WinterBreak is a jailbreak which was released on New Year’s Day 2025 by HackerDude
It is based on Mesquito
What does it do?
My kindle have not been connected to the internet since 2015.
This seems wise, is there any perk of having wifi on if you only load books with USB?
Only if you want to synch reading progress between multiple devices.
I’ve never had any reason to connect either. It would just try installing updates that make the UI shittier.
hell yes i will be doing this right away so i can continue To not use my kindle or read books because im FUCKED
mood
Behind me I have physical copies of books I want to read SO BADLY and they’re all like 40-69 pages in and haven’t been touched in months
Why are we like this
the internet
im glad i got a normal tablet over an ereader, s9fe surprisingly is fire (i read comic books mostly), relatively cheap tablets are solid now, too big at 11 inches to one hand comfortably but better for video so ill make the sacrifice. Expected cheaper tablets to be garbage since my only experience was like a decade ago, now they’re all pretty good, the lenovo ones are better/cheaper off aliexpress and have usable nits (brightness) compared to the us models.
If just for reading ereader is much easier on the eyes and amazing battery life. Completely different products I think.
You know what’s easy on the eyes? Dark mode.
E-reader is a much better experience for reading text but tablets are better for comics. There’s very limited color e-ink options and they’re very expensive with pretty washed out colors.
Is comic rack still the standard software for comics?
It is, and it’s been revived! https://github.com/maforget/ComicRackCE
I use a tachiyomi fork yokai
Anyone know how to set custom screen idle images after doing this? I’ve been wanting to put ‘Don’t Panic’ on my 6th gen paperwhite since I got it but it’s so locked down that wasn’t possible.
Custom sleep picture is one of the features of KOReader. Pretty easy to spot it in the settings.
I decided to go ahead and install KOReader and check it out. It’s pretty neat although I can’t find what you’re describing in the settings.
In any case I was hoping to find a way to do this without having to switch to a separate user interface.
Wow, they decide to kill off downloading books over USB and karma immediately strikes back lol
Huh, TIL, my gf has a relatively old Kindle, are all the models affected?
She uses Calibre to get her books.
Poor wording on my part, they’re removing the ability to download books directly from Amazon to your computer. You can still transfer books via USB using Calibre.
Hers’s an article from The Verge with more info. My apologies.
Ok I get it now, putting more restrictions even when “piracy” makes life easier for the users huh? That is a move.
@kratoz29 @LiveLM it’s the opposite of a competitive market making life easier and more convenient for customers: a race to the bottom, a struggle to create maximum difficulty and hassle at ever-increasing prices.
if the public wants public culture, the public must be prepared to invest in public culture, and that likely implies some form of collective action such as (progressive) taxes or levies. but conversely, the outcomes of that investment must then also be truly public culture with no hassle or punitive action.
She should be fine, but yes on newer kindles like the Scribe (came out in 2022 so not exactly brand-new now) they removed the “mass storage mode” (= what made kindles show up on a pc as a usb drive).
Calibre can work with the newer MTP mode (which is similar to what android phones have) but it’s a lot less reliable and requires that no other app, including the OS, file manager, is accessing the device at the same time. It’s frustrating and I’m very happy to have jailbroken it, now I can use SFTP to browse the folders much more speedily.
Kobos don’t need jailbreaking and have better performance
For those of us who will only buy electronics used, kindle is usually the only option. And far cheaper too. So its nice that the device can be opened up a bit.
what is a good kobo to invest in on the cheaper side?
$140 – the Kobo Clara BW (black and white/e-ink) is clutch. Dark mode, plays well with calibre, a wide range of supported formats, and way more storage and battery life than you’ll ever need.
Edit: it is one of the first devices to utilize the E Ink Carta 1300 screen. It’s filled with e-books from Annas Archive loaded by Calibre on Debian and never complained about compatibility.
Thank you! I really like the calibre integration. I’m on mint and it works flawlessly so having a compatible e reader for the couch will be amazing
I’d never heard of these, thanks! I been trying to find old Kindles for sale, but this looks like a much better choice.
ETA: they’re also a Canadian company, win-win
I been trying to find old Kindles for sale
Try “Unclaimed Baggage”. We got our kids kindles through them.
Interesting site. I already snagged a Kobo, but I’ll definitely keep this in mind for other stuff!
Kobo is owned by Rakuten, a Japanese company. Still a much better choice than Amazon though.
Ahh, looks like Canada native company started by Indigo, bought by Rakuten in 2011. At least their HQ and all is still in Toronto, didn’t get gutted by the buyout.
My partner has a ‘Boox’ that runs android, complete with apk side loading its basically an android tablet! Super cool so far - there’s even a model with a color screen!
I slapped the Nextcloud app on there and she has been syncing her books between her phone and the Boox!
Edit= the brand name is called Boox! Autocorrect makes a fool of me yet again
I never even thought about the syncing capability with the Android e-ink options. I thought it was too much for a dedicated e-reader, but now you’ve got me thinking.
The reMarkable 2 has built in sync capability for dropbox, google drive and a few others. That device is seriously awesome.
My lawyer has one of those. It’s pretty cool.
It’s remarkable, really.
I’ve wanted one of those ever since seeing a professor use it… but their price point is intimidating. I’m also not a fan of being limited to certain cloud services (I use neither Google Drive nor Dropbox).
Still, it’s a pretty nifty device, and the pen capabilities seem the best of all of them.
There are other integrations, those were the two I used so I could remember them.
Certainly wasn’t cheap, but I do need to take quite a few notes during meetings with my engineering team, clients, shareholders etc., and being able to sketch something out real quick and project it over onto the screen in our meeting room with two clicks is pretty awesome.
