31–37 of 37 posts
Anybody an idea when we can write code on an eInk display? So we can finally code on a beach for real :)
Looking through the paper it looks like an excellent advancement in terms of multi-color reflective paper displays. My hope is that the authors can continue the work to perhaps uncover some more economical mirror substrates and node combinations that give good results while not being precious metals.
On the other hand, it's possible to buy oled televisions now so sometimes new technologies do make it to market.
This one sounds interesting although using both gold and platinum sounds expensive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (Immediately checks for author affiliation to eInk or some bullshit mid-tier American university with an "up and coming" tech transfer office) Awesome, maybe this will actually come to market with a reasonable license fee! Uhm... I just want to say that I work in the display industry and have never heard comments like yours from my peers, or during conferences. Is there some unreasonable license fee going on that t…
I don't have a horse in this race, but I have often heard in these threads the rumor that the reason the Remarkable E-Ink tablet cannot be fully open-source is due to restrictive licenses for the E-ink technology they use. Basically people are upset (understandably) that they're holding this amazing technology in their hands but are not free to use it to its full potential, as the actual Remarkable software is pretty…
The supplied software isn't all Open Source, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's some drivers or firmware that can't be Open Source on it. But I don't see how it even _could be_ the e-ink part that's forcing the main UI software parts to be closed source.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The explicit accusation, AFAICT, is that eInk holds certain patent(s) which cannot be avoided if you want to produce an electrophoretic-technology display panel yourself; and so people believe eInk are, through these patents, “strangling the market for innovation.” They believe that, without those patents (or if those patents were instead in the public domain), companies that produce traditional display panels (like…
> The explicit accusation, AFAICT, is that eInk holds certain patent(s) which cannot be avoided if you want to produce an electrophoretic-technology display panel yourself They don't hold such a patent, at least as far as I know. Which is presumably how their competitors like ClearInk, Reinkstone are able to be in business. > so people believe eInk are, through these patents, “strangling the market for innovation.” I…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The explicit accusation, AFAICT, is that eInk holds certain patent(s) which cannot be avoided if you want to produce an electrophoretic-technology display panel yourself They don't hold such a patent, at least as far as I know. Which is presumably how their competitors like ClearInk, Reinkstone are able to be in business. > so people believe eInk are, through these patents, “strangling the market for innovation.” I…
Google and Microsoft are used by billions, why not eInk, is the question we're asking.
I don't understand the comparison between a search engine, an OS , and a niche low power display component. I had brought up Google and Microsoft as examples to prove that holding many many patents is not an unusual thing for companies to do. Also, who is "we"? The context I was originally responding to was the insinuation that eInk or its partners or some unknown consortium of patent poolers (alleged above) was an evil patent troll that was blocking progress in the display industry and was going to prevent this electrochromic nanostructure display from being successful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The explicit accusation, AFAICT, is that eInk holds certain patent(s) which cannot be avoided if you want to produce an electrophoretic-technology display panel yourself They don't hold such a patent, at least as far as I know. Which is presumably how their competitors like ClearInk, Reinkstone are able to be in business. > so people believe eInk are, through these patents, “strangling the market for innovation.” I…
> They don't hold such a patent, at least as far as I know. Which is presumably how their competitors like ClearInk, Reinkstone are able to be in business. They do seem to hold rather a lot of patents ( https://patents.justia.com/assignee/e-ink-corporation ), though I don't have the domain knowledge to know whether any of these are "unavoidable" in the domain in the way that e.g. software engineering process patents…
Some of those patents like the one about dual substrate TFT seem vaguely broad to me, but it doesn't even seem to be a display technology related patent to me. In fact it seems to be about microfluidics which is an abandoned area of research in display technology, at least in the commercial sense. As for "a lot of patents", just how many patents would you expect a company to have? How long has eInk been in business? 20 years? 30 years? I think I first heard of them in 2000s so at least 20 years it seems like.
More importantly, why would we assume anything perverse is happening? My point is that HN commenters seemed to have a strong foundational belief (as shown by the original comment I responded to) that something perverse was happening. OP was effectively claiming that eInk would try to stop this electrochromic nanostructure display tech from succeeding, and now that I've challenged that claim, I don't see any OP or anyone else provide any sort of factual basis for it. So if you'll allow me, doesn't it kind of sound like a bunch of software guys shitting on a niche display company that failed to achieve their lofty desires?
As a display guy, can I just say I have perhaps analogous despair at how terrible the software for everything I do on a daily basis is. I'm forced to reboot my desktop pretty much on a monthly basis. PLC controls that suck. Interfaces that are so horrible. Is that all Google's fault? Microsoft's fault? Is it all due to patent trolls? Who do I get to blame? You guys tell me please.