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Comment by disintegore | Hacker News Reader

A few years ago I bought a Kobo device. Not sure what it's called. I fired it up and it immediately asked me to create an account, with no option to skip the process. I thought to myself "screw that" and plugged it in so I could flash something like okreader instead. KDE automatically recognized it as a storage device, so I decided to take a look.

Turned out that the root folder contained a sqlite database. I opened it up, looked at the schema and inserted a new user manually. It worked just fine. No problems since.

I have no idea if the new devices are any different but given the overall quality of the thing I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so trivial to bypass their online service integration on purpose.

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They absolutely have left that door ajar on purpose. Presumably they calculate that by being the de facto go-to reader for the people who want to install their own software, they can both sell more devices and don't need to splash a lot of money up the security wall playing cat and mouse with motivated hardware hackers (who would become pretty motivated if they found there were no open platforms). It's not as if people who would install koreader would just roll over and start throwing money down on Kobo store books. They'd just never buy a Kobo at all.

I have a Clara HD and it's a fun little Linux device (no android nonsense, just a good old shell), Koreader is pretty great (a few rendering bugs aside) and I can even ssh into the thing _and_ pull files down from my computer with WebDAV though the koreader UI.

What do you mean by install their own software? What are people installing on their Kobos? I bought mine just because Kindle doesn't have ePub support[0]. Now I'm curious what else I could do with it.

[0]I know about Calibre. I'm not willing to jump through any hoops for ePubs. This should be basic functionality on any ereader.

Alternative reader applications like koreader and plato open up more customization than the default reading app allows for.

https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/baskerville/plato

Kobos let you install custom book-reading software without too much hassle. KOReader[0] is the most popular one. I like it because it allows for a ton of customization, can properly render pretty much any EPUB you throw at it (much better than stock), and can reflow PDFs (using K2pdfopt[1] under the hood). But there are some other alternatives, including Plato[2] (simple, easy to use, fewer features) and PBChess[3] (closed source, play chess on your Kobo).

The MobileRead forums[4] are quite active, you'll find a lot more there.

[0] https://github.com/koreader/koreader [1] https://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/ [2] https://github.com/baskerville/plato [3] http://pbchess.vlasovsoft.net/en/ [4] https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=223

I have a Boox and i just drop the epubs on the sd card.

> I bought mine just because Kindle doesn't have ePub support[0].

> [0]I know about Calibre.

Amazon actually provides their own tool to produce a Kindle document from an ePub. The assumption seems to be that you'll naturally produce Kindle ebooks by writing ePubs and converting them. But the tool doesn't work!

I wanted to have line numbers floating to the left of the main text. ePubs are just HTML, and it's easy to do this. It works fine in ePub readers. But while I tried multiple different ways of accomplishing this in an ePub, none of them made it through the conversion to Kindle.

Any customer who actually cared enough to bother to circumvent, is too savvy to be taken advantage of.

It's a filter for idiots.

One of the unfortunate things you'll realize about the (FMCG) advertising industry, is that most of the results from advertisements is made from the impressionable customers.

Impressionable people are the money makers, but they're not the savviest. Hence you're essentially building business models that are targeted at the lowest common denominator.

You don't even want the clever customers, they make you less money.

> You don't even want the clever customers, they make you less money.

Some research has been done on "Why are the various scam emails so absolutely horrible, wouldn't they get way more hits if they actually had a native language speaker check them first?"

They concluded that the awfulness of it is a useful filter for the most gullible of the gullible. You can only string along so many people.

> Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...

How does one checkout books from the library with a Clara HD? Our library uses the Libby app - does that work on the Clara?

Apparently[1], yes, it does, via some Adobe DRM thing (so maybe it requires Windows?)

[1] https://help.libbyapp.com/en-us/6059.htm

I have a Libra 2, but I don't think it should be that different.

You log in/create an Overdrive account on your Kobo (Libby is made by Overdrive), add your library card to your Overdrive account and you're good.

Then when you search for books on the store on your Kobo you click the three dot menu (next to the buy button) and "Borrow" will be an option if it's available from your library.

Otherwise after connecting Overdrive you can use the Libby app on your phone or wherever to borrow books, then just connect to wifi and sync your Kobo, and it automatically downloads the borrowed books

I love my Kobos. I've effectively sold quite a few based on how well they work (most of my social circle reads on Kobo now).

In addition to "Ok, fine, you can do that thing you're doing anyway" with the recent updates, the SQlite approach works fine and has remained so for... oh, years, at least.

The stock PDF reader is fine for ebooks, but sucks for reference PDFs. However, it's trivial to install koreader, and that is good for reference PDFs. I replaced an iPad and GoodReader with a Kobo Elipsa and koreader for reference docs, and it's great. Plus, insane battery life with the backlight off.

And if you want to install some goofball bit of software, well, drop it in the right directory and don't go whining to Kobo if you break things. it's an insanely hacker-friendly device that's also a solid e-reader.

I've been following the Pine Note work with some interest, but, really, all I'd want to do with it is stuff koreader on it and use it like a Kobo.

- "I have no idea if the new devices are any different"

They changed that last month (as a software update, so it's retroactive to existing devices):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30037152 ("Kobo unveils Sideload Mode to their e-readers ")

I guess you meant they decided to ease the open up and access by mere mortal, not hacker.

> I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so trivial to bypass their online service integration on purpose.

I'd be surprised if it was on purpose. More likely they know 9,999 people out of 10,000 are going to create a trackable account, and the simplest thing is to ignore the "hacker" outliers, who would probably not be particularly profitable anyway.

Not getting into an arms race against hackers is a sound business decision, unless you have a very good profit motive to keep them out.

Maybe the devices are loss leaders and you can't afford to have many users not following up with purchases from you. Or maybe you are at risk of being sued over some shady licensing deal if you don't lock down. Or someone like Microsoft bribes you to lock out competitors. Or maybe you're just a control-freak asshole company.

Or a mix, like Sony.

Kobo devices work really well with Calibre for exactly this reason. I've got a Libre H2O, it works great. My son has the Clara.

This is the single reason I got a Kobo. And I will never ever let it connect to wifi.

I didn't mind creating a Kobo account - I have never actually purchased anything from the Kobo store.

I have ALWAYS side-loaded all my books using Calibre.

However - about once or twice a year, I do turn on WiFi and download OS/system updates - which actually made the device faster and more reliable, so...

Biggest speed difference I’ve seen for my Kobo was adding a faster class 10 Micro SD. The one they ship with is fairly lousy. Plus now I get 128 GB instead of 8 GB.

When you say you turn on wifi, do you change the wifi password on access point after it? Some TVs have been known to remember and use wifi credentials even when disabled, iirc. I never let any device on my network unless it is properly blocked from phoning home.

You don't even need Calibre. Just connect to your computer's USB port, it'll show up as a mass storage; copy your ebooks over and you're done.

I have a Kobo Mini from 2012, a uniquely small 5" reader that fits in my pocket. It never asked me to set up an account, even after a 2017 firmware upgrade that gave it a bunch of new features like Pocket integration.

The latest firmware from Kobo finally allow using the reader without needing this step.

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