Kindle E-Readers cannot be turned off anymore | Hacker News Reader

Kindle E-Readers cannot be turned off anymore

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73 pointsruph12384 comments

Not following. According to TFA, it does turn off automatically, but the screen is E-Ink which uses zero power after programming. The user doesn't understand this.

Why the freakout, what am I missing?

(Disclaimer: I have a 2013 Kindle and I still get about a month out of each full charge.)

EDIT: If you really want a freakout, how about the fact that Amazon is no longer loaning their publishing catalog to libraries. That makes owning a kindle a difficult choice.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/10/22323434/amazon-publishin...

Kindles have background processes which do drain the battery badly. To support their search feature, they will index all of your books that are downloaded onto the kindle. They will also regularly poll the network to download new books you've purchased. And then there's bluetooth (on the Kindle Oasis).

I've had an "off" kindle drain itself dry in a day from these.

> I've had an "off" kindle drain itself dry in a day from these.

I don't believe you.

That's your right, but it's a pretty useless comment.

New kindle oasis, downloaded as much of my library as I could. Once downloaded, I pulled it off power (not realizing there was an indexing process). Battery goes dry, internet searches reveal the indexing process occurs with a download.

Even now the Oasis can't stand up to a long-ish book's worth of reading if the network's on.

> I've had an "off" kindle drain itself dry in a day from these.

I find that hard to believe. I've left my in non-airplane mode and maybe after a week it drops 40%.

Since I always leave it in Airplane Mode I'm probably seeing different behavior than OP. Plus it is an older kindle, not a fancy new one. But still: screw active Wi-Fi.

> I've had an "off" kindle drain itself dry in a day from these.

> I find that hard to believe.

Assuming good faith on their part, it's a little more interesting to ask why their experience is so different from yours. It might be something mundane (different models, battery degradation, ambient temperature throwing off the voltage sensors on a partially degraded battery), or it could point to something like careless programming. E.g., I've had phones with 2day battery life in normal use which would fully discharge in 1-2hrs in the presence of weak network connections because of aggressive scanning and reconnecting (and I'd imagine the storage location for an "off" kindle wouldn't have great connectivity).

The screen may not draw power, but the WiFi, cellular modem, and system board remain on in the background. The device wakes and sleeps according to its own software and schedule, or network activity.

In terms of user experience, this change makes it harder to store your Kindle in a charged state for longer than a week or so. Edge case for sure, but still a seemingly unnecessary feature removal.

This is why I keep my Kindle in airplane mode until I need wifi to download something new. I really only read on my e-ink kindle, so keeping books synced between devices isn't an issue for me. YMMV.

Yeah, I've always used airplane mode as well and it's been fine.

Additionally, whatever micro-controller inside could easily be set to stop all clocks and go down to picowatt levels of power, triggered on a pin interrupt from any of the buttons. This is no different that most computers that draw a phantom amount of current whenever plugged in.

Wake on interrupt with aggressive gating and poweredown has been around for about three decades now. Pretty much anything with a battery and an MCU has multiple levels of clock gating / power gating at the core, package, and platform. It's implied when building a low-power device, so I'm sure it wasn't a kindle oversight.

(FYI "phantom power" is unrelated, it is power supplied to microphones to power the condenser.)

You want to turn off your device? What is next ? you want to read content that we do not approve( think at the children and your grandma)?

Seriously, this makes me think that soon you will not be allowed to really turn off your phone and other smart devices, then you will really have no choice then put them in your fridge when you waZnt to have a true private conversation/action.

Microwave might be a good choice as well, depending on your opsec requirements -- it's a Faraday cage by design.

Amazon is already censoring books and manga they don't approve of on the kindle.

For example, you can not buy Mushoku Tensei Vol 6 on Amazon for Kindle, even though it's still available on other platforms (and on Amazon in print form). The reason? Drawn topless children in a slave pen.

Big companies are hypocrites, similar disgusting things they do is signaling how political correct and LGBT friendly they are and at the same time they are BFF with Saudi Arabia.

