Like, cool. Free stuff.
Im actually hesitant to accept. Idk if I really like the idea of assimilating a computer even closer to my person than my phone already is.
It will probably just be a distraction. But idk. It might be useful.
Wondering what other #smartWatch owners might have to say.
I know @benjaminhollon has a smart watch. Made by frameworks maybe??? :thaenkin:
@twizzay@benjaminhollon@jamesp just got my son a #pinetime - increasingly choosing it over his Apple Watch. He says it is basic and the bezel is bigger but keeps wearing it.
@CharismaticBatman@joel@twizzay
As far as I know my youngest brother is still using his—he really liked it, but I know he'd keep forgetting to charge it, so he may have also stopped using it.
He never really used a watch with much frequency, though, anyway.
@twizzay@CharismaticBatman@benjaminhollon@joel I’ve had an Apple swatch for over 2 years and honestly, unless there is a major battery improvement, I won’t buy another one for a long time. Charging daily is the worst. I love Fitness+ but I don’t use my Watch for anything other than texts and fitness/health stuff anymore.
I don't remember it being a ton worse, though, when I had it on. Charging it while in the shower would easily take care of the day's worth of power. :)
@twizzay@joel@teamtuck@CharismaticBatman
You get play/pause only if you use Apple Music, you can update firmware, and it can read step count and heart rate data. Oh, and it'll set the time for you.
Well currently my Crapple Watch only seems to support notifications if I have my VPN off. Which goes against one of my core values. So. :ms_shrug:
Im assuming you can set vibrate alarms on the pinetime??
Vibrate alarms are honestly one of the most underrated features of smart watches. I would much prefer to be woken up by a tap on the wrist than some ringtone.
@CharismaticBatman@twizzay@joel@benjaminhollon I don’t mind swapping ecosystems but IMO Apple just has the best option sometimes. I don’t want to touch anything Google makes with a ten foot pole. I want something that will last and has security and feature updates for more than 3 years. But I really want a watch that has a week plus on a single charge. Sacrifices….
@teamtuck@CharismaticBatman@twizzay@joel
InfiniTime (PineTime's OS) has a generic Linux client I like, itd, so you could use it with a PinePhone or similar. :)
(I think there are clients actually designed for Mobile Linux, though; itd is mainly designed to be used from the terminal via itctl)
@twizzay@benjaminhollon@CharismaticBatman@joel I’ve only had my iPhone 13 Pro for 9 months so I won’t get another phone for a long time. Whatever watch I buy will be a “dumb watch” or maybe a Garmin?
@benjaminhollon@joel@twizzay@CharismaticBatman Heh, one of the reasons I like my [Garmin] "smart" watch is that the battery life is, basically, one month.
...except when the GPS and bluetooth are enabled (tracking + music for runs), which means I practically have to charge it weekly instead of monthly, but it charges off of a tiny solar panel in like 30 minutes so /shrug
I should note the solar panel is external. The watch does not have one built in.
The model with a built-in solar panel is ~$100 extra, even though $100 can buy a 100W solar panel, enough to charge the watch in LITERALLY SIXTY SECONDS on a sunny day.
or...maybe closer to five minutes? Point is the solar option is actually really bad for the price.
Yeah, it's the easiest one to land and return from, as it gives you just enough atmosphere to do some aerobraking, but not so much that launching back up into orbit is horrible.
The planets without atmosphere are a bear to land on. Way too much dV.
Well, it would need something like starlite for the back plate so as to not cook the person's wrist, and some fold-out heatsinks and a fan to dissipate the heat, because no matter how great your circuit is, handling 100W is kinda nuts, unless you're just running it through some fat gauge wiring and not much else.
@CharismaticBatman@pixelherodev@joel@twizzay
Realistically, though, if I actually had the know-how, I know exactly what I'd build. An mp3 player, based off of the Ox64. Bluetooth, storage on microSD, perhaps streaming over the wifi, etc. Would be so great.
@CharismaticBatman@pixelherodev@joel@twizzay
I'm also still waiting on a low-power e-ink writing device that's not the insanely-expensive freewrite. ;)
@benjaminhollon@CharismaticBatman@joel@twizzay Book nova 3 can be got on ebay decently cheap. I'd offer you my old black and white one even cheaper (read: friend discound [read: free]), but the screen broke and I dunno that it can be easily replaced anyways :/
What were the failures of the PBP? I love mine. I mean, the trackpad is kinda bad (started out HORRIBLE), and the webcam is useless, but otherwise it's a pretty sweet little not-chromebook. ;)
I think it's slowly getting into more and more products, but when companies like Onyx try to make general purpose e-ink devices like the BOOX, they get reviews from youtubers cough Tinus Lech Lips cough that just say, "Man, no color? The refresh rate is crap!" :eyeroll:
Yeah. I forget if it was a Boox or the ReMarkable 2, now, but probably a Boox.
