The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[John F]

I guess you are correct, no direct links to downloads. But I believe we can link to sites (excluding pirate sites, porn sites, ...) which have the downloads, which is what I provided.

I may be wrong, but I don't think so?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by chickpea

Calibre. Unwisely, it turns out, updated to 5.x and found that the DeDRM plugin no longer works.

So uninstalled and went back to 4.23, and now I can't delete books from the database AND DeDrm still doesn't work. Oy.

I might have to export all my books, completely expunge Calibre from my system, reinstall from scratch, add the plugin, and hope that fixes it.

Unless anyone has a better idea?

Uninstall Calibre 4.23, reinstall the current version, and look for an updated version of the plugin. Also, check the MR Cailbre Forum.

Calibre installs books in the defined Library location. Here, that's E:\Calibre Library, where E:\ is a SATA HD essentially devoted to Calibre. Books get installed in sub-directories created for them, based on Author name. Additional books by the same author will be in sub-directories under the main one for the author.

No need to export. Removing Calibre itself does not alter the existing library. Reinstall a current Calibre, and specify the existing Library as what it should use. Metadata about individual books is stored with the books, and will be imported too. Calibre's master eBook index and metadata are in the top level of the Calibre Library

I don't get books with DRM I must remove, and haven't seen the DeDRM plugin stop working, but I'd be surprised if a version that does work in Calibre 5 doesn't exist.
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Dennis

[ownedbycats]

Rant: Between Cloudflare and domain squatters foiling my attempts to automatically check for dead links, cleaning out all the dead links from my bookmarks is a bit of a tedious manual process.

[pdurrant]

Links to Apprentice Alf's blog and Apprentice Harper's github repository are allowed.

But not direct links that download DeDrm tools, nor explicit help with installing and using the tools. A fine line, but that's the one the owner has chosen.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I don't get books with DRM I must remove, and haven't seen the DeDRM plugin stop working, but I'd be surprised if a version that does work in Calibre 5 doesn't exist.

I believe that there's a mostly working version.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Rant: Between Cloudflare and domain squatters foiling my attempts to automatically check for dead links, cleaning out all the dead links from my bookmarks is a bit of a tedious manual process.

I think I'm too obsessive to have bookmarks automatically deleted, too many have notes attached that in some cases might allow me to find where stuff has moved to.

Since you use Vivaldi I thought it relevant to add that it was bookmarks that finally (after several other annoyances) drove me away from Firefox (their seemingly arbitrary and pointless decision to drop the bookmark note field) and into the arms of Vivaldi. Of course it helped that I'd once been a fan of Opera (before they dropped a perfectly functional browser for a pre-alpha development release), so of course I was going to look closely at Vivaldi once I started looking for alternatives. (I said I changed "recently", but time flies - it was three years ago, not sure if that qualifies as recent or not.)

[ownedbycats]

Nah, I don't automatically delete them - if they're dead, I run them through Wayback Machine to see if they might be worth saving.

I do have a lot of amusingly unexpected stuff in here. Hard disk drive disco, anyone?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I believe that there's a mostly working version.

The fundamental problem Kovid faces with Calibre is that simply possessing such tools is illegal in some jurisdictions. So Calibre doesn't ship with them, or explicitly tell you where to get them. I don't blame him a bit for his feelings, and the line MR walks is a consequence..
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Nah, I don't automatically delete them - if they're dead, I run them through Wayback Machine to see if they might be worth saving.

I had an extension in Firefox at one point that added a right-click context menu to run a failing URL through the Waybak machine.

Wearing another hat, I maintain a site about computer text editors. There are 1,800+ entries at the moment. Each editor has a page with descriptive information about it, including where to get it. A fair number of those Homepage: links now point to a Waybak copy, because the original page is long gone. (I don't worry about links for shareware programs that can no longer be registered, if you must have a registered version to have a usable copy.)

I do have a lot of amusingly unexpected stuff in here. Hard disk drive disco, anyone?

