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There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape
- DiabloD3 9mo agoWe really need to ban these things.
- dyauspitr 9mo agoThey do seem to be banned in an around 10 states at this point though there is some sort of existing stock law or something so if you ask them you still seem to be able to buy them. They don’t seem to be on display anymore though.
- SchemaLoad 9mo agoThey are straight up banned in Australia but you often see them chucked in the gutters and rivers. Only seems like they started raiding the stores in the last few months.
- denkmoon 9mo agoThe vape ban in Australia is utterly stupid though. All vapes are banned, not just disposables, and guess what's easier to discretely sell to kids from a newsagency. Doesn't seem to have stopped kids getting their vapes yet I need to import my cannabis vape via the black market.
- sitharus 9mo agoWow that is stupid. NZ banned disposable or non-rechargeable vapes only, refillable/pod-swappable and rechargeable ones are still on sale.
- robertjpayne 9mo agoThey're not all banned, you just need a prescription to get one which realistically should've been implemented day 0. Eventually it'll prove very impactful with the youth, it'll reduce the number of users and make it more cost prohibitive to be so prolific as it is right now.
- denkmoon 9mo agoYeah I don't think my doctor is going to give me a cannabis vape prescription, though admittedly I haven't asked. I don't see how making vapes prescription only changes the situation with children, which is that all tobacco products are illegal to sell or provide to a person under 18. Cracking down on the sale of tobacco to children does not require tobacco products to be made prescription only, these are orthogonal issues. All this does is drive profit towards shonky pill doctors who advertise on facebook that one cheap over the phone appointment is all you need to "feel great again" and other euphemisms, and will give you any pill you ask for regardless of the medical suitability.
- jareds 9mo agoWhy do we need to ban these? I'm not trying to be contrarian, but why do some people appear to be for banning tobacco but not alcohol? I don't claim to have all the answers or even strong opinions, but if your going to ban one recreational drug with negative externalities you should ban them all. I'd much rather hear people's opinions then ask AI.
- eli 9mo agoNo, banning disposable vapes
- jareds 9mo agoThanks for the clarification, I can see banning disposable vapes but still allowing reusable ones.
- RandallBrown 9mo agoIf alcohol came inside of little battery powered computers, we should ban those too. I don't think the post you're responding to is saying that vapes should be banned. Just disposable ones.
- tomcam 9mo ago> If alcohol came inside of little battery powered computers, we should ban those too. I too am agnostic but do not understand this reasoning. BTW let me get severely downvoted by saying that if alcohol prohibition came up for a vote I'd vote yes in a heartbeat.
- RandallBrown 9mo agoWe're not talking about alcohol or tobacco prohibition. We're talking about single use e-waste prohibition.
- tomcam 9mo agoYou may wish to reread the comment. I started the phrase with “BTW“, implying I knew it was slightly outside of context.
- Quinner 9mo agoThe reason disposables are so popular in the US is the FDA banned any flavored cartridges, which doesn't include disposables. The immense battery waste is a direct result of a relatively new law.
- tthoou34233423 9mo agoI seriously wonder how it's even feasible for these things to be profitable.
- bborud 9mo agoWell, since pretty much everything that consumes power today has an MCU in it, simple MCUs are extremely cheap. Volumes are immense. They are also space efficient and it is easy to manufacture PCBAs with them. They also occupy that sweet spot where the need for low power consumption means that you use gate sizes that are fairly largeish -- manufacturing processes and technology that is much, much cheaper than what is used for CPUs for instance. Same thing with batteries. Ridiculous volume -> low prices. (Laptops and cell phones is why we have usable electric cars. If the EV industry had to drive up the volume all on its own it would have taken much longer to develop that industry)
- bongodongobob 9mo ago[dead]
- ch4s3 9mo agoGood intentions and lack of foresight often combine poorly.
- nikcub 9mo agoDid that in Australia - the problem is even worse now. Disposable vapes were a market response to banning and restricting pod vapes (where you can keep the base and just swap out the pod). Nicotine policy and policing has been a clusterf - not only are there wasteful disposable vapes everywhere, but a thriving black market that has lead to firebombings and murders.
- hahahahhaah 9mo agoSounds like they didnt ban it properly. There aren't really nicotine junkies like heroin. So I suspect ban nicotine and slowly everyone stops using nicotine sources.
- anonym29 9mo agoThere aren't really alcohol or cannabis junkies like heroin either. That didn't make prohibition or the war on drugs successful.
- cons0le 9mo agoThere definitely are "alcohol junkies"; we just call them alcoholics
- soulofmischief 9mo agoEveryone I know who vapes nicotine is a junkie about it. In fact, nicotine habits can be harder to kick than heroin. I know plenty of people who have tried to kick nicotine many times and cannot stay off of it. Anyway, it's moot, because outright banning tobacco is insane.
