braunboffel

> Modos is working on a 60fps e-ink monitor

Fundamentally, my opinion is all these things trying to move electrophoretic ink fast are misguided. You end up using so much energy trying to move particles that are inherently designed to be bistable. If you want to play a video, you're better off using material physics that was intended to be fast from the start, not trying to force a material that's intended to be slow to fight itself.

Stuff like "We need 50,000 people interested in being a part of creating an open-hardware e-ink ecosystem". This seems like trying to drum up a kickstarter. The modos founder, Alex Soto, what's his track record? Googling seems to show him making ridiculous claims like "To make matters worse, the E Ink Corporation holds the patents for its e-ink technology and only licenses its technology to large manufacturers making availability or mass adoption difficult."

I would love to see him explain that in detail with concrete facts.

Patents were never the issue, there was one crazy comment on HN a few years back claiming that it was and somehow it became a mindworm that kept getting repeated. You can prove this to yourself by asking anyone that repeats the claim of patents being the issue, what patent specifically they mean. Invariably they can't answer or say "all of them". The real issue is volume and scale of production and the physics of the technology not being suitable for a broad enough range of solutions to hit the volume needed to get to a higher scale.

RPM? You think the ink rotates?

> I'm surprised the eink patent holders are seemingly content to lose their patent in time instead of licensing it and making real money

and I'm surprised I keep reading such claims on HN and everytime anyone ask which patent you're referring to, you get no concrete answer. It is like saying "microsoft holds lots of patents on operating systems" and that's why operating systems are so terrible and everyone is still using windows.

> We just need exciting products now.

Will you be working on such a product? :-D

> the laws of physics do not stop anything from moving more than 14 times per second,

Sorry, but this is like saying the laws of physics do not stop you from moving from Mars to Earth 14 times per second. In fact, they do. The same is true of moving ink particles within a high density high viscosity physical medium and getting them to stay at a specific location once you're done moving them.

Also "almost never use the whole screen at once" makes no difference since the rate of movement of ink is the same even if you were only trying to change 1 pixel.

> most of the screen refresh algorithms etc are Eink IP

Please help the rest of us understand what you mean. What specific algorithms are you referring to?

> so they keep the cost low by not innovating on responsiveness

Could you clarify who the "they" is? The way you write "not innovating on responsiveness" sounds very confident. Do you have a background in electrophoretic particle physics or industry expertise which is why you're saying that? Just want to make sure this isn't like some case where a commentor is saying "the only reason we haven't established a homeland on Mars is because rocket companies are not innovating".

"The world of e-paper displays is one of the most undocumented you can find: this is the unfortunate side effects of patented technologies, as there is a strong incentive to avoid disclosing useful information, with the effect of slowing down software progresses towards programming these kind of displays. "

That's a startling remark to make. I mean, like if I wanted to control OLED display waveforms, there's not exactly a massive stash of documentation about that. It is just that nobody really needs to since OLED drivers are hugely commercially successful that standard controllers drive them perfectly whereas the niche market for black white slow panels ends up with things less than satisfactory. I'd love to see evidence for claims like "slowing down software progresses towards programming these kind of displays".

Ok, so you're unable to provide evidence. Got it.

> Now some hacker is gonna respond complaining about Onyx not respecting some GNU license or other meaningless stuff, but the fact remains that they are cutting edge in eInk. Expensive though.

Please clarify what you mean by "not respecting some GNU license or other meaningless stuff" ? What exactly is meaningless?

Please also explain what you think "they are cutting edge in eInk" is based on. Thanks.

> Case in point E-ink technology, still extremely expensive due to corporate choices that favoured "milking" over "scaling".

You say that with such confidence like as if it is a well proven fact. Care to share your evidence that it is not a simple case of a niche product with low volume?

> I do recall that patents/trademarks/tech are owned by E-Ink inc., and one of the biggest reason for the cost is them gouging the market? That mechanism can keep high prices for a long time.

recall? gouging? You mean you have data showing is not just simple volume issues?