I don't blame them for refusing to sell child pornography regardless of the legality or the format. Media meant to trigger the pathologies of the mentally ill, such as content encouraging paedophiles to continue sexualizing children, isn't something that anyone has a duty to sell or distribute.

So, a point of clarification (not sure why I didn't put it in the original, I knew it would come up):

This is not sexualizing minors. Or rather, it's as sexualizing of minors as war photographer's photos of nude children on the sidelines of combat.

So, while someone with the right fetishes might find it titalating, your average citizen would not find it so.

Plus, it's a drawing. I realize this doesn't matter in some countries, but it's just a drawing. Even had it had been a sexual image (again, it's not), it's not victimizing anybody.

My mistake. I think I confused it for that anime that's been causing some controversy lately, where the grown man has the body of a child.

As far as drawn media not victimizing anyone goes: based on what I've read about the issue of mental illness, it's harmful for a mentally ill individual to engage in activities which reinforces their pathologies. In the case of a paedophile, it seems like it would be harmful to reinforce the link between sexual desire and children by enabling their fantasies. I don't believe that any temporary relief that offers would offset the elevating risk of committing a violent offence by someone whose mental illness is worsening.

>I think I confused it for that anime that's been causing some controversy lately, where the grown man has the body of a child.

You didn't confuse it; it's the very same one. Regardless, it's best not to pay attention to the drummed-up 'controversy' by both sides, with disgust and discomfort masquerading as 'critique' on Twitter. Of all recent-ish series, this is probably low on the list of 'controversial' ones.

Like Goblin Slayer or Attack on Titan? Yeah. This is not even on the same plane of existence. Almost wholesome even.

But that won't stop folks from critiquing it. The word "Pedophilia" has, with a complete lack of irony by its users, become the new "Think of the Children" as a justification for pushing agendas.

Having read dispassionate descriptions of some of the scenes and plot lines in that series, i.e. what occurred rather than someone's opinion about it, the controversy makes total sense to me. The fact that other series are worse is pretty troubling, too. Child sexual abuse shouldn't be exploited for the excitement of those who want to harm them.

It's worth noting that the image in question is not pornographic. It's entirely possible to depict nudity and for it not to be pornographic. A passing familiarity with the manga or anime series would correct your misconception.

Further, even if it were pornography, researchers (see Patrick Galbraith) have shown, through ethnographic field work in Japan and studies of the fans that they do not interpret these images to have the real-life referents of real children. Rather, they are symbols that only refer to other symbols and tropes. In other words, it's a "2D" phenomenon, and the naive interpretation that it is a "3D" one for the people who enjoy it is insufficiently nuanced and incorrect.

It's also dubious whether such content counts as "encouraging pedophiles" in itself. As much as, say, BDSM pornography may encourage rapists, that does not mean that people enjoy it for other reasons - and there is an empirical reason to think that most people do enjoy it for other reasons. The blame lies on the consumer of the material and their thoughts, not the publisher who believes with good reason that the most common reading is not "encouraging pedophiles".

I would welcome some links to what you've read on this topic if you're willing. I briefly Googled Patrick Galbraith, and he does not appear to have the relevant education in psychology necessary to conduct such research, so I would strongly prefer medically-authoritative sources of information.

Based on what I've read, I have absolutely no reason to believe that people who are sexually excited by the concept of children are limited to drawings of them, or that sexualized content featuring children is consumed by people who do not fantasize about raping children.

As far as the blame, I'm comfortable blaming the publisher, too. There's a lot to abhor about someone who would choose to make money by sexualizing children for the entertainment of others.

If you're asking for citations, you may wish to also provide them yourself. Otherwise it's merely using heresay and "Think of the children" brands of moralization to push your own morals onto others (other countries, in this instance).

I'm not trying to convince you or win imaginary victories. If they're interested in sharing information, I'm willing to read it. Otherwise, I will stick with the opinion I've formed based on what I've already read from relevant experts over the years.

Then, we appear to be done having a conversation. Have a great day!

Seems that way, but I'm glad I could offer a dissenting opinion; ending child sexual abuse is a topic of particular importance to me.

