[HN Gopher] E-ink is so Retropunk
___________________________________________________________________
E-ink is so Retropunk
Author : raisjn
Score : 470 points
Date : 2023-08-26 13:21 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rmkit.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (rmkit.dev)
| yoavm wrote:
| shameless plug: I'm loving my PostmarketOS powered Kobo and even
| built a small interface for it: https://github.com/bjesus/air and
| would highly recommend it to fellow hackers.
|
| I use it pretty much daily for reading, and occasionally for all
| sorts of hacking fun.
| caligarn wrote:
| Better link for remarkable discord server:
| https://discord.com/invite/qEnCVcd
| Eeems wrote:
| Better in what way?
| eterps wrote:
| IMO the Oberon operating system would be a really good fit for
| this type of hardware.
|
| http://www.projectoberon.net/
| weinzierl wrote:
| I love all the things from Niklaus Wirth I know, but I only
| casually know about Oberon. From a glance I don't see the
| connection. Could you elaborate _why_ this would be a good fit.
| cyberax wrote:
| The members of the Oberon Cult just keep pushing it
| everywhere.
| eterps wrote:
| Ah of course, the large number of platforms where the
| Oberon OS has been pushed to by the many Oberon cult
| members ;)
| eterps wrote:
| It's a simple and small system that renders directly to a
| framebuffer (Project Oberon only supports black and white),
| it's optimized for simple CPU architectures (and that's an
| understatement), extremely small footprint and doesn't have a
| lot of resource usage.
| ekidd wrote:
| I haven't touched Oberon since the 90s. But it was a fun
| little system.
|
| The language is one of the nicer Pascal descendents. The
| windowing system was similar to tiling. The entire system was
| tiny in terms of code. Everything was black and white.
|
| One of the nicest features was universally embeddable
| widgets. You could make a simple clock and embed it in
| running text, for example. Kind of like what OpenDoc dreamed
| of, or Google Wave's inline widgets, or what it might be like
| if you could extend Discord with custom UI in a few hundred
| lines of code.
|
| I wasn't motivated to keep using Oberon--it was honestly too
| odd and too small to compete with my other desktop options.
|
| But I do agree it would be neat to try with an eInk display.
| It's a small, interesting, black-and-white system with a
| minimalist UI. Particularly if you customized the UI input
| layer, it could be a neat tool for building small household
| dashboards.
| wchar_t wrote:
| A FORTH gui would be an interesting project as well
| vpribish wrote:
| that page lists a few devices they _don't_ recommend (kindle)
| because they are not openly hackable. what are some ones that are
| more so? anyone here recommend a cheap, hackable, e-ink reader?
| [deleted]
| Nashooo wrote:
| They also linked to the Remarkable and Kobo communities.
| SalimoS wrote:
| From the same page > Convinced that you should hack on eink
| devices? Grab a reMarkable or Kobo and get hacking
|
| But kindle is The cheapest e-ink afaik
| Qwertious wrote:
| The cheapest e-ink is a $5 2" Waveshare EPD plus an ESP32.
| ljf wrote:
| Last time I looked the Nook simple touch (6 inch android eink
| tablet) was about PS30 delivered 2nd hand. Love mine. I spent
| a long time (a few years ago) setting it up with all sorts of
| android fun, but now I just use it as a epub reader and it
| fits that niche perfectly for me.
| extr0pian wrote:
| The author mentioned them already, but didn't recommend for
| violating the GPL, but I have an Onyx Boox Poke 3 and Boox Leaf
| that run Android that I've rooted. They're not very cheap (the
| Poke runs about $180). They're pretty fun devices to tinker
| with. https://chuck.is/rooting-onyx/
|
| Edit: I also experimented with the Poke 3 by creating a sort of
| "writerdeck" setup with a bluetooth keyboard and termux, then
| attaching everything together with velcro and magnets:
| https://chuck.is/writerdeck/
| politelemon wrote:
| I've switched to Kobo recently and their devices are very
| hacker/sideloader friendly. There are also many community
| provided software and unlocks.
| frognumber wrote:
| No, for it to be retropunk, it would need to just work. Not
| necessarily work well, but just work.
|
| QBasic would be fine. GW-BASIC would be fine. P5.js would be
| great. Hypercard would be adequate. Heck, even raw assembly code
| would work.
|
| Documentation on jailbreaks, microcontroller versions, ssh, and
| file systems? Not so much.
|
| The whole point was /simplicity/. Simplicity isn't the same as
| ease-of-use or speed-of-use, but old-school computers might boot
| into a BASIC interpreter. That was simple.
|
| I'd love to have a simple eink solution. I don't care if I'm
| manually flipping pixels or have high-level APIs, and I don't
| care if I'm using BASIC, Makecode, Python, or C. I do care that
| it just works, and I know ahead of time it just works.
|
| What I don't want is I buy an old Kobo on eBay, and find out it's
| not jailbreakable, or requires some library which requires a
| different version of Ubuntu, or whatnot. I don't need another
| half-baked project.
|
| The actual ultimate here would be an all-in-one which is
| micro:bit compatible. All-in-one means it includes a case, a
| reasonable form factor, and works in standard micro:bit
| programming environments.
| pdntspa wrote:
| Any of the e-ink pads that run Linux under the hood and expose
| SSH can get you to a bash prompt. Which is about as simple as
| one can get.
|
| Why does it have to be /simple/ anyway? With a rich programming
| environment you can make your own simplicity. The world needs
| more devices that force you to come to them, not the other way
| around.
| aftergibson wrote:
| Odd, I always considered retropunk as something requiring a
| specialist skillset. Breaking into systems to bend them to your
| will etc. Different perspectives I guess.
| II2II wrote:
| > What I don't want is I buy an old Kobo on eBay, and find out
| it's not jailbreakable, or requires some library which requires
| a different version of Ubuntu, or whatnot.
|
| I understand what you're getting at. When I was following some
| of the article links with respect to the Remarkable 2, I had
| the exact same concerns when they were discussing how you need
| to wait for the patches to be updated to new firmware versions
| since the screen driver was integrated into the software.
| Needless to say, I have also been bitten by such things with
| other devices.
|
| That said, you picked a poor example. Kobos aren't locked down
| in any meaningful way. Anyone with a knowledge of Unix and how
| the update process works can inject their own software. There
| are no secrets. There is no encryption. At least when it comes
| to the operating system. It is the way hardware should be,
| albeit it is so rare for it to be so that it is easy to jump to
| conclusions.
| gadgetoid wrote:
| I'd be remiss not to mention that we (Pimoroni) sit right at the
| hacker end of the E-ink scale with stuff like Badger2040W [1] and
| Inky Frame [2], both of which pair (small and less small) E-Ink
| panels with the RP2040 microcontroller so you can BYO software.
|
| The biggest roadblock to these being super compelling is update
| rate. The black/white screen on Badger can be driven pretty hard,
| but overdriving it (a friend built a continuous E-ink zoetrope
| [3]) has consequences.
|
| Inky Frame's 7 colour display is awesome for dithered artwork
| (missing cyan and magenta notwithstanding) but very, very slow to
| refresh- ~30s after the panels were updated to incorporate an
| unskippable "clean" phase.
|
| Faster, cheaper and bigger all seem mutually exclusive right now,
| but I share the authors passion for the format.
|
| 1.
| https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/badger-2040-w?variant=405...
|
| 2. https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-
| frame-7-3?variant=40...
|
| 3. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-digital-
| zoetr...
| [deleted]
| kepano wrote:
| I really wonder what would have happened in the e-ink patents
| didn't get locked up, and the technology had a chance to evolve
| for a couple more decades like LCD has.
|
| I'm working on an e-ink theme for Obsidian[1]. So far it's
| working on Boox devices, but I wish I could get it running on
| reMarkable. I'm not as clued into the reMarkable ecosystem, does
| anyone know if they will eventually add an app store or better
| tools for developers?
|
| [1]: https://minimal.guide/features/eink
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| You should check out hyperpaper, and maybe let's build an
| obsidian plugin with similar functionality. The problem right
| now with obsidian is pen input lag atleast on my Onyx device.
| funksta wrote:
| Hey, hyperpaper creator here! One of my long term dreams for
| the project is to make those pdfs usable as an input source
| for PKMs like Obsidian. I love the promise of full-featured
| PKMs (searchability, long-term retention) but I don't want to
| be on a laptop for hours curating and typing into them. An
| eInk tablet is my preferred note-taking and thinking device.
|
| The idea I want to eventually pursue is set up a service
| where you could sync your pdf (or send specific pages via
| email), have them OCRed (including dates and titles
| specifically since they already live in well-defined parts of
| the pages), and then ingest them into your PKM for long-term
| storage and recall
|
| Unfortunately Obsidian Cloud doesn't seem to have an API to
| support this at present, but I think it's theoretically
| feasible with Notion at least. Let me know if you build
| something like this :)
| konschubert wrote:
| Hmmm, do you think your theme could potentially work as an app
| on the e-paper smart display that I am selling?
|
| The screen I am using doesn't have touch input though, so it
| would only make sense if your app has non-interactive use
| cases.
|
| For now, the only out-of-the-box app that my display comes with
| is a calendar with google calendar sync. I am looking for ways
| to extend that.
|
| Maybe email me? (Email is in my profile.)
|
| And here is the eink smart screen I am talking about:
| https://invisible-computers.com/
| [deleted]
| Qwertious wrote:
| >I really wonder what would have happened in the e-ink patents
| didn't get locked up
|
| This is a myth endlessly repeated without evidence. LCDs have
| patents up the wazoo (OLEDs etc, plenty of new screen techs),
| it didn't stop them being developed. E-Ink just doesn't ha e
| any economy of scale, and it hasn't had an easy route toward
| economy of scale in the future, it's fairly niche in it's use-
| cases when it's competing with LCDs.
|
| If ReMarkable ever adds an app store, I'll eat my RM2*. They
| suffer from Apple syndrome and it goes against their "digital
| paper" schtick.
|
| *No I won't.
| codethief wrote:
| > If ReMarkable ever adds an app store, I'll eat my RM2*.
|
| Yeah, their whole product management is just downright
| obnoxious. Personally, I'm waiting for Supernote to open up
| their devices to 3rd-party devs.
| louison11 wrote:
| Can anyone give their feedback on eye strain with e-ink?
|
| I feel like my eyes have gotten really tired from over a decade
| working in the tech industry, and wondering if taking my
| notes/reading emails/articles on a reMarkable 2 or similar could
| give my eyes some rest.
| [deleted]
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| This is incredibly insufferable and unnecessary.
|
| > It's a world where Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X never
| existed and we don't have to suffer with abstractions on top of
| abstractions. It's DOS for the 2020s. It's graphing calculators
| for grown-ups.
| fossuser wrote:
| There are some E-ink fans in the urbit community (disclaimer I
| work on this stuff) and it really lets you fully extend the
| retropunk feel.
|
| I've got my Urbit running on a native planet hardware box
| (https://martiancomputing.substack.com/p/product-review-nativ...)
| plugged into my router's switch that I can access from anywhere.
