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Comment by drcode | Hacker News Reader

We'll hang out in this thread and answer any questions. (Also happy to answer questions on my other books, "Land of Lisp" or "Realm of Racket")

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Questions about ... what? That's simply a teaser with absolutely zero content. Are you going to answer questions about how you drew that crocodile? I must admit the drawings are lovely, though ;-)

It looks like the facebook external hit bot isn't picking up any images or description. You can add some meta tags to facilitate sharing:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11616697/how-to-use-og-me...

Thanks, this is one of the many little SEO things that we need to get more experienced with... That link you sent is very good and will be followed to the letter.

Looks like the site is having some trouble. In Firefox there's no text on the yellow bars (just two arrows and a drawing). In IE I get a blank page.

Hi, everything is looking fine for me in FF22 and IE11. This site does make heavy use of new HTML5 features... If you can let me know which versions of FF and IE you're using (and your OS) that would be helpful, Luc!

Vista, FF 25, IE 9, all up to date. I got the text on the yellow bar to display in FF by disabling Adblock Plus. IE hasn't got any relevant extensions running.

Are you long BTC at this moment? Do you think that makes your opinion of it unbiased?

Co-author writing here. Although we think Bitcoin has (probably) a bright future, the book is really just about explaining how it works (the protocol and the cryptography behind it).

Question to both authors - The Cicada 3301 group has been linked to BTC (suggestions that Satoshi is a pseudonym for the group), their most recent puzzle had a key code around The Book of Law by Crowley. Just coincidence that your character is also named this, or by design?

Cicada 3301 is fascinating. Taken at face value (and that's a huge assumption to make) it appears to be a self-styled "cypherpunk freemasonry" of sorts. Care to cite or summarize the evidence and case for a satoshi/cicada link (other than "hey wouldn't that be so awesome if...")?

Yes, I own bitcoins right now (no idea about my co-author.) We are not journalists, just technical book writers. Of course we are probably biased, in the same way that someone writing a stock market book invests in the stock market, or someone that writes about vegetarianism is probably a vegetarian.

When I write newspaper opinion pieces on bitcoin (only one so far) I make sure it says in there that I own bitcoins.

I definitely agree though that bitcoin raises new questions about conflict of interest when writing about technology.

Are people who instead hold USD, EUR, or CNY unbiased when writing about those currencies or BTC?

I would agree authors should disclose their participation, but I think disinterest/divestment on such matters is an unrealistic goal. Any stake or non-stake implies some personal preferences, and some personal stake is practically a prerequisite for motivating enough attention to understand and explain.

(Or as VC John Doerr has said: "No conflict, no interest".)

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