It's ~16.5k books that at least two different HN commenters brought up, from 2007 till now. Each book links back to the comments that mentioned it. Data is downloadable from the about page.
To be clear: Claude wrote almost all of it, including the data pipeline and the site. I mostly steered and made calls, bought the domain name, etc.
It counts mentions, so it's not perfect (praising a book and trashing it both count). If your favourite book is missing or matched to the wrong thing, tell me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invention_of_Morel mentioned here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28779266 I'd have expected it to come up as one step removed from Borges, and it did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why%27s_(poignant)_Guide_to_Ru... mentioned many times, eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36632010 - a surprising omission, tho I guess it's not in print.
Also... "Each book links back to the comments that mentioned it."
> Please don't put generated text in HN posts.
Claude speak gives me a gag reflex these days.
And fair on the post, I had claude draft it and only edited it a couple of times. Should have just written it myself.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2249390
I planned to revive it later, but life got in the way
The book recommendation aggregation website is so common because it’s one of the few variations of this theme that can be monetized through affiliate links.
None of them last long because the traffic falls to zero basically as soon as it falls off the front page.
But why do we anchor naming to someone who made something popular? Why do we upvote similar names too? For example, openclaw became popular then there were similar projects with the "claw" naming.
It's just a very fascinating psychological thing to do, and I don't understand why. Because if you copy part of a name, generally you'll never get more popular than the original name. So why do this?
I’m not sure where you get your evidence for “never get more popular than the original”. I’m sure you just haven’t heard of the originals that faded away.
If you were referring to why Karpathy's name was invoked in the post, piggyback effect I guess?
I will add some personal recommendations to maybe get picked up by the algorithm:
Science fiction:
- Parable of the Sower and Kindred, both by Octavia Butler
- The Lathe of Heaven and The Word for World Is Forest, both by Ursula K Le Guin (also The Left Hand of Darkness, which I did see on there)
Non-science fiction:
- Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (essays)
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Edit: Changed it to "mentioned by"
"Most recommended" can stay as it is
and then a new "Top all-time" should be a weighted sum of recommendations plus mentions with recommendations getting a higher weight (obviously) … l33t c0d1ng sk1llz for deducting negative mentions (as in "awful book", "do not recommend" etc)!
Why would we want to forget such an example?
Sometimes, I crave the directory like appearances of lycos/altavista/yahoo...
With finite reference points, directories work well. I would love to see this as a text version too.
1. youtube 2. books 3. podcasts 4. blogs 5. articles 6. etc...
Heavily curated like this is one direction. Micro consumables (ala tiktok) supporting more impressions is another.
Thx.
With AI, in rust, invest before it's too late, etc...
Also, clicking the link "On "...."" it doesn't bring to the exact comment, only that thread or topic, so you need to search for it. It could bring directly to that comment.
If there is a design that LLMs do that you don't like, tell it that. You're allowed to be picky.
# Author
# Date published (like enter a from-date and/or to-date)
# License
# Free download available y/n
# Sample chapter available
# Format: softcover / hardcover / ebook / audiobook etc
# No. of pages
# Language(s)
# Can you watch the movie? (if so: IMDB/Wiki link)
I've mentioned it a couple times.
Maybe language filters for non-English titles? Or if a book is in public domain already then links to the sources could be presented?
https://hackerbooks.org/#/book/OL999456W
> HIS DESIRE WAS FIERCER THAN A ROCKY MOUNTAIN STORM... HERS WAS RECKLESS AND DANGEROUSLY WILD
There are some others, just one example.
Point being though is that every library system is different.
Feedback: I don’t understand how the rising category works. I looked up a couple of books and they seemed to have peaked a while ago.
Very cool though and love seeing all of the covers in various forms of condition.
But there's no way Vanity Fair by Thackeray so high on "top all-time" list. It turns out that a lot of comments are about Vanity Fair magazine.
- The Matrix (1999) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/
- Hackers (1995) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/
- Sneakers (1992) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0105435
- Jurassic Park (1993) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/
- The Terminator (1984) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0088247
- WarGames (1983) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/
There you go, that’s the entire list :)
- Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177
I wonder if it is because simulation can often allow you to get around needing P&S techniques in general? Or maybe it is that (Neural Network) ML models allow you to often approximate the things you might do with P&S in terms of making decisions?
No real point, I just think it is interesting.
There is a separate topic "Data & Statistics" that has quite some relevant titles.
Also, I think the interest in probability theory has only recently grown with the advent of generative AI. I'm expecting more interest in the future.
Edit: also, the site seems to miss some nice gems, most likely because they are not traditionally published books: "Probabilistic Artificial Intelligence" is freely available on Arxiv, and was discussed on Hacker News in March 2025 [1].
* Probability and Statistics for Engineers and Scientists, that showed me how to calculate various percentages and p values and what does statistical testing really means * How to Lie with Statistics, that showed me how easily you can manipulate the numbers to get what you want out of them
Another neat one, albeit niche, is Directional Statistics. Turns out, doing stats on angles and directions is less trivial than it sounds!
