Yes, you are correct. These things you can't read offline. And most of the time, going the visual route (like imaging each screen and then OCR) to get a clear-text copy is ruinously time consuming and difficult.
Only if you can put the file on a device, and then read off-line, in airplane mode for example, with a FOSS reader, are you reasonably safe from tracking.
Even if you get a book DRM-free from Gutenberg or a shadow library, if you read it using a corporate reader like the Amazon app on a smartphone...I'd bet that Big Brother is watching.
@demerara@yo_bj@scissortail I keep coming back to this quote from the #book "100 Things We've Lost to the Internet" by Pamela Paul: "The United States remains the sole developed country without some kind of federal consumer #data protection law or agency."
Well THAAAANK YOU #GNUTerryPratchett for 'ruining' a whole page of this book A lengthy passage about a Scottish Highland character's interactions with "the Little People" ends with this question and OF COURSE I read the whole thing mentally substituting "Wee Free" for "Little" - Every.Single.Time 🤣 #AmReading#ebooks#DeanStreetDecember#Discworld@bookstodon
@pgcd@bookstodon In an interesting twist, the character is telling the story to a child who says that he "thought fairies were nice, and had wings" and she replies with a lengthy desription of "the Little People" that is eerily prescient of The Wee Free People. "neither good nor bad" being one phrase that particularly resonated
Okay so NOW this FREE cyberpunk collection (which is so old you can see on the cover that it was only $3.50 for a paperback copy), is available as an #ebook download (FREE, I said!) as well as just opening it to read on your device. If you want it in that format, you can go there and try out the two ebook download systems it's offered on, let me know if it's not working.
I don't talk about this much because I suck at promoting myself, but for those of you who weren't aware, I published some books. Three of them are a fantasy trilogy still available via Carina Press, under the pen name of Angela Highland. The other two are books 1 and 2 of an urban fantasy series, self-published under my actual name, Angela Korra'ti.
And since I continue to be unemployed AF right now, if I could make anything at all off of sales to new readers, that'd sure be super helpful right now.
@annathepiper tagging @bookstodon for better reach... to that audience: Anna is a very addictive storyteller, and I wait with 'bated breath for at least two more novels from her, one of which I had the honour of beta reading... a feast for the eyes after all that turkey.
A fun read from Philip Durkin's "Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English" - an extract from a 1403 letter written in a mix of English and Anglo-French. Franglais has a LONG history indeed. Somehow I don't think extracting the ALT text from the image will be much help here 🤣 #AmReading#Linguistics#History#NonFiction#ebooks@bookstodon
@Yora@bookstodon To paraphrase Mark Twain. "rumours of English having been hijacked by French have been greatly exaggerated"
It is still possible to construct sentences in English with only Germanic components. It's not easy, and the sentences are awkward and awful (imo), but it can be done.That's not possible (afaik) using only non-Germanic elements.
"It was a beautifully illustrated copy of 'Treasure Island'. "
Reading my Dean Street Press edition of Young Mrs Savage, my TENTH novel by D.E. Stevenson, and come across the very first reference in any them to one of her famous cousin's works. #AmReading#ebooks#Kobo@bookstodon
OK, it's official - 37% in and I love @scalzi KPS. Even if the last 2/3 is worse than anything Dan Brown ever inflicted on the world, the sheer delight of seeing a Māori character using the Māori name for his homeland in a book written by someone neither tangata whenua nor tangata Tiriti guarantees KPS a whole heap of aroha from me. #Aotearoa#TeReo#AmReading#ebooks@bookstodon
@ronsboy67@scalzi@bookstodon Which is WHY that trope is so problematic: it enforces the idea that disability is faked or by choice. Instead, to be truly disabled it’s permanent and not by choice. Don’t know how you deal with eg beggars who (not sure if true) had multiple amputations to improve begging prospects in developing countries. Now I suspect probably landmines or disease but there are these persisting myths.
@DarkMatterZine@scalzi@bookstodon Yes, thinking about how it's almost certain that I would not be who I am today had I not been born with my disability that makes me realise what a nuanced question "do you want to be fixed?" is
In her description of the 'arrival' of Alleyn, Ngaio (the g is NOT silent, folks) Marsh unintentionally highlights why I love Allingham's Campion. For him, tempus really did fugit, at more or less real pace. #AmReading#Aotearoa#GoldenAgeMysteries@bookstodon#ebooks
@Weltenkreuzer@ronsboy67@gunneraditya@bookstodon AFAIK that's true of pretty much all colour e-ink screens nowadays. Unless you're talking about Gallery 3 screens, which have beautiful colours, and are waaaaay slower than Kaleido.
Buttons are a must for me. I use my Sage at home 1-handed, and have a 7-inch Libra H2O (gen 1) for when I go out, as it fits in more pockets. Even in a case, it's an easy hold and read. For me, 7-inch is the optimal out-and-about size - large enough that I'm not pressing the button too often, small enough to stow and hold
A few years ago, I got rid of all my paper books and switched exclusively to eBooks. Whenever I tell bibliophiles1 this, they usually shriek in horror. What about the smell of books2?!!? What about showing off your bookcases to impress people3!?!? What about your signed first editions4!??!?! But the other day I had someone…
@Edent the whole "smell of books" thing always makes me laugh. Really? Always seems like grasping for straws in the argument. I admit, there's something to the smell of an old used book store that is very nostalgic. But not so much my personal library.
@Edent I read for the content in side. I don't love books, I love knowledge. I don't have a lot of books to show off, I have books to read again. I got mad when my sister in law rearranged my bookshelf by color, thus separating the volumes of a set (sure it looked better, but finding the book wanted became more difficult) If I don't dream of reading a book again I get rid of it (though I'll freely admit most of my books I'll never read again, I still hope to)
If civilization collapses the books I want are "how to be self sufficient on a little land", "how to grow hybrid seeds", "how to build a shelter with just an axe", "how to create simple tools", and a lot more on those lines. My "Modern C++", "the chocolate teapot" books will not be the ones I really want, but those are the types of books I keep on my bookshelf. So I guess if civilization collapses I'll be joining all the other survivors at my local library - a good idea anyway as survivors meeting at the library and working together to build a new civilization is the future I want to be a part of, not the lone guy shooting everyone else to protect the little I have in my house.
Wow, today marks my 17th anniversary at Distributed Proofreaders (@DProofreaders) -- the largest contributor of #ebooks to Project Gutenberg! I started out as a proofreader but then quickly got involved in development.
I've been the lead dev and a system admin for most of the past decade, including mundane things like keeping the code up-to-date with new PHP and MySQL versions but also converting the entire site to Unicode.
@openbuddha@RichStein@bookstodon@leftofseatac No problem. I find Queens selection for ebooks only, being remote from there, isn't the greatest. But combined with the streaming services they have-including Qello, Kanopy, and Hoopla-I can justify the cost.
Added Vivlio to Libreture's DRM-free bookshop list. 🛒
Vivlio is a French-language e-reader manufacturer and ebookshop, and stocks thousands of mainly French ebooks, but also some Italian and English titles, in all genres. 🇫🇷📚