If you think most people "are just terrible", I think you've let cynicism corrupt your thinking, and I don't think we're going to get very far by talking. I believe the opposite -- people fundamentally want to help each other, and we've structurally set up our society to force people out of that mode and into a competitive mode. Read "A Paradise Built in Hell", when push comes to shove, communities care for each other. If we covered everyone's basic food, housing, education, and medical needs, I guarantee you'd see crime and addiction plummet. | |
| ▲ | konmok 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The USA opioid epidemic was caused by gross government negligence and corruption. Is it really a stretch to think that a policy solution could have prevented the majority of the harm? And do you really think there wouldn't be enough food and shelter to go around, if the government decided to get serious about poverty relief? | | |
| ▲ | NoMoreNicksLeft 17 minutes ago | parent [-] | | The government policy might have caused it, but a reversal of the policy might never fix it. The real world is like that, unfortunately. Besides, it's not the policy you're thinking of anyway, that causes this specific problem. This specific problem (theft for scrapyard sales) is primarily caused by piss tests. If people supposedly would suck cock for a hit of crack, then they'll also scrub toilets at minimum wage for crack too. But piss tests short circuit that. Here's the problem: the government doesn't mandate pre-employment piss tests. So they can't fix it easily. It would be far harder to convince legislators to prohibit them than it would to convince them to legalize drugs. There is a corporate culture that has gone on nearly 50 years now that has normalized piss tests, and they are true believers in it. They would lobby against prohibiting the tests. But, even if all that could be done (very doubtful), we've also taught crackheads and tweakers to steal copper wire and whatever else not nailed down. We've taught them to do this for 50 years. Multiple generations of junkies and dope fiends have done this, passing down the knowledge (or what passes for that) of how to steal to feed a drug habit. They aren't going back to scrubbing toilets, even if they would have done that way back if only they hadn't been forced to stop. >And do you really think there wouldn't be enough food and shelter to go around, if the government decided to get serious about poverty relief? I think that even without the government getting serious about poverty relief, housing prices are insane and there's not enough to go around. And my grocery bill's not exactly nothing, either. And all for what, even if it did work the way you think it would, I'd get to pay for that welfare so this guy's radio station wasn't held hostage by Rudy's desperate need for bathtub meth? No thanks. |
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| ▲ | CamperBob2 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Where does the fence sell the scrap? Somebody is buying it. | | |
| ▲ | MBCook 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Same as stolen TVs, catalytic converters, and anything else. There’s always someone who likes the money/discount more than morals/the law at the next step in the chain. Somewhere. | | |
| ▲ | cucumber3732842 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | >There’s always someone who likes the money/discount more than morals/the law at the next step in the chain. Somewhere. That's every scrap yard and most small businesses. Nothing makes you hate the law and it's enforcers, peddlers and proponents like being on the business end of regulations and a scrap yard probably has at least half a dozen agencies they are subject to. Heck, I bet half of these guys would aerosolize radioactive waste out of spite if they thought the wind would blow it into a "good school district". |
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| ▲ | julian_sark 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Didn't know fences contained copper ;) | |
| ▲ | BobbyTables2 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Wonder if they steal the fence too! |
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