I don't like being negative, but I feel like I am obligated to pipe up every time I see Onyx products hit the front page here[0], because I was one of the people who politely requested that Onyx abide by the terms of the licenses for the Free Software that they use in their products. To this day, they refuse to do so.
- Onyx still doesn't release kernel sources for their products.
- Onyx still uses outdated and vulnerable builds of Android, with questionable settings such as disabling SELinux
- Their devices are very chatty back to servers in the PRC. And their privacy policies are pretty bad (and by bad, I mean non-existant! [1])
- Their digitizer API is not very documented and difficult to build off of, so claims of being friendly to 3rd party developers are overblown.
- They shut down their support forums when the chorus of disgruntled customers began to get too loud
And even worse, they are using claims of "anti-China movement" as an excuse to not comply with the GPL [2].
Please, we've got to stop shilling this company's products with these affiliate-link blogs. They seem completely opposed to the hacker 'ethos' of this site. Otherwise, why not also shill the hundreds of Oppo or Honor or Huawei phones being released every year?
Edit: To give a positive remark, I recommend the reMarkable tablet. It's what I purchased after I sold my onyx tablet. It runs linux and they give you root access out of the box! There is a vibrant community of people developing programs for the rM and even running other linux distros on the device.
I'd say it's likely not due to any shenanigans, but simply because HN readers in general love eInk devices.
That said, I do which there were more players in the market. If you want an Android powered e-Ink device, you don't have a lot of options at the moment.
I don’t think flagging a post for that is a good use of that system, because the submission isn’t breaking the rules. But a comment in this thread as a reminder seems reasonable.
Since you seem well informed: what about Ratta, the maker of Supernote? Their software seems pretty good, and they are about to release another product.
They are also a Chinese company, I believe, which does make me so what nervous about writing down any IP...
I feel like this device would be 10x more compelling if it had an actual modem.
Like, the software looks decent, the display is nice, the battery life is good. But why would you use it if you have to carry a separate phone? Surely it wasn't that hard?
I have one. I use it as a replacement for my phone when I am in bed, just for checking email, reading the news, Anki flashcards etc. I also take it out on long bike rides so I can do those same things while sitting in the sun on the beach or something. (Phone screen is pretty much useless in direct sun by comparison.) It's not a big deal to connect to your phone's wifi hotspot briefly to sync. Main point is that you have the phone experience without the eye strain, and if it saves battery on your phone at the same time, bonus. Yeah, you're carrying more stuff, but if you're really going somewhere where carrying two devices is going to be too much weight, then you probably would prefer a regular phone screen over eink anyway.
You can get a similar e-ink experience with the Dasung E-ink Phone Monitor. The advantage is that it just mirrors your phone display and acts as a touch screen. You can keep using your existing apps without having to transfer data to a new device, and when you upgrade your phone you're also upgrading your e-reader. Just make sure to get the wired or wireless option suitable for your phone type.
Is this an intuitive personal observation of yours ("shift the brain [...] frequency")? You're on to something there.
You should look up Kaufman et. al.'s "High-Low Split" research:
> Two initial randomized experiments revealed that individuals who completed the same information processing task on a digital mobile device (a tablet or laptop computer) versus a non-digital platform (a physical print-out) exhibited a lower level of construal, one prioritizing immediate, concrete details over abstract, decontextualized interpretations. This pattern emerged both in digital platform participants' greater preference for concrete versus abstract descriptions of behaviors as well as superior performance on detail-focused items (and inferior performance on inference-focused items) on a reading comprehension assessment.
tl;dr: using a screen for cognitive tasks appears to "bring down" your thought process to a lower, concrete level, rendering you unable to perform with a "Big Picture" understanding of the task.
> it's far from meeting the security requirements. It has a Snapdragon 662 with Android 11 firmware/software. See https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices for the list of requirements. No particular reason someone can't make a secure e-ink device but the existing ones are awful in this regard.
Pixel Tablet is relatively affordable, supported by GrapheneOS, with 8GB RAM, MTE, pKVM nested virt that can run standard Linux VMs alongside Android, Titan RoT, Tensor TPU, UWB precision location tracking and WiFi6.
> Pixel Tablet is relatively affordable, supported by GrapheneOS, with 8GB RAM, MTE, pKVM nested virt that can run standard Linux VMs alongside Android, Titan RoT, Tensor TPU, UWB precision location tracking and WiFi6.
It's also not phone sized or e-ink, which make it basically entirely different than the Boox Palma
- Palma was released at August, 2023.
- It's operating system was Android 11
- 05 Feb 2024 security supports was ended for Android 11
If you compare these dates: August, 2023 and 05 Feb 2024. It is only 7 months of lifetime - between release and end of security support.. Somebody in Onyx decided to use Android 11 instead of 13 that was released 15 Aug 2022 - 1 year before Palma release.
Nested virt with pKVM is the way forward to balance the competing goals of security, usability, freedom, individuals, and corporate supply chains. pKVM is sill in development for GrapheneOS. It's present and running, but VM features are not yet actively used.
