Why would anyone seriously think the billions of dollars earmarked for the Department of homeland Security will actually go towards what is said it will be used for? My bet is a small fraction will go toward ICE agent salaries and the vast majority will go toward the existent and persistent "military industrial complex" that views the states of the Union as a new market. Follow. the. money.#
Doc Searls has a blog post that both demonstrates an effective use of chatGPT and has insights on education in the United States. I added this comment:
I think there is one important part missed here regarding thoughts on leaning. Society in the United States establishes intelligence (IQ) as a constraint on learning, but is not and one might argue that intelligence isn’t a real thing. The constraint on learning in the United States, which I think is implicit in all of the above but not explicit is motivation. Children motivated to learn will learn and likely will see learning as fun. Highly motivated children will route around the problems of the current system. Unmotivated children will not learn and will not see the value in learning.
Motivation comes from parents, which makes good parenting so important to society. Problem is the United States society is basically in opposition to parents mostly because those who influence our society want a narrow definition of good parenting and support only that definition.
- The World Wide Web was created for scientists to share information. While the act of sharing is a social function, I think there ought to be an emphasis on the information portion of that mission statement. Information cannot be conveyed well, if at all, in the limit of 500 characters or less. While social networks use the technology of the web, for me their timeline format and size constraints make them something other than the web. Further, I think the social and information constructs are very different. Consequently, I have a hard time thinking of the "social web" as a thing. #
- I get that the now accepted format of what most once called the world wide web is the timeline but the ephemeral nature of timelines make them useful only for a moment. The perceived lack of permanence of a timeline is contributing to a world without facts and because we need facts I think we need fewer timelines. The right view of the web is a garden, ideally one with good soil and well tended within which perennial flowers of information thrive. #
There are two fundamentals of a blog, one is that it is a web page and the other is that the page includes links. A linkblog is a special form of blog the soul purpose of which is the sharing of links to other web pages and therefore contains only the titles of the source pages and a link to them and no real commentary related to the links. All blogs contain links but usually include commentary, hopefully in the voice of a human author. Because the purpose of linkblogs is sharing and the purpose of RSS is sharing, the alignment and perhaps even the dependency of one on the other is natural, but the RSS feed is only useful with a RSS feed reader whereas the linkblog is useful in every web browser. In some ways the focus on the RSS feed is anti web. Mastodon, Bluesky, and other timelines are conceptually RSS feed readers but I do not think they are the web. #
I think it is probable that the rise of authoritarianism in the United States by the capitalists is driven by the fear of the changes coming by the climate change of the earth. Capitalist addiction to wealth prevents them from taking any action on climate change but requiring to do so means accepting a constraint on wealth. Knowing that the change coming is inevitable, they will lock up, exile, and kill any whom they fear, which is everyone and everything else. #
I cancelled my subscription to The Atlantic. I cannot bring myself to pay $100+ per year for a subscription to a magazine. #
I've noticed that the data usage reporting in the Xfinity app is not updating and says I've only used 50 GB this month while I am certain I've used much more. Perhaps that is evidence that we are on the unlimited data plan and it's just that Xfinity's apps are not current to their new plans.#
Unfortunately, I cannot use the new Wordland Linkblog feed for the links on this site because the Links feature of the version of Old School that renders this site expects the feed to be a Json file rather than RSS XML. #
The latest release of Wordland now supports linkblogs. I created a new Wordpress site for my linkblog and there is a corresponding RSS feed. You can add this feed to your micro.blog timeline or any RSS feed reader. The RSS feed works as expected but the posts to the WordPress site do not currently include the source links and I have filed a bug report. I also discovered in testing this that the Wordland RSS feeds is per Wordpress site so the linkblog feed is separate from the general posts that I have been publishing.#
I don't trust Comcast. On Tuesday I changed my Internet service to what I think is one of their new plans with unlimited data, yet to date I have not seen any verification that I have unlimited data. Today when I log on to the Xfinity portal I see that my speed is now 500 Mbps where the previous one was 400 Mbps but there is still a Data Usage item under the plan and the same graph show a 1.2 TB max. I do think Xfinity suffers greatly from bad IT, it seems their web sites are no where in sync with their actual services. I will probably have to wait for the bill next month before I will know for sure whether my plans have actually changed.#
