There are so, so many better ebook readers to choose from. Honestly just a phone with an oled screen is better than kindle.
No it isn’t Eink is eink
Kindles are pretty decent ereaders if you don’t connect them to amazon’s ecosystem and just keep them in airplane mode. And unlike phones, they can hold a charge after a few years.
Moved away from amazon and kindle a while back
Are there any good “open” alternatives to the Paperwhite? I’ve been drooling over getting an e-ink reader for like a month straight now. https://kindlemodding.org/jailbreaking/kindle-models.html
Most of the current models can be jailbroken, but I’d definitely rather another route. (Not having to deal with checking second-hand market seller’s firmware versions etc)Pocketbook readers are pretty nice
PocketBook if you want openness and long runtime (book-replacement), it runs plain Linux.
Kobo/Onyx if you want Android flexibility, with possibility to flash LineageOS/PostmarketOS (though they’re slow for tablet use).
But personally, if you’re not using it to transcript notes (recommendation Remarkable) or want more than merely reading books, i would go with a tablet.
I have a super note, which is an eink tablet, reader, it’s quite nice and drm free but a bit pricey.
Wait, can’t you just load non-Amazon books on the Kindle? I thought this is only about the ability to redistribute books you buy from Amazon.
I mean I’d still sure like to hear if there’s a good alternative. But if not, I think you can still use it, just don’t buy Amazon books for it. Recommend researching first though.
You sure can.
I’ve used calibre in the past.
I just use a USB cable. No extra software required.
I only read books uploaded through calibre
I second the Kobo. Bought one when my old kindle died, no regrets.
amazon: finally we defeated piracy
one kid with a computer: snickers
Remember to pay your local pirate.
So I had an e-reader once but left it in the drawer because I found reading on my phone (dark mode) was so much more convenient.
I use librera which has tts and I alternate between reading with my eyes and listening to the robot voice narration (eg while driving). Those language packs have come a long way!
My kindle is from 2011, got it for free from someone getting rid of it. It’s old and dumb as shit and Amazon fortunately doesn’t care about it anymore.
Since I got it, it never had an Amazon DRM-ed e-book loaded on it. I intend to keep it that way.
calibre ftw always and forever
- https://www.gutenberg.org/
- https://openlibrary.org/
- https://www.planetebook.com/
- https://archive.org/
- https://www.smashwords.com/
- https://books.google.com/
- https://www.freetechbooks.com/
- https://www.getfreebooks.com/
- https://www.openculture.com/free_ebooks
- https://www.goodreads.com/
- https://www.oreilly.com/ (trial)
- https://annas-archive.org/
- https://pdfcoffee.com/
- https://singlelogin.re/
- https://www.ereaderiq.com/freebies/
- https://www.bookbub.com/ebook-deals/free-ebooks
- https://digilibraries.com/
- https://www.overdrive.com/
- https://manybooks.net/
there’s so many others and of course torrents
Check out standard ebooks. They take public domain books and “clean” them up with really good typesetting, spelling fixes, and other things. All free too
Standard is fantastic! The books are better quality than what they charge for on “marketplaces” and can be read for free or downloaded wholesale for a song. Add to that they host an opds catologue that fbreader can browse and you have incredibly convenient public domain books right to the ereader.
Assuming you have a card from a participating library.
You can also use Book Bounty to integrate LibGen support into Readarr. It’s a workaround for one of Readarr’s biggest weaknesses, as torrents historically aren’t great for ebooks.
Didn’t readarr get discontinued a few weeks ago?
It was officially unsupported, but it still works just fine if you use a third-party metadata provider. There haven’t been any breaking changes on the backend, so (unless sites change things) it will continue to work fine.
It is remarkable how many books available for free on Gutenberg are sold in the same format on Amazon (it’d be one thing if they were special editions, new translations etc, but they’re the same!)
