6 ms·

50% off O'Reilly ebooks and videos today

80 points by vijayr 14y ago

belorn 14y ago
The DRM-free is nice, and they get some large amount of points for doing so. But ads in hacker news, masquerading as an article? Can we keep commercials out please? (interesting to see that people are not contesting that the link/title is an actually an ad, but that people are arguing that ads should exist because they are useful. The role and appropriateness of ads alongside other content looks to be a controversial subject.)
- barking 14y ago
  Still though, I'd probably not have heard about it otherwise
  - belorn 14y ago
    Thats what banners/newsletters and ads in TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky are for. But not in news aggregators, no siree.
    - mhurron 14y ago
      Absolutely, promoting other useful products to the community is not in any way what HN is about. You should be here pushing your own startup, useful or not, or reading some pointless blog of someone just because they started yet another picture sharing service that will be dead tomorrow, or fawning over whomever the latest superstar is. But one day sales on useful information that would otherwise be missed by many users here? Oh no, there's a group think to be maintained.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- melling 14y ago
  Who thought it was an article? Some sort of O'Reilly coupon gets posted a couple times a year. In fact, deeply discounted tech books from most publishers are welcome. What you're suppose to do here is recommend great books on the list.
  - belorn 14y ago
    Are you saying that the goal of hacker news is to post commercial ads with coupons for people to see? Really? that's the goal of this site? I wouldn't mind an article which talked about different books and in that context, which just happened to mentioned that there was a sale going on with 50% off. That would give room of discussion. But this is just a text banner ad with a open comment field. If it had been a real banner, positioned at the right side of the screen, I would not complain as it would be clear that its an ad and not ordinary content. I would even consider a small disclaimer tag in the title ([hacker news commercial] to be fair, but to actually be listed as any other news article?
    - boundlessdreamz 14y ago
      You are taking this way too seriously. Posts like this are rare. Also very useful. I have bought ebooks before in sales which I came to know via HN. As the GP said the best part was the discussion by people about the books they are buying and why. If you don't like this post, flag it.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      > Are you saying that the goal of hacker news is to post commercial ads Are you suggesting that O'Reilly paid to have this link posted to HN? That's not correct. They didn't. Someone saw the offer, knew that many people on HN would find it useful, and posted it. It's valid to not like it, and to ignore it or flag it, but don't dislike it for something that didn't happen.
      - belorn 14y ago
        I dont think they paied for it, and I dont dislike O'Reilly. They didnt do anything here beyond having a sale and selling non-drm products. Like I initially said, they get major points for this. I only pointed out that this is an ad promoting a sale. No one seams to contest that. What people seems to have an issue with is the claim that ads should not sit alongside other articles. It would be interesting to hear why having a ad promoting a sale posted in a news aggregate is a good thing, or why in this case we should have an exception that sites like amazon or newsegg does not deserve. After all, they too have done 1 day's sales, some very interesting for hackers. Thus, I am failing to find an attribute that this ad differ from all other ads. Does anyone has an insight to what that attribute is?
- chollida1 14y ago
  Clearly there are two things going on here that you seem to object to: 1) People actually find this link useful. 2) People don't want you to be the judge of what is appropriate on hacker news. Look there are always going to be links like this because people here like them. Whether it's book coupons or links to getting a free Chrome book from Google or free phones from Microsoft or Blackberry for developing apps, these links people find valuable. If it bothers you, then just skip it and move on.
lukeholder 14y ago
website is slow as molasses. Cant even buy a book!
- willhsiung 14y ago
  Apress.com has a $15 eBook special on all Apress and Springer eBooks today only and they were already very slow at midnight Eastern Standard Time when it started!
wiradikusuma 14y ago
i cant help but wonder why on earth they're giving promotions without preparing their infrastructure. reminds me of "free ebook from Packt" promo that lasted for days but never managed to get any since the website was always down. the one that went well was Pragmatic Programmer, bought an Arduino ebook. it was posted here last week. those who complain that book promo shouldn't be here have their reason, but i'm glad i see this kind of promo in HN.
- lukeck 14y ago
  I'm happy to see relevant promos here as well because I would miss out on them otherwise, but it's a slippery slope. Perhaps we could have a convention for post titles or a separate section for them? Apologies if this idea has been floated and rejected before.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  I missed the PragProg one, slightly disappointed now I've found out about it. The free ebook from Packt was a slight disaster, hopefully they're getting on top of it now.
  - telemachos 14y ago
