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People usually opt for those Android ereaders if they wanted openness.
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Sep 20, 2019 18:07
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I dropped by the thread to ask this since I can't find a better answer by myself on the internet: is there a way to scrape threads from this site and dump them into an ebook? There are some funny threads I want to read but I don't want to strain my eyes all too bad. I think someone else asked this a while back but I can't find it.
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Sep 30, 2019 22:06
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im on the net me boys posted:I dropped by the thread to ask this since I can't find a better answer by myself on the internet: is there a way to scrape threads from this site and dump them into an ebook? There are some funny threads I want to read but I don't want to strain my eyes all too bad. I think someone else asked this a while back but I can't find it. This seemed like a decent idea so I took a look, and no there doesn't seem to be anything of the sort beyond just using the web browser on the device and dealing with that lovely experience. Nothing for these forums or any forums as far as I can tell. A few forums offer an official ebook export of a thread, but it's not common. There are a few tools out there that convert web pages to EPUB or MOBI formats, but the output isn't great and I haven't yet found one that could take multiple URLs and make one document so each page of a thread is a separate book with around a dozen pages a piece. If you're familiar with HTML and can do some basic programming both major eBook formats are based on a subset of HTML so it shouldn't be too hard to write a script that basically screen scraped a thread and fiddled with the formatting. Could probably end up with something that worked at a basic level by pretty much find/replacing the forum template parts from around the content.
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Oct 1, 2019 02:30
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wolrah posted:There are a few tools out there that convert web pages to EPUB or MOBI formats, but the output isn't great and I haven't yet found one that could take multiple URLs and make one document so each page of a thread is a separate book with around a dozen pages a piece. you can do this pretty easily with calibre https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#how-do-i-convert-a-collection-of-html-files-in-a-specific-order it might be worth asking one of the SA app developers too, they know how to grab the forum's information and it might be trivial to just convert that to a formatted html page
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Oct 1, 2019 04:54
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SymmetryrtemmyS posted:it might be worth asking one of the SA app developers too, they know how to grab the forum's information and it might be trivial to just convert that to a formatted html page The nice thing about forums is that the thread content is in a very predictable format so it's not rocket science to parse. Neat about Calibre, it certainly wouldn't be too hard to create a base page that linked to all the thread pages for that to load and convert directly, though presumably the formatting is still going to be wonky. I really like this concept so I'm actually trying to learn enough about EPUB formatting to give it a shot. Catching up on a megathread this way would be pretty nice. wolrah fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 14:36
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wolrah posted:I looked at the source for Awful.apk and they're just screen scraping. There's no special backdoor API or anything. See if you can talk the developers of Awful into making their screen-scraped data available via an API 
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Oct 1, 2019 15:55
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wolrah posted:I looked at the source for Awful.apk and they're just screen scraping. There's no special backdoor API or anything. You probably don't even need to learn anything epub-specific; scrape the HTML+images, extract all the table.post elements, concatenate them with the necessary CSS and slam the whole thing through calibre's ebook-convert command. If you don't care about who posted what you can get away with just extracting the td.postbody elements, I think.
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Oct 1, 2019 16:04
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ToxicFrog posted:You probably don't even need to learn anything epub-specific; scrape the HTML+images, extract all the table.post elements, concatenate them with the necessary CSS and slam the whole thing through calibre's ebook-convert command. Yeah, my goal would be to actually format it in a way that makes sense for an e-reader rather than the generic web page conversions that pretty much just apply what some modern browsers would call "reading mode". I'd probably cut out a lot of the post metadata but I'd want to have at least the username and timestamp showing as well as having intra-thread links as seen in quotes working correctly. Maybe something along the lines of how collections of conversations via letter have been formatted.
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Oct 1, 2019 18:03
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wolrah posted:Yeah, my goal would be to actually format it in a way that makes sense for an e-reader rather than the generic web page conversions that pretty much just apply what some modern browsers would call "reading mode". I'd probably cut out a lot of the post metadata but I'd want to have at least the username and timestamp showing as well as having intra-thread links as seen in quotes working correctly. I'd love a Calibre plugin or standalone utility that allows me to catch up on megathreads, especially if you can do Twitter embeds (or add an option) or image embeds (also this would be a nice option imo)
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Oct 1, 2019 19:45
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I was trying to figure out a way to use the news scraper tool in Calibre, but since there aren't RSS feeds for individual threads I'm not sure what the hell I'd do. By looking at the documentation it look like Calibre is perfectly capable of stitching together HTML files in order into an ebook, but I'm not sure how I would automate the process of saving the forums threads to HTML, nor am I sure how I'd cut out the gunk like avatar, the little buttons, etc.