People out to make a quick buck are banking on suckers not knowing about Project Gutenberg, or failing to check it, or not wanting to do a couple of extra steps to get something onto their Kindle.
The best books are on IRC.
Shoutout to Anna.
Have you noticed that the download interface page for Anna’s archive has suddenly changed? I can’t figure it out!
Impossible? So cameras and OCR don’t work anymore?
If a human can see it, it can be pirated
Few have the resources or time for that. And Google and Internet Archive were both sued for doing that with even public domain/orphaned/out of print material
I have an ereader and I’ve never bought an ebook. The fact that they’re priced the same as paperbacks is absurd.
I like to go check out the book I want from the library, and when it gives me the Amazon DRM version I just go search for the epub version online and download that. IIRC, completely legal as I have legal access to the book…somehow.
IDC personally. I remember publishing houses basically forcing the Internet Archive to stop letting people downloading books during the fucking pandemic. They killed fair use, fuckem.
Just imagine giving money voluntarily to Amazon.
This entire thing has been made needlessly complicated. Easy fix though.
- Get whatever ebook you want.
- Borrow some code from GitHub and teach a raspberry pi with a camera and a few servos to snap pictures of pages, turn the pages, snap again into a PDF.
- A script then parses all the images and OCRs them for the final PDF.
- You now own a backup of your DRM book, which you own forever. Pretty sure this is actually legal under DMCA since you are taking a backup of something you allegedly own. The encryption circumvention is irrelevant.
- now, break the law and throw the PDF on the internet to everyone. Go little bot! Go go go!
The goold old analog hole.
The encryption circumvention is irrelevant.
Oh you sweet summer child, judges will bend over backwards to slap people with multi-decade-to-life charges for ‘hacking,’ even if the ‘hacking’ is just the rightsholder accidentally presenting data to you.
Just do it in a country with reasonable laws
They already ruled on this in favor of allowing you to back up what you already own. See video games, DVDs and CDs, video tapes, this is well established already.
To be fair, if you OCR the pages via camera, you haven’t actually circumvented DRM. That means it’s a completely legal backup, as the DRM on the original file was untouched and unaltered. This definitely does fall under fair use.
You didn’t circumvent it by breaking the encryption, but I’d say you still circumvented it.
Theoretically, yes. Realistically, judges historically believe anything prosecutors tell them about hacking and circumvention.
There’s been people thrown in jail for the rest of their life for the crime of clicking a public URL that the company didn’t intend to be public.
In general I agree, but I am going to have to ask you for a source on that last one.
Looks like I mixed up two different cases- the cause of one, and the duration of another.
weev (who apparently is a giant asshole) was the one who got sent to jail for accessing a completely public URL AT&T wished he didn’t in 2010. The EFF took up his case. His sentence was later vacated by another court because so many civil rights lawyers kept joining his team pro-bono so the court tossed it out on a blatant technicality to get the issue to go away, so he only served ~2y.
As for the CFAA being used to slap people with life sentences, there’s too many examples to know which one I was mixing it up with. Aaron Swartz is the classic example.
so he only served ~2y.
Still 2y more than he should’ve, geez…
There’s been people thrown in jail for the rest of their life for the crime of clicking a public URL that the company didn’t intend to be public.
Source?
The closest i’ve heard was a journalist being accused of hacking for the crime of choosing “view source” in the right-click menu of a web-browser.
Tangent, but I have had an incredibly poor experience getting a library eBook onto a kindle. Libby gives out time restricted epubs - fair enough, I am actually borrowing the book, that makes sense. Kindle, despite being the “goto” ereader, and epubs being a standard format, cannot read them.
So, despite wanting to legitimately borrow and read the book, instead I am borrowing and DeDRM’ing it (which is its own convoluted process).
Why is Amazon pushing so hard for piracy? Its one thing to make their store easier to use, but breaking all other valid use cases just leaves the one remaining option…
I have a kobo ereader, it connects to my local library through the overdrive system and I am soooo happy.
