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Comment by drallison | Hacker News Reader

ACM has done more than make Leslie's book available. The Digital Library is an amazing resource. You now have no excuse for wasting time while waiting for the pandemic to resolve. Kudos to the ACM.

The notice published on the site: To help support our community working remotely during COVID-19, we are making all work published by ACM in our Digital Library freely accessible through June 30, 2020.

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> You now have no excuse for wasting time while waiting for the pandemic to resolve

I have to say, for anyone feeling bad, you have PLENTY of excuse for wasting time. It's hard to be stuck inside with all this death and financial ruin, and while some people are comforted by working and reading things like this, some people are comforted by being lazy and unproductive.

Do what you want, read a bunch of classic CS works from ACM or play Borderlands3 non-stop for 2 months, either is fine!

sci-hub is an even more amazing resource

Yeah, it’s strange to butter ACM that have been total jerks until last week, and would not have done anything if not for the pandemia (and will resume their behavior afterwards). Sci-hub on the contrary have provided a free service for years, more reliable technically and content-wise than any library service at any research institution I worked. They are the real heroes.

While I would agree in the case of other commercial publishers, at the end of the day the ACM is a nonprofit owned by its members that invests back into the community. I don't think 100 dollars a year is excessive for what it provides.

That $100 a year is a solid value to support the profession - especially if you take advantage of the Safari membership. Heck, just being able to point people, both executives and new hires, to the code of ethics has saved me several times.

But, the digital library costs extra.

My bad, 200 all in.

Your point about the code of ethics is intriguing! Do you point them to the code of ethics before or after the fact? Or to push back against someone trying to get you to do something unethical?

Except its creator is at constant risk of being kidnapped by the US if she leaves Russia or Kazakhstan.

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