> From my research nested virt on android never got any community traction
It will take time before mobile nested virt is easily accessible to end-users, but pKVM was upstreamed to mainline Linux and AVF was shipped on Android two years ago, so nested virt is here for the long haul and can incrementally reduce dependence on TrustZone.
Nested virt has been available on x86 for a decade (KVM, Bromium vSentry / HP SureClick, Microsoft Defender App Guard), on Apple Silicon since M2, MacOS since M3 and iPadOS since M4 (Secure eXclave VM). On mobile, it can sidestep some business model conflicts which torpedoed Nokia, RIM, Maemo, Meego, Tizen, etc.
Readit News
- Onyx still doesn't release kernel sources for their products.
- Onyx still uses outdated and vulnerable builds of Android, with questionable settings such as disabling SELinux
- Their devices are very chatty back to servers in the PRC. And their privacy policies are pretty bad (and by bad, I mean non-existant! [1])
- Their digitizer API is not very documented and difficult to build off of, so claims of being friendly to 3rd party developers are overblown.
- They shut down their support forums when the chorus of disgruntled customers began to get too loud
And even worse, they are using claims of "anti-China movement" as an excuse to not comply with the GPL [2].
Please, we've got to stop shilling this company's products with these affiliate-link blogs. They seem completely opposed to the hacker 'ethos' of this site. Otherwise, why not also shill the hundreds of Oppo or Honor or Huawei phones being released every year?
Edit: To give a positive remark, I recommend the reMarkable tablet. It's what I purchased after I sold my onyx tablet. It runs linux and they give you root access out of the box! There is a vibrant community of people developing programs for the rM and even running other linux distros on the device.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21041543
[1]: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/onyx-bo...
[2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/hsn7kx/onyx_usin...
Flagging the article will help.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=boox
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=onyx
That said, I do which there were more players in the market. If you want an Android powered e-Ink device, you don't have a lot of options at the moment.
They are also a Chinese company, I believe, which does make me so what nervous about writing down any IP...
Like, the software looks decent, the display is nice, the battery life is good. But why would you use it if you have to carry a separate phone? Surely it wasn't that hard?
- Already carrying around a larger, heavier ereader
- Not interested in using an e-ink display for stuff like videos, instagram
https://shop.dasung.com/products/dasung-6-7-e-ink-phone-moni...
The ghosting and refresh rate are holding this technology back though. Definitely not main driver status yet.
LED and LCD screens seem to shift the brain into an agitated frequency. I wish they'd make more progress with E-Ink!
You should look up Kaufman et. al.'s "High-Low Split" research:
> Two initial randomized experiments revealed that individuals who completed the same information processing task on a digital mobile device (a tablet or laptop computer) versus a non-digital platform (a physical print-out) exhibited a lower level of construal, one prioritizing immediate, concrete details over abstract, decontextualized interpretations. This pattern emerged both in digital platform participants' greater preference for concrete versus abstract descriptions of behaviors as well as superior performance on detail-focused items (and inferior performance on inference-focused items) on a reading comprehension assessment.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2858036.2858550
tl;dr: using a screen for cognitive tasks appears to "bring down" your thought process to a lower, concrete level, rendering you unable to perform with a "Big Picture" understanding of the task.
> it's far from meeting the security requirements. It has a Snapdragon 662 with Android 11 firmware/software. See https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices for the list of requirements. No particular reason someone can't make a secure e-ink device but the existing ones are awful in this regard.
Pixel Tablet is relatively affordable, supported by GrapheneOS, with 8GB RAM, MTE, pKVM nested virt that can run standard Linux VMs alongside Android, Titan RoT, Tensor TPU, UWB precision location tracking and WiFi6.
It's also not phone sized or e-ink, which make it basically entirely different than the Boox Palma
Palma is running a closed fork of Linux with non-upstream drivers, https://old.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/1btqzoa/palma_is...
Small size and e-ink screen.. for 7 months.Nested virt with pKVM is the way forward to balance the competing goals of security, usability, freedom, individuals, and corporate supply chains. pKVM is sill in development for GrapheneOS. It's present and running, but VM features are not yet actively used.
AVF (pKVM for Pixels or gunyah for Qualcomm) is enabled and usable by developers on stock Android 11+, https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/modules/V...
> From my research nested virt on android never got any community traction
It will take time before mobile nested virt is easily accessible to end-users, but pKVM was upstreamed to mainline Linux and AVF was shipped on Android two years ago, so nested virt is here for the long haul and can incrementally reduce dependence on TrustZone.
Nested virt has been available on x86 for a decade (KVM, Bromium vSentry / HP SureClick, Microsoft Defender App Guard), on Apple Silicon since M2, MacOS since M3 and iPadOS since M4 (Secure eXclave VM). On mobile, it can sidestep some business model conflicts which torpedoed Nokia, RIM, Maemo, Meego, Tizen, etc.
If it had a sim card slot, I'd drop my phone and move to the Palma as my primary device