Hacker News: timw4mail

New comment by timw4mail in "Tiny $70 Xteink X3 e-reader"

timw4mail — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 13:14:36 +0000

For the Pro, you will want a 3d-printed dock, or a really thin USB-C cable to use with the pogo pin dongle.

New comment by timw4mail in "Tiny $70 Xteink X3 e-reader"

timw4mail — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 13:07:37 +0000

With the original X4 discontinued, none of the XTEink products now have USB-C, they all have the pogo pins.

New comment by timw4mail in "Tiny $70 Xteink X3 e-reader"

timw4mail — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 13:04:55 +0000

Standard or not, it's not the standard.

New comment by timw4mail in "Taffy: A flexible, high-performance, cross-platform UI layout library"

timw4mail — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 19:28:41 +0000

Seriously? Wow.

New comment by timw4mail in "Taffy: A flexible, high-performance, cross-platform UI layout library"

timw4mail — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 16:00:04 +0000

Floats? A fan of pain, are we?

New comment by timw4mail in "Fixing a bricked Framework laptop"

timw4mail — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:49:00 +0000

While I've had issues doing bios updates on my Framework, it's been more due to the fact that my main drive has too small of an EFI partition to update with the main drive in the laptop (who knows why it takes so much space to update the firmware in the first place).

That said, with another drive (and a larger EFI partition), I've been able to do 4 or 5 different bios updates on my AMD 7040 Framework 13.

New comment by timw4mail in "Show HN: Write.md – A free, open-source, themeable Markdown editor for macOS"

timw4mail — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 17:22:09 +0000

That's the app I'm looking for a direct replacement for as well.

New comment by timw4mail in "Use Task Runners for Common Coding Tasks"

timw4mail — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 19:06:09 +0000

Not using YAML is huge.

New comment by timw4mail in "How to think about software quality (2022)"

timw4mail — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 13:19:40 +0000

I think a good way to put it is this: every abstraction is a gamble.

There are likely a lot of safe bets, but even choices that once made sense can become an issue later.

New comment by timw4mail in "FreeInk: Open ecosystem for e-readers"

timw4mail — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 21:43:52 +0000

There's a font manager in Crosspoint and Witch, you can download that font directly from the device.

New comment by timw4mail in "FreeInk: Open ecosystem for e-readers"

timw4mail — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:38:08 +0000

I have not seen any support on the mini readers.

New comment by timw4mail in "FreeInk: Open ecosystem for e-readers"

timw4mail — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 20:12:25 +0000

My favorite at this point is Witch reader (https://github.com/jpirnay/witchhunt-reader). All the features of Cross-point, with better book rendering, and more features. I've tried a lot of the various alternatives, and keep coming back.

If you want all your book series displayed together, AALU (https://github.com/dawsonfi/aalu) might be worth a look.

And Crosspoint OS itself is still really nice.

New comment by timw4mail in "98% Isn't Much"

timw4mail — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 13:55:42 +0000

And I see the opposite: Safari is a valuable check on constant additions and bloat to the web platform.

New comment by timw4mail in "98% Isn't Much"

timw4mail — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 13:48:17 +0000

Progress, or constant churn for the sake of Google's stranglehold on web standards?

New comment by timw4mail in "The Boeing 747 begins its final descent"

timw4mail — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 17:23:43 +0000

While true, aircraft fatality statistics generally are not split that way.

The 747 is a safe aircraft, but there have been a lot of fatalities associated with it, due to pilot error, terrorism, improper repair/maintenance, etc.

New comment by timw4mail in "The Boeing 747 begins its final descent"

timw4mail — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 14:22:59 +0000

Hard to beat other planes that have not had fatal crashes or hull losses, especially when you consider the Tenerife crash.

New comment by timw4mail in "Deno 2.9"

timw4mail — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 18:35:59 +0000

But the point of Deno was to try to avoid pitfalls that became apparent in NodeJS, so some over-correction was bound to happen.

New comment by timw4mail in "OS9Map"

timw4mail — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 18:12:19 +0000

Officially? A single cpu G4 tower. Beyond that, I'm not sure.

New comment by timw4mail in "The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader"

timw4mail — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 18:40:37 +0000

While I agree in terms of modern browser expectations (and books absolutely should not need JavaScript), I think books in HTML makes a lot of sense. HTML was meant for sharing text documents, after all.

New comment by timw4mail in "The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader"

timw4mail — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 18:34:32 +0000

As a crazy person with both, I have mixed feelings between them.

In favor of the X3:

- Crisper text

- Whiter display

- Slightly better battery life

- Top-mounted power button (subjective)

In favor of the X4:

- Larger display

- Plain USB-C charging

- Slightly better custom firmware support

- Backward and forward button on the same side (subjective)