A young artist lady was reviewing it, and while she definitely tried to give a good review, I don't think she got the point of the device, or the trade-offs of eInk.
Does anyone remember Mirasol? It was a revolutionary low-energy high-refresh-rate reflective color display technology from the latter naughties that just seemed to vanish into thin air. :/
From the description, the tech sounds a lot like DLP, except that it actually produces color, whereas DLP only reflects a varying amount of light, and relies on a color wheel to produce color.
That's not too shocking for tech in development. But probably big Q got sold on a tech that would be super easy to implement and the reality thereof gave them cold feet.
@CharismaticBatman@pixelherodev@joel@twizzay
I mean… I could easily afford it. I have thousands in savings, I guess, simply because I've never touched the vast majority of the money I've received.
But my own mother describes me as a miser; I find it really hard to justify a purchase for something that feels redundant. In my head it basically goes:
...
I was a little more miserly when I was young (read: 30).
I suffered with a broken 17" CRT that only worked half of the time unless you slapped it for a few years until I finally broke down in 2006 and bought a 19" LCD.
Then I really wondered what I had been waiting for for so long ;)
@CharismaticBatman@pixelherodev@joel@twizzay
I mean, I've used a TV as an external display for my Pi, but haven't actually had one I used with any regularity.
They're not a great company, but this is such a common story. The better tech gets supplanted by the worse because of the cost of development, bad management, poached engineers, stupid marketing, or many/all of the above.
I remember being so miffed that PCs outsold Macs like crazy, because (to me), not only was the OS and hardware superior, the CPUs were a full generation of Intel crap until the 486 (at which point Intel in Austin had poached enough Motorola engineers. Egad. XP
I suspect it wins for text editing but loses hard for videos, not least of which because the RLCD can display videos at 60Hz full color in 6W, and the eInk can't do that at all
@pixelherodev@CharismaticBatman@joel@twizzay
Oh I have no idea. I just know e-ink tends to be very low power, especially for stationary things. It doesn't use any power at all if the image isn't changing; you can power it off and the image will remain.
@CharismaticBatman@benjaminhollon@joel@twizzay AFAIK it's basically the first large RLCD ever made, which is probably part of it. If it matures, this could be great :P
Interesting. Some of the first LCDs were reflective, but I think it became very difficult for them to be reflective once color was introduced.
I wonder if they're using a bayer pattern instead of RGB subpixels for more clarity.
I was also thinking about PixelQi, which was a screen technology used on the OLPC XO. It was a normal LCD when backlit, and a monochrome reflective screen when not. Very interesting.
@CharismaticBatman@benjaminhollon@joel@twizzay Both of my watches are TLCDs - transflective LCDs. They have the same color quality when backlit and when using external light.
Basically, it means that the backlight is off at all times outside during the day, when indoors with a light on, etc, but can be turned on e.g. at night to see the screen :)
TLCDs are even harder to make than RLCDs, because they ARE RLCDs, but which ALSO have more layers so the transmission backlight works.
@CharismaticBatman@tyil@joel@benjaminhollon@twizzay Yeah, that's the thing about OLED - if you use it the way you'd use an eInk, but in reverse [white text on black; used primarily for reading static content, text editing, etc.], it's pretty competitive with eInk.
But, when you want to do things eInk can't, you have that option, it'll just drain more power.
So, yeah, either would be nice, but I'd honestly prefer OLED.
@pixelherodev@CharismaticBatman@tyil@joel@twizzay
I'll admit I haven't tried it on OLED, but the issue isn't with the contrast, it's with the fact that for people with astigmatisms small points of light amidst a dark background are fuzzy.
@benjaminhollon@CharismaticBatman@tyil@joel@twizzay Ahh, okay - it might actually be WORSE on an OLED, then, because the blacks are actually black, whereas on an LCD, there's a bit of white light shining through them
I'm more or less visually comfortable with it either way, it's just that it's more battery-efficient on LCD to use a light theme, and it looks less HAX0R-ey.
@pixelherodev@CharismaticBatman@tyil@joel@twizzay
I mean, I guess. I'm not sure why that would be the hardware restriction, though. I'd think white on black to be more likely.
> green phosphor has the longest afterglow (remains on the screen for the longest time)
> green phosphor was the first available
> The human eye responds to the green color the best, so it looks brightest
Thinking back to it, the predecessor of raster CRTs were oscilloscope and radar CRTs, and they were always green. So I think you're right about it being the first phosphor.