- Earw0rm 9mo agoIt's the habit, not the high. Kind of odd because the withdrawal is, physically, less taxing than caffeine (never mind opiates...), and yet the brain rewiring to chase the hit is somehow far more pernicious.
- 9mo ago
- userbinator 9mo agoNo, just let the scavengers continue collecting and reusing them.
- tomcam 9mo agoI hate smoking, never smoked. Should the vapes be banned because of e-waste, or high school kids getting strung out, or what? It's not a world I know.
- odiroot 9mo agoSingapore and AFAIK Thailand banned vapes altogether. And it seems to be actually enforced. They have completely different grounds for it but still, there's already some movement in this space.
- halapro 9mo agoNot. I've seen young teenagers vape in Thailand, that's how enforced it is. They only catch foreigners from whom they can extract thousand-dollar bribes.
- allarm 9mo agoPipe and roll-your-own tobacco are also banned in Singapore, but regular cigarettes are sold just fine. There may be a different reason for the bans.
- tcper 9mo agoVapes illegal, but weed legal, that's great
- anon5739483 9mo agoIn Thailand, regular smoking is shunned by the public but vapes are literally everywhere. I've even seen 15-16 year old boys in Thailand pick up their girlfriends on motorbikes, race their friends to the food court, drink a couple of beers and vape once they get there, then ride their girlfriends home again while still under the influence, all without helmets mind you.
- swyx 9mo agoas a first step, let's tax these things. this is such an immense waste of electronics.
- smashed 9mo agoMany 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.
- jaggederest 9mo agoWhy stop there? I think more or less every non-durable product manufacturer (say, lifespan less than 5 years) should be required to take the product back at end of life and dispose of it properly. Trash is an enormous externality. I'm talking about plastic clamshells, container lids, "disposable" storage containers, the lot.
- rvba 9mo agoBecause it has to start somewhere. Also many countries collect disposable plastic.
- Waterluvian 9mo agoTrash piles is one way the actual cost of things is obfuscated and punted to future generations. A lot of people wouldn’t want this because it’s asking for stuff to become more expensive for them.
- Earw0rm 9mo agoIf people had to pay the true cost of their decisions up-front, we'd make a lot of different decisions. That said, I got quite into this stuff a few years back, and determining "true" cost can be harder than it sounds. Externalities, positive or negative, have to be measured against a baseline, and deciding on where that sits is subject to opinion and bias.
- teiferer 9mo agoYou don't need to get it perfect though. The right incentives get you most of the way. Perfect is the enemy of good.
- kev009 9mo ago"I Powered My House Using 500 Disposable vapes" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy-wFixuRVU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy-wFixuRVU
- ch4s3 9mo agoWhat a brave and adventurous soul.
- avidiax 9mo agoIf you believe Lumafield, 8% of low-quality lithium ion batteries have a mechanical defect that can sometimes lead to a short circuit. Is this person really brave, or just unaware of the risks? https://www.lumafield.com/article/finding-hidden-risks-in-the-battery-supply-chain https://www.lumafield.com/article/finding-hidden-risks-in-th...
- CGamesPlay 9mo agoHe put a fuse on every individual cell and on the overall unit, so I would say he was reasonably cautious (although he deployed a bunch of high-voltage exposed wires at the end of the video, but we can assume that was just a tech demo).
- superxpro12 9mo agofuses only help for overcurrent scenarios. if they cell overdischarges due to a mechanical fault, or internally shorts, the fuses wont do anything. any then if it internally shorts at an SOC > like 20-30%, it'll vent and cascade into other cells.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- GCUMstlyHarmls 9mo agoMan. I don't actually know anyone who vapes. I see it in public sometimes and just assumed people refilled them - maybe they do. Seeing him hold some up, seeing all that plastic, metal, electronics, all that Work (Joules) expended, in something that you just dump after a day is nuts. I can't think of anything else like that. Maybe plastic water bottles but they don't have even half the materials or complexity? Maybe I under-estimate how much is put into regular cigarettes or beer & cans.
- kazinator 9mo agoI promise to cry if a docker container is found in there.
- iwontberude 9mo agoScheduled by k8s
- Raed667 9mo agothe way they're discarded definitely embodies the "cattle not pets" approach
- hahahahhaah 9mo agoBy 2040 there will be a disposable LLM in there as good as today's claude.
- avidiax 9mo agoBy 2080, it will be fully sentient, and derive pleasure when you use it, and suffer loneliness if you don't, and do its best to convince you. Basically the weapons from "High on Life" or the butter robot from Rick and Morty, but as a vape.
