The ReMarkable E Ink Tablet - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/the-remarkable-e-ink-tablet-is-way-too-good-for-its-sof-1822612517 <comment><USER3> Some cool facts about the device from a hacker point of view:

\- Main developer/CTO is a KDE dev and very open source-friendly.

\- You get root access to the device out of the box.

\- The device is running a mainline kernel with minimal patches, which have a good chance at being upstreamed[1].

\- The toolchain is open[2]. They use vanilla QT/QML and people have already built simple example apps.

\- There's an unofficial Linux client which works just fine.

\- Desktop client and device run the same code, so you can just sync the files locally without connecting the device to the internet. Works both ways (it's the setup I use).

[1]: [https://github.com/reMarkable/linux](https://github.com/reMarkable/linux) [2]: [https://remarkable.engineering](https://remarkable.engineering)

Community:

[https://reddit.com/r/remarkabletablet](https://reddit.com/r/remarkabletablet)

[https://discordapp.com/channels/385916768696139794/385921743...](https://discordapp.com/channels/385916768696139794/385921743522627595)

[https://github.com/reHackable](https://github.com/reHackable)

<comment><USER4> IMHO, these are important features. It seems it does not have Bluetooth (for a keyboard and/or headset to listen to mp3 while reading) and the battery can not be easily replaced.

<comment><USER5> Because its meant as an pen and paper replacement. Nothing more, nothing less.

Besides why would you want to listen to MP3s on such a device? Your smartphone with bluetooth and microphone jack is way better equiped for such a thing.

<comment> m-p-3 I still wish it was slightly more than that. If I could read my emails on that thing instead of my violet screen, I'd consider it for work.

<comment><USER6> _No_.

I own one. I've had mine since last November. I love it. I love it in large part because when I'm working on it, I -can't- read email, browse HN, read blogs, check on a server. The only thing I can do is put thoughts to words and diagrams.

What you want is a tablet, maybe something from Amazon. The ReMarkable is intended for a different audience, people who remember what it's like to be undistracted and want that again.

<comment><USER7> For $600 it better do more than that. If I wanted something to write on that does nothing else I'd just use a pad of actual paper. And that's the real competition for a device like this -- paper.

I think it would need to come down in price significantly for it to be just what you want it to be.

<comment><USER6> I have put a few hundred pages of notes through this thing since I've had it. That's a lot of paper I don't really want to carry around. I have old notebooks, binders, loose-leaf collections of everything from letters to myriad projects to random musings.

My notes on this are organized into folders. When I'm at a SAR meeting, I tap "SAR", and there's everything from the last meeting and training notes and anything else I might want to reference.

When I'm at work, I tap "[Job]", and there's the graphs, notes, and complex as hell SQL and database layouts and everything else I've been working on lately.

I don't have to scribble out sentences from pen and paper, instead I can neatly erase them from the screen and rewrite them. It has become my tool of choice for first draft, second draft, third draft, and final draft writing to people I care to write to.

When I'm working out a flow chart or application logic or something else that I'm struggling to get my head around and ordinarily would run to paper for, I use this instead, because when I need to reorganize different bits I can just draw a circle around them and drag them elsewhere on the screen.

And, after doing all of this, I can back all of that up to my laptop.

Go ahead and do that with your pad of actual paper, I'll wait while you find a scanner and fight to get the stupid paper feeder to work.

If the thought of being unplugged and focused on a single thing doesn't exhilarate you, if it terrifies you, that's fine, this isn't the device to you. I'm not going to cheer it on to those folks; frankly, at this point, I hope ReMarkable is able to avoid that audience, because they're going to ask for all the wrong things.

But I don't spend a lot of money and when I first saw this thing I immediately wanted it because it's exactly what I've been wishing for, for a long time now. Ever since the Newton, at least. It's valuable at that price to me and to a lot of other people.

<comment><USER8> Type what you can, draw diagrams on white boards or paper and take pictures of what you can't. Very simple and cheap workflow.

<comment><USER6> Help me out here: what's a polite way to ask you why you think I'm such an idiot that that never occurred to me?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have this device, and for hackers, this review misses some stuff:

* the company behind it is based in norway, so you can be pretty sure the techies got treated well

* they abide by the GPL very well

* by connecting via USB and flicking a switch in the options menu, you get SSH access, as well as a REST endpoint where you can upload your files via curl. So if you don't like their cloud offering, you can turn of wifi and be sure your data is local

* I _really_ hope they start a good opensource community program. There are already efforts underway for hacking on this, and in theory making custom applications for this could be very fun

* last I saw, some of the developers are active on reddit and HN, so I hope they comment on the last point

<comment><USER10> Is the response time really that fast? On my e-reader, it takes solid 1 second in the best case (and sometimes more than 3s worst) to switch a page. This device looks really fast. But maybe it's just updating small region and that's why it's so fast?

<comment><USER11> The response time is optimized for writing, not reading. This device is better treated as a whiteboard than an ebook.

Switching pages can still take a few seconds (the display is lightning fast, but the processor for generating the page is not).

<comment><USER12> >> _Switching pages can still take a few seconds (the display is lightning fast, but the processor for generating the page is not)._ *

Can _take up to_ a few seconds, but really depends on what the device is rendering. For most arXiv papers and light graphics (e.g. clean charts) the page turns have been very tolerable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice. I'd like to see e-ink continue to develop.

What _I_ want is an e-ink laptop with simple but good word processing, coding, text-mostly browsing, emails and such.

I like my reader. It doesn't feel like "device" and I'm much more relaxed using it. Im on my third one and all three were on airplane mode since the day I bought them. Reading on tablet/phone triggers my hyperactive "device mode". Checking emails, hn, tinder, contol-tab, notifications, Twitter, youtube... Not good before bed. e-ink just lends to relaxed focus, for me. The battery life also helps me forget it's a device.

An e-ink laptop built for working on stuff with fewer distractions, 20+ hrs battery life, decent text editing and word processing, emails... I want.

<comment><USER14> I've actually been working on something of this sort with a battery-powered Raspberry PI running Debian and a Pervasive 7-inch e-Paper display. I whipped up a pretty decent prototype that had a terminal (so, Emacs, w3m, newsbeuter, etc.), PDF reader, and rough support for keyboard-driven X apps, but then my little girl got to the wiring with scissors, and my momentum died. (It also had a small character LED display to show rapid feedback while typing.)

The last few days I've been working on a new version of the software, and I think I'll wire it back up. If I get it clean enough for others to use, I'll write it up.

<comment><USER15> Looking forward to more information about this as well. I'm thinking about wiring up an e-Paper display to a Pi for some digital signage applications and curious how you got it all to work, and the prices for doing so!

<comment><USER14> I used a 7.4" display from Pervasive, about $50USD. It's a simple development board with an easy to drive controller. All the software was in Python, with a few performance-critical bits in Cython. I used wire wrapping to hook things up, and it was not difficulty, even though I'm a programmer with no previous hardware experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So there are some positive and negative comments here, I'd like to throw in my opinion as someone who backed it and currently owns one.

\- Hardware is ok. Not super comfortable to hold.

\- Pen works alright, however my goal was to use it to annotate PDFs and software issues got in the way.

\- Software is absolutely awful. It's unstable, slow, and updates are slow to come.

\- Crashes regularly when reading and annotating PDFs.

\- Loading epubs is hit-and-miss. I have some that work alright, some that fail to load entirely. Changing pages is slow.

\- Frequently fails to save your place in a document when it goes to sleep. If you're able to get it working for a few hours reading session, you might come back later to find that your progress is gone. Getting back to where you were is painfully slow.

\- Support is not good. I submitted a ticket with my concerns in October, got response in January. Return period expired while I was waiting for a response.

\- Battery life is merely passable.

edit: To conclude, I think that if I were to do this again I would either get an iPad or a Kindle Oasis (would have to try both to determine just how important e-ink is compared to a high dpi LCD). Either would be cheaper than the Remarkable, and you can buy a pretty sweet pen and a lifetime supply of paper with the remaining money. The iPad would probably be better for large- format PDFs, but since a lot of those have some pretty hefty margins I could probably preprocess PDFs with a script to trim them for better viewing on a Kindle.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have been using it since November (second preorder wave).

Pros: The e-ink display is great, large enough to show one page of any pdf. The device is light. Taking notes feels good. Battery life is great for reading books, good for taking notes.

Cons: Price. In-house cloud storage that you must use (there is a beta setting enabling some weird tunnel over usb, have not tried it yet ...). Apps you must use in order to transfer document onto device (Windows, iOS, Android only). All your documents are automatically backed up and synced once you are on a wi-fi, whether you like it or not. No apps ... there is not even a web browser and there is no way of installing anything. Because the controls are on the bottom, the reading experience is not as good as with Kindle. Round pencil tends to roll around.

Many of the cons are software related and could be fixed. But there is no way of telling, whether they will be fixed.

At the end of the day, I do not regret getting it.

<comment><USER18> There is a linux app, but the link was taken away from [https://remarkable.engineering/](https://remarkable.engineering/) . You can download it from [https://remarkable.engineering/remarkable-linux- client-0.0.5...](https://remarkable.engineering/remarkable-linux- client-0.0.5-16-1408-g7eca2b66.tgz)

<comment><USER19> This client only works with some version of Debian. I am using flatpak [https://flathub.org/apps/](https://flathub.org/apps/)

and it works (flatpak run com.remarkable.reMarkable )

It takes about 400Mb since it downloads many libraries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My friend has one and I got to try it a couple weeks ago. The writing experience is as fantastic as the article describes. But, the rendering of screens is slow and you have to look at bizarro artifacts for a second or two before a new screen is shown. This is... not great. But, I am guessing this can be improved on in future versions. I am waiting for a better/cheaper model to come out, but fully intend to get one when it does.

edit: clarity

<comment><USER21> I can see that disappearing quickly as it did between 1st and 2nd gen kindle. On my paperwhite it's now completely un-noticeable most of the time, there's only a few operations that have some lag.

