The world generates tons of electronic waste every year, leaving a profound impact on the environment. For tech enthusiasts, unused or broken electronics might be piling up in your garage or storage, but there’s hope. 

Transforming old electronic projects into green solutions is good for the planet and offers an opportunity for you to get creative and make the most out of the technology you love. Here are some clever ways to reduce your e-waste and put those old devices to use. 

1. Donate Working Electronics 

These professionals also understand more niche topics like the packaging requirements for battery disposal and its importance. Many of these centers ensure proper disposal of harmful components, such as lithium-ion batteries or toxic chemicals. 

Some tech companies, like Apple or Best Buy, run recycling programs that collect used electronics at no charge to make the process easier. Always check that the battery compartment is empty before recycling and look for separate battery drop-off locations nearby. 

4. Sell Usable Parts 

Old tech often holds more value than you think, especially when you break it down into parts. Sell components like graphics cards, memory sticks, and processors individually via online marketplaces to other people who are working on repairs or upgrades. 

Selling these usable pieces allows other tech enthusiasts to extend the lifespan of their devices with affordable options. Before listing anything for sale, test component functionality and provide detailed descriptions for potential buyers. 

5. Upcycle Into Art 

Turn outdated circuit boards, wires, and other electronic components into unique art pieces that add character to your home or office. Circuit boards, with their intricate designs, look great as the foundation for creative sculptures. You might also fashion jewelry, such as earrings or pendants, from compact mechanical parts. 

Upcycling is an excellent way to showcase your love for technology while turning old electronics into greener solutions. Online platforms like Pinterest or Etsy have a wealth of inspiration for creating tech-inspired art.

6. Refurbish and Reuse 

Refurbishing old devices gives them a second life and keeps them out of landfills. Whether it’s a forgotten smartphone or a dusty tablet, replacing damaged screens, upgrading components, or repairing ports makes them useful again. Many online repair guides and tools are available to help you get started. You can also consult local repair services if you’re not confident handling electronics yourself. 

7. Compost Bio-Plastics 

Certain biodegradable electronics are now available on the market,  and if you’ve been a part of such innovative projects, consider composting them correctly. Bio-plastics offer an environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional, toxic materials used in items like device casings. 

After removing and recycling the electronic components, check the manufacturer’s guidance on how to safely compost the biodegradable parts. Composting allows these materials to break down naturally, which reduces their impact on the environment and enriches the soil. 

8. Convert to Smart Devices 

When you’re not ready to let go of your older tech, repurpose and upgrade it to serve modern smart functions. For example, an old Android phone can become a home security camera using apps specialized for that purpose. Similarly, you could repurpose a tablet as a digital cookbook or an extra monitor for your workstation. 

Many tutorials are available online to guide you through these transformations, which require minimal hassle and tools. This approach creates value without needing to purchase an entirely new device. 

9. Create Educational Displays 

Old electronic devices teach others about technology, especially young learners who are curious about how things work. Carefully dismantling items like computers or gaming consoles provides the components to create displays showcasing their inner workings. 

Label each part to explain its role in the device to provide a hands-on learning experience. Through education, older electronics continue to serve a vital purpose. Set up these displays in classrooms, community libraries, or science fairs to spark curiosity and inspire creativity in future tech enthusiasts. 

10. Transform Into Furniture 

For larger pieces of electronics, such as CRT TVs or bulky desktop computers, consider turning them into one-of-a-kind furniture. Hollow out an old TV and convert it into a fish tank or shelf. Similarly, a CPU tower might make a great base for a table or storage unit. 

These projects require minimal additional materials but do call for a touch of creativity and craftsmanship. By upcycling into tech furniture, you keep larger items from becoming waste while adding quirky, functional pieces to your space. 

Technology evolves quickly, and it’s easy for electronic projects to fall by the wayside. By thinking creatively and sustainably, old devices find new life, reduce waste, and even educate or inspire other learners and enthusiasts. Begin giving a second life to your retired projects today and make a meaningful difference. 

To work around those rules, the Humanizer skill tells Claude to replace inflated language with plain facts and offers this example transformation:

Before: “The Statistical Institute of Catalonia was officially established in 1989, marking a pivotal moment in the evolution of regional statistics in Spain.”

After: “The Statistical Institute of Catalonia was established in 1989 to collect and publish regional statistics.”

Claude will read that and do its best as a pattern-matching machine to create an output that matches the context of the conversation or task at hand.

