Author Clock: a novel way to tell time | Hacker News Reader

Author Clock: a novel way to tell time

authorclock.com

206 pointsiamben131 comments

This is a very nice packaging of a kindle hack I've seen several years ago [1]. Previous discussion: [2] You can point your kindle web browser at this website: [3]

[1] https://techni.gallery/literaire-klok-trekt-internationaal-a... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17688324 [3] https://literature-clock.jenevoldsen.com/

I made https://literature-clock.jenevoldsen.com/

It is based upon a Kindle project [1] and initially I just used the quote library from that project (which is based on a crowd-sourced collection of quotes by The Guardian [2]).

Later, a lot of quotes have been added by kind strangers through GitHub issues and pull-requests [3].

[1] https://www.instructables.com/Literary-Clock-Made-From-E-rea...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/jun/26/lite...

[3] https://github.com/JohannesNE/literature-clock/blob/master/l...

The quote list is pretty cool, I wonder if there are other languages available?

There is this fork which has a few different languages and some other cool features. I believe the non-english quotes are mostly machine translations of the quotes in my repo. https://literatureclock.netlify.app/?locale=pt-BR

"Author Clock has built-in Wi-Fi, so all software and content updates happen automatically." i.e. At some point in the future, an advertisement will be the first thing you see when you open your eyes in the morning.

Indeed, what software would you want to update?

The quote db? I assume they're cached and not calling an API every minute.

That's what they mean. You could download new quotes every once in a while.

Right, that's what it does. You can do it manually too if you don't want to connect it to WiFi.

It might be nice to update the quote database, or the timezone database, and wifi is handy for setting the time.

I built a wifi alarm clock with OTA updates [1], which is handy when I find yet another bug in processing iCal or assumption I've made about what data will actually be in the iCal files. :/ Although, at this point, I've figured out what kinds of things don't actually work and avoid them instead of fixing the bugs, because there's two of these in the wild and I think the person I sent the second one to gave up on it.

[1] https://github.com/russor/ClockThing

Yeah - timezones, especially daylight savings changeovers which sometimes get changed to the most trivial of reasons, is the one big thing that'd get annoying if this thing couldn't connect to the outside world.

Makes sense.

I too had trouble with iCal. I don't see why I did - the format is simple enough. But making and sending iCal files to people with iPhones and having them parse it is harder than it should have been.

The format is both simple and not.

Recurrence relations are tricky.

Timezones are tricky and many implementations don't include them or don't read the included zones.

DST changes are really tricky, and some times that exist can't be represented as local times.

She turned back—-for a brief, brief moment—-and it felt like all the mad activity of the world stood paralyzed, save for a soft flutter from a single wisp of her hair.

“Target closes in 45 minutes and they still have that great sale on TVs.”

Ouch. But still better than verification cans.

my mom had an alexa gizmo beside her chair, that was cycling through 4 kinds of ads followed by a random pic of one of her grandkids. Literally 80% ads. And she placed it beside the chair where she spends so many hours.

I said "but didn't we get you a digital picture frame?" and she said "this one can play music. sometimes I use that feature."

Really felt dystopian. She didn't mind at all. Although she appreciated when I spent 15 minutes digging in the settings and turning off every category of slideshow _except_ for pictures from her albums.

It won’t be along until the ads come back. I did the same thing. The ads always come back. Ended up returning it.

FWIW, we’ve had a good experience with the Aura picture frames. No nonsense. Good UX.

What, you can predict the future now?

I come to Hacker News for interesting, curiosity-satisfying content. Not meaningless drivel like this that belongs on Reddit.

It is slowly creeping in to almost every HN discussion, Low quality negative comments.

If you point this out , you may be thought of naive or out of touch.

They add 0 quality to the discussion but are easy to upvote.

I aggressively flag these comments, and I encourage you to do the same. We may be able to reverse the trend, at least temporarily.

