Author Topic: I died a little inside today.  (Read 46907 times)

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Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #125 on: October 16, 2017, 08:45:50 pm »
In my hospital we had someone successfully prosecuted by NHS Fraud and sacked for taking something out of a dumpster on the premises last year.

At least some managers bypass that and give me electronics bits to tear down rather than go in the bin.

Cheers
In a lot of countries, trash can't be stolen, as you've already given up ownership. Otherwise it would mean the waste collector commits a crime at every address.
 

Offline nanofrog

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #126 on: October 17, 2017, 12:10:39 am »
One thing that is useful is the gas lift in office chairs and the base with castors. They can be used to make a nice stable pot-plant stand.
Now that's what I call creative recycling.  :clap:
 

Offline Old Don

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #127 on: October 17, 2017, 03:54:50 am »
I forgot to mention that there was some government official standing at the crusher marking down each serial number as each bit of equipment got thrown in.

And the government can't figure out why our companies can't compete in the world market. "We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo
Retired - Formerly: Navy ET, University of Buffalo Electronic Tech, Field Engineer and former laptop repair business owner
 

Offline Red Squirrel

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #128 on: October 17, 2017, 05:06:51 am »
I hate this kind of waste, it's usually political more than anything.  There's usually a reason for it but they're all stupid reasons imo.  It's waste, pure waste.

It's even more horrible in the insurance industry, things that could be going to less fortunate people like clothing get destroyed.  Like say a clothing store gets a flood they just write off everything and order it destroyed.  Those are the kind of things that make me hate humanity.
 

Offline vk3yedotcom

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #129 on: October 17, 2017, 08:00:45 am »

Where in Melbourne do they still put rubbish out en-masse for footpath  collection? My council just does them on request. But it is close to inner city and footpaths filled with rubbish is probably more of a problem where density is higher.

City of Kingston.  Some suburbs has been collected but you're not too late for other areas http://www.kingston.vic.gov.au/Services/Rubbish-and-Recycling/Hard-Waste-Collection
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Offline bd139

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #130 on: October 17, 2017, 08:14:40 am »
Quick note as I used to deal in electronics years ago. If you find out who the recycler is, they will probably sell you the stuff rather than recycle it. It’s much more profitable to sell it to you than recycle it. There are a few people I know who work for WEEE disposal here in the U.K. and they to this day resell more stuff than they crush and part out.
 

Offline Muttley Snickers

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #131 on: October 17, 2017, 08:24:30 am »
The City of Darebin still has the kerb side collections and the last flyer they sent out just prior declared that professional scroungers would be prosecuted, we did witness many large vans collecting white goods, bed frames and other metallic objects probably for the scrap metal value,  I've just moved to the City of Whittlesea and not unlike the council itself have little or no clue as to the goings on up this way.   ::) :P

 

Offline IanMacdonald

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #132 on: October 17, 2017, 08:52:03 am »
Most of this is due to scrooge-type bureaucracy. Departments have a budget, but if a department improves its efficiency and reduces its costs, then it gets penalized by having its budget reduced. So, they always use up their budget so it can't be reduced next year. If they don't actually need new gear they just throw away some serviceable stuff.  I recall employees at a certain defence manufacturer reporting that a skip full of near-new electronics hand tools was sent to landfill. Employees were strictly warned not to take any of them for personal use. Probably because if they were seen around then someone might twig that they didn't need replacing.  :-X
 

Offline bd139

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #133 on: October 17, 2017, 09:15:48 am »
The NHS are worse. My brother-in-law handles a trust's inventory. They just paid a recycler to take 500-ish monitors and desktops away. These hadn't even been unboxed. They fucked up their windows 7 deployment so they just sat there for 4 years. Then they bought new ones for windows 10 which are sitting in a warehouse and they can't proceed because the clinical systems don't work on windows 10 yet ...  :palm:
 

Offline Zucca

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #134 on: October 17, 2017, 09:56:53 am »
Quote
In 2017, some electronics units were sent to scrap yard by an economic court for a crime they didn't commit. Some EE promptly escaped from a maximum-security stockade to the EEVBlog underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as engineers of fortune. If you have an EE problem... if no one else can help... and if you can find them... maybe you can hire... The EE SWAT-Team

We should set up an EE SWAT Team, only trained people with no fear. We don't follow company laws, we don't care about taxes, we just want justice.
If you ever see EE equipment going to the scrap yard call us.
We will make justice and rescue what can be saved.
For Germany and Italy area I will coordinate the operations. Send me a PM.