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Oct 1, 2019 20:07
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So this might be a weird question, but how do I get the progress bar with the chapter markings back on the screen? I got a new Paperwhite half a year ago, to replace my old Kindle with buttons, and ever since, I've really missed that progress bar. Percentage and page counts are fine, but you know... I think I've looked everywhere in the settings. Is it just gone?
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Oct 1, 2019 20:07
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Fart of Presto posted:So this might be a weird question, but how do I get the progress bar with the chapter markings back on the screen? I miss the progress bar too! It's just gone now, and the only way to get it back would be modifying the Kindle's software. KOReader might have this and it looks to from some screenshots, but it's not documented.
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Oct 1, 2019 20:15
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im on the net me boys posted:I was trying to figure out a way to use the news scraper tool in Calibre, but since there aren't RSS feeds for individual threads I'm not sure what the hell I'd do. By looking at the documentation it look like Calibre is perfectly capable of stitching together HTML files in order into an ebook, but I'm not sure how I would automate the process of saving the forums threads to HTML, nor am I sure how I'd cut out the gunk like avatar, the little buttons, etc. That would have to be done externally (or you'd have to write a calibre plugin to do it), I think. Probably something like wget --save-cookies to emulate a login, then wget --load-cookies --page-requisites --convert-links --span-hosts to fetch the actual thread content, then wring to peel apart the downloaded HTML and get just the parts you care about. (I do a lot of "scraping webpages and turning them into epubs", but I haven't done it for SA yet or I'd have a script to share, sorry.)
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Oct 1, 2019 20:30
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Fart of Presto posted:So this might be a weird question, but how do I get the progress bar with the chapter markings back on the screen? It’s not there if you tap in the lower left corner?
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Oct 1, 2019 22:17
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Silly Burrito posted:It’s not there if you tap in the lower left corner? No we're talking about the actual progress bar that was across the bottom of the screen
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Oct 1, 2019 22:22
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Fart of Presto posted:So this might be a weird question, but how do I get the progress bar with the chapter markings back on the screen? im on the net me boys posted:I miss the progress bar too! It's just gone now, and the only way to get it back would be modifying the Kindle's software. KOReader might have this and it looks to from some screenshots, but it's not documented. KOReader does have this, as well as percentage and page counts if you're interested in those. Tap the very top border to change that one, and then in options (while you're in a book) you can add a mini progress bar as well. It's so poorly documented, but I use it so I can probably answer questions about it.
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Oct 1, 2019 22:23
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I'm going to see if my Kindle can be cracked and install KOReader since it seems so nifty.
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Oct 1, 2019 23:17
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SymmetryrtemmyS posted:KOReader does have this, as well as percentage and page counts if you're interested in those. Tap the very top border to change that one, and then in options (while you're in a book) you can add a mini progress bar as well. It's so poorly documented, but I use it so I can probably answer questions about it. Since you can answer questions, I do have this: am I going to have any problems reading books bought from Amazon if I install it on my Kindle/will WhisperSync still work? Neither is a dealbreaker but I'd like to know.
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Oct 1, 2019 23:25
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im on the net me boys posted:I'm going to see if my Kindle can be cracked and install KOReader since it seems so nifty. I wrote this guide a while ago, it should still apply as long as you get it rooted first https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3257147#post3257147 im on the net me boys posted:Since you can answer questions, I do have this: am I going to have any problems reading books bought from Amazon if I install it on my Kindle/will WhisperSync still work? Neither is a dealbreaker but I'd like to know. KOreader won't open azws, so you have to convert them first anyway. It's worth the hassle, IMO - organizing books by author and series is alone worth the hassle. I have literally 1200 books on my Kindle and I hated finding my next thing to read until I did the rigamarole outlined above.
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Oct 1, 2019 23:52
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Some minor news on the Kobo side. The Forma will be able to log in to Dropbox accounts: https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033830114-Add-books-to-your-Kobo-Forma-eReader-with-Dropbox
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Oct 2, 2019 02:21
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8-bit Miniboss posted:Some minor news on the Kobo side. The Forma will be able to log in to Dropbox accounts: https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033830114-Add-books-to-your-Kobo-Forma-eReader-with-Dropbox I installed 4.18 last night and I still don't have this feature, which is kind of annoying. I've always kept my Calibre library in Dropbox anyways so this would save me the annoyance of having to plug my Kobo into my computer to transfer new items over.
