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When attending school for music a few years ago, my house mate had started playing violin after having binged TwoSet Violin on YT. Sad to see them go - they inspired many.

(I never watched a video though, as I had 40 hours of practice to do every day)


I want to recommend getting an e-ink smartphone.

I've tried the Hisense A5 and the Bigme Hibreak, and software-wise, found the Bigme Hibreak to suck a little less, as I could not access the Google Play store on the Hisense.

I had one with colour, and one without.

The black and white screen is much better.

Both sadly run outdated Android versions, so I don't do anything like banking on my e-ink phone.

But I have found that not having a LCD screen in my pocket, literally gives me hours of my day back. It literally saves a huge portion of my life from being wasted in the evil pit that is ad-funded recommendation algorithm services.

LCD screens, videos, and ad-watch-time-maximising recommendation algorithm services (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, etc) attract our eyes like moths to a flame.

I have not finished multiple books per month since my pre-smartphone childhood days, until getting an e-ink smartphone.

My Bigme Hibreak, that is my daily driver, runs Android 11, and I don't get timely notifications on e.g. messaging apps. It also came without case and screen protector, which is a big minus.

Do you have experience with e-ink smartphones? Which makes and models work for you?


I'm sorry, as much I'd like to buy a e-ink smartphone, your recommendations doesn't read like a recommendation at all.

Notifications and a kind of recent android version are two deal breakers.


You're not wrong. Notice how I mentioned my favourite model "sucks less" than the other one. What ever company sells an e-ink smartphone with a fantastic camera and up-to-date Android will get my money for ever.


I wonder why all these eink devices seem to be stuck on Android 11. Did google change something about bringing android to weird devices?


I'm hearing good things about the Palma. I currently have a first gen paperwhite and am looking to upgrade. I'm thinking either the palma or the kobo libra color. They are about the same price, I think.


I have the Palma.

It's pretty good. The only problem is that the glass on the screen scratches easily. If you're okay with a screen protector then it should be fine.

In terms of software, it has access to the playstore but I actually haven't downloaded any apps on it. I've used fdroid and aurora store.

I installed a minimal launcher called unlauncher. I use Koreader as my main reader and I have it there most of the time so that I unlock/lock the e-reader and I'm taken directly to the book. It has amazing support on this device (I've used other android based E-readers and support wasn't the best). Can't change front light from the Koreader app though, which is slightly annoying.

Other than that, and the main reason I got an android e-reader, is that I use an android based manga reader. The experience is amazing. Yes, the manga reader is not fully optimised for e-reader screens like Koreader is but it works well enough that it's not a problem.

Overall, it's a really nice E-reader. My favourite thing about it is the size and form factor. Really, I have a 6 inch Kobo reader and this one is much easier to carry around. I'm very much used to reading on my phone anyway so the size is very comfortable for me.

Overall, it's been a positive experience. I'm waiting for either a color device in this form factor with kaleido 3 or perhaps another b/w with carta 1300.

But yeah, it's positive. Hardware is good and software can be made enjoyable.


Thanks for sharing! I too have looked at the Palma, but without it also being a phone, I can't go for it, because I'd have to carry it and a LCD-screen phone.

Colour e-ink works by having a colour filter over the screen, and every third pixel being dedicated to each colour (please correct me, people who actually know the details!).

Therefore they inherently have lower resolution, and are also by nature around 2/3 less white in the pixels not displaying anything. When reading text, most pixels are uncoloured, meaning in most cases you significantly lose screen resolution, compared to b/w e-ink. Thus, with colour e-ink screens, unless you're out in sunlight, you'll need backlight most of the time. This is my reason to keep using the black and white versions, and it might be something for you to keep in mind when you select your next reading device.


Turned location off for Uber for this reason. Makes the app less useable - but still worth it. Without that feature, I'd rather just wave a taxi in (depending on city). Makes me feel like Uber is hostile towards users instead of servicing them.


How about I rob your store Thursday and you mine Friday?


Is there a DRM-free way to watch this?



That is indeed totally crazy.

I wish I had some way to verify your story, as I as a reader can't know who sits behind the keyboard on the other side.



