Copper has chemical properties such that you can dissolve it, and then electrolyise it back out of solution ridiculously pure. More reactive metals stay in the solution, less reactive metals like gold, silver, cadmium and platinum form a nice little lump of sludge beneath your anode that’s absolutely worth collecting.

It’s valued per weight, like anything else. Wire will cost around as much as the copper inside does, plus a little for the cost of extruding and coating it.

TL;DR no, in the 21st century pure copper is just pure copper. If you make bronze then sure, there’s many different kinds.

You can work steel with bronze or copper tools just fine. Wood and stone tools will do, even.

Getting it hot enough to work might be harder, although it’s surmountable and many stone age peoples managed (and manage!) it. Making tools that are as good as bronze ones isn’t as easy for a number of reasons, including that bronze is actually just a good material.

I mean, a rock works alright for that too.

Yeah, but you can cast bronze fairly easily, while casting iron is more of an AD technology. Early modern, even, if you’re European. Traditionally you don’t even let it melt while smelting.

Blacksmithing with wrought iron is way harder than working with something like bronze. There’s slag in it either just from oxidising or from the solid smelting (bloomery) process, and so it has a kind of grain that builds up over time from it. If you don’t account for it your sword or plough will be trash.

It also rusts, is softer than bronze (even as a typical steel) and not necessarily stronger. The only real advantage is that it’s common and doesn’t require a trade network for rare elements, which is why it didn’t fully catch on in the Near Eastern world until after the bronze age collapse.

Good reply, but one nitpick:

It’s also reasonably safe and easy to extract in a moderately pure form with modern techniques unlike other super abundant elements like silicon.

Silicon smelting is arguably easier. If you have excess quartzite in your furnace it won’t form silicon carbide, while steelmaking involves being really careful to not get too much or too little carbon in the melt. Silicon becomes expensive for electronics because the industry wants 99.9999% purity absolute minimum. What comes out of the arc furnace isn’t read except for use in other metallurgy.

I’d also like to point out other elements can do the same basic all-around-skookum-alloy job as iron, like nickel or titanium. It’s just that none of them are everywhere.

Iron is in rocks, potatoes have to be lovingly nurtured over a few months. That still doesn’t seem like enough to make up the difference, though. Preparing chips must cost more than smelting. I guess shipping is also a factor unless you’re near a chip factory.

Vastly.

It’s in the same column of the periodic table as silver and gold, and while less rare than the other two, still isn’t exactly common. Bronze, like a bronze medal, is just copper with a little bit of something added for strength. On the other hand, iron is one of the typical things rocks are made of. (Edit: Oh look somebody already linked Wikipedia)

I’m surprised you haven’t heard of copper theft. Cutting wires out of things is kind of an infamous way to pay for your next fix of drugs. The power lines near me all have signs warning that they’re just copper-coated.

It was the bronze age where cities just burned sometimes, so that says less than you’d think.

That much hate mail arriving in a short period or Ea Nasir just having a devoted hate mail meditation room are both memeable.

Mandatory any time someone talks about “just” accounting for timezone:

https://xkcd.com/2867/

Although the work has already been done out of necessity and put in libraries, so you could still do this.

They can also do the aiming, which is helpful if it’s a drone whizzing around. The operator just pulls the trigger.

It’s a big development, and will have a lot to say about how 21st century warfare works, but if you were expecting Terminator you’ll be relieved.

I can’t tell if they haven’t thought through what that would mean for them themselves, or they know it’s BS but it’s still good for marketing.

A really great recentish article on why, exactly, even if we have the connectome all squared away.

Depaywalled link.

Spoiler alert: because it hurts.

I guess turning it into a mystery gets more clicks than “check out how many times this exact molecule has evolved in parallel”, even if that’s the actual interesting part.

Except they can’t, because nobody in their country cares about the war enough to send boots on the ground. Clearly, they should be asking Russia.

Yeah. Surveillance is covered already.

Overkill. Just find the illegal no-age-collection ISO. Installing with your middle finger raised is optional, but recommended.

Nobody really looks at the past decades that way here, and even in the third world there’s plenty of America fans.

You tried to hedge that, but you’re basically just agreeing with QAnon, on grounds of a different conspiracy theory.

That’s the author’s opinion on what this means, anyway. I’ll have to try and actually read the study.

Of course, hiring depends on a whole lot more than AI productivity.

There’s many kinds, but yes.

I know canola has the lowest saturated fat of them all, which is also why it doesn’t smoke easily.

Maybe? It won’t stop them all, but the network effect also works in reverse - one teen leaves, and it’s less attractive to their friends. Hmm, I should check the latest from Australia.