5 ms·

Does anyone else get pretty tired with 404s style of writing? I hate to make this comparison but it feels like a Fox News for the left. I always struggle with

by infecto 2mo ago

Does anyone else get pretty tired with 404s style of writing? I hate to make this comparison but it feels like a Fox News for the left. I always struggle with their articles because it feels like they built it for rage bait on a topic and leave the other interesting topics out of it. It is an absolute shame for books to be destroyed but what does it really mean to be rare here? I know they kind of tried to differentiate but it sounds like this could be John Doe’s self help book that never sold well. If you ever are connected to a library you will start to realize how many books simply get thrown out or sold for nothing because nobody wants them. To me the problem is partly the copyright law. I think it’s. Hard problem but I always lean more towards books having short copyright shelf lives and making it legal for digital copies to be shared after which I think would eliminate I good part of this problem. Not to mention 99% of the books published are probably garbage but that is highly subjective. So it is bit of a meta rant but I think there a couple holes to go down that could be extremely interesting but they always write these informationally light articles. Like scrolling through a NYT visualization for just some shipping datapoints. Don’t really dig deep on anything and then end with a trust me bro these are rare books that Amazon is destroying for AI when I cannot be that upset with the amazons of the world. There are a lot of reasons for a business to digitize books, most books are worthless and it makes sense to cut the bindings for scanning. I would rather talk about how could you fix copyright to make this less an issue but is it even an issue with how many books get thrown out?

forestrywat 2mo ago
Not really. It's not to my taste, but I've found their journalism to generally be lefty but focused on important events. Like Amazon consuming and presumably destroying rare books should be enraging to everyone, regardless of political persuasion. The difference is huge between 404 and Fox. Fox is out here trying to tell people there's a trans agenda, and that Biden was a lunatic leftist. They are just making up stories and publishing them because they know their audience engages. 404 definitely make editorial choices about which stories to pursue but I've largely found them to be grounded in real depictions of stuff that is happening.
- infecto 2mo ago
  Again, what rare books? Like they pointed to a book with low published volume or foreign language is “rare”. If you have ever been to annual library book sales you start to realize just how many books get thrown out. I can go buy a stack of books from the 1880s and 1890s on eBay right now for $25. $4 each. Most people don’t realize how worthless books are, even “rare” ones. I even imagine that the market price for these “rare” books is helping filter out anything truly valuable and rare. It just reads as a rage bait tmz article. The quantity of used books including “rare” books that get thrown into the dump is astronomical.
  - forestrywat 2mo ago
    I worked in a bookshop. I know all about this. I've seen pallets of books with covers torn off so they can be reported destroyed. Here's a bookseller describing some of the books, which he believes are going to middlemen who are playing a sort of arbitrage with the AI companies by buying obscure titles, reselling them, and tossing away anything that doesn't sell. https://charliebecker.substack.com/p/is-an-ai-company-buying-up-all-the https://charliebecker.substack.com/p/is-an-ai-company-buying...
    - rpdillon 2mo ago
      The titles mentioned there are not rage-inducing: "The Insider’s Guide to Metro Denver from 1995" and "How to Use Corel WordPerfect 1991". 404 writes and article about book destruction, and then explicitly neglects to mention a single title. I suspect that's because folks wouldn't react the same way if they realized it was computer manuals for Windows 3.1. Even more obviously, Amazon doesn't want to be paying a lot for these books, so it seems outlandish that they'd be buying valuable rarities, since the booksellers would know the worth of those copies. Good reporting on this would have included sales prices, volumes, and titles.
- kevin_thibedeau 2mo ago
  You don't know the books are being destroyed. There are automated scanners with page turners.
FLeXMurphy 2mo ago
> I always struggle with their articles because it feels like they built it for rage bait on a topic and leave the other interesting topics out of it. I was going to say a very similar thing, and this is something I strongly disagree with when it comes to HN's moderation, and it goes like this: The product is the outrage. And HN should know better and mods should actively discourage, warn and prevent accounts (who karma farm, among other things) from even being able to post rage-bait articles. These aren't "hacker curiosities", they're just insipid bullshit. We wasted time and learned nothing.
awakeasleep 2mo ago
I agree with you. And it sucks, because 404 writes about interesting topics! But they're so negatively polarized it often obscures what's actually interesting.

by infecto 2mo ago

forestrywat 2mo ago

Not really. It's not to my taste, but I've found their journalism to generally be lefty but focused on important events. Like Amazon consuming and presumably destroying rare books should be enraging to everyone, regardless of political persuasion. The difference is huge between 404 and Fox. Fox is out here trying to tell people there's a trans agenda, and that Biden was a lunatic leftist. They are just making up stories and publishing them because they know their audience engages. 404 definitely make editorial choices about which stories to pursue but I've largely found them to be grounded in real depictions of stuff that is happening.

infecto 2mo ago
Again, what rare books? Like they pointed to a book with low published volume or foreign language is “rare”. If you have ever been to annual library book sales you start to realize just how many books get thrown out. I can go buy a stack of books from the 1880s and 1890s on eBay right now for $25. $4 each. Most people don’t realize how worthless books are, even “rare” ones. I even imagine that the market price for these “rare” books is helping filter out anything truly valuable and rare. It just reads as a rage bait tmz article. The quantity of used books including “rare” books that get thrown into the dump is astronomical.
- forestrywat 2mo ago
  I worked in a bookshop. I know all about this. I've seen pallets of books with covers torn off so they can be reported destroyed. Here's a bookseller describing some of the books, which he believes are going to middlemen who are playing a sort of arbitrage with the AI companies by buying obscure titles, reselling them, and tossing away anything that doesn't sell. https://charliebecker.substack.com/p/is-an-ai-company-buying-up-all-the https://charliebecker.substack.com/p/is-an-ai-company-buying...
  - rpdillon 2mo ago
    The titles mentioned there are not rage-inducing: "The Insider’s Guide to Metro Denver from 1995" and "How to Use Corel WordPerfect 1991". 404 writes and article about book destruction, and then explicitly neglects to mention a single title. I suspect that's because folks wouldn't react the same way if they realized it was computer manuals for Windows 3.1. Even more obviously, Amazon doesn't want to be paying a lot for these books, so it seems outlandish that they'd be buying valuable rarities, since the booksellers would know the worth of those copies. Good reporting on this would have included sales prices, volumes, and titles.
kevin_thibedeau 2mo ago
You don't know the books are being destroyed. There are automated scanners with page turners.

FLeXMurphy 2mo ago

> I always struggle with their articles because it feels like they built it for rage bait on a topic and leave the other interesting topics out of it. I was going to say a very similar thing, and this is something I strongly disagree with when it comes to HN's moderation, and it goes like this: The product is the outrage. And HN should know better and mods should actively discourage, warn and prevent accounts (who karma farm, among other things) from even being able to post rage-bait articles. These aren't "hacker curiosities", they're just insipid bullshit. We wasted time and learned nothing.

awakeasleep 2mo ago

I agree with you. And it sucks, because 404 writes about interesting topics! But they're so negatively polarized it often obscures what's actually interesting.