One last mega-deal closed out an eventful 2024. On Tuesday, World Wide Technology (WWT), a tech services company based in St. Louis, announced it has agreed to acquire Canadian IT provider Softchoice in a deal that values the latter at C$1.8 billion (~$1.25 billion).The deal, which is all-cash, was unanimously approved by Softchoices board, but has yet to be voted on by the companys shareholders. Its also subject to court approval and customary closing conditions; the firms expect it to be finalized in late Q1 or early Q2 2025. If it isnt, Softchoice could be on the hook for a C$49 million (~$34 million) termination fee. Its board has retained the right to consider other offers, however. In a statement, Jim Kavanaugh, WWTs co-founder and CEO, said that Softchoices software, cloud, cybersecurity, and AI capabilities will complement WWTs existing product portfolio.Softchoice has been a transformative player in the IT industry for over 35 years, he said, and [this acquisition will] enable us to create even greater value for our clients striving to achieve their digital transformation goals.Softchoice was founded in 1989 by David Holgate and Jone Panavas to supply hard-to-find software products to enterprise customers. The company grew and evolved over the years, and now is one of the largest tech solutions and services providers in North America, according to Softchoices website.In 2013, private equity firm Birch Hill acquired Softchoice for C$412 million (~$286 million), per Crunchbase. Close to a decade later, in 2021, the company filed for an initial public offering on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) that valued it at around C$1.15 billion (~$800 million).Softchoices financials have been fairly strong as of late. In Q3 2024, the company reported a 10% year-over-year increase in gross profit and 8% uptick in net income, driven by an expanding customer base. Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) was $23.2 million for the quarter, up 2.2% from Q3 2023.WWT says its offer represents a total shareholder return of around 62% over Softchoices initial public offering price. Should the deal go through, Softchoice will delist from TSX.We are excited to join WWT, Softchoice president and CEO Andrew Caprara said in a press release. Its scale and global reach, customer base of large organizations, and industry leading infrastructure solutions are a perfect complement to our software and cloud focused solutions, our Canadian presence, and our strength in the North American mid-market.WWT, founded in 1990 by Kavanaugh and David Stewart, helps customers and partners conceptualize, test, and deploy tech solutions, including projects involving cloud computing, data center infrastructure, and app development. The companys annual revenue hovers around $20 billion, and it employs a workforce of more than 10,000 people.Softchoice is WWTs third acquisition in its history. In 2010, WWT acquired Baltimore, Maryland-based Performance Technology Group. And in 2015, WWT bought software company Asynchrony.

Ah, 2024: the year we debated how to pronounce hawk tuah, pondered the health benefits of eating rocks, and held space for a Broadway showstopper. It was a year when the discourse could feel shockingly pure and joyful at least for a few minutes, before we all came tumbling back down to reality.Online culture was more inescapable than ever this year, but where and how we engaged with that culture became increasingly fragmented. So here are the eight viral, much-memed moments that captured the year for me but feel free to let me know what I missed!A Willy Wonka experience turns sourAn organization calling itself the House of Illuminati promised a magical, Willy Wonka-themed experience, with AI-generated fliers advertising everything from Encherining Entertainment to an Imagnation Lab [sic]. The reality proved a bit less enchanting basically, just a sparsely decorated Glasgow warehouse. But while the experience may have been a letdown for anyone who actually paid for a ticket, it provided a seemingly unending source of bleakly hilarious images for online posters.Image: X/Disappointed OptimistGoogle decides its healthy to eat rocksAI-generated content literally moved to the top of our search results, with Google pushing an AI Overviews feature that proved less than entirely reliable. Some of the results that went viral in the first few days after launch included instructions to add glue to pizza, stare into the sun for up to half an hour, and eat one small rock per day. And while Google quickly removed the most high-profile of the groan-worthy results, the debacle illustrated how dumb an AI-centric future could actually be.The internet celebrates Brat summerMore than just an album, Charli XCXs Brat was a vibe, defined by lime green and a celebration of being (in the artists words) that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes. If that sounds a bit vague, dont worry about it: Its brat. Youre brat. Thats brat. For a brief, shining moment, even Kamala Harris was brat.The