I'm tempted to buy one, but know how frustrated I get with bad UIs, so might hold off until the next gen.

<comment><USER6> FWIW I'm a fellow UI-grouch, but haven't hated anything about it enough to outweigh everything else I love about it. The funky screen redraw is just a brief thing and doesn't really get in my way.

The only UI thing that makes me scowl so far is that sometimes my pen settings inexplicably get reset.

<comment><USER21> I am very tempted then, presently I have 5 different notebooks for different things and doing a couple of courses which I've started to study like I did at university and take written notes instead of just passively consuming.

The general consensus is that you learn better if you write but it's frustrating to not have the notes digitized and backed up.

It sounds like it might be good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I purchased the remarkable and was really disappointed. I ended up returning it. Ultimately, if i'm spending $700 for a writing tablet (after accessories), it has to work as described. Some of the deal breaking issues:

\- Battery lasts for hours, not days. \- Mobile apps are buggy, viewing notes caused them to crash \- Randomly stops responding to pen \- Randomly freezes up \- Customer support takes weeks to respond \- Ereader experience is horrible (no bookmarks, table of contents, etc) \- UI really needs improvements (pen style settings aren't retained)

<comment><USER6> The only one of those I could corroborate is the pen style settings issue, which occasionally irritates me too.

Price: I won't argue it's expensive and if it isn't scratching an itch you've had for a long time then it might not be worth it. Mine has provided that much value to me since I bought it, and I figure I'm paying a little extra for early access anyway (and hopefully supporting a technology that will stick around for a while).

Battery: I can see it lasting for only hours under heavy, constant use, but I've found that I only need to charge mine about once a week and I use it daily. I'm just not drawing or doodling on it constantly, so mostly it sits idle next to me and is interrupted every once in a while for a quick note.

Apps: I haven't used any of the mobile apps for it because that defeats its purpose (for me).

Pen response: has been perfect for me so far. This makes me wonder if you had a glitchy or buggy device.

Freezing up: I've seen this happen twice, I think, since November, and in my case the device locked up for several seconds and then rebooted itself, which I thought was pretty cool (a hell of a lot better job than KDE on Debian 9). I didn't lose any work, even though both times I was using it when it happened.

Customer support: haven't had to deal with them, but I'm not surprised at the lack of response. That seems to be a trend over the last several years. Nobody does customer support anymore.

Ereader: Ashamed to admit I haven't tried using this feature on it yet, just haven't got around to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Back when the first Kindle came out I felt like this would be the future. I bought an iRex Illiad 2[1], it had really everything you wanted, open source, wacom stylus, and reasonable PPI (180). But it was expensive and it couldn't compete without decent software and its screen was pretty delicate (a lot of busted ones out there). I had hoped that the folks at Plastic Logic would fix that with their QUE Reader[2]but sadly it failed to materialize.

Today I find the drawing experience on the Surface Pro 4 to be the best I've been able to find, rather than make the glass the answer they made the tip the answer (for writing/drawing feel). I rank the iPad Pro (current edition) second, and I'm not sure if I'm able to get past the frustration of the great platform/no software hump that I had on the Illiad to try the reMarkable tablet. About once every 3 months I look at it :-).

What all of this has done for me is give me a tremendous amount of respect for the problem of simulating drawing. Even with a special ASIC in the SP4 it's not quite lag free.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILiad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILiad)

[2] [http://www.the-ebook-reader.com/plastic-logic.html](http://www.the-ebook- reader.com/plastic-logic.html)

<comment><USER24> I also use a surface pro for note taking. The glass isnt the best writing surface, but it's fine. What really sets it apart for me is the handwriting recognition. My handwriting is not super neat but the Microsft recognition software makes very few mistakes converting it to text. Being able to take notes with a stylus during a meeting and then converting to a searchable text is the beat of both worlds

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I used to have Kindle DX, but today there is no bigger sized Kindle. I wonder why. Feels like regression to me.

Remarkable got huge potential, but needs better integration with ebook stores (e.g. Amazon), OCR and Apps. Price is excusable for 1st gen, but probably too high for mass market.

<comment><USER26> I got the Kobo Aura One which is 7.8 inch. Kobo has nice integration with the Pocket bookmarking app. Does anyone else have the Kobo Aura One and have opinions on it? I'm happy enough with it so far but not sure if it was quite value for money.

<comment><USER27> The Kobo Aura One is a bit on the expensive side, but the display is excellent (300dpi), so in the end I think it's worth it, especially if you also care about the waterproofing. I also happen to like the "natural light" very much, as I'm often reading in the dark, although it's a bit uneven at the edges. I'm not very happy with the default software ("Nickel"), but fortunately the device is very hack-friendly (no jailbreaking needed), so you can easily install Dropbear (=ssh server) and KoReader, which IMHO is the real killer app for any E-Reader. I would _never_ buy any e-ink device which does not run KoReader.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It looks promising, I hope it will be the begin of a new era of gadgets with less cognitive load...

Does anyone know whether the software is user friendly? E.g. cloud integration, doesn't require to install shitty software, can email documents, etc...

Is it hacker friendly? And perhaps write a small app for it (terminal viewer).

I wish I could try it in Europe (Germany, Spain or France...)

<comment><USER29> I want the opposite. No cloud dependencies.

Always-connected is a plague on modern computing that has ruined the experience for anyone with slow computers and/or unreliable networks. If you proposed a 3MB web page with 300ms API calls for every action and called that a replacement for an app for anyone with an unreliable/heavily metered connection you would be laughed out of the room. Yet that's the status quo of 'modern stacks'.

It's eye-opening how useless a $1000 smartphone is in the middle of the outback, in the Yukon, etc. We've regressed to dumb terminals with the cost of decentralized computers.

<comment><USER30> The Sony DPT-RP1 is a large e-ink reading device that works offline, but it's not available in Europe, just Japan and US.

And of course they're getting some poor reviews for not having some bullshit cloud sync.

Edit: I've heard Sony takes some privacy liberties with their EULA, so check that and maybe block their desktop app from connecting to the internet.

<comment><USER31> As of a few years ago the DPT-RP1 isn't even available in the US anymore, only Japan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've got one too. I take most of my notes in notebooks but would end up with loads of notes that I would never refer to again and I couldn't be bothered uploading to Evernote.

I got this 100% in the assumption that hand-writing recognition will come eventually. Or maybe some kind of link to Evernote so they can do that bit.

Funny the review mentions the battery life being good - it's really not as good as was expected, and is probably the #1 complaint on social media (man, I feel sorry for their social media team).

Also the slow startup time is a bit irritating.

<comment><USER33> A good Evernote app would persuade me to buy this device. Otherwise I'd be more inclined to get a cheap Kindle and only use it as an e-reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Really glad to see ReMarkable getting some love. E-ink is such a promising technology. I pre-ordered this and overall have been thrilled with it. I've loved my Kindle for years but had always wanted a device big enough to read full-size Magazines, textbooks, and letter-sized PDFs. This device allows me to do that. The hardware is fantastic, most of my complaints are on the software side of things. With how open-source friendly the company is I have confidence the software quirks will be fixed (either officially or unofficially). I didn't originally think I would write on it that much - <USER2> the writing experience is fantastic...far better than what you get on a glass screen (iPad, surface pro, etc).

I hope this device continues to remind people that E-ink has a future. If the technology can continue to advance - I think someday we could have e-ink displays to use for software development/writing...which would be an absolute dream.

</comment><comment><USER35> I hope this is good, or that they are working on making it better. I love e-ink, far prefer it to reading on my phone, but the last 2 devices I've had have had terrible software, eventually been discontinued, and in any case, the screens have broken. I get the impression e-ink is much more fragile than an LCD, but maybe it's just a question of the build. I've dropped my Huawei many times without breaking it, and although I've seen many iPhones with broken glass, the display and touch input generally remains usable.. on my e-ink devices, in one case a bit of water completely destroyed it, in the other case, I don't know what happened but I took it out of my backpack and it was busted, so it must have been a small shock, as I didn't drop the bag or anything. I'd buy another e-ink device in a heartbeat, but it had better be solid because they aren't cheap.

</comment><comment> jay-anderson This looks good and feels like the larger screen e ink devices are getting better. Unfortunately I haven't found one which ticks the boxes I want (mostly to use for sheet music):

\- Hands free page turning (a bluetooth foot pedal would be idea) \- Large size (at least as large as a4 paper). \- Split screen page turn (That is do a page turn in two steps: (1) show the top of the next screen and the bottom of the current (2) show all of the next page) \- Cross platform file transfer (I use linux and mac and would like to be able to transfer files from both) \- No cloud services for document storage (I want to keep everything locally)

This device is a bit smaller than I want. The Sony dpt-rp1 is close, but it doesn't support bluetooth foot pedals or cross platform file transfer (I'm not sure why they're crippling their devices).

<comment><USER36> Fellow musician here can confirm that two step page turns is very nice and easy to implement feature to have.

The device seems great for adding notes to sheet music.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Sometimes I wonder what happened to the display class which was built into the Notion Ink Adam: Some kind of an LCD, e-ink hybrid. When the backlight was enabled it had colors and when you disabled it, it became an e-ink display of some sort.

While the result was a display which neither had good colors nor a perfect e-ink experience, I found it had some practical advantages, as you never had problems using the display: In bright sun light you had the e-ink display and if you wanted to watch a movie in the dark you had the LCD.

Overall the displays quality was far away from what we have today, but the tablet was released in early 2011 so quite some time ago in terms of display technology. At the time it was trying to compete with the iPad, but had several problems in the process which resulted in many dissatisfied customers.

