KOReader is so good for reading PDFs, compared to the native reader, I’m very impressed. Supports proper landscape mode (where swiping to next page moves to the second half of the current page, THEN next swipe gets you to the first half of the next page), supports auto-rotation, support auto-cropping of PDFs with controllable margin (killer feature), supports contrast adjustments, … It does not support handwritten annotations, but for just reading PDFs - it’s perfect.
I always found KOReader to be too fiddly for ePubs, has that changed recently or have I been doing it wrong? I want a set of sane defaults to be applied to every book, I don’t want to tweak every book individually. This leads to distraction for me
You can set defaults for all books. Simply long press on the option you want to be a global default. That said, it can still be fiddly since different books respond in different ways. Most of that seems to be due to differences in how publishers handle formatting, but I'm fairly certain that some of it is due to how the renderer handles things.
It’s still the case in my opinion. Yes, you can fiddle to make it work. You can set sane defaults. The heuristics for applying styles etc apparently are not clever enough because sometimes you still get strange results. Comparing it to the default Kobo reader is like using a Mac vs a Linux DE. As I’ve gotten older I find I no longer enjoy tweaking every possible parameter :)
I can still use Kindle Scribe exactly the same as before the Jailbreak. Think of it this way - before it had Library (for reading and annotating Kindle books) and Notebooks (for writing). Now it has a third thing - KOReader (for reading only, KOReader doesn’t support handwriting annotation).
I have a lot of PDFs and this is the most interesting. Do you use the Calibre KOReader add-on to sync and manage? Does that work well? Do deletions of books sync?
Does highlighting annotation work/sync fine?
I would make the move just for that alone since SendtoKindle is kind of basic.
I didn’t get that advanced yet. I’m trying to figure out the Dropbox integration at the moment. I don’t use Calibre. I know highlighting works (I’ve annotated the PDF I’m reading), but I didn’t test highlights export / sync yet.
I revived my old kindle pw7 using this a week or so ago. If you have an old kindle lying around, you can use it as an e-ink weather dashboard (or anything else for that matter, as long as you can convert it into a 8bit greyscale image).
Only upgrade I did from my old kindle paper white was to a water-sealed version. Really nice to take it to the beach or a pool then just hose it off when I’m done so it doesn’t have sand and such everywhere. Just less stressful to carry around in general.
USB-C on the newer Paperwhites (and base Kindles? IDK if those changed over yet), in case you just want all your (portable) gear to be USB-C.
What is extremely annoying is people constantly and universally lauding the Kindle for Kids option, when it is only offered in the US. Or, at least, its barely offered in the EU.
I gave up on my first paperwhite last year (10+ years old). Would randomly lose its charge, which was annoying when bringing it on trips (and often not having an old micro-usb charger lying around). And from being stuck into all kinds of pockets and bags without a protector (half the use was it fitting in my pants) had seriously scratched up the screen. The new one I got is nice, but other than the old one being beaten up, I don't notice much difference. A bit faster to click around, but in the end it's mostly the same.
Not sure what my old kindle version was, it had a keyboard though, but I upgraded eventually because I wanted a warm toned backlight. It's nice that the newer ones are a bit snappier too.
I upgraded from Kindle Keyboard to Kindle 2023 last year. Backlight is very nice and I appreciate its lighter weight, but otherwise it's pretty much the same.
Unfortunately your Kindle needs to be registered to do this, and it's often a phenomenal pain in the ass to get old Kindles to register, if it's possible at all. I've got two old Paperwhites and I can't get either of them to register despite trying for hours and hours with every troubleshooting step I've found.
Kindles have long had a history of gaolbreaks. I've scarcely seen a scene as dedicated as the folks over on the MobileRead Forums (https://www.mobileread.com/forums). I notice many of the names associated with this new break as people who were associated with hacking early Kindles back in the early 2010s.
