Hacker News with Generative AI: Books

Move fast, break things: A review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (networked.substack.com)
Abundance, the buzzy new political call to arms by New York Times writer/podcaster Ezra Klein and The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson, is less a book than a manifesto.
Politics, Books, Media, Economics
52 points by jaypinho 1 day ago | 123 comments
Silicon Valley, Halt and Catch Fire, and How Microserfdom Ate the World (2015) (grantland.com)
Douglas Coupland’s novel Microserfs is about the spiritual yearnings and time-frittering activities of youngish coders immersed in the drudgery of the software-development process, and how those activities become an expression of those yearnings.
Silicon Valley, Books, Culture, Technology, Software Development
109 points by Apocryphon 1 day ago | 87 comments
My Book's Pre-Sale Just Barely Succeeded (mtlynch.io)
For the past few months, I’ve been working on a book called Refactoring English: Effective Writing for Software Developers.
Writing, Books, Software Development
16 points by hyperbrainer 2 days ago | 7 comments
Show HN: AI-powered reading companion that helps you read hard books (collabai.live)
AI, Reading, Education, Technology, Books
18 points by joezee 3 days ago | 9 comments
China Miéville says we shouldn't blame science fiction for its bad readers (techcrunch.com)
It’s been 25 years since China Miéville stepped into the literary spotlight with his novel “Perdido Street Station.”
Science Fiction, Books, Literature, Authors
16 points by pseudolus 3 days ago | 2 comments
The Child and the Shadow (1975) [pdf] (johnirons.com)
Psychology, Literature, Books
78 points by lolinder 3 days ago | 20 comments
The R Inferno (2011) [pdf] (burns-stat.com)
Statistics, Programming, Software, Data Analysis, Books
10 points by Tomte 5 days ago | 0 comments
On Tyranny [book] (timothysnyder.org)
The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.
Politics, History, Democracy, Totalitarianism, Books
58 points by pabs3 6 days ago | 20 comments
The Minard System (visionscarto.net)
“The Minard System,” a book to be published in November 2018, features “the complete statistical graphics of Charles-Joseph Minard — from the collection of the École nationale des Ponts et Chaussées”.
Data Visualization, History, Statistics, Books
3 points by danso 6 days ago | 1 comments
Beej's Guide to C Programming [pdf] (beej.us)
Programming, C Programming, Books
113 points by krykp 8 days ago | 18 comments
Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete (marcocantu.com)
I've now completed the review of the 2025 Annotated Edition of Mastering Delphi 5.
Programming, Delphi, Books
207 points by mariuz 9 days ago | 115 comments
Books on Making and Maintaining Friendships (scotthyoung.com)
As I write this, I’m wrapping up the sixth month of my year-long Foundations project. This month’s focus is outreach—making and maintaining friendships. In this post, I’ll share lessons from the eight books I read on this topic. Next week, I’ll share my personal reflections on this month’s work.
Friendship, Self-Help, Books, Personal Development
77 points by sundarurfriend 10 days ago | 36 comments
Everything I learned from (finally) completing The Artist's Way (extraordinaryroutines.com)
Maybe you’ve heard people referring to the morning pages or talking about going on an artist date. Maybe you’ve just started reading the first few chapters, or adopted some of its core practices into your daily routine. Maybe you’ve abandoned it halfway through, or dipped in and out, or even completed the entire twelve-week course.
Self-Help, Books, Creativity
14 points by cf100clunk 10 days ago | 1 comments
Older editions of which books were better than the new ones? (2010) (mathoverflow.net)
When choosing some mathematics book to study, is it always the case that one should look for the current edition of the book. Are there any examples when the older edition of some book is clearly better than the latest version?
Mathematics, Books, Education
41 points by susam 11 days ago | 44 comments
Meta pirated at least 101 of my books, and others (garymarcus.substack.com)
Meta pirated at least 101 of my books and articles, and tens of millions of others
Copyright Infringement, Meta, Publishing, Books, Articles
50 points by tu7001 11 days ago | 54 comments
How a Gag Order Made 'Careless People' a Bestseller (vulture.com)
Sarah Wynn-Williams can’t do interviews. She can’t post on social media or go on tour or give a talk. Her family can’t speak on her behalf, and her friends are afraid to. None of this has affected the sales of her first book, a memoir of the six years she spent working for Facebook.
