[dotancohen]

I use a Boox E-Ink tablet with the built-in handwriting notes app. It exports to PDF and I can copy everything to my Debian machine via ADB. I absolutely love it. E-Ink is close enough to paper for me, and the EMR (Wacom) stylus is close enough to a pen for me.

[kid64]

Yeah but do you trust those guys?

[dotancohen]

I am aware that people don't trust the Chinese. Which brands do you trust?

As another poster mentioned about the ReMarkable, the Boox works just fine offline. I do use mine online, e.g. for reading HN as I prefer the E-Ink screen for text. But as for note-taking, everything I do is offline, including moving the PDF documents to the desktop via ADB.

[kid64]

It's not about their Chineseness. They're notorious, unapologetic GPL violators with a poor track record when it comes to privacy and general integrity (paying for reviews, etc)..

See:

- https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/onyx...

- https://www.reddit.com/r/ereader/comments/13e8bw3/psa_onyxbo...

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23735962

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31247982

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37665408

- https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F0...

etc...

[dotancohen]

Thank you. The GPL violations are a long-term problem, most agreed, but the lack of a privacy policy is an immediate problem. What frustrates me is that I'm usually not complacent about such matters, but I purchased the device during a period of extreme time pressure so I never got around to checking that. In fact the device was specifically purchased to help me better reduce my cognitive load - which it does.

I just wrote to the company in the Feedback feature of the device, asking about where the privacy policy can be found and giving an example of where the privacy policy is found in my Samsung device.

Thank you for making me aware of the issue. I was vaguely aware that there were GPL concerns with Boox, but I did not realize that there is no stated privacy policy - technical potential for exploitation aside.

[kid64]

I think the accepted remedy is to root the device, then use a root-level firewall to prevent it from phoning home. But Boox can of course snap their fingers and undo that any time, and rooting comes with its own set of security concerns. In any case, you're strongly advised to never enter a password on the device using the on-screen keyboard, and rotate any credentials you may have already entered.

[throwawa324]

reMarkable tablet, for example, works offline just fine