| The UI for groups also looks good on e-ink (mostly white and
| black, nice design) one of the devs has an e-ink phone that shows
| it off. It's cool to really own the entire stack.
|
| I had the original remarkable tablet mentioned in the post and it
| was really cool (someone was also using it as a browser to access
| urbit back then), the new tablet looks better too.
|
| There was someone at the first urbit assembly (probably here on
| HN) working on cool new e-ink style tech that had some advantages
| without having to engage with all the patent nonsense and vendor
| lock-in that has plagued (imo seriously stalled) e-ink as a
| technology.
| codethief wrote:
| > I've got my Urbit running on a native planet hardware box
| (https://martiancomputing.substack.com/p/product-review-
| nativ...) plugged into my router's switch that I can access
| from anywhere.
|
| This is the first time I'm hearing about Urbit and, having
| spent the past 5-10 minutes browsing their website(s), I still
| haven't been able to figure out what it is exactly. Could you
| explain? And what do you use it for?
| fossuser wrote:
| It's a new OS design that runs in a runtime with baked in
| networking and PKI lookup for encrypted routes between users.
|
| I primarily use it today for chat (similar to IRC), and I
| locally host my own system. Every user is their own server.
|
| I wrote up a longer form description here:
| https://zalberico.com/essay/2022/09/28/tlon-urbit-
| computing-...
|
| Hopefully that's helpful.
| V1ndaar wrote:
| I was under the impression there were a few big issues with the
| openness of the reMarkable. Don't remember the details, but at
| some point I decided it wouldn't be for me. But this seems like I
| may be wrong?
|
| This seems like there should be good ways for a) easy sync and b)
| OCR without relying on their subscription (that's required, no?).
| ethanbond wrote:
| I would recommend looking at the Supernote. I did a ton of
| research and the ReMarkable seems very oddly limited. Supernote
| A5X is one of the best purchases I've made in 10 years easily.
|
| Idk about hackability and whatnot but as far as a useful
| e-reader, note book, sketchbook, planner, it's amazing.
|
| Edit: Also unaffiliated with this product but it's awesome:
| https://hyperpaper.me/
|
| Configurable, highly linked PDF planner with a very responsive
| person behind it (I figure he must be around here somewhere :))
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Alt perspective: my reMarkable 2 is awesome hardware, easy to
| hack (root is trivial), and hyperpaper.me works great on it.
|
| I recommend pairing it w/ a LAMY stylus.
| Qwertious wrote:
| The RM2 can't update the screen without Xochitl, though.
| That's why Parabola-RM hasn't been ported to it, AIUI.
| V1ndaar wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out!
| TheFreim wrote:
| I have a supernote a5x, it's amazing. Extremely useful for
| marking up pdfs.
|
| > Idk about hackability and whatnot but as far as a useful
| e-reader, note book, sketchbook, planner, it's amazing.
|
| You can currently "sideload" apps. It's not officially
| supported but the Supernote team appear to appreciate people
| tinkering. Adding an official means of installing apps has
| been in the road map for a while.
|
| > You guys are really exploring! A kind warning, installing
| third-party apps on your device may cause problems, as our
| kernel is optimized for E-Ink screens. We cannot guarantee a
| good experience with third-party apps if they are installed
| through unofficial methods. We are in the process of adding
| an official app store and support for sideloading, so please
| kindly wait.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Supernote/comments/wql9gm/how_to_in.
| ..
| funksta wrote:
| > https://hyperpaper.me/ Configurable, highly linked PDF
| planner with a very responsive person behind it (I figure he
| must be around here somewhere :))
|
| Hey, that's me :D
|
| Thanks for the shout-out Ethan, I'm happy to answer any
| questions people have about hyperpaper
| adiM wrote:
| Is it possible to generate the planner for A6X. The
| customization options do not seem to mention page size.
| its-summertime wrote:
| Open-ness as in open source, I can't comment on, but open-ness
| as in being able to get root, is almost easy enough to stumble
| into
|
| https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Help documents where
| to find the information, and the account details you are given
| afaik are for root
| Eeems wrote:
| Some of their stuff is open source[0], others, like the UI,
| are not.
|
| 0. https://github.com/reMarkable
| Eeems wrote:
| You can run your own reverse engineered implementation of their
| cloud: https://ddvk.github.io/rmfakecloud/
| yayitswei wrote:
| Looks like there are several self-hosted options, like this
| one: http://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/
|
| Probably because it's easy to get root, like another poster
| mentioned.
| RicDan wrote:
| Sadly it seems that the current trend is to throw in android and
| apps and whatnot to make it a terrible tablet replacement, whilst
| driving the cost up. It baffles me how android is in any way
| (apart from installing other reader apps) an improvement for
| e-readers.
| [deleted]
| xiaq wrote:
| Installing other reader apps is exactly the point of having
| Android, and there isn't really a way to implement "just enough
| Android" to be able to run other reader apps. You have to have
| the whole package of an Android OS. I have a Boox device and
| use other reader apps all the time. There are also browsers
| optimized for e-ink (EinkBro is the one I'm using now) and it's
| great for reading books that are only available as webpages.
|
| Also, developing your own OS is not necessarily cheaper than
| porting Android. Boox has been doing Android-based e-readers
| for a long time and their devices are usually on the cheaper
| end for the hardware. I feel it boils down more to UX rather
| than cost - do you want to let the user install whatever apps
| they want, or do you want to give them a more curated
| experience (and probably also limit them to your walled
| garden).
| xiaq wrote:
| Also by "reader apps" I mean "reader apps with their walled
| gardens", like Kindle, as opposed to readers for local files.
| Boox's builtin reader is OK, but I've used other e-readers
| whose builtin reader was worse and it'd be useful to have a
| 3rd party one for your local files. Ironically those
| e-readers are not Android-based.
|
| I know you can de-DRM Kindle books, but there are other
| walled gardens that don't allow you to do that easily (for me
| it's some Chinese e-book apps).
| eterps wrote:
| Most public libraries require an Android/iOS app for
| (controlled) digital lending.
| duozerk wrote:
| OK but with libgen offering a much better, non DRM
| alternative that point is ultimately not an issue IMO
| eterps wrote:
| I agree in the case of HN readers, for grandma and grandpa,
| not so much.
|
| In addition to that, lending ebooks from the public library
| provides (at least some) income to the e-book authors and
| editors.
| schroeding wrote:
| Have to disagree on that for non-english books. libgen /
| z-lib aren't always amazing for those, in my experience.
| The local library is the other way around, almost no
| english content, but plenty in my native tongue.
|
| The library also has the current (clickbait-free) print
| versions of newspapers as e-papers, which the shadow
| libraries (at least those that I know) have not.
|
| They synergize very well, though. :)
| emodendroket wrote:
| > apart from installing other reader apps
|
| Yeah if you discount the one huge and obvious advantage of this
| approach it's not clear why anyone would do it.
| retrac wrote:
| I would like to be able to run software on a tablet-sized
| device with an e-ink display. I have uses for the no-backlight
| no-power-when-static display beyond just reading text. Ideally
| it would be with an open source operating system, but I'll
| settle for something that lets me sideload apps.
|
| Performance is always in tension with price and weight, but
| software openness isn't in tension with any of them, really.
| TheFreim wrote:
| Supernote is decent in this regard. It's an android base, but
| the software has been very intentionally designed so as to
| avoid many of the pitfalls. It's primarily a notetaking e-ink
| tablet, it excels at writing notes or marking up pdfs/ebooks.
| If you really want you are able to install other applications,
| currently not officially supported though they've said they
| plan on adding support, but it's completely secondary to the
| primary mostly seamless design.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| Lots of apps and websites work great on eink, anything focused
| around text. Because it's android, I can use any reader
| software I like, including the Kindle app, but all text format
| are effectively s7pported. Browsing HN on it is a breeze, and
| chrome works much better than the Kindle built in browser. I
| would feel totally comfortable writing on it with a Bluetooth
| keyboard, or even writing and running code inside of Termux.
| Sudoku and crosswords are great.
|
| The thing that nobody realizes until they actually spend some
| real time with eating is how much more comfortable it is to
| read with then a phone or iPad screen. It works in all lighting
| conditions, the battery life lasts for weeks. Good luck reading
| on your phone at the beach on a sunny day.
|
| The things that it's not good at are non-text based games and
| videos, but that's not what it's for. I have a computer and
| phone for those things.
| duozerk wrote:
| Same, I just don't get it
|
| My go-to e-reader for years has been an ad-supported kindle
| that I immediately jailbreak to install KOReader and remove the
| ads (as well as any communication with amazon). It's cheap,
| supports epub, and the hardware is surprisingly good and
| durable.
|
| As a bonus you can basically install any GTK app you care to on
| there; I have a term emulator with SSH and a chess game with AI
| on mine, for example
| snickerbockers wrote:
| > ARM is a simple architecture with a low instruction count
|
| This has not been my experience with ARM assembly. There are
| several RISC machines with far smaller and simpler instruction
| counts.
| snvzz wrote:
| Relative to x86, ARM could be described like that.
|
| The standard open ISA RISC-V can be described like that
| relative to both legacy ISAs.
| croes wrote:
| Simple and low don't mean simplest and lowest.
| 23B1 wrote:
| It's bonkers to me how the whole hardware/software world seems to
| miss the actual best feature of e-ink: it's visible in sunlight.
| It chaps my ass every day that it's only possible to sit in a
| semi-dark room if for my working hours - during the day no less!
|
| YES I am aware there are ways to hook an e-ink screen to my
| laptop. But that's such a kludge! How is it that there are so few
| options, how is it nobody is thinking about the health benefits
| of knowledge workers being able to spend half their day in the
| sun?
|
| Sorry for the rant, it's just big tech brain that very few
| product developers think in this way. Humans are meant to be
| outside in the fresh air and sunshine, not locked to a damn
| screen all day.
| alcover wrote:
| That is my dream too.
|
| I would be SO happy to sit outside and think and code for many
| hours without worrying on battery life.
|
| No need for a powerful CPU. I just need to edit my code, see if
| it works and take notes.
|
| I want to hack on my compiler while the cows graze around me !
| kylebenzle wrote:
| We have the technology we have, there is no conspiracy to keep
| e-ink down other than a conspiracy of dunces.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| If you believe in it, then start your own company and make it?
| Your on HN after all.
| joemi wrote:
| Speaking of e-ink devices, is there a more-open equivalent to the
| amazon/kindle ebook store? Some site you can use to legally
| purchase and download ebooks for non-kindle devices? Or can you
| do that via Amazon now?
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Google Play Books is pretty good on any device that runs it.
| You can also upload your own ebooks quite easily (and then sync
| progress/annotations across devices), which is great for my
| collection of .epub files that mysteriously fell off a truck...