Not the parent com mentor, but your argument is similar to the one where rock music and violent video games were blamed to cause violence. I don't know the show mentioned but in general would be a good idea not to block legal material because someone thinks it is not safe. There might be a correlation between some groups that consume X and some ill people.

The reason I intervened in this debate is that I listen to rock music and people that listen to rock were always accused of bad things by idiots without any proof that there is a causation, many people got beaten or killed because of this so I am really hopping we learned a lesson that maybe we should prove that something is bad.

These are dissimilar due to the pathological nature of child pornography consumption. Consider instead if you had a true compulsion to commit acts of violence. I'm not so sure a psychologist would give you the all-clear to consume media which feeds into that compulsion, even if it would be fine for a mentally sound person.

That's the sticking point here: there is no mentally healthy market for child sexual abuse.

>Consider instead if you had a true compulsion to commit acts of violence. I'm not so sure a psychologist would give you the all-clear to consume media which feeds into that compulsion, even if it would be fine for a mentally sound person.

What do you mean? I should present someone an medical document that allows me to play a video game with violence, and a different medical document for watching adult content?

If that show is promoting child abuse then there should be a law that applies, if is just some art that some people don't like then we should make sure we don't cross a line, next you will have to censor Game of Thrones the TV series and for sure the books.

I'm saying that violent media is fine for general consumption because the typical consumer is not prone to acts of violence, and the fantasy they are engaging in is temporary. The same is not true of child sexual abuse, where the typical consumer does have a mental illness that compels them to sexualize children.

>The same is not true of child sexual abuse, where the typical consumer does have a mental illness that compels them to sexualize children.

You imply that a big number of people that consume that media (I think the other guy said there are a lot of them in Japan) are sexual abusers. Can you prove this?

If not and you strongly believe in this assumption and the cause I think it should be provable, since there is a large number of consumers, located in certain regions, there should be some increase in crimes when this kind of content was released. Then after we have the proof we can write a paper, get it published, get it criticized and reproduced and then it should be easy to make the content illegal, we use the "think of the children" and politicians won't dare not to support it.

The only issue in the plan is if your assumption is wrong, and there is no statistical effect of the content on the large number of consumers.

If you want to try this plan, probably find someone that is an expert in the domain, someone at a university. maybe one of those scientists that studied video games violence/

> The same is not true of child sexual abuse, where the typical consumer does have a mental illness that compels them to sexualize children.

That's a pretty serious accusation towards people who consume a content, to do without some SERIOUS backing of peer reviewed studies. Do you have any?

>I briefly Googled Patrick Galbraith, and he does not appear to have the relevant education in psychology necessary to conduct such research, so I would strongly prefer medically-authoritative sources of information.

I'm not talking about the psychological point of view, I'm talking about the cultural anthropological point of view. For the psychological point of view, you're better off looking at the effects of porn on its consumers, and to what extent its consumers export the beliefs. As far as I know, it's a small proportion, and not the typical consumer. See Hald and Malamuth's work for that. Also see work on fiction-communities, such as studies on fanfiction users. These also tend to be cultural-anthropological point of views. I am not aware of any empirical psychological study on the intersection between fiction (2D or 1D, that is) porn and pedophilia. Taylor & Kohut note that porn effects research is a shaky science with a variety of methodological flaws. Studies on pedophiles are even more unreliable, since they mostly concern those who have either (i) already abused a child or (ii) already been found in possession of real child pornography. See a chapter in Gary Young's book, The Gamer's Dilemma for a depth-discussion of the empirical status of a hypothetical link between virtual CP and pedophilia.

I don't have a link on hand, but Galbraith's article in Image and Narrative entitled "Lolicon: The reality of 'virtual child pornography in Japan" is a study of the phenomenon and its fans. His doctoral thesis also includes fieldwork in Japan with fan communities.

As far as I know, there is no empirical psychological study which confirms or denies that the majority of these fans are pedophiles, or that they feel the same way about 3D children as they do about 2D children. The best resources we have are twofold: how do people understand fiction? And how do fiction-oriented communities guard interpretations of fiction? Galbraith sets out to provide answers to these questions.

