[HN Gopher] All Kindles can now be jailbroken
___________________________________________________________________
All Kindles can now be jailbroken
Author : lumerina
Score : 1186 points
Date : 2025-02-17 01:42 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kindlemodding.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (kindlemodding.org)
| OuterVale wrote:
| Kindles have long had a history of gaolbreaks. I've scarcely seen
| a scene as dedicated as the folks over on the MobileRead Forums
| (https://www.mobileread.com/forums). I notice many of the names
| associated with this new break as people who were associated with
| hacking early Kindles back in the early 2010s.
|
| For context, it's been a little while since we've had a fresh
| gaolbreak for new Kindles. Last one was LanguageBreak, which came
| out back in 2023 and required firmware 5.16.2.1.1 or lower.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| Mate, I'm Australian and even I think a gaol is just a dyslexic
| watching soccer.
| ggm wrote:
| Only Americans (to the extent I know) differentiate jail and
| gaol. Jail and prison.
|
| I first read gaol in a 1960s kids book by Randolph Snow. An
| Australian as it happens.
|
| https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/1496448
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Only Americans (to the extent I know) differentiate jail
| and gaol. Jail and prison.
|
| You inhabit a very different reality than everybody else.
| Americans do not differentiate jail and gaol; Americans
| don't use the word "gaol" under any circumstances, ever. It
| is not a part of American English.
| ggm wrote:
| I apologise for mixing terms. Jail and Prison? Do you
| disagree this is a point of difference? Americans also
| don't seem to talk about being on remand. In police
| custody is unwieldy, I agree.
| int_19h wrote:
| "jail" and "prison" are the American English words in
| question.
|
| Although that distinction is rarely relevant in casual
| conversation in practice. People say "jail" and mean
| "prison" all the time.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| As int_19h notes, there are people (in the US) who
| believe that there is a difference between the meaning of
| the word "jail" and the meaning of the word "prison". And
| as int_19h also notes, those people are wrong; Americans
| will just be confused if you try to use the words
| differently. It's similar to the insistence of a group
| with near-perfect overlap that crimes for which jail time
| isn't a possible punishment can't be correctly referred
| to as "crimes".
| LordKeren wrote:
| While they are often used interchangeably, it is not
| uncommon for people to make the distinction between jail
| and prison in the US.
|
| It can definitely come across as a "Frankenstein's
| monster" type of pedantic correction, but they truly do
| mean two different ideas in the US
| RajT88 wrote:
| American here. Never seen the word written before.
| gabeio wrote:
| Same had to actually look it up and at least Merriam-
| Webster lists the word as "chiefly British spellings of
| JAIL, JAILER". Which at least hints that the dictionary
| writers thought it is less common out side of Britain.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| Obviously, you haven't visited any colonial American
| sites. It used to be the normal spelling.
| t-3 wrote:
| I've also seen the spelling used in old westerns, which I
| just so happened to be reading in jail.
| wink wrote:
| Non-native speaker here and I learned the word gaol from
| some fantasy literature only a couple years back.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's a common spelling in fantasy video games and books,
| but it feels kind of performative.
|
| These same games will have voice actors pronounce "ye" as
| it's written, unaware that the y is a typographic
| substitute for Th. "ye olde" is pronounced "the old". But
| likewise, there's some VAs that clearly only ever read a
| word, like in the newer God of War games where a
| character mangles "prescient".
| throaway89 wrote:
| It's the traditional spelling. You'll see it in the
| British Isles, and on some old buildings here in Canada.
| butshouldyou wrote:
| Though it does exist, 'gaol' very infrequently used in
| the UK too.
| PostOnce wrote:
| I dropped out in the first semester of 9th grade and even
| I know the word gaol, because I read books written before
| last year.
| otteromkram wrote:
| Yes, but how often do you use it in your vernacular?
|
| Since that's the topic being discussed, then first
| portion of your statement wasn't necessary.
| t-3 wrote:
| It's the same word, just an alternate spelling which is
| now defunct.
| recursive wrote:
| I graduated from high school and even got a bachelor's
| degree. I've read several books written before last year,
| and have talked to dozens of people. I've never heard or
| seen the word gaol. And if I had, I'd probably assume it
| was "goal" misspelled. I make no assertions of being
| particularly smart or literate, but only typical.
| beowulfey wrote:
| Knowing the word exists is a different thing than using
| it in daily speech. I, and I'm sure most people, would be
| very surprised to hear there are populations of the USA
| where "gaol" is used regularly.
| donohoe wrote:
| American here (another) but also Irish (moved here in my
| 20s)...
|
| Americans never use 'gaol'. It's rarely used in Ireland
| but definitely a term there.
| mahoho wrote:
| That's not true. Plenty of ill-behaved FFXI players
| (myself included) once served time in Mordion Gaol.
|
| https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Mordion_Gaol
| yellowapple wrote:
| I'm an American and I don't differentiate between jail and
| gaol; I just assumed the latter to just be a funny European
| spelling of the former.
|
| But yes, we do differentiate between jail and prison - the
| former usually being for those with short sentences or for
| those awaiting trial, and the latter being for those with
| long sentences. Interesting that other countries don't
| maintain that distinction - but I guess most countries
| don't have such a sprawling prison-industrial complex to
| warrant separate short-term v. long-term detention
| classifications.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| The American distinction is jail v prison.
|
| In practice, the distinction is overblown.
|
| Jails do hold long term prisoners, and prisons get pre-
| trial prisoners too.
|
| There's literally a market for jail beds. So prisoners
| are often sent where there's an open spot, with little
| distinction between "short term" and "long term".
|
| A better distinction is that jails are run by a law
| enforcement agency, while prisons are not.
| otteromkram wrote:
| Dictionary essay of the difference between the two words:
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/jail-vs-prison-
| diffe...
| t-3 wrote:
| Your distinction is probably a better one, but the one
| I've heard is lockups hold temporarily from hours-days,
| jails hold prisoners for sentences up to a year, prisons
| for over a year. People might end up in a jail for much
| longer, but normally they don't.
| eloisant wrote:
| France also has the same distinction. "maison d'arret" =
| jail, "centre de detention" = prison.
|
| the word "prison" however (that also exist in French) is
| a generic term for both.
| Leherenn wrote:
| It also has "geole", which is also old fashioned.
| yellowapple wrote:
| I did say "usually" :)
|
| > A better distinction is that jails are run by a law
| enforcement agency, while prisons are not.
|
| Depends on whether you count corrections agencies as law
| enforcement agencies. On the one hand, I'm pretty sure
| all states have distinct agencies for police v. prisons,
| but on the other hand, corrections officers are usually
| sworn peace officers and therefore would count as "law
| enforcement".
|
| Another distinction, come to think of it, is that prisons
| are usually under federal or state agencies1, while jails
| are usually under county or municipal agencies.
|
| ----
|
| 1 The only exception I've found is Chester County Prison
| in Pennsylvania, which is under the Chester County Dept.
| of Corrections. Wikipedia also has an article on a
| "Northampton County Prison" (also in PA), but that
| county's website calls it the "Northampton County Jail";
| on a tangential note, if corrections agencies don't count
| as law enforcement agencies, then the Northampton County
| Jail would be an exception to the "jails are run by a law
| enforcement agency" rule.
| chasil wrote:
| A county jail is commonly used for defendants accused of
| state crimes until their sentencing, after their
| convictions.
|
| Post conviction, the prisoner will be moved to a state
| penitentiary to serve out their sentence.
|
| I don't know how these distinctions work at the federal
| level.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Depends on the state. Some states "allow" prisoners to
| serve short sentences in jail. Including short
| consecutive sentences, so, long sentences.
| lupusreal wrote:
| It's true that prison is an industry in America, but it's
| also true that only a small minority of prisoners are
| held in private prisons; about 8% of federal and state
| prisoners are in private prisons.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The prison industry isn't limited to private prisons;
| there is substantial private industry financial interest
| in the operation of the public prisons, as well, whether
| its providing services to a literally captive market,
| benefiting from prison labor, etc.
| butshouldyou wrote:
| Seeing your comment, and all the comments that follow, is
| reminding me of the "Misconceptions developers believe
| about X" posts that circulate on here occasionally.
|
| It seems like there's a lot of beliefs that don't
| universally apply.
| polshaw wrote:
| There's a confusion here. Gaol is simply a rarely used (I
| would say archaic) spelling of jail. It does not mean
| prison.
|
| British English also differentiates jail and prison, by
| extension I assume that's universal.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| British English as a language might, British people do
| not, and the physical facilities are the same. We say
| someone is "held on remand" if they are incarcerated pre-
| trial, and the part of the prison which holds prisoners
| pretrial is often referred to as the "remand wing".
| Andrex wrote:
| I feel like I've read, well not _a lot,_ but a pretty
| decent amount. More than my average peer, probably.
|
| I don't think I've ever once encountered "gaol" before
| today. Reading the parent comment, I believed it was a
| non-English language loanword, and probably a recent one
| at that, until I read the comments.
|
| It's not like I avoid archaic works, either. It's
| possible I did come across the word at some point, but it
| was a one-off and without any repetition it faded quickly
| from my memory.
|
| Am I a one-off?
| lumerina wrote:
| I'm new to kindle, I've been into this since 2021 so im not so
| aware of kindle's jailbreaking history. Can you tell me what
| gaolbreak is?
| shasheene wrote:
| Gaol is an archaic spelling of jail, that retains the same
| pronunciation and meaning as jail :)
| dgfitz wrote:
| So "gaol" is supposedly an alternative way to spell "jail"
| that I first encountered in a video game.
|
| I keep seeing "tyre" on here too. I guess hn is hipster for
| alternative spellings.
| richiebful1 wrote:
| "tyre" is just UK English
| ggm wrote:
| As is gaol
| petesergeant wrote:
| Which dictionary are you using that doesn't mark it as an
| archaic form in British English?
| FabHK wrote:
| Merriam-Webster has it as "chiefly British spelling" of
| jail, and Oxford English Dictionary has it as a
| "variant".
