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Comment by varispeed | Hacker News Reader

I have reMarkable tablet, but I have not installed anything. What is a chance of bricking the device by doing so? I also found that I can't really write any notes with it as it is not encrypted, so now it is just a - oh irony - a paperweight for me. I should have done more research before buying. Is it possible to encrypt the notes?

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Good news is that you can't trully brick a reMarkable v1 unless you break the hardware. I 'bricked' my reMarkable v1 before and used a tool to boot the CPU into recovery mode to load a new kernel over the usb port[1].

Using this mode, I was able to unbrick it but it's a complex process so it's not for the faint of heart. It's still good to know that with enough elbow grease, you can always unbrick a remarkable.

[1] https://github.com/boundarydevices/imx_usb_loader

As much as I like to Encrypt All The Things™, unless you're concerned about somebody stealing the physical device, you don't need to encrypt it.

It should be possible to set up an encrypted directory with something like FUSE (though afaik FUSE doesn't run on the reMarkable), though. https://github.com/evidlo/remarkable_entware lets you install fstools.

I would like to read and scribble on work documents (personal data, confidential documentation and so on) and regardless whether the device could be stolen or data unencrypted landed on rM servers, if there was a leak no insurer would help with that in terms of recovering losses. It is just not possible to use for business as potential for the damage huge. Now I am not sure why would I take any chances even with personal notes, not to mention loading any personal documents on it and who knows who looks at it when they land on the cloud unencrypted. It takes only one disgruntled employee.

It wouldn't be as nice as an e-ink device, but the Surface is pretty nice for doodling on PDFs.

User friendly encryption is being worked on: https://github.com/toltec-dev/toltec/pull/318

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