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Comment by jimmysong | Hacker News Reader

As one of the beta testers, let me just say that I really like this device. It's very different than a kindle, kobo or reMarkable in that the refresh rate really makes a big difference. When I show this device to people, I show them how quickly zooming in on a PDF is. It's way faster and more responsive than any e-ink screen and it's way less addicting than the typical laptop, phone or tablet.

I'm attempting to make this device my main driver over the next few months and while the ecosystem isn't exactly mature yet, most android apps just work out of the box and I've found myself doing a lot more reading, either through an e-reading app (Lithium), PDF reader or Instapaper. I have X, Primal, Telegram and many other apps installed, but I don't go to them nearly as much. The device really is a lot more human centered and it makes for a much more intentional device.

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I was playing at an outdoor concert recently - last year I suffered from the combination of paper sheet music + wind.. so this year I used an Android tablet in portrait mode where I could flicker to the next one relatively easily with a finger (no fancy bluetooth pedal control or anything). Me, wind: 1-0. This particular tablet was actually visible in full daylight when I turned the screen light to its maximum.

After this I've been thinking how nice a Kindle-style display would be (not to mention battery), the more sunlight the better, kind of. A Kindle is too small, and well.. I know there are others (that Remarkable someone mentioned), but..

What about this Daylight one? Overkill maybe?

Kobo makes an eight inch e-reader for $270. That's about two inches larger than even a fairly large e-ink reader. It has hardware page turn buttons, I think, but the screen can also be tapped.

Or the Boox Note 3c, which has a 10" screen (don't go for the color screen, the contrast ratio is much worse), also has a front light, $400: https://shop.boox.com/products/noteair3 with the added advantage of running Android 12, so you can install a sheetmusic specific app.

Or there's this $400 transflexive display android tablet, B&W only (not even grayscale) and no backlight:

https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/unboxing-the-hisense-q5...

Onyx Boox Air 3 10.3’ is great for sheet music! I'm using it and enjoy getting away from ton of papers.

Get non C version with better contrast ratio and longer battery life.

> way less addicting than the typical laptop

Xorg is still able to do 1bpp. Windows has a grayscale filter. Don't know if you can still get to render dithered B&W.

a lot of applications (especially GTK3/4) will go buggy if they open at all on 1bpp display. Generally anything that does not report TrueColor RGBA8888 or RGBx8888 as first visual will trip them up.

What's the experience like with using it as a Terminal coding app? I'm super interested in using this to SSH into a home machine and programming from this.

How viable is that?

Though even if the device works excellently for that, i'm not sure it would _feel_ good due to it not being a laptop. My wife's ipad pro for example is not nearly as comfy as my mac pro, due to the properly balanced weight of it all.

Still, super tempting to try this.. i've wanted this for so long.

I've got JuiceSSH set up and use the device as a thin client. Coding is a little different since you don't get the terminal colors that you normally use for syntax highlighting. Still, it's functional, and I can do it, mostly using a bluetooth keyboard to do so.

Do you prop it up on your lap at all? If so how's it work for you? What do you use to achieve this?

Why did you say "less addicting"?

One common psychological trick addictive social media uses is high saturation color, as it causes our monkey brains to enjoy it slightly more. This is monotone and I’d assume that’s a relevant feature point

I often use ctrl-win-c shortcut for black and white mode in Windows, it's great to rest the eyes.

That's awesome, I had no idea that was a feature, using it now!

On Ubuntu it is not quite like that.

https://github.com/ionutbortis/gnome-bedtime-mode

Yeah, you have to do some installing to get the feature you never knew you needed.

Ah man about a year ago my windows went black and white and I didn’t know why and couldn’t figure it out, I must have pressed this. Had to reboot to fix it.

Most devices let you enable a monochrome filter and optionally invert the image somewhere in the accessibility settings, for what it's worth. You don't need a special device just for that.

> Most devices let you [...]

But nobody does that, because we love addictions.

This.

The screen should slowly desaturate color and eventually switch to b/w when the phone detects mindless scrolling automatically. ;)

Lool like each post you scroll desaturates the screen by 2%

I do it!

On Pixel phone, there is a Digital Wellbeing setting that can turn your screen into Greyscale mode during bedtime. It is said to discourage the use of social networks and helps you sleep better.

I'd recommend giving grayscale mode a try not only during bedtime, but all the time! My Pixel has been set this way for a couple months and it has decreased my mindless phone usage by simply making the phone more boring overall, without any new device or major sacrifices.

I became concerned that I'd turn it off when I temporarily needed color and forget to turn it back on, so instead I used Tasker to listen for L-R shake action and make that temporarily disable grayscale mode for 20 secs (in case I specifically decide I want to look at color in a photo or disambiguate something from grayscale). Works decently well, I can explain the Tasker steps if anyone else is interested.