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gaol
|
| https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?q=gaol
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| More significantly, Collins just says " _British_ a
| variant spelling of jail ".
|
| https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/gaol
|
| I believe Collins is the standard dictionary that British
| people use, much like Merriam-Webster for Americans.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > I believe Collins is the standard dictionary that
| British people use
|
| And you would be wrong. They've only been putting out a
| dictionary since 1979. OED[0] is The Dictionary in the
| UK, and I've quoted its take on it in an adjacent
| comment.
|
| 0:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_English_Dictionary
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Well, come on, that's obviously false. Zero percent of
| British people own an OED or even have the resources
| necessary to consult one when they want to look something
| up. It costs over a thousand US dollars.
| sulluk wrote:
| I don't disagree that practically zero percent don't own
| a copy, but pretty much anyone in the UK can access the
| OED with a free library membership. It's pretty much the
| only thing I use my library card for these days.
|
| If people do use a dictionary these days they most likely
| do use a Collins or Oxford Dictionaries (not the same as
| the OED). But I imagine that most people would just use a
| Google search and rely on the top box which itself is
| using Oxford Dictionaries for its definitions.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > Zero percent of British people own an OED
|
| I suspect fewer than 1% of British people own any paper
| English-language dictionary, but the sort of people who
| need a dictionary beyond what dictionary.com can offer
| will have online access through their employer, their
| institution, their local UK public library, or for the
| princely sum of PS8/m for a personal account when paying
| annually.
|
| Regardless, the authority that the OED holds on British
| English is best understood through the criticism section
| of it on Wikipedia, with people decrying its absolutely
| overwhelming influence:
|
| > criticizing the OED is extremely difficult because "one
| is dealing not just with a dictionary but with a national
| institution", one that "has become, like the English
| monarchy, virtually immune from criticism in principle"
| defrost wrote:
| Many libraries in the UK _and_ Commonwealth countries
| have the full volume set the first, second, or both
| editions of the OED.
|
| I've routinely referenced it in both the university
| library and the local town library since 1980.
|
| There's been a digital version of almost all of the
| second edition kicking about since just prior to the
| print release of the second edition - I have that on most
| computer images I own.
|
| The OED offers digital subscription access to the second
| edition and to the in progress third edition which a good
| number of people, libraries, companies subscribe to.
|
| It's _the_ dictionary of reference for those serious
| about the English language.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| The American Heritage Dictionary is far better than
| Merriam-Webster in my experience.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > Merriam-Webster has it as "chiefly British spelling" of
| jail
|
| It's odd that it doesn't mention it as archaic, because
| it's provably Just Not Used in the real world [0], but
| it's also an American dictionary, so all bets are off
|
| > https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?q=gaol
|
| If you click on the entry your search results give, it
| takes you to the entry for jail (eg: jail is the
| canonical noun it's using). Jail and gaol have slightly
| different routes into English, with gaol being via
| Northern French. Sez the OED:
|
| > "remains as a written form in the archaic spelling gaol
| (chiefly due to statutory and official tradition); but
| this is obsolete in the spoken language, where the
| surviving word is jail, repr. Old Parisian French and
| Middle English jaiole, jaile. Hence though both forms
| gaol, jail, are still written, only the latter is spoken.
| In U.S. jail is the official spelling."
|
| Finally, though, "jail" as a noun is pretty infrequent
| compared to "prison", which are the same thing in the UK
| (unlike the US), but the latter is much more common. The
| verb form on the other hand is almost always "jail", so
| when you are "jailed", you're sent to a prison.
|
| 0:
| https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/100681/which-
| wor...
| otteromkram wrote:
| Cambridge has it as old fashioned.
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/gaol
|
| Cambridge is British, is it not?
| technothrasher wrote:
| I see gaol a lot here in New England historic places.
| There are plenty of old crumbling "town gaols" and such.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I did some googling and it turns out "gaol" was indeed
| the more popular spelling, but only up until 1960 when
| "jail" took over; numbers: https://books.google.com/ngram
| s/graph?content=gaol%2Cjail&ye...
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Brit here. Nobody here says "gaol" in normal speech or
| writing. Usually "prison", sometimes "jail".
| ggm wrote:
| How do you know if they SAY jail or gaol given they're
| pronounced the same, being alternate spellings of the
| same word?
|
| Nobody writes/uses I can concur. The pedantry here, is
| somewhat apposite surely?
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Fair enough. No one writes it then. Although it could be
| a world thats only ever spoken. If there is such a thing.
| hnbad wrote:
| Pet peeve of mine but technically prison is for convicts,
| jail is for those yet awaiting a conviction but who
| aren't trusted to show up to court if allowed to roam
| freely. That the jail system (in the US especially) has
| essentially become a form of preemptive incarceration
| without the presumption of innocence is largely an
| artefact of the bond system, the overwhelmed courts and
| the perverse incentives in all of those systems from law
| enforcement to private prisons.
|
| I realize the terms are often used interchangeably but I
| think the distinction is important especially because of
| the implications for presumption of innocence from
| conflating the two.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Pet peeve of mine but technically prison is for
| convicts, jail is for those yet awaiting a conviction but
| who aren't trusted to show up to court if allowed to roam
| freely.
|
| Pet peeve, but despite being a frequently claimed
| technical distinction, this is wrong both in terms of the
| strict definition of the terms _and_ the way they are
| used as names of real institutions (though it is
| _approximately_ true in most US state justice systems--
| but not the federal system--if you consider only felony
| crimes.)
| Denote6737 wrote:
| As a life long englishman, this thread is the first time
| i've encounterd "gaol" as a word. Not an english
| spelling.
| golem14 wrote:
| P G Wodehouse uses the term, I'm fairly sure.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| "Tyre" is extremely common throughout most of the English
| speaking world. "Gaol" is used by attention-seeking
| Australians desperately hoping to kick off dumb threads
| like this.
| singingfish wrote:
| Tyre is clearly the correct spelling. I quickly tire of
| anyone claiming otherwise. Gaol is an archaic spelling
| which I've found incredibly confusing ever since I was a
| small kid a long long time ago.
| int_19h wrote:
| Tyre is clearly the correct spelling for the city in
| Lebanon. ~
| Tomte wrote:
| Oh, it's in Lebanon? I think it's mostly known for being
| in Civ 5.
| emmelaich wrote:
| In Australia, gaol is far more common than jail. Neither
| are used anymore really. It's more often just prison or
| penitentiary.
|
| Some of Australia's more popular historical sites are old
| gaols.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| I know, I lived in Australia for 5 years. That doesn't
| change the fact of my post - that in a thread about
| jailbreaking kindles, it's nothing but attention-seeking
| bait to use the term.
| jclulow wrote:
| Geeze, Louise! Did a Koala mercilessly bully you while
| you were there, mate?
| mvdtnz wrote:
| I have no problem with Australians, I think they're
| mostly great. Occasionally you'll get an obnoxious one
| who insists on inserting "gaol" into a conversation just
| to kick off an insanely stupid side thread.
| jclulow wrote:
| I have to say, as an Australian, your reaction is making
| me want to use the spelling more often. We're generally
| culturally averse to people taking themselves too
| seriously!
| freedomben wrote:
| I did a tour in OIF with Aussie air force troops. I love
| that about Aussie culture. That and the drinking :-D
| rainonmoon wrote:
| Also Australian, would never have thought to spell it
| like "gaol" these days but seconding this.
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| Tbf as a Kiwi (currently in the UK) I see a lot of
| Australians, when interacting with other cultures, kick
| up their Australian-ness as much as they can;
| strengthening the accent, swearing way, _way_ more than
| they usually would, using "mate" "bloody" etc way more
| than they do just speaking to me.
|
| I mean when two Australasians speak with each other in a
| foreign place I definitely hear the accent rise up a bit
| more outta the both of us but Aussies are something else
| when it comes to putting on a show, especially when
| Americans are involved (in my experience).
| snovv_crash wrote:
| More likely a dropbear.
| omeid2 wrote:
| Penitentiary? Maybe it is as a your-state thing?
|
| Never heard of it down here in NSW, and I worked with
| Police, Justice Department, Juvi, and the rest of police
| to prison pipeline.
| hnbad wrote:
| Strictly speaking Australia doesn't seem to have jails,
| although some "Community Correction Centers" serve the
| purpose of jails (i.e. holding suspects before trial):
| https://vanessaash.com.au/whats-the-difference-jail-and-
| pris...
|
| Prisons are where convicts go. Jails are where suspects
| awaiting trial go. People in prisons have been convicted
| and sentenced. People in jails might be proven guilty or
| not.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The simple rule you provide doesn't describe any real
| system; it seems to be an approximation drawn from how
| felony charges under state law in the US usually work,
| but more generally, in the US, Jails are local (usually
| county) facilities that both house suspects awaiting
| trial on state charges _and_ convicts serving state
| misdemeanor sentences, while prisons are either state
| facilities that hold felony convicts or federal
| facilities that can house anyone from pre-trial detainees
| on federal charges to convicts on any kind of federal
| charges.
|
| There are some variations among states, too; e.g., in
| California, some state felony convicts serve their
| sentence in county jails rather than state prisons.
| LordKeren wrote:
| Shout out to Elden Ring
| tspng wrote:
| Never expected HN to explain to me what "evergaol" means,
| but here I am. Thanks :)
| TaurenHunter wrote:
| It is a very old jailbreak: Ye Olde Gaolbreak! One had to
| bribe the town constable with a ha'penny and a pint of mead
| just to install a third-party reading app. Dost thou even
| root, sir?
| user_7832 wrote:
| Gawdamn, whatever happened to a respectable old Mediatek
| vulnerability being exploited by a suspicious app on ya
| computer that called itself something funny like Kingoroot?
|
| (Sidenote but I'm still impressed that thing would work
| without giving my computer half a dozen viruses)
| OuterVale wrote:
| Relevant recent discussion:
|
| Kindle is removing download and transfer option on Feb 26th - 299
| Points | 173 comments -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43070155
|
| Amazon ends kindle ebooks "Download and Transfer via USB" - 121
| Points | 94 Comments -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43041726
| Quarrel wrote:
| I suspect most people that go this route (ie download and
| manage their own ebooks, then transfer them to their Kindle)
| use Calibre, which afaik, is unaffected by this change.
|
| https://calibre-ebook.com/
| dlenski wrote:
| Does a jail broken Kindle allow me to remove the DRM from
| Kindle ebooks downloaded to it?
|
| (I genuinely don't know. Until now, I've always downloaded
| Kindle purchases via "Download and transfer via USB", then
| stripped the DRM and transferred to the device with Calibre.)
