Books from the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series | Hacker News Reader

Books from the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series

abakcus.com

66 pointsdevnonymous21 comments

Similar books for those seeking introductory knowledge in certain disciplines/topics:

https://www.veryshortintroductions.com/browse?btog=book&isQu...

The Very Short Introduction series is a fantastic way to get a good over view on a range of topic. They're well written and pretty accessible.

In case someone wonders, they have a similar page at [1] (also contains affiliate links).

[1] https://abakcus.com/48-beautiful-books-in-oxfords-very-short...

> This series offers accessible, concise, beautifully produced books on topics of current interest. Leading thinkers write the books in this series, and experts deliver overviews of subjects that range from the cultural and the historical to the scientific and the technical.

...

"Open Access" ($7.47) https://www.amazon.com/Open-Access-Press-Essential-Knowledge...

it's also an affiliate link grab too

What's the problem with that? It does not increase the price for you if you buy through them.

Using an affiliate link without disclosing it is just a scummy practice. To me, that's similar to not quoting a source. Like, come on, just put (affiliate) after the link or something.

Why does it offend you that someone makes money when you make use of the web site they created? It literally costs you nothing at all, while the site creator spent time and money making this available to you.

Because it makes it clear that there might be a wrong incentive for recommending that product.

For the same reason people on here write „Company X is better than Y for Z reasons. Disclaimer: I work for company X“

Do you also feel that the Beatles had the wrong incentive for creating music because they got rich off of it?

1. it puts into question their recommendations.

2. it creates an incentive to put these spam articles all over the place which creates noise.

3. they could have disclosed it and then it would have been at least transparent.

Let's say they have a financial incentive. In order to increase their revenues through affiliate links, they'll need to please their clickers. Because then the clickers will come back and click on more links, and recommend the site to their friends.

I.e. a financial incentive increases the incentive for the owner to create good links. No incentive means why should they care?

No it doesn't since clicking on a link thinking that it's a free resource and getting tricked will "taint" your amazon account for a 24 hour period. if they spam it enough and trick enough people to click on it it's not dependent on writing good "copy"

All seem to link to Amazon web store. This is a commercial.

Has anyone read any of these books? I'm interested in picking up a few but want to hear other opinions before I make a purchase.

I can’t see anything on my cellphone, just huge blank spaces.

Same here on all browsers on my laptop.

Another similar series is “Object Lessons”: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087JBCKV6 … I wonder what other similar book series are out there, besides these, and the also mentioned “Very Short Introduction” series.

It's missing a book on the most important technology of the last couple of decades: the search engine.

The one on deep learning is the best theoretical introduction I've read on that technology.

It may be obvious but the links are affiliate links which generate commissions for the website.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com