Submitted 3 days ago by Cat@ponder.cat to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.howtogeek.com/kindle-discontinues-download-transfer-via-usb/
On February 26th, Kindle customers will lose the ability to download eBook purchases directly to their PC. If you want to switch to a rival eReader brand in the future, I suggest that you use the soon-to-be discontinued “Download and Transfer via USB” feature to archive your Kindle library.
Please pass out forward: all Kindles can now be jailbroken
What can I do with a jailbroken kindle that makes it worth doing instead of just using calibre?
Better Calibre integration.
Custom shelves and book collections on Kindle.
I switched from the default reader to koreader, and now I have dark mode (mine is probably about 8 years old and did not originally have this feature). Koreader has so many features and qol improvements compared to the default Kindle experience.
Better reader, PDFs with reflow.
reMarkable, PineNote, Bookeen, etc…
I’m not saying anybody deserve to be mistreated … but come on, at this point if you buy something from Amazon it’s Stockholm syndrome. Just do NOT. It’s that easy.
F*ck Bezos and other billionaires. Stop making them even richer from your pain. Stop your mind from being literally enslaved!
There is a whole community of people out there who will pretty much refuse to buy brand new electronics. And thats for very obvious and valid reasons.
Kindles can be found for dirt cheap if not free 2nd hand. And so many users have a kindle for this reason. Myself included. Id never throw out or discard an electronic device that continues to work. For the same obvious reasons as why i dont buy new ones.
And so this information is super relevant and important to users like me. Regardless of how much people like you might be convinced that “we had it coming” or whatever.
Sure, it’s the same problem with most of electronics, it’s the console business model, or ink printer, where the device itself is “too” cheap and companies make money on content. Unfortunately it comes with shackles. I’m all for breaking the shackles but unfortunately has to be aware of what they are getting into, not just the trouble but also potentially supporting the company promoting DRMs and more.
I work in XR and Meta/Facebook is the embodiment of that problem. The Quest is too cheap compared to alternatives like Lynx (standalone designing in France, unfortunately still running on Android but at least rootable) or even the “old” now Valve Index, which in addition to its price also requires a gaming desktop.
So… it’s a money making machine for corporations. Hopefully recycling is done in a way that provide 0 support for the corporations locking down its device, promoting its marketplace BUT also, sadly less realistic, doesn’t also prevent companies who try to sell genuine alternative that do NOT promote such business model from existing.
Thing is, the pinenote is €610, and the kindle paperwhite is £160, cheaper on discount.
I get your point and there’s a reason why the kindle is as cheap as it is, but I can understand why someone would see those prices and go for the kindle.
Or go for the Kobo, which is similarly priced as the Kindle. The Kobo Clara Colour is £150
there’s a reason why the kindle is as cheap as it is,
Indeed, cf lemmy.world/comment/15163037 unfortunately too cheap usually comes at a non financial cost.
And PocketBook. Don’t see them locking down anytime soon.
I’ve jailbroken every Kindle fire I’ve ever owned, is this something new?
As it should be.
I don’t mind a monopoly on a physical product as long as I can jailbreak it, install my own custom hardware, or modify it however I want.
You don’t mind the harm to consumers and the anti-competitive results of Amazon establishing a monopoly on e-readers? Interesting take…
Joke’s on them, I get all my books from Z-Library anyhow.
I have a few books I bought, but even then, I grab from z-library. More portable and no DRM.
If it’s alright for Facebook, it’s alright for me. Yoho
🏴☠️
library genesis exists, people.
anna’s archive?
I have never more strongly considered a subscription to annas archive than when that new dropped.
A lot of books money goes to not rich people though
if you can afford it, wire the author the 50 bucks or so for the book, and explain why you did it. most of them will be thrilled to get the full 50 for the book, i bet.
if you can’t, well they wouldnt have gotten any money anyway.
It eludes me how people pay to ‘buy’ something that they cannot download in the first place. If I don’t have it as a file on my computer, I don’t own it. You wouldn’t pay to ‘buy’ a physical item if that meant only being able to look at it at the store, without the ability to take it home and do whatever you want with it.
If buying is not owning…
Just wait until they can figure out how to do this to physical items. How? Idfk bro what am I a rocket appliance?
I agree. However, some dishonest services allow to download, but downloaded file is DRM. It is even worse.
Most services are forced to carry DRM only versions of Ebooks. But there are ways of legally removing the DRM - it’s a faff but doable. I buy epubs and don’t use Kindle (haven’t for a long time) as it’s much harder to remove the DRM and actually own your books.
But way I look at it - if I bought the Kindle version of a book, I can just download a DRM free version by sailing the seas. Fuck Amazon.
Convenience. Most people reads book once, if they finish it at all.
I am sorry, what?
Turn on PC or phone. Download ebook from torrent site. Enjoy.
It’s not difficult to switch?
Try explaining how to do that to your non-techie relatives, especially the older ones who like reading. Yes, this makes is more difficult to switch.
Oddly enough, pirated ebooks are a malware minefield. And hard to find.
That said, I have about 8000.
Where are you going to that they are a malware issue?
Why don’t you use library genesis or Anna‘s archive?
Library Genesis is down. Maybe for good
Undernet and #bookz for me somehow turned out to be easier than more popular styles of piracy.
#bookz is fantastic!
To all the people who are saying “I’ll just pirate books,” you are aware you can buy eBooks from places that Amazon, right?
Have a look at bookshop.org/ebooks You can buy books/eBooks and support local bookstores that aren’t Barnes & Nobles or Amazon.
I’d suggest you download/archive your Kindle books and then buy your eBooks from elsewhere. You can still load those onto your Kindle.
Addendum: that specific site is dog shit. Imagine thinking you just bought an ebook but instead you bought a lease to some DRM shit that only works on their app.
