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Website is hosted on a disposable vape

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

Concerns about Disposable Vape Design and Environmental Impact

A significant theme in the discussion revolves around the design of disposable vapes, particularly their environmental implications and the practicality of their "disposable" classification. Several users pointed out the absurdity of devices with USB-C ports and rechargeable batteries being labeled as disposable.

  • "I wouldnā€™t want to be the lawyer who one day will have to argue how a device with USB C and a rechargeable battery can be classified as ā€œdisposableā€." - jrmg
  • "Just like how places with bag bans often end up with thicker plastic bags that can be sold for ten cents and claimed as ā€œreusable." - bombcar
  • "Some have replaceable pods / tanks, but most have no user serviceable parts whatsoever. One the liquid is low enough, the coil will burn a bit, and the whole thing should be disposed of." - zdragnar
  • "Some of the new ones have the coil and vape juice in a disposable section while the battery and charge circuitry are reused." - Gigachad
  • "Each morning, I walk 5K. I start off in the dark. By midwinter, the whole walk is in the dark. I am constantly walking past disposable vapes in the street, with their LEDs still shining." - ChrisMarshallNY
  • "I would be more fine with disposable vapes like this if almost all of them were recovered somehow, for the amount it subsidises production of Li-ion batteries." - extraduder_ire
  • "I'm confused by why anybody would buy one of these when entirely reusable versions exist, but then vaping seems unwise to me in general except as a way to quit tobacco." - Zak
  • "It would be nice to pool ideeas for what they could be recycled into. Imagine the amount of automatic cat feeders the world could build with these." - metal696heart

Critique and Humor Regarding Technical Feasibility and Resourcefulness

The discussion frequently veers into humorous speculation about using disposable vapes in distributed computing or technical projects, often referencing concepts like Beowulf clusters. This highlights a fascination with repurposing discarded technology, albeit with a comedic undertone.

  • "HardwareLust: Your GitHub link in the doc gives me a 404. Otherwise, good stuff!"
  • "BogdanTheGeek: Thank you, it's fixed now."
  • "BogdanTheGeek: 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/"
  • "zacharynewton: Sounds like you need some more spent vapes ;)"
  • "bombcar: The Internet server version of that old photo of a guy with an entire carton in his mouth."
  • "SmellTheGlove: Wait, are we back to imagining beowulf clusters [0] of things!?"
  • "elliotec: Easy, just set up your other hoarded ones to make a mesh and do some distributed sharding in the vape cloud!"
  • "om8: https://web.archive.org/web/20250914222638/http://ewaste.fka..."
  • "wslh: And reading the article mentioned there about "THE CHEAPEST FLASH MICROCONTROLLER YOU CAN BUY IS ACTUALLY AN ARM CORTEX-M0+" (2023) [1]"
  • "cjaackie: No, itā€™s there because the battery canā€™t hold enough charge for the ratio of vape liquid they put in it. So you get 2-3 full charges and it runs out of liquid."
  • "jsheard: You think a Cortex-M0+ in a disposable vape is wasteful, wait until you see the ones with colour touchscreens and Bluetooth radios. It's probably only a matter of time before they start running Android on them."
  • "malfist: What's insane is how cheap all those components are. A quadcore processor with ram and memory, WiFi and Bluetooth for pennies at wholesale. The latest and fastest GPUs might be a marvel of technology, but so is the tech that let's us make and esp32 for almost nothing"
  • "ants_everywhere: Imagine a beowulf cluster of... wait probably not"
  • "rimprobablyly: Returning 503. Guess it got smoked."
  • "BogdanTheGeek: 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."
  • "metal696heart: Vaporised."
  • "BogdanTheGeek: so I had to throw nginx in front of it so my little router wouldn't explode, but I hope some people will get to experience the relaxing loading experience live."
  • "temp0826: The HN way is to colocate a cluster of these and put them behind a F5"
  • "prynhart: 504 Gateway Time-out"
  • "panarchy: Now make a cluster of them running on load balancer"

Debate on Reusability and Hoarding Mentality

The conversation also touches upon the concept of "reusability" in the context of single-use items and the underlying psychology of collecting such items. Users debated whether the current designs encourage reuse and whether the act of collecting them for repurposing could be seen as hoarding.

  • "They are reusable, which many people take advantage of. And it has dramatically reduced the number of tumbleweed bags clogging up nature." - orev
  • "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." - privatelypublic
  • "WD-42: They make perfect office/bathroom trash can liners"
  • "meibo: You've misunderstood the assignment if you don't reuse those, they are perfectly fine for that and will last a long time. Just have one in your bag or car. I've even reused paper bags for more than half a year since the ban."
  • "ViscountPenguin: The majority of people reuse those bags, they're pretty great actually. Most people I know have slightly more expensive bags made out of fabric though."
  • "charcircuit: >For a couple of years now, I have been collecting disposable vapes from friends and family. This act of collecting waste is a sign of a hoarder mentality. It's okay to throw things away."
  • "rovr138: Or they had an idea, needed devices to test and be able to destroy if they fucked up."
  • "charcircuit: 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."
  • "rovr138: If you have to modify the hardware. Checking pins, testing things, solderingā€¦ you might want to have backups."
  • "haunter: 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"
  • "WD-42: When was the last time you ran a website on anything cool?"
  • "charcircuit: 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."
  • "mrheosuper: a rechargeable battery with only 1 charge cycle is considered "waste" ?"
  • "analog31: So the EEs are right. Electrical circuits run on magic smoke."

