fonix232

which is fucking useless for actual progress sync of books because it doesn’t handle concurrency (multiple readers reading the same content, potentially offline), and more importantly, modern ebook formats have no concept of “page” in transit. Oh, you read page 10? Awesome! Now do tell, is it page 10 on a 5" 800x480 eink display with 48px font size and giant margins/lineheights/word paddings, or is it page 10 on a 13" display of 2480x1860 resolution with 11px font size and barely any margins? Since you’ll get wildly different results in both cases, and OPDS doesn’t really allow for adapting this simple integer to a precise position.

No, for that you require a proper locator scheme, something OPDS doesn’t provide and cannot enforce.

Page based progress is fine for fixed format publications - comics, PDF/DOCX files, etc., but that approach breaks irreparably the moment you switch to dynamically formatted content. In case of EPUV/MOBI/the various Kindle formats, you want to determine the reader’s position based on the first and last paragraph/sentence visible on the reader and correlate that to a position within the actual files of the book, which is actually dynamic, as it can be resolved regardless if it’s XML formatted EPUB or if you dumbed the book down to a simple TXT file.

So no, OPDS’s PSE is at best a stopgap solution for syncing progress.

PSE is page streaming, not progress sync…

OPDS doesn’t do progress sync, at all… you’re running something else there if that works for you.

The hardware weakness is super obvious if you try to add any third party apps. Slow loading times, badly exposed pen API, among other things.

I tried Kavita and immediately recoiled at the fact that basic features like progress sync or metadata matching are behind a paywall - literally features that don’t cost the developers anything, while having open, active bug reports going back a year on these “premium” features.

All while licensing the code under GPLv3…

Sorry but no. Abysmal hardware, shitty software that’s locked down AND crap when opened up, and horrid QA. Talking from experience.

A docker container is preferred, but again, CW isn’t Calibre. Same database but completely different management system + also lacking a lot of the sync opportunities.

The issue is that there’s no open protocol for library syncing. It doesn’t exist because all big players (Amazon, Kobo/Rakuten, B&N, etc.) have their own proprietary system, and need no open alternatives.

OPDS is a thing but it’s meant to replicate a physical library (one you can walk into) in behaviour and approach, not a personal library (list all books I have and give me easy access to them). It’s essentially just an RSS-style feed that has no defined structure, thus isn’t software navigable - e.g. there’s no guarantee you can list all book series, or all authors, and most implementations usually give you very roughly defined “recently added”, or “hot now” book lists…

I’ve actually been working on a solution for this, something that provides an almost Kindle library experience (see all your books from a remote server, sync down the remote ebook file, sync back read progress, filter/search based on book properties, etc.), while being flexible enough for non-readers applications as well. But I haven’t even gotten to the point where I can define the API contract properly, let alone the backing database and mapping to Calibre. Honestly at this stage I feel like the best approach is starting from scratch, establishing modern requirements, and going from there.

Yay, enshittification

Not to mention the super abusive stance of Amazon to writers and publishers, the sooner people stop buying Kindles and giving Amazon their money, the better.

Here’s a reminder that Boox makes amazingly good e-readers in all form factors Amazon does (including a variety of tablets!), with stylus support (USI 2.0 for smaller devices, EMR for their Note series and above), fully open (recent Android versions, regular updates, unlockable bootloader, straightforward to root devices), support KOReader, with a solid built in reader (plus support for cloud sync, including syncing books to a free 10GB Boox server storage), support for OPDS (a better way to access your library than Calibre’s sync, plus it can be utilised with most digital libraries too), and altogether quite well priced devices.

At the moment I have on my hands a Go Color 7 gen2, a Note Air5 C, and a Palma2 Pro. The experience is surprisingly good for a “random Chinese brand”, the hardware, compared to similarly priced devices, is superior (seriously, 4/6/8GB RAM, 64/128GB internal storage, SD card support), not to mention their customised e-ink waveforms (which give you near LCD-like scrolling with minimal trailing effect and little to no ghosting, something I can’t say about my Kindles…)

The only downside I found of these devices is the relatively bad battery life in locked/standby (due to Android, but you still easily get over a week per charge with average use, or about 20-22 hours of active use!), and the speakers… definitely not meant for audiobooks.

It’s a pity Calibre to date refuses to be refactored into a self-hosted service.

The core logic should be portable, with the app just being an interface to it, but no, the entire project is so much spaghetti it would feed the entire boot for over a year… such a shame.

Daft Punk. Discovered them too late to go to an actual concert.

And same with Caravan Palace. Loved the original ensemble and style, the spirit of their concerts. The current getup is nice too, but with different vocalist and a few other band member changes, it’s just not the same…

Interesting, my PA was essentially painless.