Olympics are fun againThe 2020 Summer Olympics took place in the shadow of a pandemic (the games didnt even happen until 2021), but this years event marked a return to delightful form. For American viewers, it helped that streaming service Peacock figured out how to showcase the events glorious variety. There were genuinely heartwarming moments, like Celine Dions performance of an Edith Piaf classic, but the internets true heroes were more offbeat, from the unflappability of Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikec to the wild moves of Australian breakdancer Raygun.Moo Deng bites her way into our heartsWith a name meaning bouncy pork, this pygmy hippopotamus quickly became, according to a Today Show host, the hottest new It girl on the planet. Footage of Moo Deng living her life in Thailands Khao Kheow Open Zoo took over the internet, thanks to her diminutive size, her feisty-but-harmless bites, and her cute screams. Of course, even something as seemingly pure and delightful as a cute baby hippo had its dark side, as the zoo had to deal with tourists throwing things at poor Moo Deng.The stars of Wicked hold space and fingersWicked was everywhere this fall, as a massive marketing push turned the film into the highest-grossing Broadway adaptation ever. But the biggest moment from the campaign was emphatically unscripted, with stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande seemingly overwhelmed when a journalist told them people are taking the lyrics to Defying Gravity and really holding space with that creating the unforgettable image of Grande reaching over and clutching one of Erivos fingers.The Hawk Tuah girl monetizes her 15 minutes of fame2024s most 2024 celebrity was Hailey Welch, a young woman who became famous for her colorful answer to the question, Whats one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time? Welch decided to capitalize on her notoriety by selling merch, starting a podcast, and even launching the HAWK memecoin. That last part ended badly, with the majority of tokens sold off in what appears to be a classic crypto rug pull. (Welch has denied any wrongdoing.)Bluesky goes from open source underdog to serious social media competitorBluesky opened to the public in February, and a few months after creating an initial identity as scrappy, leftist alternative to X, it shot to the top of the app charts first in Brazil (where X was briefly banned), then in the United States (after Donald Trump won the presidential election with backing from X owner Elon Musk). This, perhaps inevitably, led to hand-wringing thinkpieces about liberal echo chambers, as well as questions about how Blueskys newfound popularity might dilute its good vibes and glorious weirdness.

For the past few years, TechCrunch has looked back at some of the worst, badly handled data breaches and security incidents in the hope maybe! other corporate giants would take heed and avoid making some of the same calamities of yesteryear. To absolutely nobodys surprise, here we are again this year listing much of the same bad behavior from an entirely new class of companies plus, some bonus (dis)honorable mentions from the year that you mightve missed.23andMe blamed users for its massive data breachLast year, genetic testing giant 23andMe lost the genetic and ancestry data on close to 7 million customers, thanks to a data breach that saw hackers brute-force access to thousands of accounts to scrape data on millions more. 23andMe belatedly rolled out multi-factor authentication, a security feature that could have prevented the account hacks.Within days of the new year, 23andMe took to deflecting the blame for the massive data theft onto the victims, claiming that its users did not sufficiently secure their accounts. Lawyers representing the group of hundreds of 23andMe users who sued the company following the hack said the finger-pointing was nonsensical. U.K. and Canadian authorities soon after announced a joint investigation into 23andMes data breach last year.23andMe later in the year laid off 40% of its staff as the beleaguered company faces an uncertain financial future as does the companys vast bank of its customers genetic data.Change Healthcare took months to confirm hackers stole most of Americas health dataChange Healthcare is a healthcare tech company few had heard about until this February when a cyberattack forced the company to shut down its entire network, prompting immediate and widespread outages across the United States and grinding much of the U.S. healthcare system to a halt. Change, owned by health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, handles billing and insurance for thousands of healthcare providers and medical practices across the U.S., processing somewhere between one-third and half of all U.S. healthcare transactions each year.The companys handling of the hack caused by a breach of a basic user account with a lack of multi-factor authentication was criticized by Americans who couldnt get their medications filled or hospital stays approved, affected