Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

goodereader.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–149 of 149 posts

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#141

Post by jasomill »

dmantis wrote: post #134
rgovostes wrote: post #95

A number of comments are along the lines of "people will just pirate books from Library Genesis / Anna's Archive". It seems obvious the motivation is cutting off the supply of new books to those sites.

I don't see how their measures will help. It might have helped a few years ago, but one can literally ask to recreate the full book contents 1-to-1 with any local uncensored LLM just from a video of changing pages. You don't even need to break a DRM in a classical way. If I were them, I would rather respect my users than fight with windmills.

That's putting a lot of trust in the LLM to avoid transcription errors, especially in books that include equations and similar complicated formatting, books in languages not well-represented in the LLM's training set, etc.

To say nothing of books with pictures.

As an alternative, why not hack the Android Kindle app to spit out bit-perfect DRM-free copies, with or without the assistance of the same LLM?

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#142

Post by beej71 »

abawany wrote: post #98
beej71 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Kindle isn't a bad device on its own. Personally I use a Kobo. But I never pay for any ebook that I can't keep indefinitely one way or another. I also have an old Kindle 4 that needs to be jailbroken before the May 30th deadline. Maybe I'll do that today. Gets you out of the ecosystem. And old Kindles can be found pretty cheap.

the drm is the reason why I never bought any kindle along with the relatively small non-expandable onboard storage, though the dx was tempting to me for a bit. I've stuck with Kobo, Pocketbook, and reMarkable and have been happy with them.

I've considered the PocketBook. How do you like it vs the Kobo?

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#143

Post by beej71 »

cbdevidal wrote: post #39
beej71 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the book is readable, it can be pirated. Even the most labor-intensive piracy technique is not that difficult. And once a drm-free book is out there, it's out there.

Though sadly the new types of Kinds require a method of extracting Kindles to PDF which is an order of magnitude harder than the old Calibre DeDRM method. I had to boot Bluestacks and export license files and rub my tummy and pat my head and do the Hokey Pokey… but in the end, the books are now 100% mine. Edit: It’s been a while. Looks like the process is more streamlined, but still not what it used to be.

Harder, for sure. But you just need one copy in the wild...

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#144

Post by DroneBetter »

Unlocked5170 wrote: post #110
fooqux wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly the Kindle Unlimited program has gotten so popular that if you wish to read anything independent, you basically can't without using Kindle.

Honestly, I think the Kindle Unlimited (KU) program should be persecuted as an illegal monopoly. A lot of authors actually don't actually like it, but they have to do it because it is the only way to have viable income. This tends to happen with more niche genres though. As an example almost all books in the harem-lit (1 guy and a bunch of lovers) genre are tied to Kindle unlimited. Meanwhile, this creates a self-ful…

so one could say that the genre of "harem-lit" is itself an apt analogy for the business model of the site to which it is bidden... yes indeed...

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#145

Post by UltraSane »

jasomill wrote: post #139
UltraSane wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really easy to buy a book, cut the spine off and feed the pages into a sheet fed scanner.

This reminds me of college, where I used to take my textbooks to the local copy shop to get the pages sliced out and three-hole punched so I only had to carry around currently relevant chapters rather than 30 lbs of books. As for e-books, long story short, my low-tech chop-and-punch method tended to be cheaper and/or more convenient than the available legal e-book options at the time. I considered scanning, and even…

I actually bought a special flatbed book scanner where the glass was flush with one side and scanned every page of a book and then returned it. Scanning was tedious but not too bad while watching a good show or movie and getting my money back felt so good. Adobe Acrobat Pro can convert 800MB of scanned pages into a 70MB PDF with searchable and copy-able text.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#146

Post by abawany »

beej71 wrote: post #142
abawany wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the drm is the reason why I never bought any kindle along with the relatively small non-expandable onboard storage, though the dx was tempting to me for a bit. I've stuck with Kobo, Pocketbook, and reMarkable and have been happy with them.

I've considered the PocketBook. How do you like it vs the Kobo?

I prefer it as I don't like the following things about the kobo: ads for their stuff on the front page, and cumbersome sync (they seem to use a sqlite db to scan the loaded books on each sync, which for my ebooks takes a long while.) By comparison, pocketbook is what I want in a device: a file manager like interface to access my library, no fuss sync (via rsync and usb, primarily - I use their cloud to store books to read across devices), a good ecosystem of third party installs, and a front page that just features my books instead of whatever they want me to buy.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#147

Post by carlosjobim »

jasomill wrote: post #140
carlosjobim wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's to stop people from seeding new books to shadow libraries. It's not as easy to find new books on AA as on Amazon.

Given how quickly full-quality releases of movies and TV shows appear after they're first streamed, this is surprising to me, at least so long as the PC and/or Android Kindle apps continue to exist.

That's the title of the post.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#148

Post by boneitis »

47282847 wrote: post #131
boneitis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"or use these devices in any way"? My jailbroken Kindle has been sitting in a drawer for a while, but I do go into phases where I am using it heavily for months at a time. But, what I'm really getting at is, I don't find myself having to undertake the procedure to root a Kindle on a regular basis. Could someone clarify for me -- if I nab another secondhand device from eBay after May 20, will I be able to jailbreak it…

I don’t see the point in buying a Kindle if you plan to jailbreak it anyway. Hardware wise, a wide range of better alternatives are available.

Always had my eye on the Oasis line. There's something about the apparent ergonomics that look precisely like what I've always wanted in an e-reader but just isn't there in any other that I've seen. The Kobo Libra only almost nails it; bummer, since it has a color screen.

In any case, Oasis firmware seems to already be capped and isn't among the models being sunset anyway, should I decide to try it out.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#149

Post by boneitis »

boneitis wrote: post #148
47282847 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see the point in buying a Kindle if you plan to jailbreak it anyway. Hardware wise, a wide range of better alternatives are available.

Always had my eye on the Oasis line. There's something about the apparent ergonomics that look precisely like what I've always wanted in an e-reader but just isn't there in any other that I've seen. The Kobo Libra only almost nails it; bummer, since it has a color screen. In any case, Oasis firmware seems to already be capped and isn't among the models being sunset anyway, should I decide to try it out.

Want to follow up for anyone possibly taking ideas from my post (though I've already put in an order on an un-registerable Oasis) -- if I had a bigger budget, the Boox Go 7 (2nd gen) looks like the way to go.
Post reply on HN