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| You can download books from the Kobo store. Most of them use
| Adobe Digital Editions DRM, which is trivial to remove using
| calibre, but some are DRM free.
| bullen wrote:
| Vision Five 2 is moving decently fast.
|
| The latest release handles most things without locking.
|
| I got my 3 MMOs working on it (Java, Java+LWJGL and C+), the
| impressive part is both OpenGL 1 and OpenGL ES 3 work as
| expected, but much too slow still.
|
| Raspberry 4 and Vision Five 2 are the contenders for relatively
| open and passively cooled 100% gaming.
|
| Even if the TH1250 and RK3588 promise more juice they also
| consume ~10W and make more heat that in most cases require fan or
| very large heat sink.
| corrigible wrote:
| I was super interested up until the Discord link :(
| goodpoint wrote:
| So much for punk and hacker cultures... discord is the windows
| of chat platforms :(
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| Onyx devices are good, but would be so much better if I could run
| desktop linux on it :/
| FouzR wrote:
| It would be better if they were GPL compliant
| starman12980 wrote:
| you _can_ use some onyx devices as an external monitor.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJIS_amo7TI
| GenericDev wrote:
| E-ink devices are the best.
|
| I've been using a Boox device lately to read old comics and I
| LOVE it. https://shop.boox.com/products/novaairc
|
| The thing is that it makes them feel so retro because of the
| limited colors they can supply, and it still looks great doing
| it.
|
| My only regret isn't a regret, it's just timing. I purchased the
| nova air c before the Tab Ultra C had come out.
| https://shop.boox.com/products/tabultrac
|
| And its form factor is just so much more pleasant.
|
| I can't wait for the coming years of e-ink advancements.
| bawolff wrote:
| Wow, the interactive fiction interpreter looks so cool.
| https://github.com/bkirwi/folly i think i want one
| quailfarmer wrote:
| Anyone care to recommend one of the two devices (Kobo Elipsa or
| RM2) mentioned? It appears the RM2 may have gotten more expensive
| since release? How is the relative build quality? Any key
| hardware differences to note?
| codethief wrote:
| Having tested the Remarkable 2 for a few weeks, I'd actually
| recommend another device: The Supernote A5X. The hardware &
| writing experience are a tad better IMO and the software much
| more so.
|
| Also, the Remarkable devs are notoriously bad when it comes to
| software updates and sharing their plans for the future with
| the community. Meanwhile, the Supernote people even share their
| Trello boards over on Reddit -> https://Reddit.com/r/Supernote
|
| The Supernote, admittedly, is not as hackable yet as the
| Remarkable but 1) official software updates are much more
| frequent and 2) there are plans to open up the device to 3rd-
| party Android apps.
| foobarqux wrote:
| It's a shame that Kindles aren't hack-friendly, there are lots of
| old Kindles lying around that would be great as an always-on
| display.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Though I haven't actually tried this, it probably wouldn't be
| too hard to use the built-in Kindle web browser to display a
| constantly updating web page and/or full-screen image from a
| remote web server.
| foobarqux wrote:
| Amazon recently disabled the ability to keep the screen
| always on so it doesn't really work. It's kind of finicky as
| well: I would have the network selector pop-up and stay there
| if there was a temporary disconnection in the WiFi (say if
| someone used the microwave).
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Amazon recently disabled the ability to keep the screen
| always on so it doesn't really work.
|
| Too bad. There are probably other use cases for "keep the
| screen on continuously".
|
| > It's kind of finicky as well: I would have the network
| selector pop-up and stay there if there was a temporary
| disconnection in the WiFi (say if someone used the
| microwave).
|
| Now this I've never seen. The WiFi is pretty solid here,
| though... there are 5 WAPs in different parts of the house
| (primarily so I can get signal out to the edge of the yard
| -- the house is only medium-sized)..
| PascalW wrote:
| Some Kindles can easily be jailbroken [1]. I have two
| jailbroken Kindle 4 devices and they're still great. Both for
| reading (though you have to sideload books) and as e-ink
| dashboards [2]. A Kindle 4 can run for ~ 28 days on a single
| charge, refreshing the screen every hour.
|
| [1] https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle4NTHacking#Jailbreak
|
| [2] https://github.com/pascalw/kindle-dash
| Sunspark wrote:
| It is doable though. A bunch of years ago I followed some
| instructions and set up a dual-boot on one using a Chinese
| ebook platform firmware. This way if you wanted to read epubs
| or PDFs you would boot to the other OS. Worked pretty well! Had
| access to all of the hardware including wifi.
|
| So it would be the same basic principle here as what you
| envision.. boot into that other system, but have it instead
| launch some other app.
| orangepurple wrote:
| I love these throwbacks. It reminds me of my old Palm m500. There
| is something so _comfortable_ about Palm OS. I can 't quite grasp
| it but the Palm experience is simply exquisite and I have never
| seen it replicated anywhere.
| krabizzwainch wrote:
| I'm a little disappointed that this doesn't go into the off the
| shelf screens from waveshare. That's where the fun really is for
| me at least. I wrote an epub reader in Python and built an
| eReader with a raspberry pi. I guess it's a little less hacking
| and more so developing.
| sigil wrote:
| Sounds cool! Did you publish code or a writeup somewhere?
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Or anywhere, really. This statement: "Grab a reMarkable or Kobo
| and get hacking" isn't realistic to me. I don't run out and buy
| current products that cost $300 to "get hacking."
|
| Hacking on a panel scrounged from a discontinued product, or a
| bare one, sure. But when you're spending multiple hundreds of
| dollars for a new part, I don't consider that the hacker realm.
|
| Nothing against the author; I've been looking at E-ink for a
| long time and this page is inspiring. But in the end, the cost
| turns me away yet again. Also the pitiful refresh rates I've
| seen...
| OptCohTomo wrote:
| E-ink is a fascinating display technology. Here is an account of
| a non-destructive "teardown" of an E-ink display by optical
| coherence tomography (OCT):
| https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1605/1605.05174.pdf
| tomcam wrote:
| Wait punk started around 1975... isn't all punk retro?
|
| /s
|
| Very fun piece.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I have to say I actually find it kind of frustrating how low the
| specs are because you sometimes find the stupid thing chugging.
| While trying to display plain text. In a way a tablet is better.
| imiric wrote:
| I'd really like to have a large e-ink display on my wall showing
| various dashboards, but I can't justify the exorbitant cost. It
| would be really elegant to have a low powered programmable setup
| with an Arduino and a battery, but I'm tempted to just buy a
| large LCD display and connect it to mains instead.
|
| It's a shame that this technology is kept artifically out of
| reach to hobbyists.
|
| I've seen the Waveshare displays, but they're too small and
| limited in features (monochrome or few colors, very high refresh
| rate, etc.).
| Qwertious wrote:
| >It's a shame that this technology is kept artifically out of
| reach to hobbyists.
|
| This is a myth. They're not artificially expensive, they just
| have low economy of scale because they're a niche product. As
| you yourself said, you're tempted to just buy a large LCD
| display instead.
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| > exorbitant cost.
|
| Is that fundamental to the technology, or is it just it being a
| low-volume niche product?
| [deleted]
| Max-q wrote:
| The screens are expensive for everybody. For devices with e-ink
| display, the screen is often more than the rest of the BOM
| combined. That's why there are only premium device on the
| market, except Kindle, which is subsidized by Amazon.
|
| When they first appeared, I was sure the price would drop with
| increasing volumes, but that has not happened. Probably they
| can't get good enough yield, and it's not a product suitable to
| sell with dead pixels, like a TV, where cheap models have dead
| pixels while the premium models don't.
| arp242 wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree with that; I paid EUR120 for my
| PocketBook e-reader, which wasn't the cheapest one, and I
| bought it in-store (could have gotten a better price online
| probably, but comparing devices in-store was useful).
|
| Now, while EUR120 isn't nothing, it's also not a whole lot,
| and it's cheap enough that with a few books a year you're
| _saving_ money.
|
| Amazon's 6" Kindle sells for EUR110 by the way, but is
| missing some features my Pocketbook has, and the 6.8" Kindle
| Paperwhite with comparable features sells for EUR170. Doesn't
| seem that much cheaper to me.
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| It possibly hasn't happened because, at least from what I've
| heard previously here on HN, the e-ink company has a monopoly
| on the patents needed to make them:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779
|
| It sounds like they might have just recently expired but I
| imagine there is a catchup phase.
| Qwertious wrote:
| In the link you posted, please scroll down to the reply by
| Robinsoh - the "patent thicket" claim is bullshit, and
| people keep repeating the myth without a real source to
| back it up.
|
| E-ink is expensive because it's a niche product _that lacks
| economy of scale_ , and it's a niche product because it
| does almost nothing that can't be done by LCDs (which are
| _incredibly_ flexible). E-ink is amazing, but it doesn 't
| have the best business case.
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| To be honest, that commenter probably knows more than I
| do about the tech. But on the business side, I think that
| would be a stronger position if there wasn't just one
| single company that owns the entire market. OLEDs were
| originally very expensive, niche, and had yield problems
| but competition has driven development -- bringing prices
| down, improving yields, and solving many the issues that
| made them a niche application.
|
| The commenter said that a billion dollars are needed to
| make the technology scale but The EInk Corporation itself
| raised only 1/10th of that and now they're making a
| billion dollars per year off it -- why haven't they
| brought prices down then?
|
| If you look at their annual reports, EInk sure seems to
| think their patents are important; they mention patents
| as part of their "strategic roadmap" every year. Their
| initial patents were in the late 90s, and the last few
| years the royalty revenue amounts on E Ink's revenue
| breakdowns have been dropping every single year as they
| shift more and more into actually making the screens. The
| data lines up IMO.
| hakfoo wrote:
| The big _commercial_ selling point of E-ink is that it
| should be able to survive zero power.
|
| I assume that's why its first killer app has been
| pricetags. A store with 5000 items each requiring a LCD
| pricetag would be constantly replacing little batteries
| or having to reprogram units if they popped out of a plug
| or rail-basewd power system.
|
| I think some of the interest from the hobbyist brows is
| less about that and more about other aspects of the
| technology-- it has a bit of a distinct look and
| excellent full-sun readability.
|
| A hypothetical nonbacklit high res grayscale LCD would
| have some similar properties and might be more viable at
| small scale; I know they're making basically that in
| small sizes for use in resin 3D printers.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> A store with 5000 items each requiring a LCD pricetag
| would be constantly replacing little batteries_
|
| Errr, not really. LCD price tags existed before e-ink
| (and still do) and battery life was not much worse. It's
| something like 1.5x-2x tops, so enough to make business
| sense, but not orders of magnitudes earth shattering as
| one might assume.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| In fact, most retail shops that have anything other than
| paper use LCD price tags. If they are making the switch
| is because they expect to be frequently updating them...
| and then any eInk battery life advantage evaporates.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> If they are making the switch is because they expect
| to be frequently updating them..._
|
| Not necessarily that. They're making the switch to
| digital price tags because it's much quicker and easier
| to run promos on certain items to clear the shelves
| before closing time on perishable goods, but most
| importantly, they're making the switch because when
| employee have to manually change paper price tags,
| mistakes happen far too often, and stores end up in
| situations where the price on the self doesn't match the
| price on the cash register, angering customers who in
| certain jurisdictions are entitled to compensation for
| the store's pricing mistake.
|
| Digital price tags ensure such mistakes are gone saving
| the store money over time.
| echelon wrote:
| > It's a shame that this technology is kept artifically out of
| reach to hobbyists.