The post you flagged makes a comment about WIFI on alarm clocks, and the potential for misuse. Isn't it an opportunity to talk about the pros and cons of mandatory WIFI on alarm clocks?

Looking at the Author clock, they do have an option to update the device manually, which is nice, so it can operate without needing WIFI.

It's a valid concern. My old smart alarm clock would automatically activate bluetooth every time the alarm sounded, and try to connect to the companion app on my phone. It did this even if I didn't use the app, no way to stop it. I suspect the makers of the clock desperately wanted telemetry, and what better way than to ping their app every morning.

That post makes a speculation about ads in the most negative and sarcastic way possible while adding zero information content. Talking about the concerns of WiFi-enabled devices is appropriate for HN, but that's not what that comment was about - it was low-grade, Reddit-quality fluff meant to generate up votes and not curiosity, and is therefore thoroughly inappropriate for HN.

History (of smart auto-updating devices) has a tendency to repeat itself.

I would be extremely disappointed if a $349 epaper niche gadget with more or less no maintenance costs would resort to serving ads.

So yeah...that will probably happen.

I think this is too cynical. Not every business owner is out to get you. Not every company suffers under never-ending, always-increasing shareholder pressure.

Unless you know something about the people behind this that you’re not sharing, your comment is just informationless nihilism.

It's only slightly too cynical.

I think the right level of cynicism would be:

They will be bought by a shareholder-beholden-competitor and shut down.

Or, this is their v1 product. Their v2 product will aggressively market a subscription service at you.

> Not every business owner is out to get you. Not every company suffers under never-ending, always-increasing shareholder pressure.

At any moment no but over time statistically likelihood is high.

Not every current owner of a business is out to get you.

What will come first ? Ads, or the company discontinuing the service and bricking all equipment they sold, inviting user to restore the device to factory default and disposing of it safely (aka : throw it in a landfill)

I kickstarted this long ago and when I got it a few months ago gave it to my wife as a gift, who is an author. She immediately rejected it because she found the eink transitions where it flashes a dark color briefly very distracting.

That’s an .. interesting reaction to an unique and thoughtful gift.

I made a small digital clock program that I put on a small display.

It sat next to me while I worked, and I found the transitions from one time to another (like 1:01 -> 1:02) to be distracting. So I changed the transition to be a gradual fade and it helped.

Now that I think about it, I remember getting distracted years ago at a home with a grandfather clock. A quiet room except for the ticking. Definitely accentuated boredom (which with smartphones, we never have anymore)

Yeah, at work we switched phone systems a few years back to some Avaya phones. The new ones had a small screen on them. After 15-30 minute idle, they'd display the a logo that would jump to a new location every minute or two. It was a constant distraction in the corner of my vision. Ended up moving the phone to where I couldn't see it. About 10% of the workforce found it distracting.

It's a potentially insulting gift for a writer. Writing lies between job and hobby, depending on success.

This product, from the ad copy, is targeted at fans of writing. People sitting on the bleachers, not the ones on the court.

So from the right angle, the gift reads as saying "I don't take you seriously - you're a wannabe".

She is not alone. Even antirez spends an incredible amount of time these days just to make the transition smoother on his displays: https://x.com/antirez/status/1768741226159730750

I think it'd be better as a fully mechanical device. 1,400 printed pages that flip like a book minute by minute.

> We plant a tree for every Author Clock sold....

> Shop: $199.00 USD

Funny how products that claim a cause on the side are always 5 times the price they should be.

Funny how products made as if there's no such thing as an externality or grotesque wealth inequality are always so much cheaper than they really ought to be.

ps. i am not suggesting that the author clock is externality-free. it probably is not. nor am i forgetting that it will be purchased mostly by people on the upside of that inequality.

It's buyer manipulation. "Here's this ridiculously priced item; but it's okay you can feel good about throwing this much money away, because we're planting a tree."

Instead of segmenting/targeting the high-income market by product quality, they target by emotional manipulation claiming good causes. (i.e. higher-priced product that does not have to be higher quality).

