Does anyone use a Kindle anymore? I feel like the writing was on the wall ten years ago. It’s a dead end product that no one cares about. And all the shady stuff like forced deletion of books was a sign. But also, I think people have really become tired of sitting in front of screens. Physical books are more popular among friends than Kindles or other digital books are, and that wasn’t the case ten years ago.
Kindle to end store downloads and registering for 1st-5th gen kindles in May
31–40 of 80 posts
Re: Kindle to end store downloads and registering for 1st-5th gen kindles in May
#32I don't approve of a company shutting off network service for a device it sold, but... If this is a hint at much more formidable DRM coming out, could a silver lining for authors and publishers be more sales? Or is mass piracy going to just continue, full steam ahead? (Authors and publishers need any bit of good news they can get right now.)
Long ago, for a few years I would occasionally buy ebooks from Amazon when it was trivial to strip the DRM with basically my credit card number and a script. Once they started trying to lock things down further, I completely stopped buying, moving to piracy mostly, and occasional scanning of physical books. Being more technically capable than typical, I’m hardly a normal customer to try to target, but the way I see i…
Speaking of llm OCR tools, had a quick look and immediately found this: https://github.com/transitive-bullshit/kindle-ai-export
If anyone has similar tools they like I’d love to hear.
Re: Kindle to end store downloads and registering for 1st-5th gen kindles in May
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate Amazon more because than most people, but let’s be realistic. These devices came out in 2007-2012 14-19 years is a respectable lifetime for a handheld electronic device.
Yes...but let's also be realistic. Very few people are still using this Kindle as their daily driver . They've already upgraded to a PaperWhite or something better. But there's a very simple reason that Amazon is cutting support for these. Many people (myself included--I have a 4th Gen still kicking around) keep one around because, after Amazon removed the Download option for Ebooks awhile back, having one of these o…
Good news: People are working on removing the latest KFX DRM, and it has already been cracked.
Bad news: Amazon is monitoring them and hasn't let up on efforts to update the DRM.
Re: Kindle to end store downloads and registering for 1st-5th gen kindles in May
#34This kind of stuff is why I no longer use a kindle. I use a kobo which IMHO is not as good of a product but it's worth not supporting this behavior.
Where do you buy your e-books? I've stuck with Kindle, but that's 80% inertia (Amazon has most books, the device works well enough) and 20% existing library is Kindle e-books.
One could buy a physical book, and then "find" digital version of it. Seems fair to me?
Re: Kindle to end store downloads and registering for 1st-5th gen kindles in May
#35While everyone is commenting about drm, there is another factor to consider: TLS. These old Kindles definitely do not support up-to-date TLS ciphersuites and understandably Amazon wants/needs to drop insecure ciphersuites from public endpoints at some point. I'm pretty sure that is also the reason why the Wikipedia integration for these old Kindles broke ages ago.
Software updates exist, I’m sure they could support it if they wanted to.
Ed25519 isn’t so new that the hardware wouldn’t be capable.
Re: Kindle to end store downloads and registering for 1st-5th gen kindles in May
#36I've used a kindle for years and have bought hundreds of ebooks through Amazon's platform. The convenience of being able to carry a library with me in a single device is undeniable. ~14 years of support seems reasonable, especially in the context of modern tech. And yet decisions like this always upset me. For all the limitations of physical books, I can hand my physical books to my literal children and grandchildren when I die. As long as I tend to the book, I have it. The fact that this isn't guaranteed for DRM-locked ebooks, for all their advantages, makes me feel like we are somehow going backwards, despite our progress technologically. Instead of a future where products get unambiguously better, the future seems filled with products that come with significant trade-offs. The trade-offs are beginning to not feel worth it to me.
Re: Kindle to end store downloads and registering for 1st-5th gen kindles in May
#37I don't approve of a company shutting off network service for a device it sold, but... If this is a hint at much more formidable DRM coming out, could a silver lining for authors and publishers be more sales? Or is mass piracy going to just continue, full steam ahead? (Authors and publishers need any bit of good news they can get right now.)
Piracy will never be stopped. Never.
Re: Kindle to end store downloads and registering for 1st-5th gen kindles in May
#38This kind of stuff is why I no longer use a kindle. I use a kobo which IMHO is not as good of a product but it's worth not supporting this behavior.
Because Amazon stops supporting devices after 14 years ? (while they can still be used to read books already downloaded) Really?
In this case the reason for dropping support is most likely that the only DRM they can support on that older hardware has been broken. There's no technical reason why it can't be supported, and I doubt it would cost them much (or even anything) to continue support.
Meanwhile, I can still read physical books I've had since I was a child, 40 years ago. The Kindle is undeniably more convenient than physical books, but this is absolutely an unnecessary sunset of these devices.
Re: Kindle to end store downloads and registering for 1st-5th gen kindles in May
#39Side tangent: I’m the developer of Kindle Comic Converter. Kindle updates 5.19.2+ have completely broken the sideloaded manga reader with bugs like huge margins, pages being on the wrong side in 2 page landscape mode, no panel view, no % read tracker, and laggy page turns. I’ve documented the problems here and the first report was 50 days ago. https://youtu.be/Eo6K7omlE7g And I haven’t even touched all the problems w…
Thank you for making such a great tool. KCC got me back into reading manga and there are so many that are so great.
For anyone looking for recommendations, I really enjoyed Pluto, Yokohama Shopping Log, and Young Ladies Don't Play Fighting Games.
Re: Kindle to end store downloads and registering for 1st-5th gen kindles in May
#40Man, Amazon is really going above-and-beyond to cripple the last bastion of Kindle devices that carry a DRM scheme we can crack.
I hate Amazon more because than most people, but let’s be realistic. These devices came out in 2007-2012 14-19 years is a respectable lifetime for a handheld electronic device.
I disagree. There's no technical reason why they can't still work. They're perfectly good devices (possibly some needing a battery replacement). Why do we think it's ok to turn working devices into e-waste, because the company behind them needs to make a "business decision".
(Which in this case is likely DRM-related, which drops my sympathy meter below zero.)