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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

#191
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m reading ‘The World Without Us’ by Alan’s Weisman. Last thread like this had someone recommend it (thanks!). Every bit of plastic humans have made still exits, bar a small amount we have burnt. That’s concerning.

All petroleum products come from the fossilized remains of the first trees to evolve lignin, which was tough and durable enough to allow trees to grow taller, but also too tough and durable for any other living things to decompose it. At the time, fallen trees would not rot, and the resulting buildup of wood all over the place caused all sorts of ecological problems. Many of those trees ended up buried deep undergrou…

The ecosystem will be fine, the question is whether we are going to be part of it.

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

#192

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…

paper straws do not make any sense any way you look at it. Are we saying that we are okay to cut trees to make straws when we could make them out of petroleum ? Moreover, paper straws are not even recyclable due to water content which makes them soggy. Plastic ones are almost 100% recyclable Most importantly, unlike plastic straws, they are laced with glue and other chemicals which gets ingested.

Soggy is not a problem.Recycling paper involves wetting it to loose the fibres and then reforming it. It's how paper is made.

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

#193

[flagged]

Sounds like you're whining to be fair.

Please have a read:

https://pirg.org/resources/vape-waste-the-environmental-harm...

Edit: You were complaining about 'environmental' HN users, but now you've edited your comment. I guess you read the article and were convinced, that's great :)

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

#194
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need to ban these? I'm not trying to be contrarian, but why do some people appear to be for banning tobacco but not alcohol? I don't claim to have all the answers or even strong opinions, but if your going to ban one recreational drug with negative externalities you should ban them all. I'd much rather hear people's opinions then ask AI.

I think broadly prohibition didn't work but smoking bans do. Where "work" means fewer people smoke and passive smoke.

If that's how you you define work, prohibition worked.

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

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

paper straws do not make any sense any way you look at it. Are we saying that we are okay to cut trees to make straws when we could make them out of petroleum ? Moreover, paper straws are not even recyclable due to water content which makes them soggy. Plastic ones are almost 100% recyclable Most importantly, unlike plastic straws, they are laced with glue and other chemicals which gets ingested.

Soggy is not a problem.Recycling paper involves wetting it to loose the fibres and then reforming it. It's how paper is made.

But usually paper and cardboard that has been in contact with food is not recyclable because it contaminates the batch. That's why pizza boxes also cannot go into the cardboard/paper fraction.

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

#197
post #92
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need to 2x+ the transportation cost of all products... Companies also need to double their specializations and adopt recycling processes that will largely be redundant with other companies I think 3rd parties would spring up to deal with that stuff

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

Maybe they could use big trucks that just collect all refuse from the curb. And maybe that is something that the city should do so that we don’t have a dozen trucks collecting a dozen different trash cans from every house.

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

#198
post #102

These products are targeted towards high school teens and middle schoolers, carry a number of serious health risks, and anyone involved in making them can rot in hell.

They’re better than cigarettes, so they’re the lesser evil.

You cannot say "better" in this context without an almost endless degree of quantification that could fill textbooks. By what metric? Public health? Cost effectiveness? Environmental impact? How do we measure these things? I assume you're arguing a health perspective (which, at this point all we can say is probably better), but in the context of TFA "better" is more likely to be interpreted in an environmental context, of which I haven't really been convinced either way.

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

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 c…

Most paper straws use PFAS, meaning we’re actively composting PFAS in a fantasy effort to feel good about our waste without actually giving anything up

https://fortune.com/well/2023/08/24/paper-straws-harmful-for...

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

#200
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…

How close are we to smart dust I wonder? How small can we make wireless communications?
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