|
| This is still an issue where a single company controls the
| entire tech, right? When do the relevant patents expire?
| Qwertious wrote:
| They don't - the Display Electronic Slurry (DES) is a
| competing 'e-paper' tech that E-Ink corp haven't patented. It
| has slightly different pros and cons (it has a more defined
| checkerboard pattern which isn't as nicely grainy as E-Ink
| corp's MED, but it let's them pour the 'ink' straight into
| the substrate which potentially has higher contrast and
| resolution as a result), but ultimately that's irrelevant
| nitpicking if patents are causing the price of E-Ink screens
| to be crazily high as people keep falsely claiming. If DES
| could deliver screens at half the price, then Wiwood (?)
| would eat E-Ink's lunch.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Expiry isn't the issue. In America (and Canada I'm pretty
| sure) you have the right to use a patent at a fair cost
| determined by a court. Or you can try to just use the patent
| anyway and wait for the court case to come to you.
| sjs382 wrote:
| Nope. A patent is an exclusive right yo an invention. They
| aren't forced to license it to you or anyone else.
| generic92034 wrote:
| The exception would be standard essential patents, as far
| as I know.
| stonogo wrote:
| The standards bodies can encourage FRAND licensing, but
| there is no legal requirement backing it beyond the
| patent holder agreeing to it.
| generic92034 wrote:
| Thanks for the correction, I misremembered that, it
| seems. On the other hand, an SEP holder not licensing the
| patent with FRAND terms will have a hard time to
| establish any kind of standard, in some scenarios.
| stonogo wrote:
| I agree with you, it would be counterproductive. The more
| common occurrance is that one of the patent-holding
| entities opts out of the FRAND agreement, holding all the
| implementors of the standard hostage. An example would be
| Forgent's acquisition of a patent they interpreted to be
| essential to JPEG. The patent was eventually invalidated
| in the courts, but it caused a lot of headaches for a few
| years in the early 2000s.
| giaour wrote:
| There are a few exceptions in US law (e.g., provisions in
| the Defense Production Act) that can allow a patent owner
| to be compelled to license their IP. IANAL but I believe
| this generally requires an officially declared emergency
| of some kind.
| _delirium wrote:
| There are additional exceptions short of a declared
| emergency, but rarely invoked. So in practice I agree
| this is unlikely to happen with e-ink displays. But for
| legal nerds I'll elaborate anyway.
|
| Some exceptions are obviously inapplicable here, e.g.
| special rules for plant varieties [1] and nuclear energy
| [2]. The one most likely to apply to e-ink displays is
| that, under the Bayh-Dole act, if an invention was funded
| by government grants, and the patent holder fails to make
| it widely available, the government has so-called "march-
| in rights" to license it to third parties themselves.
| However this has never been successfully used. Wikipedia
| summarizes: "Though this right is, in theory, quite
| powerful, it has not proven so in terms of its practical
| application" [3].
|
| [1] Perhaps because it's controversial to allow plant
| varieties to be patented in the first place, the statute
| for them has an explicit compulsory license clause (see
| the last subsection): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/
| text/7/chapter-57/subchap...
|
| [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2183
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act#P
| etition...
| sjs382 wrote:
| Yeah, I initially threw in some caveats but removed them
| for brevity and because they don't really apply to the
| topic at hand (eink).
|
| I mean, someone can also compel you to license your IP
| using a hammer.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The patents on the original black and white displays have
| already expired. They are just really hard to make at large
| size without defects.
|
| Newer versions that are easier to manufacture or have color
| are still under patents for a while.
| malfist wrote:
| Not exactly what you're looking for, but check out dakboard.
|
| They even have a pi version
| MayeulC wrote:
| Are you sure it's artificial and not related to yields? As in,
| it's more likely you get a dead pixel on a larger screen.
|
| The answer would be "chiplets" of course, assembling bigger
| screens out of smaller ones. At the hobby leven, I think
| something decent could be built out of a few second hand kindle
| screens, if you plan the seams as part of the aesthetic.
| hwillis wrote:
| > As in, it's more likely you get a dead pixel on a larger
| screen.
|
| Aside from the ink capsules and higher voltage (though still
| very low), E ink is almost identical to LCD and probably
| slightly easier to make. There's a TFT (which can have a
| larger footprint, since it doesn't need to be transparent) on
| the back, an LC or E ink capsule layer, and an ITO electrode.
| Dead pixels are almost always caused by damage or defects in
| the TFT.
|
| I wouldn't say it's artificially out of reach, though-
| setting a line up to produce large panels is a high
| opportunity cost. If anything is artificial about it, it's
| that you presumably can't buy E ink capsules yourself. With
| enough effort you might be able to separate the top glass
| from an LCD TV, dissolve the LC, and replace it with E ink,
| but I have no idea how you'd do that. No promises it wouldn't
| burn out the TFT immediately.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> E ink is almost identical to LCD and probably slightly
| easier to make_
|
| False. E-ink film, especially color, is definitely more
| complex to get right than LCDs. Sure, e-ink displays have
| the same TFT layer underneath just like LCD displays, but
| the e-ink pigment and film is tricky to make.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Acronym-expansion as a service:
|
| TFT: Thin-film transistor
|
| LC: Liquid crystal
|
| ITO: Indium-tin oxide
|
| LCD: Liquid crystal display (though this one's widely
| known).
|
| (Please expand acronyms on first use. Even, or _especially_
| , where they strike you as well-known or obvious.)
| konschubert wrote:
| It's true. Large eink displays get expensive really fast.
|
| I went with a 7.5 inch display for the eink calendar / smart
| display that I am selling.
|
| I am definitely feeling the limitations, but there is still a
| lot you can do at that size.
|
| Have a look: https://shop.invisible-
| computers.com/products/invisible-cale...
|
| And maybe once the business grows, I'll have the volumes needed
| to get better prices on the bigger displays.
| QuinnyPig wrote:
| Ooh. Purchased. Let's see how this goes...
| mmh0000 wrote:
| I've looked at your product multiple times and every time I
| think I wanna buy one. Then I go to the webpage and I see
| that it only works with Google which is not what I use so
| then I get sad and leave.
|
| I'd buy one in a heartbeat if there was support for iCalendar
| or other common/open standards.
| konschubert wrote:
| I have started working on more calendar integrations now.
|
| If you write me a short mail at info@invisible-
| computers.com and tell me what integration you need, I will
| make sure to let you know once it is out.
|
| In the meantime, there are often ways to sync other
| calendars (also iCalendar) with google calendar. It's a bit
| of a detour but it might just work.
| starman12980 wrote:
| what screen did you use for the e-ink part of the display/who
| manufactures it?
| konschubert wrote:
| It's a model similar to the 7.5 inch screen by waveshare
| anoncow wrote:
| Looks good. I made one using a waveshare screen and a
| raspberry pi zero. It cost almost the same as your retail
| price, but it didnt look this good.
| konschubert wrote:
| Cool! What are you displaying on it? I am always adding for
| new use cases to add as apps to my device.
| bennetthi wrote:
| Do you sell anything bigger? I only saw the 7.5, I'd be way
| more interested in something like 24.
| konschubert wrote:
| I just don't have the volume right now to get good prices
| from manufacturers on any bigger displays.
|
| I'm looking into 10 inch displays right now, but they are
| already significantly more expensive.
|
| At some point it just drives the price of the end product
| up too much.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The largest devices I'm aware of are E-ink displays. Onyx
| produces the Onyx BOOX Mira Pro, 25.3" diagonal, based on
| the E Ink Carta, 25,3", resolution of 3200x1800 dots, 145
| ppi, 16 shades of grey.
|
| <https://onyxboox.com/boox_mirapro>
|
| Note that the pixel density is _markedly_ lower than
| other e-ink devices. For smaller devices, e.g., the Poke
| 5, DPI is _more than double_ at 300 dpi (comparable to a
| laser printer): 6 ", E Ink Carta Plus, 16 shades of grey,
| 1072 x 1448 dots, pixel density - 300 ppi
|
| <https://onyxboox.com/boox_poke5>
|
| Granted: with increased viewing distance, resolution can
| fall somewhat, but given that _areal_ density falls as
| the, well, square, this is 4x lower resolution.
|
| The Mira Pro runs an eye-watering $1,750, further
| impeding the viewing experience. Given price trends on
| other E-Ink devices, I'm pretty sure that's all but
| entirely driven by the display cost itself.
| theK wrote:
| How much of an effort is it to get this working with webcals?
| I love the idea but don't use google at all...
| konschubert wrote:
| Hi, I'm about to find out, since I am working on adding
| support for it :D
|
| If you want I can let you know once it's done if you send
| me a short email to info@invisible-computers.com
| iglio wrote:
| Have you considered using multiple of the current displays
| together in a single product, presenting them as a single
| view to the user? Does that help with the pricing?
| pmarreck wrote:
| I have had this bookmarked for a few years to do as a side
| project but the acquisition of a new son has put all this aside
| for the foreseeable future unfortunately, perhaps you can make
| use of it:
|
| https://alexanderklopping.medium.com/an-updated-daily-front-...
|
| Would strongly recommend using another language than PHP to
| make it work, but the LLM du jour would probably translate it
| to any other language for you.
|
| Here was the original post that inspired that one:
| https://onezero.medium.com/the-morning-paper-revisited-35b40...
| cinntaile wrote:
| OT but... Did you mean addition or can you actually say
| acquisition in English?
| pmarreck wrote:
| I was making a humorous reference to startup life. You
| don't normally say that in English, I was playing with the
| language. My son is actually awesome, and yes, he is an
| "addition" (sum of one total). =)
|
| Thank you for learning English! As a speaker of (to some
| extent) 3 other languages, I for one appreciate anyone who
| has struggled to learn English as an (N+1)th language.
| onurcel wrote:
| same. I have these exact urls bookmarked for years
| raisjn wrote:
| OP here. thanks for all the comments. some more info:
|
| rmkit is a library (and group of devs) for creating apps on the
| rM (and now Kobo). outside of rmkit, people typically use Qt to
| write apps, but there's many routes[0], including SAS[1]: a
| solution that uses unix pipes. the rM2 requires a bit more
| hacking to get working than the rM1 because their framebuffer
| driver[2] is embedded in their software for rM2 and requires
| updating rm2fb every time remarkable releases a new update.
| there's alternative drivers[3] to drive the display in
| development.
|
| i will keep updating the article based on feedback, thank you and
| keep hacking
|
| [0]: https://remarkable.guide/devel/index.html
|
| [1]: https://rmkit.dev/apps/sas
|
| [2]: https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-framebuffer/
|
| [3]: https://github.com/matteodelabre/waved
| [deleted]
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| Can you brick your RM2 by playing with this? I'm interested,
| but the device was a bit pricey for potentially destructive
| fooling around.
| raisjn wrote:
| see Eeems' comment about soft bricking:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37274460
|
| as long as you have SSH keys and you don't blow away your
| home partition, you are mostly fine. you do need a slightly
| older version of Xochitl, though (3.2 and below)
| jmspring wrote:
| On a scale of a PC to having to jail break an iPhone to do
| custom stuff - how invasive is what you are mentioning for the
| RM2? I have one, love it for notes/etc. But haven't tried 3rd
| party software/etc on it.