My company even offered to pay for it, but I wanted it to be mine.
project it over onto the screen in our meeting room with two clicks is pretty awesome.
Didn’t know that was a feature, that’s pretty cool.
I’m also not a fan of being limited to certain cloud services (I use neither Google Drive nor Dropbox).
Good news!
Boox will run any cloud sync that has a recent Android app available. It’s just an Android tablet, at heart, and it’s already unlocked.
In particular, the local NAS sync client for Synology runs like a dream.
Edit: Oops. I missed that we switched from Boox to reMarkable, there.
I guess I’ll leave this since Boox sells eInk tablets that are feature matched to reMarkable, anyway.
I have been looking at Boox, yes. Though their price range is seemingly not much better than reMarkable… I’m still waiting for a decent used market to develop around some of these newer models. I’m okay with being patient on e-ink tech.
Recommend checking them out! Sorry, typo’d on my comment - the brand name is Boox!
I have hers all loaded up with a FOSS reader, f-droid (droid-ify), Nextcloud, Element messenger… The only thing I haven’t put time into is custom launcher stuff - but the native launcher isn’t half bad, if you ignore their attempts to coax you into their cloud subscription crap!
I’ve got my eyes on some Boox models, perhaps in a year or two if prices come down for the secondhand market. (Since I think they just released a new line not too long ago.) I’ve never had a tablet sized device (my e-reader is 6 inches), so it’d be an upgrade.
Omg this is so exciting, I love jailbreaking devices and jailbreaking my mom’s old ass kindle was oddly tricky.
Sick luckily mines already jail broken but will keep this saved for future. I would love to see a bigger modding scene like custom os akin to android
🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳
I guess if you already own a Kindle then you might be interested in jailbreaking it. But for someone choosing an ereader it seems that Kobo is just a better choice. Isn’t it? Like, why pay to put yourself in a jailed system in the first place?
Kindles are easy to come across 2nd hand for free or a few bucks
My kindle could already handle everything the Kobo I was looking at could do, but was far cheaper than the Kobo due to a sale (and Amazon thinking I’m dumb enough to be locked into their system)
Literally using Calibre is enough to turn your Kindle into a piracy machine, so if you can get one cheap it’s long been my recommendation for people
Haven’t done a thorough research so take this with a grain of salt, but it seems in my country kindles are significantly cheaper than kobos.
Oh finally! I wanted a new launcher installed and have all ads removed. Now I can finally do it! Thanks for the news!!
Cool!
Giving me something to do with my current kindle. I wasn’t sure how to load to it my downloaded books, so I’ve been suffering on my phone, but hopefully this helps me out a bunch. Thanks. This is a rabbit hole I never knew existed.
After the feature of being able to send EPUB files to Kindle through email and them being automatically converted… I have not felt I was missing anything by using standard Kindle software.
So I’d suggest, unless you really really need some obscure feature, Calibre+Kindle is nowadays perfectly fine, and maybe you shouldn’t risk bricking your device.
You like ads?
There are no ads on my Kindle.
OH did they remove that? I’m glad to hear it.
So I’d suggest, unless you really really need some obscure feature, Calibre+Kindle is nowadays perfectly fine, and maybe you shouldn’t risk bricking your device.
Uhm… Well about that… You will not be able to transfer books onto you kindle via USB in about a week. Amazon is going to remove that feature from all Kindles next week. The only way to do that may be through the method you described. But how long will they offer that, if they say they are removing the USB feature because of piracy? You cannot pirate books onto your kindle, when you cannot transfer books from outside of Amazon onto it. (Also this is a nice reason for them to block you from buying books anywhere else than on Amazon, of course)
https://www.theverge.com/news/612898/amazon-removing-kindle-book-download-transfer-usb
Okay, yeah, that is definitely concerning.
I think you fundamentally misunderstand what Amazon is removing. From your linked article:
Once this feature goes away, you’ll still be able to manually copy ebook files and other documents to Kindles over USB using Amazon’s apps or third-party solutions like Calibre. You just won’t be able to download copies of your purchased books to a computer.
The only thing Amazon is removing is the ability to save books that you purchased from them. No more personal backups of legally purchased material, but piracy is still fair game.
For what it’s worth, the “Download & transfer via USB” feature was applying DRM locked to the key of the specific Kindle device you select, giving you a file that’s incompatible with other devices even if they’re kindles linked to the same Amazon account. For many publishers it also gives files with drastically lower image quality than the Kindle app: about one-fourth to one-third the file size. For a couple examples, a 368MB KFX manga volume has a 125MB AZW3 file and an 8.0MB KFX light novel has a 2.2MB AZW3 file. Those smaller AZW3 files are also similar in size to DRMed EPUB files of the same books from other markets like Kobo and Google Play, so I expect it’s a deliberate choice to limit the quality of formats that are more trivial to strip DRM from.
The best way I’ve found to make personal backups of owned Kindle content is to use a rooted Android device to download everything through the Kindle app, copy the KFX files to a computer, extract the key in a root shell, and then use DeDRM tools on those files with that key.
A quick and dirty shell command I’ve used for that purpose is
egrep -ao 'dsn[0-9a-f]{32}' /data/data/com.amazon.kindle/databases/map_data_storage.db. The key is 32 hex characters.Having a rooted Android device in the first place is the biggest hurdle for being able to do that. This new jailbreak should make it possible to do something similar with e-ink kindles instead.
Somewhat, I read a German news article that explicitly warned that USB transfer will be blocked. I just searched for an English article to post here afterwards, but I didn’t read it. So… yeah, „lost in translation“
