Similar to OP’s new hobby of math and physics, I recently started scratching a long standing itch to teach myself electrical engineering. I’m using books, YouTube and my brain to learn, and it feels like such a breath of fresh air compared to what my day job as a SWE has become since AI took it over. Because I’m not trying to build anything in particular — and since the learning _is_ the goal — I don’t hear that nagging voice saying, “AI could do this so much faster,” that pops in my head when I write code by hand these days.
It is maddeningly impossible to get an ereader with all three of these features: b&w screen for maximum crispness; physical buttons for reliable page turns; modern processor for speed.
It runs Android. It's a Chinese company and comes with a bunch of pre-installed apps, but I just blocked its abilities to phone home and use Koreader. It's been great for me
https://goodereader.com/blog/product/onyx-boox-go-7-bw
"The Onyx Boox Go 7 is a dedicated e-book reader with a black and white e-paper display. This device has the same specifications and software as the Go 7 Color Gen 2, except that this model doesn’t have a Kaleido 3; instead, it uses the latest generation Carta 1300 e-paper panel, which increases responsiveness. The key selling points of this model are the physical page-turn buttons and Google Android 13, as well as full access to the Play Store. For those of you who want an e-reader that doesn’t lock you into a specific ecosystem, this deserves a look."
I personally use a Moaan 7. Android and does everything i ask it (I just use FDroid apps though). But do bear in mind it doesnt seem to run apps in the background at all. Just whats onscreen. Battery life is extremely long (probably not unrelated)
Yeah thinking about an pocketbook era lite but apparently can feel a bit sluggish. Might have to unfortunately wait and hope for kobo to release something along the lines of a vision bw.
I rage quit the Boox because the page turn buttons were the same for both landscape and potrait, which meant that one direction was illogical. There were user patches but it just made me so annoyed that when a friend expressed interest in mine, I just gave it way. Maybe it's fixed now but so damn infuriating.
It starts up for me in under a second on my M4 mac. (Obviously could be faster, but doesn't bother me personally on my hardware)
My one main "issue" is with using the pi-sandbox extension. It's based on a forked claude code sandbox runtime. Not exactly sure why a fork was needed, and the fork is a bit behind now. I also wish the sandbox feature worked a bit more like how Cursor's sandboxing worked. Not familiar with Claude Code sandboxing, so can't compare that. I describe the issue and a (slightly hacky, but productive enough) workaround here: https://github.com/carderne/pi-sandbox/issues/50
Obviously the fact that I can fork a plugin for pi and customize it as needed is quite a plus too. Really all the other features work quite well for me!
Like many others, I said I’d quit Reddit when they killed Apollo. I was skeptical that I’d actually follow through, but it didn’t end up being a sacrifice at all. The official app sucks so hard it isn’t fun to browse, and now that the mobile site forces you to download the app, I don’t even look at posts from search results much anymore.
The official app is so bad that basically all quality posters left, along with practically all decent moderators except power-tripping assholes who are happy as long as they have a ban button.
Reddit's post quality dropped so hard after they killed off the API. It's night and day.
then you got companies astroturfing their own subreddits cough /r/snowflake pumping their own fake comments about using whatever AI nonsense they have and relentlessly downvote anything questioning if the content in the sub is even real lmao. this thread had me in tears https://www.reddit.com/r/snowflake/comments/1uoioz6/coco_gui... the mod of that sub de-modded the snowflake employees and there's a sticky now talking about what to do about snowflake fake engagement. lmao that subreddit is a prime example of how the utility of subreddits has pretty much evaporated
it's so funny how corporations throw literally everything they have to control narratives and it just drives people away. all companies tried so hard to have a twitter presence and that site is now nothing but a wasteland of sports journalism and racist bots.
but yeah, reddit sucks. it can't decide what it wants to be but it sure is barreling towards yet another crappy scrolly social media platform
My use of Reddit also drastically reduced after Apollo stopped working (I didn’t follow the instructions that many others have been to sideload the app, configure with an API token, etc.).
But I found a couple of ways to browse without using the official app. One is Safari, with the free SinkIt for Reddit extension, and another is a free app called Lurker. The Lurker app is nowhere close to the speed and smoothness of Apollo. It also seems to drain the battery quicker, but the UI is relatively clean.
I don't have the app and I use reddit (although not often) via my mobile browser (firefox) and it never forced me to download the app, as far as I recall.
I encountered that blocker today, so I decided to try Safari's Hide Distracting Items (1) feature, which blocked it once and for all, which I was pretty impressed by.
It does it occasionally to me (Safari on iOS). When it happens, I just close the page. I hope this is enough of a signal to make someone think.
I land on Reddit every couple of days or so, and if they don’t kick me I read the thread and sometimes browse a bit a couple of subreddits I used to participate in.
Yeah my phone was doing that for a while. I just took it as a sign that maybe I should spend less time on Reddit. After a while it stopped gating me. Not sure if that was a measured decision on their end, or just that the experiment ended.
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