Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#71

Post by tonyarkles » Sat, Apr 16, 2016, 9:44 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #65

CydeWeys wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this whole "tonne" thing. Why overload a word that already has two other conflicting meanings (the imperial short ton and the imperial long ton) when you already have a word that is more canonical and completely unambiguous in "Megagram"? Plus it just sounds cool.

It's only a problem in the US. The Commonwealth ton is only 1.6% larger than the tonne, so the distinction is usually insignificant. Most of the world has no knowledge of either the short or long ton. Likewise, confusion between "mills" (millimetres) and "mils" (thousandths of an inch) are an exclusively American problem. The American adherence to customary units is a constant annoyance for electronics engineers - an…

Sadly also a Canadian problem. We're nominally a metric country, but we're very much a hybrid. When we went to metric, many things still stayed in customary units, but with metric names. I'll likely never ask someone to go get me 454g of sugar from the grocery store, it'll be a pound. Your 2x4 is going to be 8 feet long. You're going to use 1/2" bolts. My generation does consistently use litres and celsius though!

Re: Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#72

Post by awqrre » Sat, Apr 16, 2016, 10:27 PM UTC

noobie wrote: post #32

sfall wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is a profitable venture there are companies that recover precious metals from computer equipment

Hobbyists too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhuwO8AjM7k

but at the scale he is doing it, he looses money

Re: Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#73

Post by elwell » Sat, Apr 16, 2016, 10:42 PM UTC

jonnathanson wrote: post #31

Esau wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how much did it cost them to recover that $40 million is gold?

As efficient and economically scaled as Apple's supply chain operations are, I'm guessing significantly less than $40 million.

Also, it's not as if gold is the only benefit produce from their recycling process.

Re: Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#74

Post by jdietrich » Sat, Apr 16, 2016, 10:58 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #69

jdietrich wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only a problem in the US. The Commonwealth ton is only 1.6% larger than the tonne, so the distinction is usually insignificant. Most of the world has no knowledge of either the short or long ton. Likewise, confusion between "mills" (millimetres) and "mils" (thousandths of an inch) are an exclusively American problem. The American adherence to customary units is a constant annoyance for electronics engineers - an…

I think the SMD resistors are well standardized. A resistor measuring ~0.6mm x 0.3mm is an 0201. (2 1/100ths of an inch by 1 1/100th of an inch.) The standard doesn't make sense in SI units, but it's the standard.

SMD passives are listed in both metric and imperial units. Most sizes are unambiguous, but 0402 and 0603 resistors exist in both series. There's also possibility for confusion between the imperial 01005 and the metric 1005. These parts are specified in metric, making the imperial sizes purely nominal.

http://www.newark.com/chip-smd-resistors/resistor-case-style...

The metric/imperial split is a constant nuisance. Most board houses and PTH packages use mils, but the vast majority of SMT IC packages are specified in millimetres. Board layouts almost always necessitate switching between imperial and metric units; Layout software includes features to manage this. Wire gauges are a total mess - AWG, SWG and mm are all in common use. Standard pin headers and derivative connectors are 0.1" pitch (2.54mm), but JST connectors are 2.5mm pitch. Conversion errors have caused countless production problems.

Re: Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#75

Post by imaginenore » Sun, Apr 17, 2016, 1:59 AM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #55

imaginenore wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unambiguous? As in megabyte?

Yes, it is unambiguous. No one uses binary prefix notation for mass.

No one uses "mega" for grams either.

Re: Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#76

Post by fabulist » Sun, Apr 17, 2016, 2:11 AM UTC

yuubi wrote: post #40

monochromatic wrote: post #33

> Copper is super-cheap, but it moves electrons too slowly for some of the most important computing tasks. Just garbage reporting.

For those who haven't had a physics class, that's garbage because silver is somewhat more conductive than copper, which is slightly more conductive than gold. The main benefit of gold is that it's more stable than copper, so it's a good material for connector contact surfaces, but the bulk of the contact should be something else like copper or steel, depending on the relative importance of electrical or mechanical pr…

Additionally, copper might be cheaper than gold or silver, but isn't very cheap.

Re: Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#77

Post by mchahn » Sun, Apr 17, 2016, 3:04 AM UTC

I knew of an assembly worker at HP Labs whose job including trimming off gold flash. It was a small amount but she threw it in her desk drawer. After a few years she sold the collection for a lot of money. She was caught and had to pay it back.

Re: Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#78

Post by tamana » Sun, Apr 17, 2016, 4:07 AM UTC

sfall wrote: post #30

baskind wrote: post #13

Would be equally interesting to know how much it cost them to recover that much gold from that many devices.

it is a profitable venture there are companies that recover precious metals from computer equipment

Sort of. Those businesses have externalities in worker unsafety and pollution.

Re: Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#79

Post by tamana » Sun, Apr 17, 2016, 4:07 AM UTC

awqrre wrote: post #72

noobie wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hobbyists too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhuwO8AjM7k

but at the scale he is doing it, he looses money

That's what a "hobby" is: a money-losing activity.

A "business" is a money-making hobby.

Re: Apple recovered 2,204 pounds of gold from broken iPhones last year

#80

Post by tamana » Sun, Apr 17, 2016, 4:14 AM UTC

neilk wrote: post #58

powertower wrote: post #56

This is what 1 tonne (2204 LBS) of gold looks like - http://demonocracy.info/infographics/world/gold/images/demon...

Yeah, I did some calculating and surprisingly, 1 tonne of gold is somewhat smaller than a 2' cube. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+tonne+of+gold+in+cub...

Close to 1.3ft per side, or a 18" diameter sphere

A gallon of gold is 75lbs, almost 10x as dense as water, and worth about $3million