There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by smj-edison » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:30 AM UTC

tombert wrote: post #121

GeertB wrote: post #72

For these devices the microcontroller needs to be super cheap. Microcontrollers like the Puya PY32 Series (e.g., PY32C642, PY32F002/F030) can cost in the $0.02 - $0.05 range for the kind of many-million volumes applicable for disposable vapes. These are 32-bit ARM Cortex M0 MCUs, running at a 24 MHz clock or similar, some with 24 KB of ROM and maybe 3 KB of RAM! To put into context: this is 3x the ROM/RAM of the ZX81…

What a world we live in; we have gotten to a point where computers are so small and cheap that they can literally be “disposable”. It’s beautiful, I love it.

It reminds me of how Sussman talked about someday we'd have computers so small and cheap that we'd mix dozens in our concrete and be put throughout our space.

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

#152

Post by teiferer » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:31 AM UTC

lend000 wrote: post #69

pyrolistical wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go further. Every product must be returned to manufacturer at end of life. Any items found by garbage program will be collected and returned to manufacturer at cost. All items sold in country must be identifiable for this purpose. Importers are considered the manufacturers and must retrofit products. Then we would be getting closer to capturing the total burden to society.

I don't hate the idea. But if you think it through, it's intractable. You need to 2x+ the transportation cost of all products (it will cost more to get them back for multiple reasons, including products not being as neatly packaged and often going from many-to-one transportation to many-to-many). Companies also need to double their specializations and adopt recycling processes that will largely be redundant with othe…

> You need to 2x+ the transportation cost of all products

As with all economics, it's not a one-way street. A change in conditions causes a change in behavior. Increased costs will cause a change in how products are designed, manufactured, used. If one-time use cost goes through the roof, suddenly all vapes will be multi-use. Plastic bottles will disappear in favor of dispensers and multi-use bottles. Not all of them, but most of.

It's about incentives in a dynamic system, not spot bans in an otherwise static world.

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

#153

Post by mindslight » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:32 AM UTC

zelon88 wrote: post #94

seemaze wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just received a $10 deposit refund for returning my motorcycle battery to the battery shop.

That's a good point. In America we call this type of deposit a "core charge." The "core" is the component you return to the store to get your deposit back. This is done for components like starter motors, alternators, power steering pumps, batteries, and a variety of other components. The complex components are re-manufactured to like-new specifications and the less complex components are recycled to recover material…

Lead actually has a pretty good scrap value.

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

#154

Post by teiferer » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:33 AM UTC

CableNinja wrote: post #123

__d wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Companies could “outsource” their recycling obligations to local (national, regional, whatever) providers.

That was tried, and what ultimately occured was disgusting. The world was full of new computers popping up and every middle class or above person buying new ones like they do with iphones now. Companies started recycling programs, and many immediately went the route of corruption. They would pack up shipping containers full of ewaste, with 40-50% reusable items, and the rest junk, allowing them to skirt the rules. Th…

Why past tense? That's describing exacty the world we are living in right now.

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

#155

Post by teiferer » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:35 AM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #67

pyrolistical wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go further. Every product must be returned to manufacturer at end of life. Any items found by garbage program will be collected and returned to manufacturer at cost. All items sold in country must be identifiable for this purpose. Importers are considered the manufacturers and must retrofit products. Then we would be getting closer to capturing the total burden to society.

The amount of completely useless plastic garbage that we would be sending back east would be mind-numbing. They don’t have anywhere to put that trash either.

So maybe if you make the cost high enough (which is currently just externalized) then they might start disappearing by not being produced in the first place by lack of demand.

People don't buy this because it's crap. They buy it because it's cheap.

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

#156

Post by hippo22 » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:36 AM UTC

Earw0rm wrote: post #120

loeg wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nearly all the plastic humans have made still exists. And it just doesn't matter. It's a tiny amount of mass / volume. > The great garbage patch in the Pacific is growing fast. Ocean plastics are almost entirely a consequence of (particularly Indonesian) fishing net waste, not Western consumer products disposed of in managed landfills. The "great garbage patch" is also very much overstating the scale of the problem…

Go on, give us some numbers. Because 7Bn people multiplied by a few kg/year doesn't seem trivial to me, but sounds like you can prove it.

The main thing about plastic is that it’s made from oil, and oil already exists in the ground. Putting it back into the ground is basically neutral minus the pollution involved in manufacturing.

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

#157

Post by teiferer » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:36 AM UTC

Earw0rm wrote: post #118

Waterluvian wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trash piles is one way the actual cost of things is obfuscated and punted to future generations. A lot of people wouldn’t want this because it’s asking for stuff to become more expensive for them.

If people had to pay the true cost of their decisions up-front, we'd make a lot of different decisions. That said, I got quite into this stuff a few years back, and determining "true" cost can be harder than it sounds. Externalities, positive or negative, have to be measured against a baseline, and deciding on where that sits is subject to opinion and bias.

You don't need to get it perfect though. The right incentives get you most of the way. Perfect is the enemy of good.

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

#158

Post by adrianN » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:38 AM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #148

tombert wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a world we live in; we have gotten to a point where computers are so small and cheap that they can literally be “disposable”. It’s beautiful, I love it.

For my part, I hate anything explicitly labeled "disposable". As the author writes, you're supposed to recycle it, but how many people will do that if it has "disposable" written on it? Even worse, if it was truly disposable they could use a non-rechargeable battery, but because they have to keep up the pretense of it being reusable, they have to include a rechargeable battery with more dodgy chemistry that probably…

To make matters worse, recycling is a scam (with a small handful of exceptions).

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

#159

Post by dmurray » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:39 AM UTC

Earw0rm wrote: post #120

loeg wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nearly all the plastic humans have made still exists. And it just doesn't matter. It's a tiny amount of mass / volume. > The great garbage patch in the Pacific is growing fast. Ocean plastics are almost entirely a consequence of (particularly Indonesian) fishing net waste, not Western consumer products disposed of in managed landfills. The "great garbage patch" is also very much overstating the scale of the problem…

Go on, give us some numbers. Because 7Bn people multiplied by a few kg/year doesn't seem trivial to me, but sounds like you can prove it.

7 billion kg at the density of water would fit in a cube 200 m on each side.

All the plastic ever produced could be stuffed back into one medium size coal mine. There are thousands of such mines and they are already ecologically disruptive.

It's a large amount when you think about the logistics to move it around the world, but a small amount compared to the total amount of stuff we take out of the earth.

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

#160

Post by bigstrat2003 » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 6:43 AM UTC

teiferer wrote: post #142

jaggederest wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Why stop there" is often a reason why nothing gets done. Why do small if you can go big right away? Because going big right away is costly (in social cost, in convincing, in how much people need to change behavior, ...) and that prevents people from doing it in the first place because the threshold is high. Apathy is the result. Better to take a small step first, then get used to the measure / the cost, then have a…

> 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 cost aside) they are wildly superior to incandescent. People actually like having LED bulbs and seek them out. The same cannot be said, and likely never will be said, of paper straws.