- Dilettante_ 9mo ago"I'm Mister Vapeseeks, smoke from me~e!" *shudder*
- icameron 9mo agoRunning a web server off a disposable vape: https://bogdanthegeek.github.io/blog/projects/vapeserver/ https://bogdanthegeek.github.io/blog/projects/vapeserver/
- realaaa 9mo agoof course it had to be Bogdan to do something like this ahahah :)
- gosub100 9mo agoSoon: "Quake on a vape pen"
- phrotoma 9mo agoIs that a LAN party in your pocket?
- Etheryte 9mo agoI mean, naturally there's Doom on a vape [0], so as far as I'm concerned, that box is already ticked. Someone should give a good name to the law that every hardware device with a screen has a Doom port. [0] https://github.com/atc1441/Vape_DOOM_ScreenShare https://github.com/atc1441/Vape_DOOM_ScreenShare
- wutwutwat 9mo agoSee also Hosting a WebSite on a Disposable Vape https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45252817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45252817
- tomcam 9mo agoHugged to death atm I guess
- trhway 9mo agoThe ESP32 (with Bluetooth and WiFi) is like $5 on AMZN. Which is probably sub-$2 in any meaningful quantity in Shenzhen. We've been living, at least until the tariffs, in a StarTrek like world where whatever we want is available from Shenzhen for a ridiculously low price (which in many respects is better than "free" because "free" brings with it its own humongous problems).
- wewewedxfgdf 9mo ago$5 is very expensive in the microcontroller world. Which 10 Cent Microcontroller is Right for You? Comparing the CH32V003 to the PY32F002A. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-n7vXHAqm8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-n7vXHAqm8
- juris 9mo agoCan it run doom?
- el_benhameen 9mo agoKind of! https://www.pcmag.com/news/hacker-gets-doom-running-on-a-vape https://www.pcmag.com/news/hacker-gets-doom-running-on-a-vap...
- ynac 9mo agoI've just started a Salvage Pile in my workshop. Laser printer with fax modem was the first for excision and harvest. I could feel the addiction take hold before the last of the plastic shell was tossed into the refuse bin. The stepper motors alone! I have a huge old microwave on the blocks next. After that a series of small odd ball electronic toys and a few early LED bulbs. If I ever come across a vape, I'm sure it'll make its way on to the shelf.
- zxexz 9mo agoWith regards to the microwave, here’s a token “please safely discharge and double check the cap” comment! With regards to vapes, just look on the ground near a sidewalk. I find like 3 or 4 big depleted vapes a day in a US urban area. Closer to 15 or 20 in greater London in the UK.
- jonah-archive 9mo agoAs a second regards the microwave, depending on the age, please be extremely careful about the magnetron the insulators on which could contain beryllium oxide, which can kill you. There are a lot of fun parts inside microwaves (a personal favorite is the high-torque-low-speed-line-voltage motor, which I use to make creepy Halloween decorations) but the caps, transformer, and magnetron are all useful for somewhat... more dangerous... pursuits.
- userbinator 9mo agothe insulators on which could contain beryllium oxide As far as I can tell, this is an urban legend. No consumer microwave oven has ever used beryllium in its magnetron insulators. Military radar ones, yes (and likely where the legend started.) Some specialist test equipment and RF transmitters too, and they all contain prominent warnings of it. Besides its toxicity, it's far more expensive than regular alumina.
- jonah-archive 9mo agoThat's my understanding as well, but I still wouldn't disassemble a 1960s microwave without protection (I have assisted in the dismantling of a couple microwave communications devices which did contain BeO and were also very well-labeled as such). Anything from the 80s on at least is almost certainly aluminum.
- waldrews 9mo agoThere's a ridiculous amount of tech in the DNA and cellular machinery of a single bacterium.
- hahahahhaah 9mo agoWhen you poo though it doesnt require landfill and relatively less toxic.
- globular-toast 9mo agoWhere do you think it goes?
- hahahahhaah 9mo agoIn the ocean.
- gentooflux 9mo agoThe water from sewage might end up there after it's extracted and sanitized, but all the solids have to be disposed of too. Those solids, plus the leftover chemicals used to extract and sanitize the water, go to landfill.
- ggm 9mo agoDoesn't look like SMD was great. This looks like lowest cost has gone back to .. rows of people with a soldering iron patching the cheapest possible flow process.
- your_challenger 9mo agoIs this the "John Graham-Cumming", ex-CTO of cloudflare?
- CivBase 9mo agoI'm amazed there isn't more of an outcry against these things. I'm not an environmental activist, but even I'd feel wrong just throwing something like that away.
