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No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

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Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#71

Post by camdenreslink »

tjr wrote: post #53
riffic wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

loaded questions.

Maybe a bit depressing, but I'm not sure loaded. I was just talking to someone (in person!) a few days ago, who purported that online courses were basically dead, because people can learn from LLMs instead. And then, it seems to be a real issue amongst some people to ask, "why should I learn X, when LLMs already know it?" Not unlike, "why should I learn to divide, when we have calculators?" but on a grander scale.

My hypothesis is people will get burned out on this unguided learning via LLMs and still want some sort of curated/guided learning experience through material to understand some subject.

There is the problem of "I don't know what I don't know" that a course can solve for you. An LLM can sort of do that, but you have to take its word for it, and it does it pretty much strictly worse at the moment (but is much more flexible).

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#72

Post by dceddia »

j45 wrote: post #67
roadside_picnic wrote: post #62

> Unfortunately, I cannot read technical books fast and definitely not fast enough to make the subscription be worth $500 per year. For me I find the $500 to be a pretty clear win as far as value goes. My shelves are already overflowing with, while not "timeless", much slower aging technical books. But quite often, throughout a year, I'll want a deeper dive into a current topic than I can get from online resources +…

Books still activate a different part of the brain than reading on a screen, including e-ink, so it's not you or a dying breed, people may turn out to not learn as deeply or as quickly.

I had kinda suspected this just based on my own experience of paper vs screen, but hadn’t run across any research.

After seeing your comment I went looking! I found this interesting: https://phys.org/news/2024-02-screens-paper-effective-absorb...

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#73

Post by tech-ninja »

theli0nheart wrote: post #31
AlexB138 wrote: post #7

I just checked, and I've had an O'Reilly account since March of 2014 without major interruption, back when it was called Safari. It is by far the best source for high quality tech content out there. There is so much filler content in tech blogs, that I'm happy to pay to get access to high quality. I must be on some grandfathered plan though, as I'm not paying near $500/year. That is a very steep price.

What are you paying?

I also pay $200/year, well worth the cost for me.

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#74

Post by tech-ninja »

zargon wrote: post #47

I'm grandfathered in at $200/year from the Safari days. The main advantage of the subscription to me is being able to evaluate several books on a topic to pick the one that is the best fit for what I need. If I knew which books were best in category, it would be cheaper for me to just buy those specific books (or video courses, for things like Blender). But if I had to pay the current $500 price, I wouldn't be a subs…

Agreed, I'm also on a $200/year plan and for me too the fact that I can skim multiple books on a single topic before settling on one is well worth the money.

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#75

Post by kulahan »

cauliflower99 wrote: post #13

Anytime I'm asked for feedback via the O'Reilly website (I manage the business account for my company), the first thing I always say is that the app is unusable. I've tried it on my Amazon Fire Tablet, Ipad, different phones - it doesn't work. The user metrics in O'reilly (and probably most learning apps) has floored in the last 12 months. I see they've launched a new AI platform now. They're definitely going in a di…

I haven't used any O'Reilly products, but if your library offers any, you can probably access the product via libby, which works on a phone/tablet? Just a guess. Libby also supports sending the data to kindles, at least.

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#76

Post by clumsysmurf »

cauliflower99 wrote: post #13

Anytime I'm asked for feedback via the O'Reilly website (I manage the business account for my company), the first thing I always say is that the app is unusable. I've tried it on my Amazon Fire Tablet, Ipad, different phones - it doesn't work. The user metrics in O'reilly (and probably most learning apps) has floored in the last 12 months. I see they've launched a new AI platform now. They're definitely going in a di…

I agree wholeheartedly. The app is unusable and unstable. I had to delete collections from the web because they were getting corrupted in the app.

One thing I notice is that it simply does not render many code snippets well, especially when using the "page" (vs "continuous" scrolling). I don't get the impression they are doing QA on rendering quality. Not only external publishers, but O'Reilly books themselves! I also had a lot of problems reading Manning books in their app.

Rendering e-books properly is a pretty big table-stake thing.

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#77

Post by giantrobot »

daveoc64 wrote: post #58
giantrobot wrote: post #52

The moment O'Reilly went subscription-only they lost me as a customer. I have a huge library of O'Reilly books I've purchased as PDFs. Shit I've got a huge library of print O'Reilly books despite years of slimming down. It really sucked because I've been learning from O'Reilly books for thirty years. But I've become fundamentally opposed to DRM on media and subscription-only access is the ultimate DRM. I don't have a…

They do still sell all of their books - just not directly on their website. Whenever possible, they're sold without DRM.

Which is fine but they ruined their direct DRM-free sales. You used to get access to a PDF, epub, and mobi version of a book with no DRM. They even conveniently allowed you to sync your purchases to Dropbox. It was awesome.

Now you have to hope something g you're interested in ends up in a Humble Bundle or something. The situation is worse in every way for a end users.

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#78

Post by keithnz »

tjr wrote: post #26
whenc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It went un-noticed here, I think, but The Pragmatic Bookshelf recently fired most of its staff and are taking on no new books. In the email they sent to authors, they quoted a 40% YoY fall in non-fiction sales, industry-wide.

Is this because people seek knowledge from LLMs rather than from books now? Or is it because LLMs know everything that is in books, so people don't feel compelled to learn any more themselves?

even before LLMs you could/can get a lot of info on the web. Most ideas presented in books exist on the internet somewhere, quite a few pass through HN. In the 90s and early 2ks I used to hoard books, but now, not so much, I get a few through my library these days but a lot of times I just find the book is padded out to be a book and the meaty bit of the book is usually tiny.

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#79

Post by dboreham »

AlexB138 wrote: post #7

I just checked, and I've had an O'Reilly account since March of 2014 without major interruption, back when it was called Safari. It is by far the best source for high quality tech content out there. There is so much filler content in tech blogs, that I'm happy to pay to get access to high quality. I must be on some grandfathered plan though, as I'm not paying near $500/year. That is a very steep price.

Same. Mine is grandfathered in price from long ago. I couldn't work without it, although LLMs are becoming a good substitute for some subjects. The mobile app is a roach motel though.

Re: No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

#80

Post by dboreham »

j45 wrote: post #67
roadside_picnic wrote: post #62

> Unfortunately, I cannot read technical books fast and definitely not fast enough to make the subscription be worth $500 per year. For me I find the $500 to be a pretty clear win as far as value goes. My shelves are already overflowing with, while not "timeless", much slower aging technical books. But quite often, throughout a year, I'll want a deeper dive into a current topic than I can get from online resources +…

Books still activate a different part of the brain than reading on a screen, including e-ink, so it's not you or a dying breed, people may turn out to not learn as deeply or as quickly.

Probably true but I'm not going to lug 10 textbooks onto a plane.
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