>I have absolutely no reason to believe that people who are sexually excited by the concept of children are limited to drawings of them

I don't think you have reason to believe the converse, either; at least Galbraith's work provides a hint (even if a weak one) against your conclusion. You may also have reason to believe based on how BDSM practitioners and enjoyers interact with their own pornography; for instance, how it has been studied that women with rape kinks do not themselves wish to be raped in real life, or how most people navigate pornography, in particular heinous or non-consensual acts. Incest pornography and furry pornography are interesting points to consider here. We also have some orthogonal evidence from video games and lasting aggressive attitudes outside lab settings - as far as I know, consistently fail to show persistence. Additionally, the rate of sexual assault does not even correlate with the rise in consumption of pornography in general.

I think there is a stronger reason to believe that even if there are negative effects from real-life porn, that fictional porn in which reality itself is bent, with immense scapes of fantasy and wonder, grotesque bodies, unreasonable attitudes, twisted scenarios, and strong elements of parody will have less of an effect, or even no effect.

I'll look up the names and articles you've mentioned, thanks for that. I've seen some information about the effects of porn consumption, but it's difficult to relate the results of a study on typical porn consumers with the effects of media depicting child sexual abuse on those with a mental illness compelling them to sexualize children. That's an enormous sticking point that also differentiates the typical consumer of fiction with the consumer of depictions of child sexual abuse. We can't expect someone consuming specific types of media pathologically to react the same way as a typical person consuming media that does not aggravate an illness of theirs.

I have no doubt at all that pedophiles do enjoy fictional child pornography. However, my contention is that (i) it is not clear that pedophiles make up the majority of such viewers, and there are other plausible explanations for why, concordant with what we know from other kinds of media, and (ii) it is not clear that the fans understand the work in the way pedophiles do, and Galbraith's work on the history and current trend of phenomenon hints in that direction.

From what I can tell, the people whom the content is marketed towards (and yes, including things like Mushoku Tensei) concerns people with what is known in Japan as the "2D complex", or people with vivid imaginations, with a strong distinction between fantasy and reality.

At the same time, I will agree that pedophiles typically have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. But it is undeniable that there are kink, fetish, and pornography communities which work on the very principle of distinguishing fiction from reality, and infusing them with imagination that does not reflect real-world desire. It also stands to reason that the aesthetic properties mean something - in that if the primary audience were pedophiles, we'd see much more realistic depictions, or a trend toward realism, rather than an emphasis on distorted bodies, ridiculous settings, parody, and unbelievable characters common in such material.

See also readings on Otaku, fictional sexuality, and moe. Japan, and by extension those who are moulded by Japanese media, has a strong tradition of a different conception of fiction and reality to the Western view that fiction is pure wish-fulfillment, and real desire is a fixed point in erotic function. Galbraith cites this research in the paper I mentioned earlier, as does Gary Young (a psychologist, for once!) in the work mentioned earlier.

What is it that you think interests people in seeing sexualized depictions of children when it's not the children themselves? Perhaps someone who lacks empathy may simply not care that they're fantasizing about children being abused, but I'm honestly trying think of any other scenario that is more plausible than them being sexually attracted to children.

What unique quality does child sexual abuse add to fiction which would override the loss of sexual desire that the average person feels with children?

You've missed the key point I was making, which is that these people do not fantasize about children at all, if by children we mean real (3D) children, in the same way BDSM enthusiasts do not fantasize about really non-consensually caning someone, or raping someone. It's only made OK in their mind by the addition of fiction and play. According to Galbraith's findings, concordant with other research in fictional media, they literally don't think of a real life child when they see these characters. They think of them as tropes, assemblages of aesthetic features (hair colour, height, body type) that are themselves referents only to other symbols.