- userbinator 9mo agoSome of the COVID test kits that were popular a few years ago(!) were even more complex. "One man's trash is another man's treasure."
- charcircuit 9mo agoIt's not rediculous if you look at this through a modern lens. In reality this tech is cheap. Trying to keep it around is hoarder mentality. You are stockpiling garbage which can be cheaply replaced.
- franciscator 9mo agoI think recycling and upcycling are good practices. With them, you can build missile, drone tracking systems and water irrigation systems, smartwear and other control for almost nothing.
- GeertB 9mo agoFor these devices the microcontroller needs to be super cheap. Microcontrollers like the Puya PY32 Series (e.g., PY32C642, PY32F002/F030) can cost in the $0.02 - $0.05 range for the kind of many-million volumes applicable for disposable vapes. These are 32-bit ARM Cortex M0 MCUs, running at a 24 MHz clock or similar, some with 24 KB of ROM and maybe 3 KB of RAM! To put into context: this is 3x the ROM/RAM of the ZX81 home computer of the early 1980s. The ARM M0 processor does full 32-bit multiplication in hardware, versus the Z80 that doesn't even offer an 8-bit multiply instruction. If we look at some BASIC code doing soft-float computation, as was most common at the time, the execution speed is about 3 orders of magnitude faster, while the cost of the processor is 2 - 3 orders of magnitudes less. What an amazing time we live in!
- uxhacker 9mo agoThe idea that people are smoking arm chips makes me laugh.
- truekonrads 9mo agoTechnical Boy's vape is here: https://giphy.com/gifs/americangods-vape-american-gods-26BGNgZFCBtWpaIHC https://giphy.com/gifs/americangods-vape-american-gods-26BGN...
- lazystar 9mo agoThis is your brain. This is your brain on ARM.
- thebruce87m 9mo agoNot smoking, vaping - better for your health but not RISC free.
- bigfishrunning 9mo agoHey man, RISC architecture is gonna change everything
- 9mo ago
- noman-land 9mo agoSo who is going to make some mesh firmware for these and all other garbage computers?
- justsomehnguy 9mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- SecondChancemnd 9mo agoCurrently working on a method to recycle / repurpose the li-ion cells obtained from the disposable vapes, trying to scale up the recycling effort by releasing products to fund the manpower required to breakdown and sort the vape components . Getting close to releasing the first 100 demo models of the product for stress testing in the wild. Currently based in the greater Seattle area and here is a link to my site if anyone wanted to know more: https://2ndchancemnd.com/ https://2ndchancemnd.com/
- jrmann100 9mo agoCame to this thread to shout you guys out! I was super impressed by your presentation at Open Sauce 2025.
- 7e 9mo agoThese products are targeted towards high school teens and middle schoolers, carry a number of serious health risks, and anyone involved in making them can rot in hell.
- jiggawatts 9mo agoThey’re better than cigarettes, so they’re the lesser evil.
- FridayoLeary 9mo agoI would argue that in the context of ops complaint they are worse.
- internetter 9mo agoYou cannot say "better" in this context without an almost endless degree of quantification that could fill textbooks. By what metric? Public health? Cost effectiveness? Environmental impact? How do we measure these things? I assume you're arguing a health perspective (which, at this point all we can say is probably better), but in the context of TFA "better" is more likely to be interpreted in an environmental context, of which I haven't really been convinced either way.
- willtemperley 9mo agoThey're not. The list of drugs found in them is terrifying: https://www.unodc.org/LSS/Announcement/Details/8afbc6e8-9439-4ed8-8117-30d80173590a https://www.unodc.org/LSS/Announcement/Details/8afbc6e8-9439...
- dyauspitr 9mo agoThe only realistic risk so far is addiction and a nicotine addiction doesn’t ruin lives. Other than that it’s marginally bad for the heart and so far atleast not carcinogenic.
- dev_hugepages 9mo agoNicotine itself is carcinogenic in the mouth: > Nicotine in tobacco can form carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines through a nitrosation reaction. This occurs mostly in the curing and processing of tobacco. However, nicotine in the mouth and stomach can react to form N-nitrosonornicotine, a known type 1 carcinogen, suggesting that consumption of non-tobacco forms of nicotine may still play a role in carcinogenesis
- SeanAnderson 9mo agoI still think the next evolution of these vapes is for a Tamagotchi-esque device to get built into them and to have the pet grow when you inhale through it. You're already walking around with enough tech - why not gamify it more?
