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.
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?
> 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.
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?
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
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.
What you're suppose to do here is recommend great books on the list.