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Any place is very warm where you have people with common, niche interests discussing topics that you care about. Besides that, HN is very nicely moderated. It

by rg111 5y ago

Any place is very warm where you have people with common, niche interests discussing topics that you care about. Besides that, HN is very nicely moderated. It might be just me, but I value non-echo-chamber places. HN is very surprisingly very diverse, and I have considered many POVs that I hadn’t considered before. HN made me a better person. Apart from that, people in HN are generally very helpful and are keen on giving valuable advive. Thanks, everyone. HN has been transformative in my life and journey. I am a much better engineer, well versed in diverse subjects. I am in a much better place in my career for HN. They say, "if you are the smartest person in a room, change the room, if you care to grow". I am certainly not the smartest or the most experienced person in this room, and I grew a lot and keep growing due to HN. I lived (and now live, due to WFH) in a very small town. What I do, nobody understands. First, FB connected me with smart, accomplished expats who grew up in my town, then Quora gave me a glimpse of outside world, Amazon gave me book-gadget-parity, and Reddit gave me a good base. I learned programming with the help of Reddit recommended sources. Then finally, HN recommended sources made me, and keeps making me better. And thanks to pirates, too, because many stuff that I could not literally afford, were available for free. I got to know about SICP, nand2tetris, genetic programming, and a lot of other things from HN for the first time. And the level of competence of people on HN is much higher. I get better just by trying to be worthy of this place. A heartfelt thanks to HN. I will make a post, too, when I am where I want to be.

mwattsun 5y ago
> And thanks to pirates, too, because many stuff that I could not literally afford I like to call them Good Samaritans because I also cannot literally afford to buy the interesting things I want. In the age of perpetual copyright and DRM, it would be a much less interesting world for me if I had to pay for everything. Some of the things I am most interested in cannot be found in the public library. For example, "Beyond Good and Evil" by Friedrich Nietzsche on Amazon is $3.99 for the eBook, $17.99 Hardcover and $6.99 for paperback. Nietzsche has been dead for 122 years, so why do I have to pay? No one currently alive had anything to do with helping Nietzsche produce his work. Pirate Bay to the rescue, I downloaded the collected works of Friedrich Nietzsche (72 books, essays and other works) for the total cost of FREE. How amazing is that? I'm not sure I could even do that by paying for it. Thank you to anyone who made that torrent available (or similar torrents.) You're doing God's work.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > For example, "Beyond Good and Evil" by Friedrich Nietzsche on Amazon is $3.99 for the eBook, $17.99 Hardcover and $6.99 for paperback. Nietzsche has been dead for 122 years, so why do I have to pay? No one currently alive had anything to do with helping Nietzsche produce his work. > Pirate Bay to the rescue, I downloaded the collected works of Friedrich Nietzsche (72 books, essays and other works) for the total cost of FREE. How amazing is that? I'm not sure I could even do that by paying for it. You have a good point, but chose a bad example. For works that are public domain or otherwise out of copyright (at least, non-obscure ones), you have fairly good legal download options, starting with Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/779 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/779 https://archive.org/search.php?query=Nietzsche&and[]=creator%3A%22nietzsche%2C+friedrich+wilhelm%2C+1844-1900%22 https://archive.org/search.php?query=Nietzsche&and[]=creator... Within that set of public domain works, the most popular ones often have somewhat nicer (but still free) editions from places like Standard Ebooks, Feedbooks, and Manybooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks?query=Nietzsche https://standardebooks.org/ebooks?query=Nietzsche https://www.feedbooks.com/search?protection=without_drm&query=Nietzsche&sort=top https://www.feedbooks.com/search?protection=without_drm&quer... https://manybooks.net/search-book?search=Nietzsche https://manybooks.net/search-book?search=Nietzsche
  - mwattsun 5y ago
    This is great. I didn't realize this. I was confused when I saw Amazon was charging so I went to PB
    - webmaven 5y ago
      Amazon has free stuff too, but they've made those harder to find, you can't generally get there by browsing. But if you search for what you want and then sort results by price, that usually does the trick.
- halostatue 5y ago
  If you’re reading the original German, then you’re right. If you’re reading an older translation, you may also be right. If, on the other hand, you’re talking about a modern translation, then you’re not necessarily recognizing the value that translators provide (or take away) from a work. Also, for books, it’s always worth trying Gutenberg, first: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/779 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/779

by rg111 5y ago

mwattsun 5y ago

> And thanks to pirates, too, because many stuff that I could not literally afford I like to call them Good Samaritans because I also cannot literally afford to buy the interesting things I want. In the age of perpetual copyright and DRM, it would be a much less interesting world for me if I had to pay for everything. Some of the things I am most interested in cannot be found in the public library. For example, "Beyond Good and Evil" by Friedrich Nietzsche on Amazon is $3.99 for the eBook, $17.99 Hardcover and $6.99 for paperback. Nietzsche has been dead for 122 years, so why do I have to pay? No one currently alive had anything to do with helping Nietzsche produce his work. Pirate Bay to the rescue, I downloaded the collected works of Friedrich Nietzsche (72 books, essays and other works) for the total cost of FREE. How amazing is that? I'm not sure I could even do that by paying for it. Thank you to anyone who made that torrent available (or similar torrents.) You're doing God's work.

webmaven 5y ago
> For example, "Beyond Good and Evil" by Friedrich Nietzsche on Amazon is $3.99 for the eBook, $17.99 Hardcover and $6.99 for paperback. Nietzsche has been dead for 122 years, so why do I have to pay? No one currently alive had anything to do with helping Nietzsche produce his work. > Pirate Bay to the rescue, I downloaded the collected works of Friedrich Nietzsche (72 books, essays and other works) for the total cost of FREE. How amazing is that? I'm not sure I could even do that by paying for it. You have a good point, but chose a bad example. For works that are public domain or otherwise out of copyright (at least, non-obscure ones), you have fairly good legal download options, starting with Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/779 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/779 https://archive.org/search.php?query=Nietzsche&and[]=creator%3A%22nietzsche%2C+friedrich+wilhelm%2C+1844-1900%22 https://archive.org/search.php?query=Nietzsche&and[]=creator... Within that set of public domain works, the most popular ones often have somewhat nicer (but still free) editions from places like Standard Ebooks, Feedbooks, and Manybooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks?query=Nietzsche https://standardebooks.org/ebooks?query=Nietzsche https://www.feedbooks.com/search?protection=without_drm&query=Nietzsche&sort=top https://www.feedbooks.com/search?protection=without_drm&quer... https://manybooks.net/search-book?search=Nietzsche https://manybooks.net/search-book?search=Nietzsche
- mwattsun 5y ago
  This is great. I didn't realize this. I was confused when I saw Amazon was charging so I went to PB
  - webmaven 5y ago
    Amazon has free stuff too, but they've made those harder to find, you can't generally get there by browsing. But if you search for what you want and then sort results by price, that usually does the trick.
halostatue 5y ago
If you’re reading the original German, then you’re right. If you’re reading an older translation, you may also be right. If, on the other hand, you’re talking about a modern translation, then you’re not necessarily recognizing the value that translators provide (or take away) from a work. Also, for books, it’s always worth trying Gutenberg, first: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/779 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/779