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Comment by stiva | Hacker News Reader

This really is an interesting story, but I wish he'd taken it to a journalist instead of writing it himself. The narrative is choppy and has a lot of holes in it. I would have loved to see this done as a feature from someone with a lot of experience writing about technology. That might also have given some extra credibility and context to things.

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Ha. I was going to write a very similar comment. It's a really interesting situation, but the story as told is incomplete and lacking in really obvious parts, such throwing out "30 FBI agents kicking down the door" but not giving anything concrete. Was he there at the time? Was he even still living there? If so, it seems to go directly against his lawyer's "[you will] never hear from the FBI".

Agree. Would have been a great story on NewYorker or Wired like this one https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/

He might fear that too many details could result in renewed interest from the FBI. Sure, they have it all already... or do they?

Now it's out there, though. This can be the V1.0 of the story and although it won't be breaking news if written professionally, it can be a great investigative piece still!

Really? I actually like it this way. Journalist tries to make it intriguing and longer. But that doesn't change the events or make them more interesting. I guess I just like simple and straightforward.

Except for the fact that he was working on data sets of oil pressure and speed sensors, but somehow that was for silk road.... maybe I didn't follow it, but I don't understand what he was doing.

From the comments he didn't know either.

Sounds like he was told that's where the data was coming from, but his tool could have been used to visualize totally different data. I don't see anything in the design he posted that would limit it's usefulness to sensor data.

But this story wasn't simple or straight forward. If someone challenged me to draw up a simple timeline of events, I wouldn't be able to. I'm not even sure who he was directly reporting to while doing the work for Silk Road, or to whom he sent the final "I quit" email, or what he was doing for them at all.

It was exactly the opposite of simple and straightforward. I had to read it several times to ever understand what was happening and there is still giant pieces missing. One thing doesn't follow from the next and the whole thing is just confusing and disjointed.

Normally I wouldn't waste my time on such nonsense but it was an interesting story so I really wanted to understand it. It's a great story.

He also didn't mention that it wasn't the original Silk Road, which is pretty significant information.

I agree. This would be awesome if it was written up like the Paul le Roux story on The Atavist [0]. That was gripping. I'd be so excited to read the next piece each week. I want to hear the rest of this story.

[0] https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind

I thought you were just being petty until I tried to read it. There is so just much context switching without any clues at all to the reader, it is really jarring.

what gave you that impression?

I sent the following email (below) shortly before receiving the previous one (above).

I assume you mean about the credibility? We don't know those e-mails are real. A journalist handling the story would contact the relevant parties to confirm the account given.

naw they'd just cite an anonymous source and publish anyways

I assume they meant that it was seriously confusing to read an email without context, only to find the context in an earlier email after reading another full page of content.

I was just making a joke about it being choppy and hard to read.

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