healthcare providers who were going broke as a result of the cyberattack, and lawmakers who grilled the companys chief executive about the hack during a May congressional hearing. Change Healthcare paid the hackers a ransom of $22 million which the feds have long warned only helps cybercriminals profit from cyberattacks only to have to pony up a fresh ransom to ask another hacking group to delete its stolen data.In the end, it took until October some seven months later to reveal that 100 million-plus people had their private health information stolen in the cyberattack. Granted, it must have taken a while, since it was by all accounts the biggest healthcare data breach of the year, if not ever.Synnovis hack disrupted U.K. healthcare services for monthsThe NHS suffered months of disruption this year after Synnovis, a London-based provider of pathology services, was hit by a ransomware attack in June. The attack, claimed by the Qilin ransomware group, left patients in south-east London unable to get blood tests from their doctors for more than three months, and led to the cancellation of thousands of outpatient appointments and more than 1,700 surgical procedures.In light of the attack, which experts say could have been prevented if two-factor authentication had been in place, Unite, the U.K.s leading trade union, announced that Synnovis staff will strike for five days in December. Unite said the incident had an alarming impact on staff who have been forced to work additional hours and without access to essential computer systems for months while the attack has been dealt with.It remains unknown how many patients are affected by the incident. The Qilin ransomware group claims to have leaked 400 gigabytes of sensitive data allegedly stolen from Synnovis, including patient names, health system registration numbers, and descriptions of blood tests.Snowflake customer hacks snowballed into major data breachesCloud computing giant Snowflake found itself this year at the center of a series of mass hacks targeting its corporate customers, like AT&T, Ticketmaster, and Santander Bank. The hackers, who were later criminally charged with the intrusions, broke in using login details stolen by malware found on the computers of employees at companies that rely on Snowflake. Because of Snowflakes lack of mandated use of multi-factor security, the hackers were able to break into and steal vast banks of data stored by hundreds of Snowflake customers and hold the data for ransom.Snowflake, for its part, said little about the incidents at the time, but conceded that the breaches were caused by a targeted campaign directed at users with single-factor authentication. Snowflake later rolled out multi-factor-by-default to its customers with the hope of avoiding a repeat incident.Columbus, Ohio sued a security researcher for truthfully reporting on a ransomware attackWhen the city of Columbus, Ohio reported a cyberattack over the summer, the citys mayor Andrew Ginther moved to reassure concerned residents that stolen city data was either encrypted or corrupted, and that it was unusable to the hackers who stole it. All the while, a security researcher who tracks data breaches on the the dark web for his job found evidence that the ransomware crew did in fact have access to residents data at least half a million people including their Social Security numbers and drivers licenses, as well as arrest records, information on minors, and survivors of domestic violence. The researcher alerted journalists to the data trove.The city successfully obtained an injunction against the researcher from sharing evidence that he found of the breach, a move seen as an effort by the city to silence the security researcher rather than remediate the breach. The city later dropped its lawsuit.Salt Typhoon hacked phone and internet providers, thanks to a U.S. backdoor lawA 30-year-old backdoor law came back to bite this year after hackers, dubbed Salt Typhoon one of several China-backed hacking groups laying the digital groundwork for a possible conflict with the United States were discovered in the networks of some of the largest U.S. phone and internet companies. The hackers were found accessing the real-time calls, messages, and communications metadata of senior U.S. politicians and high-ranking officials, including presidential candidates.The hackers reportedly broke into some of the companies wiretap systems, which the telcos were required to set up following the passing of the law, dubbed CALEA, in 1994. Now, thanks to the ongoing access to these systems and the data that telecom companies store on Americans the U.S. government is advising U.S. citizens and senior Americans to use end-to-end encrypted messaging apps so that nobody, not even the Chinese hackers, can access their private communications.MoneyGram, the U.S. money transfer giant with more than 50 million customers, was hit by hackers in September. The company confirmed the incident more than a week later after customers experienced days of unexplained outages, disclosing only an unspecified cybersecurity issue. MoneyGram didnt say whether customer data had been taken, but the U.K.s data protection watchdog told TechCrunch in late September that it had received a data breach report from the U.S.