You're suggesting that it's somehow made in a way that's more conscious of externalities or wealth inequalities than cheaper competitors, a suggestion that I think is unwarranted.

Absolutely not.

I was contrasting "stuff associated with causes costs more than it should" with "a lot of stuff costs less than it should because the cost ignores externalities"

Do you all not think that companies should charge prices that maximize their profits (in the long run)? Typically, companies are trying to predict the price elasticity curve that yields the most profit via # units sold * price. That said, if you overcharge, that could be bad for the brand, turning off users in the short and longer term.

Another product like this for me is the Manta Sleep Pro Mask. It’s $80, but the best I’ve found, so I buy it anyways. I’m mildly annoyed and also feel like they’re taking advantage of me on price and will switch as soon as there’s an alternative at least as good for less…but when that happens, they’ll probably lower their price, which is what typically happens as sectors and products mature due to competition.

Profit maximization curves are interesting, and I think explain things like how convenience stores exist with much lower volume compared to grocery stores. Eg XYZ food costs 90 cents and the grocery store sells it for $1, yielding profit of 10% whereas a convenience store sells it for $1.50, just a 50% increase in price for the consumer (for the convenience), but the profit is 6x that for the grocery store, so they only need to sell approx 1/6 to make the same profit.

In the case of the author clock. If COGS is $50, profit is $150ish. If they sold for $100, they’d have to sell 3x as many to make the same profit. Given that it’s a niche product for readers (smaller population and typically more educated and wealthier), I think they care less about the price. Doesn’t seem that unreasonable to me.

It’s interesting; we’ve lived within capitalism so long, it sounds reasonable for you to (archly) ask “do you not think all companies… should maximise their profits?” - as it that’s a given, and anyone even treading around questioning this fundamental is by default wrong, or forgetful, or crazy. It’s almost as if had moved from being a choice, to an immutable natural law.

But I’m coming to the conclusion —more powerfully in the recent few years— that not only is this an issue that should be debated, but the pursuit of profit above all else is responsible to a greater or lesser degree for many of the ills that we see and suffer in our societies. And from my European perspective, I believe that it is responsible for America (its culture, way of life, the ‘American way’) fracturing and falling apart.

We just had dinner in our favourite Vietnamese restaurant. It’s closing tomorrow. The rent got too high and the lady who runs it wasn’t taking a wage. It was busy every day. It’s a favourite lunch spot, their bahn mi is the best in town.

So they’ll close, and that’s another empty shop front. God knows if anyone will rent it, ever again. There are plenty more empty shops to choose from.

This is in the centre of Canberra. The capital of Australia.

And why? Because whomever owns the shop owns it as an ‘investment’. So the lovely lady who runs (ran) it needs to not only run a profitable restaurant — pay staff, suppliers, taxes, insurance, take a wage — but she also has to make a profit for the guy who owns the shop.

Because his ‘business’ is owning a shop. So he (I’m sorry, I’m just assuming it’s a dude) needs to turn a profit. For owning a building.

So she’ll close.

---

So restaurants are fucked. They’re all closing. At what point do we think, restaurants are the fabric of society. Cities need restaurants. It’s what makes a city a city. So when do we realise that imposing a condition on a restaurant that not only must they make a profit, but they must make a profit for the owner of the building, who does fucking nothing, is ridiculous?

Anyway. I know this is a rant. I just had dinner at a popular restaurant with amazing food with a wonderful owner that’s closing tomorrow so that the landlord can own an empty space. I’m bitter and sad.

Thanks for listening.

Some restaurants should just be food trucks.

This kind of thing permeates through our society. We can all see it, we all know it's absurd, but we can't change it. That requires the people with the money and power on board. I don't need to tell you how they got that money and power. It's not only the buildings that have owners

We are on the same page here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39773155

I wonder if more and more people come to the same conclusion, but are not able to voice their opinions loud enough. I also wonder what needs to be done so that the "maximize profit" mantra gets away.

