EETree LLC seems to be a shell company owned by EETree Info & Tech Limited in China (https://www.eetree.cn).

I'm not sure what that means as far as payment processing etc, apparently sellers were all cut off with money owing and still have no explanation.

Also the AI-generated blog post on the Tindie site (under the name/account of assumedly-previous staff?), and the post above that says absolutely nothing about what's actually going on...

It looks from the outside like a Chinese tech blog just randomly bought Tindie, broke the site while moving it to their own servers, and now are trying to figure out how to run it?

Yeah, pretty sure there is a better way to make a transition—even a complete stack rewrite. Get your new stack operating before you make the switch—and you could have even staged the switch-over starting with one region first.

If they purchased the site, I get it, new servers, etc. But part of the purchase agreement should have stated that the site continues to be run/maintained for 6 months or so until the new owners have a replacement ready.

(I feel like someone reading HN could have (vibe?) coded a replacement for Tindie by now. I mean Tindie does have the name recognition… kind of?)

The prices I’ve seen mentioned are around USD$3-5 per “pixel”.

Similar to all the ePaper projects that show up here, they’re expensive but cool gimmicks.

Whole dollars per pixel is insane!

The whole mechanism looks very 3d printable... I wonder if one could design one with PCB coils and a large 3d print only? If so, cost could probably come down to cents per pixel...

You'd probably also need a single 'C' shaped piece of steel for the magnetic flux path, but you might be able to find a supplier for the right shape already used for something else you can buy in large quantities very cheaply (eg. Steel staples).

This fella gave it a shot. https://hackaday.com/2021/05/29/3d-printed-flip-dots/

These mention 25-30 fps, so the mechanism may cost a bit to be that sturdy.

I wonder if anyone makes cheaper versions that you're only supposed to update at 1 frame per minute or less...

Yes, because a majority just use a CSS framework to save time, and all the big/common frameworks have put a fair bit of effort into their default colours and typography.

I would rather go back to when all side projects used Bootstrap than this purple-on-purple-with-glowing-purple mess of stuff we have now.

It’s also interesting that you can tell which LLM provider was used to build certain sites, sometimes even model and version.

It’s insane though how many dark mode websites with purple there are right now, how come all LLMs converged on that style?

People get wobbly legs after spending a few days on a cruise ship at sea.

I would assume spending 10 days in zero G is orders of magnitude more chaotic for your motor skills.

It’s SO bad. It makes me not want to use my phone anymore and physically go get my laptop if I’m chatting/messaging someone.

It’s probably the worst typing experience I’ve had since resistive-touch screens on PDAs. At least with them you could still type what you intended to though, just slowly.

That's very cool.

I have a few ePaper picture frames that don't use any power, and when you tap your phone to them it uses the power-over-NFC to boot itself and update the photo you send to it. It's such a cool idea and something I always felt like could be used more for displays that don't need to update very often.

This sounds really neat. Is it a commercial product or did you build them yourself?

This is so cool. Could you share more about where I could find them?

Technically you could use a keyboard with any modern phone, so it’s not “wrong”, it’s just… extremely unlikely anyone would ever do it.

True. I had an iPhone with a broken digitizer so I just plugged a USB keyboard and mouse into it and it worked great.

If your workstation setup is built around a screen with USB ports, to which you attach peripherals and optionally daisy-chain with other monitors, and then expose a single USB-C cable to plug your laptop in, there are very good chances this will work out-of-the-box with any Samsung flagship released in the last ~decade or so.

(Yes, I occasionally do it on the go, whether at home or at work; typing on mobile sucks.)

When it comes to Google it’s not being pessimistic, it’s just being realistic.

Maybe for most of their acquisitions (but I don’t know). But they do get acquisitions right: YouTube, android, double click, Waze…

The majority (all, I'd say) of those are 15 years (and more) in the past by now. Not sure about Waze, well, looks like I was wrong, they were only acquired in 2013, so it's "only" 13 years in the past for them.

And more relevant, Mandiant.

Or Apigee. Or Looker. These comments are tiring.

The best of them all.

Edit: meant gmaps

Gmail was an acquisition? I thought it was internal? I remember them launching as an invite only (how i got mine) and it went from there. What is the story?

Its boring though?

Pessimism is so lame and uninteresting for discussions

Are you not entertained?

This is such BS… Google also bought YouTube for a bargain price early on… and that is far from the only successful purchase that Google has had

One of my kids just got a $13 “smart watch” which has a touch screen, camera with filters/editor, microSD storage, plays MP3s, records voice memos, has games, and more I’m probably forgetting.

It absolutely blows my mind how cheap tech is these days.

Can you post a link or maybe just the name? I'm curious!

This is so much fun, and some an awesome idea. Playing around with it gives me that same feeling as playing with MSPaint as a kid, exploring different brushes and seeing how they interact.