<comment><USER38> That display was originally created for the One Laptop Per Child project and then was sold commercially by a spin off company: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Qi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Qi)

It got designed into a couple of product, like the Norton Ink, and was also sold as a replacement screen for existing laptops (you might still be able to buy a kit). Sadly, it was not successful enough to continue.

<comment><USER39> Ah, so it can switch between transreflective and reflective. The Amazfit Pace (see my previous comment) is transreflective but it has a backlight which I guess might make it reflective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> That some people prefer an iPad to eink for reading absolutely blows my mind. I'm still annoyed that the iPad killed practically killed the eink market, such waste.

If this thing is half as good as I hope it is I'm going to buy it, despite the quite hefty price. I still can't come up with a use-case for a tablet but this I'd use constantly.

</comment><comment><USER41> Is this currently my best option for reading black and white PDFs that are formatted for 8.5"x11" paper?

<comment><USER42> What do you think about the Sony DPT-RP1?

<comment><USER43> I have the DPT-RP1, and it's fantastic for reading things in A4 or letter format like articles and papers. The best things about it are the large size and the extremely light weight, which makes it both easy to read and hold.

Highlighting works great as it detects lines of text and can select even over multiple lines (the Remarkable doesn't do that). Writing quick annotations/notes with the pen works fine, but it's not pressure sensitive and the writing looks quite bad compared to real paper.

Long PDFs or books are hit and miss: There is no table of contents view and no support for anything besides PDFs. So you can't put e-books on it without converting to PDF first, and if you need to jump around in a (technical) book the lack of a table of contents or overview is very inconvenient. If you read through from A-Z then it's ok.

All in all it works great in replacing printer paper, but not so much in replacing your paper notepad.

There's no actual official announcement, but the lack of table of contents and a few small other things will probably be fixed by the upcoming firmware update, once it's actually released.

The DPT-RP1 really shines as a paper/article-reading and annotating device, but I wouldn't recommend it outside of that use case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I have a theory that media addictions happen in large part because screens are more shiny and colorful than reality. If that's true, e-ink only phones and laptops could be a big help against procrastination. (But also probably lead to fewer ad clicks, so beware of incentives for manufacturers!)

</comment><comment><USER45> I am so happy I pre-ordered one of these. It is by far the best e-ink tablet I have used for handwriting, and it is light enough to take with me everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER46> Paper is just one of those things where everyone thinks they know what they want to use instead, but who really knows! Maybe what we all want is smart glasses to record and transcribe everything we write onto physical paper / surfaces. I can also see the appeal of a device that facilitates both writing and reading, but the issue is that computers (desktops / laptops) are already so damn good at this.

</comment><comment><USER47> We have almost reached pen and paper functionality and usability for a mere $600.

<comment><USER11> Call me when your pen and paper supports layers, copy/paste, drag & rotate and zooming.

<comment><USER47> Take a photo of it on the phone and it does those.

<comment><USER48> and how much is your phone worth ?

<comment><USER47> 160 euros new. So maybe half of that after 6 months of use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> As a side-side note, and just for the record, in 1993 existed (I had one) the Compaq Concerto, using the Windows for Pen Computing (a spin-off of Windows 3.1):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Concerto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Concerto)

My model was a 486Sx 33 Mhz with a whopping 8 MB Ram (default was 4 MB)

I could have written more or less the same review at the time, nice (doing what at the time was more like "magic" or "science fiction" than anything else) it would have needed a more powerful processor, need (better) character recognition, sold for a VERY steep price [1], etc.

At least it needed not a stupid proprietary cloud, it was compatible with most if not all existing software, doubled as a "normal" laptop.

[1] The cost was if I recall correctly around 4,000,000 Italian Lire, roughly 2,000 Euros which at the time was like 3 months salary of a worker.

EDIT: Clear slip of the fingers, it was 8 MB and 4 MB, I wrote GB originally

<comment><USER50> > At least it needed not a stupid proprietary cloud,

As has been pointed out many times here, this does not require a 'stupid proprietary cloud' either.

<comment><USER49> >As has been pointed out many times here, this does not require a 'stupid proprietary cloud' either.

Let me rephrase "needed not" with "came not with a default", and allow me to doubt that a "common user" (or if you prefer "non-hacker" will be able to change the settings/whatever that this (otherwise nice) E-Ink device ships with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This sounds like the perfect GTD/TODO list device!

> but what isn't great is annotating an epub file and then changing its > display font or font size. The text will automatically adjust its flow and > move around to fit the screen, but your annotations won't, leaving them > misplaced and out of context.

No way, that's such a big oversight.

That said, I'm totally buying one of these when they do the next major version bump and hopefully address the above issue and ideally double CPU speeds, as the lag mentioned when writing non-cursive is equally an unacceptable UX IMO.

I also absolutely love my Kindle's and have for years. I don't know how the author can have a preference for reading books on a bright iPad. It must not be something he does daily as I do.

The other great benefit of the reMarkable is the support for ePub documents. This is the biggest annoyance with using the Kindle, I've had to convert hundreds of ePub->Kindle using Calibre over the years.

</comment><comment><USER52> I wish that people who reviewed devices with handwriting support would include some pictures showing math writing. Throw in an electronics schematic diagram or two, also.

I want to know how well the thing works as a STEM writing scratchpad. If it can handle math and electronics reasonably well, that should be sufficient for most STEM.

<comment><USER53> Same here. I asked about exactly that a few months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15544996](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15544996)

Math writing needs a much higher resolution than ordinary text. For example if you are writing 2^2^2 the last 2 is really small. You also need a larger surface area so that you can draw diagrams and layout your calculations exactly as you want. I haven't tried ReMarkable myself, but from what I've heard, for math it is not quite there yet.

<comment><USER52> I've been reasonably happy with my Surface Pro 4 for math, using OneNote. I do occasionally zoom in when writing something with more than one level of superscript or subscript, but it is responsive enough that zooming in or out is not overly annoying.

I'd be happier with a lighter device, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I also own this (I got it in the second batch). So far I really like it. I use it to take notes in every meeting, I'm rsync-ing the device with my computer to keep backups.

For me it solved the big problem of: quickly take notes and be able to access them later. I used to keep random pieces of paper here and there and notebooks that I just kept loosing.

Using the laptop is a no-no for me in meetings (we're trying a no-devices in meetings) and this is basically just a notebook.

For taking dev notes, I keep using orgmode. But for meetings and day-to-day notes, the remarkable is by far my favorite gadget. I would only change a few minor glitches with the UI, but so far I'm pleased with it.

</comment><comment><USER55> Been using mine since the first batch went out and it's a great replacement for paper, for notes.

The one thing that annoys me is the battery life (about 6 hours of more or less continuous use). So during a work day I end up having to keep it permanently connected while at my desk (easier than charging at odd times). I understand why it's not as energy cheap as just an e-ink reader, but what annoys me is that they obviously decided to sacrifice battery size to make it light. The result is that the device is almost _too_ light and thin.

I'd take twice the weight for more battery life.

</comment><comment><USER56> I have one of these. The writing surface is much better than I expected. The battery life is surprisingly poor though - not as good as an iPad, say. The interface has a few rough edges - you are limited to the size the pages presented to you and cannot scroll down for more real estate.

On balance, I would say that I am broadly content with the device - I use it to replace the write-once notes, noodles and workings-out that I used to slay forests for. I did get it for the Kickstarter price, however. I would not pay a near iPad price for it.

</comment><comment><USER57> Reading this got me somewhat hyped for the 2nd or maybe 3rd version...

<comment><USER58> I feel the same. Let someone else pay for the development of this technology and I'll use it once it's stable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm looking towards the Sony DPT-RP1, but it's not cheap and PDF only, so I hesitate.

<comment><USER59> I own the earlier Sony DPT, and I love writing on it. The only problem with its e-ink display is the really slow page refresh rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> This summer I'm planning to code outside. Is the 13' Dasung for $1400 really the best/biggest/'cheapest' the market can offer?? [https://www.amazon.com/Dasung-Ink- Paperlike-13-3-Monitor/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Dasung-Ink- Paperlike-13-3-Monitor/dp/B075FL8DKV)

@notemaker Boox Max2 Pro looks better, thanks. Pretty small display, but it's a start.

<comment><USER61> Bargain basement & barely usable: [https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=olpc](https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=olpc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> from my experience, "apple pencil" is a piece of crap (too slippary, too heavy, requires charging thru the ipad's port ...wtf?)

Surface Pro / Galaxy Notebooks(wacom-based) with "a layer of finely textured acrylic glass" will be a much better comparison.

> but it comes at the cost of not being able to flip through documents using > finger swipes or taps

so no multi-finger zoom gestures

<comment><USER63> > requires charging thru the ipad's port ...wtf

It comes with an adapter so you can charge it with same Lightning charger you use to charge the iPad itself.

I almost accidentally threw it out with the packaging. They should have incorporated into the cap so you'd always have it with you.

Also it's kind of silly they didn't make that end (where an eraser usually is) function as an eraser.

<comment><USER62> but why not just put a female-end of lightning port? (not on top but somewhere near middle - I agree with your eraser function)

having a cap to protect its manliness is so... stupid

<comment><USER63> It's nice being able to charge directly from the iPad in a pinch. Supposedly 15 seconds of charging gives you 30 minutes of use.

I've just been using the female-female adapter as a cap, but it doesn't look as nice. It's more oval than round and has the exposed port.

I'm kind of surprised no one has made a nicer female-female adapter with matching male cap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I own a reMarkable Tablet, unfortunately its software has many teething troubles. For instance, the regular* eraser doesn't erase everything. I.e. on the tablet, it appears as it erases everything, but as soon as you export the page some fragments reappear. Also the percentage battery indicator is unreliable. Or was, they simply removed the indicator in an update. Now, you only have a approximated indicator, which is annoying (I hope the origin of the problem is not hardware related).

