And Calibre, a third party software for managing ebooks, has a plugin to crack Kindle files.
Unfortunately currently broken for the latest version of Kindle for PC, which switched to a different encryption scheme. It also uses KFX file format that nobody likes, which fortunately can be converted to EPUB with another plugin, but de-DRMing doesn’t seem to work right now. It still seems to work for titles in AZW3/MOBI that didn’t get DRM update or didn’t have DRM in the first place.
Previously, you could just download the books on the Kindle for PC, use a random decoder software or install a plugin for Calibre, and boop, decoded books, readable in Calibre, can be converted to EPUB.
For ssssssome reasonnns I’ve been looking at how to do the same thing again, but apparently you need an old version of KfPC because the new one uses new encryption/file format that hasn’t been sussed out yet. Weirdly enough, even with the newer app, I’ve still been able to download a bunch of books that didn’t have DRM to begin with, but of course Amazon doesn’t exactly advertise if a book is DRM-free anywhere on the store page.
Also weirdly enough this quest of mine actually started last year when one Finnish ebook store was closed down, but that was less of a problem. I just downloaded all of my purchases as unencrypted EPUBs. Guess the local publishers are less dickish, worst thing they asked for was watermarking.
Long ago, I used Debian on my main PC but decided to go with Ubuntu on the laptop because it was easy to set up.
Later I switched to Debian on the laptop, too, because ultimately I felt Ubuntu was just Debian with extra steps.
Well, duh, where else would a pro-Hitler, Holocaust-denying ad be?
Yup, the bottom line is, there was this dude who, upon buying a website, fucked it up.
Upon attaining unprecedented government position, he got access to government systems, and fucked them up.
Did anyone vote for this? No, no one voted for this. Were there supposed to be checks and balances to stop this from happening? Well, theoretically, maybe, but, urgh, the Founding Fathers didn’t expect anyone to unleash the Ultimate Idiot on crucial data infrastructure.
When Elon bought Twitter, I realised right away I’d need to close my account.
What made me hurry up exporting my data and closing the account were the reports of Elon Musk personally fucking with the systems, and the subsequent glitches and outages. Had to get it done while the site was still moderately functional.
And they just let this guy get his hands on actually important national computer infrastructure? Fucking hell.
Whenever Elon speaks of programming, he just spouts the most delusional Point-Haired Boss bullshit imaginable. Truly, he has been promoted to the level of his incompetence.
(It is also highly ironic considering the Dilbert creator’s politics.)
I have boatloads of MP3s and at least they can pretty much be played by all imaginable software and hardware imaginable, and since the patents have expired, there’s no reason not to support the format.
MP3s are good enough for its particular use case. Of course, newer formats are better overall and may be better suited for some applications. (Me, I’ve been an Ogg Vorbis fan for ages now. Haven’t ripped a CD in a while but should probably check out this newfangled Opus thing when I do.)
Open source software doesn’t, by definition, place restrictions on usage.
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor.
Clauses like “you can use this software freely except in specific circumstances” fly against that. Open source licenses usually have very little to say about what the software should be used for, and usually just as an affirmation that you can use the software for whatever you want.
I don’t really watch Star Wars. I’m a more of a Trekkie gal.
🖖
See, you can separate files both ways as long as it’s logical
Well, the ball is in the court of the public transport agencies, then! While OpenStreetMap cannot be expected to accept any and all kind of geographic data imaginable, OSM is meant to serve map data that can supplement other data sources and services.
I’m in Finland, and there’s at least a couple of Web services that do long distance bus/rail/plane route planning, all using OSM. Our municipal bus schedule service, mobile app and the bus stop displays have been using OSM for over a decade.
Funny thing, I used Xfce pretty much everywhere. When I recently had a work laptop I tried KDE seriously for the first time ever, and I was like, oh, this is just a sensible desktop nowadays.
Clearly meant for nice hardware though. Sometimes a bit slow on my Raspberry Pi 4. Might switch back. But otherwise, no complaints.
Well, some browsers have made User-Agent strings useless. Technically, it’s like this:
Firefox: “Mozilla based browser, Gecko engine, Firefox.”
Chromium: “We’re totally a Mozilla based browser we swear. Also KHTML, which is like Gecko basically. I guess also a bit like WebKit. Has anyone ever heard of those? No? OK. Fine, here’s some actual information then…”
Bah. Me, I’ve been using Debian since 1997. I’ve tried Ubuntu (and, what was it called, Progeny?) a few times but decided it was just Debian with extra steps.
I once read about Andy Warhol’s film Empire and thought it could form a decent stylistic background for a movie about your average programmer’s work day.
One continuous 8 hour shot of a programmer sitting by a computer, slowly scrolling through a code, pausing for a long time to stare at particular sections, and occasionally saying “why the fuck doesn’t this work?”
Funny thing, Pixelfed isn’t even a competitor to Instagram in the very very strictest sense.
Pixelfed is a federated service for posting photos.
Instagram started out as a service for posting photos, but it has become this… thing. I don’t even know anymore.
In addition to the stuff already listed:
In the Swedish film version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, Lisbeth and the hacker dude use Ubuntu, especially in the scene where they recover the stuff from Lisbeth’s broken laptop. (In the US version, they decided to use Macs instead. And included a scene where she goes to an Apple store with the broken laptop and they helpfully tell her shit’s unfixable. Realism.)
rm -rf /can brick your system
Well good thing there’s basically no legitimate reason to ever even use rm -rf / anyway so GNU version is perfectly within its rights to refuse to do that by default, am I right? If you know what you’re doing and want to nuke partitions, that’s what cfdisk and mkfs are for, dammit
- Yes
- Yes, and also delete Electron
- That, and also make me forget I ever even heard about Electron in the first place
There’s always the old piece of wisdom from the Unix jungle: “If you write a complex shellscript, sooner or later you’ll wish you wrote it in a real programming language.”
I wrote a huge PowerShell script over the past few years. I was like “Ooh, guess this is a resume item if anyone asks me if I know PowerShell.” …around the beginning of the year I rewrote the bloody thing in Python and I have zero regrets. It’s no longer a Big Mush of Stuff That Does a Thing. It’s got object orientation now. Design patterns. Things in independent units. Shit like that.