- Last week I learned that Comcast/Xfinity had announced new Internet plans that eliminates the data caps that I have complained about frequently over the years. The data caps have always been a way for Comcast to make more money through fees and never anything to do with a technological limitation. In other words, the caps have always been arbitrary. Comcast executives claimed they are concerned about recent losses of customers and were addressing this with price certainty (the data plan prices are supposedly guaranteed for up to five years) and making it easier for their customers to do business with them. In my experience today Comcast is still failing on both points. #
- When I first learned about the plans, which the articles claim ranged from 300 Mbps to 2 Gbps, I logged in to the Xfinity web site and could not find any information about the plans. Today, for the first time I saw the new options. Problem is, it was not clear to me how to change my current plan because all the options were to "add a plan." If Xfinity wants to be easier to do business with, they should plan for existing customers and their software should know that I have a plan and offer to change it. #
- So, I started an online chat and was happy to find that I was sent to a person (allegedly) rather than a bot. In the process of asking to change my plan I was told that my TV package was old and needed to be changed. I immediately felt this was a bait and switch tactic but was willing to play along. I told the person I wasn't interested in more channels, in fact all we use cable TV for is to watch sports and they have a News & Sports package that looked like a good fit except that it doesn't have NFL Red Zone. Still, I proceeded to the point of reviewing the changes but not finding a clear statement that the Internet was unlimited data. Instead under the Internet service was a bullet saying "Data usage plan applies," which sounds to me like a data cap! #
- At this point I asked if I could talk with a person and was given a toll free number. I was surprised that I got through to a human right away and began again the process. I told the person on the phone that my goal was to change to an Internet plan that had unlimited data and I wanted to keep my Xfinity bill the same or lower. I also told him about my prior chat and that I was told I had to change the TV package which he said was not the case, although in the end I see that while it appears my TV package is the same in terms of channels the package name is different, from "Digital Starter" to "Popular." So it's possible the person on the chat was right at least as far as the name is concerned and the issue here might be with the format of an online chat. #
- I proceeded through the process but again saw in the Internet section of the plan the statement "Data usage plan applies" and I asked the person on the phone what that meant. He didn't really know but assured me the plan does not have a data cap. At this point I took his word, and I won't know for sure until at least tomorrow as I am told it will take 24 hours for the switch over. I won't be surprised if the cap is still there. #
- Even if I do in fact get the unlimited Internet data that started all this my message to the Comcast executives is that you are failing to meet your intended outcome. As for the price certainty, no where in the new plan do I see any mention that the price is guaranteed for any amount of time, you would think that would be upfront in bold if that is what you are trying to assure customers. Next, I spent probably an hour trying to make this change that really I should have been able to do by myself using the portal. You need to be sure all your public facing employees, those physical stores, online chat, and answer phones are on the same page about what it is you are selling. When you start publicity for new plans you should make sure that the new plans are available on your web site at the same time. Comcast has a long way to go to be easy to do business with, you only have my business because I really have no other comparable provider choice. #
For some reason left-click on a link using Chrome on Linux has become difficult. Seems I have to find just the right spot to get the context menu to appear, other times it opens and closes really fast.#
Read this really good article about Bill Moyers upon the occurrence if his passing. Those of us unwilling to close our eyes to what is happening in the United States know why it is happening, it's because the hierarchical/supremacy basis of the norm of civilization demands exclusivity over inclusion. In other words from the founding citizens of the United States have been in a struggle over the definition of "We The People."
The article tells the story of Moyers' first act of journalism, a series of stories about a group of women in Texas who argued that Social Security was unconstitutional. The key point is this made by Moyers upon reflection about the women in his reporting.
“It came to me one day many years later,” he continued. “Fiercely loyal to their families, to their clubs, charities and congregations — fiercely loyal, in other words, to their own kind — they narrowly defined democracy to include only people like themselves.” Many of their own neighbors, he realized, were, to these Social Security skeptics, not as much a part of the democracy as they were. “We the people,” narrowly defined.
