Better than throwing an old computer in the garbage.
People act like if you're not connecting through SSH that you'll magically set the internet on fire.
Not every connection needs to be secure. I don't care if hackers see me reading Radio France International.
I could have used any number of packages that would create a little host on the ESP8266, or something that sends out MQTT packages to another server, etc etc.
but you know what was quickest? Telnet server on port 23, open, blasting out the buffered serial data once every second. It just sits there and does this. And if I want the data I just point a dashboard to that IP at that port and out it flows. If the device loses power and reboots, it is back up in a fraction of a second.
Security? who cares. it's some random numbers on my internal home network.