I'd love to do the same thing, so if you have time to explain the Tasker steps I'd definitely make use of them :-)

I put the steps in a sibling comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40465686

Cheers

> used Tasker to listen for L-R shake action and make that temporarily disable grayscale mode for 20 secs

Wonderful

I am using gray scale on personal phone permanently, but avoided that on work phone as I might need to discern color in some work documents or screenshares.

What you describe seems like a perfect solution but does it work on all Android phones?

If you could throw some more light on the steps ... appreciate that!

I do think it will work on non-Pixel phones, but you do need to enable Secure Settings for Tasker, which probably can be locked down by Mobile Device Management or other admin control methods that a work device could have.

Listed my config in a sibling comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40465686

On my Pixel using GrapheneOS, I can go into Accessibility settings and enable gesture support for toggling Grayscale support, without the need for Tasker. I'm unsure how other Android ROMs stack up but I imagine stock Pixel has this setting.

It's a great feature, just swipe up from the bottom with two fingers whenever I need color.

> I'm unsure how other Android ROMs stack up

I'm _almost_ certain that comes with any Android ROM from 9.0 up as a standard accessibility setting. All my Samsung devices have had it for a few years.

Huh, didn't realize that was there! Works on stock Pixel, you're right, definitely useful feature to have

Thanks for the recommendation! I don't have a big mindless phone usage problem but I'll give it a shot anyway and see what happens.

This would eliminate the failure mode of my grayscale attempts. I would appreciate knowing the configuration steps.

No root needed, but you first need to grant Tasker the WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS permission, see: https://tasker.joaoapps.com/userguide/en/help/ah_secure_sett...

I granted it via ADB using the command line listed, but the other method with app might work too. If you don't have ADB, It's very easy to install by just downloading the right sdk for your OS, and you run the included ADB binary via command line while your phone is plugged in via USB, and USB debugging is enabled (which is an android developer setting).

Set your Android accessibility color correction type to grayscale if you don't have that already. The below Tasker action simply toggles it off and on.

Tasker config is-

Configure a Shake Left-Right event trigger (I recommend sensitivity 'Very Low' and Duration 'Long' to avoid accidental triggers)

Configure a 3-step action following the trigger:

1. Custom Setting

    Type: Secure
    Name: accessibility_display_daltonizer_enabled
    Value: 0

2. Wait action (I set to 20 sec)

3. Custom Setting

    Type: Secure
    Name: accessibility_display_daltonizer_enabled
    Value: 1

Set the Collision Handling on the task gear/settings to "Abort Existing Task", so that you can extend the color lifetime by shaking the phone again.

Of course, once you have this action in Tasker, you can use any trigger to turn it on or off, like opening a particular app, turning it on when you are only at home or away, etc.

Works pretty well for me, there is one slight issue where some type of android display layout refresh occurs when the color toggle happens, which sometimes refreshes the interface you are on in a slightly annoying way. I tolerate it, it's ok, maybe setting a longer wait period would make this occur less often.

If these steps don't work / too confusing, try using the really great accessibility gesture support setting mentioned in a reply, instead or in addition: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40462366

FYI John Dalton was a scientist who pioneered color blindness research among many other fields, so his name is everywhere in color correction settings apparently.

Amazing, thank you!

I've been doing the same for a few months, as I wanted to get an eink phone but wasn't sure how annoying it'd be. Although there's some limitations, like charts or video calls, I got used to it quite quickly in the end. Really recommended, you can just enable it in display settings (at least on my Samsung).

That's Android thing not just Pixel thing

That, and at night a LED device is literally putting a flashlight in direct line of sight, which does not help in making one sleepy (even with night mode stuff cutting some blue light it's still a flashlight, albeit tinted) so more potential for extended late hours doomscrolling. OLED is kind of better than LCD but still.

Comparatively eink relies on ambient lighting (backlighted ones have it backwards in that regard)

For starters, it doesn't come with the whole "light show", it's black and white.

"Minimalist" types often suggest turning your smartphone into B&W mode (usually an accessibility setting), precisely to reduce temptation to watch videos, social media, and such.

Elsewhere in this thread I see comments that mention "low distraction", "calmer", and something about iPhones frying kids' brains.

This all looks like snobbery to me, based on the association of monochrome paper with novels and writing and intellectual pursuits. In the 18th century we were scared that novels would fry the brains of young women, but times have changed and now it's iPhones that are sinful, and monochrome displays are virtuous, apparently.