    So far as I know, the PragProg discount is still valid[1]. I think it's valid all day today. Load up your cart, and as you go through the purchasing process, there's a button to apply coupons. Click there, and enter the word TURKEY (not sure if it's case sensitive; all caps works for me). That should get you a 40% discount. Enjoy. [1] Yup, just confirmed. Here's the original blog post, which I'll submit to HN as well: http://pragprog.com/news/black-friday-cyber-monday-40-off-sale http://pragprog.com/news/black-friday-cyber-monday-40-off-sa....
    - nicholassmith 14y ago
      Oh, awesome thanks. Got myself confused on the expiry time.
mrmincent 14y ago
I'm fairly certain that if you create an account with o'reilly, you get a 'buy one get one free' code for their ebooks, so with two books it basically works out to be 50% off anyway, any day of the year.
- iaskwhy 14y ago
  I'm getting 60% off today, not sure why. Also, one could wish to buy just one book and would still get a good discount today on that one instead of paying the full price for one and having another as an offer.
  - mrmincent 14y ago
    You get 60% off on orders over $100, so you've probably stocked up on ebooks :)
    - Gmo 14y ago
      I know I did :) Bought 6 ebooks, and I'm happy it was posted and upvoted on HN, otherwise, I would have missed it.
rplnt 14y ago
> Our site is temporarily unavailable due to routine maintenance. Isn't it weird to do a maintenance during a sale?
- jgrahamc 14y ago
  I suspect they don't mean that. I'll wager that's a default message and that, in fact, their site is overloaded.
danso 14y ago
FYI, every day at O'Reilly is 50 percent off ebooks. If you're a logged in member, one of the perpetual in house ads will be for a code for "Buy 1 ebook, get 1 free" Also FYI, the most recent purchase I made was a book that made HN's front page last week: interactive Data Vizualization for the Web. And I highly recommend it http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920026938.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920026938.do
- Auguste 14y ago
  I recommend joining the mailing list too. There's one book on sale nearly every day, and a category (e.g. Python, Ruby, data mining, etc.) every few weeks. If you aren't in a rush to buy your books, keep a wishlist and pick them up as they go on sale.
- pdelgallego 14y ago
  Thanks for the recomendation, I just bought the book. I am trying to learm more about visualizations (and D3). Any other recomendation?
  - danso 14y ago
    The cupboard seems dry in terms of D3 right now. But there seem to be quite a few good books with R. The ggplot2 book is great, but I don't think it's on O'Reilly http://www.amazon.com/ggplot2-Elegant-Graphics-Analysis-ebook/dp/B0041KLFRW/ref=kinw_dp_ke http://www.amazon.com/ggplot2-Elegant-Graphics-Analysis-eboo...
- smiler 14y ago
  50% off is not the same as buy one, get one free. Let's say each Ebook costs $10. On a "buy one, get one free" deal, I have spent $10. On a 50% off deal, I have spent $5
shortlived 14y ago
Can anyone comment on the quality of O'Reilly books these days? I used to read them long long ago but then their editing standards seemed to take a dive and companies like Apress and pragprog started producing much better quality.
- lukev 14y ago
  I can only speak anecdotally, not across a wide sample of books. But as an author, O'Reilly's editing staff is way better than Apress. I haven't written for the prags but I like their books.
- jnazario 14y ago
  as always it depends on the series or topic. myself, i read some of their blogs (esp nat torkington) but rarely read their books any more. i can get what i want elsewhere, for free. if i do pay for a tech book it's usually not a manual or anything tied to a specific version of anything but instead broad paradigms. they did, it seems, go for "filler" instead of "killer".
mhurron 14y ago
I could use a good book on learning Javascript. Anyone have any recommendations? Background: I'm not a programmer, I just do some things in my spare time. I did a little something with Django and Bootstrap over the weekend, but I could really only use Bootstrap for the CSS to make it look good without knowing how the Javascript end works. So I'm not completely new to programming though still really a beginner but would be completely new to Javascript.
- cfqycwz 14y ago
  Eloquent Javascript seems to be pretty highly recommended. You can buy it from O'Reilly, but the author also offers it for free online[0]. 0: http://eloquentjavascript.net/ http://eloquentjavascript.net/
  - abecedarius 14y ago
    (The pay version is newer. I haven't read it, can't comment on the differences.)
    - stephenhuey 14y ago
      Is it? The last modified date on the free web version seems to be October 30, 2012. That's less than a month ago, whereas the print version on Amazon was published in February 2011.
      - abecedarius 14y ago
        eloquentjavascript.net says "I have published a revised version of the book on paper. The structure of this version remained largely the same, but the whole text has been thoroughly edited and updated."
- netvarun 14y ago
  I would suggest starting off with Codecademy (http://codecademy.com/ http://codecademy.com/) first.
bcl 14y ago
So far I haven't found a single book that I can't get from Amazon for less than their 50% sale price (or with a $1 difference). I think they need to re-evaluate their pricing structure.
- danellis 14y ago
  What I dislike about Amazon, though, is that you don't get the PDF, only "Kindle Edition".
  - cloverich 14y ago
    I think he's referring to the print books. I buy ebooks from o'reilly; idk why anyone would purchase a technical ebook from Amazon if they weren't forced to.
- psweber 14y ago
  I much prefer the value I get from O'Reilly. No DRM. Any format I could want. The PDF is especially useful for technical material.

