Hosting a website on a disposable vape

Project and Technical Aspects

• Commenters are impressed that a tiny Cortex-M0+ with 3KB RAM and 24KB flash can run a TCP/IP stack and serve a website over SLIP; several note this is “VIC‑20 class” RAM with a much faster CPU.
• People discuss similar ultra-tiny webservers (e.g., smews) and wonder about emulating this in QEMU or clustering multiple vapes behind a load balancer.
• The author’s use of Perl, uIP, and semihosting is praised as a neat microcontroller intro and a clever workaround for limited resources.
• Some compare this to other repurposed cheap hardware (LTE “OpenStick” dongles, Android SoCs) as surprisingly powerful, near‑throwaway compute platforms.

Home Hosting and Network Exposure

• Several describe ways to safely expose a home device: port forwarding with VLAN isolation, reverse proxies, Cloudflare tunnels, or a tiny VPS + Tailscale + socat.
• Others argue the risk of targeted attacks on a hobbyist’s home server is low compared to generic malware/phishing, provided basic hardening is done.

Disposable Vapes, E‑Waste, and Reuse

• Many see disposable vapes as “egregious” e‑waste: Li‑ion cells, microcontrollers, USB‑C ports, even screens, used once then littered or landfilled.
• Some report streets full of still‑blinking vapes, or saving the batteries for DIY projects (e‑bike packs, power banks, cat feeders).
• There’s debate on whether reusing generic, mass‑produced chips is actually less wasteful than custom ASICs, but broad agreement that disposable electronics shouldn’t exist.
• Suggestions include high deposits, mandatory take‑back/recycling, or outright bans on disposables; others note weak enforcement and loopholes (e.g., adding a token charging port to skirt “disposable” bans).

Vaping, Health, and Addiction

• Vaping is generally seen as less harmful than smoking, but commenters stress it’s far from harmless: lung irritation, cardiovascular effects, immune suppression, and possible links to autoimmune conditions after quitting.
• Some argue flavors and high‑nicotine disposables hook new users (especially teens) and may act as a gateway to cigarettes; others counter that flavored vapes help smokers switch away from tobacco.
• Several share personal stories of addiction, quitting success, and the psychological component of “taking a puff.”

Regulation, Plastic, and Externalities

• Analogies are drawn to plastic bag bans: some say thicker “reusable” bags actually increase total plastic use; others cite dramatic reductions in visible litter and bag counts in official statistics.
• Broader discussion covers how hard it is to internalize environmental costs into prices, how landfill vs incineration trade‑offs work, and whether regulation has been mis‑targeted (e.g., Juul pods banned while disposables explode in popularity).