481–490 of 538 posts
Lovely, great effort. I wonder if Kindle Web reader supports word search, but that probably just searches server side and then returns indexed selections. And how about copy-and-paste and accessibility, there must be some a11y support?
You can copy and paste text from it. But you get no formatting, paragraph breaks, etc.
I personally have bought many fewer books over the last couple of years, from amazon, as they've made it harder and harder to, you know, read the books I've paid for. Pirating books is not hard. They're probably the smallest possible thing that people are interested in copying with the broadest variation in acceptable formats. I know I'm screaming into the void, but if I'm paying real money why is the experience from…
In general, if I don’t have to pay someone to produce something I can provide a better experience to my customers than those who do. It’s why archive.is is so much better to read on than a news site. Might as well ask “when I engage with GPL projects it’s so much worse of an experience than if I just bundle the code and distribute it without a license, why?” It’s often cheaper to not comply than to comply. But my kin…
Amazon theoretically makes money with which they pay people to make the user experience good.
Pirates have... a few nerds with some spare time?
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This is essentially how I find myself defending a lot of my DIY stuff. "Wait, you work in tech, why would you ever work on your own car when you can clearly pay someone else to do it???" Because I like to learn things.
Agreed, that is the same way I view things. There is also the great feeling of satisfaction when you finish repairing your own stuff.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, if you haven't read it
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I'm an owner of a Kobo, how did you do that? When I tried, the only options from Amazon were 'transfer to my device' and that only works if you have a Kindle. There was 0 way to just download the stupid file and let me copy it myself.
When I said "bypass", I meant I ditched my kindle for a kobo and stopped buying books on amazon entirely. There is a library built into the kobo you can purchase from, which I do for newer books. However, I've been on a classics kick and I pirate them tbh. Dumas doesn't mind.
That's good to know, thanks!
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Is this the code? https://github.com/gudvardur/amazon_book_downloader
Yes. FWIW, as of a few minutes ago when I cloned this one, all the non-git files have the same hashes as the copy of the original I cloned when it was still up. (to clarify, I wasn't talking about any git-specific hashes, just regular sha2/blake2b hashes of python, json, and font files. However, the two sha1 commit hashes in the git history match as well.)
4526863 - Initial commit
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So it can refer to people and what is in their minds too? Anyway I'm not surprised. This kind of pedantry is what lawyers do for a living.
Yes, it can, and I thank God because I wouldn't want more nuclear powers than what the world already has.
All I am saying is that I am not sure it's so simple: sure, if everyone had them, the risk that there is some lunatic crazy enough to actually put them to use rises; but it also potentially stops a bunch of wars, especially bigger countries going after smaller ones.
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Isn't he talking about the print copy?
Print copy: 57% of the price Amazon: 40% of the price Author: 3% of the price (half of which goes to taxes)
Color printed books are expensive, but I think he chose the premium color print option rather than the standard color print option. You can try it out: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/royalty-calculator { pages: 432, dimensions: 7.5"x9.25" } Roughly $18 for basic color and $36 for premium color (which probably also means heavier, higher quality paper).
Amazon takes 40%. Barnes and Noble Press takes 45% for self-published books, and their printing costs are within a couple dollars. Compare to typical retailer+distributor costs of >50% while authors get The economics of retail print publishing and logistics don't seem to work out at higher author royalty rates. Authors who don't want to give up 40% of list price always have the option to handle printing, shipping, and accounting themselves, selling on ebay or from their own website.
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Yes. FWIW, as of a few minutes ago when I cloned this one, all the non-git files have the same hashes as the copy of the original I cloned when it was still up. (to clarify, I wasn't talking about any git-specific hashes, just regular sha2/blake2b hashes of python, json, and font files. However, the two sha1 commit hashes in the git history match as well.)
These commit sha's do not match the original: 4526863 - Initial commit
Hell hath no fury like an engineer angered! This was such a good read and epitomizes hacking: "Was it worth it? To read one book? No. To prove a point? Absolutely. To learn about SVG rendering, perceptual hashing, and font metrics? Probably yes."
This is essentially how I find myself defending a lot of my DIY stuff. "Wait, you work in tech, why would you ever work on your own car when you can clearly pay someone else to do it???" Because I like to learn things.