80 points by vijayr 14y ago

The DRM-free is nice, and they get some large amount of points for doing so. But ads in hacker news, masquerading as an article? Can we keep commercials out please? (interesting to see that people are not contesting that the link/title is an actually an ad, but that people are arguing that ads should exist because they are useful. The role and appropriateness of ads alongside other content looks to be a controversial subject.)

barking 14y ago
Still though, I'd probably not have heard about it otherwise
- belorn 14y ago
  Thats what banners/newsletters and ads in TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky are for. But not in news aggregators, no siree.
  - mhurron 14y ago
    Absolutely, promoting other useful products to the community is not in any way what HN is about. You should be here pushing your own startup, useful or not, or reading some pointless blog of someone just because they started yet another picture sharing service that will be dead tomorrow, or fawning over whomever the latest superstar is. But one day sales on useful information that would otherwise be missed by many users here? Oh no, there's a group think to be maintained.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
melling 14y ago
Who thought it was an article? Some sort of O'Reilly coupon gets posted a couple times a year. In fact, deeply discounted tech books from most publishers are welcome. What you're suppose to do here is recommend great books on the list.
- belorn 14y ago
  Are you saying that the goal of hacker news is to post commercial ads with coupons for people to see? Really? that's the goal of this site? I wouldn't mind an article which talked about different books and in that context, which just happened to mentioned that there was a sale going on with 50% off. That would give room of discussion. But this is just a text banner ad with a open comment field. If it had been a real banner, positioned at the right side of the screen, I would not complain as it would be clear that its an ad and not ordinary content. I would even consider a small disclaimer tag in the title ([hacker news commercial] to be fair, but to actually be listed as any other news article?
  - boundlessdreamz 14y ago
    You are taking this way too seriously. Posts like this are rare. Also very useful. I have bought ebooks before in sales which I came to know via HN. As the GP said the best part was the discussion by people about the books they are buying and why. If you don't like this post, flag it.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    > Are you saying that the goal of hacker news is to post commercial ads Are you suggesting that O'Reilly paid to have this link posted to HN? That's not correct. They didn't. Someone saw the offer, knew that many people on HN would find it useful, and posted it. It's valid to not like it, and to ignore it or flag it, but don't dislike it for something that didn't happen.
    - belorn 14y ago
      I dont think they paied for it, and I dont dislike O'Reilly. They didnt do anything here beyond having a sale and selling non-drm products. Like I initially said, they get major points for this. I only pointed out that this is an ad promoting a sale. No one seams to contest that. What people seems to have an issue with is the claim that ads should not sit alongside other articles. It would be interesting to hear why having a ad promoting a sale posted in a news aggregate is a good thing, or why in this case we should have an exception that sites like amazon or newsegg does not deserve. After all, they too have done 1 day's sales, some very interesting for hackers. Thus, I am failing to find an attribute that this ad differ from all other ads. Does anyone has an insight to what that attribute is?
chollida1 14y ago
Clearly there are two things going on here that you seem to object to: 1) People actually find this link useful. 2) People don't want you to be the judge of what is appropriate on hacker news. Look there are always going to be links like this because people here like them. Whether it's book coupons or links to getting a free Chrome book from Google or free phones from Microsoft or Blackberry for developing apps, these links people find valuable. If it bothers you, then just skip it and move on.

