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Amazon is considering shoving ads into Alexa+ conversations (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 23 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

Not this one. I've been a Prime member for many years out of convenience (and because I live in the rurals and need to ship a lot of things to the house). Amazon completely fucked it up for themselves with regard to my subscription this past year or two, I'm done.

  • Removed the ability to download and sideload Kindle books
  • Ads in Prime Video
  • Followed by even more ads in Prime Video
  • Now this, and I don't even own an Alexa device

I'm done. Subscription is cancelled (has been for some time now, but unfortunately it was reupped annual). I've found alternative sources for several things I need to buy monthly/regularly that I previously would purchase on Amazon. Video was already trashed, but I barely used it. I've jailbroken my Kindles, converted all my books to EPUB, and installed KOReader on them. Wasn't a hard transition since I've had a Boox device as my main reader for some years now anyway. I've started buying my books from Kobo and other sources.

Looking into other services for online purchases and shipping. It'll be less convenient, and I'll still buy from Amazon in the event I absolutely have to, but I'd like to minimize that now.

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  • [+] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I never found much worth watching on Prime, to be honest, even before the ads issue.

    As for Prime, I still benefit from the Prime shipping, but a lot of stores on Amazon ship free now even without Prime, and given where I live, 2-day shipping is not a thing. It's usually more like 4 to 7 days. I'm generally in no rush either way.

    My main benefits were shipping and books, plus free games on Prime and GOG. But now the shipping is almost irrelevant, they've screwed the book thing, so all that's left is the games, many of which I won't even play.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    How do you jailbreak your Kindle?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago*

    Depends on the model and firmware, but for most, Winterbreak is the current method.

    Do note if your Kindle is updated to version 5.18.x currently it's not possible to jailbreak. There is ongoing work on a new exploit though, and a new jailbreak method (or update to Winterbreak) is expected later this year.

    Edit - actually, if you're on firmware 5.18.0 the jailbreak may work. 5.18.1 and above it definitely doesn't.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Never had issues sideloading epubs with Calibre on my PW.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    No, Amazon took away the "Download and transfer via USB" option when downloading your books. Making it more difficult to strip DRM, but also to conveniently add it to multiple devices. I prefer to keep my eReaders offline and manage them with Calibre.

    Regarding sideloading EPUBs with Calibre, it's not really doing that. Under normal circumstances Kindle can't read EPUB format at all, so Calibre will convert it to a native format, either MOBI or AZW3 generally. But with a jailbroken Kindle and KOReader, you can actually read EPUBs natively. I've actually converted my entire collection to EPUB and deleted the AZW3 and KFX files.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Oh my bad.

    Any reason why those formats are worse than epub?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    It's really just that only Amazon uses AZW3 and KFX. MOBI is deprecated, and nobody really uses it anymore, not even Amazon. KFX is DRMed to hell, and I'm not sure about it, but most AZW3 files are just DRM wrappers for EPUB anyway. This is why the KindleUnpack plugin for Calibre can strip out EPUBs from most AZW3 files and retain formatting without needing conversion.

    Basically, AZW3 and KFX are for Kindle, and only for Kindle. EPUB is an open standard that literally every device that's not a Kindle uses.

    I already own a non-Amazon reader that's my main reader, and I want to move away from Amazon's ecosystem.

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