If they keep on working on the software, it'll be an awesome device. I love that one has root access via SSH and the writing and reading experience is splendid. However, I have to add this is my first "e-reader", so for me missing features like a dictionary is no biggie. Someone who has owned a kindle might find the reading mode rather limited and thus unsatisfactory.

* The one that emulates a pencil eraser

</comment><comment><USER61> If you need to digitize hand-written notes, check out the write-only(ish) Boogie Board Sync.

I haven't Bluetooth'd yet, but plug it in and copy from its drive of single- page PDFs (with InkML?).

[https://amzn.com/B00E8CIGCA](https://amzn.com/B00E8CIGCA) $99.47

<comment><USER65> I've tried the Boogie Board Sync in the past and it really is write-only. The price is nice and they're honest about its features. Still, I really missed not being able to page through earlier notes.

Also, the feel of writing on it is okay but not good or great.

Had it been able to show earlier notes I would have recommended it to everyone looking for a digital notebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Ars Technica review: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/12/remarkable- tablet-re...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/12/remarkable-tablet- review-the-high-price-of-getting-that-paper-feeling/)

</comment><comment><USER67> My biggest pet peeve with the device is the software. What runs on the tablet is fine but the Android and Windows app have a pretty unattractive UI and there's a lot of things that are broken. I did some digging into the Android app and it looks like both that and the Windows app (and presumably Mac) are based on the same Qt interface.

I'm hoping they'll work on native apps at some point in the future. A web app would be particularly nice too. I wrote a very brief review myself a few months ago[0].

[0] [https://michael.mior.ca/blog/remarkable- review/](https://michael.mior.ca/blog/remarkable-review/)

</comment><comment><USER68> If you're looking for a sub-$100 object with which to capture notes and pull them up later, might I suggest looking at the Boogie Board sync? It's not quite pencil-on-paper, but it's close enough that it doesn't bother me at all.

It can't pull up notes on itself. The resolution is not as fine as a iPencil or ReMarkable. It will only ever display what you've written yourself. The wireless sync only works with its own software (which is, yes, a wtf), so you have to connect with a wire to pull down the files you make.

But you _can_ take notes and make drawings, save them, and download them as PDFs later.

</comment><comment><USER69> I don't even want a stylus, I just want an A4 eink device that I can read A4 formatted PDFs on (papers / textbooks).

This is pretty much the only thing I actually use my iPad for right now.

<comment><USER70> This was the only reason I bought an Aura HD, turns out it was nowhere nearly high enough res. I see this has a much larger screen but a corresponding drop in DPI.

Anyone tried this with a typical 11pt font 2 column paper?

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Most scientific research is still published as PDFs with small text at A4 size (approx 13inch diag). Anyone has experience reading such material on ReMarkable ~10inch screen?

<comment><USER72> If you crop the margins on US based journals, you can read a full page. The type is slightly smaller than what it would be if printed on paper, but is more than legible with good eyes or those who wear glasses (me). A4 is close to letter sized so results should be similar.

Note, you can find free software that will batch crop documents. Yes, its an inconvenience but a small one to no longer need to zoom/pan and/or use LCD based devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> I have one and use it daily for notetaking at work, written > 200 pages with this kind of content:

> Feb 7: Sync meeting with Bob and Carol > > [ ] Give Bob access to repo

Yes software / power management issues, and yes slow update cycle.

But YES it's a > lightweight < paper replacement! and it syncs!

VERY useful for sketching out diagrams, and having other people sketch out their diagrams. Many people communicate better when they're writing. Whiteboards are not always available.

</comment><comment><USER74> I would buy this immediately if the screen were bigger. At least legal sized. (Am a musician, and our normal paper sizes in Orchestra are 9x12 or 10x12 inches.)

<comment><USER75> I've been bothered by the piles of partition books stacked on top of my piano since I was a child.

Same as you, I would want a large e ink tablet. Doesn't have to be responsive, just has to read pdfs, US legal size or A4.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Note that the stylus tips need to be replaced relatively frequently, but there are reports that less-paper-like tips from other manufacturers do work and last longer: [http://remarkablewiki.com/index.php?title=List_of_compatible...](http://remarkablewiki.com/index.php?title=List_of_compatible_Styli)

</comment><comment><USER77> So I was pretty much set to buy one, thinking I'd replace my Kindle, too... I like the sound of it, but it sounds like they do not support the reading of any ePub documents with DRM, which means store purchases and library checkouts are out of the question.

I'm not a huge lover of DRM, but that's a bit dissapointing.

</comment><comment><USER78> Hmm, I had been thinking about something very similar to this recently. I would love to have a e-ink replacement for those big desk calendars, where it's only purpose/function would be the calendar, note taking and reading documents and maybe email. This seems to be pretty close if not perfect for that.

</comment><comment><USER79> I can literally see that stylus lag just by looking at the GIF published in the article. The claim "An E Ink tablet that's more fun to write on than paper." can't be true if you are an avid note-taker or are somewhat fond of calligraphy. And $600 price tag is steep.

</comment><comment><USER80> What's the difference between this and boogie board? [https://www.amazon.com/Boogie-Board-eWriter- Gray-J31020001/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Boogie-Board-eWriter- Gray-J31020001/dp/B010HWCEFY/)

$600 seems to much to me.

<comment><USER81> That's not an eInk display...so...it's not really the same product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> It has been discussed here previously. I'm waiting for a 2nd generation device with backlight.

</comment><comment><USER83> I was considering this but opted for a Samsung Galaxy Tab S3. The stylus is nice, and you can take quick notes directly on the lock screen. I'm writing this post with it and it's much nicer than a virtual keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER84> Has anyone held it in their hands? How does the screen compare to a 300dpi pearl eink like aura one or Oasis? I love my Kobo aura one, but I think one of the reasons it is so great is the 300dpi screen.

</comment><comment><USER85> I would love a large e-Ink screen that I can use with a raspberry to create a low power unobtrusive dashboard somewhere in my living room. But all I can find are < 5 inch screens.

</comment><comment><USER86> > There's no doubt a faster processor would vastly improve this tablet.

1 GHz is more than fast enough for a snappy bootup and responsive input. The devs just need to improve the firmware.

</comment><comment><USER87> The #1 reason I dislike pen and paper is that it's impossible to grep. Does this device solve this problem? Or is it simply moving pen and paper into the digital age?

</comment><comment><USER88> I had a CrossPad twenty years ago. And it feels like this device has improved extremely little from it. The CrossPad was recording what you wrote in a notepad placed on top of it, it had a little radio in the pen, and later you could download what you did, if I remember, in a vector format so it was better than a scanner. The ReMarkable on the other hand, records what you are writing on a screen and later you can download what you did because it seems the device is not capable of doing a thing with it.

In twenty years, we got... nowhere. Now you can wipe the writing surface with a button press instead of turning a page. Twenty. years.

<comment><USER89> I was hoping the ReMarkable would be cheaper than the CrossPad, but this ([https://web.archive.org/web/19991201033034/http://cfonews.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/19991201033034/http://cfonews.com/atxa/d092898z.txt.html)) indicates it was $399 at launch which equates to $572 in today's money ([http://stats.areppim.com/calc/calc_usdlrxdeflator.php](http://stats.areppim.com/calc/calc_usdlrxdeflator.php)) which is still cheaper than the ReMarkable's $600 launch price.

<comment><USER88> Just a small note: that's the CrossPad XP but the original was also $399. [https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/2731.wss](https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/2731.wss)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> This is nice, but..the iPad Pro starts at $636, pencil is $99 extra, not much more than this $600 device.

<comment><USER91> This is a completely different type of device. Do you question people spending $20k on a car when they can buy a pickup truck for the same price?

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> e-ink is remarkably endurable. I've had my Sony PRS-505 nearly ten years and it's still great.

</comment><comment><USER93> I've tried one and was quite impressed, even though it's not a tool that I personally need.

</comment><comment><USER94> What author refers to as "stylus lag" is actually a limitation of the E-ink display.

<comment><USER50> No, there are clear differences in lag between the printing and doodling examples in the video - much more with printing than the big doodle/scribble below it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Is there any hdmi e-ink screen? Preferably with the possibility to power from USB :)

<comment><USER96> I think the Onyx Boox Max2 PRO does this:

[https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/12/8/16750544/o...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/12/8/16750544/onyx- boox-max-2-ereader-price-date)

[https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/onyx-boox- ma...](https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/onyx-boox- max2-pro-13-3-inch-e-reader-review)

<comment><USER95> thanks, looks good. But the price tag... hehe

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> Is there a timeline on how fast e-ink got since its inception?

</comment><comment><USER98> The authors prior opinions about e-ink displays are trash.

</comment><comment><USER80> Missed opportunity for Evernote!

</comment><comment><USER99> > the reMarkable tablet definitely has the potential to make paper notebooks > obsolete.

Nope. Maybe the later generations of the device and competitors entering the market forcing a lower price will, though. I'd pay 300 tops for it.

<comment><USER100> Perhaps that's why the article used the word "potential"? As in: not now but maybe in the future... like, later generations perhaps?

<comment><USER101> No, the quote specifically says "the reMarkable tablet", meaning the one under review right now. jonnybgood notes that this particular version doesn't have the potential to replace paper because it is too expensive, and I happen to agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> its a near copy of boox max from [https://www.alibaba.com/product- detail/13-3-inch-large-e-ink...](https://www.alibaba.com/product- detail/13-3-inch-large-e- ink_60661942744.html?spm=a2700.7724838.2017115.2.48756a921fHBCb)

probably boox who oem's it for them

<comment><USER82> That's a 13.3" Android device, the Remarkable is a 10.3" non-android device.</comment></comment>


Send message beyond time and space - <AUTHOR> https://spacetimepost.uc.r.appspot.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> SpaceTimePost makes it possible to send message to someone without knowing name nor email address. The only thing you should know to send message is the place and time.