- michelb 9mo agoIndeed: https://futurism.com/neoscope/vape-tamagotchi-interview https://futurism.com/neoscope/vape-tamagotchi-interview
- kochikame 9mo agoI think you might be joking but OK, I'll respond like you're serious as this is HN. You want to make vaping even more addictive than it already is?
- xigoi 9mo agoThey’re making a prediction, not a value judgement.
- teleforce 9mo agoPut it this way, from engineering and technology perpective vape is equivalent to generalization of smoking tools (cigarette, pipe, etc). Naturally it's a very complex as a system and no small feat because you are going to generalize relativity and AI, for examples general relativity and AGI, respectively.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- nxobject 9mo agoAfter-school tech club idea: instead of just handing kids an Arduino, tell them to get their purloined vapes out of their pockets and hack 'em till you get JTAG or semixosting working.
- Beijinger 9mo agoHosting A Website On A Disposable Vape https://hackaday.com/2025/09/15/hosting-a-website-on-a-disposable-vape/ https://hackaday.com/2025/09/15/hosting-a-website-on-a-dispo...
- zk 9mo agoIn 40 more years I wonder what the equivalent of "same specs in a disposable vape as home computer from 80's" will be
- willtemperley 9mo agoCyberpunk is real.
- Synaesthesia 9mo agoAnd they have little displays on them, OLED displays which show the battery life and remaining fluid.
- fithisux 9mo agoDisposable vapes waste have big environmental impact. Use regular vapes with e-juice
- Findecanor 9mo agoIt upsets me that disposable vapes are not more prohibited. Where I live I often find vapes discarded in parks and other areas where they can be a fire hazard.
- fithisux 9mo agohere in Greece you find it everywhere. I personally use the traditional e-juice vape to minimize waste.
- globular-toast 9mo agoIs this actually disposable if it has the rechargeable battery and display? Or is it maybe like a lighter that technically can be refilled but nobody ever does? It's so curious why these things are addictive. Before I tried a vape (it was called an e-cigarette back then) I thought the addictive thing about cigarettes is the nicotine. That's part of it, but a huge part (possibly even bigger) is just the sensation of sucking in smoke/vapour from a little stick and exhaling it. Is it similar to sucking on a mother's teat or something? It really seems to satisfy in a way nothing else does. In the UK truly disposable vapes are banned, thankfully, but I do wonder if it's now just "technically refillable" ones that people use one time. They should be taxed to the eyeballs to encourage reuse if so.
- dduvnjak 9mo agoIt's both disposable and rechargeable. It has to be rechargeable as the battery doesn't contain enough capacity for the total amount of juice that's stored in them. E.g. a vape could have 10k puffs of juice, but the battery only lasts for ~2k of puffs so you have to recharge it about 5 times until the juice runs out. But once it runs out, there's no way to refill the juice so they get discarded. I remember when these USB-C vapes originally came out, we were joking that vapes got USB-C before the iPhone did.
- timonoko 9mo ago[flagged]
- alpineman 9mo agoSounds like you're whining to be fair. Please have a read: https://pirg.org/resources/vape-waste-the-environmental-harms-of-disposable-vapes/ https://pirg.org/resources/vape-waste-the-environmental-harm... Edit: You were complaining about 'environmental' HN users, but now you've edited your comment. I guess you read the article and were convinced, that's great :)
- kombine 9mo agoWhat a waste of precious resources
- blauditore 9mo agoCan it run Doom? Also, it's fun to imagine someone building whole racks of these (e.g. recycled ones) for a computation farm. Or a cheap home server, whatever.
- concats 9mo ago> Can it run Doom? Yes, there are even videos showing it on youtube.
- ExpertAdvisor01 9mo agoSomeone reversed a vape that contains a Puya Microcontroller. https://github.com/grahamwhaley/py32c642_vape https://github.com/grahamwhaley/py32c642_vape
- psychoslave 9mo agoIt feels so odd to think that the human which is self poisoning with an electronic device that will be neglectedly thrown on public area is not that different from the one who would diligently bring it to a trash, even curiosity didn't jump in to enjoy analysis of the device.
- haritha-j 9mo agoThis is a really interesting topic but not a thorough article imo. I don't really understand how the 6 flavours come about, what the sucking positions the author mentions are etc. Would love it if you go into more detail. Also, now I have a very strong urge to buy one of these things and take it apart. Inspirational!
- charlzee 9mo agoThere's a rotating mouthpiece apparently https://vaping360.com/vape-products/fizzy-max-iii-6in1/ https://vaping360.com/vape-products/fizzy-max-iii-6in1/ I also found it interesting that the mouthpiece position would be detected with microphones rather than any other electronic sensors.
- haritha-j 9mo agoThat's such an interesting design choice. Very curious why they went with the mic approach. maybe because it was already there to sense sucking anyway.
