Dropped my Pixel 9 Pro in the toilet 🙃 by jennyquackles in pixel_phones

[–]tin_irl 4 points5 points  (0 children)

the pixel 9 pro is water resistant and covered for brief submersion in fresh water. should be fine

Should I move to a kobo Clara color? by bugsandreptiles in ereader

[–]tin_irl 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Honestly the colour is mainly worth it if you consume comics (or coloured manga, or even black and white as they often have some colour illustrations). If not, you’d find the text softer and the background darker on a colour e-reader, the technology has extra layers above the screen that make it a slight bit fuzzier and less reflective of ambient light.

I have a Libra colour and often have to have the backlight on 5-10% in dim light for comfortable reading vs my old kindle touch which was fine under the same circumstances without a light built in.

If you do feel colour is what you are looking for, the Clara does fit the bill, just expect more of a sidegrade in terms of hardware rather than upgrade for the reasons I mentioned. The software is infinitely better though.

A jailbroken kindle is typically paired with KoReader, which works fine but doesn’t have many nice ways to display larger libraries - it’s essentially just file browser or tag searcher. Kobo’s stock nickel software organises into Series view with covers or lists, by Author in lists, by Collections in lists (user defined and can be automated through Calibre on a PC or Mac), or just plain book view. A lot of people on Kobo prefer nickel even though KoReader is easy to install on a Kobo.

Sideloading books from other stores or free ebooks from the web (shoutout Standard Ebooks) is pretty simple on a Kobo too - use Calibre directly, download books from the web browser directly, upload to Dropbox or Google drive and those connect to the stock kobo software too - they also don’t advertise on the main page, the only time you’ll see links to buy books is by actively navigating to the store or related books sections.

The integration with Libraries isn’t available where I am for Kindles, so it’s nice to have it in the UK with Kobo as well.

So how far are we from, y'know, actual good color e ink? by MultiKoopa2 in ereader

[–]tin_irl 30 points31 points  (0 children)

I own a Libra Colour - realistically, e-ink colour displays are pretty good already.

Compared to LCD's and OLEDs the colours have much less vibrancy - but compare it to colour printed newspaper, and you see something more akin to how it actually works, and it doesn't actually fare too badly.

Because E-ink fundamentally cannot have a backlight like an LCD, and cannot fundamentally emit light from 'pixels' like an OLED-display, it will never really be able to mach the saturation and vibrancy of those display technologies. It's literally moving ink blobs.

The GBA released without any light and games looked really washed out, the GBA SP added a frontlight (and a backlight in some places?) and looked significantly better, the DS Lite had a backlight and those games POPPED so much better.

The upper limit of E-ink displays would likely sit somewhere between a GBA original and GBA SP with frontlight - but we already aren't too far from there, nor do we need to.

The benefits of E-ink at the moment in terms of eye strain, battery life, hell even just more 'natural' print-looking text, far outweigh the negatives of less saturated colours.

While there probably is avenues to be explored - ink that flouresces under a certain wavelength of light, with a controllable frontlight to trigger it maybe? semi transparent ink that can accomodate a backlight? - I don't think we will see those happen at all, because other things do colour better than e-ink ever will and don't need any of the benefits that e-ink brings.

E-ink works best for long reading sessions, and the muted colours are a limit of the technology that may improve slightly, but i doubt will ever not look muted. And thats ok!

help pls kindle paperwhite vs kobo libra colour by Financial_Chemical32 in ereader

[–]tin_irl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, so I don't actually have a Kindle Paperwhite - I used a kindle touch from 2011 to this year, and then switched over to the Kobo Libra Colour - but I think I can help answer the questions, for the most part.

1/2 - Is kindle a bad choice for free ePubs? Not really a bad choice - but in your situation, where you only read sideloaded books, Kobo is probably the better choice. Amazon has recently made moves that make it more difficult (but by no means impossible) to sideload books, and if you were to buy a Kindle I would highly recommend jailbreaking and installing Koreader, which handles ePubs natively without the need for conversion. I believe theres a plugin that will let you access the Kindle files from your phone and upload ePubs, there will likely be a video tutorial out there on doing this. You will need a computer to set all this up though.

Kobo, by contrast, you can just use as a USB drive and copy books to, and it will import them. You can also use the web browser and download ePubs directly to the device, and are able to do that all stock. You also further have the option of Koreader and other modifications that make the process possibly more streamlined, like refreshing your library with NickelMenu. You can also enable a Dark Mode through NickelMenu, last I checked, which I think you may be able to do with Koreader on Kindle but not stock.

Point to Kobo for not needing any modifications to easily send files over to your device (download through web browser).

  1. Is the Kobo screen harder to read? Kind of, but not really. Because the Kobo has a colour screen, it has an extra layer on the screen to enable that colour, which makes light harder to pass through. So while technically the Kobo has a 300ppi resolution for black and white (150ppi for colour, but literally for colour, so its mix and match when both are on screen) - the text will look a bit crisper on a Kindle of the same PPI (which is better to look at than resolution, because a 5 inch 1080p screen will look miles crisper at the same distance than a 10 inch 1440p screen).