LCDs are removing light from the backlight. The darker the image, the brighter the backlight needs to be for it to be legible.
I've quantified it before, but I don't remember the exact numbers.
I just know that I generally have to crank my brightness up way higher in white-on-black mode, while black-on-white is quite legible even at very low brightness.
> I just know that I generally have to crank my brightness up way higher in white-on-black mode, while black-on-white is quite legible even at very low brightness.
You know, I've noticed that.
It's 48". I couldn't find any that were cheaper. I figured, heck, if it's between 35" for $1k, 42" for $1k, or 48" for 1K, why not go with the biggest one, right?
On computers, yes. pbp ~$200, various SBCs ~$200, 5600X+5600XT+used mobo ~$500 at the time IIRC, etc etc, but no individual machine cost me nearly that much >_>
I think they're an improvement over the status quo, but that fundamentally we need to stop making so much new hardware.
Framework cannot, fundamentally, solve the problem of e-waste. Whether or not it ends up improving the problem depends largely on whether people buy them instead of other hardware, or in addition to - which means, effectively, they only help solve the problem by becoming a monopoly!
@pixelherodev@CharismaticBatman@tyil@joel@twizzay
Well, fundamentally, as long as you fundamentally get your fundamental point across, you've accomplished your fundamental task, speaking from the fundamental standpoint explained in my fundamental Communiations classes.
But I don't know that they're a monopoly in that case, necessarily, they're definitely very happy for third parties to come in and do stuff with the designs they made. They've open sourced a lot of the designs.
@icedquinn@tyil@joel@pixelherodev@CharismaticBatman@twizzay
From what I've seen there's debate over whether it actually is GPL violating—if they didn't modifications to the kernel, there's not an issue, I think? And it seems like their modifications are mostly on top of Android.
@CharismaticBatman@icedquinn@tyil@joel@pixelherodev@twizzay
From what I read that wasn't their response; they were asked for the source code and said "we can't do that at this point in time" (or something to that effect) which read to me more like they didn't really understand the GPL, rather than maliciously not complying.
@pixelherodev@CharismaticBatman@icedquinn@tyil@joel@twizzay
They would, yeah. That's what I saw the debate about; many people were arguing about that exact thing, whether they'd actually made changes that require it.
Hard to know whether they made those changes, though, without the source code or official word from them.
@CharismaticBatman@benjaminhollon@icedquinn@tyil@joel@twizzay I would be unsurprised if the request was less than polite and was requesting more than just their Linux tree.
"Hey, could you send me a copy of the source code?"
"I'm sorry, we are unable to provide source code at this point in time."
"You are in violation of the GPL, etc., etc., etc." posts on reddit denouncing the company
@CharismaticBatman@pixelherodev@icedquinn@tyil@joel@twizzay
Because they're not a company based around FOSS? Most companies aren't interested in releasing their source code.
Also from the email I saw it looked like it was just a regular support person giving a fairly routine answer, not actually the company's refusal after hearing a well-reasoned response.
@benjaminhollon@CharismaticBatman@pixelherodev@tyil@joel@twizzay how reasoned of a response is required? There is no social grace requirement to the license. You just ask and they provide or are in violation (and in a just world would have two weeks to comply or be injuncted from doing any business)
v3 is better in every aspect, Linus doesn't like it "muh lenux on drm". Is it moving beyond software? Yes but nobody cares when the "trusted" computing corpos does it their locked bootloader and other "security" measures.
Also it's not "trusted" computing but rather "trust-us" computing because you can't run stuff on things you paid for unless allowed by them.
You might as well give a spare key to your house as well to them for MAXIMUM SECURITY.
Yet another argument in my long list of reasons patents should be banned. Or, maybe, modify them so that e.g. you're not allowed to prevent anyone from copying your work, but they're required to give, say, 0.1% of profits?
Dunno the solution, but i'm pretty sure a few smart people thinking about it for an hour could devise a better system.
> Or, maybe, modify them so that e.g. you're not allowed to prevent anyone from copying your work, but they're required to give, say, 0.1% of profits?
How would you even regulate that, though?
Also I don't swipe; that's even worse to me (probably just from how much time it takes, and that swiping across a screen doesn't feel great). I tap on the screen, but that's worse than a button.
the RISC-V version looks fascinating, although it will probably be a lot rougher software and performance-wise until the ISA's support in the Linux kernel matures a bit.
