In the 70s, the Polaroid SX-70 camera included a disposable battery in every film pack. After 10 shots, you threw away both it and the plastic film case with its large metal spring mechanism. When the film production stopped in the late 00s, you could use 600 film designed for other polaroid bodies reloaded into a 779 native SX70 cartridge, because the battery would last much longer than the initial 10 shots.
There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape
491–500 of 673 posts
Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape
#492Earlier 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…
I don't understand the moaning and bellyaching about straws. Are people that bad at drinking from cups? If you aren't a toddler or bed-ridden patient in a hospital (EDIT: or anyone else with physical conditions that necessitate a straw) you should be able to drink without a straw.
Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape
#493Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape
#494There’s more computing power in a disposable vape than in the Apollo Guidance Computer???
Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone was locked out in a building am staying at (40 something stories) for several hours. When I asked the concierge if I can have a look at the system, it turns out they had none. The whole thing communicated with AWS for some subscription SaaS that provided them with a front-end to register/block cards. And every tap anywhere (elevators/doors/locks) in the building communicated back with this system hosted on A…
> 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.
It's also easier to keep all the water for fighting fires in trucks that are remote, than to run high pressure water pipes to every room's ceilings, with special valves that only open when exposed to high heat. Imagine the overhead costs!
Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
The IT guy walks in and replaces/restarts the box instead of waiting for the gods of AWS to descent to earth and restart theirs. They have direct control vs. waiting for something magic to happen.
Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape
#497There’s more computing power in a disposable vape than in the Apollo Guidance Computer???
Yes, but there’s exponentially less talent on the engineering team
Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape
#498Many 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,…
Not sure about electronics as a whole, but I was able to recycle (or at least dispose of properly) an inflated old Dell laptop battery at either a Best Buy or a Home Depot (I'd assume it was the former, but they were next to each other so I don't recall). This is in the US.
Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you referring to VG/PG? Are they really that expensive for you? That's wild.
Yes, 100ml from the same store I bought a liter from for 40€ in 2015 now cost 56€. There is currently a tax of 0.32€ per ml on liquid, no matter if you're buying the base or the finished product.
I guess it's time to not only make the vaping liquids yourself, but the bases too :P
Quick Googling suggests I'd pay less than 30 euro for a liter of VG. What about for the nicotine concentrate? I'd pay about 20 euros for 100ml of 20mg/ml concentrate.
Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cooling for a card access system? A card access system requires zero cooling, it’s a DC power supply or AC transformer and a microcontroller that fits in a small unvented metal enclosure. It requires no management other than activating and deactivating badges. There is no reason to have any of the lock and unlock functionality tied to the cloud, it’s just shitty engineering by a company who wants to extract rent from…
The server running that system needs cooling, yes. You can't just shove it in a closet with zero thought and expect it to not overheat/shut down/catch fire, unless you live in the Arctic.
You're saying that as if we never had Z80-based microcontrollers doing all this without problems. Complete with centralized control and all.