As for actual pain… I was 15, and had to get one wisdom tooth extracted. Thing is, I have that gene that makes anesthesia fucky.

I did warn the surgeon, they doubled the lidocaine, and yet… the moment he started cutting my gum, that lidocaine went right out. They had to call FOUR more nurses to hold me down so he could finish the extraction and sew things up.

Pain was so bad I nearly passed out, and couldn’t talk for two weeks.

Hi, I’m technology.

parentS, plural?

that means all the Trump kids have to rescind their citizenship.

It’s not just porn though.

A lot of countries want to restrict children’s access to social media - not just Facebook, etc., but also in games like Minecraft, Roblox and so on, as these also serve as social platforms.

Which is actually fine and I agree with the restriction - kids shouldn’t be on Facebook, Snapchat, or even Roblox without supervision. Emphasis on supervision. Why? Because paedos are proven to be using these platforms as hunting grounds for grooming. Look at Roblox - even if you manage to set up parental controls (which is almost like if it’s intentionally made hard to do so), paedos can get around it by using items like signs, that allow free text entry, to communicate with kids. Rule #1: kids (and paedos) will always try to find a way around restrictions, so you want those to be as transparent (read: invisible) as possible.

The problem is, these platforms are intentionally making it impossible for parents to supervise their children’s activities. Most parental controls are done in a “we had to do it so we did the bare minimum work and implemented every possible malicious tactic to deter people from using it” manner instead of actual parental protection being in mind.

Then these very same companies go to governments and plead that the current methods aren’t working, parents aren’t using the tools, and you can’t push this level of moderation onto them - Meta execs literally admit in internal memos that at this point, they just have to accept that children will be hurt, because doing anything would affect bottom lines. Their solution?

Make everyone identify themselves. But that’s not actually for protecting children - it’s to continue mining even more data, because simply said, data miners have already gotten everything from everyone they could, and the only way this can be tied together even more is by adding your real identity to all that data. Oh and all your adult related browsing too, of course.

And the sentiment won’t change until one of these “super duper secure, totally unhackable, totally not collecting your PII with all the rest of your data” companies gets hacked, exposed for data mining to extremes, all through dumping a bunch of politicians’ and powerful people’s porn habits. You think Noem’s husband being revealed as a crossdresser was damaging? Imagine top politicians - especially conservatives - being outed as trans- or bestiality porn watching “degenerates” (putting it in quotes because in my opinion only the latter is problematic, but to conservacucks…), or that they’re a prolific CSAM fanfic writer, and so on.

In my opinion, everyone should have the privacy to browse the kind of (legal) porn they want, without it being shouted out to the world. Or abused by corporations. Privacy is a key element of our lives, and it should be up to each person to decide how much they reveal to anyone. This entire ID enforcement can only end badly. Kids will find a way around it - they already do in the UK, I mean a simple VPN gets around it, and luckily not all governments want to implement this crap - and all it does is expose those who abide by the law, to even more data breaches and such.

You’re misunderstanding the point of AGPL.

Regular GPL software CAN be run over a network, but because the binary of the software isn’t distributed - only an interface is provided to the software itself - the host isn’t obligated to provide the source code. A lot of software hosts used this loophole to get around sharing their modifications to GPL licenced software, killing the main point.

That’s why AGPL was developed - to protect hosted software. AGPL requires the host to provide source to anyone who has access to the service, not just the binary.

GPL - if I have the binary, I must be granted access to the source

AGPL - if I can access the software, I must be granted access to the source

and you can replicate that nowadays with an RP2040. Hell, the newer Pi models already kinda do that with the RP1 handling GPIO (among other things)

A moderator cannot BAN your account. They can ban you from posting on their subreddit, and can, often baselessly, get you reported to admins (who 100% of the time side with the moderators), usually flagging any kind of modmail conduct as “threatening or harassment”.

I’ve literally got a warning because I dared to ask a mod why they banned me - their response being a 30 day mute and a report to the admins about “Hey! I was wondering why you banned me, as I don’t think my comment broke any of the rules of the sub or Reddit” being threatening, and harassment…

Both are verified by an automated system.

which is why fake reviews slip through but fake downloads don’t really (download count is easy to verify with device feedback, fake reviews require a proper system…)

The Play Store has recently (I think about 3 years ago?) introduced delayed updates for things like download counts because they were battling faked statistics (e.g. the download counter could be manipulated by bot farms), so now downloads are accumulated and checked against users actually using the app and having it on their devices - which takes time to update so IIRC they now only update that counter every month. Hence the 0+ downloads.