Discussion on Home Hosting and Security Risks

A portion of the thread delves into the practicalities and security implications of hosting a web server from a home network. Users shared their experiences and offered advice on managing the associated risks.

  • "dudeWithAMood: What were you doing to get traffic from the open Internet to your webserver at home? I always felt that was a risky proposition, but I might just be stupid."
  • "rovr138: Open a port or if their router supports it, assign their device to a DMZ. Why do you think itā€™s risky? Maybe we can talk about ways of securing it. Like any server, itā€™s as safe as the server software (and its configuration)."
  • "happyhardcore: VPS with public ipv4, connected to home network over Tailscale and forward the traffic with socat. You'd probably be fine opening a port directly but a small VPS is free most places so might as well make the most of it."
  • "Aachen: Done it since before I properly knew what I was doing. Haven't had issues. Even though n=1, also now that I'm actually working in IT security, I don't think the risk was ever much bigger than what I could oversee The main thing is that, if someone gets onto the server system, then they're in my network and they can do attacks on other devices in that LAN (guest wifis are a nice way to isolate that nowadays; that didn't exist back when I started). Same as when I take my laptop to school for example, then others can reach it. I've had issues with others in school doing attacks because the internet was unencrypted http back then (client-side hashing in JavaScript limited the impact though), but not from anyone who tried to hack into the server. Only automated scans for outdated Wordpress, setup files for Phpmyadmin, ssh password guessing... the things they simply try blindly on every IP address. If any of this is successful, you're most likely going to be turned into a spam-sending server or a DDoS zombie; not something with lasting impact once you discover the issue and remove the malware Most attackers don't do targeted attacks on your system or network unless you're a commercial entity that presumably can pay a nice ransom, or are a high-profile individual. Attackers aiming for consumers send phishing emails and create phishing advertisements, look for standard password vaults if you run their malware, try using stolen credentials on Steam and hope you've got a payment method stored... the usual old things. Having a server doesn't make any of those attacks easier, and besides, self hosting is very uncommon. Even if you and I had a similar enough setup at home with a straightforward path to exploitation, it's a few thousand people that self-host in a country with millions of people. It's not worth developing attacks for"
  • "koolala: People might hack your toaster and burn your house down? Smart ovens? Smart microwaves? Smart fires?"
  • "mysteria: I've hosted at home for years and if you have it properly setup it's not any more risky than using a VPS. I have 443 open on my router and basically all web traffic is routed to a container on my server. The container is on an isolated vlan and basically runs nginx as a ssl reverse proxy. The actual web services behind the proxy run in their own containers and with proper isolation and firewall rules the effects of a security compromise are limited. At most an attacker will be able to take over the containers with an exploit (and they could do that with a VPS as well) but they won't be able to access the rest of the network or my secure internal systems. If I was this guy and wanted to let people connect directly to my vapeserver I would simply host it on another vlan and port forward the HTTP connection. Even if someone manages to take over such an obscure system they're not going to be able to do much."

Personal Experiences and Reflections on Nicotine Addiction

The thread also featured personal anecdotes and reflections on nicotine addiction, with users discussing their struggles and coping mechanisms. This provided a human element to the technical discussion, exploring the underlying motivations for using vapes and alternatives.

  • "macintux: 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."
  • "bloqs: i have owned lots. they taste better than most permanent vapes. ive tried the whole buy all the best components and perfect juices etc with various tanks of different flavours. disposables just work and taste good, no leaks. they also have a logical end point like a pack of cigarettes. Its nice to switch flavour more frequently, and the packet/vape body colours pressed deep monkey brain buttons for fruit etc"
  • "gilfoy: Looking back, the Juul product seems preferable to the current situation"
  • "MarcelOlsz: I did the math and Juul was 47x more expensive than the liquids (this is in Canada). Then I switched to the juice vapes, and finally to kick the juice vaping I picked up pipe tobacco. Pipe tobacco is way cheaper than cigs nevermind vapes, the highest quality, and tastes incredibly good (also, you can also get that "first cigarette headrush" every time if you like by inhaling, works every time)."
  • "reassess_blind: 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 havenā€™t looked back."
  • "loumf: But, then where would you host your website?"
  • "Ygg2: Used milk carton. It probably has more TFlops than Commodore 64."
  • "Dilettante_: I respect the point about not wanting to send the manufacturer any business, but I would love to know the brand so I'd know which ones to rescue if given the chance."
  • "efilife: I am probably stupid so bear with me. I don't get the part about not naming brands if you are certain they won't ever sponsor you. I feel like it just hurts the value of the article with nothing gained"
  • "gabriel666smith: This is cool, but, man, I felt like such a pathetic excuse for a human being when, brutally craving nicotine, with my vape empty of the fruit-flavoured juice that I am literally addicted to like the stupid pathetic baby that I am, and stuck with the cravings because all the shops are closed until morning, and so, in need of a distraction, I opened Hacker News. FFS. Sometimes the only option is to laugh at your own expense! Clearly this is a sign. I should buy more juice next time. And maybe start smoking more actual cigs."
  • "panarchy: Having an addiction doesn't make anyone "a pathetic excuse for a human being""
  • "gabriel666smith: I agree wholeheartedly. I've been (I am?) addicted to many substances, from fruit-flavoured nicotine juice through to heroin. I find self-deprecating humour useful, personally. It helps me not wallow, to take the cravings less seriously. I of course wouldn't say the same about anyone who isn't me. Because, as you say, someone who has an addiction isn't lesser than anyone else. It's a state of being that requires an awful lot of strength. That said, having to use that strength on 'mango e-liquid' is, I think, funny in an absurdist way. We live in strange times!"