For context, it's been a little while since we've had a fresh gaolbreak for new Kindles. Last one was LanguageBreak, which came out back in 2023 and required firmware 5.16.2.1.1 or lower.
It is a very old jailbreak: Ye Olde Gaolbreak! One had to bribe the town constable with a ha’penny and a pint of mead just to install a third-party reading app. Dost thou even root, sir?
I suspect most people that go this route (ie download and manage their own ebooks, then transfer them to their Kindle) use Calibre, which afaik, is unaffected by this change.
A year ago, I bought an ebook via Amazon. When I received it, I was so shocked by the bad quality (e.g., low-res graphics like 300px) that I returned it and bought the same book on the publisher's website. Even though it cost exactly the same, it was like a completely different book, with mixed vector and pixel graphics that made sense and even without any noticeable DRM.
That day, I decided to stop buying ebooks at Amazon. So, who cares if they shut down the download feature? You still have a week to download everything you need, and then you better buy at shops that value their customers' wishes.
Does a jail broken Kindle allow me to remove the DRM from Kindle ebooks downloaded to it?
(I genuinely don't know. Until now, I've always downloaded Kindle purchases via ”Download and transfer via USB”, then stripped the DRM and transferred to the device with Calibre.)
It would allow another source to downloading them from the Amazon website (as that is going away) on to a PC where stripping software can (in some cases) be applied.
It also might (but might not) be a way for decryption keys to be extracted from devices for that purpose, but it doesn't automatically provide such an exploit.
It's worth doing so on older kobo readers in my experience because it turns pages faster, and it also correctly displays embedded ePub fonts that the native software doesn't. I don't know how many of you will ever read books that feature APL glyphs so I don't know how relevant that last bit is, and I can't speak for more recent models.
I was actually trying out KOReader (on Android via F-droid) last night and it... looks promising... but better than the Kindle app, really? It doesn't have a dark mode which is basically baseline for me reading at night. Or am I missing something?
For translation of more than a couple sentences on demand, you'd more likely translate the epub before you put it on the device, like with the Calibre plugin https://github.com/bookfere/Ebook-Translator-Calibre-Plugin . There are better solutions that have a dictionary for consistent name translations, too.
The amount of DRM and locking down Amazon bolts onto its ereaders and ebook formats feels insane to me. I can understand the profit motive but god damn.
> The amount of DRM and locking down Amazon bolts onto its ereaders and ebook formats feels insane to me. I can understand the profit motive but god damn.
I don't. I would be much happier buying ebooks without DRM and I would buy substantially more of them if they were DRM-free.
Kobo tells you when books have DRM and when they don't (at the bottom of the store page for each book). I'd recommend supporting them over Amazon any day.
Besides that, a lot of publishers who sell their own books do so without DRM by default. As does almost every book bundle hosted by Humble Bundle.
I am with you but we are a small minority. I literally don't know anyone IRL who cares about DRM. I doubt people like us factor into their decision making at all.
It benefits Amazon obviously, but otherwise it's a massive shame to ebooks as a whole. I was really excited about ebooks when they started, but DRM has completely stagnated the format so much that I've almost completely given up on ebooks now, and read hard copies instead unless I really want to read something and it isn't otherwise available.
What about the format is stagnant? I haven't read a physical book in roughly a decade, and haven't remotely found ebooks lacking.
And to be clear, I understand and agree with the moral objections to DRM. I think we have lost something more than just the loss of ownership and control. But while you're actually reading an ebook, none of that ever actually affects the experience.
It makes more sense if you think about it as something that they need to do in order to make sure that their marketplace attracts a wide range of publishing companies, some of which have very different perspectives on digital piracy, than as a way for them to retain a small percentage of revenue that DRM could theoretically protect.
You have to pay them $20 to not get served ads on the lockscreen on your device that already costs at least $100 and probably makes healthy margin like most electronic hardware. Straight up extortion fee.