All aspects of society, including Christianity, is driven by exclusivity and its sibling, scarcity. Christianity in particular has failed us because its associated institutions were best positioned to prevent what is happening had they actually taught the theology of Jesus rather than of empire, to practice inclusion and thus be the light for the nations that the Jewish prophets said was Israel's calling. Christianity failed when it was tempted, providing evidence of its disconnect from the body of Christ.
Following up on the new Xfinity plans announced a few days ago, this Ars article says that customers won't automatically get unlimited data but can "repackage" in to one in which then can. So far I do not see an option to move to a plan that is not higher bandwidth, and thus cost, than my current plan. I do not want to pay more per month, I just want to get rid of the data cap. The most ironic thing is later in the article there is a quote from Comcast executives regarding why they are losing customers and they state as reasons "One is price transparency and predictability and the other is the level of ease of doing business with us." The later is most definitely an issue when they do not provide an easy way to talk with a human being, instead every online interaction is directed to a chatbot that does not provide answers. If Comcast really wants to make it easy to do business with them they ought to prioritize enabling their customers to simply make changes via their portal. Better yet, why not just drop caps from all users automatically rather than make your customers jump through hoops? #
I hope this isn't a tease. The Verge says Xfinity is dropping their data caps. I am trying to find more information on the Xfinity web site but having trouble. I don't think there is a way to make the change at this point in time. My fear is that they are going to push me to the Internet WiFi gateway that has a monthly cost, right now I have my own modem and access point so I do not pay Xfinity for rent on any Internet connectivity. #
Google has released a Linux terminal (CLI) agent for Gemini, Gemini CLI, that I have installed on my remote desktop container. One of the things I can with it is create thumbnail versions of image files like the one to the right. Gemini used imagemagick to create the file using convert. First I listed the contents of the folder containing the original JPG then told it to create a thumbnail version of the Phoenix Palm Trees image, which is the same picture as the banner picture above. Another thing I tried is I asked Gemini to summarize the PDFs that are in my Downloads folder. Here is a link to the Gemini CLI documentation.#The wheels have fall off the Chicago Cubs pitching. Since last Thursday, June 19 Cubs pitchers have given up seven or more runs per game, six of which (not surprisingly) were losses. At this rate the Cubs will be out of first place in the NL Central by the end of next week. The big problem too many walks and too many home runs. #
I found this article, The Fundamentalist Fallacy, yesterday and there is so much I am in agreement with that I almost highlighted the entire piece. I immediately purchased The War of Art. #
We are in the midst of a heat wave, three days or more in a row of 90 degree Fahrenheit temperatures and that makes me appreciate our new air conditioning. It also means there is a ten degree temperature difference between the top floor of our condo and the basement in which I work. #
Just read Martin Fowler's article on "expert generalists" and feel it defines me well, or at least how I aspire myself to be. In the IT services industry in which I work I don't think the contrast is specialists versus generalists but rather low cost labor versus high cost labor. My company has a focus on low cost labor, the consequence of which I think is a decrease in curiosity and with it ownership or personal accountability. I mean people are conditioned to stay within their box because that is all they are being paid to do. I am convinced that what I see, and what I am describing, is a deliverable of a managerial culture within a company as opposed to a leadership culture.#
I am using both River5 and FeedLand to monitor my RSS feeds. RSS items are retained longer in FeedLand than in River5, so I use it to catch up on feeds over the last 24 hours or longer. River5 is where I go for the most recent stuff. Of course, I am also using FeedLand to maintain my RSS subscriptions.#
I really need to get a UPS for my home servers. As I rely more on my self hosted services I am more reliant on the servers being up. #
Imagine that you are indigenous to a land in which ever since outsiders discovered it, which starts at the time of Jesus, those outsiders treated you as sub-human and believed it was their right to take your land and kill your people. If you wrap your head around this you might understand a bit of what it must be like to live in the middle east. How anyone wonders why there are people in the middle east to hate us outsiders is beyond me. The only reason why we in the United States don't live in constant fear of those indigenous to this continent is because we outsiders, the immigrants, were more successful in our genocide. #
I completed the first of my twice a year trips around Lake Michigan to visit mom and friends. Drove 1,500 miles most of which in warmer than average temperatures. Enjoying our new air conditioning today!#
This outcome was something the Constitution was designed to prevent. "The Framers of the Constitution were clear that only Congress is empowered to commence offensive military hostilities," former Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.) wrote on X. "But there are people on the left and right who reject divided powers and fundamentally hate America. They're working deliberately and methodically to destroy it."