| lallysingh wrote:
| The settings page had the root password and you ssh in over
| (IIRC) usb
| Eeems wrote:
| https://remarkable.guide/ has a bunch of current information
| on the state of hacking your device. You have root access out
| of the box, which means how invasive it is depends on how you
| go about it. The community is trying their best to stick to a
| set of standards that keeps things from being too brittle,
| and "just works".
| konschubert wrote:
| To (maybe?) add to your list: The e-paper smart display that I
| am making and selling does also allow users to build their own
| content. There are two different ways:
|
| 1. You can either just serve an image on a URL and the device
| will display it, refreshing whenever the image changes:
|
| https://www.invisible-computers.com/invisible-calendar/image...
|
| 2. Or you go one step further and wrap it into an API with a
| settings page, which will also allow others to install and use
| your app:
|
| https://github.com/Invisible-Computers/image-gallery/blob/ma...
|
| To be fully transparent: I know that many people are using the
| first approach to display their own designs, but I haven't had
| much uptake yet on the second option to build a public,
| installable app. So if anyone is interested in trying this out,
| please contact me! I am willing to cooperate closely and
| iterate on the API where necessary.
|
| (I hope that this is sufficiently relevant, even though I am
| tooting my own horn here.)
| yoavm wrote:
| I don't know about the rM, but for Kobo - why not just run
| Linux? it literally runs Debian (and others). I've written so
| apps for it (e.g. https://github.com/bjesus/pidif) using GTK.
| It would have been great if we had a more unified eco-system
| for e-ink supported apps.
| Eeems wrote:
| Usually the reason is that people want to continue using the
| built-in interface with just some additions, instead of
| replacing and maintaining a separate installation.
|
| It would be nice if someone were to start working on an
| aftermarket linux distribution/ecossytem that targets eink
| devices. It's a lot of work to do, though, so I'm not
| surprised that nobody has picked up that torch yet.
|
| Some notes on the reMarkable, it is running a custom linux
| distribution that is based on Openembedded Core[0]. The
| company publishes their modifications to the linux kernel[1],
| so one person has created their own linux distribution for
| the original reMarkable tablet [2]. The reMarkable 2
| currently has no native framebuffer driver for the screen,
| due to it being software controlled by the UI application,
| which requires a workaround for custom applications[3].
|
| 0. https://www.yoctoproject.org/software-item/openembedded-
| core... 1. https://github.com/reMarkable/linux 2.
| http://www.davisr.me/projects/parabola-rm/ 3.
| https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-framebuffer
| joshe wrote:
| Add Visionect to hacker unfriendly devices. They forced a change
| to subscription service. Ask me how I know :-(.
| hiddencost wrote:
| I wired a WavShare display to a firebeetle ESP32, with a 10 Ah
| battery.
|
| I run it with ESPHome connected to Home Assistant.
|
| Fits in a picture, I only update it every 8 hours. Battery is
| still alive after two months.
|
| I'm using Todoist to host a Todo list that I can update from my
| phone. It gets pushed to the eInk display on my office wall.
| konschubert wrote:
| How do you render the todo list? Does todoist provide an API?
|
| (I am trying to sell an epaper smart screen as a commercial
| product. Right now it only has a calendar app and I am looking
| for apps that I can add.)
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >Linux: as much as I like it, Android is a complicated mess
|
| EDIT: misread, I agree
| samtheprogram wrote:
| You're being overly pedantic. They meant a GNU/Linux
| distribution without the Android bits, not an Android
| distribution.
|
| And that's obvious.
| smeej wrote:
| I see Linux and Android there, not Arduino?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Yea I'm bad at reading.
| ryandv wrote:
| As much as I love the hacker spirit of cracking open hardware and
| software and bending it to your will (whether or not it was
| designed towards that end), I enjoy my reMarkable precisely
| because I can get away from the ubiquity of computing and needing
| to constantly tinker with and repair software.
|
| I've fucked with Gentoo and Arch for so long that sometimes I
| just want a break from it all. No dependency hell, no bugs,
| esoteric stack traces, nor popups, advertisements, notifications,
| nor distractions. Just some pen and paper, except without the
| eraser shavings or ink blots. Not having to scan your notes to
| digitize them is a nice bonus as well.
|
| Especially since the pandemic and in the WFH era it's nice to get
| away from the omnipresent touchscreen or mouse and keyboard
| interfaces and deal with something a little more tactile;
| something reminiscent of a less perpetually online era. I'm tired
| of being hyperconnected to everything. Not to mention all the
| problems from staring at LED monitors all day long.
|
| Sometimes I don't want to troubleshoot software; I've done enough
| of that already.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| > Sometimes I don't want to troubleshoot software; I've done
| enough of that already.
|
| That's why I switched to FreeBSD.
|
| Every OS kernel update, every package upgrade just works. Rock
| Solid.
| swores wrote:
| > _As much as I love the hacker spirit of cracking open
| hardware and software and bending it to your will (whether or
| not it was designed towards that end), I enjoy my reMarkable
| precisely because I can get away from the ubiquity of computing
| and needing to constantly tinker with and repair software._
|
| Personally I completely agree with you, and could have written
| almost exactly that paragraph - I too have a ReMarkable (the
| 2nd / current version), and love using it as it ships for both
| note taking and especially for reading ebooks/PDFs
| ("especially" just because it's what I use it for more, not
| because that's what it's better at - in fact, its UI for
| reading documents is among its weaker points and I hope they
| improve it in future software updates).
|
| However it is worth pointing out that you can SSH into it, and
| there are a fair few 3rd party tools and hacks for it - so far
| I've avoided trying any of them as there's nothing that I want
| strongly enough to have even a 1% risk of bricking it to worry
| about. But I'm tempted to start playing around with it someday.
|
| This is the best list of stuff for the ReMarkable that I'm
| aware of, though I don't know how complete it is / how many
| released tools or guides there might be that aren't included
| here:
|
| https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable
| Eeems wrote:
| https://remarkable.guide is a good place to start
| swores wrote:
| Thanks, bookmarked!
| pmarreck wrote:
| > I've fucked with Gentoo and Arch for so long that sometimes I
| just want a break from it all. No dependency hell, no bugs,
| esoteric stack traces, nor popups, advertisements,
| notifications, nor distractions.
|
| OT, but FYI... I have all that on NixOS. Things install and run
| reliably and configurations stick reliably, all declaratively.
| It feels like "the final distro hop" for me.
|
| 1) Getting back to known-good from any fucking-with that breaks
| something is 1 rollback away.
|
| 2) It's still Nix wizardry to do something as relatively simple
| as set up a systemd background process that gongs on the hour
| (I actually made this work, but it broke recently and I don't
| know why yet because 2-year-old-son). This actually discourages
| "distracted hacking" while making you work for the changes you
| definitely want, which ends up being a nice compromise.
|
| FWIW, I've been the most productive on this Linux distro of all
| the ones I've tried (Ubuntu, ElementaryOS, Pop_OS, Manjaro,
| Arch).
| teknico wrote:
| > Not to mention all the problems from staring at LED monitors
| all day long.
|
| Not sure what problems you mean. Any reference?
| ryandv wrote:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6020759/
| [deleted]
| blowski wrote:
| I'm with you. I want to buy things that don't need constant
| fiddling to keep them working. I want them to silently do their
| thing, supporting me in the background while I focus on mine.
|
| But it's great knowing that I _could_ drop down a layer at any
| time. It makes me feel a lot more comfortable about relying on
| an ecosystem to know that it has redundancy in the support
| layer. For example, if Remarkable themselves go out of
| business, will I still have access to my documents? Will they
| still receive updates? Will I still be able to buy replacement
| parts?
| [deleted]
| ryandv wrote:
| Yes, yes. It just works, but if I need to I can pop open the
| hood and shell in, and then I'm back at home with Linux.
| locusofself wrote:
| Precisely why I have not used Linux on my laptop/desktop since
| like 15 years ago. I love to tinker and troubleshoot but I
| prefer to to be getting paid for it.
| freedomben wrote:
| A lot has changed in the last 15 years. Unless you're doing
| something crazy (like trying to play sound, haha jk that's a
| throwback joke to the old days), there's nothing you need to
| tinker with these days (though of course it's there if you
| change your mind). Fedora, Ubuntu, and some others are very
| stable and "just works".
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| I've done 3 new computer builds in the previous 6 months.
|
| Both Linux installs were an 'it just works experience'.
|
| The windows box has been a total pain in the ass and I've
| had to reinstall multiple times.
|
| Linux is a better out of the box experience than Windows.
| dehrmann wrote:
| A year or two ago, I remember HiDPI still being a hassle.
| slimsag wrote:
| That wasn't my experience ~11 months ago
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32891879
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| I feel you on this.
|
| I started using Gentoo on my personal machines (Desktop,
| Laptop, NAS) after I needed to understand it for work.
| Eventually I fell in love with the developer workflow that it
| allows.
|
| That was seven years ago. These days I feel like I've spent so
| much time tinkering for little to no benefit. I've been through
| LFS a few times so I don't feel that being a Gentoo user made
| me understand Linux any more than I already did.
|
| So much "emerge --sync && emerge -1 sys-apps/portage && emerge
| -auUDN @world" and then fix USE flags problems and mask
| problems and keep rerunning the last command until it actually
| works.
|
| I somewhat self host everything right now - VPN into my home
| network to access my NAS. But the user experience of documents
| and media just feels so poor compared to existing cloud
| services that I'm tempted to just give up on homelab stuff.
|
| The upfront price of 10+ TB hard drives is hundreds of dollars
| a drive, you need to replace them every 5 years or so to
| "trust" them, you need redundant disks because you can never
| trust them, you need a backup solution, time investment to make
| backups, and the price of power in the Bay Area means you are
| spending several hundred a year on power to run the gear.
| Whereas I could just get 10 TB for $50/month from a cloud
| provider. It's not like I actually watch or listen to any of
| the blurays or music rips I've made, which represent most of my
| data...
|
| I bought a PineNote in early 2022 hoping to replace my
| reMarkable. I've worn out the battery but I don't want to give
| money to a company that intentionally makes swapping the
| battery nearly impossible. Along with the fact they're useless
| at work because you can't directly use a cloud service, you
| have to proxy through reMarkable's own service.
|
| I thought it'd be fun to tinker on but then I actually
| developed a healthy social life and exercise routine again and
| have found little motivation to stay inside when I'm not
| working.
| terminous wrote:
| Retro? Sure. Punk? Not when the patents are tightly held by a
| greedy patent troll who seems to do everything in their power to
| stop hobbyists and hackers
| bee_rider wrote:
| Re-purposing them is retropunk
| weinzierl wrote:
| Commercialization is the fate of punk - always has been. I read
| the headline more in the sense of aesthetically Punk. I'm not
| sure if I agree, but E-Ink certainly has a very special appeal
| that always makes me want to buy more. Not so much the tablets,
| but the small displays, especially the brightly colored ones.
