tal

good

The problem with using "good" as a criteria is that nobody decides "what we need is a bad balance". People are going to have different takes on where they want that slider to be.

There are a couple of devices here, but most of them run into one constraint you have or another:

https://kadavy.net/distraction-free-writing-devices/

• Physical typewriter: I think that electronic devices have put the era of correction fluid behind us.

• Alphasmart word processor: Lacks prestige.

• BYOK: Just a Kickstarter project.

• Freewrite: Whole line of similar devices. Some of these wonlt meet price constraints. Some might work. There's a $350 Freewrite Alpha.

• Pomera: Doesn't meet price constraints new. A used one might work; I see these on eBay for $100. Japanese-market-oriented, but E-ink and can clearly do English.

• Boox: As you mention, doesn't meet price constraints. Maybe maybe do a used one. I see someone selling a used Palma on eBay for $72, and this guy used his as a writing platform.

• Solarwriter: Mobile software designed to link an e-reader, keyboard, and iOS or Android device into an outdoor writing system. Could work!

• Remarkable: Won't meet price constraints new, but there are used ones on eBay going for around $200-$250 without keyboard.

• Kobowriter: open-source project to link a Kobo e-reader to a keyboard. The Kobo cannot power a keyboard, so some sort of external power source for USB is required. This specifically aims to be a cheaper alternative to the Pomera and Freewrite. Sounds like it requires some tweaking for different keyboard layouts and devices. I would not do this unless one is comfortable with this from a technical standpoint.

like reading Manga with Mihon,

While manga might work, as IIRC they're typically printed on smaller books, I feel like comic books really warrant a high-resolution screen if you're trying to read text in speech balloons easily. I can get by on smaller screens, but then I'm having to pan and zoom. Not an issue with traditional, text-only books.

https://www.hydracomics.com/post/how-to-make-your-comic-book-art-print-ready-a-comprehensive-guide

The standard for comic book printing is usually around 300 PPI.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ComicBookCollabs/comments/1059emp/what_is_standard_us_comic_size/

The standard comic page is around 6.625˝ × 10.1875˝ or thereabouts

So to produce that at pixel resolution, you're talking a screen that can display something like 1988x3056.

https://www.the-ebook-reader.com/large-ebook-readers.html

The highest-resolution ereaders listed there have a 2200x1650 screen.

kagis for manga dimensions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank%C5%8Dbon

Although Japanese manga tankobon may be in various sizes, the most common are Japanese B6 (12.8 cm × 18.2 cm, 5.04 in × 7.17 in) and ISO A5 (14.8 cm × 21.0 cm, 5.83 in × 8.27 in).

That's a little smaller than comic book dimensions, at least.

fast enough to be a smartphone or computer screen

I mean, people used ed on teletype machines, which didn't refresh at all.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EVugOymLn8g

This doesn't look unusable to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naWkR6YbKqs

Or this.

I mean, I you're not gonna have a good time playing Quake on it, but for writing text, I'd think it'd be okay.

If you can live with a reflective LCD display, there are various word processors with small reflective LCD displays that are inexpensive. They're also usable in bright light, like e-ink.

https://www.amazon.com/Neo2-Alphasmart-Processor-Keyboard-Calculator/dp/B00T0ZG06O

That's $220 for the device with a keyboard; runs on 3 AA batteries.

https://www.reddit.com/r/eink/comments/186x55r/good_eink_writing_device_with_a_keyboard/

Good e-ink writing device with a keyboard?

The Meebook M7 supports bluetooth, and I have connected bluetooth keyboards to it, but I usually connect a mechanical keyboard via OTG cable. It is 6.8 inches, though, so you might want something a bit bigger. Refresh rate is okay, definitley sufficient. I like to have it in normal or fast mode, depending on my mood.

eBay has Meebook M7s (no longer the current model) for $200 as of this writing. That's an Android device and will need a keyboard.

EDIT: I think that the problem you're going to run into is if you want a large e-ink display. Most e-ink use is for reading books, and most people want fairly small displays for that, so there's not going to be a lot of volume.

