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I'm a heavy ReMarkable user, mostly as a note taking device when doing client meetings.

For personal use I use it a lot for annotating philosophy papers and source materials, and the lack of a split screen feature is extremely frustrating.

Writing annotations or commentaries on texts means writing in the margins or switching back and forth between books (often a paper book and the remarkable for writing, or 2 notebooks in the device which is a slow operation).

A split screen mode would have been extremely useful, or lacking that a method for having a page-matched 'fold-out' so I can just associate a full blank page to each source page for my commentary.

I know there's an unofficial hack that adds this, but why ReMarkable doesn't I can't fathom, especially as annotations and such are marketed as primary use cases for the device.

/rant :)


I find mine close to useless. The pen is sometimes really inconsistent, to the point where the ink gets applied 1mm from the pen tip. Also, no canvas for pdf annotation, no split screen, no search in pdfs and notes, only tags, etc. It's strictly worse than paper for me.


Have you contacted support? I've had one for over 4 years (and used up 2 packs of nibs) and it writes perfectly, and much prefer it over the iPad.


That is likely a problem with that specific stylus --- have you tried a different stylus?


Hi Locutus_

I'm one of those people with "analysis paralysis" towards the E-Ink ecosystem. Remarkable Paper Pro came out while I was researching, and made me aware of the set of dichotomies around the notion of minimalism vs full blow Android, black & white only tablets vs Galery-3 vs Kaliedo, front lights vs having a screen closer to the surface without front lights...

It's difficult to enter the e-paper market.

For me, I'm a science student currently struggling through classes like Integral Calculus, Linear Angebra, etc... So I'm usually writing math equations.

My first question is how does Remarkable handle math writing? I'm guessing there is nothing to read things like a handwritten Sumation, or Integral, and then convert to Tex ?

Is black and White really the best kind of e-ink, or is that the prejudice or bias of those old time e-ink users who have been using the tech a while now? What about screen size, is the 10.3 really that great (smaller that A4 paper)?

Is Remarkable's "minimalism" claims actually legitimate, or more of a coping mechanism to explain away their apparent lack of features?


There is nothing I'm aware of that converts from handwriting to LaTeX

My general impression is that you'll still have the most-contrasty screen with black-and-white eInk. Color is just getting awesome, while black and white is already there.

The minimalism claims are real. The existence of Boox shows that reMarkable is deliberate in their minimalism. An rM2 is a for-real linux system and it does have a browser under the hood -- they could make that user-facing if they wanted to do so. In practice, the minimalist use-case can be powerful. rM's interface is conducive to entering flow and reviewing electronic documents in a way that is far less distracting than a fully-featured iOS/Android tablet. That said, that choice can also be troublesome. The lack of a real email client and for-real Google Docs integration (or JIRA) is a major impediment to certain forms of collaborative productivity. If you need to spend a long time with a document, or really think things through, though, the rM interface is helpful.

If you're eInk-curious, go demo some. Best Buy usually has displays of more than one eInk device. Doing so helped me to shape my decisions in the arena.


I have two main problems with Remarkable products:

1. They are too small. I want an A4/letter sized display for writing notes and for reading PDFs.

2. The pen is laggy. It’s very frustrating to use after using an iPad for a while.

Both of these are subjective though. Since Remarkable has a generous return policy, I recommend buying one and trying it for a couple of months. If you don’t find it useful, you can return it easily.

I’m hoping Remarkable comes out with a 13” display. There are others like the Fujitsu Quaderno, but it runs Android. I prefer a more focused device like the Remarkable.


I’m currently doing a Masters in Computer Engineering, struggling through a lot of calculus and linear algebra.

I have a Remarkable 2 for notes and working on math problem set homework to hand in as PDFs.

It’s fine. It doesn’t do anything other than record your handwriting. You can try and have it convert it to text, this works for language but fails utterly at math. I got the better pen that you can turn around to use as an eraser as using the UI to change the tool from pen to eraser and back is incredibly annoying.

I recently got an iPad to use instead mostly because I wanted one anyway, and because my handwriting is atrocious and iOS 18 pretties it up. I haven’t quite made up my mind on which one I’ll continue using. The iPad and its pen are more responsive, the fact that it improves my handwriting is a boon for the TAs, and solving some of the simpler math automatically is neat. The built in Notes app is garbage for handing in multi-page PDFs, bafflingly this is impossible, but the Goodnotes app is cheap and rather good. There’s other apps to convert handwritten math into Latex.

The Remarkable produces much smaller file sizes (I’m not sure why I care, the web app I upload homework to sure doesn’t) and the battery lasts much longer. I find replacing the pen tips very annoying and have no idea why that is needed.

I’ll probably end up using the iPad more, but I’ll guess I’ll see.


Hi bc569a80a344f9c,

I also use a table for university, instead of a laptop I've got the bigass Samsung s9 ultra (or whatever it's called) because it's near A4 size for reading PDF papers, etc..

