Bought my kindle in 2012 or 2013, still works fine.
I put it into airplane mode years ago, and just never turned wifi on again. I use Calibre to add books to it. (I use a little usb-c to micro usb adapter).
There are places and ways to get books without DRM and still pay the authors. It's a faff first figuring things out, but once you do it a couple of times, and discover the treasure troves of standardebooks.org and the gutenberg.org, it really just becomes routine you don't even have to think much about.
In my experience it's a better device without the internet, no device updates, no weird book updates (books updating is an oddly unsettling concept to me).
Also battery life got way better, I get a few weeks of battery life as long as it's in airplane mode. (Sometimes a couple of months if I'm using it lightly.) Granted I usually leave the backlight off, there's sunlight and lamp light, you don't need backlight.
I've forgotten about it for years at a time, charged it up, and it kept working just fine.
eReaders that are really just eReaders (and not an android device with apps and nonsense) are a rare case of buy it for life devices. The best kind of device. Kinda like a good watch, I now expect an eReader to work for a decade or two. I would also expect battery replacement as a part of long term ownership, though I haven't had to replace my battery yet.
Anyways, you don't need Amazon to enjoy a kindle. Hek, it honestly gets better without Amazon meddling with it at random, and the device phoning home or w/e nonsense background traffic it runs over wifi.
- Recent grad, comp sci major (security focus), business minor
- Interested in Rust and C++, graphics, game engines/tooling, and cloud infrastructure, but open to all work.
- Have prior professional work experience, both before and during university, including a full-stack summer job.
- I've participated in CTFs including NCL Spring 2022 where I placed 30th of 6010 contestants.
- Interested in learning C++ as it lets you build applications that no other language lets you build, but man its hard to stay away from Rust once you've had a taste of the cargo build system and reliable intellisense.
As someone who uses this off an on amount, I was really disappointed when I opened the app to the new web app. It was slow, janky, required me authenticating multiple times (biometric then username and password). I'm now looking for alternatives because "as fast as possible" is an important feature for me. I keep the app on my android home row, not because I use it a lot, but because when I need it, I need it instantly. Massive downgrade for the user imo, this only benefits the developer.
I'm not formally diagnosed with ADHD, but I find myself able to relate with the struggles.
There's this place at the back of my university's library in the silent section, I think it's below a large HVAC fan motor or something. There's always a deep 'brrrrrrrrrr' sound going, and it is an absolutely sublime place to work. (https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteNoiseGenerator.php?l=... this sounds pretty close to it).
Earplugs help, but for some reason the deep 'brrrrrrrrrrr' is very relaxing. A quiet environment with the 'brrrrrr' is preferable to pure silence (though I'll still take ear plugs over one of those horrific open office environments).
Moving off topic a bit, but other things I do to help focus:
- Redirect bad habit sites (like HN tbh) in the `hosts` file to 127.0.0.1 as a site blocker
- Turn off cell phone, and place well out of arms reach
- Kill & block discord, telegram, ect
(Fortunately, I'm at a place in life where no one really needs to contact me on short notice)
---> The goal being to give my brain literally nothing else to do besides the work <----
(Not perfect since I tend to daydream a lot, but I'm almost graduated uni, so I guess it's working well enough)
If I'm really struggling to get work done, I'll set a countdown timer to create artificial external pressure.
During my internships, and side gigs, I find myself setting up "real work" periods where I (try to) block the world out, and communication periods. (I get along with people too well and chit chat too much otherwise).
In general, if the day-to-day work environment requires just a whole lot of "raw willpower" it's not going to work out. Willpower is for losers anyways, better to remove the distractions / change the environment. (Also fuck MS for constantly trying to weasel more ads into its OS, their new widgets panel in Win11 is literally useless to me for mandatory news ads)
Oh, but MS Edge's read aloud is a god send, it has the best text to speech voices I have access to, and I can use it on any html or pdf article easily. MS giveth, and MS taketh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Unfortunate that zlib died. MS Edge TTS only works with html and pdf, zlib basically let me have any textbook I needed in school read aloud to me as a pdf (janky, but it gets the job done). In particular it really falls apart with math textbooks, but eh.
Android has a feature that lets you limit time in specific apps to X minutes, you can set these and the app will go black and white when you approach the limit and just close when the time is up.
I found that's a good compromise to outright blocking things, because in reality you do need stimulation, but setting limits to the sources you usually get it from can be very helpful.
Instead of spending 3 hours on a clicker app (so evil) I've allowed myself 5 minutes a day, which means whenever I open it I'm going to do the most important things then close the app as soon as possible, whilst still getting the stimulation I was seeking in the first place.
In my experience, interesting ringtones are mostly just used for alarms & reminders. A classic being Chop Suey by System of a Down as your wake up alarm.
Here's the thing, where I live (Canada) spam calls have become so bad that (unless you're in my contacts already) I almost never answer the phone. The scams aren't even in English most of the time :/
Actually it's filtered so that only 3 or so of my contacts get through the dnd.
*Scheduled calls / expected calls from specific companies are my one exception.
I put it into airplane mode years ago, and just never turned wifi on again. I use Calibre to add books to it. (I use a little usb-c to micro usb adapter).
There are places and ways to get books without DRM and still pay the authors. It's a faff first figuring things out, but once you do it a couple of times, and discover the treasure troves of standardebooks.org and the gutenberg.org, it really just becomes routine you don't even have to think much about.
In my experience it's a better device without the internet, no device updates, no weird book updates (books updating is an oddly unsettling concept to me).
Also battery life got way better, I get a few weeks of battery life as long as it's in airplane mode. (Sometimes a couple of months if I'm using it lightly.) Granted I usually leave the backlight off, there's sunlight and lamp light, you don't need backlight.
I've forgotten about it for years at a time, charged it up, and it kept working just fine.
eReaders that are really just eReaders (and not an android device with apps and nonsense) are a rare case of buy it for life devices. The best kind of device. Kinda like a good watch, I now expect an eReader to work for a decade or two. I would also expect battery replacement as a part of long term ownership, though I haven't had to replace my battery yet.
Anyways, you don't need Amazon to enjoy a kindle. Hek, it honestly gets better without Amazon meddling with it at random, and the device phoning home or w/e nonsense background traffic it runs over wifi.
Much love for Calibre!
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