#- Reason.com, "Trump Shreds the Constitution By Bombing Iran"#
Last year on this date the Chicago Cubs had a 32-35 record and would go on to a 83-79 record and finished 10 games behind Milwaukee in the NL Central. Right now they have a 41-27 record, are in first place in the NL Central and lead St. Louis by 5 games. The Cubs currently have the second best record in the National League and fourth best in the the MLB.#
What you see today as the federal response to protests in the United States began with Richard Nixon's response to the Vietnam War protests which led to the "war on drugs." Ronald Reagan continued that war on U.S. citizens and subverted Congress by illegally selling arms to Iran and diverting that money to the Contras. The executive branch power grew larger during George W. Bush's presidency in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 that brought the Patriot Act, the founding of the TSA, and the invasion in Iraq under the lie of weapons of mass destruction. As you see, the claim of fighting drugs as a pretext for militaristic actions within the United States, the subverting of Congress' authority, and the lies and taring of anyone who challenges the lies is a long held Republican tradition. #
- I think that a big problem with what is going on in the United States is that for too many citizens they think that what is happening is not going to affect them. Every part of our society is selfish. Only until something affects me will I have a problem with it. So, if as an opponent to the current Republican regime I had a large enough audience on TV or in writing, I would ask people to remember the after math of 9/11 and in particular the creation of the TSA. Do you want more "TSA" everywhere in the country? Remember that up until 9/11 there were not federal officers in every airport making you take off your shoes and go through metal detectors. Before 9/11 you had the freedom to walk directly go to a gate to see your friends and family even if you didn't have a plane ticket! What the current Republican regime is doing is expanding federal officer presence, like the TSA, to more locations through out the country. These people will be armed and wear military gear. More surveillance and less liberty for of all of us under the disguise of catching "illegals." #
- Since 9/11 we have become too accepting of these increases in the federal law enforcement and presence in our lives and too accepting of infringements on liberty even to the point where people might even think liberty is not important. The founders of the United States feared a large standing army because of what the Republican regime is now doing. The southern states demanded the second amendment, the right to bear arms, because they feared a president federalizing state militias, the very thing that Trump has done in California. The regime has convince too many citizens to not be awake to what they are doing. Don't be woke they say as they methodically increase the police state, put armed "officers/troops" on every street in the country and take away your first amendment right to protest. #
As far as I can tell, the new Pixel VIPs feature is supposed to be one of the new things I see with Android 16 but it's not currently available on my Pixel 7a. Basically, Android 16 is just a security update on my phone.#
Just checked for updates on the Pixel 7a and found that Android 16 is available. Tapped Download and install. I may be a glutton. #
I really fear that we are being baited in to a situation for Trump to declare marshall law in the United States. If you think about why Trump and his billionaire supporters are so focused about immigration I don't see any real benefit for them personally other than knowing it's likely to result in riots that provide them the pre-text to put the U.S. military on streets. We will see another Kent State as the military is taught to shoot first and ask questions later, they are not taught to be a police force. I am very skeptical that Trump and the power behind him really cares of jobs for the middle class and everything they do is about power for themselves. Heck, I expect Trump and many others in his orbit rely heavily on the low cost labor of illegal immigrants. The entire Republican party is taken over by the power grab, it does not care about the Constitution nor liberty nor democracy for anything other than themselves. Everything they do is to redirect attention from themselves and divide any potential opposition. #
Bun is a drop in replacement for Nodejs on Mac OS. It's a pre-req for running this markdown journalizing summarizer that uses ollama. #
Learned about Widgets for Obsidian via this thread on micro.blog and installed on the iPad Mini. Created a widget to create a quick note and another to open the ToDo page in my Obisidian vault.#
Now that I am running my own instance of FeedLand I see that it stores everything in MySQL, which seems wrong to me. I am not surprised that the feed information is stored in the database, but I would have expected the rivers to be generated outside of the database. My guess is for this to scale to many users the servers running MySQL need to be pretty large and probably clustered. I've noticed the performance of feedland.org to be pretty slow and while feedland.com, hosted by Wordpress, is better, that is not as fast as my own instance. #