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Not in and of itself, no.
|
| It would allow another source to downloading them from the
| Amazon website (as that is going away) on to a PC where
| stripping software can (in some cases) be applied.
|
| It also might (but might not) be a way for decryption keys to
| be extracted from devices for that purpose, but it doesn't
| automatically provide such an exploit.
| xnx wrote:
| New Kindle Jailbreak Works with Any Kindle on Any Firmware: 5
| points | 45 days ago | 1 comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42579291
| shasheene wrote:
| Highlighting the very popular app enabled by this, KOReader:
| https://koreader.rocks/
|
| https://github.com/koreader/koreader
| RachelF wrote:
| Yes, KOReader is the reason to jailbreak a Kindle.
|
| It's way better than the built-in Amazon reader app.
| safety1st wrote:
| I was actually trying out KOReader (on Android via F-droid)
| last night and it... looks promising... but better than the
| Kindle app, really? It doesn't have a dark mode which is
| basically baseline for me reading at night. Or am I missing
| something?
| teroshan wrote:
| Is Night Mode what you are looking for?
|
| https://koreader.rocks/user_guide/#autowarmth
| safety1st wrote:
| I... think... it is. Thank you!
| noirscape wrote:
| E-ink screens usually don't want dark mode, because of the
| weird way they have to refresh[0]. The effect of that is
| much more visible with white text on black background
| compared to the opposite.
|
| There's however a dark mode still if you need it; go to the
| gear icon, screen, auto warmth and night mode. Tap the mode
| line to switch it from automatic settings (either on time
| schedule or coordinates) to manual.
|
| [0]: Basically, E-ink displays have to fully "reset" their
| screen by repeatedly toggling the pixels on and off, since
| they can't fully toggle themselves off normally; doing so
| will leave them with a bit of grey. Because this isn't very
| friendly on the eyes, most displays usually do this every
| couple "page changes" (actual pages when reading or moving
| in a menu.)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I've been reading at night for years on my Kindle, and
| dark mode works very well. During daytime you don't want
| to use it.
|
| When you're using a device actually for reading, you
| don't care about minor defects on the page, just like you
| wouldn't care about some stain on the page of a paper
| book when reading it.
| safety1st wrote:
| Thanks, I must have missed it, so that's the task when I
| go to bed tonight.
|
| I hate the idea of my book collection being chained to
| Amazon by DRM, absolutely hate it. This whole DRM mess is
| one reason I haven't bought a dedicated e-reader.
|
| Though, to be frank, it's not the only one, I spent a jaw
| dropping amount of money on a really good hardcover copy
| of The Lord of the Rings recently, and I feel like no
| ebook will ever come close to the reading experience of
| that thing. There is something about this immense,
| weighty, hardcover tome that just commands your attention
| and I still find that print on good paper causes less eye
| strain than even the e-ink screens I've used (though they
| are pretty good).
| eloisant wrote:
| Yes, I also tried it on Android to see if it's worth
| jailbreaking my kindle and honestly the UI is a bit of a
| mess. It takes a lot of tweaks to get a nice looking layout
| to start with, out of the box it's just tiny text filling
| the screen with no margin.
| kubb wrote:
| Does it have machine translation? That would be a killer
| feature for me.
|
| Edit: it has AskGPT!
| drewbitt wrote:
| For translation of more than a couple sentences on demand,
| you'd more likely translate the epub before you put it on the
| device, like with the Calibre plugin
| https://github.com/bookfere/Ebook-Translator-Calibre-Plugin .
| There are better solutions that have a dictionary for
| consistent name translations, too.
| risho wrote:
| which engine has the highest accuracy? how reliable is it?
| kubb wrote:
| Thank you for this! My Victorian novel reading experience
| is about to level up.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Koreader can also be installed on Kobo out of the box with no
| jailbreaking. Just in case anybody was thinking of getting a
| Kindle for this.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| It's worth doing so on older kobo readers in my experience
| because it turns pages faster, and it also correctly displays
| embedded ePub fonts that the native software doesn't. I don't
| know how many of you will ever read books that feature APL
| glyphs so I don't know how relevant that last bit is, and I
| can't speak for more recent models.
| SSLy wrote:
| stock kobo has two epub readers. trash one from adobe used
| for drmed files and stock epubs, and an actually good one
| for use with KEPUB files. There's a calibre plugin to make
| the conversion upon push to the device.
| anoncow wrote:
| Worth it just for this app.
| seneca wrote:
| @dang Can we link to the actual article, instead of a reddit
| post? https://kindlemodding.org/jailbreaking/WinterBreak/
| cwillu wrote:
| Email hn@ycombinator.com; "@dang" doesn't do anything
| dang wrote:
| Changed from https://old.reddit.com/r/kindle/comments/1hrwytr
| /all_kindles.... Thanks!
| a2dam wrote:
| It's a shame this doesn't work for the Kindle Fire tablets, which
| are amazing devices for the price but unfortunately tethered to
| Amazon services.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I used a jailbroken kindle fire running lineage for _years_. I
| dropped that thing, got it wet, got it hot. It was impossible
| to kill. It finally had 1 drop to many but it was one of the
| best devices I ever had in terms of utility / $
| freedomben wrote:
| Indeed. I had an original Kindle fire (back when it was still
| "Android") and I loved it great device for the money. It
| saddens me greatly how they've locked everything down. They
| could be the premier builders but instead I know then as
| grotesque authoritarians.
| stkdump wrote:
| I find it exceedingly likely that they lose money on every
| kindle fire sold (at least during one of their regular
| sales), unless it causes more content sales. So the
| solution is of course to make it as useless as possible for
| anything else, otherwise they would just lose more. Same as
| inkjet printers.
| freedomben wrote:
| I've had the same thought, though if true I wish they'd
| sell an unlocked version for more money, similar to how
| they did the ads on lock screen
| toredash wrote:
| Still have two Fire tablets (HD). Works for streaming and
| reading but surfing can be a drag
| transcriptase wrote:
| It's interesting reading that the reasons for jailbreaking a
| kindle are so trivial, amounting to adding some minor
| functionality to reading books and not much else.
|
| Kobo jailbreaks from back in the day gave you root on a stripped
| down Linux install, complete with telnet ssh and ftp. You could
| even install python and essentially do anything the cpu/display
| permitted. Another cool aspect with those older kobos was that
| they had two microsd card readers... one hidden inside the
| enclosure that contained the OS, accessible without even needing
| a screwdriver.
| kragen wrote:
| Don't Kobo jailbreaks still give you that? Are they even
| "jailbreaks"?
| II2II wrote:
| Yes, you can still do that. The only differences with modern
| Kobo devices are the loss of an external uSD slot and, on the
| latest modeks, the liss of the internal uSD slot.
|
| I also have a hard time describing the process as jail
| breaking. Updates to the Kobo are simply unprotected zip
| files which contain firmware updates along with a gzipped
| tarball that contain updated files for the filesystem. Anyone
| with a knowledge of Linux can modify the software.
|
| Ibalso consider the situation as rather stable. Not only has
| Kobo/Rakuten been ignoring modifications of the open source
| components for over a decade, they have been ignoring patches
| to the proprietary binaries.
| kragen wrote:
| That's great! Thanks!
| ornornor wrote:
| I wish we could extract the kobo fonts so they could be
| used with koreader. I've found the fonts on the kobo root
| partition but they're encrypted or otherwise obfuscated so
| simply copying the files doesn't work :(
| Larrikin wrote:
| Tailscale being available totally changed the usage of my Kobo.
|
| Seems like a jailbroken Kindle is a requirement to get it.
| https://github.com/mitanshu7/tailscale_kual
| mollusk wrote:
| What's the point of Tailscale and how did it change your
| usage?
| Larrikin wrote:
| No matter what network I'm on my home network is accessible
| to just my Tailnet without exposing any of my servers to
| the full Internet.
|
| This gives me OPDS access to my Kavita library from
| anywhere and I basically never need to plug in my Kobo to
| the computer.
| eloisant wrote:
| I guess we have so many devices nowadays, there is no point
| into turning an e-reader into a generic computer.
|
| I have at least 3 RPi lying around in my home, if I want to
| tinker that's what I will use.
| ndiddy wrote:
| I think you're mistaken, the Kindle is also Linux based and you
| can also do anything the cpu/display permits on a jailbroken
| Kindle. Most people install alternative reader software that
| supports more formats like epub, but you can do whatever. For a
| while I used an old Kindle as a "monitor" (connected over ssh)
| for a server that was otherwise headless. Obviously you can't
| do anything that moves too fast, but it was nice for doing
| simple maintenance & system monitoring tasks.
| tripdout wrote:
| Wow, kindlemodding.org loads instantly. I know it's a simple
| website, but simple websites often still load slowly.
| RandomBK wrote:
| The entire frontpage was just 468KB, 91KB compressed, and most
| of that was the search index. Very neat!
| deadbabe wrote:
| Sad that 91kb is considered small.
| LoganDark wrote:
| Most websites are like 50mb, my dude.
| genewitch wrote:
| Still nearly a half million characters, though.
|
| That's 1:40 on dialup.
|
| Not 50MB, that's not lightweight, which this thread is
| about.
| LoganDark wrote:
| > Not 50MB, that's not lightweight, which this thread is
| about.
|
| I'm not sure what you're meaning to say to this but my
| point was that 50MB is absolutely humongous and so many
| websites are around that order of magnitude. 91kb is a
| lot smaller than it could be, even though it's not
| exactly absolutely small.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Incorrect, most are ~2.5 MB; granted, the size has
| steadily increased over the years. But 50 MB sites are an
| exception. https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2022/page-
| weight
| bigiain wrote:
| Heh.
|
| I, for reasons nobody will wonder too hard about, have a
| downloads folder here with a few hundred Kindlebooks in
| .azw3 format. While non of them is quite as small as 91kb,
| many of then are around that 468kb size.
|
| And they're whole goddamned novels that some talented
| author probably spend a whole year writing, not just single
| "small" webpages.
|
| The modern web is insane.
| maverwa wrote:
| ~10kb of that are for the client side search library
| ("lunr") and 50.7kb for that searchs index. So around 2/3
| of the whole first load size are "just" for the local
| search feature. The remaining 30kb split up in ~7kb of
| additional javascript, 16kb of stylesheets, and 7kb of html
| (content, markup, inline styles & scripts).
|
| I am surprised by the amount of CSS, 109kb uncompressed but
| minified is a lot of styles for a rather simple design, but
| I guess its the "just-the-docs" standard and thus somewhat
| verbose by being generic.
| culi wrote:
| https://1kb.club/
|
| Edit: Also, https://10kb.club/
| seanicus wrote:
| Never heard of this.... incredible. Thanks to you and the
| brave makers of websites that just load.
| kragen wrote:
| This is great news! Can it be patched?
