Many sports teams come to mind. Pretty much any F1 team that exists is now worth a lot more on paper than it was purchased for. A few EPL teams come to mind too.
[1]
“ The Glazer family’s acquisition of Manchester United remains controversial to this day.
Their £790m takeover in the summer of 2005 came by way of a leveraged buyout: when a significant amount of borrowed money is used to fund the acquisition of a company, with the debt secured against that company itself.”
It's high time we took this seriously and required signing and 2FA on all publishes to NPM and NPM needs to start doing security scanning and tooling for this that they can charge organisations for.
That's an entirely different issue compared to what we're seeing here. If an attacker rug-pulls of course there is nothing that can be done about that other than security scanning. Arguably some kind of package security scanning is a core-service that a lot of organisations would not think twice about paying npm for.
> If an attacker rug-pulls of course there is nothing that can be done about that other than security scanning.
As another subthread mentioned (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45261303), there is something which can be done: auditing of new packages or versions, by a third party, before they're used. Even doing a simple diff between the previous version and the current version before running anything within the package would already help.
I noticed this in safari where the bookmark icon used to be one click was now two. Fortunately you can change it back in the settings by switching the tab layout (whatever that means)
I have found the majority of these relay services utterly useless. A large number of sites are using some kind of email verification service/API that detect all these relay/trash domains (mailinator etc.) and you can never sign up unless you have a legit domain. I'd be astonished if mozmail.com wasn't already on this list.
I'm not saying I don't value the idea behind this, but at least with Apple they are using their primary domain as a relay meaning it's too risky to block all the legitimate addresses.
It's a risk, and it would be great if they worked on more sites, but "utterly useless" is too brash in my opinion - there are still a lot of sites that do accept them, and each one is one account fewer that can be linked to your others. I don't think I've had problems receiving concert or cinema tickets, for example - the one-time uses for which they are most beneficial. I just checked, and I currently have 385 email masks used. Certainly worth the €1 a month.
(Disclosure: I used to be on the Firefox Relay team.)
I have had the same experience. The vast majority of the time I use relay masks to sign up for stuff they work as expected. It is incredibly irritating when it does not work, but I blame the vendor and take that into account to decide whether I actually want to give this vendor a "real" email address. I often bail on these kinds of failed signups. Voting with my wallet.
I'd say that's lucky. I'm using "Masked Email" on Fastmail with a personal domain and I still find that I get blocked from signups from time to time. I assume they're looking for some sort of pattern?
In the alternative, you can configure Fastmail to allow sending and receiving to/from a wildcard address (which for sending allows you to specify the sending address at send time). In my experience this works far more reliably, and is one of the features that pushed me to move to Fastmail many years ago.
+1 to this. I used to use their Samsung blocklist to prevent their shitty ADs being injected into my (pretty-old) tv but it's not been working for at least a couple of years.
What is the use-case now in 2025 for an e-ink watch? I have a Garmin Epix pro gen 2 which gets about a month of battery life and has a gorgeous AMOLED, has profiles for pretty much every sport ever invented, incredibly accurate GPS tracking, all day HR-tracking, ECG etc.
I understand it's about 4x the price, but there's also lower-end Garmin's that are about 2x the price with the same screen, slightly less features and similar battery life
4x the price to start off with, 51x51x15mm size, Only 11 days battery life if you use the always on display according to their site, completely locked down OS and ecosystem that puts you at 100% their mercy when it comes to EOL and updates, no idea what their privacy policy is, but you probably have to accept it if you want to use it and just put up with the fact that all your data, location, heart rate, and everything else is sent and stored and most likely used for training different AI models, and probably getting sold to different companies.
As to "why": I'm not interested at all in Garmin's sports and health features and their cloud stuff. Pebbles work well, get out of the way and have a nice, friendly and slightly quirky interface. There are many apps and watchfaces out there. As of the new ones, the OS is open source. Reasons enough for me. ;)
I likely will continue to use my Garmin watch because I rely heavily on the fitness stuff that they do so well, but outside of that the Garmin is "just OK."
If you want a fitness tracker that is also a smartwatch the Garmin is a great choice. If you want a smartwatch and don't care about fitness tracking then you're wasting a lot of money on stuff you don't care about with Garmin, for just an OK and extremely locked down device.
This is off topic, as the Pebble doesn't really aim at a use case I care about. Navigation and tracking of hikes and other daytime outdoor activity is my use case.
Automatic illumination has never worked well for me on any watch. It seems I just don't roll my wrist to view the screen the way other people do, so this heuristic fails badly for me. I often read my watches via ambient light and the light hasn't triggered or comes later after I've already seen what I want. And on the other hand, I get annoyed by false-positives where it just lights up randomly in my peripheral vision. So I often disable the automatic light feature.
