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PC Goldmine
Topic Started: Aug 14 2006, 02:19 AM (147 Views)
Johnny Fist
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Quote:
 
A single ton of junked PCs has more gold than 17 tons of ore. That's why landfills might--just might--pay for their own cleanup.


Source.

I know of one place around here that buys scrap PC pieces parts from local business to recycle. I guess it must pay or otherwise he wouldn't be doing it, but I never knew you could get that kind of gold from a ton of garbage.
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Zybch
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Thats a load of dog balls.
Not the numbers perhaps, but the processing and refinement needed to actually get to the gold. There is so much extra crap (like plastic case components) that are very difficult and expensive to dispose of due to the very high concentration of toxic chemicals they contain (like flame retardant). There is also a LOT of heavy metals like lead which mean you can't just melt the things down in a regular furnace thingy. To comply with EPA stuff costs a shit ton of money.

If there really was enough gold in old PCs to make it worthwhile to recover the stuff, whole landfill sites wouldn't be filled with the things.
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Johnny Fist
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I see your point, but landfills are full of all sorts of other reusable metals its not even funny. Next time I'm in there I'll ask if I can take a few pictures. The guy has mountains of hardware stacked up. The weirdest thing I saw in there was a cardboard box big enough to fit a washing machine was almost full of nothing but CPUs. He was all proud of it.
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cheeseman
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:) i would to get my hands in there, i sure i can could find some working cpus, since they are the most durable part, maybe i could score a p4 3.06 for my dell dimension 8200 and scrre some 512 sticks or rambus :sun:
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Prushka
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I wonder what happens to HD's with personel/company info
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Zybch
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A couple of university students did a thesis thingy 2 years ago on just such a thing. They bought $2000 worth of used HDDs from swap meets and the internet and were able to revcover usable data from something like 70% of them, and personally identifiable data like credit card details and stuff from almost a quarter of those!
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Johnny Fist
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Yeah, they were at MIT. It kind of makes me want to start buying hard drives on Ebay that are listed as defective to see if I can do the same thing.
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HeLLMasteRHeLL
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Ah, I've heard this before. But what you need to question is not how to get it or whether it's there or worth getting, but WHY they used gold instead of something else less expensive but still as efficient.
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J..M
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We send a loda old pc's to africa ........ Well Nigeria to be precise & they get all the hdds & find ppls personal info & basically nick all their cash ....... Our govt says they are reycycling shit that other ppl don't want ........... Fuckin great I say ;)
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Prushka
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Johnny Fist
Aug 15 2006, 07:57 AM
Yeah, they were at MIT. It kind of makes me want to start buying hard drives on Ebay that are listed as defective to see if I can do the same thing.

Quote:
 
The guy has mountains of hardware stacked up.


Why not there...and check his office maybe he's invested in card manufacturing

I seriously have doubts about our governments refusal to act on Identity theft...they are worthless...actually worse than worthless, their getting paid
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Zybch
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HeLLMasteRHeLL
Aug 15 2006, 08:42 AM
Ah, I've heard this before. But what you need to question is not how to get it or whether it's there or worth getting, but WHY they used gold instead of something else less expensive but still as efficient.


Gold is pretty much the ultimate conductor.
Because all of its electron shells have their full complement of possible electrons it is incredibly stable and won't rust or corrode at all. Ever.
Its also the absolute best conductor of electricity which is the other reason its used.
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cheeseman
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they format them ;)
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