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Hosting a website on a disposable vape

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Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You throw away your smoke detector? Just replace the battery. My guy is out here pulling off the whole thing and tossing it in the trash.

Yes, Smoke Alarms should be thrown away. The element that detects smoke has a 10-year maximum life span, which is exactly why most have moved to a non-replaceable battery that forces you to throw it away (for safety).

So you're comparing a smoke detector that lasts 10 years to a disposable vape? Do disposable vapes last 10 years?

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#212
post #67
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do, but they still don’t make it back to the stores enough, and nobody has 16 wastebaskets to line every week. Also the old ones were just as suitable for wastebasket duty. The bag laws have done nothing but increase the consumption of plastic, since stores still go through nearly as many, but they’re 5x thicker now.

The only time I even get one of those things is if I forget my regular bag or I buy too much stuff to fit. That happens like once a month. Why are you going into the store empty handed and coming out with 16 plastic bags?

Not everyone is you. 16 is mild hyperbole, but I'm not even speaking normatively on what people should do. I'm speaking about what people do do. I'll stipulate that everyone including me should always keep at least 10 bags in my car so that I can do about 2 typical shopping trips even if I forget to put them back in the car. And we should always remember to carry them in. But that isn't happening with the current hilariously poor incentives in place (50 measly cents to buy 5 bags and no bag deposit either.)

I predict that if you spend 10 minutes observing the checkouts in your supermarket you'll see exactly what I see: At least 75% of people buying new plastic bags for the transaction, and zero people depositing bags into the special bag recycling bin at the store - which in the US is basically the only place this type of plastic is even accepted for recycling.

And again, these bags appear to be 3-5x as thick as the old bags, so the bag law is a huge win for Big Plastic who sells more plastic than they used to, and it mostly goes into the landfill.

The solutions:

• Admit this is a failed policy

• Everyone everywhere stops being imperfect, forgetful and lazy -- 100% of the time.

California is still hoping for the latter to pan out!

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#213
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that selling such a thing is profitable means that we lack regulations somewhere.

No, it means computing has gotten so %$#@ cheap that it's cheaper to just cobble together cheap parts instead of spending the money to design a purposed device.

That's not mutually exclusive with what I said.

Laws are not here to make money, they are here to decide what kind of society we want. If electronics is too cheap and it creates wastes, I'm of the opinion that we should make it illegal, period.

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#214
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that selling such a thing is profitable means that we lack regulations somewhere.

>The fact that selling such a thing is profitable means that we lack regulations somewhere. It's the exact opposite. Tobacco is so heavily regulated and taxed that these become profitable. If cigarettes were 3-4$ a pack (which they would be without sin taxes and regulatory overhead), the vape market would come down as well and there's no way these could be profitable. As it is, they retail around $20 and contain the…

> It's the exact opposite. Tobacco is so heavily regulated and taxed that these become profitable.

It's not the opposite at all. Tobacco should disappear just as well.

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#215
post #95
post #85

Re-using this sort of device is super cool. I can imagine a post-apocalyptic scenario where a city is run on a hodgepodge of random computing devices like this. I will say, though, disposable vapes with microcontrollers inside (and even full games and screens from recent reporting) are an egregious source of e-waste. Many layers of stupid are present here.

I've been aware about the perfectly reusable lithium batteries inside these disposable vapes, which is egregious enough. But the one in the FTA comes with a full fat microcontroller and USB-C connector! I'm not clear if these connectors are accessible outside or if you need to break open the packaging before being able to get to it. Like you said: "Many layers of stupid are present here" All that hardware must surely…

The USB-C connectors are mostly for charging, and IME it'll take 4-6 full cycle charges until most are out of vape juice and disposable so they're always accessible. The packaging usually is snap-together with no screws so it's a puzzle.

I'm still surprised to see the fancier LCDs used which range from 2x4cm - slim 1.5x3cm (Digiflower, Raz is super popular.) Most LCD vapes which range from $20-25 are starting to fall by the wayside for $13-15 vapes with simple SMD LED displays with color overlays, (Kadobar, Geek Bar, Cookies, North) easy to make 7-segments for battery/juice status. Some are elaborate with wraparound displays that I've mistaken for flexible OLED and are deceptively cheap.

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#216
post #129

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…

There are reusable vapes and reputable stores carry only those, but they are generally many times more expensive than disposable vapes, which are favored by smugglers (profit margins) and underage users (price point and potential seizing by parent/teacher/police). 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 mo…

My reusable vape cost like 15$. It's basically the same components as a disposable vape, except I can refill a pod and switch the pod if I burn the wick.

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#217
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between (a) component that costs tens of cents to mass produce and can be bought off the shelf and is reusable vs (b) component that needs actual experienced electronics engineers working on a single-use design that can not be repurposed later, I think we'd see that (a) might end up being less wasteful.

> can not be repurposed later whether it can be repurposed is worth little in being wasteful if >99% go to the landfill. > I think we'd see that (a) might end up being less wasteful. Monetarily? sure. Environmentally? unlikely

Environmentally, there is very little difference at the landfill if the PCB has an 8 bit microcontroller or a 64 bit ARM chip.

The only environment-friendly solution is to forbid this product to exist in the first place.

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#218
post #136

Talking of cheap and powerful devices one can also look at Chinese UZ801 4G LTE (Qualcomm MSM8916) dongles. They cost like only $4-5 and pack quite impressive HW: 4GB eMMC, 512MB RAM, actual 4G modem sometimes with 2 sim switching support. Since it's actually old Android SOC there is even GPU and GPS in there. And a lot of work was already done on supporting them: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Zhihe_series_LTE_d…

Where do i get a MSM8916 board for commercial usage at low volumes(1k)?

What about disassembling 1k dongles?

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#219
post #139

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.

Would you include RFID tags in packaging? If so, you're law needs more nuance back to the drawing board.

Re: Hosting a website on a disposable vape

#220
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You begin by making a pen "from just the elements", then work your way up to there. In other words, it's a huge challenge, but 6502 is closer, in complexity, to the pen than to the, say, AMD Ryzen. But the primary idea behind Collapse OS isn't to run from 6502 built from the ground up (although it partly is), but to run from frankenstein cobbled up machines made from scavenged parts.

If I scavenge any machine today, how likely would I be to find a 6502 vs something more modern? I’d argue that some people might have a NES at home and one could get a 2A03 from it, but in a hypothetical scenario where I need to scavenge some computational power, I’d find an Android phone

DuskOS apparently runs on ARM, so one of these vape boards running FORTH would likely feel very roomy indeed.
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