Live data from Hacker News

All Kindles can now be jailbroken

kindlemodding.org

51–60 of 438 posts

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#51
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which dictionary are you using that doesn’t mark it as an archaic form in British English?

Merriam-Webster has it as "chiefly British spelling" of jail, and Oxford English Dictionary has it as a "variant". https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gaol https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?q=gaol

> Merriam-Webster has it as "chiefly British spelling" of jail

It's odd that it doesn't mention it as archaic, because it's provably Just Not Used in the real world [0], but it's also an American dictionary, so all bets are off

> https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?q=gaol

If you click on the entry your search results give, it takes you to the entry for jail (eg: jail is the canonical noun it's using). Jail and gaol have slightly different routes into English, with gaol being via Northern French. Sez the OED:

> "remains as a written form in the archaic spelling gaol (chiefly due to statutory and official tradition); but this is obsolete in the spoken language, where the surviving word is jail, repr. Old Parisian French and Middle English jaiole, jaile. Hence though both forms gaol, jail, are still written, only the latter is spoken. In U.S. jail is the official spelling."

Finally, though, "jail" as a noun is pretty infrequent compared to "prison", which are the same thing in the UK (unlike the US), but the latter is much more common. The verb form on the other hand is almost always "jail", so when you are "jailed", you're sent to a prison.

0: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/100681/which-wor...

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#52
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Merriam-Webster has it as "chiefly British spelling" of jail, and Oxford English Dictionary has it as a "variant". https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gaol https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?q=gaol

More significantly, Collins just says " British a variant spelling of jail". https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/gaol I believe Collins is the standard dictionary that British people use, much like Merriam-Webster for Americans.

> I believe Collins is the standard dictionary that British people use

And you would be wrong. They've only been putting out a dictionary since 1979. OED[0] is The Dictionary in the UK, and I've quoted its take on it in an adjacent comment.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_English_Dictionary

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#53
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 had no idea the extent that Kobos allow you to do these sort of things. Heavily considering a Kobo as my next e-reader once my PW3 gives ups. Is there a good starting resource for Kobo modifications like you mentioned?

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire frontpage was just 468KB, 91KB compressed, and most of that was the search index. Very neat!

Sad that 91kb is considered small.

Heh.

I, for reasons nobody will wonder too hard about, have a downloads folder here with a few hundred Kindlebooks in .azw3 format. While non of them is quite as small as 91kb, many of then are around that 468kb size.

And they're whole goddamned novels that some talented author probably spend a whole year writing, not just single "small" webpages.

The modern web is insane.

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#56
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 switched from Kindle to Kobo and out of the box it would hard-crash within a few minutes of using it, every single time. You have to pry the case off and remove the internal battery hard reboot it. I sent it in, waited 2 months for a replacement, and the new one (with new firmware) does the exact same thing.

I despise Amazon as a brand but nothing comes close to the kindle hardware wise. Waterproof, indestructible, and never had it crash.

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#57
post #33
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't Kobo jailbreaks still give you that? Are they even "jailbreaks"?

Yes, you can still do that. The only differences with modern Kobo devices are the loss of an external uSD slot and, on the latest modeks, the liss of the internal uSD slot. I also have a hard time describing the process as jail breaking. Updates to the Kobo are simply unprotected zip files which contain firmware updates along with a gzipped tarball that contain updated files for the filesystem. Anyone with a knowledg…

That's great! Thanks!

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#59
post #50
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geeze, Louise! Did a Koala mercilessly bully you while you were there, mate?

I have no problem with Australians, I think they're mostly great. Occasionally you'll get an obnoxious one who insists on inserting "gaol" into a conversation just to kick off an insanely stupid side thread.

I have to say, as an Australian, your reaction is making me want to use the spelling more often. We're generally culturally averse to people taking themselves too seriously!

Re: All Kindles can now be jailbroken

#60
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Merriam-Webster has it as "chiefly British spelling" of jail, and Oxford English Dictionary has it as a "variant". https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gaol https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?q=gaol

More significantly, Collins just says " British a variant spelling of jail". https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/gaol I believe Collins is the standard dictionary that British people use, much like Merriam-Webster for Americans.

The American Heritage Dictionary is far better than Merriam-Webster in my experience.
Post reply on HN