I'm not sure it'll ever get mature. I know the pattern too well. Something really amazingly free and open comes out and everyone gets super excited, only to realize later on that it was free-and-open for the corpos, which then lock it down for maximal denigration. Bleh. :P
Man, I REALLY want a FOSS e-ink (or even AMOLED!) notebook. I think the PineTab is the closest thing, until (if?) the PineNote gets mature. And I don't think the PineTab has a wacom/EMR digitizer. :/
@CharismaticBatman@pixelherodev@joel@twizzay
Honestly though, going back to my wish for that mp3 player, Pine64 did announce the "PinePod" in the same April Fools' post as the PineBuds, and the PineBuds turned out to be an actual thing.
I'm hoping that turns out to be the same for the PinePod; I would buy that like a shot. XD
nmtui doesn't work with my university wifi; it doesn't support WPA2 Enterprise.
You can set up a Pi headless, which I've done before, but it's kinda tedious and it's hard to find documentatino on the wpa_supplicant.conf format for WPA2 Enterprise. Eventually I'll get to it, I guess.
@pixelherodev@CharismaticBatman@joel@twizzay
If I had an ethernet cable, yeah I'd do direct ethernet. Except I don't think I'd be able to connect to it from my laptop without having my laptop also over Ethernet, which means I'd have to borrow my roommate's ethernet connection; we only get one each.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK opens door "Yes?"
"Sir, we have here that you did 960G of downloads in the last two days."
"Ah yes, that was me setting up my private fork of Project Gutenberg."
Oh, I get that, it's just that I don't know where people draw the line between,
"Man, I get where you're coming from, but you truly DO have better choices, if you'd just spend a little time to become familiar with them."
and
"BRAH! DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW TO EXIT VIM BTW??!?"
And the fact that the line isn't clearly defined is concerning, because it can be used to repudiate people of good conscience trying to encourage others to make good decisions.
@CharismaticBatman@benjaminhollon@joel@twizzay It's generally a derogatory term for asshole dudes in FOSS. Pretty sure it's a bit more specific than that, but I don't exactly care to check.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK opens door "You again?"
"Yes sir, this time—" grabs tablet and takes a look "That was just me downloading the Linux install ISOs of every systemd-free Linux distribution"
"But what about—"
"Oh, that. I was downloading the entire archives of every podcast I listen to."
"And this spike here?"
"Syncing my local music collection over to the laptop under my bed, then streaming it to my phone."
@CharismaticBatman@pixelherodev@joel@twizzay
I think I read about people setting up an SSH connection to headless Pis over Bluetooth. That's kinda crazy; I need to look that article back up.
I get that e-ink products are expensive (though I don't like it), but that's insane. That's as much as my Mechanical Keyboard which I'm sure is far nicer.
It's a neat replacement for a written journal, though. For the times that a laptop (even a teensy one) is just a bit too unwieldy.
You know, I got BACK into the Linux world in early 2019 by purchasing a 2010 Thinkpad X200t to put Linux on "JUST FOR WRITING." It became my gateway drug back into the amazing Unix world, which I should have never left.
Baptizing and killing my Macbook Air with tea didn't hurt either. ;)
> It's a neat replacement for a written journal, though. For the times that a laptop (even a teensy one) is just a bit too unwieldy.
I already find it hard to keep a journal; no way am I paying a ton for a device to do that on. ;)
@benjaminhollon@CharismaticBatman@joel@twizzay I use it for my todo lists / the poetry drafts. Really, REALLY nice to write on. Nicer than paper, nicer than plain text on a computer.
My rm2 got unused for a long time because I found I just greatly preferred the feel of a fountain pen. But compared to a pencil or ballpoint, it's great.
If you go for a keychron I can definitely recommend the V line—all the same features as the Q line, but with a plastic chassis which significantly cuts the price. And it's lighter, meaning I can reasonably travel with it.
Even "lighter", it's still pretty hefty—the V4 is the same weight as my previous TKL, as a 60% board.
Fwiw There are ways to make a cheap board feel nice.
I think my board cost me like $25. I bought it used and broken. Resoldered a transistor back onto it and desoldered all of the switches. Bought ~$20 of a good quality lube, and spent 18 hours lubing all 84 switches and resoldering them back on.
Well if he had to desolder they're not removable otherwise. :)
I go for hotswap boards, which are ones where you can change out the switches. Not only does it give me more flexibility (as someone who doesn't solder), it means if a key stops working I can effortlessly swap out the switch in ~15 seconds.
@pixelherodev@CharismaticBatman@joel@twizzay
You know I've actually revived a macbook that had coffee spilled on it. I then daily-drove it for a couple months during lockdown after accidentally bricking my main laptop, until I could figure out how to fix it. XD
It was the first of what is now my fleet of ~5 old or broken laptops I've been gifted by people not using them anymore. One is my home server under my bed.