EDIT2: One other option you might consider is use of a laptop hood, if you don't specifically want e-ink. I spent a while working by a window, which was really obnoxious, because sun would shine in from the side and highlight all the dust particles on the screen and create glare. I wound up using a monitor hood, which worked well for that. That wasn't a laptop, but there are a variety of devices that will cover the top and sides of a laptop so that the area surrounding the screen is dark.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=laptop+hood

Makes for more setup and teardown, of course, and it won't help if the sunlight is coming from behind you. But if you already have a laptop that you're otherwise happy with, it might help.

EDIT3: Oh, sorry, somehow I missed you mentioning that you already have the mentioned word processor at the top of your post.

No. I'd guess that it's about the same; existing grocery stores aren't reducing their size, so unless they're going to stock more of one thing, I'd expect them to stay pretty comparable.

A store could close and a new one open, but I'm pretty sure that if anything, grocery store size has increased over time in the US, not decreased.

China's decision in April to suspend exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets has upended the supply chains central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military contractors around the world.

We were working on this several years ago.

Extraction:

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2023/01/02/in-the-mojave-desert-the-rebirth-of-the-only-american-rare-earth-mine_6009991_19.html

In the Mojave Desert, the rebirth of the only American rare earth mine

With support from the US government, mine operator MP Materials is reviving the Mountain Pass site. The company is taking advantage of the global appetite for magnets for electric motors and wind turbines.

Those MP Materials guys also do processing.

https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news-and-insights/latest-market-news/2643665-western-re-refining-projects-attempt-2025-push

Attempts to establish commercial-scale rare earth separation and processing outside China are growing in number and progressing gradually with a view to ramping up output over the next two years.

Mineral resources developers are scrambling to reassess and upgrade their estimates of mineable rare earth element (REE) content as western governments attempt to encourage producers to establish production closer to home. And new efforts to develop high-volume processing capacity outside China — which currently accounts for more than 80pc of global refining — are emerging.

Western countries are well behind China in advancing technical processes to refine REs from raw materials, as they seek alternatives to the highly polluting solvent extraction process. But with China banning the export of RE extraction and separation technologies in December 2023, as well as exports to the US of key electronic metals in December 2024, the impetus is growing to come up with viable Western production.

RE oxides are used in the manufacturing of permanent magnets for electric vehicle (EV) motors, wind turbines and electronics, as well as batteries, lasers, metal alloys, medical devices and military equipment.

Given that latter application, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded more than $439mn in financing since 2020 to support a new domestic supply chain, from the separation and refining of materials mined in the US to downstream production of magnets. In a broader trend towards "friendshoring" of critical material supply, the DoD considers Canada, Australia and the UK as domestic suppliers.

Like the US, European countries are also targeting domestic production in a bid to secure their supply chains.

Projects include the expansion of Nd and NdPr processing capacity at UK-based Less Common Metals (LCM), the addition of NdPr production at Belgian chemical group Solvay at its plant in France in 2025 and French consultancy Carestar's plan to start production in 2026 of RE oxides from mining concentrates and, later, recycled magnets. REEtec in Norway plans to start a commercial NdPr plant in 2025 and Swedish state-owned LKAB plans to start an RE oxide demonstration plant by the end of 2026. These initiatives are in line with plans across Europe to increase EV manufacturing and renewable energy.

Rare earth mining projects in Africa and Australia are largely targeting supply deals or integrated production in Asia or North America. Miners in Brazil, such as Aclara, are also planning integrated production by developing separation plants close to demand in the US and Europe.

On an entirely-unrelated note, I would make the following observations:

• Monaco has no such law that I am aware of.

• French is used in Monaco.

• I don't know whether Pornhub cares about the IP address from whence a user is accessing it, but NordVPN appears to have Monaco exit nodes.

• Pornhub apparently accepts cryptocoin payments via Verge.

and it’s especially surprising coming from two companies that serve billions of users worldwide

I mean, deanonymization and data-mining costs are gonna be R&D, so they're a fixed cost that doesn't really scale up with the size of the userbase, so it makes more sense, financially, for a company with a larger userbase to be putting resources into it.

You don't need to hit boiling levels to evaporate water.

You can editorialize in the body on Lemmy

Or, even better, just comment with one's position like everyone else.

Just noticed this on !technology@beehaw.org, which lemmy.world is defederated with. As I've seen a number of people using catbox.moe to host content posted on here before, thought it'd be of broader interest than to just the beehaw.org crowd.