Ah, here are a few HN mentions of the same plan, although (still!) not the recent one I was thinking of:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2830122 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223706

Again, it doesn't help that each story's title manages to avoid the terms "immigration, ship, hack, anchor, foreigner, visa", and, as mentioned before, HN doesn't encourage summaries. puts on flamesuit