| The yellow background makes them look like sticky notes right
| out of a magic fairy tale wonder world.
| criddell wrote:
| > a greedy patent troll who seems to do everything in their
| power to stop hobbyists and hackers
|
| Is there evidence of this? On every HN e-ink thread this is
| repeated as if it is common knowledge, but I haven't read much
| to back it up. Have you personally been shut down by lawyers
| when you try to use an eink display in a hacker kind-of-way?
|
| And yes, there are patents, but so what? How does the company
| wield them? Are the licensing terms terrible? My Raspberry Pi
| has a Broadcom CPU. Broadcom is no stranger to patents yet
| there's plenty of hobbyist and hacker activity around their
| components.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Not when the patents are tightly held by a greedy patent
| troll who seems to do everything in their power to stop
| hobbyists and hackers_
|
| That's a bit disingenuous and short-sighted view from people
| not knowing or understanding the industry, market, technology
| and manufacturing challenges. Sure, like any successful tech
| company, e-ink owns patents and controls a large part of the
| market more-or-less, but patents aren't the main reasons why
| the e-paper industry hasn't moved forward.
|
| That's kind of like saying "ASML's and Cymer's patents are the
| reason the EUV lithography hasn't moved forward and why they
| have no competition."
|
| No mate, that's not true. Just like EUV lithography, making
| e-ink tech displays, affordably, and at scale with good yields
| and healthy margins to keep the industry afloat, is hard, very
| hard, bordering on magic, which is the main reason they have no
| competition.
|
| Turns out making minuscule pigment electrostatic particles that
| can quicky move around inside a fluid suspension and hold their
| position long enough at various ambient conditions, is a huge
| challenge, and manufacturing that at scale with very low
| defects and sustainable margins is even harder.
|
| Nothing in their patents currently is holding back competition,
| but competition can't reach the scale and yields that would
| make enough profits to support a viable competitor consider
| even entering this field, versus OLED displays, as that's where
| thew real money is in display manufacturing right now and
| that's where the competition is heating up and where all the
| R&D money gets poured.
|
| That's why there's been various alternatives to e-ink-like tech
| popping up from university research labs and being displayed at
| trade shows, but going from a research lab one-off prototype
| being shown at trade shows, to mass production at scale with
| good yields and profit margins, is the real challenge and is
| where e-ink has their secret sauce that nobody can successfully
| replicate.
|
| Similarly how China has been showing off working home grown Xnm
| lithography prototype chips that can compete with TSMC, but
| reaching the yields and volumes of TSMC is where the impossible
| to cross cliff lies, and why people get confused and don't
| understand that the major challenge lies in manufacturing at
| scale and not just the core tech that makes the widget unique.
|
| I'm not defending e-ink the company and their corporate
| practices, just wanted to shed some light on the technicalities
| of the subject and hopefully clear some of the FUD and
| conspiracies that get wrongfully spread around.
| surgicalcolor wrote:
| Given that the margins are so tight and the expenses so high
| as you've illustrated, explain to me how it's possible that
| the extra costs involved with licensing patented hardware is
| not a significant factor?
|
| It doesn't really make sense to say that on the one hand,
| it's super tough and hard to make a profit, and on the other
| hand the costs of accessing patented hardware is an
| immaterial cost.
|
| Your post just really isn't convincing that a patent here has
| little effect on the ability for others to compete.
|
| When margins are as tight as you say they are then obviously
| the costs of licensing are going to make the margins even
| thinner or next to impossible for another competitor to meet.
|
| Love when people come out here with unironic defense here of
| monopolies by simply defending them as some meritocratic
| output of success or something.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Love when people come out here with unironic defense
| here of monopolies by simply defending them as some
| meritocratic output of success or something._
|
| That wasn't my point. You must have misunderstood.
| swores wrote:
| In my opinion, saying that without explaining what they
| misunderstood / what you disagree with them on is both
| snarky and unsubstantial enough to fall below the line of
| the HN guidelines. Especially as it's not clear to me
| that their interpretation isn't what you meant, and it's
| clear that they are arguing in good faith rather than
| intentionally misunderstanding. Though their last
| paragraph was itself snarky enough that I can see why you
| might have wanted to react in kind (not that that means
| you should). /my two cents
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| I didn't detail further why he misunderstood, because in
| my interpretation of his comment, he had his pitchfork
| out and falsely accused me of "defending monopolies" just
| to engage in flame-bait which I didn't want to fuel, and
| I already went into enough details in my original comment
| to explain why he misunderstood and why my original
| explanation is not "defending monopolies" but presenting
| the facts, he just has to read it again carefully with an
| open mind and with his pitchfork down.
| swores wrote:
| Fair enough to not want to engage, but in that case you
| could just not engage rather than adding more snark.
|
| But ideally, even if you think they don't deserve your
| explanation, considering it's a public forum you could
| still explain why you think there wrong for the benefit
| of the rest of us who maybe also don't understand your
| argument.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Fair enough to not want to engage, but in that case
| you could just not engage rather than adding more snark._
|
| That wasn't snark from my end, I was just telling him he
| was wrong, as plead for him to re-read my comment again
| with an open mind. That's it. Actual snark would have
| added more fuel to his flame-bait which I didn't want to
| do.
|
| _> considering it 's a public forum you could still
| explain why you think there wrong for the benefit of the
| rest of us who maybe also don't understand your argument_
|
| Because I don't have more information than that of my
| original comment, which is based on some years of
| experience developing products with e-ink displays and
| getting to know the tech and the company to a degree that
| allows me to have a relatively informed opinion to a
| degree on this topic.
|
| And, because you can never please everyone no matter what
| you do, and some members can be overly contrarian and
| needlessly pedantic at times when it contradicts their
| entrenched belief that _" evil corp is evil"_, expecting
| _" sauce or GTFO"_ for every opinion on the matter (even
| though they themselves provided no proof for their "evil
| corp is evil" opinion), but I don't have or can't
| publicly share any documents to provide proof or more
| deep insight into the matter, nor the time to perform
| investigative journalism on the spot based on public OSS
| data, just to win an argument here.
|
| Like I said, it's just my opinion based on my experience
| in the field, so take it as is with a pinch of salt, as
| an opinion of an average joe on the internet, not as a
| proper journalistic piece.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| > That's a bit disingenuous and short-sighted view from
| people not knowing or understanding the industry, market,
| technology and manufacturing challenges.
|
| For clarification -- disingenuous is defined as:
|
| > not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one
| knows less about something than one really does
|
| In your post, are you claiming there's a shadowy group of
| people who at the same time are both unknowledgeable but also
| conspiring to hide their own knowledge?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Sorry, I'm not a native English speaker. "disingenuous "
| was the wrong word in that context. I meant to use it as a
| synonym for "unfair" and made a mistake.
|
| _> In your post, are you claiming there's a shadowy group
| of people who at the same time are both unknowledgeable but
| also conspiring to hide their own knowledge?_
|
| No, that's nowhere near close to what I claimed. I think my
| post was clear on what I meant despite my mistake: that
| people are too quick to blame e-ink the company for malice
| without understanding the technical challenges around
| industrialization of such technology and the economic
| factors of the e-ink-like products market (profit margins,
| supply/demand) that drive competition and investments, or
| lack thereof, in this tech.
| kragen wrote:
| it is definitely not a synonym for "unfair"; it is a
| serious attack on the integrity of the person you were
| responding to, and you should apologize to them
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| I do believe the first word in my previous comment was
| "sorry" for the mistake, and unfortunately I can't edit
| that comment anymore to correct the mistake.
|
| Also, I have no reason to apologies to the commenter as
| he did not provide any evidence to support his claims
| that "e-ink is evil" in order for his integrity to be
| affected, to warrant an apology for my counter-arguments,
| nor do I think the original commenter is petty enough to
| be offended by my honest mistake, which I rectified
| later.
| kragen wrote:
| you called them a liar who was pretending to be stupid,
| which is what 'disingenuous' means
|
| to me, that counts as a reason to apologize
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| I have already before pointing it out, what more do you
| want?
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| I'm not the person who apologised or the person who was
| apologised to, but the following, to me, reads like an
| appropriate apology in the context:
|
| > Sorry, I'm not a native English speaker. "disingenuous
| " was the wrong word in that context. I meant to use it
| as a synonym for "unfair" and made a mistake.
|
| This particular mistake (assuming disingenuous means a
| little less than it does) is not particularly uncommon
| among native english speakers (or on HN, at that).
|
| FWIW:
|
| > you called them a liar who was pretending to be stupid
|
| This is unfairly prescriptive.
|
| The "pretending to be stupid" is not an essential part of
| the definition above (merely "typically by").
|
| Finally, Merriam-Webster offers up other definitions:
|
| _lacking in candor_
|
| _giving a false appearance of simple frankness_
|
| Don't comport particularly with the strident definition
| you're using.
|
| English words are complex, with contextual and flexible
| meanings. Don't be this guy.
| yellowapple wrote:
| The "typically" in that definition would suggest that
| "claiming there's a shadowy group of people who at the same
| time are both unknowledgeable but also conspiring to hide
| their own knowledge" is unnecessary to claim disingenuity.
|
| You're on the right track, though; it's worth asking if the
| people criticizing patents and their stranglehold on
| innovation are not being candid or sincere in doing so.
| (The answer IMO is "no, they're being very candid and
| sincere, in stark contrast to most defenders of
| contemporary patent law", but it's nonetheless the more
| relevant question).
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Retro-cyberpunk maybe?
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Sigh. Again with the story about "evil eInk and their gazillion
| patents". A story which :
|
| 1. Does not make any logistic sense: eInk is rather a small
| company versus the likes of Qualcomm, Sony, Sharp, Fujitsu,
| Philips, Microsoft (thanks to Wacom) all of which have way more
| patents in the EPD area that eInk. EPDs are literally as old as
| the _GUI_, and even started at the same place (Xerox). Plus,
| eInk relies mostly on chinese manufacture... which is well-
| known to generally don't give a damn.
|
| 2. Could not possibly have any motive: eInk apparently is a
| suicidal company that likes to torpedo its already shrinking
| little market so that .... what exactly? LCD manufacturers have
| a field day?
|
| 3. Ignores the fact that there are, indeed, multiple
| competitors to eInk whose panels are either indistinguishable
| from eInk or literally better. Many smartwatches like
| Pebble/Garmin don't use eInk _at all_, yet people even right
| here in HN still believe they are eInk. Qualcomm of all
| companies (an actual patent troll -- ask Apple -- and most
| definitely unlikely to be afraid of a minuscule company like
| eInk) owns a in my opinion _much_ better EPD technology called
| Mirasol which has zero of the slow refresh problems of eInk,
| much better color reproduction, much better contrast *, and is
| barely more expensive!
|
| The plain truth is that majority of customers just don't care
| enough about these technologies, and therefore they will always
| be niche. At the end of the day, average customer can't
| distinguish the latest EPD panel to a reflective LCD from
| decades ago. Customers will flock towards shiny glossy LCD
| watch over EPD all the time. That's why Gyricon failed. That's
| why Mirasol failed. That's why every other electrophoretic
| startup folds.
|
| * eInk contrast is still a joke and for the last decade
| actually degrading rather than improving, thanks to touchscreen
| layers, color filter layers, etc. But you see it being parroted
| all the time that "eink has infinite contrast". The latest
| color panels this year are no better than the ones I have on
| WindowsCE devices from the late 1990s, eInk or not. Colors
| still look incredibly dull, there is a ridiculously limited
| palette, and resolution and contrast take a sharp hit (pun not
| intended).
| paint wrote:
| Mirasol sounds great, how come there are not more devices out
| there using it? The only one I could find was the "Toq", a
| 2013 proof of concept smartwatch by Qualcomm?