Don't get me wrong, unfettered capitalism has plenty of problems - eg tragedy of the commons, regulatory capture, effective monopolies, etc. That said, pricing things to maximize profits (given societal and economic constraints) still seems like the best route, especially in this case. How else could / should they price it?

I think one of the jobs of gov't is good regulation, which is hard. And once the rules have been set, maximizing profits within that box of regulation seems good, yea? Capitalism is reasonably good at allocating resources in many cases.

I think it was in the 80's, I got a little pine tree from McDonald's. Must have been a promotion or part of a Happy Meal, I honestly don't recall. I planted it in my parents yard, where it is still growing today (and its huge).

We had a live Christmas tree another year that is still growing in the yard too.

Save your money from over-priced clocks, plant a tree yourself and enjoy it for a long time.

They don't plant a tree for every Author Clock sold.

They plant a seedling.

This means (a) it may not survive to be a tree, but that's not the mental image they want you to have and (b) it might be in a tree farm, which means it's not a ecosystem-tree but a product to be harvested and processed (with fossile fuels). So, you know, it's more likely about giving you the warm-fuzzies than any particular concern for the environment.

That said, kudos to them for making the device easy to disassemble and repair. That in itself is a laudable thing.

This device does not need a WiFi for any reason. A microsd with the entire database of messages (encrypted) would have made the device cheaper, safer, consuming less energy (not an expert, but I guess that those solar cells you see in calculators could power 1 e-ink transition/minute forever), still upgradeable and a better product overall.

But this wouldn't be a SaaS

Doesn't it though?

> An ever-expanding library > What a vision that is. We are continuously adding new quotes to Author Clock. Once it's connected to your WiFi they'll simply begin to... apparate.

NTP time sync is nice, but arguably that could be solved using a WWVB receiver for a much smaller bill of materials.

Agreed, but I don't think there'd be any reason to encrypt the database

I wonder if someone has managed to extract the quote database yet for DIYers.

The device's firmware is easily available via their website - the Mac Installer contains a pair of 9MB binaries (in addition to 200MB of Electron), which seems to just be an unencrypted ESP32 blob. Running `strings` on the blob gives plenty of human-readable stuff (including entire html pages), but nothing resembling quotes. Maybe they are compressed in some way?

Assuming 140 characters per quote, the entire 13000-entry quote database should fit uncompressed in about 2MB, so who knows.

Here is the quotes database of one of the older projects this is (potentially) based on:

https://github.com/JohannesNE/literature-clock/blob/master/l...

13,000 seems surprisingly small, all things considered. Seems like the sort of task where you could automate it with a small LLM instance and process millions of books easily. Then extract all of the key strings and have a set of tens of thousands of ways to describe time which can be searched for as fixed-string matches, and might be of interest in its own right. (How do mentioned times change over history? Do they get more precise? Do books take place at wider ranges of the day?)

There's only 1440 minutes in a day. So there's almost 10 quotes for each possible minute to display (assuming an even enough distribution).

Even if you check the time a lot - I guess I probably check the time 3 or 4 times every day between 9:20 and my regular 9:30am meeting - it'll probably be ~15 days before I hot a duplicate quote. That feels like "enough" to me?

I'm not sure your math there on the birthday paradox is right (you only check the time during a single 10 minute range every day, no matter what? and you wouldn't look at it out of curiosity or for the pleasure of seeing a new quote?), but 15 days to the first collision doesn't seem like that long to me, for a piece of furniture that one would expect to be good for years to come and which costs $200+.

And note that the number will go up rapidly from whenever the first expected collision is: only 10 quotes per minute means you're going to see a lot of duplicates after a few hundred days.

What about copyright and/or intellectual property of these quotes? Do quotes fall under fair usage law?

At a glance most of the quotes seem to be pre-1920's, so those should all be in the public domain.

One would have to make a full audit to be entirely sure that no more recent literature has crept in.

