I hope this isn't a criticism. Referral links are about the only reasonable way to monetize a blog, and are a whole lot less intrusive than advertising.

Fundamentally, I don't have any problem with it. If you're going to link to something anyway, as would be obvious with a book list like this, it's a no-brainer to use affiliate links, get a cut, and earn back some hosting fees. The price is what it is for the consumer, whether they get there through an affiliate link or not.

My problem is that he scrapes Hacker News data and then infringes the Hacker News name right there in the domain name to hock his wares.

Edit: It appears the mods updated the title to be a ShowHN. Thank you Mods.