So, I enjoy the always-on but passive aspect of a transflective LCD display. It is practical like a conventional watch with physical hands. It works well in bright sunlight, well enough in other decently lit environments, and at least copes with dark via the backlight. I wish it was even more reflective for low light, but the recent LCDs are not bad.
I vastly prefer my Garmin FR255 which seems like the last of its breed. Garmin may have lost me as a repeat buyer with the changing products. I think I'd like their Enduro line, but not at those prices. I don't like many of the compromises of the Instinct line either, but it seems the only option left.
> This is off topic, as the Pebble doesn't really aim at a use case I care about. Navigation and tracking of hikes and other daytime outdoor activity is my use case.
I was thinking about that, I like my iWatch logging my hikes.
But then I realized that I always have my phone with me anyway. And I already use a self-hosted track recorder ( https://github.com/Freika/dawarich/ ). So Pebble has one more order from me.
iWatch and the recent Android phones have some nifty features like fall detection and heart rate alarms, but their privacy and the ease of use are deteriorating.
I've been satisfied with how well the on watch GPS and barometric sensor are used by Garmin to give clean data, including consistent ascent/descent figures.
This is the main value of the watch to me. I like it as a standalone tool in the wilderness. I am not in the market for a phone peripheral. To me, the phone app is a peripheral to setup/maintain the watch and manage its data. But during hikes they are not connected at all.
I also really like the "course following" navigation on the watch and the customizable data pages. So I can have at my wrist a concise dashboard of timing, distance, elevation, ascent/descent, and upcoming turn guidance as I approach trail junctions. It's there at a glance.
I do also have mapping software on the phone for redundancy and other purposes, but the watch will get me to my destination on its own.
I think that you can get course following to work with Bluetooth? The phone can just send a notification when it approaches the fork.
Though if you want to use your watch as a primary navigation device, you likely need to use LCD/OLED. eInk is not great for interactive map use, not a great use-case for Pebble.
For backup, I like carrying a Garmin satellite communicator. It has its own offline maps and a way to call for rescue in a pinch.
Same. Amoled watches feel like TEXT IN ALL CAPS to me, screaming for attention when all they should do is make information available, vs force-feeding data. For attention, there's the vibration buzzer (which I absolutely love, so much more personal than a phone jumping around on the table)
Garmins are incredibly expensive and not everyone wants a fitness tracker. Garmin's UX is also very disjointed between devices for how expensive they are. Plus, battery life tends to be garbage for smartwatches. I just sold my Apple Watch for a Coros because I was tired of trading battery life for features I didn't want/use and Garmins also require yet another subscription for some features. As someone who just spent the last month deciding on a new fitness wearable, much of the market is full of bloated devices that don't do everything right, but instead do a handful of things right with a laundry list of caveats.
There's still a strong market for dumb watches too, so a long-lasting "smart" device that does some things but not as much as an Apple Watch, Garmin, Coros, etc while still serving as a general information displaying wearable sounded enticing. Unfortunately Apple's lockdown of the iPhone for the previous Pebbles (which I think might still be a thing) and my need for fitness tracking are what prevented me from buying a Pebble.
> Garmin's UX is also very disjointed between devices for how expensive they are.
Yeah... I bought an Instinct 2S hoping it would scratch the same itch as Pebble, but the UX is really awful.
The Pebble OS UX is really something special because it's so... obviously correct. Vertical menus just a few layers deep. You can set shortcuts on long-press but they aren't required to do the basic functions. It boggles my mind that Garmin cannot make an interface that doesn't require a lot of memorization in remembering all the right buttons to press/hold.
I want to join in with a Garmin rant. I also made the switch to a Coros after owning 3 Garmin watches. Each Garmin seemed to last almost exactly 3 years before abruptly dying. Each time I wanted to buy essentially the same watch only to find the new watches had more features and a higher price. The last round the "upgrade" more smart watch features, fewer sport watch features, and less battery life. The lower priced watches were always carefully missing select features that I wanted. I was doing triathlons which I guess Garmin thought they could coerce me into buying separate bike/run/swimming devices or paying 3-4X to get that extra 4mm of screen to show an extra data field. Garmin priced and segmented themselves out of a customer.
The new Pebble is very similar to the Coros Pace but without the GPS but with hackability and that makes me very interested.
I have an Instinct 2 that cost me under $200 new, goes 2+ weeks between charges, and handles all activities I throw at it quite well.
I agree: their launching of a subscription service is disappointing, because (1) it was wonderful having a no-recurring-cost ecosystem before, and (2) presumably that's where they'll be investing their product dollars. But, it's not required, and to date, it's not particularly high value.
