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A little while ago, I tried out an Android eInk tablet. That one didn’t quite work out, and I returned it, but I still had the feeling that something along those lines would be useful. As I ruminated on it, I realised that the need I want to cover was very specific: reading. I’m not looking for handwritten notes¹, or yet another way to read my email or browse the web. I want something to replace both my Kindle Paperwhite, for books, and my iPad Mini, for Readwise Reader (which I’ll refer to as “Reader” for brevity).

Both devices are getting on a bit, but are far from dead — they still have usable batteries, and work pretty much as they did when they were new. However, the Kindle is tied to Amazon’s ecosystem, and can’t be used with Reader, which rules it (or a newer version) out as a one-stop reading device. How about the iPad? It can access both Reader and the Kindle app (and Libby and BorrowBox and…). However, its glossy, backlit screen is not ideal for reading in the evening, and all but unusable outdoors. OLED might be an improvement, as it is on the phone and the watch, but as yet that hasn’t made it to the Mini. Moreover, the Mini isn’t all that mini — it’s noticeably bigger and heavier than the Kindle, and the metal-and-glass construction makes it feel less like something you just toss into a bag.

All of that steered me in the direction of another Android eInk device, but an eReader rather than a more general purpose tablet. After lurking on r/eink and r/readwise, I decided to get myself an Onyx Boox Go Color 7 (Gen II) (on the left in the photo at the top). This is in some ways the little brother of the Note Air 3 I tried in 2024, but with a few important differences. Firstly, it’s smaller and lighter (but more on that below), and has a plastic rather than metal construction. I consider the latter a plus for my particular use case, as it makes the device both more comfortable to hold for long sessions, and I have less instinct to treat it super-gently (the iPad Mini is pretty robust, but I feel like it needs coddling).

Another difference is, as the name suggests, colour. The Go Color 7 has a 7” Kaleido 3 display², in contrast to the monochrome eInk of the Note Air (and Paperwhite). I wasn’t particularly looking for colour for this device, but the black and white version of the Go seems harder to come by, so I decided to give it a go. To be honest, it’s a bit of a mixed blessing.

Kaleido adds colour by means of an overlay, which can reduce the clarity even for black and white. I didn’t find this a problem in practice, but I did notice that the display was a little darker and lower contrast overall. However, it’s still more than readable enough both with ambient light and when using the front light. The colour itself doesn’t really add much when reading prose ebooks, but but turns out to be a nice enhancement for articles and the UI, so overall I think it’s a win.

Software-wise, both the Reader and Kindle apps (installed from the Play Store exactly as you would on an Android phone or tablet) work well, better than I recall them doing on the Note Air 3. This might be due to a faster processor, improved eInk technology, software updates, or a combination of all three. In any case, it’s no longer a sticking point for me.

One minor speed bump was security. The Go doesn’t have a fingerprint reader, and entering a passcode every time I pick the device up quickly became tiresome. For now, I’ve decided that the right trade-off is to run without a passcode, but to keep the data on the device to a bare minimum. I’m not concerned about anyone reading my Kindle books, I don’t put anything particularly sensitive in Reader, and I make sure any purchases need a password, so the impact of someone else getting access to the device is minimal. As a nice side effect, it avoids feature creep on what is intended to be a focussed device, and mitigates any privacy concern around Boox themselves³.

After using the Boox for a week or two, I was pretty happy with it, aside from one niggle: the physical size. As you can see in the photo, it’s about the same height as the Kindle, but the width is closer to that of the iPad, giving it a more-or-less square shape. The reason for this is the wide bar on the side, containing two physical buttons for page turning⁴. This is pretty ergonomic when reading, but makes the device a bit cumbersome when you’re not. Unlike the Kindle, it won’t fit into a the back pocket of jeans⁵, and is a tight squeeze even in a jacket. This is a pretty minor inconvenience, but an inconvenience nonetheless.

This lead me to look again at the options, and I came across the Bigme B6 (pictured on the right at the top of the post, and bottom right in the size comparison). Bigme seem to be a smaller, more recent entrant into the niche that Boox, but they’ve been growing in prominence for a while, and seem to offer some strong alternatives. I ordered a B6 to try out in parallel, with the intention of returning or reselling whichever I didn’t want to keep.

The initial impressions were very good; while still plastic rather than metal, it feels solid in the hand, and everything seems well put together. I went for the Jade Green version, which makes a pleasant change from utilitarian black and grey. The squared-off profile make it seem slightly thicker than the Boox, but not massively so, and make it easier to hold by the edges. Most importantly, the size of the device accomplishes the aim of solving my pocket problem.

The software experience was more of a mixed bag. Broadly speaking, Bigme’s platform is similar to Boox’s, being a custom shell on top of Android and the Google Play Store. Kindle and Reader both worked well; no physical page turning buttons, but gesture controls do the job fine. The device felt a little more sluggish than the Boox, but not disastrously so, and certainly not enough to put me off out of the box.

One thing that did put me off was the strip of fixed controls along the bottom of the screen. These aren’t part of the eInk display, but are simply printed on. Not only can they not be visually changed, the software didn’t offer a way to customise the functionality. The best you can do is disable the Bigme store and AI (which I did immediately), but that still left three functions I don’t use often if at all, and a honking great eyesore glommed on to every page.

This is compounded by the size of the screen — 6”, like my old Paperwhite, rather than 7” like the Boox. I found that fine for reading prose, but a bit cramped for articles, particularly those with diagrams. The colour reproduction seemed significantly worse as well, not in terms of lack of vibrancy but rather consistency across the screen. This is particularly noticeable if you ever find yourself on a web page with a flat, mid-level background colour, like Daring Fireball. This looks fine on the Boox, but has very pronounced banding and fringing on the Bigme. This alone wouldn’t be a major issue, but was another in a growing pile of minor irritations that tipped the scales against the B6.

