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There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

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Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#381
post #3

Many countries have deposits for single use bottles/cans but an electronic device with a lipo battery is seen as perfectly fine to throw away. These things should have 100 times the deposit amount of a can of soda with mandatory requirements for retailers to take the 'empties' back.

Why stop there? I think more or less every non-durable product manufacturer (say, lifespan less than 5 years) should be required to take the product back at end of life and dispose of it properly. Trash is an enormous externality. I'm talking about plastic clamshells, container lids, "disposable" storage containers, the lot.

It will raise the costs and the prices, people will be unhappy and this will result in far-right populist parties taking over.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#382
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with redundant power, cooling, etc The doors the system controls don't have any of this. Hell, the whole building doesn't have any of this. And it definitely doesn't have redundant internet connections to the cloud-based control plane. This is fear-mongering when a passive PC running a container image on boot will suffice plenty. For updates a script that runs on boot and at regular intervals that pulls down the la…

What updates? That would be on a local network and have no internet connection, if done right.

And? That doesn't mean, especially for a system with security impact (like door access), that it should never be updated.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#383
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with redundant power, cooling, etc The doors the system controls don't have any of this. Hell, the whole building doesn't have any of this. And it definitely doesn't have redundant internet connections to the cloud-based control plane. This is fear-mongering when a passive PC running a container image on boot will suffice plenty. For updates a script that runs on boot and at regular intervals that pulls down the la…

What updates? That would be on a local network and have no internet connection, if done right.

I am guessing the main attraction of such a system is that owners can set the cards remotely and get data about it (ie: who accessed and when)

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plastic ones are almost 100% recyclable Nope, that's a myth. Plastic is essentially unrecyclable. Some types of plastic can be made into "lower" quality types with lots of effort, but there is no circular reuse. The oil and plastic industries want to make you believe that this is all a solved problem, but it very much is not. In contrast, paper and wood products just rot away at the end of their life, and a new tre…

It's not a myth, you can make new items using recycled plastics. Of course, the recycled plastic doesn't have the same properties, but it doesn't mean that it can't be useful to reduce plastic production. Most plastic items do not require pristine materials anyway. It's the same for paper and cardboard, and it's much better to reuse it as much as possible to avoid cutting a tree. Letting it rot releases the same amou…

I'd argue it's kinda a myth, because I used to believe we could create a perfectly closed loop (you know, like the one the recycling symbol suggests) if only we could cleanly separate the materials (which in my imagination requires consumers to vigilantly separate the waste into dozens of different bins). I'm beginning to think I was wrong.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the self service kiosks/checkouts at supermarkets. So infuriating! Like I'd have to try to make something that slow myself on purpose! Besides the fact that scanning a barcode seems beyond much of the general population, they do it so sloooow.

The self service kiosks are intentionally throttled when scanning barcodes, at a guess to prevent people accidentally scanning the previous/wrong item - I once had some problems with one and a staff member flipped it into supervisor mode at which point they were able to scan at the same rate you'd see at a manned checkout.

Idt that's it, at least in my experience.

I scan as fast as a manned checkout (I did my time in retail). And I can scan my groceries at the speed whilst the people next to me spend most of their time rotating an item to find the barcode.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#386
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why recycle things that you can make them cheaper, with less resources and in higher quality from scratch? (The above is not so much about processors, but about plastics. As long as we are still burning any fossil fuels at all, we are probably better off holding off on recycling and instead burning the plastic for electricity to use ever so slightly less new fossil fuels for power, and instead use the virgin fossil f…

Is that a genuine question, or are you parodying an ignorant point of view? The World has limited resources, we don't have a spare. Do you need it spelling out more clearly?

That sounds like an almost Malthusian viewpoint.

The world has effectively infinite resources, getting more is usually just a matter of figuring out better extraction techniques or using better energy.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#387
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't explain why vapes are so rife elsewhere, particularly the UK. They're popular because, as the FT described, they're the ultimate product. Cool, cheap and addictive. https://www.ft.com/content/f72f17e4-a83d-4494-b1e7-a349cc7ae...

UK also banned them

It was one of those rush laws. They are still for sale, I walk past a "BULK OUTLET FOR ELF-BAR" shop sign when I walk to work.

It's one of those UK laws of "we are doing something!" but not actually do anything. These companies either pay backhand or know how to skirt around the rule. Who's enforcing it?

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#388
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everybody makes fun of paper straws. Yeah, because they suck . Uh, pun not intended. Paper straws get somewhat soggy and feel bad in your mouth. They are inferior to the plastic straws they purport to replace, so people resist them as much as they can. If you want to actually make a difference with an environmental effort, you need to make something superior . Nobody makes fun of LED light bulbs because (up front c…

I'm convinced paper straws are a psy-op by the plastics industry to make us hate environmentalists.

No it's to punish us when it isn't us causing the alleged plastic problem. When the orders went out all the western media took holidays to the far east to film garbage filled rivers in india, the philippines, indonesia. Your disposable plastic straw wasn't ending up there. Your plastic bottle might have been but that's only because of the recycling scam. It should have been burned like the oil it is.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#390

I just dont understand disposable vape. It's very easy to convert one into "reuseable": Add a charging port, a cheap li-po charger ic, some mechanism to let user refill the boiler. Disposeable vape should have not existed at first place

Some of them (actually most of them where I live) are rechargeable, they're not refillable and you can't change the atomizer (wick and coil). And the most expensive part of the vape is the tax on nicotine liquid, so there is little sense to hassle with wicks and refills.
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