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Also: "punk" just means "aesthetic" now. The economic and
| political connotations have a long-term downtrend in
| mindshare.
| jmbwell wrote:
| Gen X forgotten again? Figures. Whatever, I guess.
| [deleted]
| joemi wrote:
| Does punk even exist if there's no "man" to "stick it to"?
| ynac wrote:
| If only they asked questions like that in philosophy class!
| I'd say no, punk requires a wall to push against. The
| question of whether we still have a Man to stick it to - I'd
| say yes. And by Man, I mean a force that is either
| irresponsible with their power or got their power
| illegitimately or simply doing bad things with their power.
| Plenty of that around, and so much of it just goes ignored or
| worse, copied for personal gain.
|
| I'm just finishing up Schnier's - A Hacker's Mind - and it's
| a good example of where "hacking" happens these days. The
| force the book profiled hackers are working against are just
| the masses. Us. People. Which has always been around - but it
| makes me wonder if we as hackers of the 80s and 90s just
| developed a mental toolkit for corporations to use against us
| and then left our counterculture post empty.
| danjoredd wrote:
| Hacking, the act of using technology in ways the manufacturer
| or developer didn't intend, is inherently punk. The "man" is
| the company that puts blocks in place to keep you from doing
| what you want with the hardware you bought.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Looks like some of the patents have expired, but the e-ink
| company keeps adding more. At least to my layman's eye the new
| patents don't seem to be particularly revolutionary :/
| Qwertious wrote:
| Patents are irrelevant - if you think OLEDs don't have any
| patents then I have a bridge to sell you.
|
| The real problem is that E-Ink is a niche product that lacks
| economy of scale, because LCDs do everything an EPD can do
| and more.
|
| I don't know if it's been patented, but E-Ink's recent
| Gallery 3 screen is pretty amazing, they got multi-dye color
| screens to refresh fast enough to use in an e-note. That's
| _insane_ , that's an order of magnitude reduction! It might
| actually make color e-notes a viable product category.
| terminous wrote:
| > At least to my layman's eye the new patents don't seem to
| be particularly revolutionary
|
| It's the same trick that pharmaceutical companies use to
| extend their patents. Find a slightly new use or way that
| also covers the old use, and bam, exclusivity for another 20
| years.
| space_fountain wrote:
| People say this but I've never been quite clear. Outside of
| medicine where you can convince doctors to insist on your
| new better safer cap or whatever is there anything stopping
| people from just building a product without the new
| patents. You still aren't allowed to patent things with
| prior art right? So you can't legally wait till your
| product is about to loose patent protection and then patent
| another existing aspect of it
| couchand wrote:
| Well the law on the matter really depends on the relative
| size of your legal team.
| space_fountain wrote:
| What does that look like exactly? Patenting something
| they're already doing?
| couchand wrote:
| Corporations with large legal teams are able to
| discourage others from experimenting in areas near
| expiring patents by coming up with "novel uses" and other
| such legal loopholes that effectively extend their patent
| protection despite what seem to be clear limits.
|
| This effect in the case of eInk is clearly described by
| others in this thread.
| adrianN wrote:
| A greedy patent troll is something that you'd expect in a
| cyberpunk story.
| prox wrote:
| Yup Corpos are part of the equation.
| cryotopippto wrote:
| Seems rich to recommend the expensive reMarkable which doesn't
| even encourage external devs.
|
| It seems people managed to jailbreak older versions but you will
| brick your device if it's too new...
| [deleted]
| Eeems wrote:
| There is no jailbreaking. You are given root access out of
| box[2]. They don't discourage external developers, they even
| provide a toolchain[1] to build for the device upon request.
| Hell, their CTO at the time (not sure if they still are) wrote
| some non-official software that people can install[4], and
| helped some of the initial members of the community get their
| stuff working. They just don't provide official support for
| external software on the device.
|
| As for bricking your device: It will not hard brick, it may
| only soft-brick[0], as in, the display will not update on the
| rM2, because the software driving the screen needs to be
| updated to support the new OS. You can still SSH in and revert
| the changes and then downgrade. If you were silly enough not to
| write down your SSH password, or set up an SSH key and can't
| get into SSH, you can still recover your device[3] on your own.
|
| 0. https://remarkable.guide/faqs.html#can-i-install-toltec-
| befo... 1. https://remarkable.guide/devel/toolchains.html 2.
| https://remarkable.guide/guide/access/ssh.html 3.
| https://remarkable.guide/tech/recovery.html 4.
| https://github.com/sandsmark/recrossable
| zorrotorro wrote:
| I didn't know there's different kinds of bricking. It does
| NOT sound like having root access.
|
| This big warning is on the front page:
|
| > Warning: Toltec does not support OS builds newer than
| 2.15.1.1189. You will soft-brick your device if you install
| before support is released. See remarkable2-recovery for
| information on how to recover your device if you have done
| this.
| Eeems wrote:
| > I didn't know there's different kinds of bricking.
|
| There are two types of bricking[0]. A hard brick, where the
| device no longer functions, and may not be recoverable, and
| a soft brick, where the device is still working, but fails
| to boot to a usable state.
|
| > It does NOT sound like having root access.
|
| Could you clarify what you mean by this not sounding like
| you have root access? You have the ability to sign in to
| the device as the root user out of the box, which is
| exactly what root access is.
|
| > This big warning is on the front page: > > > Warning:
| Toltec does not support OS builds newer than 2.15.1.1189.
| You will soft-brick your device if you install before
| support is released. See remarkable2-recovery for
| information on how to recover your device if you have done
| this.
|
| Yes, I know about the warning, I wrote it. When it was less
| strongly worded, way too many people were ignoring the
| warning, trying to install toltec on an OS version that
| didn't have the offsets required for rm2fb yet, and did not
| write down their SSH password or set up an SSH key.
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_(electronics)#Types
| fidotron wrote:
| The killer problem with e-ink is the pricing betrays that the
| yield absolutely tanks as the area increases, which is true of
| semiconductors and other display technologies, but in the case of
| e-ink seems to be that much worse.
|
| Part of the success of things like GPUs is their ability to
| degrade gracefully in the presence of one or two errors which
| would otherwise render the whole thing unusable.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| If this is the case, then it would seem to me that the ability
| to produce _modular_ e-ink displays, where segments are
| individual, independent displays, would be an option.
|
| This is most tenable for large-scale displays (e.g., wall
| displays), and we're already used to segmented "television
| walls" in which borders between individual displays is strongly
| evident. The trick would be for such compound devices to both
| match one another's display characteristics (brightness /
| shading / hue), and for borders to be made as undetectable as
| possible (several possible mechanisms suggest themselves to me
| as I write this).
|
| Given the sweet spot of 8--10" displays, compound devices made
| of multiples of these would seem to be at least a conceptual
| possibility. 16x8 displays would give 32" diagonal measure, 300
| dpi, and assuming 50% BOM cost might run less than the 25" Onxy
| BOOX Mira Pro ($1,750).
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| LCDs are incredibly simple to manufacture compared to e-ink
| displays. Also, the best cleanroom technology in the world goes
| to LCD manufacturing facilities thanks to the incredible
| economies of scale available.
| coder543 wrote:
| > Also, the best cleanroom technology in the world goes to
| LCD manufacturing facilities
|
| Better than cutting edge semiconductor fabs? Why would LCDs
| need such cleanroom facilities?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| One dust particle per 12" square loses you 1 of 100 CPUs.
| It loses you 100% of your 50" TVs.
|
| Also, CPU manufacturing facilities keep the insides of the
| machines cleaner than the facility, containing the wafers
| in transit between machines, and LCD manufacturers do not
| have the same luxury.
| queasypickle wrote:
| [dead]
| random3 wrote:
| I love e-ink and simple interfaces. I don't believe in low-
| powered hardware, however.
|
| This said remarkable 2 is so underpowered it's impractical. I
| love the paper-like experience, but I never use it for any
| important notes because I can't find anything ever. For example
| copying and pasting more than a trivial amount can take minutes
| (i.e. it blocks for minutes) and scrolling is just painful.
| Writing is not always accurate and you can get weirdly thick
| lines, etc. All of this can be fixed with better hardware and
| more performance, but I suspect the experience vs cost ratio is
| logarithmic/exponential.
|
| While scribbling in Goodnotes an iPad pro is not as "rewarding",
| actually working is so much better.
| yoyopa wrote:
| how retropunk is it?
| zvmaz wrote:
| It's a new technology (in that sense, it's not "retro"), and
| "punk"? I don't know what the author means.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's not new, the first Kindle was released in 2007.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| That's just 16 years, not much. From the POV of retro, this
| is new. Especially as we are talking about a still used and
| evolving technology, not something dead which was
| rediscovered and revived.
| thelazyone wrote:
| I wonder what kind of interesting applications could be done on
| e-ink harnessing the advantages of the long battery life and not
| suffering by the slow refresh rate. Sure, porting doom or
| implementing a terminal is an interesting and probably
| challenging feat, but still it's applications that don't shine on
| an e-ink device.
|
| Maybe some "slow" strategy game, that updates upon certain events
| but might remain unmodified for hours at a time? Or - more in
| general - an application that is required to be on for a long
| time but really doesnt' change often.
| NeoTar wrote:
| I think eInk price labels are now getting to be quite a common
| thing in some stores - while it's probably not fair/legal to
| change prices while the store is open, it means prices can be
| updated very easily overnight.
| wchar_t wrote:
| A traditional roguelike, in the line of
| TGGW/Cogmind/Nethack/Brogue/DCSS, would probably be nice. Not
| really a "slow strategy game", granted, but the fact that
| animations/colors aren't necessary makes it a good fit IMO
| t0bia_s wrote:
| I really want phone with e-ink display. I mean something like
| Mudita phone without that hipster approach and overpricing.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Second-hand Motorola F3[1]? Even brand new I paid something
| like 50 Euros for it.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone
| tambourine_man wrote:
| > They are a return to the magical feeling of computers of the
| 80s and 90s. It's a world where Microsoft and Apple never existed
| and we don't have to suffer with abstractions on top of
| abstractions. It's DOS for the 2020s
|
| Does the author know who wrote DOS? Microsoft and Apple were
| essencial to the magic of that era of computing.
|
| It's a genuine question, someone born in the 2000s is 23 now and
| will have only experienced that age indirectly.
| edent wrote:
| Do _you_ know who originally wrote DOS?
|
| Hint: it wasn't Microsoft!
| stavros wrote:
| Looks like it was, though, unless you mean the "jointly
| developed by Microsoft and IBM" bit.
|
| Edit: to clarify, when people say "DOS", 99.999% of the time
| they mean MS-DOS, not the generic "disk operating system",
| which is a category and wasn't developed by anyone in
| particular.
| beej71 wrote:
| 86-DOS was purchased by Microsoft and renamed MS-DOS.
| stavros wrote:
| Huh, Wikipedia buries that lede in the "history" section,
| thanks.
| Fordec wrote:
| Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, including a Microsoft
| PR intern.
| gizajob wrote:
| Whoever wrote ProDOS that they purchased?
