3 ms·

> due to eInk's bullshit monopoly practices A recurring meme from people who meet one or more of the following conditions: a) Don't understand business b) Do

> due to eInk's bullshit monopoly practices A recurring meme from people who meet one or more of the following conditions: a) Don't understand business b) Don't know anything about the display industry c) Don't know anything about manufacturing anything at scale d) Don't have any real information other than repeating something someone said e) Never take the time to do enough research and gather enough data with which to support their opinions f) Don't seem to care about the truth As someone who worked in the display industry for over ten years, conducted seminars for thousands of engineers and business professionals on the design and manufacturing of display systems (down to pixel-level electronics) and, generally speaking, considered myself an expert in the domain...these kinds of comments come off as --to be kind-- terribly misplaced. It would behoove HN commenters to at least exercise enough restraint to only comment in domains they have either researched profusely or understand to a good level of proficiency. That is, if they care about HN signal-to-noise ratio not degrading to Twitter/FB food fight levels.

rurounijones 6y ago
I mean, you haven't actually provided any reasons backing up your case. The comment is pure ad hominem with a case of appealing to self-authority. Why hasn't E-Ink display tech gone mass-market? lots of other commenters are arguing the reasons for and against.
- robinsoh 6y ago
  Allow me to try to explain his/her point. There's been a bunch of comments making really strong claims. Here's some examples just from this post. "They're famous for patent-trolling and disrupting anyone elses effort's to do anything with the tech". When asked for proof of this, there was no reply. "E Ink is part of a consortium that owns all the patents around the technology used in their ePaper displays." When asked for proof of this, there was no reply. "Because there's no real market, the only company "innovating" on the original technology is E-Ink. With a 20-year head start locking down iterative improvements, the technology may never get out of the tarpit. " When asked to back up the claim, at least the response was better in that they accepted it was an assumption based on other comments rather than actually being based on facts. " It is all just an assumption, and I don't have any evidence. Thank you for pointing that out, challenging me, and forcing me to take reconsider my opinion. " So his/her point is that people are alleging a company is a patent troll, even perhaps part of a consortium seeking to control the market and when challenged, they are unable to defend their claims. So your question appears to be asking him for reasons to backup his questioning of other people making claims. Eg, you are acting as Dan in the following itemized list. Alice: We are making a product at price X and volume Y with features Z Bob: Alice is preventing anyone else from making similar products using your patents. Alice is part of a consortium that is evil. A is making enormous profits. A is a patent troll. A is an example of patents gone wild. Charles: Uhm, Bob and buddies? Why are you saying that about Alice? I work in Alice's industry and see nothing like that. You guys shouldn't make such baseless comments as it brings down the quality of our technology forum and level of discussion. Dan: Charles, you're making ad-hominem attacks and appealing to self-authority. > Why hasn't E-Ink display tech gone mass-market? Because their technology (ie: the physics they're reliant on) can't do what competing products like LCD, OLED are able to do. You can't magically make electrophoretic particles that stay in a stable position AND move fast. You can't magically fit millions of color pigments in a pixel when there is NO backlight. Until they can switch to a different technology or physics, they can't compete against LCD/OLED and will never reach high enough volumes to scale to a lower cost structure.
- robomartin 6y ago
  > The comment is pure ad hominem You got that wrong. Listing the many ways in which someone doesn't know what they are talking about is a statement of fact, not a personal attack. If I argued a bunch of nonsense on HN about an article on biology and someone called me for not having a clue, that would not be a personal attack, they would be factually accurate. Biology is not my thing. Sometimes we just need the truth.
cbozeman 6y ago
Well riddle me this, Batman... The entire fucking world of government and business runs on paper. I have to print out literally reams of shit for regulatory requirements, shit that could be easily stored in multiple locations, on tiny ass microSD cards that could be filed away into a single filing cabinet, potentially holding billions of records, damn near indefinitely, and near-immediately accessed on ePaper displays, with the color documents being displayed on color ones and the black & whites being displayed on greyscale displays... instead we have an enormous off-site filing warehouse to retain documentation for up to seven years. Hell, my corporation probably has several of these. And it sure as shit isn't the legal framework holding all this up... everyone I deal with in government and business hates having to shuffle all this shit around, and would much rather be tossed an 8.5" x 11" eInk display with all relevant documents than having to shuffle through manila folder after manila folder of printed pages, and they'd all gladly lobby to have these laws and regulations changed and revised to allow for that. I guaran-goddamn-tee you the market for eInk is there.
- glangdale 6y ago
  I'm not sure I follow the logic. A setup where you are not allowed to store a document on a disk of some kind is not going to be friendly to a solution where you instead can store the document on a little microSD card hooked up to a eInk display instead. If there's a fetish for a "this document is an actual physical object" somewhere (with all the usual security theater about security from theft and alteration), it's not going to be helped by taping eInk to a disk.
- robomartin 6y ago
  I don't think you understand how government works, how they buy things, what data archiving/security requirements they have and, well, frankly, the value of paper as an archival medium. About thirty years ago I worked on a sizeable archival project. Technology deemed "modern" at the time was very hard to justify. Why? Because nobody could truthfully answer a simple question: What happens when the hardware/readers go obsolete? Well, the first thing that happens is that you have to migrate ALL of your data from the old medium to a new medium before the old one goes out of style. That's all the bean counters had to hear to know they'd rather keep things on film. Film, as the argument went, is good for a long time if stored properly and all you have to do is shine a light through it. The started a slow transition to digital some 20 to 25 years after that conversation. Guess what? They were right. The film was --and still is-- in pristine condition.