-based company, indicating that customer data had been stolen.Weeks later, MoneyGram admitted that hackers had swiped customer data during the cyberattack, including Social Security numbers and government identification documents, as well as transaction information, such as dates and the amounts of each transaction. The company admitted that the hackers also stole criminal investigation information on a limited number of customers. MoneyGram still hasnt said how many customers had data stolen, or how many customers it had directly notified.Hot Topic stays mum after 57 million customer records spill onlineWith 57 million customers affected, the October breach of U.S. retail giant Hot Topic goes down as one of the largest-ever breaches of retail data. However, despite the massive scale of the breach, Hot Topic has not publicly confirmed the incident, nor has it alerted customers or state offices of attorneys general about the data breach. The retailer also ignored TechCrunchs multiple requests for comment.Breach notification site Have I Been Pwned, which obtained a copy of the breached data, alerted close to 57 million affected customers that the stolen data includes their email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, purchases, their gender, and date of birth. The data also included partial credit card data, including credit card type, expiry dates, and the last four digits of the card number.Bonus dis(honorable) mentions:AT&T denied a massive data breach until it couldntAT&Ts first data breach of the year saw more than 73 million customer records dumped online, three years after a hacker posted a smaller sample on a known cybercrime forum. AT&T persistently denied the cache belonged to the company, saying it had no evidence of a data breach. That was until a security researcher discovered that some of the encrypted data found in the dataset was easy to decipher. Those unscrambled records turned out to be account passcodes, which could be used to access AT&T customer accounts. The researcher alerted TechCrunch, and we in turn alerted AT&T, prompting the phone giant to mass-reset the account passcodes of some 7.6 million current customers and notify tens of millions more.SEC fines four cyber companies for downplaying their own breachesNot even cybersecurity companies are immune from breaches, but how four firms handled their cybersecurity scandals this year prompted regulators to impose rare fines for their misconduct. The companies, Avaya, Check Point, Mimecast, and Unisys paid a collective $6.9 million in fines for a range of violations that included negligently downplaying and minimizing the damage of their own breaches stemming from the 2019 SolarWinds espionage attack, per the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.In May, a spyware app called pcTattletale was hacked and its website defaced with downloadable links to archives of data stolen from the companys servers, exposing data on some 138,000 customers who signed up to use the surveillance service. Instead of notifying affected individuals of the breach and those whose devices were compromised without their knowledge the companys founder told TechCrunch that he deleted everything because the data breach could have exposed my customers. pcTattletale, which subsequently shut down following the breach, is the latest in a long list of stalkerware and spyware makers that have lost or exposed data on spyware victims in recent years.Brainstack outed its involvement with mSpy after breachAnother prolific spyware, mSpy, also had a major data breach this year that exposed emails sent to and from the customer support email system dating back to 2014. The emails also exposed the real-world Ukrainian company, Brainstack, that was secretly behind the operation. The company did not dispute the claim when contacted by TechCrunch. Weeks later, Brainstack issued a takedown notice to the hosting provider of DDoSecrets, a transparency collective that hosts a copy of the leaked mSpy data, demanding that the web host takes down the site for hosting confidential corporate data belonging to MSpy, a brand of our company. The web host, FlokiNET, denied the request and instead published the takedown notice, which confirmed that Brainstack was behind mSpys operation as the prior evidence suggested.Evolve Bank, a financial giant that provides service to a number of growing fintech startups, revealed in May that it was hacked by the LockBit ransomware gang, exposing private financial data on around 7.6 million people. As affected startups began to scramble to understand the scale of the breachs impact on their businesses, Evolve opted to send a cease and desist letter to the writer of a respected financial newsletter who was reporting on the ongoing incident, who continued to do so despite the banks spurious legal threat.

