America: Starting with Daily Intelligence-Chapter 224 - 152: Doorstep Recycling_2

After finishing the recycling work with Dominic, they notified Deshawn that they were done. She came out to check the warehouse, was very satisfied with their service, and paid them $50 for the recycling fees.

The two recorded the money in the recycling station’s ledger. Today, Dominic had already recycled almost $100 worth of cans at the recycling station.

Allen Zhang drove the van full of electronic waste back to the recycling station, dropped off Dominic, and then took out his phone to get in touch with Blitz.

Upon learning that Blitz wasn’t working that day and was doing network maintenance in Jason’s basement, Allen decided to head over to the community with a box of solid-state drives (SSDs).

Arriving at the familiar community, Allen saw that Black woman at the entrance again.

She recognized him instantly, but before she could block his path, Allen swiftly notified Jason to come and pick him up.

Allen Zhang: "That Black lady who could squash me to death with her backside is looking for trouble with me again, hurry up and come out to meet me!"

After receiving the message, Jason immediately ran out to rescue the General Sect Leader, explaining the situation to her.

The Black woman dismissed them with scorn: "You think I don’t recognize this Asian kid? I was just curious to see where he got this car from. You, this white boy, always act so secretive, I wonder what you’re up to. You’d better not let me catch you slipping!"

Allen Zhang and Jason were somewhat speechless. So this is the West Coast version of a nosy neighborhood watch.

But they still didn’t argue with her too much, and drove to the rented house. After parking, they moved a box of SSDs into the basement.

Once there, Allen saw bags of sorghum seeds being processed and packaged in batches.

The Mohawk-haired brothers, whom he had met once before, wore masks, rubber gloves, and aprons, and were packaging the sorghum seeds filtered out by the machines in plastic film bags, with an exhaust fan buzzing overhead. The room wasn’t too stuffy, but it looked like a greenhouse setup.

Fitz was sitting nearby working on a second-hand laptop, packing boxes and attaching mailing labels to orders, waiting for the courier company to pick them up.

"Weren’t you just selling sorghum seeds? You’ve really turned this into a seed plantation base."

Allen was shocked.

"Whatever we do, we have to be professional! If we don’t say it, who knows what we are actually doing? Others might think we’re dealing drugs, but we’re actually selling sorghum seeds, so we’re not worried about inspections. We are actually selling sorghum seeds, but many people who see these facilities online will definitely think we’re selling castor seeds!" Jason was full of pride.

He waved Allen into a partitioned area, where Allen saw several second-hand computers running programs, with bot software automatically replying and generating positive reviews and deleting posts.

Blitz was sitting next to the main computer, writing program code.

Seeing Allen, he smiled and greeted, "Allen, do you want me to take a look at your SSDs?"

"Exactly. I collected these with Dominic, some may be damaged, but others should still be usable. I feel like there might be something good inside."

Allen placed a box of SSDs aside.

Blitz glanced at the box, picked up a few SSDs to examine them more closely. There were some with 500 GB, others with 1 TB, and 2 TB ones were less common; some of the gold fingers on the edges of the SSDs were blackened.

He wondered, "Why do I feel like these have been used for mining?"

Without massive computational stress, it’s unlikely for normal use to cause the gold contacts to turn so black. A graphics card used normally for ten years would not show as much wear as a card used in a mining rig for six months.

"We did find that some of the graphics cards we collected had signs of being used for mining. Clearly, the previous owner had used them for mining for some time. Still, I don’t know if they made any money with it. The person also worked as a programmer in an electronics factory and brought home some defective electronic waste every day," Allen explained.

"That’s not surprising then. Many programmers have side jobs and collaborate with others to mine. Hackers plant Trojan viruses on websites, invade, and use other people’s computers to mine for them. Some do second-hand repair work," Blitz nodded.

"Actually, most of the graphics cards and chips on the market are defective. The more intact chips are made into the 4090 series, the defective ones into the 3070, the more defective ones into the 3060, and so on for lower-end graphics cards."

Blitz explained, "Most people buy graphics cards to play games, wasting their computational power. Since it’s recycling anyway, production lines make so many chips in one go, and only the few immaculate chips are qualified to be used in military and major companies’ computational facilities. The ordinary graphics cards that regular people buy are ninety-nine percent defective."

"Can you help me decrypt these SSDs, then? If there’s something good inside, I’ll definitely share the profits with you!" Allen said.

"No problem."

Blitz readily agreed, fetched some equipment from the storeroom, installed the SSDs one by one, connected them to the computer, started the software he wrote, and began testing to see if they were intact. The software could simultaneously test thirty SSDs for functionality.

The software lit up, and quickly went through a round, showing that out of the thirty SSDs, only three were in good working condition and could be used.