I think I might be going off the idea of e-ink, as a result. But my particular interest is nostalgia for the illustrators of the 80s. I would like to see a full-color portrait format 16-inch e-ink display or tablet. Preferably as addicting as possible, because outside of actual pharmacology that word just means "fun".

By way of an experiment - set your phone screen to black & white (in iOS, settings -> accessibility -> display -> color filters -> [on] -> grayscale, on android, settings -> accessibility -> color & motion -> color correction -> [on] -> grayscale), and leave it that way for a day of normal use. Then, turn it off, and note how you react to the change.

Folks aren't calling it calmer because they're trying to look erudite, they're calling it calmer because modern applications put a lot of work into capturing your attention, and color is one of the tools they use (quite aggressively) to do so. Disabling color on the device isn't some way to look snobbish, it's a way to reduce the number of ways the device and applications are attempting to grab your attention.

Just ignore them? Don't use manipulative apps?

I suppose for some people this is an issue and they genuinely want a physical solution in order to stop habitually doing things they don't like, like Odysseus wanting to be tied to the mast to avoid the Sirens.

I can predict how my behavior would change if I tried this: I'd be pissed off because you'd ruined my game of Heroes III (1999). And Brogue would be slightly less pretty. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead would be much the same, and news sites and coding wouldn't change much. So my reaction would just be "this is gloomy", it's not like I need freeing from a hypnotic spell.

Again, I'd encourage you to actually give it a try. It's quick, and I think it would give you some insights into the things people are actually saying and why they're saying them.

>it's not like I need freeing from a hypnotic spell.

Well, that's exactly what many social media addicts do need.

Hmmm..the way you're arguing against makes it seem like you're being manipulated. Maybe you have an issue too?

If you don't want to use it then don't. I'm not even sure why you're in here arguing against it.

> People often believe that "other people can be persuaded, but not me. I’m the smart one. It’s only those other people over there that can’t control their thought."

https://www.wired.com/story/our-minds-have-been-hijacked-by-...

> I'm not even sure why you're in here arguing against it.

To recap, somebody mentioned addiction, to colors presumably, as a reason to prefer a monochrome display, and I thought that was ridiculous. So I said so. People didn't react well.

I've read a little part of the article. I don't much like the giant tech and social media companies. However, when I come to phrases like this:

> hijacking of the human mind

> hooking kids to send messages back and forth

I can't bear to continue wading through it. This is just moral panic. A marginal effect of keeping an audience's attention - sometimes - for a little while - is exaggerated by people who (again, like me) dislike the big tech companies, and described like an actual addictive drug. This seems dishonest. But perhaps they actually believe it. No doubt there have been studies that tell them what they want to hear.

But yeah, moral panic, or maybe virtue signalling, or tribalism - something like that is going on here, and realism suffers, and I don't like that, so I said something. I don't know if anybody appreciated me saying something, because maybe it was off-message, but I'm saying it anyway. I'm not claiming to be super-smart, I'm generally a foolish person, and I'm getting a lot of veiled insults here, I suppose because I pissed on your oddly monochrome strawberries.

Yawn. You started off calling the use of greyscale "snobbery". Just because people use something you don't, doesn't make them snobs. Maybe if you were more open and honestly questioning, you wouldn't perceive "veiled insults", which I haven't noticed so far. Nice projection, buddy.

But, like I said, if you don't think it works, fine don't do. But when people explain why it works for them, don't diss them for using something that works.

Don't act like you're some perfect moral compass of everybody's experience. You started this thread with insults. And every comment you've made since includes them. Maybe grow up and accept that people like something _you've never tried before_.

Yes, just to reiterate: it's snobbery, I'm pretty sure. Do you think that's an insult? I could sugar-coat it: probably the snobs involved are lovely people, and I can't control their preferences. And I shouldn't have started mentioning insults, that kind of meta-comment is always a distraction. I see what I took to be a direct parody of me with "I'm the only smart one" was actually a quote from the tiresome hooks-in-your-brain article.

>To recap, somebody mentioned addiction, to colors presumably, as a reason to prefer a monochrome display, and I thought that was ridiculous.

Somebody mentioned addiction, not "to colors" but to regular content doomscrolling, smartphone overuse, and so on. And the idea was that a monochrome display of videos, social media apps, webpages, TikToks etc makes them less enticing (and thus helps with reducing their use).

This is not only far from ridiculous (then again, some find the idea of a round earth ridiculous too), but something that has both tried with reported success by tons of people, and also the subject of study:

True colors: Grayscale setting reduces screen time in college students

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03623319.2020.1...

Color me calm: Grayscale phone setting reduces anxiety and problematic smartphone use

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-02020-y

Suffering from problematic smartphone use? Why not use grayscale setting as an intervention! – An experimental study

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245195882...