Glad someone has created a new one.
Now, all we need is diff-book-order(1), a command which takes as input your personal "library.bib" file and it orders all books mentioned on the parent's site that are not already part of the personal library.
Built it - https://hackerbooks.org/#/trends
SCNR
Even though I like HackerTube as well as HackerBooks. However, for HackerBooks, I am missing the summary of why people on HN recommend it.
Awesome Idea and I would love to see what else community tinkers with things like these :-D
Hackernews is really a gold-mine in many ways.
Edit: I will try to read thinking fast and slow because of HN recommendations. I have heard some good things about the book but I will try to read it in future given HN's immense recommendations, so your website has already had a negative net positive for me :-D
It really truly is... I've learned so many new things, and discovered so many nifty softwares, books, and websites that I never would have found on my own, all thanks to HackerNews. Y'all folks here surely do have some really great tastes in "nerdy" stuff sometimes. ;)
Correct move on handling the financial aspect yourself. I asked my mine to do everything but forgot to give it some dough. It sorted it all out but ended up with $6.3B on its account and I think it might have done something dodgy.
It’s what all the other companies are doing!
If you owe the bank $10Mil, that's the banks problem.
If you steal $10Bil from the bank, the government bails out the bank and now it's everyone's problem.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49308787 - keeps the default look while just removing AI-related submissions
I still have blind hope that tags feature with the obligation to include them in each submission will be added, but that would cut... "activity" some of the most prominent accounts.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34129571
"Yes, we have a dress code. You have to dress." – Scott McNealy
On the other hand, down the road at SGI there was a practice called "Skinnyhacking"!
https://rdtk.net/internet/how-do-you-check-a-computer-s-comp...
>Snowsinger. November 21, 2020 at 07:48.
>A truly excellent review of the history of Silicon Graphics. I worked in the Australian Sales office as their 1st engineer in the Asia Pacific region. Was trained in MtView the 1st week the MtView campus opened. The 1st system I worked on was the IRIS 1000 and subsequently all the products from then on till I left in mid-2009 when the Australian Engineering division was shut. A great company with great people who just wanted to engineer the best Graphics experience on the planet until we lost focus and vision of what we did well. Brings to Mind the Skinny Hackers, the Rocktain event, PCP monitoring, CXFS (Clustered File Systems), Failsafe, Diskless boot, Voxel vision, and so many other engineering wins. A great company, great people, & the drive to make a better computing world. Thank you for the memories and documenting the history of a company that did make some huge breakthroughs in Computer Graphics & Computing architecture. Just go ask NVIDIA, Cray and now HP!! Also a shout out to Jim Clark & his team for the vision and determination to bring the Graphics Engine to world, the heart of the IRIS workstation and subsequent graphics systems.
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.sgi.misc/c/X50cCoYrU20/...
>Tom Davis, Mar 22, 1993, 6:06:21 PM, comp.sys.sgi.misc
>In article <gom...@zola.esd.sgi.com>, ol...@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson) writes:
|> In <112...@bu.edu> j...@bu-pub.bu.edu (Jason Heirtzler) writes:
|> | Okay, I gotta know. Whom does the phrase "The Skinny Hackers" refer to?
|> A small group of (fairly skinny ;) ) folks who are also great hackers/developers and mostly long time SGI employees. Among other fruits of their group hackerdom was the original showcase.
>Being skinny didn't have anything to do with it. Although Showcase was the best known product of the skinnyhackers, the first product was an image of them made from a photo of all three sitting naked at computer terminals, busily hacking. On top of the photo was the international "no" symbol (red circle with a line across it), and underneath, the words "No Skinnyhacking".
>Note: Skinnyhacking is a dangerous activity, and should only be performed by professionals. Do NOT attempt it at home.
>If you're interested, you can see the image in the most recent (1992) SIGGRAPH proceedings, in distored form on the back cover, and in non-distored form on page 252.
>I can't imagine that anyone would want a copy of this image, but I have one in SGI format. (Actually, the secret goal is to have this image overtake the mandrill in popularity.)
|> I won't speak further to protect their secret identities ;)
>I will! It was me! Tom Davis! The bald guy in the front! Oh, and the other two are Rocky Rhodes and Scott Carr. Ann Sydeman joined the group a short time later, but unfortunately missed the initial photo session (although there was a subsequent video ...). Paul Haeberli was the photographer.
[Fortunately I found a pdf of the paper with the image:]
"Fast Shadows and Lighting Effects Using Texture Mapping", by Mark Segal, Carl Korobkin, Rolf van Widenfelt, Jim Foran, Paul Haeberli, Silicon Graphics Computer Systems. Computer Graphics, 26,2, July 1992, Page 252, Figure 3: Simulating a Slide Projector:
NSFSIGGRAPH:
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
This is actually BETTER than HackerTube, which doesn't expose something like this on the front-end AFAICT. Maybe the reason you didn't look for a .csv on HackerBooks is because you checked HackerTube first and developed a little bit of learned helplessness while I checked HackerBooks and its comments first before checking HackerTube