Yeah, definitely considering that as a replacement.
I think this explains why Amazon is locking down their books and making libraries non-portable. There is more competition
I got a Kobo about a year ago (Libra Color) it is just great. The kobo store keeps having sales on books I want for $2 so as much as I intended to use the overdrive connectivity, I just keep buying books on it!
Seconding their enthusiasm. I love my Kobo Libra Color.
I have owned 5 kobos over time, and just love them.
This one is my second but the first one is still working fine many years later. I just wanted color.
How is the color? I’ve been told it makes the screen less sharp, is it noticeable? I kinda want one, been using a tablet for comics lately and it’s nowhere near as good at night.
The color is a trade-off. It looks more or less like newsprint: a little faded, but still capable of some lively imagery. It also means that black and white pages aren’t as high-contrast. The “white” parts (that are really never fully white on any e-paper display) are a little less white, meaning it’s not as sharp and you’re more likely to need to turn on the backlight or to turn it up a couple percent.
I’m not too bothered by the trade-offs, and I like it when I can see things in color. It lasts ages even with the backlight on low, so that’s not a major problem. It also includes pen support and USB-C, so all in all I’m perfectly happy with it.
I transitioned from a Kindle to an iPad. It just works better and you can get refurbished older iPads with an excellent OLED screen and warranty for less than a new Kindle in most cases.
refurbished older iPads with an excellent OLED screen
The only iPads with OLED screens are the current generation of iPad Pro with the M4 chip. Every other iPad is an LCD screen (very good LCD, with deep blacks and very good local dimming, but still LCD).
Ah. I thought Retina was marketing speak for OLED. I stand corrected.
Retina is marketing speak for “pixels small enough to be individually indistinguishable by the human eye at proper viewing distances.”
Yeah but the goal of a ereader is to not have to read on a normal screen but on something that look more like paper
Oh, you mean paperwhite ereaders. You can get those too. Android based.
(Pedantry incoming)
Paperwhite is actually Amazon branding. E-Ink is as well. The generic name would be electronic paper or e-paper.
Not entirely true. E-ink is trademarked by the e-ink company, sole manufacturer of e-ink displays.
https://trademarks.justia.com/788/55/e-78855402.html
That part isn’t Amazon-related.
I meant its branding, not Amazon owned, I should clear that up though it is misleading as written.
Amazon and Kindle have always been upfront about only supporting their proprietary format and people just chose to ignore it.
Never had any trouble with my Nook.
I dont think that is true at all. They describe it as an e-reader and its reasonable to assume that that means it can read e-books. They even list EPUB on the supported formats section of the specs. No caveat there about only partially supporting EPUB.
Really? I’ve never had an issue. Libby sends me directly to Amazon to “check out” the book, so I don’t have to upload it to the Kindle manually.
Apparently for america, it works relatively seamlessly, but the rest of the world doesnt. No idea why, but that is what my brief research told me.
Ah, gotcha. That sucks.
That’s what they want. If you don’t agree don’t get a kindle.
They list EPUB as a supported format. Nothing on their site says DRM EPUB doesnt work.
Amazon is full of shit. EPUBs only work by using send-to-Kindle which converts it to a file that works (either AZW3 or KFX. Despite the misinformation, EPUBs do not work on Kindle, except if you jailbreak, as you can then use KOReader to read them natively.
That last point is salient, as it means the hardware supports the format just fine. Amazon intentionally does not directly support EPUBs in their software.
When I got a kindle (10 years ago) I did it on the basis that it was possible to strip the DRM of the books and load them on another device. I’m not going to be tied to some shitty platform for ever more. I must say though that when I have bought books on other places, the process of stripping the DRM and getting the book onto the device has been an absolute ballache - presumably the same for any device when you’re not using the native store.
I won’t be going back to physical books though. I bought a hardback for the first time in ages and my wrists don’t like it. Nor does my partner when I’m reading while they’re trying to sleep.
