• TommySoda@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    The optimist in me says they’re doing this to avoid piracy.

    The pessimist in me says they’re doing this so they can purge books because of the Trump administration.

    Either way, I can’t say I’m a fan.

    • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      The optimist in me says they’re doing this to avoid piracy.

      Won’t pirates just buy their source copies on a different platform, so now Amazon loses the original sale as well?

      • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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        9 days ago

        The “original sale” in that case is not even pennies. So… not sure why amazon would care?

        Also: Many smaller authors basically depend on kindle because of the ease of use of the web portal and incentives to do larger discounts for their audiences. One of my favorite guilty pleasures has talked about exactly this (although he IS investigating alternatives).

        And, much like with video games: The Sandersons of the world will be pirated. MAYBE a Dalglish will be too. But nobody cares enough to go after a Samphire or Shel.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      100%. I have always pirated, but the amount of things I pirated went way, way down when Netflix had a decent library of things to watch and was affordably priced.

      • Scrollone@feddit.it
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        9 days ago

        I stopped pirating altogether thanks to Spotify, Netflix and Steam.

        But now I’ve cancelled Netflix and I have a 24 TB NAS filled with movies

    • Andy@slrpnk.net
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      9 days ago

      Yep. Not to gloat, but I never touched Amazon’s ebook marketplace.

      My current e-reader is a second-hand Kindle that has a permanent message asking if I would just please connect to a WiFi network just one time just for a moment PLEEEEEASE.

      I get my books from libgen, Gutenberg, or Kobo, and keep them on my computer. They’re organized in Calibre, and I transfer them over on a USB cable.

    • CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee
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      9 days ago

      My libra 2 breaking just after they were discontinued will forever be an unhappy event. I know the libra colour exists but I can not stand color e-ink screens.

      • Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 days ago

        Wow, I just bought it last year before they discontinued it then. Interesting that only colour screens are available now. It must mean that they are at least as good though? Edit: after reading reviews, apparently not… that sucks.

        • CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee
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          9 days ago

          honestly I have no clue why so many manufactures are pushing color e-ink right now. It’s still not as good as the first gen nook was for black and white.

          • Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            9 days ago

            At least I’m hoping that there’ll still be a spectrum of both BW and color screens available. Apparently many seem to like/prefer colour screen, and the screen door effect and worse contrast doesn’t seem to bother a lot of people. Some even prefer the more textured look of the screen door effect, though I don’t know myself as I’ve never tried a colour screen. Either way, I’d be hesitant to try one, and as I kept my Kobo Aura One for like 7 years it’ll be quite some time before I upgrade my current Kobo Libra 2. If I have some spare cash I might be inclined to try a colour e-reader as an alternative to my current one, but it’s not high on my priority list.

            But yeah, it definitely seems that Kobo is pushing their colour screens as they’re only selling the Libra in colour now. Might be that they release a B/W once the hype dies out a bit though.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        The Kobo Clara Color’s screen doesn’t look any different to me with non-color eBooks than their non-color version. The only thing that’s really different is that the book cover you see when it’s powered off is in color. Now I will admit that e-ink color is not very good, but it doesn’t ruin the experience of reading just a regular book.

        • CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee
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          9 days ago

          I’m extremely sensitive to the screen door effect on the color e-ink screens I’m not sure that there is a reason why but some people don’t seem nearly as bothered by it as others.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            I’m farsighted and have an astigmatism, so I have to read with glasses, and maybe that’s the issue, but I just held my Clara really close to my face and I don’t notice any screen door effect.

  • GoumLeChat@jlai.lu
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    9 days ago

    That’s why I avoided Kindle and picked a Kobo. Sure you can remove DRMs from the books you’ve bought. But at some point they could block you from doing that. They can change anything at anytime and there’s nothing you can do about it.

    • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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      9 days ago

      That is no different than Kobo. Thus far, Rakuten have been pretty good about not caring more than the bare minimum. But there is nothing stopping them from doing the same bullshit with firmware updates to the kobos and drm updates to the store and apps.

      I am finally migrating from kindle to kobo (tried kindle to boox last year and it was bad…) but I am under no illusions that I am just hoping one company is better than another. I mean, the other is Amazon so it is a pretty safe bet. But still.

      • GoumLeChat@jlai.lu
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        9 days ago

        Well there’s a key difference, Kobo allows epub. I don’t think they could legally remove it from devices already on the market?

        • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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          9 days ago

          And Kindle supports mobi files? It is just that those tend to get preprocessed into azw or the other one files. Much like Kobo tends to work best if you preprocess those epubs into kepubs.

          The issue is that Amazon has repeatedly changed their mobi variants to fight against de-drm tools as well as increasingly locking down their apps and even devices to make it harder to get data off (and now on) to them.

          There is absolutely nothing stopping Rakuten from doing the exact same with Kobo. And people should be aware of that rather than just stanning their favorite company.

        • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          9 days ago

          Kobo allows epub

          Kindle doesn’t? Mines 2 years old but my co worker got one for Xmas and theirs loads the epub I sent them no problem at all

          Honestly the Kobo is better as a physical device imo but the Kindle is perfectly simple to commit crimes on if you have Calibre

      • zecg@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        there is nothing stopping them from doing the same bullshit with firmware updates to the kobos and drm updates to the store and apps.

        I never connect the Libra to any network, how can they do anything? I did actually install some updates since there were a few annoying bugs, but I just downloaded the firmware on the pc from https://pgaskin.net/KoboStuff/kobofirmware.html and updated it offline. Now all those bugs seem fixed and poor Kobo still hasn’t seen the interwebs

        • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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          9 days ago

          Ah, my deepest apologies. I was not aware there was absolutely no issue or threat to anyone because you didn’t connect a kindle to the network either.

    • Anivia@feddit.org
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      9 days ago

      It’s pretty easy to jailbreak a Kindle and block firmware updates. But the fact that it is necessary in the first place sucks

  • turtle [he/him]@lemm.ee
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    9 days ago

    Ugh, thanks for the warning. Time for me to download and de-drm all my old kindle books and never again buy anymore.

    • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
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      9 days ago

      I just tried Calibre hoping it would help me get the metadata in my library in order… But maybe I am stupid, but I don’t understand the purpose of this software. It apparently can’t choose the MTP device as your library, only a folder on your computer? And only push the books onto the reader? I don’t get how that’s massively different from just copypasting the files into the reader. Is the main point convenient metadata editing?..

        • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
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          9 days ago

          That barely tells me anything because I could never afford Apple tech :/ But from what I read, Apple devices genuinely need an external piece of software to even upload anything there rather than you just copypasting the files, so idk how fair of a comparison it is.

  • Polysics@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    I sure am glad I got a Kobo for myself for Xmas and ripped all my books to it. Guess I’ll be recycling my Kindle for good.

    • sunshine@lemmy.ml
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      9 days ago

      I just got a Kobo color (don’t recommend the color feature; no book is ever going to use it except the red-letter Bible and House of Leaves) and gifted the old Kindle to a friend. I e-reader is an awesome gift actually because for a lot of people it’s something they would never evenly in years take a chance on, but that they would love it if they tried.

    • ChapulinColorado@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      If your model accepts a custom OS, some of them make decent e-ink displays for weather, family photos, etc. Things look good in the black and white ones especially.

      • Polysics@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Yeah I’ve actually thought about doing that and making it an office desk calendar or something. Thanks for reminding me!

    • roofuskit@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Adding on to this that Barnes and Noble sells DRMed ePUB files that are relatively easy to strip DRM from using Calibre.

      So if you can’t find a book anywhere else, at least they don’t use a proprietary format and still allow you to download your books using their PC software.