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Yes, but you can disable OTA updates
| mook wrote:
| https://kindlemodding.org/jailbreaking/WinterBreak/ says it's
| based on https://kindlemodding.org/mesquito/ which in turn says
| it needs <=5.15.1.1
| ThatHackerDude wrote:
| That's a mistake on my part, I've updated that page
|
| Right now WinterBreak remains unpatched, but it is patchable
| and likely will be in the near-future
| ggm wrote:
| The constant anti patterns in how your library and even things in
| Amazon's interest like book reviews display are why I would do
| this, if I thought I could script or fix the changes away. Kindle
| is Doctorow's enshittification at scale.
| FabHK wrote:
| I have a nice unregistered recent Kindle that I put books on
| via USB (I don't even give it WiFi access), and _every single
| time_ I switch back to the main library to pick a new book to
| read it puts up a modal informing me that it doesn 't have
| cloud access and prompts me to register. Quite annoying.
| ggm wrote:
| This and a hundred other snippets of mal behaviour. I have
| both calibre side loaded and on device, and it does not like
| the mixture one bit: they're just files. What's the beef?
| RachelF wrote:
| Not just enshittification in the way of spying and ads. The
| actual reading experience has got worse.
|
| I have a Kindle 11 and an old Kindle 3. The Kindle 3 actually
| works better - easier to read, no random pauses, easier to
| search.
| talideon wrote:
| To this day, the 3 is still my ideal version. Everything else
| since has fallen flat in some way in comparison. It was the
| right size, had paddle buttons for turning the page, had a
| passable keyboard, was responsive, could play audio, &c. It
| was excellent. I very much wish mine didn't die on me.
| fvrther wrote:
| Kobo are giving you root access with telnet from the start. You
| can flash modded firmwares, change the backend servers to phone
| your own calibre-web instance, install ssh, koreader and even a
| tailscale vpn on it. They even have UART pins labelled on their
| board. These are amazing devices to play with. And they read
| pretty much everything you throw on their storage: epub, cbz,
| cbr, pdf..
| throitallaway wrote:
| I moved from Kindle to Kobo for the sole reason that the
| backlight had tunable color temperature. I've ended up liking
| it for lot of reasons, including how open they are.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Kindle Paperwhite (and possibly others) have adjustable
| colour temperature too, with time-based automation. From a
| quick squizz, not quite the same as the Kobo (I don't think
| it has the "more blue in daytime" function) but just noting
| that it does exist on some in some fashion.
| throitallaway wrote:
| It's great that Paperwhite have caught up to Kobo in this
| manner. Back when I was evaluating replacing my (lost)
| Kindle I believe it was only an option on the top tier
| ($300+) Kindle.
| pathartl wrote:
| I moved to Kobo because I bought my partner the Kindle Oasis
| and just after a year the battery couldn't hold a charge. I
| contacted Amazon and they would only give me 10% off a new
| device. I only found one person on the internet who was
| courageous enough to open one up. The screen was epoxied to the
| body with no way of opening the device without destroying the
| screen.
|
| So I got her a Kobo Libra H2O. Just as waterproof,
| significantly cheaper, and you can actually repair it. I ended
| up getting a Libra Colour for myself and love it.
| taspeotis wrote:
| Don't they have a 12 month warranty? What do you want Amazon
| to do after more than 12 months? 10% discount is above and
| beyond their obligations.
| lwhi wrote:
| It's completely reasonable to expect it to last longer than
| 12 months, especially considering this is their premium
| model.
| donalhunt wrote:
| In Europe, consumers should be getting longer protection
| than 1 year. May require a fight / small claims court
| submission to exercise one's rights.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Yes, every device should fail immediately upon warranty
| expiration.
|
| You should build a company founded on that principle.
|
| Call it GTL Pty Ltd
|
| Formerly known as Guaranteed To Last, but they dropped that
| naming and are now know simple as GTL after a social media
| smear campaign where people were saying 'guaranteed to be
| the last thing you ever buy from that company'.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Oh, come on, they could _totally_ own that smear
| campaign. "Guaranteed to be the last [class of device]
| you ever buy, unless you give it away." Something
| something heirlooms, put together a simple, 30-second
| narrative for the advertisement campaign, job done.
| simion314 wrote:
| Would be normal/natural if we could change the batteries
| and not throw away devices when the battery fails even more
| natural when the device is not dirt cheep.
| callc wrote:
| Have human wellbeing as the priority in making products.
|
| Treat users with respect.
|
| Make hardware open, firmware open, repairable.
|
| Let's be honest here, there are user hostile products and
| pro-user products. Let's make making user hostile products
| illegal / unprofitable with laws.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| For the record, my Kindle died after 4 years and Amazon
| replaced it. That one died after 2 and they replaced it
| again - all free. Australian Consumer Law is required to
| be followed if they want to trade here. If you want
| respect, speak to your lawmakers.
| jamesy0ung wrote:
| ACL is fantastic, gotten my 2017 MacBook Pro 15" fixed
| multiple times for free even out of applecare, last time
| it was fixed, it was 6 years old. Had issues with the
| keyboard, and the screen. Seems to be a common issue with
| this model.
|
| https://gregsamborski.com/macbook-pro-led-screen-
| discolorati...
| sharpshadow wrote:
| I thought 4 years is not bad at all but it's even better
| because ,,consumer guarantee rights under the Australian
| Consumer Law, ... don't have a specific expiry date" and
| ,,apply for a period of time that is considered
| reasonable having regard to the nature of the products or
| services"[0].
|
| 0. https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/broken-but-out-
| of-warr...
| IanCal wrote:
| Consumer protections in the UK and EU means they have to
| last a reasonable length of time, and if not you get a
| proportional refund (or repair, or replace). I've had
| refunds from devices several years old.
| netfortius wrote:
| Amazon is [d]evolving the concept of "owning" what you paid
| for - slowly, but surely [1]
|
| [1] https://goodereader.com/blog/kindle/amazon-removing-
| download...
| lostlogin wrote:
| Here in Mew Zealand we have the consumer guarantees act.
| Stuff needs to last for a duration commensurate with its
| price. Nice and vague and super good for the consumer.
|
| An iPhone can generally get fixed under warranty for 2-3
| years. I've never tried a Kindle but the premium model
| should get 2 years without too much fuss.
| karparov wrote:
| 12 months is a laughable amount of time. Sadly, companies
| have normalized such short periods of time, so much so that
| everybody would give me looks when I say that 5 or 10 years
| would be more appropriate. Especially tech folks, so I'm
| expecting pushback in a forum like HN.
|
| My in-laws have a few kitchen appliances from the 80s.
| Still working rock-solid. Not the wifi-enabled modern crap
| with some shitty cloud-based app that you need to replace
| all the time.
| eloisant wrote:
| In Europe the minimum is 2 years, but I agree it's still
| too short.
| karparov wrote:
| That's kinda my point. Two years are better than one, but
| celebrating it as _the_ achievement is really missing the
| bigger picture (and is a great success of lobbying work)
| zuppy wrote:
| my biggest fear from moving out of kindle is losing access to
| the store. they did a good job securing most of the authors
| and books.
|
| what's your source for books and how often it happens for the
| books you're looking for to be unavailable?
| pmx wrote:
| You can browse the Kobo book store here
| https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebooks
| _thisdot wrote:
| What are the prices compared to Amazon's? Books are
| generally cheaper here in the subcontinent. I did a price
| comparison of 30 books and found out that Kindle editions
| cost significantly lesser than Kobo. And Kobo editions
| cost slightly higher than paperbacks.
|
| The total amount for these 30 randomly selected books
| came to: Paperback price: [?]13,017 (~$149) Kobo price:
| [?]13,252 (~$152) Kindle price: [?]9,171 (~$105)
| OvbiousError wrote:
| I found that it's often best to use google search to
| search the kobo store. Books sometimes have multiple
| editions with significant price differences. Not sure if
| it would make a difference in this case.
| londons_explore wrote:
| google search "book_name epub"
| sandeep1998 wrote:
| same
| zuppy wrote:
| ... but this does not replicate the kindle one-stop store
| experience. and looking on the kobo store doesn't help
| either, i wanted the experience for someone who actually
| migrated from kindle. i may find the books i'm looking
| for now, but what are the struggles for people who
| actually used it? do they come later than kindle, are
| they using multiple shops, etc.
|
| edit; yes, i know about the pirating options. i'm not
| talking about those.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Kobo in my experience has all the books from big
| publishers, the publishers that publish paper books too.
| What they do not have is the stuff from Kindle Direct
| Publishing. This is stuff people have self-published on
| Kindle, I think Amazon requires exclusivity when you do
| that too?
|
| In my opinion this is actually more of a blessing than a
| curse since I consider 99% of that garbage I don't want
| to sift through.
|
| Sometimes multiple store headaches are still a necessity
| depending on region. Even on Amazon.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| IIRC they give you a better revenue split or something of
| that nature if you only publish there
| a-french-anon wrote:
| `filetype:epub book_name` should be tried first, in my
| opinion.
| nolok wrote:
| This is rather terrible for supporting authors though. I
| read a lot of scifi from small authors who self publish
| on kindle direct publishing, and I would rather they get
| my money for their work.
|
| And yes I can pay then find the epub (and not all are
| available, due to small author), but the experience is
| then much worse.
| jack_pp wrote:
| Contact the author, send direct to paypal. this way you
| get freedom, they get more money
| dsign wrote:
| This is partially on the author, and I say this as
| somebody how writes as a hobby. It's not too difficult to
| publish on the Kobo store, and there are other stores out
| there. Of course, it's difficult to compete with Amazon
| when it comes to reach and to some small features, but
| they are no panacea either. For example, they don't
| support epub 3 with aural synchronized media, and they do
| something terrible to images embedded into ebooks that
| make them frankly useless. And they charge authors an
| outrageous amount for kilobyte of ebook content.
| criddell wrote:
| FWIW, Amazon generally doesn't require DRM on ebooks.
| YuccaGloriosa wrote:
| I believe Amazon impose a whole bunch of conditions on
| people publishing on their platform. Along the lines of
| exclusivity and controlling where else if at all you can
| sell it. I'm pretty sure Corey Doctorow extensively
| covered this.
| dsign wrote:
| Yes they do. One particularly annoying one is about
| pricing: price can't be zero. If you write as a hobby and
| don't care about making a dollar, then Amazon gets in the
| way. Sure, you can publish in Amazon and charge 1 USD,
| but then you can't publish your book on your own website
| for free because it goes against Amazon's TOS.
|
| There are other peeves. Covers for example: it's against
| the TOS to have a cover that shows female nipples, but
| it's okay to show male nipples. Beyond the sexism of the
| rule, I'm worried that the way to enforce this is to have
| some ML system checking all the covers and making
| judgements about nipples. Which means you have to ask
| your cover artist to not draw anything that may
| accidentally look like the wrong kind of nipple \o/ .