Pilaster PuzzleSix Columns, a home by 31/44 Architects for cofounder Will Burges, is raw and warm at onceByJack Murphy December 31, 2024Located outside London, Six Columns features a brick frontage and sloped roof (Nick Dearden)SHARERuins have long been a capital-R Romantic source of inspiration for architects. The formal references and physicalspoliaof prior epochs often serve as the inspirational building blocks for tomorrows architecture. Lately, one contemporary flavor of this inspirational search has flourished among British architects who generationally follow practices like David Chipperfield or Caruso St John and among whom the legacy of figures like Louis Kahn still lingers. Here a sense of solemn spatial expression is joined with a still-life appreciation of domestic messiness and the tightening belts of the U.K.s climate goals. One of the best expressions of this sensibility is Six Columns, a ground-up home designed by Will Burges of31/44 Architectsfor his family. The residence, massed in three wings, occupies a sloping, trapezoidal site outside of London that used to be a side garden. Perhaps at a distance it looks typical with its brick frontage and sloped roof, but up close things veer into more expressive territory. At the ground level, bricks are set in a staggered texture or with small vertical apertures, and one encounters a (perhaps unnecessary?) column that proudly supports a beam on the way to the front door, which itself is set next to a green-marble panel that feels like a Milanese facade. Above, six (perhaps eponymous?) columnspilasters, technicallyare set on either side of a wide glazed opening that brings light into the stairwell.Read more about the house on aninteriormag.com. United Kingdom

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A periodical store in Santa Fe, NMGetty ImagesAs 2024 comes to a close, here's a look back at some of the tech stories that caught my eye in the past year. These articles deliver perspectives on enterprise AI adoption and implementation, the growing pains of digital infrastructure, new cybersecurity vulnerabilities, how overlooking past warnings about technological dependence can lead to devastating failures and how the new business and social dynamics in an increasingly AI-driven world.AI and The Last MileBy Hollis Robbins, Anecdotal, November 15As AI becomes increasingly integrated into daily decision-making, Robbins introduces the concept of the "last mile," the crucial 5% to 15% gap between algorithmic recommendations and human judgment. She argues that while AI promises to democratize services, it's creating a new form of inequality where human insight becomes a luxury good, suggesting AI might inadvertently be creating a new kind of digital divide.How Companies Can Use AI to Find and Close Skills GapsBy Brian Eastwood, MIT Sloan Management Review, June 10A study from MIT's Center for Information Systems Research reveals how companies like Johnson & Johnson are using AI-powered "skills inference" to quantify skills proficiency, identify gaps, and transform workforce development. The research shows this approach has increased participation in professional development programs by 20% while providing executives with valuable heat-map data that assists in strategic workforce planning. It also introduces the concept of a "career lattice" rather than a traditional career ladder.MORE FOR YOUEnterprise Philosophy and The First Wave of AIBy Ben Thompson, Stratechery, September 24Thompson draws a compelling parallel between AI's enterprise adoption and the first wave of computing in the 1960s and 70s. While most AI discussions focus on consumer applications and employee productivity, he argues the real transformation will mirror how mainframe computers revolutionized back-office operations. The piece suggests that like early computing, AI's most significant initial impact will come from top-down enterprise implementation rather than grassroots adoption.Scaling: The State of Play in AIBy Ethan Mollick, One Useful Thing, September 16Mollick breaks down AI development through the lens of "scaling laws," the observation that larger AI models consistently outperform smaller ones. He introduces a novel generational framework for understanding AI models and reveals that beyond