      I was a semi-early adopter in the ebook space and I have refused to get onboard with the kindle ecosystem from the start. There’s no reason for their proprietary format other than complete control over things they pretend to sell you. Amazon is also the Walmart of books and uses their position to browbeat publishers and authors into taking smaller cuts of sales.

      One of my friends got a book published and I waited and waited for it to be available anywhere else. Eventually just bought what was probably a print on demand copy from Amazon because that’s the only place his publisher sold books. I never buy physical books anymore but I’d rather do that than buy a kindle book.

    • adarza@lemmy.ca
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      9 days ago

      early models didn’t have wifi, only usb or cellular from one provider or another–and those models’ 3g connectivity was killed off years ago.

      this will obsolete all the non-wifi kindles still in use.

        • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
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          9 days ago

          So it just obsoletes them for the model users that buy ebooks from Amazon and put them on their Amazon device without conversion in between. Even though this user group should be Amazon’s favourites.

          lol, lmao even.

          • Cid Vicious@sh.itjust.works
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            9 days ago

            The specific devices impacted by this are pretty old (I think only the first and second gen ones? So at latest 2009), so honestly I doubt they’re very worried about it.

    • FlyingLoon@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      I mean, I agree with this. I have a kindle and had no idea you could directly connect it to download books. Guess I learned my new thing for the day.

    • jonathan@lemmy.zip
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      9 days ago

      It’s the old bait and switch, they had to have this feature to build initial trust in ebooks.

        • jonathan@lemmy.zip
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          9 days ago

          Amazon spent 20 years being unprofitable on purpose. You think they don’t have long term strategies?

          • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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            9 days ago

            Profitability as reported by companies, especially tech companies, is complex. Also understand that most of that 20 years (assuming that is an accurate statement) was the era of venture capitalism and infinite funding.

            But yes. Amazon did spend decades inventing and taking over e-commerce.

            But that is not what you described. You described a “bait and switch” which implies that they designed the old keyboard kindles with built in wikipedia support as some long con to get around the eventual invention of a de-drm plugin for the eventually invented Calibre library manager.

            The reality is that this is just a case of locking down walled gardens to take advantage of market share. Everyone is doing it. It isn’t some deep conspiracy and is more just the logical end result of a walled garden with large market share.

  • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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    9 days ago

    You know I am starting to think going to the library is a better idea than buying their products. You can literally just walk in.

      • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        My library only offers ebooks via CloudLibrary, which doesn’t support e-readers. You have to read everything in their mobile app which scrolls instead of turning pages. It’s like someone custom built an app to be horrible for reading books in bed.

        I literally pay $50 per year for a library card in a neighboring city, just so I don’t have to deal with it.

  • ghashul@feddit.dk
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    9 days ago

    I’m glad I started converting all my amazon books long ago. When I finally got a Kobo last month, there were no issues since the work was done.

  • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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    9 days ago

    If only there were some way to get books to read in a format where a billionaire’s trillion dollar company can’t gatekeep them.

    Some sort of physical product, perhaps one made out of trees?

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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      9 days ago

      If only there was a library for geniuses where I can read in a format that billionaires aren’t able to gatekeep what I read on my e-ink device.

      Some sort of website, perhaps one on the internet?

      • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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        9 days ago

        While I don’t disagree, I still think using a Kindle device is stupid.

        No reason that they can’t just go ‘oh we didn’t sell those books, we should clean up all that unauthorized content’ at some point in the future.

        Buy something that’s not made by Amazon, even if it costs a bit more or has worse features, because well, they’re not to be trusted.

        (Or custom non-connected firmware if that’s a thing for Kindles. Never really looked so no idea if that’s a thing.)

        • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          9 days ago

          No reason that they can’t just go ‘oh we didn’t sell those books, we should clean up all that unauthorized content’ at some point in the future.