It's raining out and it looks like the Canadian forest fire smoke has reached us as the AQI is at 156. Sensors directly west of us is at least 10 points higher.#
- I've created a Google NotebookLM notebook for my 2025 day notes. Turns out that how Old School generates monthly index files works well as sources to NotebookLM. All I did was add the URL to the monthly index page, like this one for May, as a source to the notebook, and that enables me to ask questions about my writing. I intend to see whether this will work in a manner similar to search for my writing. For now I am not going to share this publicly.#
- If Google enabled RSS feeds to be a source for NotebookLM and that had the ability to get updates then one could have a notebook in which to be able query their latest writing. I tried using the RSS feed for my micro.blog but that is a JSON file that is not a valid source for NotebookLM. Given that at some point in time Google will monetize NotebookLM, I think it's probable that URL structured data like JSON will be a valid source if you have a subscription. Feeds are a constantly flow of information going in to NotebookLM and processing would like significantly increase Google's operating cost of the product. #
The Cubs beat the Nationals last night and in the game they hit the team's 200,000 hit since the National League was formed in 1876. The Cubs are the first NL team to reach that mark.#
I don't see the visible line running down the edge of the Boox Go 7 described in this review. I think I have my Go 7 set to 70% brightness and the temperature turned all the way off. It might be that my eyes are not sensitive to the line. The main issue that I have is that the touch screen is too sensitive around the edges. Some times when I am holding the Go 7 reading a book the page turns when I do not want it to. #
I got FeedLand running in my home lab, but why did I bother with it? Besides the obvious to find whether I can, one of the main reasons is to use it for managing my RSS subscriptions. Over time many of the sites I add to my subscription list stop being updated and it seems like a good idea to remove those sites from the subscription list and therefore cut down on the number of unnecessary updates being made by my feed reader. FeedLand provides a nice view of all my feeds sorted by when they were last updated, so I can go to the bottom of the list and remove sites that haven't updated in a year or more. #
Right now I am using the public version of FeedLand to check for updates at the beginning of the day, then throughout the day I use River5. The feeds are organized differently in FeedLand than River5 and that makes it easier for find older updates. River5 displays new items in a reverse chronological order so it's great to see the latest updates over the last several hours, but I find FeedLand a bit easier to use go back in time more than four hours. I just feel using the two provides me the best way to keep on top of everything. I also have River5 running locally and that server is in my Tailnet so that I can access it remotely. Now that I have an instance of FeedLand running that I know will be available so longa s I keep it running, I might transition to using just it. #
One thing that I am interested in is using FeedLand for linkblogging. I have used Radio3 for that but when I settled on a more direct way of adding articles to Readwise Reader for later reading I stopped using Radio3. As long as Radio3 is hosted by Dave it's a risk of being taken down, so using something else for a linkblog, if I want to even build a linkblog, is a good idea. #
I wonder if there are many real world uses for locally hosted LLMs? I have Ollama and some models on my Macbook but honestly, I just try them out and then don't do anything with them.#
- Here is a quick write up of how I got FeedLand running in my home lab. FeedLand is hosted using two LXC containers running in Proxmox, one is running mysql and the other is running feedland. After provisioning the mysql container using the PVE Helper script I logged in to the database as root and created the database, tables, and indexes using the SQL provided in the FeedLand install instructions. I then created a new mysql user with read/write access to the FeedLand database for use in config.json of the FeedLand app.#
- The second LXC container is running Debian 12 and I installed the latest version of nodejs. I then downloaded the FeedLand install zip file, expanded it and copied the required files in to the ~/feedland directory. I then went about editing config.json to align to my configuration. #
- At first I tried configuring FeedLand to use IP addresses for domain names hoping that would work but I could not get any browser I have to access the site, no matter the configuration. When I requested the site with the web console open the request appeared to redirect to https for access so fast I couldn't see anything appear in the console, so I then proceeded to configuring for access using https. #