| einpoklum wrote:
| > rather terrible for supporting authors ... scifi from
| small authors who self > publish on kindle ... I would
| rather they get my money for their work.
|
| I would suggest you write them (each of them) a letter,
| or email, which:
|
| 1. Discourage them from publishing on an Amazon platform,
| explaining how Amazon, and DRM-laden reading, is
| terrible.
|
| 2. Suggest that they publish with a link allowing readers
| to pay them directly, or at least via a payment platform
| (see here for example:
| https://www.mightynetworks.com/resources/patreon-
| alternative... )
| nolok wrote:
| While this is right in theory, in practice I don't think
| you realize why those authors are there : discovery and
| ease of management. Your offer makes them lose both, for
| what gain from their POV ?
| briandear wrote:
| But Amazon DRM-laden reading isn't terrible. I buy a
| book, it's on my Kindle. With Kindle Unlimited, I can
| read tons of books for a fairly small monthly price.
|
| Not sure what problem we're trying to solve.
| intothemild wrote:
| So, I had a kindle, amazon prime, everything.. until the
| pandemic, and here in Norway we don't have an amazon
| webshop of our own. Up until this point I had been buying
| from Amazon US. The pandemic made shipping from the US
| hard, and so I decided to use AmazonUK, my login worked
| there, so i just switched to using that one. Then
| shipping from the UK became hard (brexit), so I started
| using AmazonDE.
|
| Then Amazon locked my account, and said I needed to prove
| who I am. So I did, sent in documents to prove who I was.
| Didn't matter, apparently I had broken some rule about
| using my login in different amazon stores or something.
| Apparently I wasn't allowed to do that.
|
| So now I lost all my books I had bought, because Amazon
| decided to ban me.
|
| If I had bought these books from any open store, I would
| still have my books.. but because I bought from Amazon,
| I've lost them all.
|
| That's why DRM free books are important.
| nunez wrote:
| The problem of supporting authors who actually want to be
| paid more than beer money (or any money, really) for
| their work, for one.
|
| There's also the problem of moving those books onto
| another platform once Amazon directly affects you and you
| wish to move onto something else. (Amazon Unlimited DRM
| hasn't been broken yet.)
| ekianjo wrote:
| > This is rather terrible for supporting authors though.
|
| Supporting a terrible platform to become the main place
| to get books is way, way worse.
| defensem3ch wrote:
| annas-archive.org
| mdhen wrote:
| https://open-slum.org/
| ReptileMan wrote:
| anna archives
| tjoff wrote:
| Search for alternative first. If it doesn't exist: purchase
| and download the file from amazon and remove the DRM.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43070155 - Kindle is
| removing download and transfer option on Feb 26th
| (2025-02-16)
| DANmode wrote:
| See title of OP ;)
| kelnos wrote:
| This thread is about Kindle alternatives. If you don't
| have a Kindle at all, there's nothing to jailbreak.
| magnetowasright wrote:
| If there's no DRM-free version available to purchase, I buy
| from the kobo store (it's very easy to access different
| region stores which can impact book availability) and I
| then remove the DRM. Library genesis is also an option, of
| course.
| bbarnett wrote:
| This is why I buy an android e-ink tablet.
|
| My needs are unique, all of our needs are unique I suppose,
| but I want epub but also want to use the Kindle app (in
| cases of them being the only place to get a book).
|
| I worry about firmware updates(security), but also my needs
| do not require the tablet being online constantly. So in a
| case like this, not a phone, not online, I only bring the
| wifi up to download books from Amazon via their Android
| app.
|
| Otherwise, I copy epubs over via USB.
|
| This is the middle ground.
|
| I've been quite happy with the Meebook E-Reader M7.
| eek2121 wrote:
| FWIW actual kindles don't need to be online except if you
| are buying a book or transferring one via their website.
|
| Older Kindles did have an optional cellular connection,
| but that was to make purchases easier.
|
| Kindles aren't limited to the Amazon store. Your kindle
| has an email address you can email books to, and there
| are ways to transfer via USB, etc.
| broken-kebab wrote:
| I don't know if it still works, but the last time I checked
| it was possible to un-DRM (de-DRM?), and convert amazon
| format to normal epub, and read it everywhere
| benkaiser wrote:
| Yeah there's a way to do this with Calibre + some plugins
| on windows. I tried on my Mac but it was unsuccessful.
| criddell wrote:
| Depends on which version of the DRM. KFX hasn't been
| broken yet. It's been a bit of a cat-and-mouse game where
| the DeDRM people make some progress then Amazon tweaks
| something and they have to start over. There are some
| workarounds that involve getting Amazon to give you an
| older version of the file, but then you lose the
| typography improvements present in later versions of
| Amazon's ebook format.
| ornornor wrote:
| Libgen, #bookz on irc, and dedrm plugin for calibre will
| let you get drm free copies of books you already own so you
| can use them however you see fit
| digikazi wrote:
| Sadly Libgen seems to have been down for the past couple
| of months, there is some discussion whether it will ever
| come back or not.
| YuccaGloriosa wrote:
| I heard some new guys were running it federal bureau of
| something
| ornornor wrote:
| Depends where you look :)
| rr808 wrote:
| I use the libby app on Kobo to get books from the library.
| Its just what I need. I can add epubs and pdfs from dropbox
| but never use that any more.
| nunez wrote:
| ebooks.com has loads of books on the platform, though
| they're DRMed. libby's great also.
|
| no need to be locked into kindle anymore.
|
| transferring books is also easy. you can install Calibre on
| your computer, connect the Kindle to it via USB and
| transfer. if you're into self-hosted, you can run Calibre
| on a server, either as an installed binary or in a
| container, and send books to it via email or dropbox.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| I got a Kindle (moving on from an absolutely ancient rooted
| Nook) purely because the Oasis looked so nice
|
| I'll never get a Kindle again because I was blown away by how
| impossible it was to repair (plus the closed system really
| sucks). Mine broke for no reason at all a bit ago; my best
| guess is the battery started to swell inside it and that
| broke the screen. Got a Forma super cheap ($25!) and I've
| been super happy with it, feels a bit cheaper but it's
| actually got some level of grip. Have read more on it in a
| month than I did on my Kindle in the last 3 years.
|
| Haven't even dabbled into the custom tools stuff much but it
| all sounds great. Might get a cheap secondary one to play
| with, can become an (outdated) offline Wikipedia reader if
| nothing else.
| GTP wrote:
| Where did you find a Kobo Forma so cheap? A quick check on
| Ebay lists the cheapest at 150EUR, but maybe I'm looking at
| the wrong model.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| Just got really lucky. Someone hadn't a clue what they
| were selling, was listed as "Kobo e reader" or something
| very vague like that. Fully expected it to either be
| broken or not match the image.
|
| In general the Forma looks overpriced imo, the benefits
| of the 8 inch screen don't really warrant a price that
| nears the Libra Color or Sage.
| barrkel wrote:
| Shocking that battery didn't work after a year. I still use
| my Kindle 3 from 2010; it still holds weeks of standby
| charge, days worth of reading.
| anon743448 wrote:
| This shows the decline in Amazon's customer service. I had
| several Kindles starting with Kindle Keyboard. At that time,
| Amazon's service was beyond amazing.
|
| At one point, I had some issue with one of the Kindle while
| it was past 1 year. Amazon sent overnighted new Kindle for
| free when I was just hoping they give me some troubleshooting
| steps.
|
| I stopped using Kindle about 4-5 years ago mostly because of
| all the bad press especially around them removing purchased
| books. Now I mostly buy paper books. I also use BOOX e-ink
| tablet to borrow books from library or newspapers. (BOOX is
| not ideal but there is no other choice of e-ink tablets that
| can let you use 3rd party apps, sadly.)
| nunez wrote:
| I'm on the BOOX train as well. I wanted a device that I
| could read books and catch up on HN on. Kindles do great
| with the former (if you're bought into their ecosystem) but
| suck badly for the latter. (Silk Browser is still too slow
| and renders all pages server-side with no ability to change
| this.) My BOOX Page 7 does everything I want and more,
| though I did choose to root and debloat it as well as
| install a firewall given the company's (ONYX) shady
| backgrounds.
| sphars wrote:
| I had no idea the extent that Kobos allow you to do these sort
| of things. Heavily considering a Kobo as my next e-reader once
| my PW3 gives ups. Is there a good starting resource for Kobo
| modifications like you mentioned?
| fvrther wrote:
| Mobile read forum for most of it, but also heavily recommend
| kobopatch
|
| 1. https://github.com/pgaskin/kobopatch-patches/releases
| optional but nice to tweak some small ui details and get rid
| of ads
|
| 2. https://github.com/videah/kobo-tailscale to have a secure
| connection with your calibre-web instance, but you could also
| use self-signed certs
|
| 3. https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web/wiki/Kobo-
| Integratio... adding books to calibre-web will cause them to
| appear on the device the next time it syncs with calibre-web
| sphars wrote:
| Thank you! Will peruse over these
| muhehe wrote:
| There are ads in kobo? Is it normal or some sort of cheaper
| offering like kindles?
| fvrther wrote:
| No ads per se, but a recommendation tile and a kobo plus
| subscription tile on the main screen that just eats
| display space for nothing. I mainly use kobopatch to
| change the epub reader margins, get the page remaining in
| a chapter and block firmware updates and a few other
| details. Totally optional, it's just pure nitpicking
| here. Here is all my kobo modding work in this repo, you
| can also find what firmware mods are available...
|
| https://github.com/obynio/kobopatch-
| config/tree/master/src
| muhehe wrote:
| Thanks, I'm liking kobo more and more every time I read
| about it :).
|
| Out of curiosity, why block updates? Does it conflict
| with your modification
| fvrther wrote:
| We also have the amazing Plato reader, like koreader but
| with a snapper UI and made exclusively for kobo and written
| in Rust by the guy responsible for bspwm.
|
| https://github.com/baskerville/plato
| sen wrote:
| I switched from Kindle to Kobo and out of the box it would
| hard-crash within a few minutes of using it, every single time.
| You have to pry the case off and remove the internal battery
| hard reboot it. I sent it in, waited 2 months for a
| replacement, and the new one (with new firmware) does the exact
| same thing.
|
| I despise Amazon as a brand but nothing comes close to the
| kindle hardware wise. Waterproof, indestructible, and never had
| it crash.
