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I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

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Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#171

I work part-time for my university's help desk and I was both impressed and disappointed the first time I came across one of these--one the one hand, its highly customizable and supports SSH access. On the other hand, there is shockingly no way to get the MAC address without connecting via SSH, even though this is popular among academics who often need to get onto MAC filtered networks. In hindsight, we probably coul…

You could also of course turn off the ineffective MAC filtering, was this option considered?

I doubt that they are actually using MAC filtering, but probably some kind of captive portal that the Remarkable doesn't have support for (without setting up a SOCKS proxy, which doesn't count as a solution, IMO)[0]. Most of these captive portal systems allow someone with privileges to add a MAC address to the system manually, so that device has access without having to go through the portal itself. In the old days, that was the kosher way to get Xboxes and the like on hotel Wi-Fi (they'd often have a number you could call from the room to get a network admin to put your widget on the list).

0: https://remarkablewiki.com/tips/wifi

(Also, given that OP's a part time helpdesk person, they can't turn the MAC filtering off anyway).

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but both problems are "realigning your notes". It is possible to render an element to the side of the main text in a flowing epub; I did this when I wanted to include line numbers in a text. You could use that idea to keep visible notes near their original location while reflowing the epub. But it wouldn't work at all with notes that appear over the main text. It's also possible to just print the notes within the…

I think OP could have used a more specific description for the sake of clarity. The idea is that using a reMarkable is just like using a pad of paper, so you can make arbitrary handwritten notes on the text. It's hard to imagine how arbitrary notes like that would be displayed on different epub renderings, so I think it's understandable why they use their approach. I also think it's a different problem than kindles h…

Marginalia does not generally appear over the text on which it comments, because that would make both the text and the marginalia difficult to read. (Just look at the word - it's text that appears in the margins.)

So for practically all purposes, treating each note as an image which should be rendered to the side of a particular part of the dynamically-flowed text will solve the problem. This isn't that hard to do.

If someone is underlining parts of the text itself, that isn't independent of the flow of the text, and so it's harder to reflow. But I'm taking "notes" to mean commentary.

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#173
post #4

Not trying to shill too hard, but it's rare I fall in love with a device the way I've fallen in love with my Remarkable 2. I can't say it was 100% worth the price (half was paid as a gift), but everything about it is refreshingly elegant and simple. Great to know recovering from a brick is possible too.

I'm glad that you enjoy yours. Mine has been sitting in my dead technology drawer since about two weeks after it arrived. The pen is too laggy, the contrast is too low for me to read PDFs comfortably, and the note-taking experience doesn't come close to what I get from a good pen and good paper. Nice try, but meh from me.

Could have returned it for a full refund within 30 days. Any reason you decided to keep it in the dead technology drawer instead?

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a matte screen protector for my iPad with a similar feel. Neither the iPad with the paperlike protector nor the remarkable actually feel like paper, but they do feel better than drawing with a plastic pen on a glass screen. My 16" Wacom display tablet also has something similar applied from factory to provide a texture to it

To further clarify, you have actually compared reMarkable 2 (and not reMarkable 1, which was never equally praised) to all the other devices you mention? (Basically, that would make me not get a reMarkable 2 before I can try one out, and if my impression matches yours, I wouldn't bother and would instead wait out for PineNote)

given another poster's post in this page describing their return experience, I would advice you to not a get a remarkable 2 until you can try one in person no matter what people say.

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#175
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

using two partitions in this way on embedded devices has been a trope for a very long time. service/warranty calls are expensive! usually there are three. system a and system b which are updated and flipped and some sort of emergency recovery that either has a factory image or a very light rom that phones home for a new image.

It sounds like Blue/Green deployments.

sorta. but i think that blue/green deployments are typically monitored by some central control that will halt and reverse a whole fleet deployment, where typically embedded devices run that state machine locally. (after flashing the unused partition, if it fails to boot, fail back to the old one and disable the update).

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#176
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It very much is true. I do it all the time. If the target device is running ssh, you can use rsync on the source. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-copy... Edit: Looks like I was wrong.

As others have pointed out, that doesn't quite work. But the way that I use rsync with my remarkable is to use sshfs to mount the remarkable's filesystem, and then run rsync between the local and mounted filesystems. Works for me without having to install rsync on the remarkable.

Unfortunately you will not get any speed boost in that case, in fact it will be slower having to fetch all the remote side data for small file changes.

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#177
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and it's runs Android I apologize for the snark, but I refuse to see how this is a plus over "it runs vanilla linux".

vanilla linux doesn't have any good ereader apps

koreader is one of the best reader apps out there.

https://github.com/koreader/koreader

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#178

I work part-time for my university's help desk and I was both impressed and disappointed the first time I came across one of these--one the one hand, its highly customizable and supports SSH access. On the other hand, there is shockingly no way to get the MAC address without connecting via SSH, even though this is popular among academics who often need to get onto MAC filtered networks. In hindsight, we probably coul…

The reMarkable is surprisingly good for its primary purpose. Everything else it does... is limited. They things they did do are done well given how they are implemented. The epub/pdf experience sucks because it doesn't have a real pdf reader. It just renders the epub to pdf and then throw the pdf into the note-taking app. Arguably, none of the functionality is half-assed. It works very well as a writing tablet. It ab…

I find my Boox Note Air pretty good. It runs Android basically every app I've thrown at it works although the fact that's eInk means stuff like Netflix, games etc. is obviously not a good experience. Some apps take a little fiddling to get working well on eInk like filtering out page turn animations or page refresh settings but once that's done it works well. The stock reader is very good at PDFs and passable at ePubs but you can just download another app so it's no big deal.

Remarkable seems like it's still a little better at writing feel/writing latency but the Boox line is very good as eInk tablets.

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#179
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Onyx Boox series is really good. The writing experience is almost as good as a Remarkable. The reading experience is excellent, and it's runs Android.

> and it's runs Android I apologize for the snark, but I refuse to see how this is a plus over "it runs vanilla linux".

There's no vanilla linux version of Libby, Kindle app, Kobo, Marvel Unlimited, Pressreader etc. At best you can maybe use a web browser for those which is a sub-par experience. For reading content Android is IMO better because there is general an app for DRM'd content. Linux doesn't have that and not all content can be made DRM free.

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#180
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I reacted hard to this statement: > Going further down the rabbit hole, the toltec GitHub page mentions that it works on top of the Entware distribution, and recommends what is basically “wget | bash”. I’m not a fan of this. Could I install my own rsync? We made sure that the toltec install process includes a hash of the install script to prove that it isn't modified by a man-in-the-middle. Toltec itself requi…

I made the mistake in that post of not mentioning that I didn't want to be required to connect the rm2 to wifi, and installing a package manager would mean I would need to do that to install software. If anything it would be something I would temporarily install, use it to install rsync, then figure out how to uninstall it, and in my mind that's functionally equivalent to what I was doing with docker. Pushing to / in…

Ah! Now that approach makes a lot more sense. Any particular reason to avoid putting it on a WiFi network for a few minutes?
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