Have a later model, the Pocketbook Verse (not the pro edition). Flashed KOReader on it which was much easier than anticipated. Have a couple extra features in the reader that way.

It does as promised. I just plug it into my devices to get epubs onto it. You don’t even need a book management software like Calibre, you can use it similarly to how you’d use a thumb drive.

Thanks for taking the time to share, this was very helpful :D

Thank you for the thoughtful reply! One more question: Can you really manage everything using the website? Just sounds too good to be true!

Checked out the support pages. It does get a bit complex trying to figure out if they charge for adding money via bank transfers. But I got to it! For other people wondering (only valid for EU folks):

Turns out they take the customary 1.75% on using the card to get cash from ATMs (and even take 0.50€ on top after the second time). That makes them slightly worse than established banks for this purpose.

However they offer pretty low fees on transactions with the card. While established banks still take 1.75% on every transaction, Wise currently takes 0.46% on exchanges from EUR to JPY. They don’t seem to skew the exchange rate like PayPal does either. The only drawback is they’re free to change their fee any time, while most normal banks haven’t deviated from 1,75% in forever.

To my great relief adding EUR to your Wise balance is free with a standard SEPA (EU zone) bank transfer. And they automatically convert money to other currencies as needed. Though I wonder whether you can convert in advance to make use of favorable exchange rates.

This makes it seem like Wise is a solid option. Only one data breach so far, too ;)

Planning a trip to Japan soon and would like a credit card to pay for accommodation (I don’t have a credit card yet). Wise seems to be what I want but I’m not sure:

1. Can you top up your Wise balance from your local bank account for free?
2. Are conversion fees and ATM withdrawal fees abroad reasonable?
3. Is their human support any good?
4. How intrusive was the sign up and KYC?

The President of the Signal Foundation (Meredith Whittaker) has commented on this in this podcast episode. Skip to 1:05:45.

Finally a good, nuanced article on this topic, thanks for sharing. Only drawback is that the author doesn’t seem to be aware that degoogling your phone is a viable alternative, especially with manufactures like Fairphone offering this out of the box.

Lots of people (including myself, previously) fall for the narrative that Apple can financially justify not spying on their users because their hardware is expensive. Versus Google, who have always been about ads and data mining.

This logic unfortunately fails to consider that a publicly trading company will always use all methods at their disposal to keep up profit so shareholders are happy. Expensive hardware was probably enough a decade ago, but the golden rule is: as long as a company can fuck you over in a way that increases profits, they absolutely will, given enough time.

We need federal privacy law in the U.S. and we need it fast.