          On our personal devices? That’s illegal where I am and I doubt they even have the capability to do that currently, anyway

          Or custom non-connected firmware

          Just don’t connect to the Internet and use Calibre to manage your library, there’s no need for custom firmware

    • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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      9 days ago

      I recommend actually listening to some authors.

      The “gatekeeping” back in the days before ebooks was infinitely worse than it is now. These days? Basically anyone who can fill out a webform can publish a kindle book. And other stores aren’t much harder. And those ebooks can be sold indefinitely.

      Contrast that with needing to find a publisher who is willing to allocate some of their limited production time to you. And then hope that Borders et al are willing to put you on the shelf. And then realize that you are never getting another penny for that book because the first MMPB run ran out and you aren’t getting a second because you didn’t sell enough to justify it.

    • tabular@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Amazon will come into your house to take your digital copies of books you paid for (e.g. when they did that with 1984). No reason to think they wouldn’t take physical books after they’ve violated your digital sovereignty - it is only a question of if that were to ever become a viable option for them.

  • amos@mander.xyz
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    9 days ago

    resist.

    Stop buying whatever it is that Amazon/Meta/Google/Etc sell. They will not stand for you. They will not respect you.

    At some points, it may seem like they changed and that they are now good. They are not. They will never be. Resist them.

    • Yppm@lemy.lol
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      9 days ago

      I bought a Kindle so I can pirate all my books. Am I resisting?

      • amos@mander.xyz
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        9 days ago

        You could have made a better choice, I suppose. And some authors/editors do deserve the money.

        Pirating is not necessarily resisting. Are you taking money from authors who really really need it? Or are you taking money from rich CEOs who are worsening the environment, ruining future generations, slaving, etc?

        • Yppm@lemy.lol
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          9 days ago

          Ya good point.

          Seems like I’m doing it backwards lol

          Giving money to Amazon for the hardware and then stealing from the authors.

          I should do some more research before buying my next ebook reader.

        • Yppm@lemy.lol
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          9 days ago

          Using calibre to just upload books directly.

          I’ll check out KoReader. Never heard of it.

          • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            Yeah, Calibre is the way to go. KoReader is basically custom built for Calibre, and includes things (missing from the base kindle firmware) like native metadata retrieval.

  • almost1337@lemm.ee
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    9 days ago

    I’m quite glad that I never bought fully into Kindle/Nook/Kobo and instead went with an eInk Android tablet.

    • Lem453@lemmy.ca
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      9 days ago

      Kobo connected to calibre web is the ultimate freedom/privacy ereader

      • Rolder@reddthat.com
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        9 days ago

        I’ve got a kobo Clara HD with plenty of pirated books on it, works pretty well, would recommend

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          I have a Clara Color (it was like $10 more for the color version and it gives me a pretty screen when it’s powered off) and I absolutely love it. I was not a fan of ebooks until I got it. Turns out what I was not a fan of was all the other ebook readers I tried. I’m reading books on it more frequently than I ever read physical books.

      • almost1337@lemm.ee
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        9 days ago

        I went with a Box Note Air 3C, and it’s great. I hear the new model is basically the same but faster.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Technically, official Kobo books are KEPUB, which is their own proprietary version of EPUB they use for their store, but they can read EPUB and other formats just fine. And if they don’t, Calibre solves that problem.

        (Converting books to KEPUB is sometimes worth it, especially if they have illustrations mixed in with the text, because then you are able to do things more easily like zoom in to the image on the reader.)

    • Dil@is.hardlywork.ing
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      9 days ago

      im glad i didnt even try eink, i just went to best buy tried the cheapest tablets and the s9 fe works perfectly for me, wanted to like the p12 lenovo but the brightness was terrible on it, couldn’t see shit. I think id be dissapointed in my reading experience if eink is so much nicer, i like having options to watch media and do other stuff

      • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
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        9 days ago

        I used to have a normal tablet before buying my e-reader and can say with certainty it is night and day difference. So much more comfortable to read on e-ink. Even comics are usually good in black-and-white.