For this particular product, it doesn't matter what the publication year of the book is. 1) The quotes are short and 2) the use of them is transformative, so this falls squarely within the doctrine of Fair Use.

That said, I'm sure if an author or publisher of a book that's still within copyright contacted Author Clock and asked them to remove their quotes from the database they probably would, because it just wouldn't be a thing worth fighting about.

Reproducing a quotation from a book is likely always fair use in the US. A database of quotes is also probably not copyrightable in the first place though of course the software is.

Nice. Saw the price and that threw me right into SharkTank pitches, “cost me $39.99 and I sell it for $199”.

Yeah, price is quite big

Really?

A Kindle is ~$80, and the Paperwhite without ads is $180.

A cheap Android tablet is ~$70 without an eInk display.

Just a 4 or 5 inch eInk display would cost me ~$70 or so.

This is a finished product, in a gorgeous timber case (if you like that sort of thing) with a beautiful knurled knob. And a bunch of custom written software and a collected database of quotes.

I reckon it'd sell - at least to the right crowd - at 4-5 times that price.

Those of use who are capable of making their own probably wouldn't buy one anyway - but as a high end gift or executive toy, I could see them selling these at $700 or $800.

(And yeah, I'm considering grabbing a 2nd hand Kindle and firing up my CNC mill or laser cutter to make a case for it, but people like me are very much in the 0.1% or 0.01% of all the people who'd like to own one of these.)

To be honest, the wood feels plasticky and the knob feels unfinished. There's also a significant gap between the wood and the bezel. The screen is too small, and battery life is poor. It looks like a premium product, but it doesn't feel like one. I have one, and if it broke I wouldn't pay more than $20 for a replacement.

That's sad. I haven't seen on in real life, just the pics on their website (although I did find out yesterday a friend bought one in their original kickstarter, so I'll be able to hold one soon.)

I do have a bid in on a spare Kindle and plan to make my own though. I really like the _idea_ of it.

I have no doubt it is also pretty expensive to make. Eink screens of that size have certain price. Other parts likely are not cheapest possible options either. Volume is likely also pretty low, so tooling etc. isn't shared over that many units.

Not that it isn't expensive for what it does. Just that it probably isn't cheap to make.

And this is not far off most hardware.

Retail price will be about 5x BoM cost, or about 3x overall cost of goods, though of course it can vary wildly depending on volume and market.

HP famously aimed for a markup of pi (3.14x cost, ie gross margin > 60%), or e (2.71..) if they wanted to be especially competitive.

> If the "Captive" setup page is not working, try going to "192.168.4.1" instead of the captive website.

I’m at a loss as to why they’d hard-code an IP address instead of pulling a DHCP lease. I suppose they chose that subnet with the thought that it isn’t in use for most people, but it would in fact collide with a VLAN on my network.

I reckon it's a combination of simplifying it and assuming that anyone capable of setting up a VLAN knows enough to sort this one out. That might not hold for more exotic networks (businesses, schools...)

Neat, but the weird line breaks would drive me crazy.

https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/647e0971bc9b144cf71693a5/...

I wish they would add hyphens and justify the text.

The website tries to tell you every time someone buys one, like some kind of creepy attempt at peer pressure.

Fwiw, this is a fairly common way to increase sales, as a kind of social proof, and to say “wow stock sure is dropping fast!” I understand it can be annoying though, as a user I’m not fond of it either.

It is gross in general, but it's especially offputting on a product that is otherwise sorta likable and cute. Like it's one thing if a hotel website does it because you expect them to be scummy anyway (not ideal but that's how it is). But this site could have easily not seemed scummy just by removing the greedy stuff.

It completely turns me off from anywhere that sells it. I'm an annoying Ocarina fan, and the two largest Ocarina manufacturers in North America do this. I haven't bought one from either of them in years because of it.

A well-known "dark pattern" used to suggest impending scarcity. Airlines and fast-fashion outlets are major offenders.

