588 karma · joined January 29, 2021
There's a lot to unpack in that sentence. Care to elaborate?
I disagree. It leads me to believe the underlying technology, electrophoretics isn't capable of achieving the volume scaling and update speeds that would make it achieve mass market pricing. Also the links you provided, do not substantiate the main thesis that's being asserted, ie "there are still patents at play that prevent competition from rising up". Further, the quotation you provided was from Behzadi who was a kickstarter guy who failed to deliver the product he promised and then proceeded to blame everyone else except himself.
There's a simple question you can ask to prove this to yourself. Ask everyone who is making this claim, which specific patent is blocking them and how exactly it blocks their idea. You'll instantly realize the people making these claims are not actual display engineers with knowledge of electrophoretics. Typcially, at best, they're bullshitters trying to sound clever or at worst like Behzadi, scammers who are trying to hide having overpromised and then misspent other people's money.
You think patents is why e-Ink is 'barely affordable'? Could you elaborate on what data you used to form that conclusion? A simple question, lets say price of a panel versus cost of the raw materials to make it? What margin do you think they're making? Do you know?
In my opinion, this reminds me of a course I took about ethics. Slave owners and slave traders would say their slaves were happy because they would sing while working and play games like jump rope and hopscotch. The owners would also say their slaves loved them, especially the ones that were 'house slaves' that tended to be young women. A good example of that would be Thomas Jefferson and the underage child, Sally Hemmings who had his children. More recently Qatari companies caught using indentured/slave labor to build the FIFA stadium made similar remarks about their 'workers'.
Thank you for sharing your experience. It convinces me that people can easily find ways to convince themselves everything is fine.
What was the name of the project management firm? I am curious how you determined that they seemed eager and happy to be there.
> I don't believe it should be compared to slavery since they chose to be there and they were paid well for their time
How much were they paid?
There's a lot to unpack in that sentence. Care to elaborate?
"From what I know". Could you clarify? This is first hand knowledge based on industry experience?
Could you please cite which specific patent you're referring to and what you mean by "e-ink tech" and "has been very feasible"? I'm assuming you actually have detailed knowledge of the display technology. Could you also please cite some evidence for the "notoriously slow to reach any licensing deals"? I'm assuming you actually have detailed knowledge of these licensing deals you're referring to. Hopefully your citation will be something other than a HN post by a throwaway account and blogs that cite that specific HN post and other HN posts that infinite loop circle back on those blog posts. Hopefully you'll give the rest of us first hand evidence and a reply based on actual experience that you personally have from years working in the electrophoretic display industry where you were held back under E-Ink's titanium and carbon coated jack boot and patent-waterboarded with high viscosity electrophoretic solvent? :-D That's the evidence the rest of us have been eagerly seeking to see and hear. I look forward with bated breath. Thank you.
I ask this, perhaps a little comically disingenously since I work in the display industry (not for E Ink) and I've asked the exact same question so many times on HN and have never gotten even a remotely satisfying answer which makes me think your extremely confident claim in your post, like the many before it are just Dunning Kruger in effect. But I'll still keep a sliver of a slightly open mind so that I can be convinced. Otherwise, I would recommend everyone treat your type of comment as equivalent to someone in the farming industry alleging that a good solid operating system has been very feasible but IBM is holding back the software industry with their patents and is notoriously slow to reach any licensing deals.
Not sure if you're being serious or being sarcastic. Any evidence for your claim?
The ancient Olympics (as the name itself implies!) is about religion. Olympus!
Violence, murder, corruption was part of it. Perhaps as much as it is today.
"Sotades at the ninety-ninth Festival was victorious in the long race and proclaimed a Cretan, as in fact he was. But at the next Festival he made himself an Ephesian, being bribed to do so by the Ephesian people. For this act he was banished by the Cretans."
"In 67, the Roman Emperor Nero competed in the chariot race at Olympia. He was thrown from his chariot and was thus unable to finish the race. Nevertheless, he was declared the winner on the basis that he would have won if he had finished the race."
Not from E Ink. .fw is from Freescale. Never seen any .ihex E Ink waveform data file. Could you point to an actual example since you seem to imply it is very common?
> They are not redistributable, and eInk DMCAs attempts at hosting them;
Could you show me an eInk DMCA?
Could you share some evidence for this and exactly what you mean by "waveform data"? Thank you.
My issue is that there's folks repeatedly saying confidently that there's a patent issue. Which I initially thought was real, and genuinely asked thinking they'd share terrible tales of misbehavior and patent evil committed by the accused company. Over time (more than a year) of this repetition trying to get answers, it seems pretty clear to me that it is not real and is just based on people who have no display industry experience or even a basic understanding of electrophoretic materials just saying 'it should be better than this by now, so the problem must be the company that produces the product'. They often have a Dunning Kruger level of confidence in making their claims. Examples:
"It is indeed a complex patent and licensing issue."