> I wish I had some way to verify your story, as I as a reader can't know who sits behind the keyboard on the other side.

I could never in a 1000 years make up the narrative of my life. I often cannot believe I've lived it.

Every word I write here on HN is true, although you simply have no idea how I wish it wasn't so.


I believe you.

I'm also a LV resident. The city is generally hostile.


There are several similar stories in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_(film)


You can easily verify the existence of such conditions in the penal system without needing to know the specific facts of an individual person's situation.


USA has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, you can find many similar stories on Google.


I am curious as to why he was incarcerated.


"If it seems strange then assume it's a lie".

When did that become a thing? And who does it benefit?


Online Adverts are a form of micropayment. It's currently the only way to charge sub-cent amounts from users. It requires the third party of an advertiser, which is a very expensive middle man.

If we can figure out how to do micropayments without users needing an account somewhere (like PayPal), we can get rid of ads. That is the ultimate solution to this long-winding conflict between users, advertisers and content creators.


> how to do micropayments without users needing an account somewhere

That doesn't seem possible. What does even a hand-wavy sketch of this look like to you? I'd guess it's possible without, e.g. a unique row in a single (tho perhaps distributed) database table for each user, but I can't imagine it really being different than an 'account' either, e.g. a Bitcoin 'wallet'.


This is what I have done as well.

I think it was Bruce Schneier who brought up the idea of digital feudalism. I want to own my data, and that is incompatible with the business of Netflix and Spotify.

Very sad about it, since both those services are very easy to use and I was experiencing more new film & music while subscribing than I am when not subscribed.


After being Clojure-only for a long time, I decided to write the front end to my last project in Elm, just to see what the fuzz was about.

While I miss code-is-data very much, there is no turning back from the type system and how there are no unpure functions. It is just so mind-blowingly easy to catch almost every bug I would usually write.

I'm afraid this is the point where I should try Haskell, and be unsatisfied for the rest of my professional life.


You should definitely try, even if you end up being somewhat unsatisfied every time you have to use something else.

When I write code in Haskell, it feels right, just like when I discovered Lisp. Only better. And oh, the purity! Not only in the mathematical sense, even the code is completely deprived of clutter.


But at what cost!? Every time I write Haskell code it reads like a mathematical proof that's beyond my ability to comprehend! Whereas my Ruby, Python, and Clojure programs read like a poem I might have written in third grade.


I don't think Haskell code looks like this. You don't have to use all the guru syntactic sugar; the library functions usually have pretty explicit names, and yours should have to.


I'm a ruby developer by day and, to me, OCaml-like languages like Elm and F# are better rubies. The language remains as concise and crisp as ruby, the algebraic data types help me more precisely formulate the logic for the app, and the static types remove a whole class of errors and makes refactoring much easier.

As an aside, I have a theory that Elm is a gateway drug to Haskell. Next stop, purescript?


> While I miss code-is-data very much

FWIW, Elixir has this (and is possibly the only non-homoiconic language to implement "true" macros)

Opt-in typing, though.

Regarding Elm, I love that runtime errors are considered compiler bugs.


Nim and Scala are not homoiconic, yet they both have true macros


Nim's macros look harder to use, with a fairly custom DSL in the AST (instead of, say, a simple datastructure like a nested map). I don't think you can pattern-match on AST fragments, either, like you can in Elixir.

Scala macros cannot change its syntax, Elixir macros can I believe (to some extent).


The AST of Nim is a simple tree, the only thing is that the nodes of this tree are tagged with a kind that represents the kind of syntactic element, since the language is not homoiconic


Dylan?


After reviewing Dylan's, it doesn't seem as powerful. And it's unclear how it handles runtime variables passed within code snippets to macros (Elixir has "unquote" for this)


So owning and sharing child porn should be OK in the eyes of the law?

It's simply not an easy question to give an easy answer to.


I think it should be just as OK as owning and sharing videos of death, murders and of adult people being raped. There is no reason why CP should be better or worse in the eyes of law.

(not justifying CP, just saying that it's just as bad as the above)


The decision of New York v Ferber spells out why child porn is illegal better than I can (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Ferber)


That explains why the sale is illegal, which is much more straightforward than possession.


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