Companies should be required by law to completely open devices when they end support for them
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@dnparadice @thomasfuchs I have been trying to 100 percent avoid Amazon, but with a lot of places to buy eBooks from, it's more walled gardens. Kobo requires their own hardware or an Adobe ID. The books I want to buy are rarely available at other sources. I have tried so much, but everything is so complicated and time consuming and in the end I'm not owning my books.
I am back to sailing the high seas and instead of paying publishers I'm donating to the authors directly. If they offer that.@Eatsbluecrayon @thomasfuchs well if I'm going to live in a walled garden I would rather it not be owned by a billionaire. I do like your other approach 🦜
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Companies should be required by law to completely open devices when they end support for them
If they don’t, the penalty should be that the CEO has to eat the bricked devices
@thomasfuchs Absolutely. I have the Kindle Keyboard (2010) that's still going strong, after a battery replacement ($20 or something?). There should be significant laws against this constant e-waste churn, on top of everything else.
I guess I could root it and look at KOReader, or stick it in airplane mode and copy files via cable. What's worrying is that you can't factory reset it after this deadline.
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@budin @thomasfuchs it's unclear how usable kindles that have been reset/deregistered for re-sale if you cannot register them any more. Can these be used with calibre/sideload if reset after this date?
Also, it means that people like me with multiple kindles cannot sync books and reading position across such devices
@foobarry @thomasfuchs i don't know
but i guess it's likely that at least some use can still be had out of them. ideally someone finds out how to install something else on them and keep using them, but i've never checked if that's possible -
@budin @thomasfuchs Check out whether you can use Calibre to get ebooks onto the device.
Works fine for my Kobo.
(Although I refuse to use versions >8.9.0 because of the introduction of "AI" features)
@slackline for mine it works. to be honest i never used the kindle store in my kindle, i only ever copied files directly to it by plugging it to the computer or used the kindle email function which is quite convenient. i'll have to see what happens!
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Companies should be required by law to completely open devices when they end support for them
If they don’t, the penalty should be that the CEO has to eat the bricked devices
@thomasfuchs Another example of corporations forcing their customers to spend money for no good reason.
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@thomasfuchs
> “The challenge is that these devices were built for a different era and are not equipped to run newer, more data-hungry services and features,” he told the BBC, adding that “ageing hardware” could also pose problems.It's a fucking book reader, why would it need any "newer, more data-hungry services and features"
@IngaLovinde @thomasfuchs
unless the data hungry services are spyware and ad delivery. -
Companies should be required by law to completely open devices when they end support for them
If they don’t, the penalty should be that the CEO has to eat the bricked devices
@thomasfuchs
The CEO should be forced to take each device as a suppository. -
@thomasfuchs
> “The challenge is that these devices were built for a different era and are not equipped to run newer, more data-hungry services and features,” he told the BBC, adding that “ageing hardware” could also pose problems.It's a fucking book reader, why would it need any "newer, more data-hungry services and features"
@thomasfuchs imagine a fridge you bought in 2007 stops accepting any new food you put in it. You can only eat what's already there, but you cannot put anything new inside anymore. Its door literally switches to one-way mode.
That's because the fridge manufacturer ended support for your fridge, because it was built for a different era and is not equipped to run newer, more data-hungry services and features; and ageing hardware could also pose problems.
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Companies should be required by law to completely open devices when they end support for them
If they don’t, the penalty should be that the CEO has to eat the bricked devices
@thomasfuchs this is what parents are *supposed* to be for; there's exclusivity protection for a reasonable period in exchange for enough information about the patented subject to reproduce and improve it after that period ends.
That it doesn't work that way in reality these days is a large part of why the parent system is so broken. -
@magnetichuman @thomasfuchs We'll let 'em use tomato sauce, we aren't monsters

@brad I would even let them blend it first.
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@thomasfuchs
> “The challenge is that these devices were built for a different era and are not equipped to run newer, more data-hungry services and features,” he told the BBC, adding that “ageing hardware” could also pose problems.It's a fucking book reader, why would it need any "newer, more data-hungry services and features"
@IngaLovinde @thomasfuchs Yes. I wanted to quote exactly that.
It's a bloody ebook reader. My ancient Kobo that I never activated nor connected to the net works. It helps that I avoid DRM media like the plague it is. Or read dead tree books. They are nicer anyway.
Still: ebooks are really light weight and do not take up a lot of space, nor do they come with computing heavy features. So the reasoning is just... BS -
Companies should be required by law to completely open devices when they end support for them
If they don’t, the penalty should be that the CEO has to eat the bricked devices
@thomasfuchs to eat bricks
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@thomasfuchs
The CEO should be forced to take each device as a suppository.@AG100pct either end is acceptable
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Companies should be required by law to completely open devices when they end support for them
If they don’t, the penalty should be that the CEO has to eat the bricked devices
@thomasfuchs Install your open source like model and stop complaining about it please.
Why do you use that trash????
Each complaint post bout AI I see, is I see you as a simp as well simply set.
You can install yours and run it privately > figure out how as I'm tired to explain it. -
Companies should be required by law to completely open devices when they end support for them
If they don’t, the penalty should be that the CEO has to eat the bricked devices
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io
And it it's a device (or even just software) that requires a centralized service to function, they should have to publish the server code and turn it over to a community custodian/maintainer as well as create easy-to-install packages of the server (e.g., Docker containers with necessary Dockerfiles). -
Companies should be required by law to completely open devices when they end support for them
If they don’t, the penalty should be that the CEO has to eat the bricked devices
This sucks. My 2010 Kindle still works perfectly fine! I should be able to keep using it if I want to.
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@IngaLovinde @thomasfuchs Yes. I wanted to quote exactly that.
It's a bloody ebook reader. My ancient Kobo that I never activated nor connected to the net works. It helps that I avoid DRM media like the plague it is. Or read dead tree books. They are nicer anyway.
Still: ebooks are really light weight and do not take up a lot of space, nor do they come with computing heavy features. So the reasoning is just... BS@drchaos @thomasfuchs I'm using e-ink book readers since Sony PRS-500 which in 2006 IIRC was the second commercial e-ink reader ever (the first one being some other Sony device that was only available on Japanese market).
It never occurred to me that they need to have "services" or "features". Although having dictionary support in my current Kobo Aura H2O (released in 2014) is nice. -
@drchaos @thomasfuchs I'm using e-ink book readers since Sony PRS-500 which in 2006 IIRC was the second commercial e-ink reader ever (the first one being some other Sony device that was only available on Japanese market).
It never occurred to me that they need to have "services" or "features". Although having dictionary support in my current Kobo Aura H2O (released in 2014) is nice.@IngaLovinde @drchaos Kindles have dictionaries built-in and have Wikipedia lookup which is really helpful; but the killer feature for e-readers really is notes and highlights (and syncing them around etc.).
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Companies should be required by law to completely open devices when they end support for them
If they don’t, the penalty should be that the CEO has to eat the bricked devices
@thomasfuchs
“The challenge is that these devices were built for a different era and are not equipped to run newer, more data-hungry services and features,”
pretty sure they're supposed to run books -
Companies should be required by law to completely open devices when they end support for them
If they don’t, the penalty should be that the CEO has to eat the bricked devices
@thomasfuchs by the ass ><