No, it´s not a joke.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2017, 10:20:59 am by zucca »
Can't know what you don't love. St. Augustine
Can't love what you don't know. Zucca
 
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Offline Halcyon

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #135 on: October 17, 2017, 11:47:25 pm »
We just destroyed thousands and thousands of mostly working 5-year old Motorola portable radios, chargers, accessories etc... Only because they were fitted with strong encryption capabilities not available to the general public, so in the shredder they go.
 

Offline jhalar

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #136 on: October 18, 2017, 01:57:12 am »
I think for the "professional scroungers" they regard them as theives because it reduces the scrap value the contractors receive and they in turn charge the ratepayes a higher fee. Ordinary folk tend to take a different sort of stuff that probably doesn't overlap the money scrap so much. I dislike the people who cut power cords off everything, even servicable stuff.

My council used to have regular 5 times a year scrap and electronics collections. The council could not deal with the number of  "professional scroungers" so they changed the collection from a regular scheduled pickup to one that you need to book a pickup time.  We still get 5 x scrap and 5 x electronics free pickups but the "scroungers" don't know when a pickup will be made. This stopped them coming.

Electronics and Network Engineer. Working in both worlds.
 

Offline amyk

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #137 on: October 18, 2017, 01:58:29 am »
We just destroyed thousands and thousands of mostly working 5-year old Motorola portable radios, chargers, accessories etc... Only because they were fitted with strong encryption capabilities not available to the general public, so in the shredder they go.
Military? I'm not surprised. After all, they constantly handle things that are built to destroy and be destroyed...
 

Offline calexanian

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #138 on: October 18, 2017, 04:12:12 am »
I have a little experience with this. Look for the local e waste recyclers. Call a few and see if they offer disposal of government or financial computer systems. That will probably be the place they are taking it. Most counties have an E Waste place that handles all of the government hard drives and bank computers. Certain public offices must destroy their systems every few years for security reasons. At my local one the high sensitivity things like hard drives and such go right into a shredder. Its kinda neat to watch. Computers go in, finely ground scraps come out. This is then separated into plastics, ferrous metals, non ferrous metals, and then other junk. Non critical items are evaluated for any secondary value or for repair. Certain things are saved to collect replacement parts or batteries and such from, then into the shredder it goes. The ground and sorted result is shipped to stockton, and then to china to be recycled. Of course we know that probably just means dumped and or burned there, then chemically leach heap metal recovery, then into the ground water system it goes. Etc.

And the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon, little.........   Recycle..  :-DD
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Offline Red Squirrel

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #139 on: October 18, 2017, 04:26:18 am »
Most of this is due to scrooge-type bureaucracy. Departments have a budget, but if a department improves its efficiency and reduces its costs, then it gets penalized by having its budget reduced. So, they always use up their budget so it can't be reduced next year. If they don't actually need new gear they just throw away some serviceable stuff.  I recall employees at a certain defence manufacturer reporting that a skip full of near-new electronics hand tools was sent to landfill. Employees were strictly warned not to take any of them for personal use. Probably because if they were seen around then someone might twig that they didn't need replacing.  :-X

This style of budgeting is the most retarded thing, but it's sadly more or less the norm at most companies, and especially government.  It's so wasteful.  I worked at a hospital, it is sad the amount of stuff I saw get wasted, and that's all tax dollars too, so it makes it even more enraging.  Thankfully we were sometimes allowed to keep stuff.  But I did not need over 9,000 power cords, so I did have to let some stuff go to the bin.  But looking back I kinda regret not taking them, I could have at least brought them to the copper recycler.  Ironicly I probably would have donated the money to the hospital foundation...  They probably had some weird political reason as to why they could not do that. 
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #140 on: October 19, 2017, 12:39:47 am »
We just destroyed thousands and thousands of mostly working 5-year old Motorola portable radios, chargers, accessories etc... Only because they were fitted with strong encryption capabilities not available to the general public, so in the shredder they go.
The restrictions on strong encryption always puzzle me. It's not like AES512 wouldn't be almost the exact same thing, just computationally more expensive, and by all accounts as unbreakable as any other strong solution would be.
 