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I do, but they made it popular. I'd much rather CP/M had won,
| not some quick and dirty clone, but that's besides the point.
|
| The "DOS for the 2020s" being anti-Microsoft and Apple makes
| no sense to me. Also, DOS was _the_ mainstream, not some
| retro-cyberpunk thing. Again, makes no sense at all to me.
| [deleted]
| gadrev wrote:
| I love e-ink devices.
|
| Just back from a reading session in my Kobo, and I sent this
| article to it of course :) (through Firefox/Pocket). I can even
| read in the swimming pool (it's water resistant), nothing better
| than reading in sunglasses halfway in on a sunny day, awesome!!!
| And it doesn't weigh as much as some books. While I still prefer
| paper for certain reads, it has definitely helped get back into
| the habit of reading real books/reading more, so lost to
| smartphones and social media / "sugar" information type content
| these days. So convenient in terms of size/weight/number of books
| you can carry, while being easy on the eyes. No distracting crap,
| either, as TFA mentions.
|
| Long live e-ink, whatever device you like most!!
| cimm wrote:
| I got myself a https://paperd.ink: a 4.2'' screen with battery in
| a printed case for $90. I wrote a small calendar application for
| it to replace the paper calendar at home:
| https://suffix.be/blog/eink-calendar
| konschubert wrote:
| For others who see this and don't want to build something
| themselves:
|
| I make and sell an eink calendar (and smart display) for $149,
| complete with mobile apps and google calendar sync.
|
| https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale...
|
| The display is 7.5 inch.
|
| This is still a side project for me though I am thinking of
| ways to turn this into a self-sustaining business.
| agentultra wrote:
| A ReMarkable 2 with the Folio keyboard is _almost_ a whole ass
| computer. An eMacs-like development environment where buffers
| also had layers that could intermingle strokes with text and it
| would be perfect.
|
| I'd hack my own but I'm a little paranoid of bricking it with
| only one hardware button.
| starman12980 wrote:
| lmao I was just watching a video with this dude making it his
| whole ass computer
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJIS_amo7TI
|
| I think he used a boox tho
| Qwertious wrote:
| The ReMarkable 2 needs the proprietary Xochitl binary to update
| the screen (there's a shim, but it needs to be updated every
| time Xochitl updates), but the ReMarkable 1 doesn't have this
| problem, and already has a port of Parabola Linux, Parabola-RM
| (no WiFi due to Linux-libre, although you can compile it with
| them included): http://www.davisr.me/projects/parabola-rm/
|
| Plus, the ReMarkable 1 has a total of _four_ hardware buttons,
| and is even 50g lighter! Plus it 's power button doesn't get
| stuck.
| Exuma wrote:
| Can someone talk me in/out of buying one of these? I've looked at
| them several times, and I have quite literally no purpose for it
| (each iPad I buy I end up not using it much, and somehow the next
| iPad I think will be different. I basically just use it as a
| painting reference).
|
| But I could imagine sitting this on my desk and using it when
| designing software to draw out diagrams.
|
| That said, I also use actual paper and pencil and have notebooks
| full of sketches... so ultimately I don't know if I would want
| this or not.
|
| Help me decide!
|
| EDIT: I bought it so from here forward only rationalize my
| decision that it was good!
| picture wrote:
| I've made similar considerations (as a college student) and
| honestly, just stick to pen(cil) and paper. Analog stuff are so
| cheap and so good that you won't come close to paying off the
| price of a e-paper tablet.
|
| The only benefit imo is portability and ease of sharing to
| computer, but I find my scanner on my printer works perfectly
| fine and that I have trouble finding things digitally even with
| effort organizing
|
| My opinion against e-paper tablets would definitely change if
| their price becomes much lower
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Was firmly in this camp, and preferred paper to electronics,
| until the Remarkable 2.
|
| It managed to get close enough in feel (not perfect to be
| fair) to paper that I don't mind using it for notes and
| studying.
|
| It's pretty nice being able to markup text books and research
| papers as a separate layer I can toggle to de-deface the
| page, add note pages, etc. And having my whole book
| collection at hand everywhere I go without lugging around a
| 50lb backpack.
|
| I still prefer paper for desk references. Flipping through a
| 300pg tome looking for a specific familiar page is still
| easier with analogue.
| boesboes wrote:
| I've had a remarkable 2, I found I prefer paper for notes. I
| don't read my notes very often, so its more the process of
| writing them that I 'use'. And although very good, its not the
| same on a rm2. Not sure waht it is exactly. The latency, the
| tactile aspect, maybe even the physicality of a note book or
| just the annoyance of using a device again..
|
| That's my 50 cents :)
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| I wish I could talk you out of it but I love mine. Now whenever
| I bust out an old notepad I get frustrated I can't pick up and
| move around the text to reorganize my notes as I'm writing
| them...
| TheFreim wrote:
| > I've looked at them several times, and I have quite literally
| no purpose for it
|
| I have a supernote. I'm glad I have it, it fills a niche for me
| that has been very beneficial. With that said, I don't think
| because it works for me that it will be a good tool for
| everyone. I'll make a bit of a blunt argument, but I hope you
| take it in good spirit.
|
| If you buy some shiny new toy that you know you don't need then
| you are a slave to your desires, a slave to marketers. You're
| taking hard earned money that could be saved, invested, or
| donated and using it to engage in a useless fantasy of some
| sort of benefit that you already know to be marginal. Do you
| want to be the kind of person who does that? Do you want to be
| someone who mindlessly consumes products just for the sake of
| consuming products? Tools are a means to an end, don't make
| them an end in and of themselves.
|
| Also, you already have a workflow. What are the costs of
| switching from what you know works? Think also of possible
| unforeseeable downsides. You know the limitations of what you
| have currently, but you also know /exactly/ what you have. Do
| you choose the unknown item that will only possibly have
| marginal benefit or do you stick with what is tried and true,
| known, and established? Id choose the established option any
| day of the week.
| Exuma wrote:
| We have very very different perspectives, it is probably not
| worth replying.
|
| The very fiber of my being down to my DNA is about creative
| energy, not consumption. I am inspired by tactile things, and
| things which spur certain energies. This is why I love
| programming, painting, etc.
|
| Money is no issue, so there's that.
|
| And lastly, my entire mind is a kaleidoscope of tradeoff
| decisions every waking second. Things like "investing the
| money of my tablet" I will just never do. I do not think like
| that. If I can have a happiness factor of 10, with the
| ultimate cost of not investing as some variable, and the
| amount of time learning about investing, and the benefit of
| the joy of learning things that earn me far more than
| investing, or starting a new company, I will always simply
| choose the simple answer "Just earn more." That is ultimately
| what it always boils down to, with my happiness and
| satisfaction level of life at the highest, while minimizing
| costs of heavy minutiae like investing. It's not that I don't
| like technical things, I am obsessed with them, but I can
| have hundred percent returns through my own companies rather
| than < 10% returns through investing. I'm absolutely certain
| this will seem like the 'wrong' perspective to others, but no
| one else lives in my head. For me, what is most paramount, is
| that I'm constantly maximizing benefits while minimizing
| costs, and projecting this plan forward constantly, and
| refining my trajectory if I see inefficiencies, or
| miscalculations.
|
| Also "literally no purpose for it" is hyperbole, I obviously
| have some purpose for it or I wouldn't buy it. I have 20+
| sketchbooks sitting next to me that I fill, and every new
| project or company I start/take part in which is complex, I
| sketch it out across multitudes of pages. I was more saying
| that... I have no "need" for it to replace paper, but I'm
| always open to trying new things that augment my experience
| nabla9 wrote:
| E-ink is better for reading than screens.
|
| Paper is better for reading than E-ink.
| [deleted]
| layer8 wrote:
| They are relatively low-contrast (compared to laser print or
| black pen on white paper), which may or may not bother you.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| I'd say they're comparable to newsprint. It's clearly not as
| good as ink on paper but it's still pretty darn good.
| helf wrote:
| I love love love eink. I have used eink daily since about 2007
| (first gen kindle... who's design I still adore. Talk about _punk
| looking lol).
|
| I then switched to an Entourage eDGe briefly (too big) and then
| to an Entourage eDGe Pocket in ~2011. I still have it and use it
| (battery amazingly holds all day charge under use).
|
| Just got a Boox Tab Ultra C and I am in _heaven _. The CFA layer
| over the eink goves really nice muted colors that remind me of
| 1960s news print and it is so easy on the eyes. The screen
| refresh speeds are amazing (I actually watch videos using PiP
| floating (smaller windows refresh better) while doing other
| things. The Android 11 install is heavily optimized and runs
| beautifully. If I use it for just tectual data in airplane mode I
| easy get nearly a month per charge.
|
| My dream is a laptop that is 300+ DPI eink @ 13-15" with maybe a
| clear oled overlay for when you need color. It would be so nice.
| Or even a laptop with a rotate screen like the old panasonic
| toughbooks or fujitsu lifebooks that has a 180_ hinge.
|
| Oled or IPS hiDPI on one side and highres eink on the other.
|
| Would be _phenomenal_. As soon as I have the spare cash I am
| going to get one of the desktop eink monitors! I am so excited
| they are finally becoming a thing.
|
| I used to run a greyscale NeXT Turbo for years. Was only 68hz but
| it was a proper monochrome CRT and was easy on my eyes. For
| whatever reason, color CRTs hurt my eyes unless they are ~85hz or
| higher.
|
| Anyways, enough ranting. Suffice to say eink is a dream for
| people like me and I can only hope it contonues getting better <3
| clnq wrote:
| I've been dreaming of a truly programmable (not just apps) e-ink
| watch with 4g or at least WiFi for a while.
|
| A week-long battery life, cellular connectivity, visibility in
| the sunlight, and it should be cheap if it's cost+ priced.
|
| Oh the things I'd put on it. I could host an API on my server
| where I'd ask GPT to summarise recent events or my email metadata
| and calendar events. I could probably finally ditch my smartphone
| for good.
|
| Its hard to find anything like that, though.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Oh god, somebody should bring pebble back to life. Such a shame
| pebble time 2 wasn't delivered (
| devbent wrote:
| Soon as you add in connectivity, battery life dies. RF is
| expensive.
| clnq wrote:
| There are some LoRa watches that last quite long. So I wonder
| if WiFi or 4g, at least at intervals, would make a week-long
| battery with low hundreds or slightly under a hundred of of
| mAh impossible.
| k__ wrote:
| Would be more punk if nobody would hog all the patents.
|
| It's really a shame...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-08-26 23:00 UTC)