- I have a handful of web applications running in my home network that are accessible over https via nginx. The key to how that works is using Duckdns.org for hosting the DNS A record of the IP address of a server running on my home network and nginx knows how to configure and use Let's Encrypt with Duckdns to provision, update, and store the SSL certificates. The IP address is local and accessible via the Internet so the URL will only properly resolve when I am at home or connected to my home network via VPN, which is why the nginx and Duckdns integration is important for authorization and provisioning of the SSL certificate by Let's Encrypt. I have minimal knowledge of Nginx and use the web app to configure it. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to make websockets work and I would see errors reporting that the app can not communicate with the server. At this point I decided to install and use Caddy in the Debian 12 container running FeedLand so that I could use the example configuration provided in the Feedlandinstall repo.#
- Next I had to figure out how to make Caddy work with Duckdns, which requires running Caddy with a Duckdns module that one installs using xcaddy. I found xcaddy requires the latest version of Go, which I installed and eventually got the Duckdns module installed for Caddy. To proxy the URL and handle SSL I had to add a tls section to the Caddyfile to specify using duckdns for the DNS and provide the Duckdns API token for authentication. The steps I followed are available in this article about using xcaddy and this article about configuring Caddy to use Duckdns.#
- One final piece to get FeedLand running was to configure it to use Wordpress for the identity management. I briefly looked at the Email configuration and got a confused by the instructions for AWS SES so switched to using Wordpress. #
- All of this worked and I could load FeedLand and log in but every attempt to do something, like add a feed, resulted in "Unable able to communicate with the server" errors. I saw in the browser console that there were mixed content errors occurring. The resolution was adding the a value for urlServerForClient such as "https://feedland.example.com/", being sure to include the slash at the end. I found this out by reading the config explanation but this value is not in the default config.json included in the file nor was there any mention about it in the instructions regarding using HTTPS. Before setting this value calls were being made to the myDomain value using http. #
This description of Sky, which is a Mac OS app in development that automates tasks but uses a LLM to understand a user's request, sounds very useful but I wonder how much will be the monthly subscription which will likely also require a monthly LLM subscription that will have its own cost. Hopefully they will make it work with locally hosted LLMs. #
- The solution to the on-screen keyboard usage issue is to install the Google Gboard keyboard from the play store. I configured it to use the split keyboard that moves the left and right sides of the keys toward the left and right sides of the display. The space bar is much wider and the auto correction works just as well as on my Android phones. All of this makes for as good a typing experience on the Go 7 as with any other device I use.#
- Boox sells a stylus that works with the Go 7 that costs $50, but that is not yet available to order in the United States. Fortunately, the Go 7 supports USI 2.0 (Universal Stylus Initiative), which means other branded USI 2.0 styluses should work and I bought this cheaper one on Amazon. Unfortunately, it now looks to be out of stock. #
- Stylus input and thus handwriting on the Go 7 is not very good mostly because the nib of the stylus is a hard plastic and you are writing on a glass screen. You have a similar experience writing on the Apple iPad using the Apple Pencil except that latency and pressure sensitivity is better with the Apple Pencil than most USI 2.0 styluses. In my opinion, because the handwriting capability is not going to be very good it's not worth spending a lot of money on a stylus. In fact, you really don't need the stylus to use the Go 7, which is why one is not included. #
- One final issue to report, as this Boox Go 7 has a monochromatic screen colors in apps are "translated" to different shades of black and in some instances the results are not very good. An example is Google Keep, note text displays pretty good but tap the add button to create a note and you see a dark background and black buttons but not text because it appears Google has dark text on those buttons. What I had to do is optimize the app, select Other Colors, and increased the Webpage Text Color to 20.#
One issue that I do have with using Android apps on the Go 7 is that I find its near perfect square size, it's 6 inches tall and 5.25 inches wide, makes typing using the on-screen a tad difficult. Boox has their own keyboard but it's space bar is not wide enough so I often hit either the comma (left) or period (right) keys when trying to to enter a space while typing with my thumbs. #
Scott Alexander reminds us that 1.2 million Americans died due to COVID, and any way you cut it that is a lot of loss of life. He also seems at a loss for what could have been done differently. I think there is one thing that could have been done differently, one lesson that should be learned from COVID, which is that disasters are no place for politics. We must have a point at which we are willing to see there is a common enemy and work towards defeating it. In my opinion too many of those 1.2 million Americans lost their life because of people too caught up in the blame game and got ya politics. #
