In case you did not know: Packt is giving away free ebooks each day. The main downside is that you can not download them. You have to access them via their home page but on there, you can keep them forever access them on their page as long as it exist.
I don’t disagree. The topics are a bit hit or miss and yes, my newest free ebook from them is from 2020, so all contents should be taken with a grain of salt. I did manage to grab some on C++, Machine Learning and different Pentesting tools, so not everything is completely obscure but as you said, usually they do not choose their most recent books. I see it more as a nice free resource on some topics in the books as of course not everything will be entirely out of date. It’s also not necessarily worse than buying their 2023 books today and using them for the next 3 years… That’s just a general problem with tech books, at least these outdated books are free.