This tablet has a special accessory that is a screen overly that is textured glass, so the "Writing feel" seems more like a pencile or whatever paper-like... It's marketed towards artists or whatever creative types. I think the Remarkable has that feature built into the screen without any accessory. You might see if you can find something like that for Apple tablets.

As far as a writing or note taking table goes, for people in the University, we really do need integration with things like Google or Microsoft. The whole idea that a minimal table requires the user to be subject to gatekeeping things like a computer/mobile app to do basic input/output of documents is quite frankly absurd. There is nothing distracting about saving a document into OneDrive or Google Drive.

I really do suspect the whole "focus" of Remarkable, and similar, is a cope. I totally get people with ADHD exist, and those people appreciate the kind of devices that actively prevent them from straying off their path.... but this is ridiculous.


Since a few updates ago, margins and pages are "limitless", so you can scroll a page (including PDFs) to the side to reveal a parallel page / much larger margin.


I had one in the early 00's.

Especially liked packet radio stuff back then, but due to regulatory restrictions in practice the networks built are not really all that useful other then for contacts. So in a way, loved the tech but it's really a hobby just for the tech itself rarely applications there-of.


It's just a bummer the community around it is super-cultish.


Sorry to reply to a random comment of yours, but did you ever publish your CM-2 emulator?


No worries; I have not yet.


If you have important Mac disks to archive, then a Kryoflux is probably the way to go.

It's a external USB attached floppy drive controller that uses a normal PC floppy drive.

It reads the raw disk stream and software then decodes that for whatever disk format it was. It seems old Mac disks can be recovered with it:

https://www.kryoflux.com/?page=home http://forum.kryoflux.com/viewtopic.php?t=135



Thanks!


There are two sets of kryofluxed floppies on archive.org. the 800k image is 58Mb, and all four floppies have errors at 60~65%. All the data is extractable except for the bad regions so... It looks like they kryofluxed the disks to preserve what data they had left, but it's not a solution. It's a huge waste of space, can you imagine a box of disks all inflated to 73 times their size?

Apple got Sony to make cav drives, (MacIIx and SE HD to the 9600 )and when they raised the price, no floppy. Sneaker net was over until USB drives became cheap.

One disk on archive that is unrecoverable is Adobe Type Manager. The areas where the fonts are is corrupted, but the data is available elsewhere, but the program isn't.

Now it sits in the cloud ( someone else's hard disk ) in a corrupted state. Wish I had an SE 30 to restore the disk, and put it's compressed image up as a replacement.


It says 800k/400k, but all his images are 800k. The filesystem may be different, but for diskcopy 4.2, it never made a difference. ( MFS vs hfs ). I am sure that for kryoflux, it does not make a difference either.

It does not show how kryoflux assists in recovery. They can be archived, and preserved, but not recovered. ( Just try the 800k ATM disk on archive.org )


KryoFlux is long obsoleted by the open-source GreaseWeazle.


I use that mode on a Panasonic S1R to scan 5x4" film negatives, it does actually work.

However it requires a solid reproduction column mount, excellent lenses, perfect focus and vibration free environment etc.


Huh, this is super interesting, thanks for sharing!

I might try something like this just to see the results..


[dead]


Yeah, in the states we say 4x5, but in either case it’s the most common large format film size. You buy them in boxes and use them one sheet at a time.


I tried to look it up, but are any bootable GNO/ME disk images around? I'd like to see it run in an emulator just out of curiosity.


No idea if these work, but I found disk images here:

https://macgui.com/downloads/?cat_id=193

Install instructions:

https://a2central.com/features/gno/

Also a short video of it running:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPi9EW4Mnk4

This appears to be the magic search term:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=gno+2.0.6

The gno_206.zip file here is also apparently a complete install:

https://public.asimov.net/images/gs/os/gsos/gno/

Reference for gno_206.zip:

https://comp.sys.apple2.narkive.com/7qima2le/gno-2-06-partia...


This seems to have been a pattern with all the 80s home platforms, especially in Europe.

I came from the Commodore Amiga, and used mine still in the early 00's all hacked up with cottage industry expansions and software hacks as a Mini-workstation writing LaTeX and C/C++ for Uni and a somewhat functional browser.

The Atari ST had a similar trajectory post Atari with FreeMiNT, and even smaller the Archimedes and Sinclair QL did!


> even smaller the Archimedes

I have written about the ST continuation efforts:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/05/new_atari_display_dri...

And the modern QL OSes:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/16/ql_legacy_at_40/

There is modern new QL-compatible hardware on sale today, which still amazes me, 4 decades later.

But saying that... If one were so inclined, which I am, one could argue that the entirety of the Arm platform, including the modern Mac I'm typing this on, is an extension and development of the Acorn Archimedes.