Offline helius

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #141 on: October 19, 2017, 01:11:35 am »
We just destroyed thousands and thousands of mostly working 5-year old Motorola portable radios, chargers, accessories etc... Only because they were fitted with strong encryption capabilities not available to the general public, so in the shredder they go.
The restrictions on strong encryption always puzzle me. It's not like AES512 wouldn't be almost the exact same thing, just computationally more expensive, and by all accounts as unbreakable as any other strong solution would be.
It's largely an artifact of the way things were in the 1970s to 1990s, when encryption technology was considered a military asset and export controlled. At the time all public algorithms were weak or had been modified in some way by security agencies (DES s-box).
There are some encryption algorithms that are top secret: the NSA calls them "Suite A". There are other algorithms that are public, but approved for classified government use, which were formerly called "Suite B", and now called "Suite CNSA (Commercial National Security Algorithms)". The Suite A algorithms aren't necessarily stronger, but being secret does reduce the population of cryptologists that can try to attack them. It also allows the implementations to be restricted in how they are used, which protects against some types of user errors. Suite A keys are heavily restricted, for example: it isn't possible for users to generate their own, but they must come from the security agencies. It also helps to introduce backdoors into systems sold to foreign militaries without the chance of them being discovered.
 
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Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #142 on: October 19, 2017, 07:42:53 am »
It's largely an artifact of the way things were in the 1970s to 1990s, when encryption technology was considered a military asset and export controlled. At the time all public algorithms were weak or had been modified in some way by security agencies (DES s-box).
There are some encryption algorithms that are top secret: the NSA calls them "Suite A". There are other algorithms that are public, but approved for classified government use, which were formerly called "Suite B", and now called "Suite CNSA (Commercial National Security Algorithms)". The Suite A algorithms aren't necessarily stronger, but being secret does reduce the population of cryptologists that can try to attack them. It also allows the implementations to be restricted in how they are used, which protects against some types of user errors. Suite A keys are heavily restricted, for example: it isn't possible for users to generate their own, but they must come from the security agencies. It also helps to introduce backdoors into systems sold to foreign militaries without the chance of them being discovered.
Security by obscurity. Nice. Not only are these algorythms much less tested and scrutinized for vulnerabilities, it's also easier to be lulled into a false sense of security.

Then again, these lads are supposed to be the best and brightest, so I won't pretend to casually know better ;D
 

Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #143 on: October 30, 2017, 05:09:22 am »
It just occurred to me that there is a solution to the tax write down part of this issue.  As always, it comes down to making greed work for you.   It will take a while to implement as it requires legislation, but keep the greed thing in mind.

The problem is the government doesn't want to see its tax revenue damaged by companies writing down the value of equipment, and then benefiting from that "zero value" asset.  So instead of requiring destruction, make it a crime to destroy it - require it to be sold with proceeds going to the government.  New revenue is always attractive to government so this has a real chance of flying.

We will benefit because the gear won't be destroyed, and likely will be relatively low cost.   The only losers are the TE makers who will have a slightly smaller market for new gear.  But only slightly because there are few of us ogling these discarded items who can afford the new stuff.
 
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Offline sony mavica

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #144 on: November 01, 2017, 03:18:28 am »
this is madness
MORE POWER!
 

Offline aronake

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Re: I died a little inside today.
« Reply #145 on: April 26, 2023, 08:35:02 am »
Greta need to get on this case! Reusage and repair of electronic equipment (and other things) would have a massive positive environmental impact!

 


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