An example of why AI writing detection fails

Even with such a confident set of rules crafted by Wikipedia editors, we’ve previously written about why AI writing detectors don’t work reliably: There is nothing inherently unique about human writing that reliably differentiates it from LLM writing.

One reason is that even though most AI language models tend toward certain types of language, they can also be prompted to avoid them, as with the Humanizer skill. (Although sometimes it’s very difficult, as OpenAI found in its yearslong struggle against the em dash.)

Also, humans can write in chatbot-like ways. For example, this article likely contains some “AI-written traits” that trigger AI detectors even though it was written by a professional writer—especially if we use even a single em dash—because most LLMs picked up writing techniques from examples of professional writing scraped from the web.

Along those lines, the Wikipedia guide has a caveat worth noting: While the list points out some obvious tells of, say, unaltered ChatGPT usage, it’s still composed of observations, not ironclad rules. A 2025 preprint cited on the page found that heavy users of large language models correctly spot AI-generated articles about 90 percent of the time. That sounds great until you realize that 10 percent are false positives, which is enough to potentially throw out some quality writing in pursuit of detecting AI slop.

Taking a step back, that probably means AI detection work might need to go deeper than flagging particular phrasing and delve (see what I did there?) more into the substantive factual content of the work itself.

from the kashing-in dept

Kash Patel, FBI Director, is not very good at his job. There are plenty of examples to demonstrate that notion, from him apparently completely misunderstanding the purpose and protections of the 2nd Amendment and Minnesota gun laws (whatever your thoughts on gun rights might generally be), to his gathering of barely trained castoffs to serve in the FBI, to the absolute wild waste of resources he spent last summer trying to root out independent thought within his agency. None of this is justice. None of it is good policing. All of it is the result of putting a podcast host shitposter in charge of America’s federal police force. Ol’ Crazy-Eyes just might not be the right person for the role.

And if you’re going to be the leader of a federal police force, one of the skills you probably want to have is the capability of shutting the fuck up. Kash can’t do this. Rather than simply not answering, it appears Patel may have lied to Congress about the Epstein files (remember those?). In the immediate aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination, Patel blabbed about suspects all over social media and elsewhere, leading to wasted time and attention on completely innocent parties.

And, now, in the wake of an operation by the FBI that would appear to violate Mexican law, Patel decided to gush about the whole thing on the internet. What other option did he have, I wonder?

Ryan Wedding is a former Olympian who, by all accounts, turned himself into a violent cocaine drug kingpin working with a Mexican cartel. He was charged in Canada in 2015 for cocaine trafficking and in America in 2025 for that and for murder. Recently, Wedding found himself in American custody to face those charges. How that happened wasn’t initially disclosed in coverage of the arrest. But then Kash Patel got out his phone and decided to gush about the whole thing on internet.

On Friday, however, FBI Director Kash Patel announced the joint operation publicly on X. “Our FBI HRT teams executed with precision, discipline, and total professionalism alongside our Mexican partners to bring Ryan James Wedding back to face justice,” he wrote, sending shock waves through Mexico.

Except there’s a problem with that statement. A pretty big one, actually. Mexican law is very clear that foreign LEOs are not to operate on Mexican soil. That would make the FBI’s participation as outlined by Patel illegal. And that might create problems for his eventual prosecution and a really big headache for the Mexican government.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum scrambled to perform damage control, as foreign intervention in Mexico is politically toxic. She said that there was no U.S. involvement in the operation and that U.S. agents in Mexico are limited by law.

“I’m not going to get into a debate with the FBI director, nor do I want there to be a conflict,” Sheinbaum said at a press conference Tuesday. “What they, the U.S. authorities, told the Mexican authorities is that it was a voluntary surrender.” She pointed to a picture Wedding posted to his Instagram account at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico announcing that he was turning himself in.

Wedding’s lawyer disputes that account, because of course he did. Whether Wedding actually surrendered or not is unknown to me, of course, but I’ve been well-trained the past 13 months not to believe a single thing my government says, so who the fuck knows. Wedding’s lawyer claims he was handcuffed and transported to California and that this runs contrary to any claim any of this was voluntary. And because of all of this, the Mexican government now has both an internal problem and has to deal with an unreliable shitposting partner in the American government.

