Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: 73,530 free book summaries in 40 languages (with paid audio)

sobrief.com

41–47 of 47 posts

Re: Show HN: 73,530 free book summaries in 40 languages (with paid audio)

#41
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meaning you “generated” 73k “summaries” of which you are wholly unable to verify the content of because it would require you to have read the books and listened to/read the “summaries”. No, we generate summaries on the fly, too. Why would you generate all the summaries in advance when you can summarize real-time when a user clicks on it? > What is with sloppybros and thinking quantity is more desirable than quality…

> Why would you generate all the summaries in advance when you can summarize real-time when a user clicks on it? Well the most obvious reason is that the summary page would load faster. I clicked on a book summary and it took much longer to render than even a bloated web app usually takes. 73k summaries isn't that many. If your site gets any traction most of those summaries will be hit repeatedly and will have to gen…

Okay, that's fair. It isn't that many, but it's still 10x more than the industry leader, Blinkist, though. A good start.

As a small company, we currently need to sacrifice the first reader's experience for the sake of spreading out the costs over time. But every subsequent read is cached!

Re: Show HN: 73,530 free book summaries in 40 languages (with paid audio)

#44
post #43

oh man, LLM summaries usually blow, particularly the longer the text they are summarising. have you heard the HN generated podcast? still better to read the actually post and comments.

are you referring to this one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35831177

Re: Show HN: 73,530 free book summaries in 40 languages (with paid audio)

#45
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, AI. Meaning you “generated” 73k “summaries” of which you are wholly unable to verify the content of because it would require you to have read the books and listened to/read the “summaries”. What is with sloppybros and thinking quantity is more desirable than quality? What motivated you to “remove” this fact from your website? Legitimate criticism?

> Meaning you “generated” 73k “summaries” of which you are wholly unable to verify the content of because it would require you to have read the books and listened to/read the “summaries”. No, we generate summaries on the fly, too. Why would you generate all the summaries in advance when you can summarize real-time when a user clicks on it? > What is with sloppybros and thinking quantity is more desirable than quality…

> No, we generate summaries on the fly, too.

Yikes, so the summaries change with each viewing?

Information that changes each time you read it is by definition “unreliable”.

> Go ahead and read a summary of a book you've actually read and let me know what it's lacking.

Work for a sloppyjoe? And for free?!

Come on. I think you have clearly grown a little too accustom to exploiting other peoples’ work.

Hey, just have your AIs check them all. Right?

Re: Show HN: 73,530 free book summaries in 40 languages (with paid audio)

#46

This is why no one buys books. Books are too long, too broad, the interface of books is the same since 868 CE and 90% of the text is just filler. Kindle brought some innovation into this space, but it's UI and support tools are still ridiculously cro magnon like. The invisible hand that somehow forces authors to bloat their 3 paragraph gist into 200 pages kills the whole industry. I don't care if a book is only 15 pa…

I have mixed feelings. I generally agree—the industry tends to incentivize writers to fill a certain amount of space, much like college essays. However, there are quite a few books I've enjoyed in their entirety, discovering new insights when re-reading them.

Yeah, but I'm talking in a broad way, and would want the average people to read more books. Relevant books, something that clicks with them, but in order to do so, this current, outdated and sloggy format books have must go.

Re: Show HN: 73,530 free book summaries in 40 languages (with paid audio)

#47

I expected the books to be public domain, but no, it's just random (?) books from many different publishers. I hope you have a good legal team...

Did you read the title or site? It says they're summaries which are definitely fair use. Now whether they're interesting or not is another question.....

Definitely more useful than the teaser sections Amazon makes available for free.
Post reply on HN