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posted by martyb on Wednesday November 01 2017, @05:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the praise-me-for-fixing-what-i-broke dept.

news.bitcoin.com reports on a Samsung Initiative to repurpose older Samsung Galaxy devices rather than trash recycle them. From the article:

Samsung's new 'upcycling' initiative has seen the company repurpose outdated technology for novel and creative utilities, including the construction of a bitcoin mining rig from out of old smartphones. The 'Upcycling' Program Has Seen the Company Turn 40 Used Galaxy S5s Into a Bitcoin Mining Rig

[...] Samsung has reportedly claimed that eight Samsung Galaxy S5s can mine with superior energy efficiency compared to a standard desktop computer.

Of course in this age, GPU rigs are not even effective bitcoin miners, so beating a 'standard desktop' is complete nonsense. However, the later article has some actually interesting information:

Kyle Wiens, chief executive officer of iFixit – a company that is involved in repairing Galaxy S3s for Samsung's initiative – has given generous praise to the upcycling program. Wiens stated "what [Samsung] built is a layer between the hardware and you being able to install anything you want on it. It's a step lower than jailbreaking, it's removing Android entirely." Wiens describes the initiative... "the challenge with keeping old electronics running a long time is software," adding that "with phones in particular, the old software is insecure and doesn't run the new apps. So the question is, if you have this perfectly functional piece of hardware that doesn't have good software anymore and you want to keep it running for ten years, how do you do that?"

It is almost like this initiative would not even been needed if the hardware was not cryptographically locked down from running the owner's software of choice in the first place. At least there is this bit of relief:

The company has pledged to make plans for the showcased projects freely available online, in addition to the software that allowed Samsung's Creative Lab to unlock and repurpose old phones.

Anyone ready to place bets on whether the 'unlocking software' will be freely available or require onerous EULA acceptance?

Link to the Initiative: https://galaxyupcycling.github.io/


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  • (Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Wednesday November 01 2017, @04:26PM (1 child)

    by Dr Spin (5239) on Wednesday November 01 2017, @04:26PM (#590631)

    Dated kit? I am still using my Samsung S3 with LineageOS.

    We need an EU law saying that if the manufacturer is no longer supporting the phone he is required to put details of the hardware in the public domain so anyone can.

    With Brexit, we in the UK don't matter anyway - we still have to do what the EU says - the alternative is no food.

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  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday November 02 2017, @03:28AM

    by Arik (4543) on Thursday November 02 2017, @03:28AM (#590865) Journal
    "With Brexit, we in the UK don't matter anyway - we still have to do what the EU says - the alternative is no food."

    Or you could discover that there's actually an entire country outside of London. Lots of farms and pastures, more than enough to provide all the food needed, if people would go work them.
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