Social Media, Books, Censorship
38 points by herbertl 11 days ago | 0 comments
The Unbelievable Scale of AI's Pirated-Books Problem (theatlantic.com)
Meta pirated millions of books to train its AI. Search through them here.
Artificial Intelligence, Piracy, Books, Training Data
8 points by the-mitr 12 days ago | 0 comments
Facebook Pirated My Books (wordpress.com)
The Atlantic has an interesting story on all the books Meta/Facebook pirated to train their Llama 3 AI model.
Artificial Intelligence, Copyright, Social Media, Books
12 points by ingve 12 days ago | 1 comments
How 'Careless People' is becoming a bigger problem for Meta (theverge.com)
Meta has aggressively pushed to discredit and silence Sarah Wynn-Williams, the author of Careless People, her memoir about working at the company as a policy director. Now, she’s fighting back.
Meta, Social Media, Public Relations, Lawsuits, Books
50 points by CrypticShift 12 days ago | 41 comments
Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI (theatlantic.com)
Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.
Artificial Intelligence, Books, Data, Privacy, Meta
38 points by skadamat 13 days ago | 22 comments
‘The Celts: A Modern History’ by Ian Stewart Review (historytoday.com)
Around the 1990s, the historical Celts endured something of an identity crisis. First in academic articles, then in popular books, and eventually in newspaper headlines, people started loudly declaring that ‘Celts’ did not really exist.
History, Identity, Academia, Books, News
107 points by lermontov 13 days ago | 43 comments
The CIA Book Club by Charlie English review – 'It was like fresh air' (theguardian.com)
A fascinating, exciting history of how the agency smuggled subversive books across the iron curtain
History, CIA, Books, Cold War
5 points by tintinnabula 13 days ago | 0 comments
Physics-based Deep Learning Book (v0.3, the GenAI edition) (physicsbaseddeeplearning.org)
Welcome to the Physics-based Deep Learning Book (v0.3, the GenAI edition) 👋
Deep Learning, Physics, Generative AI, Books, Machine Learning
5 points by MAXPOOL 13 days ago | 0 comments
The Beam Book: Understanding the Erlang Runtime System (2015) (github.com/happi)
This book is freely available online at https://github.com/happi/theBeamBook/ under the Creative Commons license. This printed edition is provided for convenience.
Erlang, Programming Languages, Books, Open Source, Runtime Systems
3 points by Tomte 13 days ago | 0 comments
The Scale of AI's Pirated-Books Problem (theatlantic.com)
Meta pirated millions of books to train its AI. Search through them here.
Artificial Intelligence, Piracy, Books, Training Data
10 points by hakaneskici 13 days ago | 1 comments
Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI (theatlantic.com)
Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.
Artificial Intelligence, Piracy, Data, Books, Science
7 points by bookofjoe 13 days ago | 0 comments
Careless People Review (slate.com)
If you’ve heard about Careless People, the scandalous new memoir from former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams, it’s likely because you first heard about Meta’s relentless efforts to shut it down.
Social Media, Books, Censorship
13 points by rednafi 14 days ago | 1 comments
Meta puts stop on promotion of tell-all book by former employee (theguardian.com)
Meta on Wednesday won an emergency arbitration ruling to temporarily stop promotion of the tell-all book Careless People by a former employee, according to a copy of the ruling published by the social media company.
Meta, Social Media, Lawsuits, Books, Employees
185 points by j_maffe 17 days ago | 88 comments
Technical Mathematics (1954) [pdf] (sliderulemuseum.com)
Mathematics, Books, History
27 points by Tomte 17 days ago | 4 comments
My 10 Commandments of Software Design (Inspired by John Ousterhout) (igbanam.com)
This should not have been a book — for many reasons — could as well have been a bullet list. The summary I have at the end of this article is the whole book. Skip there if you don’t care about my reasoning.
Software Design, Programming, Principles, Opinions, Books
9 points by nomilk 17 days ago | 3 comments