I think I saw something like that where the poster had a setup that played recognizable songs made from the sounds a running system made. It's Yet Another Instance of "Some people have way too much time on their hands..."

Automatically deleting dead links is the least of my worries. I've been collecting URLs for a long time. Just finding duplicates is a challenge. (I've looked at various Firefox extensions for doing that, but have not seen one that suited me. Still looking.)
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Dennis

[ownedbycats]

There used to be the CheckPlaces extension, but I think it's been defunct for years. Then Firefox went and broke all the old extensions anyways.

I gave up years back and switched to a standalone bookmark manager. No syncing between devices, but I'm not in particular need of that. And it has built-in duplicate and dead link checkers.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

There used to be the CheckPlaces extension, but I think it's been defunct for years. Then Firefox went and broke all the old extensions anyways.

Yep. Firefox switched to a model where all extensions must be pure JavaScript, written to a WebExtensions API. Some of the things FF extensions did can't be done using just WebExensions.

I gave up years back and switched to a standalone bookmark manager. No syncing between devices, but I'm not in particular need of that. And it has built-in duplicate and dead link checkers.

Which one?

I can live without syncing. I use multiple Firefox profiles on the desktop, but I create symlinks to the master places.sqlite file for most of them, so the all share the same bookmarks file and all see the current version. The version on the laptop gets used occasionally, and a periodic manual sync will do fine.

An external tool to check for dupes and dead links is fine by me. I just haven't seen one that impressed me.
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Dennis

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Which one?

I can live without syncing. I use multiple Firefox profiles on the desktop, but I create symlinks to the master places.sqlite file for most of them, so the all share the same bookmarks file and all see the current version. The version on the laptop gets used occasionally, and a periodic manual sync will do fine.

An external tool to check for dupes and dead links is fine by me. I just haven't seen one that impressed me.
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Dennis

LinkStash. Shareware. A bit old but still gets the occasional update - I think the last one finally dropped Netscape as one of the default options, lol.

[Bradles]

Originally Posted by gmw

You are making the assumption that DNS is configured at the external router, or the same on all devices - you're right in my case, but it's not necessarily so. Of course that doesn't change the recommendation to check the settings on the particular device.

I've been using CloudFlare for a year or two now, before that it was Google. I think I did try OpenDNS for a time. Keep them guessing, I say.

I cannot speak for Bradles, who brought this up originally, but in my case the device on which I have the problem is also the only one I regularly use to access MR. When I said "similar" I was referring to the problem seeming MR specific rather than device specific, which I cannot say. In my case I've also wondered if it could be browser related: I recently moved to Vivaldi, and really like it, but it's behaviour when loading of tabs can make for some oddities. I've had too much work on to spend much time on the problem - it came on its own, so I've been hoping it will go the same way.

Yes, cloudflare is the DNS configured on the pi-hole. The pi-hole is passing through mobileread.com successfully, so no issues at that level.

No other sites have this issue. Only mobileread.com.

I tried different browsers (slightly different anyway - Edge vs Chrome) and private mode, but it didn't make a difference when there was a problem.

I've switched the pi-hole over to OpenDNS to give that a go.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Bradles

Yes, cloudflare is the DNS configured on the pi-hole. The pi-hole is passing through mobileread.com successfully, so no issues at that level.

No other sites have this issue. Only mobileread.com.

I tried different browsers (slightly different anyway - Edge vs Chrome) and private mode, but it didn't make a difference when there was a problem.

I've switched the pi-hole over to OpenDNS to give that a go.

I will be interested to hear how you go with that - save me some effort

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Nah, I don't automatically delete them - if they're dead, I run them through Wayback Machine to see if they might be worth saving.

I do have a lot of amusingly unexpected stuff in here. Hard disk drive disco, anyone?

I haven't been able to find the short video of a DEC RP-04 hard drive ( I think that was the model ) with a program that moved the head actuator around causing the drive to "dance". Rather impressive for a box the size of a dishwasher/washing machine.