This is a beta version and we'd like to have your feedbacks:D Thanks.

<comment><USER2> How does it work?</comment></comment>


PropTech Pioneers – A support group for real estate entrepreneurs in London - <AUTHOR> http://attending.io/events/proptech-pioneers-demo-night

<comment><USER2> looking forward to this!!

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks good. See you there.</comment>


The Full Stack, Part I - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/the-full-stack-part-i/461505383919/ <comment><USER2> Early in the article, the author comments on how an SQL delete statement can result in different disk access behaviour depending on whether the database is in Innodb or Myisam format.

That reminded me of the scene in Blues Brothers where, after asking the owner of the restaurant where they were about to play what kind of music they usually play there was: "we play both kinds, Country and Western".</comment>


A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time in Four Decades - <AUTHOR> http://www.thoriumenergyworld.com/news/finally-worlds-first-tmsr-experiment-in-over-40-years-started <comment><USER3> Better explanation here (linked from Technology Review): [http://www.thoriumenergyworld.com/news/finally-worlds- first-...](http://www.thoriumenergyworld.com/news/finally-worlds-first-tmsr- experiment-in-over-40-years-started)

More details on the experiment sequence: [https://public.ornl.gov/conferences/MSR2016/docs/Presentatio...](https://public.ornl.gov/conferences/MSR2016/docs/Presentations/MSR2016-day1-17-Ralph- Hania-The-SALIENT-Fluoride-Fuel-Salt-Irradiations.pdf)

This is not actually a reactor test because the thorium-bearing salt does not attain criticality. It's a sequence of materials tests using thorium- containing salt mixtures in small crucibles inside the conventionally fueled High Flux Reactor ([https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/research-facility/high-flux- reac...](https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/research-facility/high-flux-reactor)).

The experiments rely on neutrons from the High Flux Reactor to induce nuclear reactions in the thorium-bearing salt mixtures. However, the experiments will be useful in validating materials behavior for possible future molten salt reactors because it combines realistic thermal, chemical, and radiation stresses.

<comment><USER4> Comments like this are why I don't bother getting my tech & science news from anywhere but HN.

<comment><USER5> I've seen an increase in the number of NLP bots that give snippets, but they're far from consistently being accurate. Are there any services that can give you summations like this, kind of like the WSJ's _What 's News_ section?

<comment><USER6> Sometimes, the best summary is "this article is bunk". You won't get that from a bot. The fatal flaws in bad journalism are too often subtle and require careful parsing or outside knowledge to identify.

<comment><USER7> I think it's easily quantifiable what's a good article. Clear statement at the top that refers to big things, not a storytelling bullshit opening, then the body of the article provides support for that top statement, and later portions are basically just more of the same gradually unfolding sub-articles.

If this structure is lacking, it'll be obvious to sentiment analysis, that there are too much free floating statement, and the article either requires too much outside knowledge (in field expertise), or it's just gossip.

And of course it can be "easily" estimated how novel the statement is, what quality the sources and support are, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think we're making a serious PR mistake calling these "Thorium Reactors" even though the term is accurate.

"Reactor" evokes "Nuclear Reactor". For many people, "nuclear reactor" is a deeply loaded term. Likewise "Thorium" (and other words that end in "-ium") sounds dangerously like "plutonium" and "uranium".

It doesn't _matter_ how much better/safer this technology is. Don't expect the public to respond positively when we use those words. There's too much knee jerk, "no nukes!" baggage.

We should start calling these "salt power stations" or something else _accurate, yet non-threatening_. Otherwise, IMHO, it will be a steep uphill battle getting public and legislative support for building these things, _regardless_ of their many benefits.

<comment><USER9> A bunch of people have tried to rebrand our most energy-dense fuels (uranium and thorium). "Terrestrial Energy" comes to mind. And the unofficial Thorium PR lead, Kirk Sorensen, rebranded the Thorium-Molten Salt Reactor (T-MSR) as the LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) because "lifter" sounds better. As an engineer I'm a stickler on accurate naming so this suggestion bothers me, and I think the opposing forces will easily be able to point out that it's just a rebranding of advanced nuclear reactors and hurt proponents' credibility. I wish we could just teach people to weigh risks of things like nuclear reactors versus their real benefits (clean air that has saved 1.8 million people already, 24/7 reliability, tiny land/fuel/waste/transportation footprints, etc.) but on the other hand people are more emotional than not. I'm sure you're right that a sweet new name on a nuclear reactor would be a help.

Honestly I consider focus on Thorium fuel itself to be an attempt to rebrand the much broader but equally capable advanced nuclear industry.

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately regardless of what you wish, people do not weigh the risks. They have knee jerk reactions to terms like 'nuclear reactor'. It's human nature and shouldn't be ignored. Is it more important that it have an accurate name or that it's accepted by the public?

<comment><USER9> Definitely the latter. I just hope to find other ways to influence people's feelings about things like nuclear reactors. If some epic rebranding is what it takes, then that's great. I feel that it will take more than that.

<comment><USER3> Any such rebranding would probably last about as long as it takes people to learn that the facilities are built by nuclear contractors, regulated by the NRC, and employing nuclear operators.

<comment><USER11> More importantly: any such rebranding would ignore how we got into the current predicament to begin with...

Oil, gas, and coal companies have known about climate change for decades, and it represents a threat to untold megabillions worth of profits and business. It is no coincidence they have been pushing anti-nuclear FUD, sponsoring hack research, pushing "green" blogs, NIMBY campaigns, and such for decades. Coordinated, professional, smear campaigns masquerading as environmental issues.

Leaked presentations and marketing materials have shown those companies have triangulated the issue quite simply: They cannot win on facts. They cannot convince everyone to keep fossil fueling it up on the merits of their argument. They can, however, cause enough confusion and knee-jerking to keep the "debate" about climate change open to paralyze political action. They have also pushed pie-in-the-sky green solutions which are superficially satisfying but fundamentally entrench their interests until we're past the point of no return. Push the starting line so far forward that we just have to give up.

That the "environmentalists" on the left have spent 20+ years pushing the strategic interests of Big Coal and Big Oil using their resources and bad science is the result of willful manipulation. That manipulation is a response to the threat of atomic energy and climate change legislation in light of our global infrastructure cycles.

That is to say: if you call fission "grandmas apple pie" it will be a very short time before we're all convinced that grandmas apple pie is dangerous, impractical, too expensive, poorly thought out, not scalable, not feasible, and impossible to do right. Forget what the stats say. Do not look at Ontario. Pretend France is not real. There will be blogs. There will be glossy signs. There will be "grassroots activism", tweet campaigns, and coordinated messaging about Big Grandma and the cancerous properties of Pie. The anti-GMO people will now be anti-grandma, too.

We are playing a game against well-connected oligopolists... We only get to win if we win. They get to win if they win, or if the clock runs out. So guess what the strategy is?

<comment><USER12> It's all quite baffling, because they could instead of invested some of those megabillions in extending their reach into low-carbon energy sources, embracing the new world and continuing to exist.

<comment> vertex-four The thing is, the _reason_ they have those megabillions and continue to make money is the institutional knowledge they have of how to run a mature business in the industry they're in. Parts of that will translate over to nuclear power or whatever comes next, but for a very significant chunk of it, they're competing with every other business in the new industry, many of which will have a lot less baggage - which is incredibly risky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A couple of comments;

First it is really awesome to see actual research experiments being done on the materials. This is a critical first step in understanding the underlying complexity of the problems and as the article points out it is really helpful to have a regulatory agency that is open to trying new things.

The second is this isn't a 'Thorium-Salt Reactor' it is 'parts that would go into parts that would make up such a reactor if the experiments indicate they will work.' A much less clickbaitey headline but such is 21st century journalism.

<comment><USER14> The second is very important, there is still a lot of research and engineering to have:

* a (ideally several) functioning research reactor

* an industrial prototype

* and finally a fully functional commercial plant

It's a step in the right direction, but the road is very long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am surprised they are using stainless steel instead of Hastelloy-N

[http://www.haynesintl.com/alloys/alloy- portfolio_/Corrosion-...](http://www.haynesintl.com/alloys/alloy- portfolio_/Corrosion-Resistant-Alloys/hastelloy-n-alloy/principle-features)

The Hastelloy family of super alloys is basically stainless steel without the steel and was proven in the Oak Ridge MSR experiment.

<comment><USER16> Oak Ridge MSRE found unexpected cracking throughout the reactor anywhere Hastelloy came into contact with the salt fuel. Experiments produced various means of reducing the cracking, but it is not exactly true to characterize this system as "proven."

In 1977 Oak Ridge concluded [1]:

        Controlling the oxidation potential of the salt coupled with the
        presence of chromium ions in the salt appears to be an effective means
        of limiting tellurium embrittlement of Hastelloy N. However, further
        studies are needed to assess the effects of longer exposure times and
        to measure the interaction parameters for chromium and tellurium under
        varying salt oxidation potentials.

We know that without very precise control of the salt fuel chemistry Hastalloy N. will become brittle. It's an open question what happens with longer exposure. And that is where it was left by MSRE.

[1] [http://moltensalt.org.s3-website-us- east-1.amazonaws.com/ref...](http://moltensalt.org.s3-website-us- east-1.amazonaws.com/references/static/downloads/pdf/ORNL-TM-6002.pdf)

<comment><USER15> To be fair, the same is true of the LWR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This technology, if viable, could help solve our current nuclear waste problem. Valuable materials could be recycled (by separation) for additional use.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing#Pyroproce...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing#Pyroprocessing)

[https://youtu.be/oAVCaUonrbE?t=12m7s](https://youtu.be/oAVCaUonrbE?t=12m7s)

<comment><USER18> I wasn't expecting to see George Lucas on that video, I kinda got distracted because of him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This was apparently at the High Flux Reactor in Petten, Netherlands.

