141–150 of 493 posts
By law, neither electronics nor batteries can be disposed of with generic waste. This is the case in the EU, at least. So how are people then disposing these devices? Disclaimer: I do know the answer, but I'd rather pretend that people actually follow the law.
I am happy they demonstrated how useful these devices are. Marking these as "disposable" is a kind of insanity. I recovered a few of them "disposed" (i.e. "randomly thrown away into") in an empty flower pot, and took out the LiPo batteries from them -- which are rechargeable, and have charge circuitry (non-trivial for LiPos). That we somehow decided that it's OK to design these to be used only once feels wrong. This…
Disposable vapes put young people in contact with career criminals and organized crime, who will be only too happy to oblige even if the customer has no money. The result is young people in debt to criminals, which has the exact same ramifications as getting in drug debt. Those young people can then be coerced to commit other crimes to cover their debts.
I wonder how much cost would be added if they included a small usb storage drive in those things. You could incentivize non-disposal because people would have a million of those things. It’s really hard to quite vaping btw.
I mean disposable vapes are just complete idiocy to begin with. Vapes with pods are less expensive in the long run and offer a vastly superior vaping experience. You can get liquid for dirt cheap. If you smoke heavily, you might offset the initial investment in a week or two. Disposable vapes offer zero advantages. They are only good if you want to "just try" it once or that is what you are going to tell yourself in…
I stopped vaping a little while ago but when I did vape, there was no clear standard of pod systems. You sure could walk into a nearby smoke shop but it was unlikely that you'd find your ideal pod/coil/liquid.
It's hard to take back the convenience people have gotten used to. I think one idea could be that disposable vapes become recyclable vapes. They should cost $15 more and buyers should get back $10 when they return it for recycling. This is nicotine we're talking about so the buyer is always coming back anyway.
We need to reduce microplastics. Let's put microcontrollers into disposable vapes. I don't know if I'm sad or happy.
The micro in this thing is a WQFN-16 (W = very very thin, thinner than V for very) with 3x3x0.75mm body. That's around a fiftieth of a gram of plastic. I think the bigger SOIC chip is probably the battery charge IC. And then maybe a gram or two of PCB epoxy. And the plastic in the battery pouch and membranes which you need anyway. In terms of plastics waste volume, the casing and tank is probably nearly all of the co…
All for a device to help you develop health problems.
I see that as of the time of this comment, he hasn't run Doom on it. Yet?
3kb of RAM and 24kb of flash is a bit tight for Doom unfortunately. It has been ported to another Cortex-M0+ microcontroller, the RP2040, but that has 264kb of RAM plus megabytes of flash and the game still barely fits.
Disposable vapes are an abomination that somehow society has normalised.
Not to mention the EXTREME damage it can do to a person's lungs, and do this damage very quickly.
There are two known culprits: diacetyl is/was used in some flavorings for its buttery taste, and liquid Vitamin E oil was used in clandestinely produced THC vape cartridges (which are really not relevant for the topic at hand). Both of those have largely disappeared from the market.
Sure, some cheap components can in theory leach heavy metals into liquids. The amounts are insignificant compared to what you will be breathing in just by walking on city streets, even outside rush hour.
And at least vapes don’t contain polonium-210 like cigarettes do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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The word "jihad" has a wider meaning than "holy war". It would better be translated into "worthy struggle" — with "worthy" being very subjective. Islam is in fact the largest religion (by worshippers) in the world today , so Frank Herbert's assumption that a culture derived from it would be dominant in a future society is just extrapolation.
Fyi,
> Dune is a 1965 epic science fiction novel by American author Frank Herber
The distinction you're making wrt Jihad is also super modern and did not apply back then
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a shame negative externalities like this are basically impossible to include in the up-front price.
I feel like a law saying "don't put electronics in disposable products" would do the job.