If you've heard of the idea of the 'lifeworld' from Habermas, it's a similar principle here. They are quite living in another world, a fantasy and fictional world, to the point where they develop what Japanese psychologists have identified as a "2D sexuality". Please compare this to the way in which a BDSM practitioner/fan looks at what others may see as abuse. The practitioner actually sees some nuance, or a possibility of nuance, that others don't.

You might look at the material and say "that's a child" - but these fans, at least the ones Galbraith argues are the primary consumers, do not visualize a real child in that context. This is emphasized by the fact that even the term 'lolicon' before being adopted outside Otaku discourse is an entirely fictionally-referent concept.

Again, pedophiles will enjoy it too - but that's because they see the material through your lens, not the lens of someone who has developed some component of a 2D sexuality, and never shall their 2D and 3D sexualities meet.

I'll do some more reading, but I find the concept extremely implausible. If the fictional child did not represent a child in their mind, there would be no need to seek out media featuring children. The 2D/3D attraction hypothesis you've presented would exist aside their paedophilia.

>If the fictional child did not represent a child in their mind, there would be no need to seek out media featuring children.

This statement falls apart when you correct the last word to 'fictional children' rather than just 'children', which is what it should be, unless you have reason to believe they (the majority of viewers) also seek out 'real child' pornography too.

They seek it out because they have trained themselves to see these characters as part of the world inhabited by fictional adult characters. The 'child' characters are no different to them as the 'adult' characters. It's important to note, they're not seeking out media featuring 'children', they're specifically seeking out media featuring the 2D, deformed, and aesthetically pleasing trope-based 'children' they've seen elsewhere in the fictional world. They do not view the child in an anime as a child, but as a manifestation of some child-like qualities (or perhaps not even that) combined with tropes they have learned to recognize. It's also driven by taboo taking things to extremes - such as the fascination with youth, particularly in Japanese society - much in the same way rape fetishes are taken by BDSM partners to be the subordination of women taken to the extreme in the fiction-context, not necessarily a fascination with rape itself. This is seen in other BDSM behaviours too.

This is the main point of the 2D complex. It circumvents the 3D referents and developes itself separately. Lolicon is merely a subset of the 2D complex - and in the 2D complex, "anything goes". The equivalent for people with 3D attractions would be a risque fetish.

Trying to understand the 2D complex in terms of what is appealing about people with regular (3D) attractions is almost as non-sensical as a gay person trying to understand what's so appealing about heterosexuality from the perspective of homosexual attractions.

It is more plausible that the 2D children attraction exists beside (i) other 2D attractions (ii) a fascination for youth, a fetish for the concept and all things associated with it - but no sexual attraction to children.

I say the last part because there are studies on people with youth fetishes, but not pedophilia - the ageplay community in BDSM circles simulates child sex, but is not clinically considered a subset or relation of pedophilia.

Thank you for taking the time, I understand the concept you're explaining, it just sounds implausible. At the end of the day, they're still fantasizing about children, they've just found a way to believe that they're doing it in a way that is not mentally deleterious. I'll keep reading, but it's going to take something extraordinary to convince me that the link between sexual excitement and the qualities that make up the concept of a child is something that manifests in people who aren't paedophiles.

That seems like a weird stance to take when they sell it for Kindle on Amazon.co.jp.

Joke's on them, my kindle turns itself off when it decides to precipitously drain the battery in a matter of minutes for no apparent reason.

Usually when I'm boarding a long flight. Cheeky fucker.

An alternative explanation is that the battery has reached its end of life

Given that it is a, I think, gen2 paperwhite, you are almost certainly correct in your assessment of my humorous comment.

However, I don't like to generate waste so as long as it still, generally, holds its charge for weeks I'll continue to use it.

Ugh, I hate this kind of stuff.

At the same time, I’m a poor college student who finds the fact that the Kindle edition of books is often half the price of a physical copy, and everything is available through Amazon.

Can anyone recommend a good ereader/publisher stack? I’ve considered trying to find ePub versions and then converting them to work on my Kindle—is that possible?

Help free me from this prison!