I ended up returning it, and sticking with the Boox. The convenience of a slightly smaller device didn’t outweigh the utility and functionality of the slightly larger one. I think my ideal form factor is probably somewhere between the two — the screen of the Boox, but without the side buttons⁶ — but for now I’m very happy with it. Especially as the weather improves, I’m appreciating having a lightweight and distraction-free device that lets me read anywhere. For me, at least, this is a niche that I’m glad is being served.

After more than a decade, my friend and colleague Cal Bryant has moved on from Cydar, and has written a long piece about the his time with the company. Cal started at the company not long after I did, and it’s great to have a look back at the journey we’ve been on. We’ll definitely miss him at Cydar, but I have no doubt he’ll continue to do great things at his new company. Aw, snap.

Reading OpenAI’s recent announcement of GPT 5.5, I was struck by the following pull-quote:

One engineer at NVIDIA who had early access to the model went as far as to say: “Losing access to GPT‑5.5 feels like I’ve had a limb amputated.”

They presumably intended this to be taken as an endorsement, but I read it as a warning. I don’t want to come to rely on a tool from a single vendor to such an extent that I can’t work without it. As demonstrated recently by OpenAI’s competitor Anthropic, that vendor can unilaterally degrade the service, by accident or design, or perhaps jack up the price by five times. Given the staggering expense in serving increasingly complicated models in increasingly complicated ways, both of these seem less like if then when.

A similar criticism could be levelled at cloud providers like AWS, and many other things, and it’s always wise to approach any such entanglement with eyes open. However, AI seems like a special case, as the alternative that it’s foreclosing is not another vendor, but your own skills. Despite the myriad problems with and around LLM-based coding tools, there definitely seems to be something useful there. Leaning on them too much, though, seems like a recipe for ending up in a very uncomfortable place when the music stops.

It’s been a bit quiet here of late; I’ve not put anything up anything since my now-annual New Year’s Eve book post. At time of writing, that’s ninety-five days ago, which is the longest gap I’ve had since 2022 into 2023. The reason is prosaic — there’s been a lot going on both at work and at home, and I’ve simply not been able to carve out the time. I don’t plan to go into either on here, but I wanted to plant a flag in the ground to encourage me to get back to writing. I have a couple of pieces in mind, so hopefully this declaration will act as additional motivation to get them over the line.

In the same way that two points make a line, I’m going to say that two posts make a tradition. This time last year I wrote about the books I read in 2024, and suggested it might become an annual thing. Making good on that threat, here’s my reading in 2025:

(The yellow bars indicate when I started and finished each book; the open ones are for books I was reading when the year started, or still have on the go.)

The biggest through-line has been the Matha Well’s MurderBot Diaries (highlighted in green). I added these to my list about the same time as last year’s favourite Hild, but I only got around to starting at the beginning of the year¹. Once I had started, I devoured them at a breakneck pace, having to make a conscious effort to read other stuff in between to avoid running out too quickly.

They’re for the most part short (novellas rather than novels), and the style is a fantastically readable inner monologue. What really makes the series, though, is the combination of kinetic set pieces with emotional literacy and an engaging main character. If you’ve not tried them out yet, I definitely recommend that you do so. Don’t let the title put you off; it sounds like it’s about a murderous robot, but they’re actually more of a cyborg.

When I wasn’t reading about everyone’s favourite telenovela-loving Security Unit, I tried to hit a reasonable mix of fiction and non-fiction, with variety within each. Careless People, Apple in China and This is for Everyone were all interesting both in their own right and in the context of the public discussion they sparked; I’m usually late to such things, but I’m glad I pulled my finger out in these cases, and will look to do so in the future. I also revisited old classics and familiar authors, and spent some enjoyable and thought-provoking hours with vintage computer texts.

Looking back, I’m happy that the time I spent reading over the last twelve months was time well spent, and it also provides me with a prompt to think about next year. Maybe more history? Some new fiction authors, maybe new genres? In any case, now that I’ve established a tradition, I’ll share all next December.

Happy New Year.

For reference, here’s a full list of the 38 books I read in 2025:

• Various: Take Us to a Better Place
• Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• Naomi Alderman: The Future
• Isaac Asimov: I, Robot
• Tim Berners-Lee: This Is For Everyone
• Alan Blackwell: Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI
• Leo Brodie: Thinking FORTH
• Clayton M. Christensen: The Innovator's Dilemma
• Lindsey Davis: The Silver Pigs
• Claire Dederer: Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?
• Richard deGrandis-Harrison: FORTH on the BBC Microcomputer
• F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
• William Gibson: All Tomorrow's Parties
• Nicola Griffith: The Blue Place
• Kazuo Ishiguru: The Unconsoled
• Beth Lincoln: The Swifts (I don't usually record books I'm reading with the girls, but this one is so good I'm making an exception. )
• Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale, Bjarne Hansen: Superman For All Seasons
• Tim Marshall: Prisoners of Geography
• Scott McCloud: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
• Patrick McGee: Apple in China
• John Muir: My First Summer in the Sierra
• Haruki Murakami: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running , 1Q84
• Arthur Norman and Gillian Cattell: LISP on the BBC Microcomputer
• Lewis Packwood: Curious Video Game Machines
• Terry Pratchett: The Wee Free Men
• Martha Wells: All Systems Red , Artificial Condition , Rogue Protocol , Exit Strategy , Network Effect , Compulsory , Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory , Fugitive Telemtry , System Collapse , Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy
• Christina Wodtke: Radical Focus
• Sarah Wynn-Williams: Careless People