As far as I can tell, little about the talk of the emerging AI "tools" is about their monthly cost. All of the good models cost at least $20 per month, which I think is too expensive and will create a digital divide. Some people are even paying $200 per month, which I just can't comprehend! #
Fortunately, when I woke up this morning I found a text message from Xfinity saying they had completed their work. If there was an Internet outage it must have occurred before I woke up. #
- I bought the Boox Go 7 e-Ink tablet, which is the second Boox tablet that I have purchased. The Boox Note Air 3C has become my primary "large screen" table that I use as an organizer and paper notepad and it is great for writing but can be too large for reading. #
- My interest in the Go 7 was piqued when I learned it has a seven inch screen, supports stylus input for handwriting, and cost $249. The downside is that the stylus is not included and that it doesn't use the Wacom EMR input as used on the Note Air 3C, which means the stylus has to be charged and the writing feel is going to be "plastic on glass" such as exists with the iPad. #
- The reasons to buy the Boox Go 7 are the resolution of the screen, how fast the screen refreshes, it's ability to run any Android app, it's size, and it's price. The Go 7 display is based on e-Ink, which is intended to look like paper and does not have back lighting. Text and pictures are drawn by applying an electrical charge to move micro capsules up or down and electricity is not needed to keep showing what is on the display, which means e-Ink displays use much less power than the LCD and OLED displays used by all other devices.#
- When e-Ink was first introduced in the mid-90s the speed at which display changes was noticeably slow. The slow refresh was tolerable for reading a book but if you flipped through the pages of the book quickly what you would see is a blur of changes as it started to draw text and then be disrupted by the page turn and the need to draw different text. #
- Even with slow refresh rates, the low power consumption of e-Ink coupled by the fact the displays are much easier on eyes because one is not starting at a panel light, made e-Ink desirable despite it's limitations and that lead to the success of Amazon's Kindle and competing products from Kobo and Barnes and Noble that are designed for reading books. People who bought these devices did so for the sole purpose of reading and had no expectation for playing games or watching video.#
- The display of the Go 7 is much more advanced than the the one in my Amazon Kindle Paperwhite or Barnes and Noble Nook. I can quickly flip through books or load web pages and scroll them up or done and see legible text. Text display is crisp and clear with the 300 DPI resolution and you can see higher resolution pictures and even video although the refresh rate, refresh rate, and lack of back light does not make for a good experience for watching video. #
- Unlike the Kindle, which exists for only to read e-books sold by Amazon, the Go 7 has the Google Play store and therefore one can install and run any Android app. Boox has their own UI for their tablets so one familiar with Android may not recognize the Go 7 and running Android, and in fact while Google is about to release version 16 the Go 7 runs version 13 of Android. If you have Kindle books all you have to do is install the Amazon Kindle app on the Go 7 to read them, but you can also install the Kobo, Nook, or even Bookshop.org app so you are not locked in to a specific e-book ecosystem. #
- I plan to use my Boox Go 7 primarily for reading but I have installed and handful of necessary (to me) Android apps: 1Password, Google Calendar, Google Tasks, Syncthing, and Readwise Reader. Reader is my web read-it-later tool that is integrated with my prime information repository Obsidian and it works very well on the Go 7.#
- Google expects Calendar and Tasks to run on a device that has a color display, so some of the color to grayscale translation results in hard to read text. Had I bought the color version of the Go 7 this would not be an issue, but I think the black and white version is good for my needs and I have plenty of other devices with very good color displays. The color use in Tasks is not an issue and it works very well on the Go 7.#
I am really annoyed by Xfinity. Last week I received notice from them that they were doing improvements to their Internet service in my area on Monday, May 19, which was yesterday, and that I should expect intermittent outages. I had outages as expected and I was able to work around them, but then later in the day I got another message saying they couldn't complete work and would continue today. I woke up this morning to my Internet being down and having to scramble to connect to work meetings but got through them. Now I got another text saying once again they haven't completed the work and will let me know when they will be able to complete the work. Potentially three days of outages is not good service! #