They're annoying clutter, but I don't think it falls under "dark pattern" because you can ignore it, there's no requirement to interact with it. Dark patterns guide you down a path you don't need to go.

This particular one on the Author Clock site is from monto.io > social-proof.

In DARE they called that the "bandwagon approach". Everyone's doing it!

Makes me think of a quote my high school friend loved so much: "Eat shit - millions of flies can't possibly be wrong!".

Here in Chile almost every single site does that. Wanted to tap on a link in the lower part of the screen? Haha no dice, it just got covered with a popup that says Miguel from Chillán bought a video card five hours ago. Absolutely infuriating.

One also always wonder are those sales real or fake...

The 1PM quote should be “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

only during april

13000 quotes over ~720 combinations isn't a bad spread.

I'll admit, it's cute. For someone well-read this is a pretty charming gift. Visually pleasant and nicely constructed.

I wish someone would sell an e-ink screen for lazy tinkerers.

It would be powered by USB C, have a small Linux system installed, and some easy way to display stuff on the screen. In a nice case.

There is the Inkplate (https://www.crowdsupply.com/soldered/inkplate-5), which has an ESP32 and so should be just as hackable as a Linux system.

Thanks for the link! I’ve been looking for something similar to hack on

A RasPi and an eInk hat seems to be exactly that? (Except for the "nice case bit, but there are RasPi eInk options that include cases too.)

https://thepihut.com/products/4-26-e-paper-display-hat-800x4...

LilyGo T5[0] has some different (smaller) sizes that seem quite good and cheap. They even have an option for battery and touch capabilities. And if eInk isn't required, they have some weirder types of devices with screens for tinkerers, like glasses and watches. Not Linux but ESP32, but I think in that form factor and performance it's preferable. Haven't tried them myself though, but they seem quite popular, my cursor has been hovering over the buy buttons for months. They usually don't come with case but there's a ton of 3d printable options and also some ready ones on Aliexpress.

[0] https://www.lilygo.cc/products/t5-4-7-inch-e-paper-v2-3

Should have put a “C.” in the middle of the name. Would have been an instant buy.

Oh very very well done.

Beautiful. I need a device like this, but with the famous memento mori calendar (https://memento-mori-calendar.netlify.app/), maybe with a bigger screen.

But the aesthetic and the e-ink screen is really nice.

Although, $200 for a clock is probably more than what I would spend. I understand e-ink are not cheap unfortunatly.

nice! this reminds me of an art piece I saw once, which used segments of movies to show the time: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/christian-marcl...

Funded this on Kickstarter to get one for my wife (who has an MA in English).

It's nice, but interferes with her BlueTooth mouse and keyboard, so rather than the envisioned usage at her desk it migrated to the living room.

The new mode of updating less often greatly reduces the need to charge.

I think your wife would like it!

> interferes with her BlueTooth mouse and keyboard

Wi-Fi radio firmware bug? Presumably this uses something like an ESP32.

Could be.

I'll keep an eye out for a firmware update which addresses this.

How often does it need to be charged?

I made something like that about fifteen years ago. It displayed "A little after two", "A quarter past three", and such. It wasn't an e-ink device; the display was vacuum-fluorescent. So it needed a power cable to a wall wart. I wanted to build one that would run for a year on a battery, like an ordinary clock, but e-ink displays were too costly back then.

The idea is from an old New Yorker cartoon, where someone is looking in the window of a clock store, and sees a long, narrow clock displaying "A little after three".

Today, of course, it has to be "cloud enabled".

From the specifications:

"Long-life battery: Author Clock lasts over a week between charges and comes with its own USB-C cable. Depending on your settings it can last for several months."

Every two to three weeks, in my experience

I wonder how easy it is to mod the firmware.

I have my own idea for an e-ink clockface, and something like this could save me some hardware prototyping (at a steep price!) Realistically I'm probably better off repurposing a kindle.

