Hi all. Slightly related to Linux because this ... or rather was ... about an Android tablet. Not a knockoff Alibaba tablet with no vowels in the brand name, an Acer Iconia One bought from Amazon in 2015. It served me well for quite a few years but, as always happens, support for updates ran out and it was replaced for daily use by an Amazon Fire 10 for which I paid almost the same amount (on Prime Day) as for the Acer a decade ago. This raised the issue of what to do with the old tablet, that was not only out of updates but also running much slower than the new stuff. I investigated the many "what can you do with an old tablet" articles and settled into turning the Iconia into a weather station that one could check at any time to see what was coming for the next six hours. It had been doing that task for about two years now, and was stationary and always plugged in. I was looking at it the other day, almost by accident, and noticed the back was much thicker than I recall. Everything was functional, and the tablet had barely been touched since given this role. I suspected something to do with the Lithium battery and immediately became wary. Was this going to be one of those times when the device caught fire or exploded? Some checking online led me to immediately turn off and unplug the device, and put it in the garage. Today I took it to the hazardous waste disposal depot on Ingram Drive (Lawrence/Keele area). Things were deteriorating fast. It had swollen so much that the screen had cracked. I drove to the dump gingerly as if I had a bomb in the car. After informing the depot staff of the nature of the tablet's battery, they were unfazed and had me just put it in the designated "electronic waste" portable dumpster, into which people had tossed their old printers, screens, faxes and a few desktop CPUs. At least it's a thick metal dumpster and any ... incident ... would certainly be well contained. Still, the disinterested response was a little surprising. I've also disconnected my Google account from the tablet, in case anyone has the bright idea to try restarting it. Lessons learned? 1. Routinely inspect any devices you have that contain lithium batteries, even if they're off. 2. Be especially careful with devices that are rarely unplugged such as old devices being repurposed as photo frames, clocks or weather stations. Overcharging is a common cause of such battery failure. 3. This doesn't just happen to Chinese mystery brands, it can happen to household names too. 4. Don't scavenge from electronic waste bins, you never know what's there. Hacklab swap events (the next one is sept 22 <https://hacklab.to/archives/junk-independence-day-5/>) are much more useful for this kind of thing. -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56