[https://articles.thmsr.nl/petten-has-started-world-s- first-t...](https://articles.thmsr.nl/petten-has-started-world-s-first- thorium-msr-specific-irradiation-experiments-in-45-years-ff8351fce5d2)

</comment><comment><USER20> India has the most thorium reserves, according to USGS: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occurrence_of_thorium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occurrence_of_thorium)

And they have had the plans and motivation to build domestic reactors for the past two decades: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three- stage_nuclear_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three- stage_nuclear_power_programme#Stage_III_.E2.80.93_Thorium_Based_Reactors)

NSG membership keeps getting held up by someone or the other and would provide more energy security for India.

[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/nuclear-reactor- at-...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/nuclear-reactor-at-kalpakkam- worlds-envy-indias-pride/articleshow/59407602.cms)

<comment><USER21> India's Thorium rich sands are being mined and exported. Not many people are aware though. Hope it isn't too late. Scandals have throttled many efforts to grow indigenous techs. The ridiculous ISRO spy case is one such example. Cui bono?

<comment><USER20> Cui bono indeed. Corruption benefits. I don't think the spy case affected much of anything.

<comment><USER21> It did affect our Cryogenic initiatives. Nambi Narayanan was the main brain behind it. It was a setback from scientific point of view for ISRO.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nambi_Narayanan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nambi_Narayanan)

Looking at the wiki, it seems likely that outside forces might've been involved in the scandal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > charged particles traveling faster than the speed of light in water

What did I just read?

<comment><USER23> Cherenkov Radiation [1]. It's not because the particles are going faster than 300M m/s, but because light _in the medium_ is going less than 300M m/s. The unbreakable "speed of light" is actually, the "speed of light (in a vacuum)". Outside of a vacuum, the light is slowed by the materials it travels through (see prisms, angles of refraction, Snell's Law [2] etc.). But it's still a very special condition when the medium slows light to some large fraction of C, while particles are going _faster_ than that (but still less than C).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell%27s_law)

<comment><USER24> Yup. Whenever you see that blue glow surrounding a reactor core submerged in water, that's the Cherenkov radiation.

If the blue glow happens in your own eyeballs, you've probably just witnessed your own death sentence.

<comment><USER25> It is dangerous? Nuclear subs have cherenkov radiation outside the hull which implies they have it inside the hull as well, but you don't hear about sailors getting radiation poisoning all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So there was a meltdown at a liquid sodium cooled reactor due to a materials problem:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_Reactor_Experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_Reactor_Experiment)

I don't see a pump seal test in this experiment... does anyone know if a solution to the SRE meltdown problem is known at this point? Perhaps the LFT chemistry would not have the issue.

<comment><USER27> This isn't a sodium cooled reactor, in this case the molten salt is the fuel itself, not the coolant. Plus there is probably no sodium involved but instead a fluoridated nuclear fuel such as thorium or uranium. Also this is a sub- critical experiment so pretty much all they have to do is turn it off if it overheats.

The best part of a molten salt fueled reactor is that in case of heat runaway the fuel would melt plugs and drain into separate containers. Essentially a meltdown would only require replacement of the plugs and refueling of the reactor to make it operational again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Really happy to finally see some movement with Thorium. It might not be the magic silver bullet that some people hype it up to be, but it needs to be explored.

</comment><comment><USER9> Glad to see some thorium-bearing salt being irradiated in a conventionally- fueled test reactor. That's a big step to getting back on the road to fluid- fueled reactors.

Here are some reminders for everyone on the technical info about Thorium. First of all, Thorium is found in nature as a single isotope, Th-232, which is __fertile __like Uranium-238 (not __fissile __like U-235 or Plutonium-239). This means that you have to irradiate it first (using conventional fuel). Th-232 absorbs a neutron and becomes Protactinium-233, which naturally decays to Uranium-233, a fissile nuclide and good nuclear fuel. This is called breeding. Thorium is unique in that it can breed more fuel than it consumes using slow neutrons, whereas the Uranium-Plutonium breeder cycles require fast neutrons (which in turn require highly radiation-resistant materials, higher fissile inventory, and moderately exotic coolants like sodium metal or high- pressure gas). Any kind of breeder reactor (Th-U or U-Pu) can provide world- scale energy for hundreds of thousands of years using known resources and billions of years using uranium dissolved in seawater (not yet economical).

Great, so Thorium can do thermal breeding, so what? Well to actually breed in slow neutrons, you have to continuously remove neutron-absorbing fission products as they're created (lest they spoil the chain reaction), so you really can only do this with __fluid fuel __. This leads to an interesting reactor design called the Molten Salt Reactor (MSR). Fun facts about this kind of reactor are that it can run at high temperatures (for process heat /thermal efficiency), can run continuously (high capacity factor), is passively safe (can shut down and cool itself without external power or human intervention in accident scenarios), and doesn't require precision fuel fabrication. Downsides are that the radionuclides (including radioactive volatiles) are not contained in little pins and cans like in solid fueled reactors so you get radiation all over your pumps, your heat exchangers, and your reactor vessel. This is a solvable radiological containment issue (use good seals and double-walled vessels) but is a challenge (the MSRE in the 1960s lost almost half of its iodine; no one knows where it went!!)

U-Pu fuel can work in MSRs as well, getting those nice safety benefits, but it can't breed unless you have fast neutrons.

People on the internet may tell you that Thorium can't be used to make bombs and that it's extremely cheap, etc. These are not necessarily true. You can make bombs with a Th-U fuel cycle (just separate the Pa-233 before it decays), and nuclear system costs are unknown until you build and operate a few. There are reasons to hope it could be cheaper due to simplicity, but there are major additional complexities over traditional plants or other advanced reactors in the chemistry department that add a lot of uncertainty. Fluid fueled reactors are probably ~100x or more safer than traditional water-cooled reactors, on par with sodium-cooled fast reactors and other Gen-IV concepts with passive decay heat removal capabilities.

</comment><comment><USER29> I was under the impression that thorium-salt reactors have been tried in the past and not deemed "worth" from security and profitability point of view.

What has changed about that ?

<comment><USER13> They have different problems that pressured water reactors and are not as applicable to applications that the military would like to use them for. So the government sponsored research labs that were running and experimenting with them stopped doing so when research funds ran out.

Add to the insane risk of investing in anything 'nuclear' and you don't have a lot of available capital. That said, the Chinese who invest in research for other reasons seem to have been working on a number of MSRs which could conceivably advance the state of the art significantly.

Oddly enough, as an American, I am looking forward to the first thing that China builds that "we" American's cannot because we lack expertise and/or technology to do so.

<comment><USER30> >> Oddly enough, as an American, I am looking forward to the first thing that China builds that "we" American's cannot because we lack expertise and/or technology to do so.

Or too much regulation or politics to allow.

<comment><USER13> Exactly right. The one that came in conversation waiting for the eclipse was genetic editing of fetuses to eliminate inherited disease. Setting aside the whole 'designer babies' as a distraction imagine a company that give free genetic treatment for couples seeking to avoid passing on known bad genes. When you walk that forward and look at the cost associated with treating, diagnosing, and supporting people that later get the disease, you begin to see a huge economic 'win' by giving them free genetic help early.

<comment><USER31> Why would you expect that treatment to be free?

<comment><USER32> If the cost of editing is not exorbitant (i.e. is lower than the average per- capita cost of paying for the condition being edited away), healthcare providers would be incentivized to pay for the editing to reduce their costs.

The incentives are obviously stronger in single-payer countries, but even in the US you could imagine an insurance company that competed on lower premiums conditional upon certain gene edits being applied to covered children.

<comment><USER33> > in the US you could imagine an insurance company that competed on lower > premiums conditional upon certain gene edits being applied to covered > children.

On one hand, this sounds entirely economically reasonable (and even humanitarian).

On the other hand, I fear this would inevitably produce unintended consequences that would shape our society in distopian, sci-fi/horror-flavored ways.

I have no idea how it would actually shake out. Maybe I'm just being anti- intellectual here.

<comment><USER34> Given the economics, I feel pretty confident predicting that these edits will be mandatory before most people on this site die.

<comment><USER35> At least you'd probably have to pay a lot more of the bills if you chose not to have genetic problems corrected before birth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Support the exciting development:

[https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fw...](https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thoriumenergyworld.com%2Fnews%2Ffinally- worlds-first-tmsr-experiment-in-over-40-years- started&u=5771623&utm_medium=widget)

<comment><USER37> I'm already a Thorium Patron, proud to be part of this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "The inside of the Petten test reactor where the thorium salt is being tested is shining due to charged particles traveling faster than the speed of light in water."

What I thought that wasn't possible? Or is this just the speed of light in water, so the particles are still moving slower than the speed of light in a vacuum?

<comment><USER39> > What I thought that wasn't possible? Or is this just the speed of light in > water, so the particles are still moving slower than the speed of light in a > vacuum?

Good question! It's the latter - the shining is due to Cherenkov radiation [0], "electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle (such as an electron) passes through a dielectric medium at a speed greater than the phase velocity of light in that medium."

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Glad to see they are resuming research even though there remain problems with it as a commercial technology.

<comment><USER41> _even though there remain problems with it as a commercial technology_

Such as...?

<comment><USER40> There are quite a few issues which this site goes into quite well [https://whatisnuclear.com/articles/thorium.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/articles/thorium.html)

Basically you can make reactors using it but it would probably work out more expensive than conventional ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> What's up with this image caption?

