Hosting a website on a disposable vape
81 comments
·September 15, 2025x187463
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.
patapong
Another example: One-time covid tests with a microcontroller, optical sensor to read the result and bluetooth to connect to a phone to display the results. Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29698887
palata
The fact that selling such a thing is profitable means that we lack regulations somewhere.
ramesh31
>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 same nicotine as multiple $10 packs of cigarettes.
beAbU
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 be worth more than half the value of the actual product!
rglullis
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.
afiori
> 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
dijit
I don't follow the logic.
Because humans are expensive? Or because we can maybe re-use the components if an (expensive) human comes and retrieves the components?
Sorry for being dumb here.
spicyusername
It's a shame negative externalities like this are basically impossible to include in the up-front price.
palata
I feel like a law saying "don't put electronics in disposable products" would do the job.
Someone1234
So Smoke Detectors are now banned?
reaperducer
It's a shame negative externalities like this are basically impossible to include in the up-front price.
You mean like add the cost of a MRI to the price of a pack of cigarettes?
Mistletoe
Will the Butlerian Jihad find all the vapes?
ffsm8
It sometimes surprises me how the dune series was created out of the culture of the Muslim Faith (and he wasn't even coy about it, he straight up said so back when it was published) - with super obvious tells like literally calling the war against machines a "jihad", which is the word Muslims call their holy war against non believers and more obsessively woke people haven't jumped on it decrying "Muslim phobia!1" whenever it's referenced.
i80and
This is an exceedingly strange comment -- you made up a silly thing to get upset about, and are making fun of people who aren't upset about the thing, because you think it's the sort of thing they would be upset about, even though it isn't and you say as much?
This feels like a whole new category of straw man.
Findecanor
The word "jihad" has a wider meaning than "holy war". It would better be translated into "worthy struggle" — with "worthy" being very subjective.
Islam is in fact the largest religion (by worshippers) in the world today, so Frank Herbert's assumption that a culture derived from it would be dominant in a future society is just extrapolation.
zknow
Really? I thought that it was kind of a ecumenist religion that included themes from many religions.
staplers
obsessively woke people
maeln
Hope you don't get caught in Luddic Path's space with your stash of contraband disposable vape
jerf
The mismatch between the Ancient Specs of Yore is kind of interesting. The Commodore 64 had 64KB of RAM, but that RAM was attached to an 8-bit, 1MHz CPU. This thing has call it half the RAM of a Commodore 64, but it's attached to a 32-bit 24MHz CPU the 1980s could only dream of. And it's disposable in 2025. Pretty impressive in a weird way.
Narishma
It's got only 3KB of RAM, less than even the VIC-20.
jerf
Whoops, yes. I stand corrected. Tack another order of magnitude or so on to the mismatch.
justincormack
Its only got 3k of RAM, 24k of flash. Although modern flash is sometimes the same bandwidth as memory was if you go back a bit, although not latency of course.
zero_k
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 is the opposite of repairability. We specifically made them impossible to reuse and refill. Makes my tinkerer (and eco-friendly) heart very sad.
cluckindan
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 money. The result is young people in debt to criminals, which has the exact same ramifications as getting in drug debt. Those young people can then be coerced to commit other crimes to cover their debts.
nusl
Disposable vapes are an abomination that somehow society has normalised.
mcdonje
Society tends to normalize things that have ad budgets.
NoSalt
Not to mention the EXTREME damage it can do to a person's lungs, and do this damage very quickly.
cluckindan
Probably not, unless there are very specific substances in the liquid being vaped.
There are two known culprits: diacetyl is/was used in some flavorings for its buttery taste, and liquid Vitamin E oil was used in clandestinely produced THC vape cartridges (which are really not relevant for the topic at hand). Both of those have largely disappeared from the market.
Sure, some cheap components can in theory leach heavy metals into liquids. The amounts are insignificant compared to what you will be breathing in just by walking on city streets, even outside rush hour.
And at least vapes don’t contain polonium-210 like cigarettes do.
NoSalt
The current state of technology is ... weird. From AI doing our art instead of our work, to hosting a website on an eCigarette. "Weird" is the only word I can think of at this moment.
jsheard
Previously discussed, but I think that first submission fell off the frontpage early because it linked directly to the vapeserver which instantly died under load: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45243800
topherjaynes
It let out one last valiant puff of smoke after it succumbed to load.
RedShift1
We need to reduce microplastics.
Let's put microcontrollers into disposable vapes.
I don't know if I'm sad or happy.
grues-dinner
The micro in this thing is a WQFN-16 (W = very very thin, thinner than V for very) with 3x3x0.75mm body. That's around a fiftieth of a gram of plastic.
I think the bigger SOIC chip is probably the battery charge IC. And then a gram or two of PCB epoxy.
In terms of plastics waste volume, the casing and tank is probably nearly all of the content. So the problem is a disposable vape bring a thing at all, not really the microcontroller in there.
It feels mad and somehow wasteful that you can get a CPU at that price point, but the die itself is a tiny sliver of silicon. You can even embed an (even tinier) and weedier application-specific) IC in a paper metro ticket.
citizenpaul
The mfg/mining process for the chips is probably equally bad.
All for a device to help you develop health problems.
cluckindan
You could say that for a lot of devices.
It is indisputable that anyone switching cigarette smoking to vaping is making a healthier choice.
droobles
Long live hacking! This is what Hacker News is all about. Great article and fun project!
accrual
This is really impressive. I laughed when I got 503 Unavailable on the hosted URL. I guess we're all hugging that little vape CPU a little too hard. :)
867-5309
504 timeout -- fug of breath
1970-01-01
I always forget about the idea that IPv6 was intended to allow literally everything to have an address. The mouse, keyboard, display, etc. Seems like a bad idea now, but back then it was considered as part of the overall plan for the nearly infinite space. Maybe the joke is still missing a punchline. We've had this generic device interface for decades but decided on proprietary and arbitrary standards of device communication to make our lives easier in the short-term.
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_dongles_...
https://github.com/OpenStick/OpenStick
So yeah if you looking for hardware platform for weird homelab projects that's can be it.