increasing model size, AI capabilities can be enhanced through increased "thinking" time during operation, suggesting two distinct paths for future AI advancement.Boards Need a New Approach to TechnologyBy Tarun Khanna, Mary C. Beckerle, and Nabil Y. Sakkab, Harvard Business Review, September-OctoberMost corporate boards remain too focused on defense when it comes to technology, emphasizing security and digitization while missing broader opportunities in areas such as new materials, space science, and genomics. Drawing from experiences at companies like AES and Altria, the authors make the case for dedicated board technology committees to help identify and prioritize new opportunities, mitigate appropriate risks, and shepherd core technologies through development. As only 36% of Fortune 100 boards currently have such committees, the authors argue that more companies need to shift to a more offensive stance toward technology.The Great Repatriation? IT Leaders Reset Cloud Strategies to Optimize ValueBy Mary K. Pratt, CIO.com, July 22As companies mature in their cloud journey, many IT leaders are strategically moving select workloads back from public cloud to on-premises environments. About 80% of organizations anticipate some level of repatriation in the next year, driven by concerns over costs, data privacy, and compliance. This represents a refinement of cloud strategies rather than a wholesale rejection, with companies adopting more nuanced hybrid approaches that place workloads where they make the most sense, whether in public cloud, private data centers, or edge computing environments.Pagers Attack Brings to Life Long-Feared Supply Chain ThreatBy Eva Dou and Gerrit De Vynck, The Washington Post, September 19A devastating attack in Lebanon in which thousands of pagers were rigged to explode has exposed critical vulnerabilities in global electronics supply chains. The incident goes beyond previous supply chain infiltrations, like the NSA's interception of Cisco devices or Israel's past use of rigged cell phones for targeted assassinations. The event demonstrates the increasing difficulty and complexity of securing modern electronics against adversaries, challenges which could accelerate efforts by some organizations to relocate critical technology manufacturing domestically.Y2K Sent A Warning. The CrowdStrike Outage Shows We Failed to Heed ItBy Zachary Loeb, TIME, July 24The CrowdStrike software update failure, which caused widespread Windows outages across various industries earlier this year, mirrors the disasters predicted during Y2K. While Y2K was averted through concentrated effort, its key warning about systemic vulnerability went unheeded. The article suggests that, like Y2K, the CrowdStrike incident offers another opportunity to address the "shortsighted thinking" in technology infrastructure and increasing dependence on interconnected systems that can allow for scenarios where a single point of failure can cascade into widespread disruption.Bill Gates Never LeftBy Ashley Stewart, Business Insider, April 30A revealing investigation shows that despite his public departure following misconduct allegations in 2021, Gates remains deeply influential at Microsoft, particularly in shaping its AI strategy. Through internal memos and private meetings, he has been quietly orchestrating Microsoft's AI transformation, including its crucial partnership with OpenAI, all while CEO Satya Nadella publicly distances the company from its founder. The article argues that this behind-the-scenes involvement has been crucial to Microsofts emergence as an AI leader.Looking for AI Use-CasesBy Benedict Evans, ben-evans.com, April 17Evans suggests that while chatbots show immense promise, widespread adoption still faces two key challenges: technical limitations and use-case discovery. Drawing parallels to VisiCalc's success with accountants in 1982, he suggests that rather than becoming a universal tool, AI might follow SQL's path, becoming a powerful underlying technology packaged into thousands of specific applications that solves distinct problems for particular users.Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. He has written three bestselling books, including his latest Getting to Nimble. He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.