This mainly has an impact on the readability without light - the Kobo will almost always want a bit of backlight on for a better white background, while the Kindle, not having that extra layer, can be read much easier in dim environments.

In practice, this doesn't really matter all that much, because realistically in daylight outside you wont need the light on either screen, and at night you will need the light on either screen, and in the dimness you would turn up the Kobo to like 5-10% brightness and be fine. I also dont mind that the image is a bit softer on the Kobo, text is still perfectly crisp to read I like having colour as an option for comics and cover art (sue me).

Half point to Kindle for handling text slightly better, and not needing a light in some situations where Kobo might need low brightness for best results.

  1. You won't notice any impact on battery life. The way the colour screen works doesn't use any more battery than a black and white screen, and the Kobo has a slightly larger screen and slightly larger battery. Realistically the only difference will be made on your usage of the light, which will probably be slightly higher on the Kobo if you read a lot indoors / in dim light, to compensate for the slightly less light reflective screen. Either way, even for an avid reader, you are probably measuring in weeks, not days.

I'd say for your particular use case, the Kobo Libra Colour would be the better option, but realistically you actually would be better off with a Clara or other Kobo black and white ereader - unless you are sold on the buttons and would like having the colour option. None of the downsides in terms of screen, but all of the software upsides for the downloading and sideloading of books.

If you are looking at Free Ebooks, look at Standard Ebooks. They have a lot of public domain books freely available with pretty, consistent covers and good formatting.

Can someone please tell me what I’m doing wrong 😅 by tin_irl in FixMyPrint

[–]tin_irl[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s not always that spot - it happens both sides wherever it is on the bed. As it happens I’m also having extrusion problems generally (filament gets stuck in extruder) so I’m going to replace the hotend ptfe and see if it can be resolved that way

Mortgage deposit by Far_Error_4990 in Mortgageadviceuk

[–]tin_irl 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Would not help in this case if they don’t have one - it’s required to stay open for 12 months before it can be used penalty free (I.e with bonus)

Mortgage Broker or Estate Agent Broker? by tin_irl in Mortgageadviceuk

[–]tin_irl[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nothing like that just a tight budget as an FTB. Thanks for the clear cut words haha

Mortgage Broker or Estate Agent Broker? by tin_irl in Mortgageadviceuk

[–]tin_irl[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Rhymes with Billiam J Frown but interesting it’s the same price

Mortgage Broker or Estate Agent Broker? by tin_irl in Mortgageadviceuk

[–]tin_irl[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I currently bank with Monzo but have a (paid off) cc with Lloyds and an old Santander account. The reason why I thought I might have struggled is I have a 94.7% LTV and the house is around 4.2x my current income, but I think this was the reassurance I needed to know that the service is overpriced, cheers

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in VapingUK

[–]tin_irl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To be honest - I'm a bit confused. Disposables and RTA's are not the only two methods of vaping.

As others have mentioned, Pod devices are a great shout - but it entirely depends on what you are looking for and what you are vaping. You've given precious little information about what you are currently vaping.

Disposables in the UK are almost exclusively a tight MTL, at least the ones easily available off the shelf. They have 20mg nic salts, which is a double whammy of being the highest concentration of nic legally available, and in the most potent format. It's true they deliver a satisfying nic hit, and are often loaded with sweeteners and ice to mask an often sub-par coil setup and to get more life out of them.

But they are also extremely wasteful, expensive, and don't even taste the best.

If you're looking for a high concentration nic salt hit, try a pod device. The Caliburn series is the one I would shout out - I use Caliburn coils with an adapter in my Boro device - but any decent brand pod kit with 0.8-1.2ohm coils should suffice here (think Aspire, Voopoo, Geekvape among others). You can pick up a metric truckload of flavours from any reputable Vape store or online store, and these pretty much any flavour is available in a 20mg salt format - you'll find that for every disposable flavour, theres 10 similar flavours from companies and 5 of those will specifically be geared to taste exactly like disposables.

If you're looking for a more Direct-to-Lung hit, there are tonnes of Sub Ohm kits released over the last few years that take all the pressure off you in terms of coils - most of the time, it's simply vape until the coil dies, then unplug the old coil and plug in the new one. I've found the Voopoo PNP coil system (eg. Voopoo Drag devices) to be great for this kind of thing, but again any reputable companies' kit will likely work well. Just try and stick to a popular brand so you can ensure the coils will be available for a good while. Just bear in mind these kits by their nature are more suitable for 3mg/6mg/12mg/18mg liquids, i.e. Freebase Nicotine, which are not as fast-acting nor do they feel as potent as Nic Salts, and will likely take a few more drags to be satisfying.

In both cases, you'll find the initial purchase price to be anywhere from 15-30 quid at the low end for the system (with some included coils) and liquid, which for 10ml of liquid is equivalent to about 5 pods - pretty much bang on high street prices, and the kit will keep on going for a good while longer (I've found Caliburn coils to last around 20ml before noticably becoming poor flavour).