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Japanese used bookstores see 5x sales surge as books are being bought by the ton

96 points · 130 comments · speckx

patall · 1790265425 · focus · HN ↗
Can someone explain why the old books could really be relevant. I get the pre-nuclear steel analogy, but why is this relevant given how much more modern texts exist. A few years ago, millions of yahoo groups were erased but now a few thousand books are what is needed to run a successful AI company? I mean, it can barely be about the information in those books (that would be very often outdated), but just for a little more text (with ever less marginal gain), what is the benefit?
1. aprilthird2021 · 1790266419 · focus · HN ↗
  The information density is a lot less for millions of yahoo groups. They are far more likely to cover the same topics and not have new information in them.
  Books are more likely to be about a specific topic or story or time or setting and be more information dense

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