| realusername wrote:
| Kobos are just a simpler mental model for non IT experts as
| well, you plug them in, they behave like a USB key, you can't
| get easier than that.
| pjmlp wrote:
| That is exactly how Kindle first generation used to work, and
| thankfully mine still does its job.
| coder543 wrote:
| Kindles have literally always behaved like that, from the
| beginning.
|
| The very newest generation of Kindle changed the storage
| protocol from traditional mass storage (which was compatible
| with everything) to MTP, which is mildly annoying for Mac
| users, but it is still intended to just show up as a flash
| drive.
| eloisant wrote:
| Behaving like a USB key is not a simpler mental model than
| "buy books on Amazon and they're on your device".
|
| I agree on the freedom for geeks, but let's not fool
| ourselves into thinking non IT experts want to deal with
| files.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Kobo has the same thing. Buy books on Kobo and they are on
| your device. But they also support ePub natively and ADE
| DRM natively so there's more options of where to source
| books before conversion.
| freedomben wrote:
| Thank you! You just sold a kobo :-)
|
| I have a remarkable 2 and really like it, but my wife needs a
| new "Kindle" and I'd rather cut my finger off than pay Amazon
| to abuse me. Looking forward to trying out the kobo
| rusticpenn wrote:
| Is remarkable 2 a good ebook reader?
| necovek wrote:
| Nope, though possibly with a custom workflow, it might be.
|
| I own a Kindle Scribe, Paperwhite (a couple versions) and
| reMarkable 2, and while I promise myself to set up an
| easier experience for using reMarkable for reading and then
| selling the Scribe, I didn't find the time so they "got
| me".
| internet_points wrote:
| It has no backlight, which I would find annoying, but i
| know someone who has read tens of thousands of pages on the
| remarkable 2. It's easy enough to copy epubs and pdfs to it
| though, and the screen is big which helps.
| speerer wrote:
| The actual experience of reading is quite good, but, it is
| not really fully-featured for EPUBs.I was trying to reflow
| text into a different font and size yesterday and it took
| forever. I ended up giving up. It is, however, quite
| hackable, and `rmapi` on GitHub allows you fine control of
| its (linux) system.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Fwiw, several stories here on HN about remarkable, so a
| search is probably worth doing if you've not read those
| other stories yet.
| nunez wrote:
| I have a reMarkable 2. It's better as a book annotator than
| a book reader, IMO. It's fine for my use case (reading
| during rest periods while at the gym), but I wouldn't use
| it as a full-time reader, as it can get quite slow and
| doesn't have very many eReader features.
| freedomben wrote:
| Personally, I find it to be an excellent ebook reader. Easy
| to navigate, and works well with epubs and PDFs. I like to
| highlight and annotate on books as I read, and to me that
| is an absolutely killer feature that the remarkable allows
| me to do. It also saves a separate copy with the
| annotations so you aren't marking up your original, which
| is something I really love.
|
| Devices made specifically to be e-readers are usually a bit
| less friction. but to me, The openness and hackability of
| the remarkable and it's excellent feature set for writing
| makes it an excellent choice.
| yoavm wrote:
| This! I've worked on https://github.com/bjesus/air as a
| completely alternative and open source UI for my Kobo Clara HD.
| PostmarketOS support on the device is great and very recently
| an important patch that will allow us to use Wayland was also
| merged:
| https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/merg...
| choobacker wrote:
| This looks great. Is there by out-of-the-box usable e-reader
| that supports SSH? Air still has some manual
| steps/maintenance.
|
| For comparison, I've used PostmarketOS on Pinephone, and it
| required a lot of fiddly to get a poor experience.
|
| But maybe the simpler usecase of "just reading" has good
| solutions?
| choobacker wrote:
| Looks like I could use https://github.com/PNDeb/pinenote-
| debian-image on my PineNote.
| bobek wrote:
| Boox devices are Android based, so also pretty hackable.
| mattl wrote:
| Remarkable Pro looks great and runs Linux and has SSH out
| of the box.
| donatj wrote:
| I bought a pretty early Kobo like 10+ years ago and found
| myself very underwhelmed with the software situation. I sold it
| and went back to my kindle.
|
| Maybe it's time to take a second look. The hacker in me's
| interest is piqued.
|
| Frankly though, the biggest thing that keep me on Kindle these
| days I suspect are hard to replicate. For example, automatic
| audio book/kindle sync where I can switch back and forth,
| listening to the audio book in my car and reading at home in
| bed. For two, read.amazon.com where I can read from my locked
| down work machine without installing anything. The whole
| whispersync ecosystem.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| I don't use any Amazon hardware but Kindle Unlimited has got
| me like netflix did back in the day.
|
| Trashy sci fi is my vice.
| dewey wrote:
| I've recently looked into buying a replacement Kindle. In the
| end the Kindle hardware looks and feels much more premium with
| the display being even with the frame.
|
| I hope there's new models coming from Kobo that address that
| soon.
| dwayne_dibley wrote:
| I'm still daily using my kobo touch from 2011, my oldest piece
| of 'still in use tech' (other than the Wii, which the kids
| still bowl on!).
|
| Not being bound to an ecosystem, has really been a blessing -
| and in part kept it in use.
| t-3 wrote:
| What you _can 't_ do on Kobo is use the page up and down
| buttons to scroll in the web browser unless you go through the
| effort of installing the cross-compiling toolchain and building
| a display server and a browser.
| hresvelgr wrote:
| The Kobo Libra Colour has the best UX of a device I own, in
| that it's completely invisible. I can just read my damn books,
| highlight passages I think are noteworthy and save words I like
| the sound of. Everything just works, and the high seas
| experience is seamless.
| zabi_rauf wrote:
| I love Kobo for that. I hooked UART with a Variometer (measure
| rate of climb in aircraft) and use it in glider soaring as a
| flight computer (good contrast on sunny day)
|
| Posted the details here:
| https://zabirauf.dev/blog/aviation/glider_flight_computer
| ZeroTalent wrote:
| True. To play the Devil's Advocate, Kindle is exceptionally
| cheap (especially the older models) on Prime Days
| magnetowasright wrote:
| They're also intentionally repairable! I've got a Kobo Libra
| Colour which is a newer model, and its product page links to
| ifixit. I love it so much.
| forinti wrote:
| I really like my old Kobo, but I was a tad disappointed when I
| had to swap the screen. It's a very shoddy build. The screen is
| glued to the board and the battery is soldered. I felt like it
| was made to break when you try to open it.
| a2800276 wrote:
| Not to mention you're not blowing money up Bezo's botoxed arse.
| Epa095 wrote:
| There are also the onyx boox models, many run android, and it
| seems like you can install whatever you want. I have no
| experience with them myself, but I am curios.
| intothemild wrote:
| I have a Onyx Boox Go Color 7, and I love it.
| Shorel wrote:
| I moved away from Kobo because of the ancient USB port, and got
| my PocketBook with USB-C four years ago, and I am still using
| the PocketBook.
|
| With USB-C, Kobo would be a very good product. I guess they use
| it now.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| They do. It's great.
| submeta wrote:
| Wow, this is so unbelievable, that I decided to sell my Kindle
| Oasis and get a Kobo. Thank you for this comment. I hate the
| restrictions on my Kindle.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| Do you know how much of this applies to older Kobos? I love my
| Forma but I'd rather start experimenting like crazy on a 2011
| one first if I can.
| ptx wrote:
| Newer devices apparently use secure boot and prevent modding
| the firmware, causing the developers of the Inkbox/Quill
| alternative distro to abandon the entire project:
| https://github.com/Quill-OS/quill
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I recently had a very bad experience with Kobo.com. Bought an
| ebook thinking I could simply download and view it on computer.
| haha was I naive... I could not download it from the website,
| instead the download gave me some XML file for some Adobe shit
| app, which would then download it. But I did not sign up to
| download and install Adobe shit on my machine. So another
| option is using the Kobo app. But guess what... they don't have
| it for GNU/Linux. And I thought maybe I can use it with WINE,
| but their friggin download link for the app did not even work
| in Firefox, even when allowing all the third party crap they
| put on that page to load. So that way was also blocked. OK, I
| thought, let's get it refunded then. But good luck!!! finding
| any kind of support e-mail address! All their docs and links
| brought me back to their chat bot, which did not help me and
| instead always directed me to the docs again.
|
| Worse, they have the audacity to state on their pages that only
| some ebooks are eligible for a refund and to find out whether
| yours is, they send you back into the docs and chat bot loop. I
| guess they don't want people to refund, so they made finding
| any contact info especially difficult.
|
| How to make a real shitty user experience 101, presented to you
| by kobo.com. With this it is clear to me, that I will never
| again buy any ebooks from them. For anyone, who does not own
| their Kobo device already, I say hands off this one! Maybe buy
| the book and download a DRM free ebook from ... elsewhere. That
| way you pay, can have a clean conscience and enjoy your ebook.
| testfrequency wrote:
| DRM free ebooks are very few and far between, especially
| current titles.
|
| What you describe is a pain and all true, this is just the
| state of ebooks unfortunately.
|
| Kobo is not great at offering refunds like Amazon, as
| expected in many ways being a much more lean business not
| being propped up by AWS margins.
| patja wrote:
| I love my Kobo reader and am happy with switching to it after a
| decade or more of daily Kindle use. But I think it is important
| to not over-sell it. It has had certain unexpected frailties,
| such as corrupting the database when I neglected to eject the
| USB device before pulling the cable, something that resulted in
| losing my notes and current progress. I also had to learn about
| the Kobo ePub format and install a Calibre plugin to get that
| working, otherwise some ePub files would rapidly drain the Kobo
| battery. I did not expect bad html/css to significantly affect
| battery life. I'm not sure I would recommend it to an older
| person or someone who doesn't have a little patience for
| tinkering.
| drilbo wrote:
| my kindle oasis has been largely collecting dusk since I've got
| my kobo. I do really miss the buttons tho, perhaps this can
| prolong my buying a third device.
|
| the only thing giving me pause is that I apparently have to
| register the kindle, which if possible, I'm sure I've avoided.
| any insight on why this is necessary?
| sersi wrote:
| I've done the opposite. While I love the openness of the kobo
| and the pocket integration, I end up using my kindle oasis more
| because of the form factor and because with the metal enclosure
| it feels better in my hand.
| restlessdesign wrote:
| For those who prefer the default Reddit UI:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/kindle/comments/1hrwytr/all_kindles...
| xethos wrote:
| Each say we stray further from God's light.