What just happened? As AMD's recently launched Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs dominate sales charts and mobile users anticipate the company's next-gen APUs, news regarding Zen 5's Fire Range laptop CPUs has been scant. A mysterious Asus gaming notebook benchmark that appeared on Christmas might be the first hint of an impending Dragon Range successor. An Asus ROG laptop with an unnamed AMD engineering sample processor was recently discovered on Geekbench. An established leaker believes it might be one of the earliest sightings of a CPU from the company's upcoming Fire Range lineup.The device's Geekbench AI scores don't offer a clear picture of real-world performance. However, it is the first ROG Strix G-series laptop with an AMD processor to appear since the 2023 editions, which featured Zen 4 Ryzen 7000HX Dragon Range chips. The 2024 variants, including the most recent G16, exclusively use Intel Alder Lake CPUs.AMD announced Fire Range alongside the other Zen 5 variants earlier this year, but the laptop processors have received much less attention than their desktop and integrated brethren. The socketable Ryzen 9000 Granite Ridge chips launched in August to a positive reception, with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D taking the gaming CPU throne.Meanwhile, the Ryzen AI chips and their larger AI Max cousins recently began appearing in mobile gaming devices. The AI 9 370 and closely related Z2 Extreme are expected to power a new generation of portable PCs, while the AI Max appeared in a recently leaked Asus 2-in-1.Click to enlargeThe new ROG Strix chip is labeled with a nondescript sample number, but its specs suggest it might be a high-end Ryzen 9 model. Its 16 cores, 32 threads, and 2.5GHz base frequency indicate a follow-up to the 7945HX or 7945HX3D. // Related StoriesFire Range will likely compete against Intel's upcoming Arrow Lake Core Ultra 200HX CPUs. Little is known about them, but the top-end model might feature 24 cores and a 5.5GHz boost clock. Intel is set to unveil Core Ultra 200H and 200HX during the first quarter of 2025.At the other end of the laptop stack, AMD has also remained silent on Krackan Point, its upcoming lineup of budget laptop APUs. A Geekbench AI test for an engineering sample appeared in November, and the company is expected to unveil devices using the chips sometime next year.

WTF?! Far less than a quarter of e-waste generated globally is properly collected, treated, and recycled, according to the UN. That's why repurposing and extending the lifespan of discarded electronics is so crucial. One person has done just that, with a remarkable home charging system created by repurposing over a thousand used laptop batteries. This remarkable feat has been running successfully for an astonishing eight years without a single battery replacement, as detailed by the creator, Glubux, on the online forum Second Life Storage.The setup is housed in a somewhat unassuming shed 50 meters (164 feet) away from the individual's residence, but its purpose is anything but ordinary. It combines old laptop batteries with solar panels to create an off-grid power supply, essentially turning a pile of e-waste into a sustainable energy solution.Despite the unconventional nature of this system, there have been no reports of fire hazards or swollen battery issues throughout its nearly decade-long operation. In fact, Glubux claims he can power his entire house from it, including the washing machine.The project's origins can be traced back to November 2016, when the creator shared his initial plans on the forum. At the time, he had already begun producing part of his electricity needs with a modest 1.4kW solar panel array, an old 24V 460Ah forklift battery, charge controllers, and a 3kVA inverter.However, Glubux aimed to expand his setup by constructing a dedicated shed to house additional batteries and charge controllers/inverters. He had already amassed around 650 laptop batteries and had started sorting and assembling them into packs, each designed to hold approximately 100Ah by carefully matching the number of cells and using copper wiring for efficient connections. // Related StoriesWhile some initial hiccups arose, such as uneven discharge rates among packs with different cell counts, the creator quickly adapted by rebalancing the packs and adding cells where needed. Eventually, he ended up using over a thousand laptop batteries.If you're wondering why the batteries in the photos don't resemble your typical laptop power pack, that's because laptop batteries have historically been multiple battery cells housed within a single casing. However, in this ingenious setup, Glubux took those individual cells and assembled them into their own customized racks a process that likely required a fair bit of elbow grease and technical know-how, but one that has ultimately paid off in spades.Fast-forward to the present day, and a recent update from Sunday revealed that the setup has been running without a hitch for eight years, with not a single laptop battery cell requiring replacement. Glubux has also upgraded his solar panel array to 24 units rated at 440W peak each, providing ample power generation capacity, especially during the winter months.