@benjaminhollon@CharismaticBatman@joel@twizzay I've got a stack on my bookshelf, too :P Some of them still work, some don't [one needs a new screen IIRC, one needs a battery, one... has a broken power button, maybe?]
Got to get them all fixed and start finding people who need them, I think. I certainly don't.
I had a 128GB SD micro card permanently plugged into a short SD card adapter that sat flush with the side of the case. Nice way to augment the paltry 128GB storage that came stock ;)
It said there were no versions of MacOS available. It was perplexing.
Until I got the terminal open and ran "date", discovering it to be 1970. Fixed the date and it could again find available versions. Apparently it was trying to check what versions were available as of 1970? XD
@CharismaticBatman@pixelherodev@joel@twizzay
Probably it looks for versions compatible with the Macbook Air. Apple's big on tying software to specific hardware. ;)
@pixelherodev@CharismaticBatman@joel@twizzay
I kinda want to get a solar panel. I've got an 88Wh power bank that's supposed to be designed with solar power in mind as an option, so that would be a neat thing to do.
What about LiFe? It's got the advantages of NiMH without the disadvantages of LiPo/LiIon.
No lead acid. Just no. I see no advantage to that technology, other than the fact that it's cheap.
Also need to factor in waterproofing. Raw cells are definitely far harder to waterproof than pre-waterproofed batteries, for which I "merely" need to waterproof the cable connections.
Yeah, they don't have quite the capacity of LiIons, but they are very tolerant of handling (in the sense of how deep it gets discharged, and how long it can be stored at full charge, I think).
I learned the hard way you do NOT leave unprotected LiPos fully charged. You get a spicy pillow within about 24 hours.
LFP is looking very strongly like the way to go. AFAICT price is alright [<$300/kWh on ebay], even if it's worse, and I think their chemical characteristics are way less of a problem.
@CharismaticBatman@pixelherodev@joel@twizzay
We had a battery back in India that would power our full house for about an hour (frequent power outages made it a necessity). No idea the actual storage capacity, but it was pretty big.
@pixelherodev@CharismaticBatman@joel@twizzay
The tricky thing in my case is that I live in a dorm. I could keep it in the corner of the window, I guess?
For a solar panel that has to take whatever it can get through a window without the ability to be rotated to be pointed directly at the sun without having any part of it obstructed... I'm thinking it could charge a phone or max a 10Ah battery.
(Calling it 10,000 MAh is stupid. Silly marketing people.)
@CharismaticBatman@pixelherodev@joel@twizzay
Yeah, that's about what I'm expecting. This is mostly an idea for the ideological merit of it, not the practical. :)
@benjaminhollon@CharismaticBatman@joel@twizzay Honestly, though, having it be the window [or, more practically, attached to the outside of a window] isn't a terrible idea. Could get a few hundred Wh per day that way, easy.
I have a 21W solar panel I strap to my backpack, with the wires run through the zipper to a battery inside. Only did that once in NYC on a bookstore crawl, but it's much cheaper - if you already have a decent backpack, <$50.
Whether it can be safely/reasonably attached to the backpack depends on the pack and the person attempting to connect them :)
> I have a 21W solar panel I strap to my backpack, with the wires run through the zipper to a battery inside. Only did that once in NYC on a bookstore crawl, but it's much cheaper - if you already have a decent backpack, <$50.
Hm I might try something along that route.
@pixelherodev@CharismaticBatman@joel@twizzay
I'm not expecting to get something big or expensive. I think it would largely be cool from a sustainability perspective. Say, if I were to power my home "server" off of it.
@CharismaticBatman@pixelherodev@joel@twizzay
Heh, I may have mentioned this before, but "some portability" isn't even enough for me. Psychologically, I don't feel comfortable if I can't at any given point in time, pack everything I need in two suitcases and move to a different country.
Depending on the power delivery method, I seriously doubt it's getting 100W. Probably 5W max.
The heat dissipation from that much wattage on a watch would be horrendous
In the end I stopped using it. I'm back on my Casio. Though the PineTime is definitely a very cool device. Perhaps I'd find it more useful if software support is better for iOS at some point down the road.
I’ve never really had a smart watch before. It feels kind of like the first time I bought a car with a backward facing camera. The whole time Im like “Do I really need this?”
I cant decide. Maybe I will just take up the offer so I can make up my mind and then have a position. If I dont like it I can regift it or give it back I guess. :comfyshrug:
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