Comment by simpaticoder
3 months ago
A gentle reminder that physical books are still available, and quite inexpensive when purchased used from, e.g., library book stores or thrift stores. It has no DRM, has a Paper White™ interface, and even has a nice smell and feel. You can loan it, give it, or sell it to any human without hassle or legal risk to yourself or them. You can highlight, add notes ("marginalia"), fold the corner of a page for a bookmark. Over time your copy of a book will accumulate incidental stains and marks, developing an identity of it's own. What's even more remarkable is that you own your copy, and it cannot be remotely changed, deleted, or corrupted or your access revoked.
True, but DRM free books in digital form have a lot more potential utility for non-genius types like myself. Just a good search engine over the text is a huge win before even considering the standard reader features like notes and book marks. With LLMs I can imagine testing my retention of a chapter by asking it where my recollection is wrong or short and having it cite paragraphs in support of its judgement. All of this progress is impeded by the big ebook sellers, but is or will be fulfilled by inde developers at least for those of us that can go to yandex, plug in a title and get a DRM free epub.