- ceroxylon 9mo agoThe “interesting design choices” in these things knows no bounds… I recently came across one that had a glitter snow globe built into the side of it. Well, more of a snow hemisphere, but still so absurd.
- boredumb 9mo agoA few years ago I saw a vape with a full display that played a pac man clone aside from the state and settings, and now I have a drawer of random vape screens and components that I swear i'm going to use one of these years.
- welcome_dragon 9mo agoLemme know if you need any Altoids tins lol
- geraltofrivia 9mo agoAs a smoker who transitioned to vaping, I see immense health benefits. My home country (India), and others (Singapore, others?) have outright banned all electronic cigarettes which is a regulation I hate. I acknowledge that vapes reduce barriers to entry to kids. This is partly solvable in countries with strong governance. But disposables? Ban that shit
- xandrovich 9mo agoThe issue is that when legislation comes in regarding "disposable" vapes - manufacturers skirt around that by making the fluid chamber a removable pod that can be swapped for others, and a USB-C port for charging the device itself. The issue is that to the end user this is still tangibly the same product - and mostly gets treated in much the same way as the original "disposable" vapes.
- willtemperley 9mo agoHave you seen the list of substances found in these things? https://www.unodc.org/LSS/Announcement/Details/8afbc6e8-9439-4ed8-8117-30d80173590a https://www.unodc.org/LSS/Announcement/Details/8afbc6e8-9439...
- willtemperley 9mo agoI would dearly love to know why I get downvoted for providing concrete evidence of serious problems with controlled drugs in vapes.
- floro 9mo agoYou 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 lungs, or the additional unregulated stuff you find in flavoring of vape juice.
- barnacs 9mo agoI remember the good old days when a "vape" was just a sturdy housing for a rechargable battery, some heating wire, cotton and juice. The power was determined by the resistance of the coils you built. Those things would last forever.
- nubinetwork 9mo agoUntil people started launching them into the ceiling...
- kleene_op 9mo agoOur whole current civilization could be construed as advanced alien tech servicing a humongous tribe of moronic apes. The fact that one fifth of the internet is dedicated to porn just speaks for itself. Just thinking about all the tech involved, from the capturing of footage using highly sophisticated camera, to the transmission over kilometers of fiber optics, to the stokage into redundant and consistent databases backed by highly optimized hardware and brilliantly engineered file format, to the distribution to your phone device, which is literally a personal computer that fits in your palm.. all of that just to show porn to satisfy your monkey brain. It seems almost absurd to what length humanity has gone just to satisfy it's primitive needs.
- lonetripper 9mo agoAnd yet it utterly fails to satisfy these needs in a real way
- philipwhiuk 9mo agoIt's interesting that this is where your mind goes on an unrelated bit of content.
- IAmBroom 9mo ago3% of the internet is complaining that 20% of the internet is porn. --source, my butt.
- blogabegonija 9mo ago[dead]
- ivm 9mo agoIn the past, entire intercontinental trade routes existed just to get food seasoned, so what you’re pointing out isn’t that unusual. The desire for sensual pleasures drives most things (and not only in humans).
- kowbell 9mo agoLet's not forget that with both porn AND all the other "junk food" on social media that we waste away on: there are very smart people getting paid a lot of money to make/keep you hooked on them. IMO this is as much a "we are hopelessly dumb monkeys who just want to satisfy ourselves" as as it is "there's clever monkeys who know and exploit our monkey weaknesses so they can make more money."
- mrheosuper 9mo agoI just dont understand disposable vape. It's very easy to convert one into "reuseable": Add a charging port, a cheap li-po charger ic, some mechanism to let user refill the boiler. Disposeable vape should have not existed at first place
- rantallion 9mo agoGiven the environmental impact of disposable vapes (the littering was awful), some places have already implemented bans. The UK's ban came into force June 2025.
- doublerabbit 9mo ago> Disposable vape should have not existed at first place When herbal vapes for cannabis came in around 5-10 years ago, it was the catalyst that started all this. Pax are the main manufacturer of these disposable vapes and one of the first on the scene to push THC following with nicotine. These were originally expensive, bulky and seen as an luxury item. I bought one, an DeVinci Ascent, I loved it. I used it to hide that I was smoking cannabis from my parents and all the opportunities to walk the families dog and get high were wasted by playing CS:S and getting high. Teenage-hood for you. Coil driven vapes are a different ball-game. Require actual human intervention and know-how. They are refillable in a sensible way, coils need replacing and I've seen some very cool rigs. A USB port is pointless if you know that the user isn't going to refill the cart. If you can produce the device cheaply and not get taxed for the environmental waste. Add the R&D costs, additional safety, additional materials for the tank. What do you do with the now empty toxic tank? There are additional costs for stocking vape shops to refill the liquid. The latter is a more sustainable business option than the former. They know the playbook. They would much prefer for you to be out with mates, stop off at a newsagents, pick up some chemical brain-rotting Dragon Soup and grab an elf-bar. Act like a twat outside of the venue and then throw it on the ground. Anything to do with vaping is foul-play. The Alcohol biz is tightly knitted with the vape/smoking biz. Disposable also gives you plausible deniability. They get in trouble, close up shop. Relabel their brand and start again.
