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All Kindles can now be jailbroken

kindlemodding.org

231–240 of 438 posts

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#232
post #224
post #39

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..

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.

They do. It's great.

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

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.

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.

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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.

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#234
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

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.

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#235
post #180
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 emb…

FWIW, Amazon generally doesn’t require DRM on ebooks.

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#236
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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?

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

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#237
post #188

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/

Koreader is much better than the stock software.

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#238
post #39

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..

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,…

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.

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#239
post #39

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..

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,…

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.

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#240

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...

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.
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