I never buy ebooks from amazon because they come with drm (did once, it was annoying as hell to get it removed with downloading random python scripts and having to start a windows vm, never again). It obviously can't be to stop people copying, because all the books are available for free anyway, maybe publishers stupidly ask for it, but the most likely reason is that amazon wants you to read from their devices so they can show you ads for what you haven't bought yet.
What are some "killer" applications that would tempt the casual Kindle user to jailbreak the device?
I can see someone has ported syncthing [1], which could be convenient for syncing the contents of the device. But probably still too much work compared to using e.g. Calibre and a USB cable a few times per year.
The smallest margin on Kindle Scribe is too large. Changing text justification is not possible. Books cannot be uploaded directly with a USB cable without additional software (calibre). Gesture configuration (tap, two-finger tap, etc). Koreader can do everything you want and is significantly better than the stock reader. Unlike other vendors, kindle requires root to install it.
I used a jailbroken kindle fire running lineage for years. I dropped that thing, got it wet, got it hot. It was impossible to kill. It finally had 1 drop to many but it was one of the best devices I ever had in terms of utility / $
Indeed. I had an original Kindle fire (back when it was still "Android") and I loved it great device for the money. It saddens me greatly how they've locked everything down. They could be the premier builders but instead I know then as grotesque authoritarians.
Readit News
KOReader is so good for reading PDFs, compared to the native reader, I’m very impressed. Supports proper landscape mode (where swiping to next page moves to the second half of the current page, THEN next swipe gets you to the first half of the next page), supports auto-rotation, support auto-cropping of PDFs with controllable margin (killer feature), supports contrast adjustments, … It does not support handwritten annotations, but for just reading PDFs - it’s perfect.
https://terminalbytes.com/reviving-kindle-paperwhite-7th-gen...
What is extremely annoying is people constantly and universally lauding the Kindle for Kids option, when it is only offered in the US. Or, at least, its barely offered in the EU.
For context, it's been a little while since we've had a fresh gaolbreak for new Kindles. Last one was LanguageBreak, which came out back in 2023 and required firmware 5.16.2.1.1 or lower.
I first read gaol in a 1960s kids book by Randolph Snow. An Australian as it happens.
https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/1496448
I keep seeing “tyre” on here too. I guess hn is hipster for alternative spellings.
Kindle is removing download and transfer option on Feb 26th - 299 Points | 173 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43070155
Amazon ends kindle ebooks "Download and Transfer via USB" - 121 Points | 94 Comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43041726
https://calibre-ebook.com/
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That day, I decided to stop buying ebooks at Amazon. So, who cares if they shut down the download feature? You still have a week to download everything you need, and then you better buy at shops that value their customers' wishes.
(I genuinely don't know. Until now, I've always downloaded Kindle purchases via ”Download and transfer via USB”, then stripped the DRM and transferred to the device with Calibre.)
It would allow another source to downloading them from the Amazon website (as that is going away) on to a PC where stripping software can (in some cases) be applied.
It also might (but might not) be a way for decryption keys to be extracted from devices for that purpose, but it doesn't automatically provide such an exploit.
https://github.com/koreader/koreader
It's way better than the built-in Amazon reader app.
Edit: it has AskGPT!
I don't. I would be much happier buying ebooks without DRM and I would buy substantially more of them if they were DRM-free.
Besides that, a lot of publishers who sell their own books do so without DRM by default. As does almost every book bundle hosted by Humble Bundle.
And to be clear, I understand and agree with the moral objections to DRM. I think we have lost something more than just the loss of ownership and control. But while you're actually reading an ebook, none of that ever actually affects the experience.
You can also install FFUpdater (either via F-Droid or directly) for a huge range of browsers.
What do you see as locked down?
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I can see someone has ported syncthing [1], which could be convenient for syncing the contents of the device. But probably still too much work compared to using e.g. Calibre and a USB cable a few times per year.
[1] https://syncthing.net/
A reader with native epub support is a good feature. With the stock reader, Calibre needs to do an epub -> mobi conversion (works well, but still...).