> The main reason there isn't is because e-ink tech is controlled by a company with a strict and expensive licensing arrangement

When? Where? How? Is this based on your direct experience? Please share some evidence so that your claims can be verified.

eink doesn't use rotating balls. You're confusing eink with gyricon from Xerox. That product died ages ago.

> Because they are massive parent trolls who sue and prevent competition. They need to be called out whenever the technology is mentioned.

Where? How? Please share some evidence so that your claims can be verified.

> I've heard that Eink is notoriously hard to work with

From whom? I asked someone who commented this on HN and the person replied saying that they had refused to help him debug his 3 display project. So yes, any display company is notoriously hard to work with if you're not buying a reasonable quantity of their product. It is like saying Samsung Displays is notoriously hard to work with as they're not helping my startup debug our problems where we've bought a grand total of 3 displays this year.

> I'm generally a fan of eInk stuff, their suspicion of/hostility towards the GPL makes me not want to support them.

What suspicion or hostility does E Ink Corp have towards the GPL?

> I always saw the problem as: only one company or limited companies can manufacture them.

That is a really odd assumption. There are multiple companies making electrophoretic displays and multiple different technologies, of which only one is really commercially effective so far in a very limited niche space. Why don't you think physics is the limitation? I mean, don't you think above would be the equivalent of me saying that the reason we don't have daily flights to Mars is because SpaceX is the only manufacturer of Falcon Heavy.

> E-ink is tied up with patents so there aren’t many organizations that can work on improving it.

I find myself forced to repeat myself. Could you give everyone here some verifiable data? Please identify what patent you're talking about. I hope I will get a genuine response from someone who genuinely knows that industry because the last time I asked I just got a patents.google.com/search?q=eink response and a link to some random claim made as an HN comment. It is fun to blame patents. But do you think it might be because physics?

I'm confused. You made a statement that they're not licensing their patent. I'm asking you what is that based on. Who asked to license their patent and was denied? Surely you have that since you made that claim right? Just your imagination or actual verifiable evidence that the rest of us can check? If challenging your claim is trolling or sealioning or cat fishing or bear baiting or worm wiggling, then so be it.

> They’re just not licensing the patent to other manufacturers

Who? Some data backing the claim up please.

> use the patent to prevent everyone else

> the history of e-ink

Could you give everyone here some verifiable data? Please identify what patent you're talking about. I hope I will get a genuine response from someone who genuinely knows that industry because the last time I asked I just got a patents.google.com/search?q=eink response. It is fun to blame patents. But that's like saying we're not making progress in operating systems because Microsoft owns a key patent in operating systems.

> someone owns a key patent (e.g. e-ink,

Could you identify what patent that is? I hope I will get a genuine response from someone who genuinely knows that industry because the last time I asked I just got a patents.google.com/search?q=eink response. It is fun to blame patents. But that's like saying we're not making progress in operating systems because Microsoft owns a key patent in operating systems.

> e-ink is still governed under a patent you must license and pay royalties to if I recall correctly

Recall correctly meaning you were involved and have direct knowledge or meaning you read it as an unsubstantiated comment somewhere here?

> On the other hand, I suspect EPD companies try to keep the low-level details (like driving waveforms) secret because that's a large part of their IP. They want to be able to sell controllers for them too.

Could you share what evidence this is based on?

The problem is physics. Not patents.

> You'd think the company holding the patents has little incentives to push the tech forward at a faster pace, given the slow advances seen in the last decade and a half.

Laws of physics don't change. Patents aren't the problem.

I noticed I got downvoted for trying to understand what someone was saying. Your answer helped a bit but I still don't really understand what OP was trying to say. In any case, it says a lot about communication on HN. I'd also like to know what people who downvoted were unhappy about my question.

> The race of Workman seems to bear no relation to the story itself, so why the callout?

I didn't understand 'callout'. "a statement drawing critical attention to someone's unacceptable actions or behaviour."

You feel stating the race of the VP was a statement drawing critical attention to someone's unacceptable actions or behaviour?