I looked at the Instinct 3 with Solar because I really wanted the best battery life out there, only to find out Garmin neglected to include topo maps (I wanted a device for hiking and backpacking so that's disappointing) in the Instinct 3 and despite being $400+ the casing is plastic. Odd choices for that price. I feel like the Garmin interfaces are also just... not great. Way too busy for such a small screen. The Coros watch face I'm using right now includes: time, date, day, elevation, steps, calories burned, heart rate and battery level all on a simple, uncrowded and easy to read b&w face... It's called Particular but I can't find a screen shot of it. It's leagues easier to read than what I've seen of Garmin and Apple (which for some reason still has their faces so locked down it's restrictive).
Personally, I try not to use screens for a few hours before going to bed. Before bedtime, I limit myself to my e-ink book reader.
The idea of having a screen on my wrist doesn't particularly appeal to me.
My partner has one and when they turn over in bed, I am sometimes blinded by the screen which still glows brightly even at the lowest setting in complete darkness.
That's why I'm considering a e-ink watch. The reason I didn't commit yet is that I fear that notifications and such before bedtime could be just as harmful to my nightline peacefulness.
You may also find interesting that in this release update he mentiones that the backlight LED is now RGB and they are toying with ideas like making the backlight blue light aware at nights, etc.
This would be interesting. I was gifted a Kindle with backlighting recently after my old first generation one broke. The backlight is useless to me because it shines blue, so I just use a candle.
Probably because the Apple Watch is effectively a modern 10 year old smart phone made tiny with an ARM Cortex A series CPU running at nearly 2GHz while the Garmin is a ARM Cortex M series microcontroller doing ~200MHz.
That is the (modern) Apple way. They optimise for smooth experience first¹, other factors second.
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[1] Actually second, their priorities are money->UX->others - hence being uncooperative with any efforts to improve standard web apps despite the potential user benefits as they could compete with their appstore
My Garmin doesn’t get 30 days but does routinely get 2 weeks, which is fine with me. The battery life is probably the only reason I have never tried the Apple Watch, and I check every generation to see if there has been an improvement. Even the large sport / epic one only gets pathetic 36 hours. It’s mind boggling how Garmin can be so good at this and Apple cannot.
Probably use-case. I only really engage with my watch to check the time and my pulse which I can do with a glance, otherwise the screen is permanently off. The other times are when I'm doing some activity (running, swimming) and GPS is on but for example with running the screen still only shows when I glance at it. Apple still has an enormous amount of room to optimise their hardware and software in this space but I've no idea why they haven't done it yet.
The Apple Watch feels like it's designed as a very small iPhone. It has a lot of unnecessary functionality on-device, like email, a separate iMessage client, and its own Focus settings, which can sync to the iPhone, possibly as a requirement to make the watch operate independently. All these things take up battery power.
Also, Apple sees no benefit having their watches last longer, so they're adding features instead of optimizing them, as long as it hits 18 hours or so.
Yea I see the Apple Watch an extension of iPhone. It's an accessory that integrates with the ecosystem and offers conveniences. I see it as a different product with different use cases that other competing watches.
For most people, the batter is enough for the day of an average use and they charge it at night with their phones.
I don't know about the Apple Watch Ultra 2 however and how it compares.
Agree with sibling comments, but I think it's a bad choice of comparison.
I'm a Garmin Venu fan, but... apparently it was a $350 watch[0], and now there's a $450 version[1] and an $800 version[2]. There's still an older one[3] available for $250 (or ~$185 on Amazon). Though I got my original Venu "refurbished" for under $100 (and it still had all the plastic wrap, etc. so was truly "like new.")
10-11 day battery when new (mine gets 6-7 days after several years of use, but I have never used always-on-display.)
If I can get a Venu 2/2S/2S Plus/3/3S as a refurbished watch for ~$200-250, then I would go that route over an inexpensive Pebble 2 Time. Love that OLED screen. But I totally get the hacker ethos favoring the Pebble OS over Garmin. (Garmin does have a pretty good watch OS, and most things work without a subscription, which was a major factor in my purchase.) For $450 (or more...) it is not comparable to Pebble's offering.
The Pebble battery life is with the display always on.
It's squarely aimed at people who want the watch functionality to be first and foremost - no dorky wrist flicks or the distraction of the screen coming on and off all the time.
> The Pebble battery life is with the display always on. … no dorky wrist flicks
My watch display (Garming Fenix 7) is always on and the battery life is great. Any dorky wrist flick or button presses are for the backlight when it is needed.