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Oct 2, 2019 16:22
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I decided to browse through the periodicals on my Kindle for once. I just use Calibre for this now but there was a time where I did try out subscriptions on the Kindle Store. Now it's almost a ghost town. For what newspapers are available, many have reviews saying that there's missing content or inconsistent delivery. The magazine section is a mess that has a lot of magazines but similar issues. I can't help but wonder what happened. I know the Kindle is a books first device, but digital newspapers were part of what got me interested in an eReader to begin with. If I can get Calibre to make a perfect file for me drat near every time I can't imagine why publishers are having a hard time with it, or why Amazon isn't stepping in to help with the quality or to try to bring more publishers in. Every small newspaper these days has an online edition and is available on tablets but you won't find them on one of the most popular devices made for reading.
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Oct 10, 2019 04:31
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Calibre had a major update this month. Some cool new features include a redesigned e-book viewer and a major overhaul to the content server software. You can now edit metadata and convert books from the content server interface. Neat!
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Oct 10, 2019 21:13
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Calibre has been updated to version 4.2.0 today 
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Oct 18, 2019 21:22
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If you're using KOReader *and using a kobo device*, check out plato instead. The KOReader code is honestly lua spaghetti hell so if you ever wanted to change things or hack around with it, it's not quite so easy. Plato is in Rust and it's way friendlier to deal with.
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Oct 20, 2019 20:20
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Plato also works on Remarkables, though I've only read that and haven't tried it yet.
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Oct 20, 2019 20:40
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Waynebo posted:If you're using KOReader *and using a kobo device*, check out plato instead. The KOReader code is honestly lua spaghetti hell so if you ever wanted to change things or hack around with it, it's not quite so easy. Plato is in Rust and it's way friendlier to deal with. I wish there was an alternative for Kindles. Koreader is so overdeveloped that it honestly kind of sucks. Too many features, you know?
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Oct 20, 2019 20:53
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Waynebo posted:If you're using KOReader *and using a kobo device*, check out plato instead. The KOReader code is honestly lua spaghetti hell so if you ever wanted to change things or hack around with it, it's not quite so easy. Plato is in Rust and it's way friendlier to deal with. KOReader is pretty messy, but it being in Lua also has the big advantage that you can edit it live: plug in the e-reader, edit the script(s) on the reader, reboot it and you're done. Sometimes you don't even need the reboot. Plato looks pretty neat, but also a lot more feature-poor; most relevantly for me, it doesn't look like it supports ssh (or, more generally, any sort of ability to load books onto it over the wifi), and I don't think I can go back to manually loving around with cables every time I want to add more books. The documentation also seems to imply that it doesn't read any metadata from the books themselves, and instead you need to run an external command to generate a JSON file that it reads instead, which is...kind of lovely, ergonomically speaking.
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Oct 21, 2019 02:05
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ToxicFrog posted:KOReader is pretty messy, but it being in Lua also has the big advantage that you can edit it live: plug in the e-reader, edit the script(s) on the reader, reboot it and you're done. Sometimes you don't even need the reboot. That's a good point about lua being interpreted so you can do live reloads, I've only used the local dev environment KOReader provides. Plato is definitely feature-poor since it's relatively new and constrained to Kobo (and Remarkable as pointed out). I personally just use Calibre for everything because I'm a control freak and organize academic papers/PDFs in it. The KOReader wifi features worked for me but everything is just so janky. It's not anyone's fault, it's a really great project but the age shows. The Rust language, despite all the hypebeasts and general circlejerk from these sort of new language movements, has good tooling and the ecosystem is better than Lua from my experience. That's important since the improved quality of life should allow for faster development. There's an official book to learn Rust that's provided for free with examples to ease you into the language. Allow Plato to initiate an SSH server doesn't seem to be difficult though, I would imagine you can have an option to just initialize an ssh-client someone created in the ecosystem e.g., https://crates.io/crates/thrussh SymmetryrtemmyS posted:I wish there was an alternative for Kindles. Koreader is so overdeveloped that it honestly kind of sucks. Too many features, you know? It's kind of weird since all the plugins are modularized aside from UI being updated to allow you to access plugins in different places. That's really not a hard problem to solve, but difficult politically since the precedent where plugins exist alongside the main application already exists. Waynebo fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Oct 21, 2019 |
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Oct 21, 2019 05:16
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I saw one of the Paperwhites with the flush screen for the first time today while I was in Target so I played around with it. It feels so good that it makes me want to chuck mine out the god damned window