|
| I could rant about how dramatically heavier the new Reddit UI
| is, but I'd be wasting my time - the people here should
| presumably know why making everything heavier isn't great
|
| Or maybe they don't, as evidenced by this new Reddit link not
| being absolutely _buried_
| dwayne_dibley wrote:
| old.reddit is the only reddit.
| nunez wrote:
| libreddit instances are even better (if you're just a
| lurker)
| hemant6488 wrote:
| I revived my old kindle pw7 using this a week or so ago. If you
| have an old kindle lying around, you can use it as an e-ink
| weather dashboard (or anything else for that matter, as long as
| you can convert it into a 8bit greyscale image).
|
| https://terminalbytes.com/reviving-kindle-paperwhite-7th-gen...
| internet_points wrote:
| i love this! unfortunately I'm still using my old pw for
| reading, I'll have to buy a second used one for this project
| import wrote:
| Nice to see a good write up. I did the same a year ago, it
| refreshes every hour (except night) and battery needs to be
| charged every 24-25 days.
| barrkel wrote:
| My old kindle is a Kindle 3 from 2010, and it's still my
| primary e-ink reader. I still haven't found a compelling reason
| to upgrade.
| matsemann wrote:
| I gave up on my first paperwhite last year (10+ years old).
| Would randomly lose its charge, which was annoying when
| bringing it on trips (and often not having an old micro-usb
| charger lying around). And from being stuck into all kinds of
| pockets and bags without a protector (half the use was it
| fitting in my pants) had seriously scratched up the screen.
| The new one I got is nice, but other than the old one being
| beaten up, I don't notice much difference. A bit faster to
| click around, but in the end it's mostly the same.
| Lalabadie wrote:
| Mine would have longer and longer delays on each page turn
| when I started using it again last year. It's a 10+ years
| Paperwhite as well.
|
| I jailbroke it and installed KOReader. Suddenly, no delays,
| great interface, wi-fi sync with Calibre. I might replace
| the battery one day, but it still lasts 2-3 books.
| Kototama wrote:
| Books as a unit of time. Interesting :D.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| Not sure what my old kindle version was, it had a keyboard
| though, but I upgraded eventually because I wanted a warm
| toned backlight. It's nice that the newer ones are a bit
| snappier too.
| nyrikki wrote:
| > Your Kindle must have a valid, internet-connected WiFi
| network saved to it that it can connect to during steps 8
| to 10 (inclusive)
|
| So only Kindle 3+ with keyboards work with this method, the
| early ones were whispernet only.
| calimariae wrote:
| I upgraded from Kindle Keyboard to Kindle 2023 last year.
| Backlight is very nice and I appreciate its lighter weight,
| but otherwise it's pretty much the same.
| seanicus wrote:
| Yup yup yup. I cracked my keyboard and got a paperwhite. I
| love the dark mode for late night reading but would
| probably go back to a refurbished keyboard in the face of
| any strife; just like the old form factor more.
| imp0cat wrote:
| I find the Kindle keyboard pretty much perfect.
|
| Even the battery surgery wasn't that hard and fixed the
| only problem mine had.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Only upgrade I did from my old kindle paper white was to a
| water-sealed version. Really nice to take it to the beach or
| a pool then just hose it off when I'm done so it doesn't have
| sand and such everywhere. Just less stressful to carry around
| in general.
| jorvi wrote:
| USB-C on the newer Paperwhites (and base Kindles? IDK if
| those changed over yet), in case you just want all your
| (portable) gear to be USB-C.
|
| What is extremely annoying is people constantly and
| universally lauding the Kindle for Kids option, when it is
| only offered in the US. Or, at least, its barely offered in
| the EU.
| Saris wrote:
| Those USB-C to microUSB adapters are handy, I keep one in
| my backpack since my camera and some other things are
| microUSB.
| butshouldyou wrote:
| I replaced the USB port on my older kindle with a USB-C
| port when I did the same for a bunch of devices. Not an
| option for everyone but if you have the time and patience
| (and a little skill) I highly recommend it.
| PascalW wrote:
| Thanks for the shout out to kindle-dash! <3 Great looking
| dashboard you have there!
| PostOnce wrote:
| Still can't remove the stupid "cloud not available" nag if your
| kindle isn't online though, which of course it shouldn't be or
| they'll delete your copy of 1984.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| Root access can't fix this?
| PostOnce wrote:
| I couldn't find a way, I was hoping someone better at
| firmware hacking could help me out but my repeated searches
| have turned up little
| m00dy wrote:
| it would be really cool to try bionic reader on the ne jailbreak.
| october8140 wrote:
| How do I get Apple Books on there?
| testfrequency wrote:
| You don't. It's impossible with Apple's DRM.
| tuananh wrote:
| what can you do with jailbreak Kindle? My Kindle usage has been
| pretty basic.
| laserlight wrote:
| Didn't work on my Kindle Paperwhite (10th generation) with
| firmware 5.17.1.0.3.
| vaylian wrote:
| What symptoms did you experience when you tried it?
| laserlight wrote:
| It was something like "Couldn't connect to Kindle Store".
| kelnos wrote:
| Did you see the "Troubleshooting" section after the
| jailbreak install instructions?
| laserlight wrote:
| Thanks for your help. I've just tried it. It failed with
| "unexpected error" again --- I believe the first error I
| got was also this one. I'm not sure what I might be doing
| wrong.
| fastball wrote:
| According to this section[1] of the website, the latest
| jailbreakable firmware for PW4 (10th gen) is 5.14.2.
|
| Not sure where the title of this HN post came from, but given
| the jailbreak came out on Jan 1st, I wouldn't be surprised if
| Amazon has already patched the exploit for hardware they're
| still supporting.
|
| [1] https://kindlemodding.org/firmware-and-
| flashing/downloading-...
| esseti wrote:
| what are the main benefits of doing so? I'm missing what's the
| deal with jailbreak in this case, using thee transfer via USB?
| what's the best thing i can do afterwards?
| genewitch wrote:
| Koreader is why I'll be doing it.
|
| PDFs that don't suck, I hear.
| ksynwa wrote:
| I use Koreader on my Kobo ereader for a few reasons:
|
| - Much much faster than stock interface
|
| - More customisable
|
| - Comes with an ssh server. I load a static rsync binary and
| use rsync for syncing the library
|
| - Much better for reading manga. Supports cbz, cbr format
| natively. Has the ability to clip empty space around the
| content to make reading on a small screen easier.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Use it as an external display or control center; it's hard to
| find decent and affordable standalone e-ink screens.
| ksynwa wrote:
| The amount of DRM and locking down Amazon bolts onto its ereaders
| and ebook formats feels insane to me. I can understand the profit
| motive but god damn.
| starbugs wrote:
| > The amount of DRM and locking down Amazon bolts onto its
| ereaders and ebook formats feels insane to me. I can understand
| the profit motive but god damn.
|
| I don't. I would be much happier buying ebooks without DRM and
| I would buy substantially more of them if they were DRM-free.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I am with you but we are a small minority. I literally don't
| know anyone IRL who cares about DRM. I doubt people like us
| factor into their decision making at all.
| kevincox wrote:
| No, but I know people wondering why this can't play this
| video in 4k or why their offline downloaded videos stopped
| working and they get a pop-up telling them that they need
| to go online to re-validate them.
|
| Yes, not many people know what DRM is but many of the
| effects are noticed when it ruins their experience.
| wand3r wrote:
| I agree, however they probably assume it's their fault or
| something to do with this arcane black box they use but
| don't quite understand how it works.
|
| For me, I bought a single DRM book against my better
| judgement because it was the only available way to get it
| quickly at the time. Predictably, I eventually lost
| access to it and never bought another one since.
| wnolens wrote:
| I have never considered DRM on my Kindle, been using one
| for 15 years. I can buy any book on Amazon which is any
| book id be trying to read on this small format, and read it
| immediately for usually a maximum of $10. Never had want
| for more!
| WolfeReader wrote:
| Kobo tells you when books have DRM and when they don't (at
| the bottom of the store page for each book). I'd recommend
| supporting them over Amazon any day.
|
| Besides that, a lot of publishers who sell their own books do
| so without DRM by default. As does almost every book bundle
| hosted by Humble Bundle.
| internet_points wrote:
| I never buy ebooks from amazon because they come with drm (did
| once, it was annoying as hell to get it removed with
| downloading random python scripts and having to start a windows
| vm, never again). It obviously can't be to stop people copying,
| because all the books are available for free anyway, maybe
| publishers stupidly ask for it, but the most likely reason is
| that amazon wants you to read from their devices so they can
| show you ads for what you haven't bought yet.
| benrutter wrote:
| It benefits Amazon obviously, but otherwise it's a massive
| shame to ebooks as a whole. I was really excited about ebooks
| when they started, but DRM has completely stagnated the format
| so much that I've almost completely given up on ebooks now, and
| read hard copies instead unless I _really_ want to read
| something and it isn 't otherwise available.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| I never even got into ebooks in the first place, precisely
| because of the DRM and "your so-called purchases can still
| get yoinked" problems.
| benrutter wrote:
| You definitely had better foresight than me then! I wrote
| off a lot of the "your purchases might get yoinked" talk at
| the time as "it would never happen in reality", but have
| had this happen to ebooks I've bought.
| delecti wrote:
| What about the format is stagnant? I haven't read a physical
| book in roughly a decade, and haven't remotely found ebooks
| lacking.
|
| And to be clear, I understand and agree with the moral
| objections to DRM. I think we have lost something more than
| just the loss of ownership and control. But while you're
| actually reading an ebook, none of that ever actually affects
| the experience.
| mkmk wrote:
| It makes more sense if you think about it as something that
| they need to do in order to make sure that their marketplace
| attracts a wide range of publishing companies, some of which
| have very different perspectives on digital piracy, than as a
| way for them to retain a small percentage of revenue that DRM
| could theoretically protect.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Yeah, the fact that you need an exploit just to get full access
| to your own property is pretty ridiculous.
| chasil wrote:
| Loading F-Droid onto a modern Kindle Fire is quite simple.
|
| You can also install FFUpdater (either via F-Droid or directly)
| for a huge range of browsers.
|
| What do you see as locked down?
| ewoodrich wrote:
| They're referencing the e-reader line of Kindles running a
| custom locked down OS (Kindle
| Paperwhite/Basic/Scribe/Colorsoft)
| Fokamul wrote:
| Amazon supporting pirating since 1997
| endorphine wrote:
| Question to KOReader users: can you somehow keep the Bookerly
| font? It's one of the main reasons I like Kindle.