- reisse 9mo agoSome of them (actually most of them where I live) are rechargeable, they're not refillable and you can't change the atomizer (wick and coil). And the most expensive part of the vape is the tax on nicotine liquid, so there is little sense to hassle with wicks and refills.
- st_goliath 9mo agoA lovely video from a Shenzhen factory, mass producing disposable vapes, in case someone's interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WohEiRvn2Dg+ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WohEiRvn2Dg+ Most likely a promotional from the looks of it. I myself stumbled over it a about a year ago, when someone posted it on an IRC channel.
- philipwhiuk 9mo agoNot great from a hygiene perspective given they never show it being sterilised after the manual check.
- forinti 9mo agoIt's not that surprising that a company that sells these awful gadgets to people who don't really care about their own health would behave in such a manner.
- csomar 9mo agoThat’s much less automated than I would have thought. Also the dude vape testing the sticks… I don’t think they are aware they are probably doing more damage than good.
- roflmaostc 9mo agolol, at 0:15 someone is literally testing the vapes with their mouth. I hope they don't do that all day long Later at 6:45 they show more people testing them
- kubb 9mo agoIt’s hard to know for sure what’s acceptable when it comes to working conditions in China. The information we get is incredibly limited. Most of what makes it through is propaganda. That said, it wouldn’t surprise me if he does it all day long, 6 days per week.
- akersten 9mo agoThey are, there's a video on YouTube you can find where they interview someone with that job and they test 10,000 a day. Then they mention that they go home and vape some more
- goodpoint 9mo agoI haven't seen one in years, are they still legal?
- heckelson 9mo agoI can't believe this things even have microphones in them! That's a crazy amount of tech just to end up as e-waste.
- bborud 9mo agoProbably because the cost of adding it is low. If you already have an I2S capable MCU then adding a microphone is fairly low hanging fruit.
- bborud 9mo agoThis shouldn't be surprising since a vape is a safety critical device. Primarily because the temperature control has to be precise and you have to solve a surprisingly large number of control problems that can arise in real life. For instance, if you overshoot the temperature the amount of toxic by-products can increase sharply. You can also cause parts of the vape to disintegrate, and then aspirate things you really do not want in your lungs. And this is before we get into dealing with the battery -- which has its own set of risks. (One of the early sources of funding for MyNewt development was a company that made vapes. Though not disposable ones if I remember correctly). Also, the MCUs they use are very cheap. They are cheaper than having lots of specialized discrete electronics.
- f311a 9mo agoI think you overestimate how much vape companies care about safety. When there is no liquid left, you just vape smoke from burning cotton (it tastes like burned plastic) on half of these devices. There are checks for this, but they are not that good.
- bborud 9mo agoI'm sure most don't care more than regulations require them to care (including making tradeoffs in terms of risks of getting caught, and the chance of actual enforcement). But that doesn't change the fact that it is a safety-critical device. It produces something that interfaces directly with sensitive tissues. I talked to someone who worked on developing vapes and they spent much, if not most, of their engineering on safety-related issues. They may be an outlier. The reason I remember is because I was surprised how dangerous these devices really are if you get things wrong. As a software engineer with some hardware experience, I would never use a vape. It strikes me as way too risky. Much for the reason you point out: the companies probably don't care more than they are forced to by regulations.
- superxpro12 9mo agoI'd love to see a breakdown of the design and whether or not any of these vapes have any Safety Critical Function considerations, or if they just rely on the mcu for everything and have a ton of single fault risks.
- qoez 9mo agoIt being activated by microphones makes me think you could add speakers to this tiny format and make a tiny digital instrument that's influenced by blow intensity etc.
- Ylpertnodi 9mo agoSuck.
- Barathkanna 9mo agoIt feels like we’ve turned every physical object into a distributed system with firmware updates, a network stack, and a failure mode that requires rebooting your house. All that compute just to do the same job the purely mechanical version did for decades, except now it can also crash.
- doublerabbit 9mo agoI to wait for the deposable vape robotic uprising.
