Comment by qwezxcrty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qwezxcrty | Hacker News Reader

I'm doing some trash dump diving in a swiss university where I'm studying at and got some nice stuff. For example, now I own a small collection of more than 15 photomultiplier tubes. Some nice (frequently in fully working condition) test equipment like a HP modulation domain analyzer (53310A) and some NI DAQ cards also appears seldomly. The 53310A survived like a miracle. Its front panel was buried beneath a CTI compressor that weighs more than 40kg, but it only suffered from minor damage of the case. The CRT is intact!

However I'm not entirely sure if this is legal and will not bring me trouble. Does these stuff still count as university property even if carelessly dumped into the SBB buckets in the recycling center (usually fenced and locked, but can be opened with student cards)?

I wanted to trash dump into the electronics at the local disposal center in Switzerland and they told me I couldn't because they need to destroy the stuff by law and punishable with 10.000 CHF if not. Don't know about an university though.

Would love to do that too, Swiss companies and universities are so wasteful it’s incredible what goes in the dumpster. It doesn’t even seem like universities try to sell their discarded equipment, they just dump it out of access to the public. How do you find these?

I'm doing my PhD there and from time to time need to throw away a few equipment that are genuinely non-reusable (dead lasers, for example) cleaned out from the labs. Then I got to know the recycling center on campus and developed a habit of looking around for things there.

Lucky you. I know companies and universities trash a lot of repairable or even perfectly good gear, but mere mortals can’t ever access it and so it’s “recycled” (whatever that means in practice)

Would love a connection if you or anyone else reading has one :)

In a reasonable country with reasonable laws, something being deliberately put in the trash by its owner should be considered an explicit surrender of ownership, but IANAL.

“res derelictae”

Keep the photomultipliers in the dark when not using. Some can be damaged by ambient light exposure, even when powered off.

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