for dashboard software like this are there any reliable techniques to prevent burn-in? I'd like to set up a large screen with a dashboard but I don't want to wreck the screen
The article says it can just use the Pi’s HDMI output as a screen, so you could presumably drive that at 60FPS if you want. I imagine the HDMI output is useful for debugging even if you ultimately intend to use an e-ink display.
There's nothing built in now, but a common technique would be to make the image e.g. ~10px larger in each direction, and then choose a random crop every other second.
It should be really easy to build a FrameOS app that does this. Add one node at the start of the render loop to increase the image accordingly, and one at the end to crop it back down. I was planning to use a similar technique to display smooth scrolling animations/slideshows, but it can definitely be used to prevent burnin.