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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

#521

Post by vel0city »

volemo wrote: post #378
eru wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why recycle things that you can make them cheaper, with less resources and in higher quality from scratch? (The above is not so much about processors, but about plastics. As long as we are still burning any fossil fuels at all, we are probably better off holding off on recycling and instead burning the plastic for electricity to use ever so slightly less new fossil fuels for power, and instead use the virgin fossil f…

> Directly re-using plastic bottles a few times might still be worth it, though. Directly reusing plastic bottles that were not meant to be is bad for your health though, isn't it?

The biggest risks are that single-use bottles are usually pretty difficult to clean (usually a narrow opening). The second biggest, which is related, is that those single-use bottles usually aren't very rigid and will tend to make small cracks in the surface as the material flexes which makes things even harder to clean. After that, all the cracks that will develop will mean it'll leach out the bad stuff in the plastics far faster than if you had some other kind of water bottle.

If you just opened it and drank the drink in it, there's probably no harm in filling it soon after and using it a few times like that. Using that same disposable bottle for a few months is probably not a good idea.

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

#522

Post by tstrimple »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #469
joezydeco wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is the brand I usually use. https://www.off-stamp.com

It has a separate magnetically attached battery / charging unit. I have to charge 5-6 times per "tank" that's attached. The battery side also has a mini-led display showing animations and battery / juice left so it's actually communicating with the tank side. A kit with battery and tank runs me about $25, but the tank alone is about $20. So they add $5 to cover the battery / charging component. It's a vice, but at least with this brand I'm not throwing away batteries weekly.

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

#523

Post by ryandrake »

tialaramex wrote: post #353
pkolaczk wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is why when folks nowadays say "you cannot use XYZ for embedded", given what most embedded systems look like, and what many of us used to code on 8 and 16 bit home computers, I can only assert they have no idea how powerful modern embedded systems have become. Yet, I still need to wait about 1 second (!) after each key press when buying a parking ticket and the machine wants me to enter my license plate numbe…

There's no pressure to make a good product because nobody making this decision has to use the machine. Everywhere I've worked purchase decisions are made by somebody with no direct contact to the actual usage, maybe if you're lucky they at least asked the people who need the product what the requirements are, otherwise it's just whatever they (who don't use this product) thought would be good. "Key presses are 15x sl…

While this is a decision-making problem, it is also an engineering incompetence problem. No matter what pointy haired boss is yelling about "priorities" ultimately software developers are the ones writing the code, and are responsible for how awful it is.

When it comes to priorities about what to write and what to focus on, the buck stops at management and leadership. When it comes to the actual quality of the software written, the buck stops at the developer. Blame can be shared.

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

#524

Post by eru »

M95D wrote: post #424
eru wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Agreed that it is smarter to use oil for plastics then to burn it directly. My argument is that as long as we are still burning oil and gas, we might as well burn old plastic instead of new oil and gas. If/when we stop burning oil and gas, then we can think more seriously about recycling plastic.

Did you ever try to burn plastic? 1) Plastic is not liquid, so you can't pipe it to a gas or oil power plant. You may argue that coal isn't liquid either, but continue reading... 2) Burning plastic generates toxic fumes. 3) Plastic ash is sticky and very difficult to clean.

You might like to read about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incineration and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste-to-energy_plant

It's a fascinating topic. There's even more problems than the ones you bring up, but engineers are also pretty smart.

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

#525

Post by systemtest »

pjmlp wrote: post #216
teiferer wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays the homeless or other less-than-living-wage earners do that for us. You can see them everywhere in cities all over north america and europe if you pay attention.

As European that is not spread everywhere, while you can get some money back in Germany and Greece, there is none to be had in Portugal. In Germany, it is such a big issue with people not having other source of income, that there is a culture where and how to leave the bottles around so that they are easier to collect.

I kinda prefer cultures where benefits and pensions are enough so that people don't have to dig into trashcans for Pfand.

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

#526

Post by willtemperley »

floro wrote: post #486
willtemperley wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the list of substances found in these things? https://www.unodc.org/LSS/Announcement/Details/8afbc6e8-9439...

You get downvoted because you're implying substances like methamphetamine are common in vapes (as per your linked article), which it obviously is not, and already highly illegal. The truth is you can mix your own vape juice from just PG, VG and nicotine. Which are completely harmless to eat (except nicotine) and used in food products. A more rational discussion would be about if inhaling PG and VG is harmful to the l…

Unfortunately the legal vape market acts as a cover for the illegal vape market. Vapes containing cannabinoids and other drugs are sold in shops.

I fully support banning these things. It's impossible to regulate effectively without.

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

#528

Post by londons_explore »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #513
Aurornis wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Vapes are probably made in enough quantity to warrant custom silicon Not when the MCUs might cost a penny and the other parts aren’t much more. Putting high power electronics and analog into the same custom silicon as a custom digital logic is nontrivial. They’re made on different processes.

I love the term “high power” even though we are talking maybe a watt or two when that bad boy’s element is doing its thing! I mean relatively it absolutely is high power. The quiescent current on that thing has to be microamps… It’s just funny because to me “high power” is hundreds or thousands of watts. Like an incandescent light bulb or a hair dryer. Or at least it was until I started tinkering with battery powered…

Vape wattages are more like 15 watts, which is an awful lot for a battery smaller than the tip of your pinkie! I believe the power density (not energy density) of those batteries is market leading.

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

#529

Post by tstrimple »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #402
DaSHacka wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A completely ridiculous and nonsensical proposal I can only assume was said in jest.

It sounds like a description of most of a deposit system to me, and deposit systems are good at encouraging recycling.

See "core charges" for many automotive parts to incentivize the return of waste for refurbishing at the higher end and bottle deposits for cans/bottles at the lower end. It's weird how things so common in one part of our society can seem so foreign in others.

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

#530

Post by parineum »

prmoustache wrote: post #212
parineum wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been smoking for thousands of years.

People have been stealing and killing other people as many years if not longer. That doesn't mean you cannot do a bit of legislation and obtain some positive results against that. I think not banning the cigarette and non reusable vape is the wrong solution but banning smoking in lots of public spaces has improved the situation, maybe not to curb consumption but at least non smokers can breath a little. I wish it wou…

> People have been stealing and killing other people as many years if not longer. That doesn't mean you cannot do a bit of legislation and obtain some positive results against that.

This thread is/was about prohibition of smoking. I was making the point that tobacco/nicotine is a drug that has positive psychoactive effects, that's why people use it.

People seem to have this misconception that smoking is just some thing tobacco companies tricked people into doing and so prohibition would work. It wouldn't. We can already see in places where the prices of cigarettes create a nearly de-facto ban that it creates black markets and we know that black markets create crime.

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