Random Questions

How risky is it to dispose of a dead laptop with the hard drive still inside?

If risky, what do I do to dispose of an old laptop

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Do you have some powerful magnets you can rub around in the hard drive area? (iirc powerful magnets will erase the hard drive?)

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Just take the hard drive out.
If the computer is trash you can just pry it open and not worry about the fiddly little screws. A kid would enjoy that job.

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What’s more, you can remove the platter from the drive enclosure (if it isn’t an SSD, I don’t know what the inside of an SSD looks like but there is no spinning platter that holds the data).

They look like this:

The small one is a laptop drive platter, and the big ones are from desktop/towers. You can drill holes in them to make sure they are unusable, or just keep them for novelty like I did :joy:.

Then send the laptop to electronics recycling (if it doesn’t work at all… But if it does possibly “work” some enterprising person might want to work on it to get it running again (it would need a new hard drive obviously, and possibly other components if something is non functional).

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I have a similar question. My phone was run over by a car and the screen doesn’t work but it is still able to connect (ie, it buzzes if it gets a text). Or it was before it shut down for lack of battery but now of course I wouldn’t be able to see to wake it back up.

What can I do to safely dispose of it? It is locked with a 4 digit code.

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You should be able to wipe it remotely, as if it were lost or stolen. Here are Android instructions: Find, secure, or erase a lost Android device - Google Account Help

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Or can you remove the sim card (if it has one)?

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That didn’t work before but I will charge and try it again.

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E sim!

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What is the best print-on-demand vendor? I have something (simple) I need to put on a shirt. (Just for me. And maybe one or two other people.) NEED. Anyone have first hand experience?

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Find someone local who does tshirts with a press and a cricut? I see posts asking for this all the time on my neighborhood moms facebook group and there are usually 30+ comments of people saying “I can do that! I’ll PM you!”

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If you can’t find a local crafter, I have used Zazzle.com a couple times. I can only vouch for them doing exactly what was promised, on time. The digital printing is good, but not as long-lasting as true screen printing, so it will fade after a few years of heavy wear.

Btw, if you only need 1 or 2 items and the image isn’t complicated, embroidery is sometimes cheaper than printing (which has more setup overhead).

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My wife used Custom Ink for this project, and they were great. They’re redoing the shirt for free because the black background of the image doesn’t blend into the shirt.

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Actually, after I posted I started thinking about embroidery! I only need (want) like 2.

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Wow I want to make this for my sister’s dog now!!!

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I saw an Instagram post about poor tongue posture (it sounds so fake!) being a thing that people with ADHD and Autism struggle with, and I was wondering if that’s true?

It sounds like a new trendy thing to make people feel bad about themselves.

BUT, the post claimed that your WHOLE tongue is supposed to touch the roof of your mouth when you’re at-rest, not just the tip of your tongue, and I definitely can’t maintain anything but the tip. I’ve always struggled with mouth breathing (really bad buck teeth as a kid, slightly deviated septum, allergies), and I’ve always felt like I had kind of a weak/recessed chin, and those were two of the things that were brought up as consequences of a narrow palate due to improper tongue position in childhood.

Is it all made up to make me self-conscious about a thing other people can’t even see? Or would I really benefit from learning a new way to hold my tongue?

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It’s minimally not described well, because tongues and the roof of the mouth are actually very complex objects spatially and like…no, I wouldn’t want my tongue root involved with the roof of my mouth in any way.

But otherwise, who knows? When I’m at rest, it varies between the tongue tip and the tongue body resting against the roots of my front teeth/my palate. Afaik I do not have autism or ADHD. I also have a very “normal” tongue and palate structurally.

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That may be my fault, I think they meant that your tongue should be touching the whole roof of your mouth, not just the tip of your tongue touching right behind your front teeth. Getting the root of your tongue up there would be…an issue, I think :slight_smile:

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It would be a strain for sure!

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I know a little bit about this! My baby maybe has a tongue tie (professional opinions vary), so that impacts his tongue positioning. Some providers will tell you that has long term health impacts, including what you’re saying. I looked into this and so far there is not mainstream scientific research that confirms that tongue tie/tongue position has impacts on older kids and adults. So obviously if it feels like something is wrong, listen to your gut, but don’t feel like you have to!

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