Sustainable Tech

People are keeping hardware a lot longer, an 8th gen i7 might not be as worthless as you think it is. Back on topic though, Best Buy typically offers free e-waste recycling. Could probably do a little better from an ethical standpoint, but could do a lot worse and we can almost guarantee you have one reasonably nearby.

For the hard drive though, I would never give anyone any hard drive you've owned ever unless you're absolutely 100% sure it has never processed any data you wouldn't want to be public. Remove the HDD and take it apart, the platters make fun mirrors.

You should have a municipal electronics recycling, but after 2025, just throw it in a river.

I don't know about your specific area, but there are charities and nonprofits that take old hardware, refurb it and give or sell for cheap to disadvantaged folks. I guess there's less need for them these days now that everyone has a phone, but there might be say, students that need one for typing stuff up, unemployed that need to write job applications, etc.

Set it to make the Wi-Fi an open access point. Set it to rotate through a list of SSIDs like:

• “Find a more ethical shop than Wal·mart”
• “Watch out for Walmartians”
• “It’s ethical to shoplift evil brands (Nestle, Coke, Pepsi, Kraft, Unilever, P&G)”
• “Never show your ID to ICE agents”
• “Learn Spanish. Fuck republicans.”

Then find a way to hide it in a wall at Wal·mart, wired to power. (edit) Maybe clean every hair follicle from the keyboard first, and wipe your fingerprints.

Perhaps have a captive portal but with no uplink. One that just redirects to a web server running on the laptop that shows content supporting whatever ethical cause you want to promote.

Maybe post the question here:

https://lemmy.sdf.org/c/retrocomputing

Someone there may want it for parts.