Skip Navigation

InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)O

orclev

@ orclev @lemmy.world

Posts
0
Comments
642
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • In Response to Amazon preventing to download books you bought: Some DRM free bookstores and publishers

    Jump

  • Unfortunately Kindle Unlimited is a Faustian bargain due to the exclusivity clause. We're now stuck in a catch 22. There are excellent (for consumers) alternatives out there to Kindle/Amazon, the most prominent of which is Kobo which has a variety of very competitive e-readers. Additionally Kobo Plus is essentially Kindle Unlimited, although I don't know for sure whether it has an exclusivity clause (I hope it doesn't, and the policies of Kobo make me suspect not, but I haven't confirmed that). The biggest problem from a consumers perspective is simply that many authors works are just not available from the Kobo (or other) store.

    However the consumer perspective is only half the picture. From the perspective of an author/publisher Kindle is undeniably the largest platform out there with Kobo being one of their largest competitors (in terms of e-readers, I suspect in just ebooks Apple is bigger) and it's minuscule compared to Kindle. While functionally the Kobo store and Kobo Plus give everything that the Kindle store and Kindle Unlimited do, what they are severely lacking in is customers. An author could choose to publish on Kindle and Kobo as well as make their books available on Kobo Plus, but doing so means foregoing the option of Kindle Unlimited which will result in fewer consumers having access to that authors works at least in the short term.

    So we arrive at the catch 22. Consumers get a much better deal with Kobo, but lose access to many of the authors works they may want to read. Authors need to stick with Kindle and Kindle Unlimited if they want to reach as many consumers as they can, but doing so discourages consumers from switching to Kindle/Kindle Unlimited alternatives like Kobo/Kobo Plus. Until enough consumers move off Kindle Unlimited authors won't want to abandon it, but until enough authors abandon it consumers will struggle to move off of Kindle Unlimited.

  • In Response to Amazon preventing to download books you bought: Some DRM free bookstores and publishers

    Jump

  • Not going to tear down my de-drm setup any time soon. But optimistic I might be able to before amazon does it for me.

    As far as I'm aware it's now too late for that. Amazon has removed the ability to download ebooks to your computer meaning the only way to access azw files now is if you've found a way to rip them out of the Kindle memory (not possible using normal means, but maybe if you've cracked one open and probed the flash memory directly).

    I used to de-drm all my kindle purchases using the manual download links Amazon had, but those have now been removed. That's actually what prompted me to switch to Kobo. I'm not going to "purchase" a book I can't create a backup of.

  • In Response to Amazon preventing to download books you bought: Some DRM free bookstores and publishers

    Jump

  • I recently switched to Kobo as a Kindle alternative, but that also highlighted a problem. Kindle Unlimited includes a TOS for publishers that prevents them from selling their books on any other platform. A significant chunk of the Kindle catalogue is also included in Kindle Unlimited, which means a significant chunk of authors works are locked into the Amazon ecosystem.

    It's been very annoying to discover how many book series I've been reading that are simply unavailable elsewhere because they opted to take part in Kindle Unlimited.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • In theory it could reduce the budget, but we all know in reality it's just going to be siphoned off into some rich assholes accounts (most likely Musk). Also that's only looking at the short term impact. Long term abandoning US soft power like this will inevitably pull the US into more wars and conflict which will just inflate our already grossly bloated defense budget. The US is going to start looking a lot like the USSR right before it collapsed.

  • Kremlin says US foreign policy pivot ‘largely coincides with our vision’

    Jump

  • You don't say. Funny coincidence that.

  • China advises citizens specializing in artificial intelligence to avoid traveling to America - SabaNet

    Jump

  • It's not like AI is a massive secret or anything, it's a very well studied field. The biggest difference is just the training set used. Individual people aren't going to make any difference unless they're carrying HDs full of training data around with them.

  • China advises citizens specializing in artificial intelligence to avoid traveling to America - SabaNet

    Jump

  • I mean it's probably a good idea to avoid traveling to the US for at least a few years for everyone, but I'm trying to work out what AI has to do with anything.

  • Removed

    My take on current situtation. Do you think it makes sense? I know it's link only community but can we make an exception?

    Jump

  • Two points.

    First, I'm not sure it's a given China would side with Russia. That's always been a relationship of convenience. China doesn't particularly like either Russia or North Korea, but they grudgingly support them because they're useful buffers. Increasingly the value of North Korea has been called into question in that regard as if North Korea actually collapsed it would cause significant headaches for China.