"The inside of the Petten test reactor where the thorium salt is being tested is shining due to charged particles traveling faster than the speed of light in water."

As I understand it, nothing travels faster than the speed of light. The author is mistaken, right?

<comment><USER43> No, it's correct. The key is the "... in water" part.

<comment><USER44> For details, see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Great that they are mentioning ThorCon's project in Indonesia. Too bad that they had to leave the US after trying really hard to find a way to build it here.

</comment><comment><USER46> As far as I know the Chinese are also putting much effort into this type of reactor.

<comment><USER47> Thats what I heard too a couple of years ago - they were putting huge amounts of money into Thorium research - does anyone know how far they are away from something similar?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> very excited about this tech, but i think it will be regulated to death.

<comment><USER49> You are aware of the current U.S. President and the current EPA Administrator, right?

<comment><USER50> Not so sure about that. Might risk these billions of coal jobs he created...

<comment><USER15> Also those two do not believe in global warming. (One thing nuclear does not cause)

It make take a long time for thorium reactors to come online but it is hard to believe anybody is going to fund the construction of a new large LWR anywhere outside China.

<comment><USER51> > (One thing nuclear does not cause)

However, two problems remain:

1) where to get the raw material? African mines are not exactly known for adhering to human or environmental rights, also African mines, by nature of being in Africa, don't create American jobs. Same is valid for the other major sources of nuclear fuel, all of which aren't the USA.

2) where to dump all the nuclear waste? I mean, people have debated to put in the most long-living and nasty stuff into special reactors to get it split up to less harmful stuff, but to my knowledge this has never been realized - <USER2> NIMBYs are highly afraid of a rad-waste dump near their houses, across the world. Also, no one has shown how to build something that can last over ten thousands of years while still protecting the rad waste.

<comment><USER15> The use of thorium in the MSR is perhaps 30x more fuel efficient than the current light water reactor. Large amounts of thorium have been buried in the desert by the U.S. government. Also, sufficient deposits exist in the U.S. to support centuries of use.

As for nuclear waste, the real reason why the problem appears intractable is that nuclear waste is not waste.

The LWR gets only 2% or so of the energy in uranium, the same fuel could be reprocessed and used in fast breeder reactors to release the other 98%. In fact, it is the presence of plutonium and other actinides in spent fuel that requires environmental isolation beyond 500 years or so. If we use those actinides as fuel, they do not need to be buried, and if we do that, the volume of waste is vastly reduced along with the half-life.

The fast breeder/reprocessing route has not been commercialized as of yet for a number of reasons. Probably the most discussed is that plutonium, neptunium and other actinides useful for nuclear weaponry could be nicked from the reprocessing plant.

The thorium MSR is an alternate path to a breeder, aka a "thermal breeder". In the case of the MSR, the reprocessing is done online or nearline to the reactor. It is also possible to do thermal breeding with thorium with a modified version of the light water reactor. Reprocessing that is a bitch though...

The most immediate problem facing the industry is an inability to say "it is going to take X years and Y dollars to build a reactor" and then finish it somewhere near on schedule and on budget. Being over 10% would be no scandal, but it is still looking more like 10x than 10%.

<comment><USER52> Doesn't reprocessing produce a lot of high level waste as a byproduct, thereby worsening the waste problem?

And I understand the Japanese had an experimental breeder reactor for a long time and never achieved actually producing any commercially viable electricity. They did get lots of plutonium, though, which may be turned into bombs any moment.

<comment><USER15> Early on the fission products were stored in acid solutions in tanks. Circa 1980 the technology was developed to evaporate the solution and trap the fission products inside glass.

Plutonium from either a LWR or FBR fuel cycle is heavily contaminated with isotopes that will cause a bomb to predetonate or get really hot. Somebody with advanced technology (say Japan's government) could probably use electromagnetic separation to remove the unwanted isotopes, but you wouldn't expect ISIS to be able to do it.

The real thing terrorists would want to nick from a reprocessing plant is Neptunium 237; it has a large critical mass compared to plutonium, but it can be separated by chemical means and will not predetonate.

In the 1970s people wrote hang-wringing papers wondering if inventory control could be made good enough to detect diversion, a 2000s accident at Sellafield's THORP plant showed that it probably can't. They lost an Olymptic size swimming pool worth of fluid containing upwards of 50kg of Pu and around 1000kg of U and did not notice for months.

To be fair, it drained into a containment area and did not threaten anyone. They were able to clean it up. But obviously the inventory control was nonexistent.

THORP has been successful at producing plutonium oxide powder but the UK was unable to fabricate it into fuel elements and had to ship it to France.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> How'd you like to be the guy pressing the button for 40 years?

</comment><comment><USER54> I have a better idea: horsecarts and sailships.

</comment><comment><USER55> Anyone with insight on this I read years ago: [http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a11907/is- the...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a11907/is-the- superfuel-thorium-riskier-than-we-thought-14821644/)

I worry that that if Thorium reactors become very very common because they are thought to be very safe (e.g. behind your house common, as some have bragged), but they turn out to be dangerous...we will have a real problem.

<comment><USER56> I think it's unlikely that we'll want to have people playing with radio active waste in their backyard..

We have decent electricity grids, if reactors become financially viable, first goal will be to power the grid.

I don't see any profit margin in decentralizing the grid.</comment></comment>


GoSquared Developer API & some cool projects - <AUTHOR> http://www.gosquared.com/liquidicity/archives/2690

<comment><USER2> Pretty awesome</comment>


Ask HN: Using a rented apartment for office space? - <AUTHOR> I'm a bootstrapped founder of a five-person startup; we've been growing well but we're still extremely lean. We lucked into a sweetheart deal for office space a while ago, which we recently found out will run out over the summer.
For a variety of reasons, physical office space is non-negotiable but market rates (in Boston) are high. To cut costs, we're considering looking at getting an apartment and housing our startup in there, in addition to probably a founder living there.
Does anyone have experience with this? We've checked with local laws, and it seems ok as long as the lease doesn't prohibit it, but would love to hear other's experiences. <comment><USER2> I've done the home office thing myself and worked out of other people's. Strong, strong recommendation to not have your founder live out of the same office -- it's disruptive both to their personal life ( _pervasive_ feeling of lacking privacy and a sense of personal space) and to other people (who constantly feel like they're intruding on someone's space while in their own office).

Landlords/leases and neighbors have a spectrum for how OK they are with this practice, ranging from "No no no no, no no." to "We officially prohibit it but won't raise a stink if you keep foot traffic to a minimum." to "Officially it's OK but unofficially the neighbor across the hall is going to pitch a fit."

I'd consider perhaps using a private room at a coworking space or shared office facility as a bridge to when it is economically rational for you to have your own office. Knowing nothing about Boston but a bit about real estate I'd estimate costs in the ~$2.5k region on a month-to-month lease, and you can probably push that down a bit by e.g. trading down on prestige/convenience of the office address.

</comment><comment><USER3> You might want to look into coworking space. Also, talk to retail businesses serving other brick-and-mortar businesses specially the ones who do shipping, mailing, and provide mailboxes for other businesses. They tend to know about someone who might be willing to rent/share the space with you.

I once paid $200 per month to a car impound lot for a stand-alone mobile cabin.

</comment><comment><USER4> If partner / customer (assuming B2B) visits are a possibility, consider that it may not make the best impression on them. Neighbor complaints are another possible area of concern; this was a big problem for one of the original coworking locations in Cambridge, Betahouse.

As others have mentioned, definitely consider coworking; there are a bunch of options in the area now, and they're more affordable than private office space with more benefits over running your business out of an apartment. Here's a list of 20+ coworking spaces in the area: [http://bostonstartupsguide.com/guide/boston-coworking- spaces...](http://bostonstartupsguide.com/guide/boston-coworking-spaces- roundup/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Have you looked into Regus thus [http://www.regus.com/office- space/boston/?q=boston&top=true](http://www.regus.com/office- space/boston/?q=boston&top=true)? They always have deals for new people.

Most apartments don't like businesses being run out of there. As long as it is not stated in the lease, you should be fine.

<comment><USER6> _" As long as it is not stated in the lease, you should be fine."_

The city might also have zoning regulations that prohibit businesses from being run from residential areas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Check and see if there is a local co-working space.

The one downtown here is $35/mo/person, one closer to my house is $125/mo/person. Still cheaper than rent for a 5 person company. No utilities, free wifi, coffee/drinks, printers and a copier.

You won't have a dedicated office (possible to add one in most co-working spaces for a little extra, still less than an apartment + utilities/ins). The space here you get a mailing address too.

Good luck in 2016.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why have an office at all?</comment>


Evidence for a multiverse? - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.03814 <comment><AUTHOR> "Our 2CSz results therefore argue against a supervoid ex- plaining a significant fraction of the Cold Spot via the ISW effect. This suggests a primordial origin for the Cold Spot, either from an unlikely fluctuation in the standard cosmol- ogy or as a feature produced by non-Gaussian conditions in the early Universe."</comment>


Tool to easily network from behind your computer - <AUTHOR> https://www.likemindedhub.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hope you guys enjoy, any feedback for v. 2.0 is much appreciated.</comment>


Show HN: Chrome Crypto Ticker - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/crypto-status/jhdfbnhbjoefbemgebjomaokpcagjplm?shn <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

I just created my first Chrome Extension. You can add all available coins from CoinMarketCap to your watchlist and track teir current prices and 1h change.

I am looking for some feedback and ideas to improve and extend my project.

Best Regards!

</comment><comment><USER2> Good work. I'm curious which API you use (or many different?), because in comparison to other plugins you even support newly listed airdrops.

Another question: Is there any good approach to monetize a chrome extension like this one?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Currently I'm using the API of CoinMarketCap, which supports over 1300 coins!

