Hosting a website on a disposable vape

it's almost like everything matching the pi footprint is severely overpriced!

"What about disassembling 1k dongles?"

deadass this literally what they do in china, they just disassemble e-waste that don't get used and resell that oversees

underrated comment, probably the way to go with an older chip and under 1k volumes.

> I wonder when in the West we'll start mining rubbish dumps

Never, because we have virtually unlimited space for landfills, and landfill tech has quietly been improving over the last few centuries, to the point that landfills are cheap, non-polluting, and entirely carbon neutral. Countries with less land mass (Europe et al) prefer incineration (mainly to save space, despite it being significantly worse for the environment and much more expensive (although with the newer energy reclamation efforts this is getting better)).

IMO it's not worth worrying about landfills too much. Household waste makes up about 3% of total landfill waste (when you add commercial/industrial/agricultural) in North America. You and your bun wrapper are truly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

Not sure how those are related. We only eat food coming in packaging comparable to transplanted organ because companies can't afford poisoning lawsuits because humans are so expensive.

Lots of people especially those generally "up north" undermine risks and therefore costs of food poisoning, but it's real. Haven't those people seen things growing molds?

The cheapness of plastic just to speaks to the enormous demand for all the other oil products sold, it's practically a byproduct.

> 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

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.

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.

Cigarettes could sell at 3-4$ a pack only because some regulation are in place that enforce the total separation of manufacturing and selling those packs from paying the cost for the societal damages wrt. health, pollution, littering...

There are many possible ways to slice the economical cake.

The regulation was written in time when there were no such devices. Are they "healthier" (less damaging) for the user? If yes, let's tax them lower. Are they less damaging for whole population? Considering the e-waste, I guess not, but it's not up to me to decide. If they aren't, they shouldn't be taxed higher that cigs, if yes, let's change the regulation.

They need to regulate the nicotine content. In Canada its 2% at least. In the US its pretty much 5% juice only.

5% is 50mg/1ml. A cigarette pack has about 25mg. A geek bar has 16ml of juice = 800mg of nicotine = 32 packs of cigarettes.

You can get 10 packs for 20$CAD on reservations in Canada, and that's for decent cigarettes in packaging, the really cheap ones in ziploc bags go even cheaper. 3-4$ a pack is still a decent markup.

> 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.

The missing regulation is some kind of tax or other disincentive against e-waste. I believe the premise of the GP is that such things can only be profitable if we chose to ignore their environmental impact.

I think it's a lack of regulation to prevent negative externalities. Particularly with respect to waste management / product lifecycle.

E-waste like this exists because it's legal and profitable.

I believe that we as a society don't want e-waste (at least I don't). And when the society does not want something profitable to be done, it sets regulations.

If it wasn't illegal to steal your neighbour's car and sell it, then it would be profitable. But we as a society don't want it to happen.

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.

Almost every electronic device becomes disposable at some point, some sooner than others. Just make sure you bring them to an e-waste bin when that time comes. E-waste recycling is a profitable business, so there's always one nearby in my experience.

If you have some old Samsung Galaxy Gio from 2011, it'll provide far more value by recycling it back to raw materials than it would if you'd somehow try to keep it usable in 2025.

The problem here is planned obsolescence in a product's design. That is what needs to be made illegal.

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

What about Smoke Detectors, since they too are a disposable electronic?

They represent the most viable pathway for big tobacco to exit regular cigarettes, which are in decline or at least struggling. AND vapes have huge traction with younger people. It's basically The Thing that big tobacco needs to go all in on if they want to keep selling carcinogenic air to people for the next 50 years

Yes, like all tobacco products. These days a lot of marketing is targeted and subtle, especially for an industry used to dealing with advertising restrictions.

https://tobaccoatlas.org/challenges/marketing/

Vaping causes inflammation, nicotine suppresses the immune system (which is probably pretty bad news for fighting any other diseases), and nicotine cessation has been linked with an increase in development of autoimmune disorders in the 12-24 month period after quitting.

I had elevated white blood cells counts and I developed an autoimmune condition a few months after quitting vaping. I had good health record leading up to it and no family history of any autoimmune disorders. White blood cells eventually normalized but autoimmune is forever, although it's under control and I'm lucky that it was caught early.

In the final ~4 years of vaping I didn't use any flavorings either, just 70/30 mix of VG/PG and nicotine.

It's not terrible as far as vices go, much less harmful than the alternatives, but it's definitely not as harmless as I thought going in. I wish I hadn't started and went for the ADHD assessment right away instead of subconsciously self-medicating with nicotine.

I don't think adequate studies have taken a look into the long term effects of all the solvents and oils they use aside from the nicotine. Intuitively, this just seems like a terrible idea putting non-water-soluble vapors into your lungs but I am definitely not a doctor.

Vapes are practically unregulated with how many sre being imported from overseas. Health impacts have barely been studied yet.

This is why to me it’s so damn disappointing to me that vaping is targeted so forcefully by the various scolds in the “regulate everything” camp when smoking isn’t yet eradicated. Things like banning flavor and stuff. They want it to be as unpleasant as tobacco, which reduces the likelihood of people switching from tobacco to vaping, killing many of those smokers as a way to “save” teens from taking up an overall not-very-dangerous habit.

Yeah, the sweetener they put in the disposables is like crack. If a liquid could replicate it then the switch to reusable would be a no brainer, but I never found one. Alas I switched to nicotine gum and haven’t looked back.

Looking back, the Juul product seems preferable to the current situation

[dead]

Used milk carton. It probably has more TFlops than Commodore 64.

Reasonable people already reused single-use bags. Trashcan liners, dog walk bags, cat scoop bags, etc.

Having recently been reminded that it used to be common to see eviscerated VHS tapes by roads, I've been reminded that we'll always have people who litter.

Not here. Standing in line at stores like target that have them I see maybe 1/20 people checking out in front of me bring in reused disposable sacks, while 15/20 leave with new ones. Certainly not enough reuse to justify the extra thickness.

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.

Growing up, smoking was quite common. A lot can change in 20-30 years, so I'm cautiously optimistic that maybe vaping will eventually become as socially unacceptable as smoking.

Theoretically a high enough deposit could probably “fix the problem.” Like, if the empty was worth a $25 deposit most people would 100% take them back to the store. It would be annoying for people to have the high deposit, but it’s really a one-time expense.

On the other hand at least in the US, a deposit of a buck or two wouldn’t do much. California has that for cans and bottles, yet only maybe 10% of people turn them in. Most end up in curbside recycling (which doesn’t refund) or the garbage, indicating people don’t care about getting their nickel or dime back.

That's the theory. I practice, even in famously recycling-obsessed Germany, it's impossible to return electronics in places that are required to accept them, even two years after that law passed. The staff is really confused when you try.

There's more silicon in the battery charge controller probably (bigger transistors). The MCU is just a speck. Ironically making these disposable vapes "reusable" causes more e-waste as now they need a connector and charge controller and a bigger PCB.

You could say that for a lot of devices.

It is indisputable that anyone switching cigarette smoking to vaping is making a healthier choice.