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Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

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Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#351

Post by samatman »

falcolas wrote: post #109

This statement - "None of these requests appear to be used for customer features like last read location." - bugs me, because it's fairly obviously false, and detracts from the real concerns. To sync a "last read page" across devices, you need to send a location back to Amazon. It's also appropriate to tie a location to a device, so you can pick the appropriate device to sync your position from. And, when you highlig…

In isolation, "last read page" could surely be E2E encrypted. Amazon would know that I'm using a Kindle app or device, but everything else could be opaque.

There's no motive on Amazon's part to do it this way, it would be a hassle to implement, possibly not great for battery life, and I expect that users don't care much.

Frankly, I don't care much, in practice. In principle, yes; everything which can be kept private, should be. But Amazon knowing what page I'm on just doesn't discomfit me, the way the prospect of some company being able to read my messages does.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#352

Post by samatman »

whynotminot wrote: post #331
kofejnik wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent comment was > if the developers take the egregious step of nerfing airplane mode, and I was responding that IF the developers decide to nerf the airplane mode it's very possible they will start using any open AP; some TV's are reportedly doing this already

Ok so you don't know, you're just speculating without evidence.

No, the entire scenario is a hypothetical, the standard of evidence is inapplicable.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#353

Post by neiman »

rumanator wrote: post #327
neiman wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video is about synch, while the conversation is about "collection does lead to better products" -> i.e, analytics.

What do you believe syncing means? This discussion talks about whispersync reporting last page read and most recent page read events. What do you think that's supposed to do?

Syncing and analytics are not identical, sorry.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#354

Post by patcul100 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #314
benmller313 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stop pretending that analytics don't explicitly benefit the user? Product Engineering organizations rely on analytics to improve user experiences.

They can but they're often much more than that. Also it should really be opt in. Our at least opt out. I hate Amazon looking over my shoulder while reading a book.

That's why I don't use their reading app and use a custom OS.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#356

Post by stock_toaster »

boogies wrote: post #312
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide the URLs so we can use pihole to block the requests?

(off-topic) What’re the advantages of pihole over /etc/hosts?

In addition to sibling replies which point out network-wide usefulness... pihole (or any dns server) can/will return NXDOMAIN instead /etc/hosts which will only return an ip. A dns server can also be configured to match a domain and any subdomain (wildcard match) without having to specify each entry individually.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#357

Post by SamReidHughes »

benmller313 wrote: post #264
falcolas wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's definitely no good reason why it should be sent to Amazon at all. I was wracking my brain on this, and all I could come up with was "to independently verify the invoicing for Bing translations" and "how many times are people accessing the definition/translation and not highlighting". So, analytics, not something that explicitly benefits the user.

Can we stop pretending that analytics don't explicitly benefit the user? Product Engineering organizations rely on analytics to improve user experiences.

The word choice we want here is directly vs. indirectly.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#358

Post by wjdp »

umvi wrote: post #61
alongreyber wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this I recommend Calibre: https://calibre-ebook.com/ It will convert any format of E-Book to a compatible format for the Kindle (usually MOBI) and allows you to upload it directly. I use it often and it's an amazing piece of software!

I actually prefer KindleGen[0] to convert EPUB to MOBI - I find it produces a superior e-book. Edit: Oh no, Amazon removed KindleGen! When did that happen? I still have x86 copies for Linux and windows if anyone wants it. Supposedly "Kindle Previewer" can do the same thing, but a cursory glance looks like it no longer supports Linux... [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765...

Aghh, I have (had?) a project that relied on downloading kindlegen as part of the CI/CD step. I just downloaded it from Amazon each time.

I doubt I have a copy of it somewhere. Does anyone have / know of a copy of kindlegen for Linux anywhere?

Edit: Wayback machine has it, thank god. Had a very real sense of loss there. Unsure why it's a project I've hardly touched for years. https://github.com/wjdp/gotdict for the interested.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#359

Post by gwbas1c »

The early Kindles didn't do this. It used to annoy me to no end that I'd have to manually tell my Kindle to sync when I was done reading.

Originally, I didn't realize this. I learned this when I'd pull out my phone in a waiting room, or on a train, only to not be anywhere near where I last read the book on my physical Kindle.

Now, I'm quite happy that Kindle syncs aggressively. I use an old phone to read in my hot tub, and it's great that the book opens up to the last place I read it, no matter which phone I'm using.

Re: Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data

#360

Post by dahfizz »

freeone3000 wrote: post #315
fouric wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a reason why that text needs to be sent before the user clicks the "translate" button? Yes - UX latency. I would expect this kind of thing to take a few thousand milliseconds, and shaving off a few hundred milliseconds from between when the user highlights text and when they select "translate" is significant. The fact that this data is being sent to Wikipedia of all places further signals that the usage is…

The screen refresh rate on these devices is measured in seconds , so a few hundred millis of network latency is impossible to display.

You're exaggerating how slow the screens are.

And the fact that the screens are slow should be motivation to make the rest of the system as responsive as possible. A good software engineer will work around bottlenecks, not shrug their shoulders and introduce new ones.

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