It doesn't run the Acorn OS, but neither do modern x86 PCs. And anyway, the original OS is alive and well and runs on modern hardware:

https://www.riscosopen.org/content/

It doesn't use the original GPU, but nor do PCs. It doesn't use the same RAM layout or anything, but nor do PCs.

But it's a compatible, extended, modernised version of the self-same CPU architecture, just like PCs are. It can emulate the old environment so you can run the old OS, just like PCs can.

Any current Arm64 device, phone or tablet or laptop or server, is every bit as much an Acorn Archimedes as a modern multicore x86-64 computer is an IBM PC.


Systems from DEC also prefered this date format (RSX11 and VMS).


As Karl Marx said about philosophy: "The point, however, is to change it [The world]"


I wonder if Karl's fairly extremist (at least in reputation, which is all that matters) ideology harmed the popularity of this discrete proposal.


Change is not always for the better. Vladimar Putin is changing the world, but expect that few here see it as a good thing. Putin, himself, is known to see Soviet Russia as good; the USSR also changed the world, but it is hard for many to see that as good, particularly the millions killed by the rulers. The USSR was a product of Marxist thought, and thus far no implementation of Marxism has been anything but highly destructive. (Regarding China, it's success came when they embraced aspects of capitalism and technocratic governance. Xi is turning back towards Marxism and China appears to be going backwards.)

Other philosophy would consider Marx as incorrect. For Plato, the point of philosophy is to find the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. For Buddhists (if I understand correctly), the point is to escape suffering. For Christians, the point is the mystical union with Christ. For these, effects on the world are a side-effect, not the point.

Personally, I think that the preoccupation with "changing the world" in the contemporary US is a search for personal meaning (via activism, or even merely "change"), since the ideas of modernity has erase all meaning from our existence.


Do you think it may be possible to use philosophy to change the world in a positive for most way (say, 80%+ of the global population), to a "substantial" degree (based on a global survey)?

As an analogy: consider perspectives (on whether flight may be possible) 100 years before and after flight was ~mastered (based on a global survey).


The problem is that we are talking about philosophy here and what is positive is being studied and discussed. And because we have not agreed yet, those changes would be more a power play then a right-idea (say positive) play. Marx is bad has been proved beyond doubt in practice. Still because it is all about power and change, it is a bad idea.


>And because we have not agreed yet, those changes would be more a power play then a right-idea (say positive) play.

So I'm not missed out understanding you, are you saying that right/good ideas require consensus before they can be that?

> Marx is bad has been proved beyond doubt in practice.

a) How?

b) Proven, technically?

c) Beyond whose doubt?

> Still because it is all about power and change, it is a bad idea.

What is this?


The question is that consensus is what is at stake in philosophy. Can all have one consensus. Can there be a truth ...

There is no ground rule in philosophy; you can have your professorship even but does you think you are right. I am not challenging as we hope there is something right out there even if it is contextual and individual and hence might not be universal that apply to all situation, all humans, ... And that the universe has no multi-dim and hence it cannot be self-contradict or self-refutated. Even if so, the issue is you are inserted there. How you do know you are the truth, the life and the way? God yourselves kind of? Why you impose your view on truth on me because you think that this is the truth? Why I have to believe in you.

Does truth/beauty/right is knowable (or is it thing-in-itelf?), talk possible (philosophy is a disease to be cured?), ...

Being Confuicus, Buddhist, Taoism, Muslim, ... or Hercaltus ... Of course you can be better than they are but have we agreed ...

Philosophy is IMHO first about raising questions. Obviously you provide answers. But it is the question and the process of finding the answer that is interesting or even truth to you. The result, ... it never satisified for everyone; sadly or happily.

To say there is a truth, a right, a beauty ... whilst we want to have one universal answer, but my answer might be different from yours and based on history of philosophy is that there is no answer. We might have to enjoy the journey.

**

in practice, marxism is bad; Maoism is bad, Stain..... you still do not get it and that is a shock to me. Should we sing a song: How many people has to die because you believe in Marxism ... Back to line 1 I guess as we will never agree.

**

When you do not think clearly and does not have an answer, and you just do it then it is just power grabbing and no doubt if you really have power, or even we do not have actually as time change whatever we do (but what is time?), we can believe our action can induce changes ... Hence, just power and change! And that is not about how right you are or how much truth you are. You just act and power-change as a result. As you do not think clearly and state clearly what this change might go to or even worst as Marx seems did not know or at least you do not think clearly or state outright what is his pathway to success. That is bad and that is how Marxism is wrong. Its development history shown you that. (Does Marx predict Soviet Union arise or even peasant China or more advance captialist stats will collapse instead?). Well, you still do not get it and to be consistent with my line, please go back to line 1 of course. :-)


> Should we sing a song: How many people has to die because you believe in Marxism

Here's a song that has some special relevance here:

Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the stream

...

Are you familiar with this song?


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