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Ask HN: Why are e-ink note-taking devices so expensive compared to iPads?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are e-ink note-taking devices so expensive compared to iPads?

#251

Post by wernercd »

1shooner wrote: post #118
wernercd wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

crying about a word is reactionary... especially when you are getting offended for other people who haven't asked for your help.

I don't think anyone is crying about it. Here's a simple thought experiment: would you use that word while sitting at dinner with a developmentally disabled child and his parents?

I would. Because I don't talk down to people or change my speech patterns around people.

Unlike, say, those who "champion" people and then speak down to them.

https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/yale-study-white-liberal...

I prefer to talk to people as if they aren't handicapped (or less because they are POC) and can handle regular words.

Re: Ask HN: Why are e-ink note-taking devices so expensive compared to iPads?

#252

Post by Karawebnetwork »

nate_meurer wrote: post #225
Karawebnetwork wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can think of no other single word that better describes the behavior of the E-Ink patent holders. This is the central point of this issue. This person uses a word that used to mean "person with a mental health problem" to describe a situation where a company "lacks intelligence and awareness". People who have been and still are the victims of this insult do not want to be associated with the concept of "lack of i…

No, the description "lacks intelligence and awareness" is not at all what the poster wanted to convey. Not even close. As I said elsewhere, "extreme, inexplicable, self-destructive foolishness" might be an adequate substitute, but I think simply "retarded" is also effective and concise, uttered not in a spirit of wanton bullying, but rather for the purpose of vivid illustration of behaviour that is, in fact, profound…

You are clearly missing the essence of this conversation as "foolishness", "stupid" and "dumb" are all words that are considered ableist.

What you are saying is that the use of the word "retarded" is viable because it means "foolishness". However, the word "foolishness" shares the same baggage as "retarded".

You use another synonym to mean that the company does not have the intelligence and awareness required to monetize its invention properly.

Reread this sentence that you wrote: "I think simply "retarded" is also effective and concise, uttered not in a spirit of wanton bullying, but rather for the purpose of vivid illustration of behaviour that is, in fact, profoundly stupid."

Now ask yourself what the vivid illustration you are painting is.

In the end, it boils down to a simple fact. The use of these words will hurt some people and discourage others from interacting with you.

Trying to justify their uses does not come off as mature but as resentful and bad-tempered. Especially in a professional setting.

Imagine talking to a business leader who has a child with special needs that is called "retarded" on a daily basis. You may be in a job interview where the interviewer happens to be on the austim spectrum and regularly has to deal with people who call them "retarded". What about a CEO who is struggling with bipolar disorder and whose actions are described as "foolish"?

In all of these cases, you are hurting or discouraging someone with your choice of words.

It may not be in the spirit of gratuitous bullying, but the words still carry meanings. They stigmatize an already marginalized population. They carry meanings you may not be familiar with yourself but that others are very intimate with.

Re: Ask HN: Why are e-ink note-taking devices so expensive compared to iPads?

#253

Post by robomartin »

robinsoh wrote: post #246
robomartin wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand where you are coming from. I have a love-hate relationship with patents. That said, I try not to pass judgement on such things until I fully understand the story (not saying you don't). For example, if a technology took ten years and ten billion dollars to develop to the point of it being commercially viable, well, yeah, a patent-protected monopoly is likely the ethically correct privilege the inventors…

> This means that making e-ink displays requires putting-up a specialized factory or retooling an old LCD factory that might no-longer be competitive for making LCD's. Regardless of the approach, this is likely to be a very expensive undertaking. That, coupled with lower volume, is guaranteed to translate into higher prices. I think your observation is much more accurate than the other speculations about patents I ha…

Well, there's probably truth to the intellectual property factor as well. The business equation is a complex multivariate problem with a long list of variables. Each and every one of them contributes in one way or another. For the last 12 months we've been learning about this new "pandemic" variable, whose coefficient went from 0 to 1 in an instant.

I see people often simplify businesses along high contrast dividing lines: big/small, greedy/not greedy, green/dirty, startup/lifestyle, etc.

Anyone who simplifies businesses along any line on a monochromatic plane has never run enough of a business to fully understand just how complex things can be. They grab one variable (minimum wage, taxes, regulations, oil, etc.) and think it can be manipulated without it affecting the aforementioned multivariate equation.

A sad example of this just took place a few weeks ago in California. I think it was in San Diego that the politicians decided grocery workers had to have a $4 per hour "hero" raise due to working through COVID. While everyone could agree that there are people who made sacrifices for the rest of us, as I learned to say, some problems don't pass math and physics. the end result was that the Kroger company, which owns Ralphs and a bunch of other brands, closed four stores (maybe 2, don't remember) because there was no way they could keep the doors open if they paid everyone an extra $4 per hour. So, a forced wage raise actually destroyed jobs --and this happened nearly instantly-- and people who had work found themselves on the street.

Businesses are not single variable problems.

Re: Ask HN: Why are e-ink note-taking devices so expensive compared to iPads?

#255

Post by unityByFreedom »

kiba wrote: post #250
unityByFreedom wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents encourage innovation. In exchange for publishing your tech, you get protection from those who might copy it for ~10-20 years. You get to make money from it and the world benefits from knowing the details of your technology. Software patents are the ones that make no sense because software is already protected by copyright and patents were never intended to protect algorithms.

Patents encourage innovation. In exchange for publishing your tech, you get protection from those who might copy it for ~10-20 years. You get to make money from it and the world benefits from knowing the details of your technology. This is stated theory of why patents work, not actual evidence that they work.

The alternative is easy to imagine. Companies either do not innovate or they protect IP on their own by keeping it secret. That may entail keeping headcount low and more overhead for security.