Patel’s rash decision to post about Wedding’s arrest online doesn’t help the situation right now. It opens Sheinbaum up to political attacks in Mexico and makes the U.S.-Mexico relationship even shakier. Under Trump, though, American law enforcement is playing fast and loose with not just the law but diplomatic relations.

I’m not exactly advocating that the American government carryout these illegal extraditions violating our allies’ own laws and then hiding it through silence. That would be crazy.

Instead, the point is that this administration’s goons, such as Kash Patel, are so shitty that they can’t even carry out such nefarious actions in silence because they can’t shut the fuck up about them.

Filed Under: claudia sheinbaum, doj, international incident, kash patel, mexico, ryan wedding, social media

NASA’s first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years won’t be getting underway this month after all.

It had been targeting February 6 for the launch of the much-anticipated Artemis II mission that will take four astronauts on a flight around the moon, but after issues surfaced during a critical preflight test on Tuesday, NASA decided that it won’t launch the SLS rocket until March at the earliest.

During the so-called “wet dress rehearsal” in which engineers fuel the rocket and go through the entire launch procedure without actually igniting the engines, a hydrogen leak was detected at the base of the SLS rocket.

The upcoming launch window runs from February 6 through 11, but NASA has decided it needs more time to review the situation, with a second rehearsal also likely. That’s meant pushing the launch date to March 6 at the earliest.

“With more than three years between SLS launches, we fully anticipated encountering challenges,” NASA chief Jared Isaacman wrote in a post on X on Tuesday. “That is precisely why we conduct a wet dress rehearsal. These tests are designed to surface issues before flight and set up launch day with the highest probability of success.”

The schedule update means that the Artemis II astronauts — NASA’s Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Christina Koch, together with the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen — will have a bit of extra time on terra firma before they blast to space.

It also means that another set of astronauts should be heading to orbit ahead of their lunar-bound colleagues. SpaceX’s Crew-12 — comprising NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, along with the European Space Agency’s Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — could be heading to the International Space Station as early as February 11.

At least, that had been the plan until Monday, when SpaceX said it was grounding its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket — the same vehicle type that will be carrying Crew-12 to orbit — after an issue occurred during a launch earlier that day when its upper stage failed to perform a deorbit burn as expected.

“Teams are reviewing data to determine root cause and corrective actions before returning to flight,” the company said in a post on X.

It’s unusual for the Falcon 9 to experience anomalies these days, so hopefully SpaceX can sort it out soon, paving the way for Crew-12’s ride to orbit next week as originally planned.

Tesla has officially released a fresh new All-Wheel Drive version of the Model Y, with prices starting at $41,990 in the US. This new variant adds not just dual-motor traction, but also a significant boost in acceleration to the more affordable end of the lineup, without breaking the bank.

Buyers in the United States now have five Model Y options to choose from, beginning with the Rear-Wheel Drive version for $39,990, followed by this shiny new All-Wheel Drive model for $41,990, the Premium Rear-Wheel Drive model for $44,990, the Premium All-Wheel Drive model for $48,990, and finally the Performance trim for $57,490.

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The new Standard All-Wheel Drive model follows the more stripped-down approach of the base Rear-Wheel Drive model. Inside, you’ll find black fabric seats with few outside color possibilities. The higher-end Premium trims include features such as a panoramic glass roof, greater premium audio, and ambient lighting. The standard issue is a set of 18-inch wheels, which are factory installed.

Performance-wise, the inclusion of a second motor up front makes a noticeable difference; 0 to 60 mph takes 4.6 seconds, which is significantly faster than the 6.8 seconds of the Rear-Wheel Drive. The top speed is a decent 125 mph. Let’s not forget about when all-wheel drive’s extra traction comes in handy: in the rain, snow, or on uneven surfaces, where rear-wheel drive alone can struggle to get a strong grip.

Range remains a big factor, and as expected, it settles at an EPA-estimated 294 miles per full charge. This is down from the Rear-Wheel Drive’s mileage of 321 miles, owing to the increased weight and power drain from the dual motors. Supercharger sessions still provide a nice boost, roughly 152 miles in 15 minutes, compared to the single-motor vehicle, which manages a little higher 160 miles.

Tesla knew precisely what they were doing when they introduced this new trim. Previously, if you wanted all-wheel drive, you had to upgrade to a far more expensive choice. So, for $2,000 more than the base model, you get a slew of significant improvements in terms of launch sensation and grip, as well as a minor drop in range that won’t affect most people’s daily trips.