"there were a bunch of patents in the way."
" Imagine where electronic ink displays could be today if E Ink wasn't such a terrible steward of the initial technology."
Not even one of the posters cared to defend their claim when I asked for just a bit of clarification about what they were basing their claim on.
So you're not in the display industry, and yet you claim there's overlapping /inter-locking patents. Please tell the rest of us a bit more. What's inter-locking about them? So if I did: patents/search=ibm or search=microsoft does that also meet your claim? So let me guess, you believe IBM is blocking progress in the software industry?
I have to say this is ridiculous. You're making a claim that patents are blocking progress. When I ask which patent and for details, you're response is that I'm making assertions that can't be verified. That's exactly what I'm saying about your comment.
Could you provide a link to where you see that? I disagree with that characterization.
I should also point out that still, even in this thread, again, no one has been able to tell the rest of us (who want evidence we can verify) what specific patent they're talking about. Instead the same old answer, of "all of their patents" comes out. This is the same as saying IBM patents are blocking progress in the software industry.
Of course, the throwaway post that I already said was clearly misinformed at many levels is cited as if it was gospel evidence of patent misbehavior.
> In my previous company we had to reverse engineer their waveforms in order to build usable products even though we were buying quite a lot of displays.
Yes, this is obviously true. You realize it is the equivalent of saying, I bought a Samsung LCD and then I wanted to change the LCD's internal drive voltages and drive circuit waveforms and Samsung didn't help me do that. And how is that in any way related to patents? I asked for evidence backing your claim that patents are blocking progress in the electrophoretic display industry. Would you care to answer that instead of deflecting?
Once again. Which patent? Which technology? All of them? I'm left convinced that you're not basing your claim on evidence, but instead just on 'feelings'.
OP made a claim. I asked for basic evidence. If that's interrogation, then sure. Are they required to do that? Not really. But it would certainly help convincing me. As it stands, it sounds like bullshit to me. It is the equivalent of saying IBM patents are holding back the software industry. Which patent, you ask? Oh, all of them. That's the answer you're giving.
What do you mean by "last I saw"? You are working in the display industry?
Remember? Meaning you worked in the display industry?
I work in the display industry. I've never heard anything like what you describe, except on HN comments and blogs that use HN comments as citations. Look at my comment history. I think your claim is false because everytime I've challenged a claim like yours the poster has never been able to substantiate it, but I keep an open mind, if you can provide some real citations backing your claim then I'm happy to be corrected.
You seem to be intentionally engaging in a circular argument. The parent post said "after present patents expire". So please answer a simple question. Which specific patents are you referring to? Are you going to google and give a random list of eink patents? I hope you can see why I think that's a counterproductive response.
I stand by what I wrote earlier.
I'll repeat it again. " Which specific patents are you referring to? If you can't answer that question without googling "eink patents", then like many others who've made this claim on HN you're not in the industry and don't actually know anything about electrophoretic chemistry and don't realize what the real obstacles are. See my comment history for details. "
It is the equivalent of saying IBM is blocking progress in the software industry because of IBM patents.
I hope it is clear how ridiculous that claim is. That's why I asked the simple question to which I still haven't gotten an answer.
It is unclear what exactly you want explained to you. Or what reference you are referring to. I asked what patent you are pointing to as evidence of the allegation that you made and instead of addressing that, you're asking me for evidence that no such patent exists? How will I be able to do that?
That's odd. I've had and evaluated the XO-1 using Jepsen's displays and found them to be of low quality for even that timeframe. Even basic things like the resolution were terrible for that time. There's good reasons why they (both OLPC and PixelQi) were unsuccessful. OLPC was a disaster and in my opinion just a way to transfer money from the education budgets of developing countries and UN funding into the pockets of people who enjoyed hanging out in swanky incredibly costly offices at 1 Cambridge Way with guys like Nicholas Negroponte, Joi Ito and Jeffrey Epstein instead of actually achieving real progress. [1]
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/09/05/133159/mit-media...
Which specific patents are you referring to? If you can't answer that question without googling "eink patents", then like many others who've made this claim on HN you're not in the industry and don't actually know anything about electrophoretic chemistry and don't realize what the real obstacles are. See my comment history for details.
What do you mean? Any data or evidence for that?
Why? The alternative competitors like VMware are better? I'm not up to date on the details but perhaps you may want to elaborate. Thanks.
http://techrights.org/2020/04/28/openwashing-vmware-after-gp...
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vmware-lawsuit...