Or turns out you can get virtually unlimited amount of Cortex M0+ microcontrollers for free literally from trash? Sounds like a great idea if you are a hacker
The novelty wears off. It doesn't justify keeping trash around forever. Sure it can be a fun project that you get some joy out of, but there isn't a need to preserve it forever.
Embedded within a disposable vape, yes. Plenty of things that are reusable are waste. When someone finishes milk jug, most people throw it away and buy a new one instead of going to get it refilled. Pretty much everything thrown away could be used for something else.
It's designed to be rechargeable due to economies of scale. It's cheaper for them to use rechargeable batteries in a disposable product I think they should be able to. They shouldn't have to purposefully have to break the recharging functionality to sell it.
That doesn't mean it's waste, that just means people are lazy and don't care about wasting things. It's only "waste" because people make it waste. If you don't waste it it's not waste.
It's not just laziness. It may not be financially worth it to do including the personal labor you have to do compared to throwing something in a trash can.
Not everything in life needs to be financially worth it... If repurposing otherwise "disposable" resources brings them enjoyment and it's a reasonable time spent, why shouldn't they?
Ultimately, it's not your storage space being used for this. Why not let them live?
This repurposing is of only one he owns and the novelty of reusing it will likely wear off within a couple of weeks as having an extremely weak web server is not particularly useful.
It may not be my storage space but people in this site do have a higher chance of hoarding ewaste for no logical reasons and I'm hoping that pointing this out can help people realize that they don't need to hold on to every random gadget forever.
Making something out of it and getting a hit on HN would easily be 'enough' for me. Your replies read like you've had some personal issue with a hoarder. Digging into that may help you in the long run.
It is not being responsibly managed, it is poisoning the planet. You can defer responsibility to others such as the producers and recyclers, and I think we should.
But it doesn't mean we can't control what we buy and throw away as well, especially if we know better which we do.
Then this is the problem that needs to be fixed. Ewaste only contributes to a couple percent of overall waste. Saving just ewaste doesn't stop the vast majority of waste entering the landfill.
Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45249287.
And... its down already. It can only handle about 10 requests at a time, so take turns guys :) Here is the same article but with hopefully better uptime: https://bogdanthegeek.github.io/blog/projects/vapeserver/
Easy, just set up your other hoarded ones to make a mesh and do some distributed sharding in the vape cloud!
Is this The Cloud that I heard so much about?
It's your fault for not putting CDN in front of it
Really neat achievement, it'd stand out on your CV, make sure to always add it there, it'll spark a fun chat on interviews.
> It's your fault for not putting CDN in front of it
That's no fun. The right answer is to distribute load across a cluster of 100 repurposed disposable vapes.
Alternatively, have a 503 "Smoke break" page.
Sounds like you need some more spent vapes ;)
Wait, are we back to imagining beowulf clusters [0] of things!?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf_cluster
The Internet server version of that old photo of a guy with an entire carton in his mouth.
Thanks for mirroring, and well done! I really enjoyed the topic and tone of your writing.
Returning 503. Guess it got smoked.
As this vape is so very British, you now have to queue to access the article. I can see that some people are getting though, so that's something.
Vaporised.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250914222638/http://ewaste.fka...
And reading the article mentioned there about "THE CHEAPEST FLASH MICROCONTROLLER YOU CAN BUY IS ACTUALLY AN ARM CORTEX-M0+" (2023) [1]
[1] https://jaycarlson.net/2023/02/04/the-cheapest-flash-microco...
Big promises, but no working website. I call it vaporware
Too many requests and its gone up in a puff of smoke
https://web.archive.org/web/20250914222638/http://ewaste.fka...
504 Gateway Time-out
[flagged]
Or turns out you can get virtually unlimited amount of Cortex M0+ microcontrollers for free literally from trash? Sounds like a great idea if you are a hacker
When was the last time you ran a website on anything cool?
The novelty wears off. It doesn't justify keeping trash around forever. Sure it can be a fun project that you get some joy out of, but there isn't a need to preserve it forever.
Or they had an idea, needed devices to test and be able to destroy if they fucked up.
He probably owned a device capable or running a virtual machine which would be much more convenient to deal with.
Also this idea of "but what if I'll need this in the future", is a common theme among horders.
If hackers always chose the convenient option, that wouldn't make for very challenging or interesting projects ;)
There are probably thousands of regular VPS webservers out there.
If you have to modify the hardware. Checking pins, testing things, soldering… you might want to have backups.
a rechargeable battery with only 1 charge cycle is considered "waste" ?
Embedded within a disposable vape, yes. Plenty of things that are reusable are waste. When someone finishes milk jug, most people throw it away and buy a new one instead of going to get it refilled. Pretty much everything thrown away could be used for something else.
The plastic that holds the milk is not designed to be reuseable, and plastic wear down is a thing.
But the battery inside disposable vape is designed to be rechargeable.
It's designed to be rechargeable due to economies of scale. It's cheaper for them to use rechargeable batteries in a disposable product I think they should be able to. They shouldn't have to purposefully have to break the recharging functionality to sell it.
how about making it less ... disposable? Make the battery replaceable, so you can use your own battery?
That doesn't mean it's waste, that just means people are lazy and don't care about wasting things. It's only "waste" because people make it waste. If you don't waste it it's not waste.
It's not just laziness. It may not be financially worth it to do including the personal labor you have to do compared to throwing something in a trash can.
Not everything in life needs to be financially worth it... If repurposing otherwise "disposable" resources brings them enjoyment and it's a reasonable time spent, why shouldn't they?
Ultimately, it's not your storage space being used for this. Why not let them live?
This repurposing is of only one he owns and the novelty of reusing it will likely wear off within a couple of weeks as having an extremely weak web server is not particularly useful.
It may not be my storage space but people in this site do have a higher chance of hoarding ewaste for no logical reasons and I'm hoping that pointing this out can help people realize that they don't need to hold on to every random gadget forever.
Making something out of it and getting a hit on HN would easily be 'enough' for me. Your replies read like you've had some personal issue with a hoarder. Digging into that may help you in the long run.
This is the mentality that is creating poison planet. Bad mentality.
I'd love to be able to go to a grocer and just refill my milk jug and my soap bottle and my beer growler but that's just not available to me.
Well, there are a few breweries that will fill my growler. Priorities.
As long as waste is being responsibly managed it will not poison the planet.
It is not being responsibly managed, it is poisoning the planet. You can defer responsibility to others such as the producers and recyclers, and I think we should.
But it doesn't mean we can't control what we buy and throw away as well, especially if we know better which we do.
>It is not being responsibly managed
Then this is the problem that needs to be fixed. Ewaste only contributes to a couple percent of overall waste. Saving just ewaste doesn't stop the vast majority of waste entering the landfill.