Start Up No.2665: the disposable vape disposal problem, beating pancreatic cancer, the US failure in Iran, personal software!, and more

The city of Wellington, NZ, is as far from the Equator as which famous US city? Now you can find out. CC-licensed photo by DVincentNZ on Flickr. You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam. A selection of 9 links for you. Return to base. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome. Fire and ‘sheer volume’: how Britain’s 6m-vape problem is putting recycling under strain • The Guardian Sarah Marsh: » It is 2pm and Ana, 47, has just started the afternoon shift at the Suez recycling plant near Birmingham city centre, standing beneath a sign reading “Non-ferrous sorting station” with a bucket of vapes in front of her. Sorting and dismantling them is part of her job as a site operative. Recycling them is not simple. Each bucket holds between 40 and 50 devices, and over the course of a…