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Oct 21, 2019 05:42
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im on the net me boys posted:I saw one of the Paperwhites with the flush screen for the first time today while I was in Target so I played around with it. It feels so good that it makes me want to chuck mine out the god damned window I upgraded from last gen Paperwhite to this gen despite not using the thing that often and don't have any regrets, flush screen is such an improvement
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Oct 21, 2019 06:12
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Waynebo posted:I personally just use Calibre for everything because I'm a control freak and organize academic papers/PDFs in it. The KOReader wifi features worked for me but everything is just so janky. It's not anyone's fault, it's a really great project but the age shows. The Rust language, despite all the hypebeasts and general circlejerk from these sort of new language movements, has good tooling and the ecosystem is better than Lua from my experience. That's important since the improved quality of life should allow for faster development. There's an official book to learn Rust that's provided for free with examples to ease you into the language. Yeah, I've done some work in Rust and quite like it. It's aiming at a completely different niche than Lua but is very good at what it does, and is arguably a better fit for e-reader firmware, hot-reloadability aside. quote:Allow Plato to initiate an SSH server doesn't seem to be difficult though, I would imagine you can have an option to just initialize an ssh-client someone created in the ecosystem e.g., https://crates.io/crates/thrussh For my use, I'd want it to be a server, since that's a lot easier as it lets me do all the typing on the laptop and not the kobo. I also use Calibre, and it can drop books onto the Kobo easily via USB whether it's running koreader or nickel -- when I can find a working USB cable, anyways, which is harder than it sounds since the Kobo seems to be really picky. The big advantage of having an sshd running on the kobo is that I don't need to worry about that anymore. I have Calibre "sync" the books to a folder on my laptop and then upload them to the kobo over ssh from there. The koreader "calibre sync" feature is, as you say, super flaky -- I contributed some patches for it which made it less flaky but not actually good -- so using ssh works a lot better in practice.
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Oct 21, 2019 23:34
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https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1192589004232908801
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Nov 16, 2019 14:35
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The Oasis is on sale for $75 off for Black Friday, these sales stack with a 25% for trade in right? Like if I trade in my Voyage for $50, plus the 25%, plus the BF sale, I should be looking at ~$80 for an Oasis. But if the 25% off only comes once my Voyage is accepted that won't work because the sale would be over by then I assume? Anyone have first hand experience with how this works?
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Nov 28, 2019 17:22
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Humerus posted:The Oasis is on sale for $75 off for Black Friday, these sales stack with a 25% for trade in right? Like if I trade in my Voyage for $50, plus the 25%, plus the BF sale, I should be looking at ~$80 for an Oasis. But if the 25% off only comes once my Voyage is accepted that won't work because the sale would be over by then I assume? Anyone have first hand experience with how this works? I just traded in my Voyage and both the $50 credit and the 25% off redeemed instantly.
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Nov 28, 2019 18:29
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Nullset posted:I just traded in my Voyage and both the $50 credit and the 25% off redeemed instantly. Instantly like, before you mailed your old one in? I just went through everything and it's all saying the gift card and discount will be applied once the Voyage is appraised. Did you do everything through the smartphone app or Amazon's site on a computer? I'm seeing a lot of people saying they got it instantly and others saying they couldn't. Trying to find a common thread in it all.
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Nov 28, 2019 21:57
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When I did the trade in last year, basically they immediately gave me the discounts and credit but warned if I didn't complete the trade in or if my Kindle was broke (or I lied about it somehow) I'd get charged full price.
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Nov 28, 2019 22:02
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Any of this sweetness available in the UK?
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Nov 28, 2019 22:19
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Humerus posted:Instantly like, before you mailed your old one in? I just went through everything and it's all saying the gift card and discount will be applied once the Voyage is appraised. I was on a computer and used the "Upgrade and save with Trade-in" button. And yes, it instantly applied the discount and the gift card to my order. I haven't shipped the Voyage back yet. Nullset fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Nov 28, 2019 |
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Nov 28, 2019 23:10
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:When I did the trade in last year, basically they immediately gave me the discounts and credit but warned if I didn't complete the trade in or if my Kindle was broke (or I lied about it somehow) I'd get charged full price. I sent mine in and it got lost somehow at Amazon. 2 months later they reversed my $25 credit. I had to fight with multiple CSRs to get them to review their own shipping logs since I used their shipping label. Finally they gave me my credit back.
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Nov 28, 2019 23:23
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