So, less jobs, less innovation, less sharing of development, and more duplication of security efforts that are shared by every company. Getting rid of patents would be a recipe for further entrenching existing wealth. You'd have no protection from a major corporation replicating your garage-company's processes. As it is, companies have a hard enough time fending off the likes of China which does not respect western IP.

Re: Ask HN: Why are e-ink note-taking devices so expensive compared to iPads?

#257

Post by darkwater »

13415 wrote: post #107
darkwater wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Guess what, stupid, moron, idiot, etc used to refer to people with mental disabilities. No, they were not. And despite what the "you get offended so quickly" mob says, "retarded" main meaning when used in a negative fashion against someone always, always appeals to the "that person/entity has the mental abilities of someone with Down syndrome or any other similar intellectual disability". And you, me and everybody…

I think you and others are missing the point of how language works. The situation is similar to famous Dutch insults like Kankerlijer (cancer sufferer), Klerelijer (cholera sufferer), or Pleurislijer (tuberculosis suffer). Using these to insult people who indeed suffer from these diseases is questionable and can be rather tasteless. It may even be confusing and fail to work entirely. By the way, it's also wrong to in…

> Swear words and insults work because they break a taboo. If you regulate language to avoid one taboo, then speakers will simply resort to breaking another taboo.

I agree with this indeed, but I stand my point: the use of the word "retarded" is by all mean used to compare someone to a person with intellectual disability. I don't know the Dutch nuances of _Kankerlijer_ so I can probably wrong but I wouldn't think that it is used to compare one person to someone with cancer. What would that ever mean? "Retarded" it is used to compare, and it means that I consider you a lesser person just like an intellectually disabled one.

Re: Ask HN: Why are e-ink note-taking devices so expensive compared to iPads?

#258

Post by _ph_ »

throwaway4485we wrote: post #14

Throaway to not get sued. E-ink, the company, holds the patents of the pigment core tech that makes "paper-like" displays possible and strongarms the display manufacturers and the users of their displays to absolute silence. Any research project or startup that comes up with a better alternative technology gets bought out or buried by their lawyers ASAP. E-ink don't make the display themselves, they make the e-ink fi…

The patent situation and the marketing behavior of E-ink are certainly important factors. But it doesn't explain why those companies, which do create E-ink devices often are not innovative. The Kindle is a nice piece of hardware and some of the models are even cheap. But why isn't there a better software on it, making it a really versatile device? Same with most e-reading competitors. Few offer anything beyond the reading capability and basically none are programmable by the user. Just having a Kindle tuned for being end-user programming friendly would be huge.

That is one thing I got my reMarkable2 for. It is a great device and very useful. But one thing stands out: it runs Linux and offers you shell access. You can just upload your own programs to it and tweak many things. Even just having the ability to upload your own "power off" picture to it is a really nice thing[1]. If the makers of the reMarkable would push a bit more into the direction of enabling users to create software, as in documenting the system and creating APIs/libraries to use for integration into the existing software stack, this could grow enormously. The hardware is great, now comes the software.

What I dream of, would be scenarios which make great use of the always-visible screen content. Like a dashboard which shows you your upcoming appointments, unread notifications, perhaps just the weather status. It refreshes every 5 minutes but otherwise doesn't consume energy or distract you with animations. Or being able to control the e-Reader from your computer. Reading a man-page? Why not send it to the e-Ink screen and have it displayed there until some other content is sent? Like a book which you keep open beside your computer, just remotely configurable. So much things could be done by just adding software to existing e-Ink hardware. And if such an environment grows, probably so will the hardware offerings targeting this market.

1: my favorite lock screen image is the GoT map "The North 02". It is unbelievable on the e-Ink and looks like printed on paper.

Re: Ask HN: Why are e-ink note-taking devices so expensive compared to iPads?

#259

Post by robinsoh »

_ph_ wrote: post #258
throwaway4485we wrote: post #14

Throaway to not get sued. E-ink, the company, holds the patents of the pigment core tech that makes "paper-like" displays possible and strongarms the display manufacturers and the users of their displays to absolute silence. Any research project or startup that comes up with a better alternative technology gets bought out or buried by their lawyers ASAP. E-ink don't make the display themselves, they make the e-ink fi…

The patent situation and the marketing behavior of E-ink are certainly important factors. But it doesn't explain why those companies, which do create E-ink devices often are not innovative. The Kindle is a nice piece of hardware and some of the models are even cheap. But why isn't there a better software on it, making it a really versatile device? Same with most e-reading competitors. Few offer anything beyond the re…

> If the makers of the reMarkable would push a bit more into the direction of enabling users to create software, as in documenting the system and creating APIs/libraries to use for integration into the existing software stack, this could grow enormously. The hardware is great, now comes the software.

The remarkable is fully open source isn't it? Have any users done work towards adding functionality?

Re: Ask HN: Why are e-ink note-taking devices so expensive compared to iPads?

#260

Post by _ph_ »

robinsoh wrote: post #259
_ph_ wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The patent situation and the marketing behavior of E-ink are certainly important factors. But it doesn't explain why those companies, which do create E-ink devices often are not innovative. The Kindle is a nice piece of hardware and some of the models are even cheap. But why isn't there a better software on it, making it a really versatile device? Same with most e-reading competitors. Few offer anything beyond the re…

> If the makers of the reMarkable would push a bit more into the direction of enabling users to create software, as in documenting the system and creating APIs/libraries to use for integration into the existing software stack, this could grow enormously. The hardware is great, now comes the software. The remarkable is fully open source isn't it? Have any users done work towards adding functionality?

Yes, the reMarkable is fully open source and there are user-created additions. This is something I really like about the reMarkable. I just think that the company could push even more for third-party software. Especially for more beginner-level hacking.
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