Converting from epub to mobi or azw3 which are consumed by Kindle is easy. Calibre can do it and it can be even run from commandline. Problem with Kindle/Amazon is the "Kindle Unlimited" program which although profitable for authors, is bad for people who want to avoid Amazon's clutches, because it doesn't allow authors to sell ebooks elsewhere.

Funny story about formats, apparently Amazon recently changed their policy about what ebook formats they accept: mobi (a native format for Kindle) is no longer one of them.

Source: A writer I follow had a book submission declined until they reformatted it from .mobi to .epub, and they discussed it on Facebook.

Seriously? Epub isn't even supported by Amazon devices, at least not my 2 year old e-ink Kindle. Is this a play to ensure their DRM gets put into as many ebooks as possible when Amazon converts the epub to a native format?

Honestly? I have no idea why they might do this. It's not supported on my Oasis either.

The best I can come up with is pretty conspiracy-theory-ish: They're moving towards removing the ability for you to load open formats onto the Kindle directly (i.e. without going through their mail system or kindle-store purchases).

No. Publishers can disable DRM if they want on Kindle. The reason they stopped accepting Mobi is because it's an ancient format that lacks a lot of features over ePub and Amazon's newer formats. It's like Apple not accepting 64kbps MP3s for iTunes. There's just no benefit, you can always make a just as 64kbps MP3 for your ancient device if you need it but you can't really go the other way around. Same with Mobi and ePub/Amazon's newer formats.

I bought a Kobo and haven't failed to find a book in their store yet.

>I’ve considered trying to find ePub versions and then converting them to work on my Kindle—is that possible?

Calibre does this perfectly.

Alternatively, if you have a jailbroken Kindle - KOReader lets you directly read EPUBs.

I wouldn't say perfectly. Amazon's own tools do a far better job than Calibre for ePub to AZW which shouldn't be too surprising because that's how they're typically made.

Calibre is handy thanks to plugins but I have found it lackluster for anything more advanced than a basic Latin script novel for conversion. Stuff like Japanese where it needs to do R2L it just completely falls on it's face. Comic books don't work well either.

> Comic books don't work well either.

Are you trying to preserve Amazon/Comixology's "smart panel" navigation, or just get the images to display?

For the smart panel nav, I can't help you, but if you all you care about is the images, I've made plenty of my own CBR/CBZs from Amazon AZWs by just pulling out the Images directory, zipping the directory, and renaming the .zip to .CBZ.

Just images. I don't care about smart panel stuff. It's easy to go AZW/ePub to CBZ/CBR but Kindles don't natively support that or at least they didn't last time I had one. Going ePub to AZW is more complicated as there is some stuff to specify that images should display full screen with no margin, whether the book is RTL or LTR, table of contents, etc.

Amazon's own tool (kindlegen) isn't really supported. It hasn't been updated in years, it isn't available on the Amazon website any more even [0]. Their new offering (Kindle Previewer[1]) doesn't support Linux, so I haven't tried it out.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765211

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765...

Wow that is crazy that you have to jailbreak to enable that! My Kobo Libre just shows up as a mass storage device that I drag epubs on to and they just show up in the "My Books" list.

I recommend the Remarkable 2. In addition to serving as an e-reader, it is an excellent notebook replacement.

As a cool note about the Remarkable 2..."under that Eink screen sits a dual core 1.2GHz ARM CPU, with 1GB of RAM, running Linux... and... you can SSH into it by default!!!" [1].

[1] https://github.com/danielebruneo/remarkable2-hacks

Downside: It's about 4x the price of a mid-line Kindle, and closer to 7x the cheap editions.

upside: it can do more (you can write on it) and the company enables ssh access into your device without having to jailbreak etc.

Yes, the company could be more open, but I feel like the remarkable is my device a lot more than I do with the kindle.

I have a Remarkable 2 (and love it), but one downside is that it only takes DRM-free books for it's e-reader. I wish the company would partner with some publishers so that I could buy books to read on the device.

At least we have Standard Ebooks[1] in the meantime!