EPUB or GTFO.
I hear you saying that, but the books I want to buy are never on those sites.
Does that provide epub when baught? Or does it lock you in with their DRM app?
I thought you could load bookshop.org eBookd onto a Kindle, but it seems they have their own DRM and you need to use their own app…
Some of their books are DRM free, but not all. I thought they all were, but it turns out I was wrong.
So… maybe even bookshop.org isn’t the best option for Kindles.
I guess there really is only one option left…
My Kobo e-reader is pretty nice and takes any ol e-pub file just fine. And Calibre, a third party software for managing ebooks, has a plugin to crack Kindle files. Just sayin
And Calibre, a third party software for managing ebooks, has a plugin to crack Kindle files.
Unfortunately currently broken for the latest version of Kindle for PC, which switched to a different encryption scheme. It also uses KFX file format that nobody likes, which fortunately can be converted to EPUB with another plugin, but de-DRMing doesn’t seem to work right now.
Am I an idiot for enjoying my Kindle Paperwhite as an eReader, while at the same time never actually buying books from Amazon?
Same. I find ebooks for my family or we use Libby. I wouldn’t know how to buy a book on my kindle if I wanted to.
Nope. Mine has never connected to the www
Same. Most news sites treating this change as a “Kindle issue” is borderline disinformation. This is an “Amazon issue”. Kindle the device isn’t changing and there is no reason to switch if you already own one (just please don’t buy a new one).
It’s a good piece of hardware. I do the same thing. Although I recently got a Kobo and I gotta say that I do prefer the kobo slightly better. Kindle is still good shit though
My solution was to just redownload all my books from z-lib after I bought them already.
I’ve been monkey paw’d with my wish “Z library becoming the most convenient eBook platform”
Well, you should not use Amazon anything. Valuable lesson learned.
I have a first generation kindle that I bought 16 years ago. They used to be awesome, and Amazon shaped the way ecommerce worked. The lesson here is not to be fully dependent on one supplier, not to boycott everything just because it’s big.
Yeah, they were great back then. I have the first generation Kindle Paperwhite (12-ish years), though at this point I only use it to read fanfics lol
AO3 let’s you download entire fics directly in the EPUB & AZW3 format, doubt they’re ever gonna change that 😁
That’s fucked.
So anyway self hosting Kavita to read everything in my browser is hella convenient.
I’m really glad that I downloaded my entire Kindle library a month ago, and converted it all to either CBZ or Epub.
Fuck Bezos.
One tip for the audiobook-fans: Download your Audible books while you still can. It’s only a matter of time before Bezos locks those downloads too. Libation will help liberate your library into DRM-free files.
This is why I never once purchased a book from Amazon even though I have a Kindle.
In the meantime, hackers have just released a new jailbreak and made it a more open platform than ever :^)
I heard there are ways to jailbreak all Kindles…
Locked-in platform closing the door. How surprising.
Accepting DRM in the first place is the problem. Hard to avoid, but still. I just got a boox; great value, can’t use adobe DRM. Didn’t have any problem there. Of course, money is going everywhere except big “publishers”, but that’s hardly an issue; they choose their business model, I choose my customer model.
I resisted eBooks for years, preferring physical books from the library or new/second hand stores. I got gifted a Kindle from a well meaning relative a few years ago and I have a small collection on there, mainly built up when I was commuting.
This news came just as I am backing up my own data, moving off of the big name Cloud services and going back to open source software. (In confession the convenience of M365 etc won me over so the last 10 or so years I fell into the trap!)
Anyway needless to say my 40(ish) Kindle books quickly got downloaded and archived this week. Thanks to Calibre I’ve also fixed the covers to a book series that suddenly got updated to an awful ‘new hip’ version! :)
I’m now intrigued about repurposing the Kindle hardware as it still works and I don’t want it to go to waste, but with this and other recent events I’m done personally proving data or money to these big corporate companies as much as I possibly can.
I use a library app called Libby to read non torrented books. But I’m not sure if it’s available on the kindle. It’s good to support your local library, even if it’s only digitally
I love my Kobo. I installed KO Reader on it and have Calibre for managing my ebooks.
Get all my ebooks from z-library or Anna’s archive.
Repeat after me!.. En-shit-ti-fication!
It’s not just Amazon. Libraries (and Libby, the app they use) are also making it difficult to do anything but read in a browser or use Kindle.
i buy most ebooks from a small local bookstore. for the rest there’s still zlib
I’m so in love with Anna…
Already been doing this, but I think this will finally light the fire under my ass to move to a boox device for all my reading I’ve got the big boox, which I use for sheet music, and quite like it, so the smaller ones are no brainers
If this doesn’t help physical book sales, nothing will.
Quick shout out to oceanofpdf
singletona@lemmy.world 3 days ago
thus I have my personal library backed up on calibre. Wonderful software that’s been around for twenty fiveish years.
somenonewho@feddit.org 3 days ago
I love Calibre. I’ve recently broken my E-Reader (Tolino) but all my books are backed up on Calibre so the only loss is the hardware (still sad but not as annoying)
vividspecter@lemm.ee 3 days ago
There’s also calibre-web for a self-hosted option with a web interface.
AtariDump@lemmy.world 2 days ago
IIRC it’s not as feature complete as the fat client
casmael@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Yeah is this going to break calibre functionality? I remember using it to rip books from my kindle library but not how, exactly 🤔
BirdObserver@lemmy.world 3 days ago
It’ll break saving books you bought from Amazon, but you’ll still be able to send books you got from other places to it from Calibre. Fortunately barely any of my ebooks on my kindle are from Amazon (though my next ereader isn’t going to be a kindle, that’s for sure).
singletona@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Probably some kind of plugin or script to run… i forget the specifics because literally grab the kindle version, then search z-library.