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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

#461
post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If 1kg of "recycled" plastics allow to reduce the production of 1kg of pristine plastics, it's already a big win, even if it's downcycling. No need to throw away the baby with the bathwater.

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

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. When I use them I assume they're making API calls to a central server to validate (or something) them.

Making API calls to a server to do button debouncing does sound like something so stupid a tech company would do it

in the worst case, they don't know they're doing it, because they've called some 'debounce.js' microservice wrapper and haven't audited it

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

#464

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…

You know what else would suffice plenty? Physical keys and mechanical locks. They worked (and still work) without electricity. The tech is mature and well-understood.

You might find Matt Blaze's paper on vulnerabilities in master-keyed physical locks interesting:

https://eprint.iacr.org/2002/160.pdf

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

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that people are smoking arm chips makes me laugh.

Not smoking, vaping - better for your health but not RISC free.

Hey man, RISC architecture is gonna change everything

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

#466
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Absolute nightmare. Yes, but still probably a million times easier for both the building management and the software vendor to have a SaaS for that, than having to buy hardware to put somewhere in the building (with redundant power, cooling, etc.), and have someone deploy, install, manage, update, etc. all of that.

>than having to buy hardware to put somewhere in the building (with redundant power, cooling, etc.), and have someone deploy, install, manage, update, etc. all of that. You don't need any of that. You need one more box in the electrical closet and one password protected wifi for all the crap in the building (the actual door locks and the like) to connect to.

And when that box fails, you're looking at how long with no access? Longer than any AWS outage.

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

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also stood out to me how little stuff is in there - there's the uC itself, 3 transistors for heating the flavor canisters, an op-amp for the microphones, but other than that I don't really see anything - no external oscillator, no vrm (though a charger/BMS circuit must be in there somewhere).

The vape is disposable, no need for a charging circuit and maybe a simple ADC to determine battery life based on a discharge curve.

Apparently there is a charging circuit, because the battery will run out long before the fluid does

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

#470
post #213
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.

Most countries don't do enough at all. For example Germany, while the country is famous for the whole splitting the garbage, I am still waiting after 20 years to see the kitchen oil recycling recipients as we have in Portugal. As for electronics, I would say no one has anything in place, and human nature is as such that hardly anyone will drive to the next recycling center to deliver a single device that broke down,…

>As for electronics, I would say no one has anything in place

I Portugal there is Rede Electrão. You can deposit those devices in a lot of supermarkets, stores and fire stations.

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