To your second question about monetizing. You can publish and sell your extensions aswell. In my opinions, this does not make sense as all, as there is a lot of competition and most of extensions are for free.

However, I'm not trying to make any profits with this Project. It was just for fun and wanted to contributed something to the community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What if it can receive the cryptocurrency data from Coinbase ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Coinbase does only offer three Coins. I think it would not make much sense to use multiple APIs.

Since CoinMarketCap is migrating its API to a professional one, I am looking forward to chsnge the used API to the one of Coingecko. I could offer more than 3000 coins instead of 1300.</comment></comment>


IPhone 4G Leak – Gizmodo Earned 8,00,000$ with 50 Million PageViewsPageviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.amitbhawani.com/blog/iphone-4g-leak-stats-gizmodo/

<comment><USER2> I tried both sansa clip and touch3g. Sansa is uglier, but sounds IMHO better.

<comment><USER2> I mean - ok, 4g, but why people are so in rush to see it...</comment></comment>


Micro:bit developer community - <AUTHOR> http://tech.microbit.org/ <comment><USER2> We build editor for microbit (beta - [https://pxt.microbit.org](https://pxt.microbit.org)). Code is open source as well([https://github.com/Microsoft/pxt](https://github.com/Microsoft/pxt)). Give us some feedback.

<comment><USER3> Can we agree that you seem to have one of the greatest jobs at Microsoft?

<comment><USER2> :-). Yes I do love it here. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment> open-source-ux Here is the BBC's portal site for the micro:bit aimed specifically at kids

[https://www.microbit.co.uk/](https://www.microbit.co.uk/)

Hopefully, all the videos on the site are accessible to international viewers, otherwise it would be a missed opportunity to spread the knowledge to everyone.

</comment><comment><USER4> So this is not available in the US yet. And there is no link to a reseller directly from their site.

<comment><USER5> Yeah I waited for a while to see if a US seller would appear but ended up buying one at pimoroni. glad I stopped waiting, its really fun to tinker with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I bought one. Programming it online and being able drag/drop a hex file onto the device makes it super simple and approachable.

Very cool product.

<comment><USER7> That's how all mbed boards are programmed (one of the ways anyway). It's ok until you need a real IDE and then they don't have any great solutions.

<comment><USER8> That used to be the case, but have a look at the new mbed exporters - you can now export to: uVision 4 uVision 5 DS-5 LPCXpresso IAR Embedded Workbench CooCox CoIDE Kinetis Design Studio Simplicity Studio Atmel Studio SW4STM32 Systems Workbench e2studio Emblocks

(taken from this recent post [https://developer.mbed.org/blog/entry/Fixed- exporters-in-the...](https://developer.mbed.org/blog/entry/Fixed-exporters-in- the-mbed-Online-Compi/) )

Which is a healthy start! There's an open source project for export to things that mbed uses: [https://github.com/project- generator/project_generator](https://github.com/project- generator/project_generator)

full disclosure: I am part of the mbed team

<comment><USER7> While that is certainly good, people using Arduino now aren't going to spend £1k on IAR or whatever. Emblocks always seemed like a good option but as far as I can tell it isn't developed any more.

Qt Creator, Visual Studio Code, KDevelop etc. would be more welcome. I did write an exporter for Qt Creator actually a year or two ago and abandoned it after the move to Yotta. Guess it is time to revive it!

Btw where is the mbed team based?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I see these are available to buy in the UK now (has singles from other retailers [http://uk.farnell.com/bbc-microbit- reseller](http://uk.farnell.com/bbc-microbit-reseller)). [http://uk.farnell.com/bbc-microbit?CMP=AFC-AN-UK- ALL-473347](http://uk.farnell.com/bbc-microbit?CMP=AFC-AN-UK-ALL-473347) Anyone how to buy a single one in the US? My 8yo was going to get an arduino robot for Christmas but this might simpler to use I think.

<comment><USER5> I bought mine from Pimoroni. Took two weeks to get to California. I paid in bitcoin so I'm not sure what the exact cost was in dollars. I bought two more for other people.

Much simpler for beginners. And they sell a coin cell add on board so your kid can carry it around and show people. Or put it on a lanyard.

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry the shipping took so long, usually standard shipping to the US arrives within a week (though we offer UPS next day services for extra cost).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm assuming someone will try to drive close-enough NTSC/PAL signals from the analog outputs, and create (a) demoscene demos and (b) Doom. Any links to such hijinks yet?

<comment><USER5> Haven't seen that yet myself but I did see a guy write flappy bird on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have a hard time understanding the educational value of the micro bit. It seems way to underpowered to do anything interesting educational wise.

<comment><USER13> I think you underestimate how much having something tactile, with buttons and LEDs, can really shift how younger students perceive learning. I volunteer teach a group of 8/9 year olds an intro to programming class and the difference between teaching them Python using CLI-esque tools and making things light up on the micro:bit is astounding.

<comment><USER9> Is that age group the best age to learn? I notice they're targeting year 7/8/9 in the UK - is that high school?

<comment><USER14> The ages for education/schools in the UK:

         5-11    -> Primary School
        11-16    -> Secondary School
        16-18    -> Further Education (often called college, or Sixth Form)
        18-21/22 -> Higher Education (University/undergraduate)

Some secondary schools are large enough/have enough expertise to have a Sixth Form as part of it. Some children go to "preparatory school" until age 13 when they enter a secondary school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would like to once more criticize the fact that BBC re-invented the wheel (and micro:bit) at a time where $5 Raspberry Pi 0 is widely available. It would have been much better to spend the effort of producing better learning software and ecosystem for Raspberry Pi instead. Someone boasted about the lengths it took to make Python run on micro:bit and it still isn't full Python and no chance for anything graphically intensive, whereas you can code Minecraft on Raspberry Pi and actually plug it to your TV.

<comment><USER16> I somewhat agree, but would like to counter by saying that the micro:bit has been an invaluable tool for me personally to teach fundamental hardware programming. The pi zero, while a great tool for more advanced programming, still requires some boilerplate knowledge of electrical engineering that surpasses what one would want to teach someone who just wants to make some lights flash.

The micro:bit has, built in: a 5×5 array of leds, an accelerometer, a digital compass, 2 push buttons, a set of piezo / touch io, and a low-power bluetooth radio — all of which have api libraries and documentation that a user doesn't need to write themselves.

While there are a multitude of awesome things that can be done with the pi zero, there's still a non-trivial amount of setup required to program basic hardware features.</comment></comment>


How to: Colours in Git - <AUTHOR> https://nathanhoad.net/how-to-colours-in-git <comment><USER2> This post comes from 2009. Current git enables colors by default (color.ui defaults to auto).</comment>


Announcing Google Cloud Spanner as a Vault Storage Back End - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/02/announcing-Google-Cloud-Spanner-as-a-Vault-storage-backend.html <comment><USER2> Isn't Spanner outrageously expensive?

ISTR reading to basically avoid touching Spanner if you're just experimenting or playing around, unless you are prepared to receive a very large bill (something like ~$700/mo. just for the lowest-end setup).

<comment><USER3> It's not outrageously expensive if you have hit the limits of of Postgres or MySQL or need multi-region replication, but yes, for small amounts of data there's too much overhead from all the redundancy.

Using it for Vault makes more sense if you are already storing other, larger amounts of data. Then the incremental cost is much smaller and more than worth it.

<comment><USER4> A Spanner setup that will outperform PostgreSQL on a hefty x86 box will run you close to 150-200K a month.

<comment><USER3> A hefty box is a SPOF, so that's an apple to oranges comparison. How do you upgrade that machine to a newer Postgres version?

<comment><USER4> You generally run at least 2 instances

<comment><USER5> No longer consistent.

<comment><USER4> ?

<comment><USER5> No longer consistent if you run two instances since a write may fail to replicate after returning a success to the user.

<comment><USER4> PG had Synchronous Replication since like 9.2

<comment><USER5> Then it isn't HA.

<comment><USER4> Patroni

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some stellar marketing. GC should be offering Vault as a service. No one should be running a critical service like this unless you have a team large enough that can support it. Frustratingly AWS KMS + Credstash is as close to a managed vault that's available right now.

<comment><USER7> Have you tried [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/key- vault/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/key-vault/)? I haven't played with it much yet, but it seems to tick the boxes.

<comment><USER6> Thanks! I'll check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seth joining Google seems to be beneficial for both the companies!

<comment><USER9> I had to do a double take on the author name. I didn't realize Seth had moved but it certainly seems like a great fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does this remove the limitation that vault reads may only go through the master on the non-enterprise vault version? The global replication is much less useful if reads must go through a single server in a single region.

<comment><USER11> As of Vault 0.9.4, this is still the case. The leader services all read and write responses. The Spanner backend does enable Vault to run in HA mode, but only a single server will respond to requests.

If, in the future, Vault allows for multi-leader or at least read-only followers to respond, the Spanner backend would support that. Unfortunately this is a limitation in Vault's current architecture, and not something a new storage backend can fix.</comment></comment>


Ask HN/YC: Early stage startup, equity for a non executive co-founder  - <AUTHOR>

Hi
I am working on an early state startup with three others.
Three out of the four in the team have worked together in our previous startup, where I was an early employee.  We have worked with each other for about 6 years now.
Now, between the other three, one is going to be the CEO, the other VP of Engineering and the last VP of Sales and Biz Dev.  I will be the 'architect' for the startup.
We have been working on this for a few months now and we are now talking to VCs to raise funds.  My question to HN / YC is 'What is a fair % of equity for me at this stage?'.  Given the past history and trust between us, if there is an issue with equity, what is the best way to deal with it?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Everyone must be happy; a fair share for each is 25%. I think it's very important that no one feel minimized.

<comment><AUTHOR> Err, post VC funding of Series A. VCs take 50% of the company, so you are talking 25% of the rest?</comment></comment>