    Similarly Russia is a gigantic backstop against NATO, but this war with Ukraine has demonstrated just how much of a paper tiger Russia is. In an actual war with NATO even with China backing them the odds for Russia are not good. Rather than be drawn into a war on the side of Russia who would very quickly lose leaving China to fight on their own with very little to gain, it's likely China might just decide to stay neutral, or at least appear to. I could see China supplying Russia with supplies without being willing to engage directly themselves.

    Related to that there's very much a big question mark of where the US would land in all this. Less than a decade ago it would unquestionably have joined the rest of NATO in attacking Russia, but with Putin's puppet now in the White House it's equally likely the US would withdraw from NATO entirely rather than get involved in a war with Russia.

    This leads to my second point. The US, or more specifically Trump, isn't actually looking to get anything from Ukraine or Russia, that's just a smoke screen. Russia is economically exhausted at this point. They literally can't afford to keep the war going much longer. Putin wants a temporary ceasefire so that they can restock and rearm before continuing the war. They need Ukraine to give up on the territory that Russia currently holds and to stop fighting until Russia is ready to continue the fight. From Putins perspective if he can hurt Ukraine economically by siphoning their resources into the hands of an ally at the same time that's just a bonus. So Putin instructed his puppet to make it happen.

  • Trump to sign executive order making English the official U.S. language, WSJ reports

    Jump

  • Warum nicht Deutsch? Oder beides. Beides ist gut.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • Hmm seems like it's only partially true these days. Looking at their webpage they have a screenshot of their Wikipedia entry (why they didn't just link to it I have no idea) that provides some more up to date info. It was a testbed and they mention a project Quantum where the tech was added into Firefox's Gecko engine. In 2020 Mozilla laid off all their Servo devs and handed the project over to Linux Foundation Europe. It seems like since then they've reenvisioned the project as an embeddable rendering engine similar to WebKit or V8.

    Edit: Further details available on the Wikipedia page. In particular this last paragraph seems highly relevant:

    In January 2023, the Servo project announced that new external funding had enabled a team of developers to reactivate the project.[23] The initial roadmap focused on selecting one of the two existing layout engines for further development, followed by working towards basic CSS2 conformance.[24] In February 2024, at FOSDEM 2024, the Servo Project team outlined their plans for a 'reboot' of Servo.[25]

    It seems like the 'reboot' is focused on turning it into a competitor for WebKit/V8. Looking at the projects roadmap it seems there are currently no plans in the works to make it a proper standalone browser.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • Servo isn't a full browser, it's a tech testbed for Mozilla to test out their various rewritten Rust components. I wish they would have promoted it to full browser status, but I think intention was always to take pieces of Servo as they were completed and drop them into Firefox.

  • Utah poised to become the first state to ban fluoride from water systems

    Jump

  • We literally just saw a child die from an entirely preventable disease just this week. A child in the US, died from measles. Something we've had readily available vaccines for for many decades.

  • Tulsi Gabbard fires more than 100 intelligence officers over messages in a chat tool

    Jump

  • Hmm without seeing what was said it's hard to say if this was justified or not. Certainly some of the things mentioned would warrant at least a warning about using work tools for personal discussions, but some of the other examples given don't seem particularly problematic (except that the current administration has decided to launch a jihad against specific ideas and minority groups).

  • More Americans approve of Trump than Biden on every issue, poll finds

    Jump

  • Alternative more accurate headline would be "Most Americans are really stupid and ignorant and actually believe the things Fox News (or worse) reports are even remotely truthful".

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • Ah, I see the confusion. Originally you mentioned two Proton services, password manager and email provider. The person who replied to you suggested two alternative password managers (one commercial, the other one FOSS). You then replied saying without a specific email feature it would be pointless, which would be fair for an alternative email provider but doesn't apply in this case.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • What do you mean by email aliases?

  • Trump Dismantles Government Fight Against Foreign Influence Operations

    Jump

  • At this point I'm expecting Trump to just go full mask off and set up a bank account to directly receive payments from Putin and whoever else feels like bribing him. Maybe launch it with a giant "foreign influence welcome!" sign.

  • 21 DOGE staffers resign as they refuse to 'dismantle critical public services'

    Jump

  • I think the ones resigning were part of the old department that Musk took over and converted into DOGE, so they didn't actually join DOGE originally.

  • Removed

    Musk gives federal workers a 'second chance' to defend their jobs or get fired

    Jump

  • Should start with DOGE then reevaluate how it's going.

  • The Coup Has Failed

    Jump

  • The coup hasn't failed as long as Trump is still in office and his goons are still running things. Things aren't going as smoothly as the donvict wants but that's an entire universe of a difference from failing.