Comment by joshmn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joshmn | Hacker News Reader

Edit: I'm still considered in-custody due to being on house arrest, and I have decided to take this site offline to prevent any potential confusion with my probation officer. It was never meant to be made public—at least, on the front page of HN. It was originally for perspective employers and passed along with my resume, and sometimes cited in casual internet conversations.

Wow, so this is what it feels like. Holy shit.

Author here, really didn’t expect this kind of attention. I have been told my tone/writing style can be misinterpreted. It’s important for me to emphasize accountability and responsibility, even if I disagree with certain elements.

This informational site was passed along with my resume for transparency. I never expected it to be here, or seen any anyone. I’m a little shy.

I’m happy to answer questions the best I can while respecting the the courts, the BOP, and the DOJ. The technical or financial aspects of the site and the case I’ll pass on, though.

(PS if anyone at GitHub can help me recover my account—I had it hijacked from me by a “friend” while I was incarcerated—that would be great)

Btw I found your site because it is in your profile. I looked at your profile because of a comment you made earlier today which piqued my curiosity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45430992

I sincerely apologize if this is causing stress.

I am considered still in-custody so I have taken the site offline. I never, ever expected any kind of attention given to it. I don't want to provide mixed signals to any BOP of DOJ employee that may misinterpret the purpose of this website.

I am flattered by the reception here, though. Maybe in due time I can talk more about things and it can find its way back to the front page of my CMD+T muscle memory.

just to be aware, it's not offline. Try a full purge of cloudflare cache?

Thanks for the heads up. I think your DNS is cached. Should be "okay" in an hour.

Was a fun ride, though not for my blood pressure.

correct, yep. Tried elsewhere and it is dead. Godspeed.

Looks like the Wayback machine still has a copy of it that's available. You can submit a request to their team to have it removed as well: https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-request-to-remove-som...

That seems reasonable, stay safe out there. To potential staff here at HN, this post should probably be moderated off the front page.

@dang maybe it is best to delete or suppress my submission?

All it would take is some people flagging it. But the site is already offline, so I think that would be overkill?

Email mods at hn@ycombinator.com

"@dang is a no-op": <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42177590> <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>

You seem to have created something that was technically complex and therefore difficult, and have done it relatively cheaply. Is it worth repeating the effort / rebuilding "as a service" for legitimate businesses that need a 100Gbps CDN for streaming, file distribution, whatever else. Like low-key sports that don't get much distribution because the big networks aren't interested?

(There's a lot I don't know, I'm just impressed by what it appears you were able to build whilst working other jobs)

Are you legally prevented from pursuing such an endeavour?

Does your criminal record unspokenly make it likely not worthwhile pursuing a legitimate version of what you created?

He couldn’t be clearer that he doesn’t want to talk about it. “Can you talk more about how the website worked? No.”

It’s a terrible look if he’s teaching other people how to do the same thing that sent him to prison. There’s no upside for him and plenty of downside.

I wasn't intending to ask how it worked, rather whether it's able to be legitimised; whether the knowledge can be re-applied on the right side of the law. It would be a shame if it couldn't or if he was prevented from doing so given that it appeared to be competent / successful.

The economics just would not have worked, let alone being the one to break the contractual agreements between the leagues and cable companies: my customers were more concerned about availability (see: no blackouts) than they were about price.

In the US, if you are physically located in Los Angeles, you're unable to watch the Lakers (or Clippers) without a cable subscription: having the league-provided streaming package NBA League Pass is not enough. Getting around this limitation was the selling point.

I actually read this earlier because you commented on another post about Charlie Javice's sentencing. Based on that sentencing and others, it seems like the going imprisonment rate for "losses incurred by the powers that be" is around $2-3 million/month of prison.

By that metric, you received an unduly harsh sentence. Would you happen to have some insight as to why?

Also, I sincerely appreciate you sharing this, and the means by which you shared it. I honestly think that with your situation (unlike Charlie Javice, Theranos, etc), anyone who reads your candid disclosure would interpret it in a positive way.

There’s a lot of factors that go into a sentence calculation—in the fed it’s all on a grid called the sentencing guidelines. Loss amount is just one lever.

You should message the MN Ruby meetup, I think this would be an interesting talk and I heard they may be looking for upcoming speakers https://www.meetup.com/ruby-mn/

Are you local? Highly familiar with Neocities.

Does the MN Ruby meetup upload talks? Cannot attend but would love to watch.

Sorry it was so boring there. Did they have a library, and if so was there anything decent in it?

We did have a library! It wasn't all that bad, or so I heard. My partner sent me books on the regular that were more my taste. I found a lot of my fellow travelers were more interested in sci-fi and fiction than my taste for biology/neuroscience/behavioral sciences/food science.

Oh good I'm glad they had one that wasn't so bad. I'm not sure why but I've always been interested in prison libraries and making sure people have stimulating things to read when they're going through hard times.

And I'm glad you had a partner who sent you good things to read :)

" I'm not sure why but I've always been interested in prison libraries and making sure people have stimulating things to read when they're going through hard times."

If you want a book to make an impact on people .. prison is probably the place where many people start reading they would not otherwise. The right book can make all the difference..

The tone seems fine to me. It was a good read, also.

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