[1] https://standardebooks.org/

Perhaps KOReader will solve your issue: https://github.com/koreader/koreader

Also, a while ago, I built a script to download all epub files from StandardEbooks. Adapt to your pleasure.

https://pastebin.com/4hQm1Nzh

Ideally you’d pull down SE books as you read them; mostly because we maintain the books regularly and you’ll be missing out on those improvements when you finally get around to reading the later 90% of the corpus.

This was my one-liner adapted from some HN comment iirc:

    curl -s https://standardebooks.org/opds/all | grep -oE "/(.*).epub"  | cut -d '"' -f1 | grep -v "kepub" | sed '/^$/d' | sed -e"s/^/https:\/\/standardebooks.org/"|wget --no-clobber -i -

I have it set as a @weekly cronjob, works well.

As for eReaders, I recommend Kobo. Top hardware and the software is also easily hackable. You can manage your library with Calibre and it will read most everything you throw at it.

I have OverDrive set up on my Kobo so I can check out books from my local library and read them on the device. It works great.

Check out Boox. They make eInk Android tablets so you can just use the Kindle, Kobo, Google Play, Libby, etc. apps on it with no problems. No need to convert everything, crack DRM etc. Even those crummy textbook publisher apps work too. They are a bit pricy but they do a lot more than a Kindle and most models these days come with a Wacom pen for note taking and markup.

I buy a lot of ebooks between multiple stores so having all on one device without loads of hoops is great. I ended up getting 2, a smaller one for reading books and a bigger one for marking up PDFs. Love em.

Library Genesis will free you from that prison. It has most books and papers I've ever needed and it's less immoral than Amazon.

http://libgen.gs/

How is this not just pirating books? This seems to be much more immoral than Amazon, and also illegal in many places.

It is pirating books.

I like my kindle, but I have noticed that my newer one has less battery life. I am not saying it got old and had less battery life, I mean new it didn't have the longevity of the old one.

I leave it sitting-- I thought off-- sometimes for a few days. The power goes down. Now I know why.

I love ereaders, and I have always loved using a kindle. But I realize now (too late I guess) I should have been supporting an open standard rather than becoming part of another roach motel eco-system.

You can try turning off WiFi if you don't need it. I found that to greatly improve battery life.

Max Headroom, 1987 [0]:-

Edison Carter checks out the cops busting into some girl's apartment. He and his colleague want to know the score, and the cop pulls back a cushion showing how she's hotwired her TV:-

Janie Crane: "An off switch?" (looks shocked)

Metrocop: "She'll get years for that. Off switches are illegal!"

[0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(TV_series)

Obligatory Douglas Adams reference: "Mode Execute Ready"[0]

If it ever really turns off, you can't turn it back on, because what is watching the button? To really turn off, it needs a switch. Which is to say, your phone also will not turn off; also, except by the battery dying.

[0] "Ford flipped the switch which he saw was now marked "Mode Execute Ready" instead of the now old-fashioned "Access Standby" which had so long ago replaced the appallingly stone-aged "Off"."

Adams dated his work implicitly by the word switch. "You must mean a physically bistable combined control/indicator." Red or green paint that gets covered or uncovered by moving it was once the pinnacle of industrial design chic, challenged only by designs that made it impossible to know which way was on.

A button is a spring loaded normally-open switch. It seems to me to be perfectly possible to implement "fully powered off" in any device with physical buttons; once you've made the initial connection, you can trip a MOSFET to keep the juice flowing.

Do Kindles have microphones?

Edit: lol, yes. This is from 2010:

https://www.wired.com/2010/08/why-does-the-new-kindle-have-a...

I was thinking we could do the opposite with e-readers, since they have a persistent display: it's always off, it only momentarily turns on to flip the page when you press a button.

https://old.reddit.com/r/kindle/comments/kt6qcu/can_you_comp...

Fixed link.

I recently ditched my kindle for an Onyx Boox Note Air. No regrets.

Such a nice device! And the software is so full of features. I was quite surprised and suspected a much shittier product. Just the case situation is dire.

I like that it ships with Android and without Google Play Services.

Not cool. I don’t trust Amazon enough not to use that always-on for nefarious purposes.

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