Billions spent in making content more addictive - including the use of color to drive emotion and provide dopamine hits.

>But yeah, moral panic, or maybe virtue signalling, or tribalism

Or <insert other random middlebrow dismissal term>

I had no idea this was possible, wow, very cool! I turned this on and I’m going to try it out. I kind of love the idea of a grayscale screen and I had no clue I owned one already!

I created a shortcut to toggle grayscale for iOS. Try it out!

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/371d5ced520d40e984d626ae304...

Since IIRC Shortcuts is actually pretty clunky, it's probably easier to use Control Center to toggle grayscale, which is possible after you add the control named "accessibility shortcuts" using {settings > control center}. That is what I use.

(And on Gnome, I use and recommend the following: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4012/gnome-bedtime/)

On iOS, you can also set up the “accessibility shortcut” (settings -> accessibility -> accessibility shortcut), which lets you triple-click the home button to enable it.

You can also have the back tap (double or triple) run the accessibility shortcut.

I use triple-back for "grayscale" (because I found myself double-tapping the back accidentally all the time.)

Thank you so much for this! Not having to dig through the settings to toggle B&W makes it much more workable.

You can also create automations to turn grayscale back off for apps that need it. I have ones for maps, photos and whatsapp (since people send a lot of pics in my group). They run when the app is activated/deactivated.

>This all looks like snobbery to me, based on the association of monochrome paper with novels and writing and intellectual pursuits

You say it like it is a bad thing. It is associated with novels and writing and intellectual pursuits, because it's less suitable for video/graphics focused social media, videos, and games.

>but times have changed and now it's iPhones that are sinful, and monochrome displays are virtuous, apparently.

False analogy aside, we already know TVs and then smartphones are addictive in a way older media never were. We already have studies about that, and we already have statistics about the dire consequences on teenagers and adults in many metrics.

So, your argument is a little like saying:

"In the 1940s and 50s we were scared that weed would fry the brains of young kids, but times have changed and now it's meth that is dangerous, and weed is ok, apparently".

Well, meth is hella dangerous, and that's a fact, even if they overblew the danger of weed in the 1940s.

I agree with you that people tend to grossly overestimate the bad effects of a new technology. For example my kids cringe if they catch me or my wife looking at YouTube shorts. My son - that has complete, unlimited access to his gaming PC, installed a Firefox extension to block YouTube shorts. I think the problem will self-regulate at some point.

However I made my iPhone black and white as suggested by others and I love it, I believe I'll keep it like this for a few days because it looks so cool. We will see if it leads to less usage.

>For example my kids cringe if they catch me or my wife looking at YouTube shorts. My son - that has complete, unlimited access to his gaming PC, installed a Firefox extension to block YouTube shorts. I think the problem will self-regulate at some point.

Kids might cringe because it's "out of fashion", then go themselves watch even worse doomscrolling bait than YouTube shorts, like TikTok or whatever's next.

>I think I might be going off the idea of e-ink, as a result.

The main benefit of e-ink isn't what you mentioned in the post, imo, it is that it is great to read with in everything from direct sunlight to darkness, which is less straining for the eyes.

Having something mainly for reading is also a nice thing for us that easily get distracted away from that.

Yeah, it's still enticing me in that respect. Or even something beyond the practical: there would be a great aesthetic to it, a new kind of artistic experience, if a digital work was in full color and presented itself with reflected light, just like a book or a painting, where the white point was exactly the ambient white of a sheet of paper.

For one, images and videos are a lot less visually stimulating. Everything is in black and white, and though those all render fine, they're just not as interesting as they would be in full color. So instead of doomscrolling Youtube shorts, I find myself doing more reading, particularly of books since the epub reading experience is fantastic and causes much less eye strain.

It's an American term that means 'less addictive.'

It says you can install any Android app. So I can just like browse websites in Firefox? How is that experience?

I'm typing on a Daylight computer on Firefox right now with the brightness turned to 0 so it's only reflecting light. It's very similar to the tablet experience for Hacker News, just with less color, so it's not as straining to the eye.

Awesome! I want!

What is your experience with writing code on the device? Does the grayscale impact syntax highlighting?

Yea, grayscale definitely impacts the syntax highlighting, as many of the colors end up pretty dark.

It works, though, and I have coded a bit on it. My only criticism would be that the copy-pasting is a little clunky, at least with JuiceSSH. Maybe other apps would be better at it.

Is there a good app for note taking like on remarkable?

There's a stylus that comes with it and lots of note-taking apps. I particularly like the ability to take notes directly in PDFs, which for technical papers can be very helpful.

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