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Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

cyanide is not a brand name, gallium is not a rare earth element, and almost all rare earth elements are cheap and abundant worldwide

consequently i am also skeptical about your grasp of the things i don't know about, like the economic effects of pcb recycling on poor economies

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Fair. The abundance isn't the problem the state of the mines for rare earth and other things is. A couple of options in Australia went to sleep when China cut prices and they haven't woken up afaik. Same with lithium options the price makes Western clean extraction much less profitable and we're not short of cheap lithium.

Snark is frowned upon here. Complaining I capitalised cyanide is pretty snarky but your substantive points stand.

Am I right in thinking your dislike of my shallow economic statements should not be read as believing you think pcb recycling has no downsides? Because you would be in a very small room if you said it's only good to send dead pc parts to Asia and Africa for teardown. Even the vendors now say they know this isn't all peachy.

> A couple of options in Australia went to sleep when China cut prices and they haven't woken up afaik.

It'd be more accurate to describe what happened was a number of resource producers went all in on an anticipated surge in lithium demand for EV and home batteries globally that was much smaller than predicted.

I do wonder, based on the 'state of mines' question, whether phytomining won't be a major source of resources in a more circular economy. The solarpunk in me loves the idea. The Engineer in me blanches at the economic realities. Investing in commercial phytomining is definitely on my 'if I win the lottery' list.

pcb recycling can easily be done in an extremely polluting way, and that's the easiest way to do it, and i've definitely seen that cause problems. i've made myself sick doing it, in fact, though not seriously. what i don't know is how prevalent it is for people to cause problems by doing pcb recycling on an ongoing basis, which i wasn't doing. it depends on the local social context, but i'd think that in most of the world it would be pretty common for their neighbors to oblige them to stop, even if they managed to avoid poisoning themselves in the process (which would also make them stop, in a sadder way)

with respect to capitalizing 'cyanide', there is a fable told by aisopos about this https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/public/gdcmassbookdig/...

> When people go on a voyage they often take with them Lap-Dogs or Monkeys as pets to while away the time. Thus it fell out that a man returning to Athens from the East had a pet Monkey on board with him. As they neared the coast of Attica a great storm burst upon them, and the ship capsized. All on board were thrown into the water, and tried to save themselves by swimming, the Monkey among the rest. A Dolphin saw him, and, supposing him to be a man, took him on his back and began swimming towards the shore. When they got near the Piraeus, which is the port of Athens, the Dolphin asked the Monkey if he was an Athenian. The Monkey replied that he was, and added that he came of a very distinguished family. "Then, of course, you know the Piraeus," continued the Dolphin. The Monkey thought he was referring to some high official or other, and replied, "Oh, yes, he's a very old friend of mine." At that, detecting his hypocrisy, the Dolphin was so disgusted that he dived below the surface, and the unfortunate Monkey was quickly drowned.

while i am not advocating drowning you in the mediterranean, i think it's reasonable that, if someone thinks 'cyanide' is a brand name, we should ignore their opinions about the toxicology of cyanide; and, if they express those opinions with great confidence, as you did, we should probably also ignore the other opinions they express with great confidence

A great read except you elevated a tablet keyboard miskey/typo into intentionality. Having worked in a marine biology lab with reagents long ago, I know the difference between Analar products in a jar and their name as chemical substances.

Maybe a little charity?

I do not, and never have thought cyanide is a brand name.

fair enough, perhaps my interpretation was biased by its close juxtaposition with other common chemistry misconceptions

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