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Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Jailbroken

Posted by timothy on from the rebel-in-the-library dept.

hypnosec writes "Amazon's latest Kindle Paperwhite is now officially jailbroken, giving users the ability to do things like turn their eReaders into weather station displays, or connect serially to a Raspberry Pi. To jailbreak the Paperwhite, the user needs to copy a file over to the root directory of the e-Reader and restart the device. The Kindle Paperwhite jailbreak is based on a previously known hack used on the Kindle Touch."

1 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. This shouldn't be news. by jmerlin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I understand why it is, but when we purchase a computer, it shouldn't be news to the world that "you can run programs on it." This industry has started a fad of creating walled gardens and severely incapacitating the things they're selling. It would be like buying a lawn mower that could only cut Monsanto grass. It would be like buying a Microwave Oven that would only work on a certain few name-brand items. It would be like buying a monitor that would only stream video from approved devices. It would be like buying a car that would only run on Exxon fuel and would only drive properly on certain roads.

    All of the above examples are absolutely absurd. So is this artificial limitation of computing devices. It needs to end, now.