Hacker News Reader

You'd be surprised. The pirating scene on IRC has a far greater selection than Amazon.

Yeah, it's easy enough to find pretty much any book if you know what to search for. It's been that way for years.

Really? Heh traditional torrent/p2p sources (say everything but usenet) tend to have a lot of trouble finding particular books.

Perhaps you're looking in the wrong place. A lot of illegal file-sharing seems to be done through file-hostin services such as rapidshare these days. A few choice keywords on google should net you just about any book you want.

try ed2k/kad. torrents are not for old or rare stuff.

Cool. What I'd really love is to be able to go to Amazon (or something) and pay to have a PDF download. I'd even pay retail if it meant I get the PDF now and the physical in the mail (though living in AU I don't think Amazon sell us books physically but you get the idea).

This system is exactly how pragprog.com works.

You can even purchase a PDF/book combo before the book is completed and have access to a (constantly updated) beta version of the PDF. When the book is completed, the PDF is finalised and the book itself is mailed to you.

Awesome. Can't wait to see this model expand.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com