rurounijones 6y ago

I mean, you haven't actually provided any reasons backing up your case. The comment is pure ad hominem with a case of appealing to self-authority. Why hasn't E-Ink display tech gone mass-market? lots of other commenters are arguing the reasons for and against.

robinsoh 6y ago
Allow me to try to explain his/her point. There's been a bunch of comments making really strong claims. Here's some examples just from this post. "They're famous for patent-trolling and disrupting anyone elses effort's to do anything with the tech". When asked for proof of this, there was no reply. "E Ink is part of a consortium that owns all the patents around the technology used in their ePaper displays." When asked for proof of this, there was no reply. "Because there's no real market, the only company "innovating" on the original technology is E-Ink. With a 20-year head start locking down iterative improvements, the technology may never get out of the tarpit. " When asked to back up the claim, at least the response was better in that they accepted it was an assumption based on other comments rather than actually being based on facts. " It is all just an assumption, and I don't have any evidence. Thank you for pointing that out, challenging me, and forcing me to take reconsider my opinion. " So his/her point is that people are alleging a company is a patent troll, even perhaps part of a consortium seeking to control the market and when challenged, they are unable to defend their claims. So your question appears to be asking him for reasons to backup his questioning of other people making claims. Eg, you are acting as Dan in the following itemized list. Alice: We are making a product at price X and volume Y with features Z Bob: Alice is preventing anyone else from making similar products using your patents. Alice is part of a consortium that is evil. A is making enormous profits. A is a patent troll. A is an example of patents gone wild. Charles: Uhm, Bob and buddies? Why are you saying that about Alice? I work in Alice's industry and see nothing like that. You guys shouldn't make such baseless comments as it brings down the quality of our technology forum and level of discussion. Dan: Charles, you're making ad-hominem attacks and appealing to self-authority. > Why hasn't E-Ink display tech gone mass-market? Because their technology (ie: the physics they're reliant on) can't do what competing products like LCD, OLED are able to do. You can't magically make electrophoretic particles that stay in a stable position AND move fast. You can't magically fit millions of color pigments in a pixel when there is NO backlight. Until they can switch to a different technology or physics, they can't compete against LCD/OLED and will never reach high enough volumes to scale to a lower cost structure.
robomartin 6y ago
> The comment is pure ad hominem You got that wrong. Listing the many ways in which someone doesn't know what they are talking about is a statement of fact, not a personal attack. If I argued a bunch of nonsense on HN about an article on biology and someone called me for not having a clue, that would not be a personal attack, they would be factually accurate. Biology is not my thing. Sometimes we just need the truth.

cbozeman 6y ago

Well riddle me this, Batman... The entire fucking world of government and business runs on paper. I have to print out literally reams of shit for regulatory requirements, shit that could be easily stored in multiple locations, on tiny ass microSD cards that could be filed away into a single filing cabinet, potentially holding billions of records, damn near indefinitely, and near-immediately accessed on ePaper displays, with the color documents being displayed on color ones and the black & whites being displayed on greyscale displays... instead we have an enormous off-site filing warehouse to retain documentation for up to seven years. Hell, my corporation probably has several of these. And it sure as shit isn't the legal framework holding all this up... everyone I deal with in government and business hates having to shuffle all this shit around, and would much rather be tossed an 8.5" x 11" eInk display with all relevant documents than having to shuffle through manila folder after manila folder of printed pages, and they'd all gladly lobby to have these laws and regulations changed and revised to allow for that. I guaran-goddamn-tee you the market for eInk is there.

glangdale 6y ago
I'm not sure I follow the logic. A setup where you are not allowed to store a document on a disk of some kind is not going to be friendly to a solution where you instead can store the document on a little microSD card hooked up to a eInk display instead. If there's a fetish for a "this document is an actual physical object" somewhere (with all the usual security theater about security from theft and alteration), it's not going to be helped by taping eInk to a disk.
robomartin 6y ago
I don't think you understand how government works, how they buy things, what data archiving/security requirements they have and, well, frankly, the value of paper as an archival medium. About thirty years ago I worked on a sizeable archival project. Technology deemed "modern" at the time was very hard to justify. Why? Because nobody could truthfully answer a simple question: What happens when the hardware/readers go obsolete? Well, the first thing that happens is that you have to migrate ALL of your data from the old medium to a new medium before the old one goes out of style. That's all the bean counters had to hear to know they'd rather keep things on film. Film, as the argument went, is good for a long time if stored properly and all you have to do is shine a light through it. The started a slow transition to digital some 20 to 25 years after that conversation. Guess what? They were right. The film was --and still is-- in pristine condition.