[Though as others point out, the balance of needs targetted by the two devices differ noticably]
Hmm, looks like your Garmin has somewhere between 30h (with everything turned on) to 11d of battery life, which is not bad for needing to power a bright screen. I wear a Skagen Jorn hybrid, which has physical hands over a round e-ink display, which lasts ~3w on a charge for me. I also like e-ink better in daylight, AMOLED has gotten pretty good, but it's still harder to read in bright conditions (though obviously easier in dark ones!)
Citation needed; that Garmin watch cited claims about 30 hours of life unless the screen is mostly off and you severely hamper the features (i.e. "smartwatch mode"). I wont doubt you can get it to last weeks like that.
These devices are able to always show the display, don't need to turn off features, can still show notifications, etc.
I recently switched to an AMOLED Garmin from a watch with an always-on screen (and before that, a pebble), so maybe I can weigh in.
The use-case for a transflective watch are the same as they were in 2013. I don't really care if my watch has a beautiful vibrant display, I want it to show the time, every single time I look at it. The Garmin's wrist turn gesture detection is decent, but far from perfect. I need to either poke the screen, push a button, or very deliberately raise my wrist to trigger the gesture detection. Also, it emits light every time the screen wakes, whether I'm looking or not, and whether the light from the watch will be disruptive or not.
None of that sounds convincing? Then this product probably just isn't aimed at you. And I don't mean that to be snarky, preferences around smartwatches are just really particular to the individual.
Speak for yourself. I can't wait for my Pebble to arrive so I can junk drawer my awful Garmin watch. The UI is dreadful to the point that I can't believe no one else notices. Like, doesn't anyone else notice how hard it is to get it to wake up the backlight so you can read the screen? I can shake my hand like I'm a paint mixer and it does nothing.
And that's not even talking about the software bugs that destroy a full battery in moments.
The Garmin is a sports watch, the use case is for people who want a smartwatch that is not a sports watch. Why pay 4x or even 2x the price for features you don't need?
In fact, I am tempted by the Pebble Core 2 (which is the lower-end version) because it ticks all the boxes: affordable ($150), supports notifications, vibration, good battery life (30 days), and of course it tells the time. It is also one of the most open smart watch platforms.
I am not a competitive athlete, I don't need a detailed report of my physical activity, and my idea of health is not chasing numbers unless it comes from a prescription. Not saying it is wrong, it is just not my thing. As for GPS tracking, it is a nice feature, but AFAIK, Pebble watches can use the GPS in your phone to do some limited navigation.
Pebble watches still have some basic health tracking features, like step counting, sleep tracking, heart rate. All probably inaccurate like for most watches, but considering how cheap these things are, why not put them in.
I used to love Garmin and I'll probably always use their watches for actual sports, but I don't trust the company anymore.
I heavily debated getting one of these and I bit the bullet a few days ago. The use case is I want a watch that I can tinker with and not giving Garmin my data.
Garmin introduced a subscription and you can guarantee that'll pave the way for the base experience to get shittier over time as they funnel people to it. If it works other fitness watches will follow.
As soon as someone makes a good enough fitness app for that it becomes a way better option, it could actually get better over time without breaking.
my Garmin Fenix 6 used to survive with 21 days of display always one but lowest brightness, if I didn't use any GPS.
Now, after 3 years it is somehow down to 10 days. No chance of debugging where it comes from as I haven't changed anything on my side.
But I didn't have this issue with my other garmins before.
Also, you have to consider that I charge my watch ~10 times less than my phone (roughly every 10 days). So the total amount of charging cycles was maybe ~100 times.
I use Garmin myself and I'm sure I won't switch to anything else for many years, as for what I need is amazing. It's a complete fitness product, with a healthy dose of smart watch features added to it.
Pebble is very different product. It's a watch for tinkerers with some fitness features added to it.
This would be an interesting additional layer for google maps search which I often find to be lacking. For example, I was recently travelling in Gran Canaria and looking for places selling artesan coffee in the south (spoiler: only one in a hotel which took me almost half an hour to even find). Searching for things like "pourover" and "v60" is usually my go-to signal but unless the cafe mentions this in their description or its mentioned in reviews it's hard to find. I don't think they even index the text on the photos customers take (which will often include the coffee menu behind the cashier).
Yeah, that can be somewhat of a problem in bigger cities ;-) It's pretty common for people to have taken a photo of the menu in cafes but as mentioned it seems google isn't ingesting or surfacing that information for text search.
English speaker living in Finland (15+ years) checking in. It’s doable but very difficult. I haven’t succeeded and of all the foreigners I know - only a handful have learnt the language to the point of being able to function. Most of them Germans - interestingly.
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