How can companies securely recycle e-waste?

07 June 2023

Did you know that millions of storage devices are shredded each year to stop their data leaking? Yet, even fragments as small as 3mm still have data on them that could be recovered. It's actually safer to use secure deletion today, which also means the drives can be reused.

I explored this concept in my latest article for BBC News Online: Why millions of usable hard drives are being destroyed.

This year, many of the 375 million hard drives that were sold in 2018 are ending their warranty period. Large data centres are disposing of them, mostly to landfill. I spoke to the Circular Drive Initiative, storage company Seagate, and security company ESET about alternatives.

Devices that have left warranty are often still fully functioning, and can be reused by others. Smaller data centres would love to get their hands on the cast-offs from the hyperscalers, for example. My article looks at purging by deleting the encryption key, and offers advice on planning for the end of life of storage and other digital devices.

I hope the article helps to raise awareness of the new standards for secure deletion, and the work that the Circular Drive Initiative and its members are doing to improve storage sustainability.

This my second piece on tech sustainability for the BBC, following my previous article about website sustainability.

Thanks to Benjamin Lehman at Unsplash for the photo

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

Three new articles on AI and hidden messages in Spectrum games

01 June 2023

Here's a round-up of articles I've written recently. ChatGPT features in two of them, and one of them gets under the skin of classic 80s computer games.

• For The MagPi magazine, I wrote a tutorial called Bedtime Stories (pictured on the right). This uses ChatGPT to create a story featuring your chosen heroes, and DeepAI's AI image generation API to create an image for each paragraph of the story. The stories are read aloud using text-to-speech (using the same library as Raspberry Radio), while the relevant image for each section is displayed. Bedtime Stories features in issue 130 of The MagPi, which is out now, and you can see the Bedtime Stories code and example images here.

• For the BBC, I wrote an article about using ChatGPT to create computer code. From my own experiments, I've found ChatGPT to be surprisingly good at writing Python programs, as long as you know enough to guide it. I have come up against its limitations when developing fairly simple programs, but it has a good knowledge of lots of Python libraries, so it can get you results quicker than reading the documentation. For my BBC article, I interviewed developers about how ChatGPT has helped them to make games, what the security risks are, and how ChatGPT could be a programming companion.

• For issue 15 of Crash magazine, for the ZX Spectrum community, I wrote an article about the hidden messages in game code. Programmers often left messages to hackers or their friends hidden in their game code, which were never displayed on the screen. Some of these messages reveal a little bit of what it was like writing games in the 80s, with complaints about the pay, tales of all-night coding sessions, and the drama of copyright infringement claims.

I've also recently redesigned the articles page on my website, so it showcases some of my favourite pieces more clearly. At the bottom of the page are the links to take you into the sections for articles on topics such as Raspberry Pi, Scratch and web design. For updates on new articles and projects, please subscribe to my newsletter!

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

Dip into the blog archive

June 2005 | September 2005 | January 2006 | March 2006 | April 2006 | May 2006 | June 2006 | July 2006 | August 2006 | September 2006 | October 2006 | November 2006 | December 2006 | February 2007 | March 2007 | April 2007 | May 2007 | June 2007 | July 2007 | August 2007 | September 2007 | October 2007 | November 2007 | December 2007 | January 2008 | February 2008 | March 2008 | April 2008 | May 2008 | June 2008 | July 2008 | August 2008 | September 2008 | October 2008 | November 2008 | December 2008 | January 2009 | February 2009 | March 2009 | April 2009 | May 2009 | June 2009 | July 2009 | August 2009 | September 2009 | October 2009 | November 2009 | December 2009 | January 2010 | February 2010 | March 2010 | April 2010 | May 2010 | June 2010 | August 2010 | September 2010 | October 2010 | November 2010 | December 2010 | March 2011 | April 2011 | May 2011 | June 2011 | July 2011 | August 2011 | September 2011 | October 2011 | November 2011 | December 2011 | January 2012 | February 2012 | March 2012 | June 2012 | July 2012 | August 2012 | September 2012 | October 2012 | December 2012 | January 2013 | February 2013 | March 2013 | April 2013 | June 2013 | July 2013 | August 2013 | September 2013 | October 2013 | November 2013 | December 2013 | January 2014 | February 2014 | March 2014 | April 2014 | May 2014 | June 2014 | July 2014 | August 2014 | September 2014 | October 2014 | November 2014 | December 2014 | January 2015 | February 2015 | March 2015 | April 2015 | May 2015 | June 2015 | September 2015 | October 2015 | December 2015 | January 2016 | February 2016 | March 2016 | May 2016 | July 2016 | August 2016 | September 2016 | October 2016 | November 2016 | December 2016 | January 2017 | July 2017 | August 2017 | October 2017 | November 2017 | January 2018 | February 2018 | August 2018 | October 2018 | November 2018 | December 2018 | January 2019 | March 2019 | June 2019 | August 2019 | September 2019 | October 2019 | January 2020 | February 2020 | March 2020 | April 2020 | May 2020 | June 2020 | September 2020 | October 2020 | December 2020 | January 2021 | February 2021 | May 2021 | June 2021 | October 2021 | November 2021 | December 2021 | January 2022 | February 2022 | March 2022 | May 2022 | July 2022 | August 2022 | September 2022 | December 2022 | March 2023 | April 2023 | May 2023 | June 2023 | October 2023 | November 2023 | January 2024 | February 2024 | May 2024 | June 2024 | July 2024 | September 2024 | Top of this page |