| slezyr wrote:
| Download the font[1] and put it in the '/koreader/fonts'
| directory[2].
|
| 1 https://font.download/font/bookerly
|
| 2. p13 https://koreader.rocks/koreader-user-guide.pdf
| c0eos wrote:
| First, KOReader uses its own fonts in addition to whatever
| fonts are installed on your device, so yes. Second, you can
| find and download Bookerly on the internet and put it in the
| fonts folder, so also yes.
| lzmp wrote:
| Hell yeah, power to the users.
| m000 wrote:
| What are some "killer" applications that would tempt the casual
| Kindle user to jailbreak the device?
|
| I can see someone has ported syncthing [1], which could be
| convenient for syncing the contents of the device. But probably
| still too much work compared to using e.g. Calibre and a USB
| cable a few times per year.
|
| [1] https://syncthing.net/
| slezyr wrote:
| The smallest margin on Kindle Scribe is too large. Changing
| text justification is not possible. Books cannot be uploaded
| directly with a USB cable without additional software
| (calibre). Gesture configuration (tap, two-finger tap, etc).
| Koreader can do everything you want and is significantly better
| than the stock reader. Unlike other vendors, kindle requires
| root to install it.
| m000 wrote:
| I didn't know about Koreader.
|
| A reader with native epub support is a good feature. With the
| stock reader, Calibre needs to do an epub -> mobi conversion
| (works well, but still...).
| ornornor wrote:
| Koreader is much better than the stock software.
| paulcole wrote:
| In what ways specifically?
| homebrewer wrote:
| Support for epubs and RSS, much more responsive UI, night
| mode, Calibre integration + SSH server (you can send books
| over Wi-Fi), countless settings to adjust pretty much
| anything (for example, you can set margins to zero -- the
| minimum margins on stock firmware are insane). The list
| goes on.
|
| edit: found this link. I don't think this list is complete.
|
| https://koreader.rocks/user_guide/#whatcanyoudo
| ornornor wrote:
| Proper text justification (hyphenations + no ragged edges),
| auto toggle between day mode (black text on white page) and
| night mode (white text on black page) at sunset (via your
| location), compact progress display, customizable taps any
| gestures... it takes a little it to configure but it's
| worthwhile.
| calini wrote:
| Time to finally buy a Kindle I guess
| axpy906 wrote:
| Before you do that would suggest you check out Boox.
|
| I am very surprised to scroll this thread and see Kobo call
| outs but not Boox.
|
| No need to jailbreak as highly customizable.
| soroushmo wrote:
| Do you have any thoughts on the Supernote?
| Shorel wrote:
| After having three Kindles I moved to Kobo, and it was much, much
| better in the compatibility side of things.
|
| Now I am using a PocketBook and it is also great. The
| synchronization feature between browser, phone and the reader is
| very good, it is reason enough to have it instead of a Kindle.
| Zambyte wrote:
| I am replying from my Daylight Computer. Happy to answer
| questions about it.
|
| https://daylightcomputer.com
| ulkis wrote:
| OMG that was the most unintuitive and annoying to browse/scroll
| page I have seen in a long time. Hope the device is good
| though.
| fivestones wrote:
| Looks interesting. Can you use it like a jailbroken device (ie,
| install whatever you want from the terminal on it)? Or is it
| locked down too?
| chimineycricket wrote:
| It's an Android tablet, download whatever apps you want.
| skiman10 wrote:
| It runs a custom Android 13 based skin with access to the
| Play Store.
| glimshe wrote:
| Cool! But what prevents Amazon from patching this in a few days?
| ZiiS wrote:
| Well they haven't patched _anything_ in the last 600 days so
| that would be fairly optimistic.
| pidgeon_lover wrote:
| This is good news, but I am curious about the Wifi requirement -
| is the jailbreak web-based? Is Wifi usable afterwards on
| Mesquito-jailbroken Kindles?
|
| I know on my older jailbroken Kindles, the jailbreak is very
| fragile and they can no longer be connected to the internet,
| partly because of Amazon's agressive OTAs and partly because
| Amazon disables developer mode and hence the jailbreak every time
| my Kindle 4s touch the internet.
|
| (PS. If anyone can suggest a way to prevent this and secure my
| jailbreaks, it would be much appreciated - I've tried 3 different
| OTA blockers and none work reliably)
| ZiiS wrote:
| The install talks though how to block OTA, wifi remains fully
| working.
| lovestory wrote:
| Will this allow for more bluetooth options? For example
| connecting with bluetooth page turner would be a killer feature,
| but so far Kindle only allows for audio transfers via bluetooth.
| adilcanq wrote:
| imagine if they pulled a slick double free in the bootloader heap
| and jacked up a custom rop chain to completely sidestep that rsa
| sig check. amazon ain't gonna be happy.
| drio wrote:
| I just wanted to express my support for KOReader--it's a
| fantastic piece of software. I use it on my Kobo, and the UI is
| noticeably faster than the device's default system. It also
| offers a wealth of customization options. This may not be an
| issue on newer e-readers, but the ability to highlight seamlessly
| across adjacent pages is truly liberating.
| Agraillo wrote:
| On a little technical side, the cross-platform engine of
| KOReader is developed in Lua and low level stuff like drawing
| and eInk specifics is different for every device. I think this
| separation might be very noticable for anyone running it on
| Android, almost no standard UI elements, dialogs, etc. But
| that's what makes this project so widespread device wise I
| think
| dartharva wrote:
| This is perfect!
|
| For anyone stuck in the hotfix installation step - try turning
| Airplane mode on before updating your Kindle. It worked for me.
| x1ph0z wrote:
| I can't understand how kindles are popular when there's a
| plethora of ebook readers without the locked down DRM.
| apexalpha wrote:
| They're sold through Amazon.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Because most users don't care. They give Amazon a few bucks a
| month and they get unlimited ebooks.
| SheinH wrote:
| I bought a Kindle Scribe recently because it was around $250
| secondhand. That makes it the cheapest of all of the 10"
| e-readers available. It's perfect if you want to read
| textbooks, PDFs, and manga.
| frantathefranta wrote:
| IIRC e-ink used to not be that cheap and Amazon sold you one
| for not that much money.
| miohtama wrote:
| I am using because of ease to use with Amazon. For my $8 book
| purchases I read once I do not want to see too much trouble.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Household name + most people don't even know about ebook DRM so
| they never encounter that downside + it's the books that come
| with DRM; you can move pirated books to it just fine.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| The devices are cheap (for what they are), the ebooks are cheap
| and most people are already neck deep in their ecosystem so
| being locked down isn't an issue to them.
|
| Also, it's not like other ebook readers let you buy non-DRM
| versions of whatever books you like. Most popular ebooks have
| DRM of some kind.
| maksimur wrote:
| Because they're affordable. Many people forego the idealism in
| favor of practicalism.
| roywiggins wrote:
| It's usually up to the publisher whether their ebooks are DRMed
| or not, the Kobo store (eg) uses DRM also.
|
| You can, of course, read non-DRMed eBooks on a Kindle, if you
| can find them.
| Longlius wrote:
| Amazon's ecosystem. Every major publisher is on the kindle
| store and it's pretty much the first place any indie author
| self-publishes to. Kindle Unlimited has a pretty good selection
| of stuff for a flat subscription and (at least in the US) you
| can borrow e-books from your local library through libby and
| access them on the kindle.
|
| The simplicity of it makes it really appealing to users who
| just want to read books and not think too much about it.
| Android e-readers also tend to have far worse battery life and
| higher-friction integration with the ecosystem.
| kluyg wrote:
| KOReader on Kindle Scribe 2022: https://imgur.com/a/oYshWxI
|
| KOReader is so good for reading PDFs, compared to the native
| reader, I'm very impressed. Supports proper landscape mode (where
| swiping to next page moves to the second half of the current
| page, THEN next swipe gets you to the first half of the next
| page), supports auto-rotation, support auto-cropping of PDFs with
| controllable margin (killer feature), supports contrast
| adjustments, ... It does not support handwritten annotations, but
| for just reading PDFs - it's perfect.
| b0dhimind wrote:
| I have a lot of PDFs and this is the most interesting. Do you
| use the Calibre KOReader add-on to sync and manage? Does that
| work well? Do deletions of books sync? Does highlighting
| annotation work/sync fine? I would make the move just for that
| alone since SendtoKindle is kind of basic.
| ajusa wrote:
| Which book is being read in that screenshot? Looks interesting.
| I did a few searches based on the text and couldn't find it.
| 42772827 wrote:
| I always found KOReader to be too fiddly for ePubs, has that
| changed recently or have I been doing it wrong? I want a set of
| sane defaults to be applied to every book, I don't want to
| tweak every book individually. This leads to distraction for me
| II2II wrote:
| You can set defaults for all books. Simply long press on the
| option you want to be a global default. That said, it can
| still be fiddly since different books respond in different
| ways. Most of that seems to be due to differences in how
| publishers handle formatting, but I'm fairly certain that
| some of it is due to how the renderer handles things.
| smodo wrote:
| It's still the case in my opinion. Yes, you can fiddle to
| make it work. You can set sane defaults. The heuristics for
| applying styles etc apparently are not clever enough because
| sometimes you still get strange results. Comparing it to the
| default Kobo reader is like using a Mac vs a Linux DE. As
| I've gotten older I find I no longer enjoy tweaking every
| possible parameter :)
| doublebind wrote:
| Can you still use the full functionality of the Scribe's
| pencil? (highlight text, drawing or writing notebooks, etc.)
| Thanks.
| jnovek wrote:
| Does it have rotation lock? That's my single biggest pet peeve
| about the Kindle Scribe.
| thehias wrote:
| Can you buy a "Kindle with ads" and remove these ads then after a
| Jailbreak?
| locusofself wrote:
| You can usually just contact amazon support and they will
| remove the ads for you without a fee.
| aalam wrote:
| They don't do that anymore, at least not for me. I tried
| contacting two different support agents and both mentioned
| that the functionality has been removed for them by the
| higher-ups.
| squaresmile wrote:
| Yes you can
| wolfspaw wrote:
| Nice! With this Jailbreak can one install a Manga/Novel
| aggregator/reader like Mihon Manga reader?
| synergy20 wrote:
| what can I do with it specifically?
|
| i use a boox these days,but i do have 4 kindles collecting dust
| jskrn wrote:
| Hmm can a jailbroken Kindle receive library books via, say
| Libby/Overdrive or other method?
| pkkkzip wrote:
| Does this jailbreak allow unrestricted web browsing? Ability to
| read long threads on kindle would be amazing.
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