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Apple will turn landfill gas into sweet electricity
Apple has been given permission by North Carolina to build a facility that uses the methane emitted from landfill waste to create electricity. The plant, which will be based in Catawba County, will stand for 16 years, with the option of a five-year extension should the parties agree. As 9to5Mac explains, it's an energy method that both generates power from waste and prevents the release of methane into the atmosphere. The news comes less than a day after the firm was given permission to begin reselling energy to power companies.
Landfill copy of Atari's Centipede donated to university
University of North Dakota's Special Collections department now houses a cartridge of the Atari 2600 game Centipede, dug up from a landfill in New Mexico last year. Assistant professor of history Bill Caraher participated in the dig and threw down $60 to buy the cartridge on eBay. "While I usually would not condone purchasing archaeological artifacts of any kind, these artifacts are somewhat different because they represent our very recent past," Caraher told the AP. "When I saw that the Smithsonian had received a game and several other major cultural institutions as well, I had to acquire one for UND to commemorate the university's participation in this unusual excavation." The Centipede cartridge marks an important moment in video game history – the crash of the industry in 1983. That year, Atari reportedly dumped truckloads of unsold copies of ET, Asteroids, Missile Command, Centipede and other games in the New Mexico landfill, and in 2014 a documentary team set about excavating the old, dirty games. Microsoft helped finance the excavation and the documentary Atari: Game Over, which explores the 1983 crash and subsequent landfill dig. Atari: Game Over premiered on Xbox in November. Once on eBay, the games sold individually for $50 to $1,500. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, picked up a copy of ET last year for its video game history collection. The University of North Dakota plans to invite people who participated in the excavation to a showing of Atari: Game Over in the spring, for a discussion of archaeology, media and video games as artifacts.
Atari 'E.T.' cartridges unearthed in landfill go up for auction on eBay
Normally we'd advise you to avoid terrible games, but here's one you might want to get your (gloved) hands on. E.T., the game that killed Atari and was famously unearthed in April at a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico, is now up for auction. To remind you, the existence of the ditched cartridges had been an Atari urban legend until a Microsoft-sponsored dig project proved the rumors true. Alamogordo's Tularosa Basin Historical Society, which arranged the excavation and owns the cartridges, put 99 of them up on eBay, each with a certificate of authenticity.
Report: New Mexican museum to sell disinterred E.T. cartridges
If you're in the market for a filthy yet arguably notable copy of the Atari 2600 debacle known as E.T., you may want to plan a trip to the New Mexico Museum of Space History. One month ago, Microsoft funded a dig in the Southwestern state in search of a fabled cache of E.T. cartridges reportedly dumped by Atari in the wake of the game's disastrous launch. After boring through 30 feet of human refuse, 1,300 of the cartridges were recovered. 700 of those historical artifacts will now be sold to the public, according to a decision by the Alamogordo City Commission. "We have been working with the space museum for curation, both for displaying and selling the games; they are now artifacts," Mayor Susie Galea told Polygon. "There are 700 that we can sell." It's currently unknown what price these unearthed cartridges will fetch, as Galea claims the city is still working to have the 700 pieces appraised. Once that's complete, they'll be handed over to the museum, complete with certificate of authenticity, just in case any enterprising New Mexicans hope to strike it rich by retrieving the more than a half a million E.T. cartridges that remain buried. [Image: Microsoft]
Take another look at the E.T. landfill excavation
Hundreds of people went out in the desert yesterday to watch an excavation for E.T., an Atari game so awful that thousands of copies were buried in an Alamogordo landfill. Microsoft and Lightbox plan on turning the dig into a documentary with a working title of Atari: Game Over. [Image: Microsoft]
Atari E.T. cartridge excavation back on track after delay
There are games that earn a negative tone in their word-of-mouth buzz, and then there are games that have truckloads of unsold copies buried in a landfill. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 is, according to legend, in the latter category. Curiosity makes people do strange things though, and Alamogordo News reports that Fuel Industries' plans to document an excavation for the supposedly buried cartridges is moving forward after the New Mexico Environment Department requested a more specific dig plan. Alamogordo News notes that Xbox Entertainment Studios and LightBox Entertainment are producing Fuel's dig for treasure, the story of which is planned to eventually air on Xbox. A Microsoft representative told Alamorgordo News that moves to begin digging up portions of the landfill are still being finalized. We admit that we'll probably watch the final product, but we can't help but wonder what they'll do with the truckloads of cartridges should they find them. Maybe they'll assemble a replica of the movie's spaceship? Perhaps they'll replace walkie-talkies in an alternate remastering of the film, where agents hurl the cartridges at Elliott to knock him off his bike and capture his extra-terrestrial friend. [Image: Shutterstock, Atari]
United Nations identifies e-waste as an urgent and growing problem, wants change
E-waste might be one of the biggest misnomers in the history of nomery -- the image it creates in the mind is of a bunch of email and document files clogging up your local internet pipes. The reality of it is that electronic waste is rapidly populating ever-growing landfill areas in so-called developing countries (they're poor, just call a spade a spade) and the issue has now garnered the attention of the United Nations. The UN Environment Programme has issued a wideranging report warning that e-waste in China and South Africa could double or even quadruple within the next decade, whereas India could experience a five-fold rise. Major hazards exist in the unregulated and informal recycling of circuit boards and techno gadgets, as processes like backyard incineration for the retrieval of gold generate toxic gases while also being wildly inefficient. The whole point of the report is to encourage some global cooperation in setting up modern and safe recycling facilities in the affected countries to ameliorate the problem, though being generally more careful in our consumption and disposal of electronics wouldn't do the environment's chances any harm either.
Freecycle meets iPod
Meet Matthew Smith. One day he decided to use a magnetic holder to hold his iPod in his car. Bad move. The magnet warped his hard drive, rendering it inoperable. So Smith turned to Freecycle, the Internet-based sharing community that prefers to gift unused items rather than to toss them into landfill. The freecyclers responded so enthusiastically that not only did he have enough parts to fix his own iPod, but also to repair and build a few more units. Which he gave away. So more people began to donate broken iPods to him, which he now fixes up and offers back out to his community. What a marvelous way to be socially responsible, environmentally conscious and spread the iPod love! TUAW salutes Matthew Smith.[via PowerPage]