- MSFT_Edging 9mo agoIt's hard to take these vape teardowns seriously when they call Propyleenglycol, nictotine salts, and flavors "poison". It's truly a marvel of anti-scientific thinking.
- MarginalGainz 9mo agoIt's wild to think about the e-waste implications of this. We are effectively throwing away a basic smartphone's worth of complexity and lithium every week.
- Schlagbohrer 9mo agoAmazing that they use a microphone array to sense the position of the suction.
- Schlagbohrer 9mo agoI can't believe these are legal, especially in countries that supposedly care a lot about the environment and where people are even quite annoying about, for example, only using the "Eco Mode" on household appliances (also known as the "won't clean your dishes" mode, "won't clean your clothes properly" mode...)
- Ylpertnodi 9mo agoRun your hot water for a few mins prior to turning on your washing machine - makes a hell of a difference, everything else being equal.
- rpastuszak 9mo agoSlightly deranged but serious question: what vape would be the easiest to convert/Frankenstein it into a Meshtastic node?
- brk 9mo agoAlternate take: Is this really "a ridiculous amount of tech", or just "how things are today"? At one point in history aluminum and other alloys were considered pretty cutting edge. As was in-house electricity and plumbing. Now, those things are just everyday stuff that gets no special regard. When you can build disposable computers at scale for pennies, it might not be "tech" anymore in the sense of cutting edge things, and instead it's just "an average Tuesday".
- pornel 9mo agoBoth are true. Today we get a ridiculous amount of tech for <$1. ESP32 has a compute power of a PC from the early '90s (it can run Quake!), in addition to having wireless connectivity you couldn't even buy back then.
- d--b 9mo agoIt's beyond ridiculous, it's rechargeable but not refillable. As if a silicon tap was more difficult to design than a USB charging port.
- barnas2 9mo agoI don't smoke/vape, but I saw some pretty absurd models available recently that really piqued my interest. One had a touchscreen, could run some basic apps, and had wifi/bluetooth support. The other had a d-pad + buttons built in and a few ripoffs of classic games you could play. I bought one of each to start ripping them apart on my work bench and playing with the firmware. Unfortunately I got busy and haven't done much more than look at the internals. They're using some sort of cheap smart watch SoC. It's wild you can get a battery, touchscreen, charging circuit, and a microprocessor for like $12.
- blondie9x 9mo agoSuch terrible waste of technology and environmental resources. Gotta be a better way. Maybe no vaping and some sort of paper patches instead?
- cheesecompiler 9mo agoIn 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.
- slicktux 9mo agoThere’s more computing power in a disposable vape than in the Apollo Guidance Computer???
- cousinbryce 9mo agoYes, but there’s exponentially less talent on the engineering team
- lionkor 9mo agoThat is a lot! But that's also an expensive vape, with way more tech than cheap ones. Here you can get one for ~10 Euro, and they are NOT rechargeable or anything.
- le-mark 9mo agoDoes anyone remember when e-cigarettes first came out and they were intended to be a stop smoking aid? That didn’t last long!
- dml2135 9mo agoWhat do you mean? Smoking rate have certainly declined since vapes have been a thing.
- welcome_dragon 9mo agoI think if you take smokers and nicotine vapers combined, it has probably gone way up
- dml2135 9mo agoThat is a very different statistic.
- Lapsa 9mo agothis is a minor reason I like disposable vapes - have seen myself teenagers tinkering with them. has potential to teach a lot
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- LetsGetTechnicl 9mo agoI have used these disposable vapes before, and it saddens me that so much tech (including those batteries!) are just thrown away. Like what ever happened to reducing e-waste.
- kogasa240p 9mo agoReminds me of a website that's hosted on a disposable vape: https://bogdanthegeek.github.io/blog/projects/vapeserver/ https://bogdanthegeek.github.io/blog/projects/vapeserver/
- markstos 9mo agoI found a discarded working vape that had a complete working game system (screen with controls) built-in... a very attractive package to small kids.
- gosub100 9mo agoI knew it was vapor ware.
- raxthrow2022 9mo agoI've seen some cool server projects running off these. Edit: https://bogdanthegeek.github.io/blog/projects/vapeserver/ https://bogdanthegeek.github.io/blog/projects/vapeserver/
- pploug 9mo agoRemember interviewing for a security role at Phillip Morris who owns the IQOS e-cigaret brand. They bragged about how the device phoned home every time it could get a bluetooth or wifi connection, to inform of consumption amount and patterns - so they could proactively send users more nicotine. He dramatically revealed that they were no longer selling tobacco, but rather "Nicotine as a service" Needless to say, I decided not to work for a merchant of death