lukeholder 14y ago

website is slow as molasses. Cant even buy a book!

willhsiung 14y ago
Apress.com has a $15 eBook special on all Apress and Springer eBooks today only and they were already very slow at midnight Eastern Standard Time when it started!

wiradikusuma 14y ago

i cant help but wonder why on earth they're giving promotions without preparing their infrastructure. reminds me of "free ebook from Packt" promo that lasted for days but never managed to get any since the website was always down. the one that went well was Pragmatic Programmer, bought an Arduino ebook. it was posted here last week. those who complain that book promo shouldn't be here have their reason, but i'm glad i see this kind of promo in HN.

lukeck 14y ago
I'm happy to see relevant promos here as well because I would miss out on them otherwise, but it's a slippery slope. Perhaps we could have a convention for post titles or a separate section for them? Apologies if this idea has been floated and rejected before.
nicholassmith 14y ago
I missed the PragProg one, slightly disappointed now I've found out about it. The free ebook from Packt was a slight disaster, hopefully they're getting on top of it now.
- telemachos 14y ago
  So far as I know, the PragProg discount is still valid[1]. I think it's valid all day today. Load up your cart, and as you go through the purchasing process, there's a button to apply coupons. Click there, and enter the word TURKEY (not sure if it's case sensitive; all caps works for me). That should get you a 40% discount. Enjoy. [1] Yup, just confirmed. Here's the original blog post, which I'll submit to HN as well: http://pragprog.com/news/black-friday-cyber-monday-40-off-sale http://pragprog.com/news/black-friday-cyber-monday-40-off-sa....
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    Oh, awesome thanks. Got myself confused on the expiry time.

mrmincent 14y ago

I'm fairly certain that if you create an account with o'reilly, you get a 'buy one get one free' code for their ebooks, so with two books it basically works out to be 50% off anyway, any day of the year.

iaskwhy 14y ago
I'm getting 60% off today, not sure why. Also, one could wish to buy just one book and would still get a good discount today on that one instead of paying the full price for one and having another as an offer.
- mrmincent 14y ago
  You get 60% off on orders over $100, so you've probably stocked up on ebooks :)
  - Gmo 14y ago
    I know I did :) Bought 6 ebooks, and I'm happy it was posted and upvoted on HN, otherwise, I would have missed it.

rplnt 14y ago

> Our site is temporarily unavailable due to routine maintenance. Isn't it weird to do a maintenance during a sale?

