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.

Reminds me: long ago, one comedy website made a bunch of awards that you could put on your own website with if you didn’t get awards from anyone else. (Having a bunch of random awards was the style of the time.) One of these was the coveted Titanic Navigation Award. I don’t think it can be awarded to anyone any more, as the developers of React have been the most deserving one to receive it in recent years, for their unending efforts in making navigation more confusing for everyone.

Yay, I didn’t get spammed! …so the stuff I have on Codeberg is officially stuff nobody but me cares about. (Sadness, or an opportunity?)

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.

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…”

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.

• Yes
• Yes, and also delete Electron
• That, and also make me forget I ever even heard about Electron in the first place

Oh yeah, pineapples have always been associated with toughness.

My hierarchy goes something like this:

• A relatively trivial configuration file? TOML
• A configuration file that needs a bit of complexity and nesting? YAML
• Is it getting so complicated and longwinded that you’re actually unlikely to touch it by hand anyway? JSON
• Have we become downright enterprisey? XML

Huh.

You know, when I think of supercomputer applications, I think of deeply analytical problems based on solid math and well understood algorithms that can be highly parallelised to take the maximum theoretical advantage of the hardware at hand.

You know, the opposite of what the “AI” crowd is doing. Throwing vast amounts of crunching power at a barely understood hypothetical black-box problem in hopes that it potentially yields some interesting results. Maybe.

From Explain XKCD:

This comic was released on Christmas Day of 2024, but makes no reference to Christmas. This year marks the first time in xkcd’s 20 year history (of releasing comics around Christmas), that there have been no Christmas comics released during those days. Also all nine times before this year, when a release day fell on Christmas Day, that comic has always been about Christmas.

…But when you really think about it, isn’t this comic about the true meaning of Christmas? That is to say, it is about avoiding the Sun. It’s still topical, I’d say!