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Comment by awinder | Hacker News Reader

I had a whole thing written up, but in the interest of brevity, maybe covering my ass a little, but balancing some public interest for people who read these articles:

1. Cassandra Capital is "somehow" getting to the top on HN quite frequently (this is not true of other communities I participate in)

2. Pretty much everything in this comment chain lines up with my experience https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/cz3w52/pension_f...

3. I'm no longer clicking through on Cassandra Capital articles and maybe some people here who care about how what they read influences financial decisions should also do some background research

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Hi, I’m Joshua Konstantinos the author of this post.

I’m sorry if you don’t like the quality of my article. But I felt I should respond to the insinuation that I’m doing something underhanded to “somehow” get to the top of hacker news.

I did absolutely nothing to get to the top other than submit the post this morning.

I have been working on my book as a passion project for two years. It is very unlikely that I will ever recoup the money I spent writing it, printing copies, researching etc.

Now that I’ve finished my book I’ve been posting articles on economics and geopolitics because it’s a topic I enjoy. I don’t have ads on my site, and honestly I probably lose money on hosting costs. I have had some success on hacker news and Reddit which has been a pleasant surprise - but Cassandra Capital is just me writing about what I enjoy writing about.

I will say that people get hell-banned for seemingly self-promoting on HN. Might be good to mix up your submissions with other articles you find interesting, so it doesn't appear as though you are only posting your own writings.

I have submitted a few news article that I've found interesting (from Bloomberg etc) that have also done well on here lately. But you're right. I will make an effort to mix up my submissions! Thanks!

Just a warning as, speaking from experience, it happened unbeknownst to me. Congrats on the book btw!

Er I don't know the right etiquette as far as original post, but I shouldn't have quoted/included "somehow", that's entirely fair. I think you've had great success to my eyeballs for placement on HN, but did not need to insinuate that it wasn't on the up-and-up.

No hard feelings! No one has been more surprised than me by the response I’ve gotten - I can see why you might be suspicious. I will make an effort to post from other sources more frequently moving forward.

How do I preorder or buy your book? I very much enjoy your writing by the way. Please write more if you continue to enjoy it!

I’m so pleased to hear that you liked it! My book is on amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1793927758/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_...

Congrats on the release and I'm curious to know how such release process works.

e.g. I'd buy it in audiobook form, my wife and I enjoy this topic. Have you considered it, and if so, what's involved?

Given that HN doesn't have any secret vote buying mechanism I'm aware of, I suspect this is since the Cassandra Capital articles are pretty technical, and HN tends to like brief, technical write-ups.

So, less secret cabal, and more just writing to an audience. Remember, any given subreddit is just a community and not representative of the internet or reality at large.

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