jgrahamc 14y ago
I suspect they don't mean that. I'll wager that's a default message and that, in fact, their site is overloaded.

danso 14y ago

FYI, every day at O'Reilly is 50 percent off ebooks. If you're a logged in member, one of the perpetual in house ads will be for a code for "Buy 1 ebook, get 1 free" Also FYI, the most recent purchase I made was a book that made HN's front page last week: interactive Data Vizualization for the Web. And I highly recommend it http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920026938.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920026938.do

Auguste 14y ago
I recommend joining the mailing list too. There's one book on sale nearly every day, and a category (e.g. Python, Ruby, data mining, etc.) every few weeks. If you aren't in a rush to buy your books, keep a wishlist and pick them up as they go on sale.
pdelgallego 14y ago
Thanks for the recomendation, I just bought the book. I am trying to learm more about visualizations (and D3). Any other recomendation?
- danso 14y ago
  The cupboard seems dry in terms of D3 right now. But there seem to be quite a few good books with R. The ggplot2 book is great, but I don't think it's on O'Reilly http://www.amazon.com/ggplot2-Elegant-Graphics-Analysis-ebook/dp/B0041KLFRW/ref=kinw_dp_ke http://www.amazon.com/ggplot2-Elegant-Graphics-Analysis-eboo...
smiler 14y ago
50% off is not the same as buy one, get one free. Let's say each Ebook costs $10. On a "buy one, get one free" deal, I have spent $10. On a 50% off deal, I have spent $5

shortlived 14y ago

Can anyone comment on the quality of O'Reilly books these days? I used to read them long long ago but then their editing standards seemed to take a dive and companies like Apress and pragprog started producing much better quality.

lukev 14y ago
I can only speak anecdotally, not across a wide sample of books. But as an author, O'Reilly's editing staff is way better than Apress. I haven't written for the prags but I like their books.
jnazario 14y ago
as always it depends on the series or topic. myself, i read some of their blogs (esp nat torkington) but rarely read their books any more. i can get what i want elsewhere, for free. if i do pay for a tech book it's usually not a manual or anything tied to a specific version of anything but instead broad paradigms. they did, it seems, go for "filler" instead of "killer".

mhurron 14y ago

I could use a good book on learning Javascript. Anyone have any recommendations? Background: I'm not a programmer, I just do some things in my spare time. I did a little something with Django and Bootstrap over the weekend, but I could really only use Bootstrap for the CSS to make it look good without knowing how the Javascript end works. So I'm not completely new to programming though still really a beginner but would be completely new to Javascript.

cfqycwz 14y ago
Eloquent Javascript seems to be pretty highly recommended. You can buy it from O'Reilly, but the author also offers it for free online[0]. 0: http://eloquentjavascript.net/ http://eloquentjavascript.net/
- abecedarius 14y ago
  (The pay version is newer. I haven't read it, can't comment on the differences.)
  - stephenhuey 14y ago
    Is it? The last modified date on the free web version seems to be October 30, 2012. That's less than a month ago, whereas the print version on Amazon was published in February 2011.
    - abecedarius 14y ago
      eloquentjavascript.net says "I have published a revised version of the book on paper. The structure of this version remained largely the same, but the whole text has been thoroughly edited and updated."
netvarun 14y ago
I would suggest starting off with Codecademy (http://codecademy.com/ http://codecademy.com/) first.

bcl 14y ago

So far I haven't found a single book that I can't get from Amazon for less than their 50% sale price (or with a $1 difference). I think they need to re-evaluate their pricing structure.

danellis 14y ago
What I dislike about Amazon, though, is that you don't get the PDF, only "Kindle Edition".
- cloverich 14y ago
  I think he's referring to the print books. I buy ebooks from o'reilly; idk why anyone would purchase a technical ebook from Amazon if they weren't forced to.
psweber 14y ago
I much prefer the value I get from O'Reilly. No DRM. Any format I could want. The PDF is especially useful for technical material.