I enjoy the meandering style but it did become a little long because of the meandering, glad I skipped ahead instead of just closing tho

> I had to bail out halfway through

Telling us you didn't read the article is exactly the kind of unsubstantive comment we don't want on HN. The comments thread is for people who did read the article and have something to say about the content.

This kind of comment breaks the guidelines particularly these ones:

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously...

Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer....

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.

Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

Please take a moment to remind yourself of the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think it was all written for the thing it was trying to be. Which is a casual humorous take on the journey this person went through with a little tech education sprinkled in. Any more formal or sophisticated and it would've lost some of the casual humor and been less an interesting journey. But did so in a way much less aggravating than what qualifies for a food recipe these days.

It's a shame he apparently no longer blogs. His posts are gold.

Online systems sometimes use it as an indicator to prove your identity. When combined with other sensitive data it can be useful for an identity thief.

Edit: The blog post also mentions this:

https://mango.pdf.zone/finding-former-australian-prime-minis...