I like this but I'd rather make it myself than buy it. I wonder if there is a db one can get with the time quotes already compiled, it would be trivial to make one, although the fit and finish wouldn't be this nice.

I have 2 of these (their campaign manager payment service was confusing, and I accidentally bought a second one).

For me, it is very disappointing.

The screen is _very_ small and most people won't be able to read this from a shelf. The only place this is appropriate is next to you on your work desk, but personally, I prefer a desk free from decoration.

It takes a lot of effort to read a quote, and they're usually disappointing. The quotes are banal without context. It is a thrill when you recognize a quote from a book you know, but it rarely happens.

The wood is thin and plasticky, the brass knob is too sharp-edged and feels unfinished. There's a gap all around the bezel. It runs out of charge quickly, the interface is much slower than is comfortable.

I'm really sad to say, I can't think of anything good about it. I accidentally bought two, and decided not to cancel the second so I could offer it as a prize in my club. But now I won't inflict that disappointment on someone else, and it is still in the box.

That is brutal. Good review though, appreciate the honesty. I was half considering it as a gift, not so sure now.

Is there some sort of internet law which says that any device providing a service which could be an app will eventually be replaced by an app?

The app (or some equivalent) may already exist.

The whole point of this product is that you get a device whose hardware is tailor made (e-ink, no other distractions, long time between charges, etc.) for this purpose.

It's beautiful and fun!

$199 seems expensive, but when an EInk screen is around $80 and it has a carved oak case and brass fixtures and a nice finish, it seems worthy of the price.

But what about all of the great quotes that will occur from 12a to 6a when I'm asleep? I would have to set it to random wrong times on different days to read all of them!

Nice idea and nicely packaged.

I think they could open the firmware and make plenty of sales from tinkerers, and 'secondary tinkerers' ie people buying the clock to use a particular mod to show the tides, moon phase, stock quotes, or whatever.

This is a great idea, and I love that it includes four languages. The price is a bit more than I'm comfortable with but I may pick one up anyway, it does look nicely constructed.

I have always hunted for things like this. In my childhood, I collected calendars with quotes from great people. These clocks have intrigued me very much

A novel way indeed. I love how, while difficult to build without modern computing, the clock maintains the feel of low-key ambient tech.

I really like mine, but recommend the larger one - as a clock, you really need to be too close to the smaller one

If I'm halfway through reading a quote when it ticks over, can I backtrack?

you probably have to turn back the clock

Return tomorrow, same time, same place.

It claims to have more than 13000 quotes, which aren't going to be evenly spread. There's probably at least a month of midnights, but precious few 5:37s

Ooooof, that price tag though $200 or $350

I can build this myself, thanks for the idea!

Unfortunately, shipping is only available for the US. Not even Canada.

Sending vibes into Universe for the Russian language support...

I've seen one of these in person. It works as advertised.

Eink is bad for anything that changes often; the flicker of the screen refresh would be distracting.

There is a high chance that the quote would disappear before you finish reading.

Even ignoring these flaws the item seems significantly overpriced.

"High chance"?

How long does it take to read a line or four of text? Especially when the bit you're actually after is highlighted in bold?

(And to me, it looks underpriced, unless they've already got orders or investment for production runs in the 10,000s. I've done a hardware startup. Hardware is _hard_. Amazon manage to sell Kindles for ~$80 building them at Amazon volumes, and almost certainly subsidising them with expected future ebook sales. I'd be very very surprised if they'd even be breaking even on manufacturing if they're building those in runs of ~1000)

I meant that the full quote would disappear, not letting you finish reading, check the title or author. Unless you're really after the highlighted bit, but then a "regular" word clock [1][2] seems a better fit.

[1]: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1468882678/led-word-desk-clock-...

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/live/video/08cccf8215454ac799a2906811...

Cool, but $200, wow.

Cool but expensive af.

This is a phenomenal way to add a new distraction to every minute of my workday.

Awesome

Reply on news.ycombinator.com