This is a complete reimagining of the Open Book Project, but the original mission remains:
As a society, we need an open source device for reading. Books are among the most important documents of our culture, yet the most popular and widespread devices we have for reading are closed objects, operating as small moving parts in a set of giant closed platforms whose owners’ interests are not always aligned with readers’.
The Open Book aims to be a simple device that anyone can build for themselves. The Open Book should be comprehensible: the reader should be able to look at it and understand, at least in broad strokes, how it works. It should be extensible, so that a reader with different needs can write code and add accessories that make the book work for them. It should be global, supporting readers of books in all the languages of the world. Most of all, it should be open, so that anyone can take this design as a starting point and use it to build a better book.
Check out the promo video as well:
https://youtu.be/vFD9V8Hh7Yg
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Mass production does that.
It’s not just mass production and economies of scale. That’s obviously a huge part of it, but the cheap Kindle devices are also definitely sold at a loss with the expectation that you’re going to buy a lot of ebooks from Amazon which will more than make up for it (and also some of the devices are ad supported).
…and we can be sure Amazon finds ways to monetize user data as well (they see your book purchases, downloads, reading habits, etc)
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It’s also the economy of scale. You get better prices when you’re buying thousands of units.
Mass production. Plus ads on the Lock Screen. It’s $20 cheaper with the ads.
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I keep mine in airplane mode most of the time to avoid getting new ads too often. Also the only ads are on the lock screen which is extremely unobtrusive if you’re looking to save a few bucks
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Same as the paper white? I saw another commenter say the same. Indeed sounds like the move!
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Call Amazon and say the content of the ads is offensive and say you want them to either remove the gambling and adult romance ads or remove it all if they can select. That worked for me and my wife.
The ads I see on my kindle lock screen all seem to be for garbage AI-generated books.
Only unobtrusive currently
Has been the same for many years. If they started popping up during reading or something I would not recommend at all of course. Wasn’t worth $30 to me and I don’t regret it so far these last few years (:
Right, but amazon also hasnt any reason to put pressure on yet. Wait till their profits start slowing
I bought an “ad supported” model but I’m not sure if they’ve activated the “service” in my country since I’ve not seen a single ad. And won’t, because that thing is never ever online.
I got the one with ads too. Then I called and asked for the ads to be removed because I’m not okay with the kind of ads they were showing. Gambling and adult romance ads are not okay for my kids. They removed it for free. Now it shows the cover of the book I’m reading when off.
Hah this goes perfectly with my other comment
And the stats is right. Worked flawlessly for me. For my wife they charged her the removal and I called back saying I would not pay. They couldn’t put the ads back, so they had to refund me.
Wait, are they putting ads on kindle??
There have been ads on Kindle for a very long time. You can optionally pay an extra $15-$20 to remove the ads though.
I mean those Echo Dots come with a huge hit to your privacy as a cost. Not to mention how susceptible the Echo Dot has been in the past. Hell some expeditious hackers even got the Echo Dot to hack itself.
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Yeah I have an Rpi Zero for interfacing cheaper devices with HomeKit so I feel you. I’m just not going to use an Echo Dot when I already have a bunch of HomePods lol.
I installed that update just minutes ago! What are you using for your voice satellites?
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I’d be interested in how well it turns out for you haha
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No doubt Amazon sells Kindles with a thin margin or maybe even at a loss. But the cost to produce them is also lowered significantly by manufacturing large quantities.
You mean the ad infested ebook reader that has less and less features with each version? Yeah sounds great. Buy a Kobo instead and host your own library with Calibre.
Sounds great. Edit: although I would have more fun building the open book project.
And doing so in a sweatshop somewhere cheap.
That version is ad-sponsored though, isn’t it? If you wanted to get it without ads, I believe you need to pay extra.
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You can ask customer service to remove it for free after purchase, or so I’ve heard.
I’m pretty sure it’s a $30 dollar charge, from when I last looked into it. For that exact price difference you can get a Kobo, which isn’t Amazon and doesn’t have ads
If you want to just do it automatically through the settings or whatever, sure. But you can supposedly call up customer service, make up an excuse like the ads are inappropriate for your kid, and they will remove ads for no charge.
If you want them to remove it normally, it costs you. If you want to remove it for free you must use some excuse for it. “The ads are sexual and my kid sees them, do something Amazon support!”. Apparently 50% of the time it works every time.
Sadly a Kobo doesn’t support my Kindle library without a good bit of extra steps that, from my experience, can wreck some books.
That’s fair. Fwiw that’s the main reason I tried to avoid kindle, so I would be able to take my library where i want and not be tied to Amazon
Yeah they usually won’t do this unless you’ve owned it for a while or purchased a considerable amount of content via the device. Also depends on how adamant you are about having them remove it.