Substack cometh, and lo it is good. (Pricing)

Prime Day!

Posted on by Razib Khan

It’s “Prime Day” (well, the second). I know it has nothing to do with Prime Day as such, but I really do recommend all of you read Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past. It’s getting out of date here and there, but it’s essential in 2020 if you are interested in the human past.

I’m surprised how two years on there hasn’t been much else that’s come out.

Now in regards to Prime Day, Kindle Fire is on sale. I recently cracked my primary Fire so I was using a backup. I realized that the backup was too heavy, and instead of getting one of the big Kindles I got a smaller one that’s lighter. I don’t really use the Kindles for surfing the web or watching movies, I have computers or smartphones for that. I have a paperwhite, but I do most of my reading on the fire.

I know some people don’t like reading on an e-reader, but it does make me much faster.

Related Posts:

4 thoughts on “Prime Day!”

  1. I have a , what is now a 5 year old Kindle Fire HDX. I love it because the screen is one of the best that was ever put on a tablet. 7″ 1920 × 1200 323 ppi. Sadly, the line was discontinued and the best screen they now make is the 10″ 1920 × 1200 224 ppi on the $80 Fire.

    In 2018, I left my HDX on an airplane. I though that I could get by with a BW Kindle. So I ordered a 7″ Oasis. I hated it. I thought the interface was unusable.

    When the airline found my HDX, I was happy to pay the $35 handling charge to get it back. And, I returned the Oasis pronto. I was surprised that my CS MA DiL, who uses a BW Kindle all the time agreed with me about the interface.

    La Lutte Continue!

    I looked at amazon.com to find the specs of the HDX. It turned out that they still had two of them on hand for sale at $60 ea. They were originally $230. I bought both of them. One as a back up for my current machine and one as a replacement for my wife’s dead HDX.

  2. For those who are so inclined, most versions of the Kindle Fire can be rooted and converted to run under a more conventional operating system (LineageOS).

    The disadvantage is that you are no longer tied deeply into the Amazon ecosystem (if that is important). The advantage is also that you are no longer tied deeply into the Amazon ecosystem, and also that the rooting and custom OS installation drastically improves battery life (easily a 3-4x improvement in my case) vs. Amazon’s own system.

Comments are closed.