And so EC2 repents for another one of their design mistakes... finally fixing the problem that storage isn't persistent. Maybe we can look forward to EC2 one day becoming a standard Virtual Private Server environment!
I don't think it is useful to bring attention to that. Hacker News readers familiar with AWS will recognize the name. A certain amount of pseudo-anonymity may encourage people like him to post more on HN.
People have been doing this using the Linux kernel's root pivot functionality. While it might be a bit more copious as you've got to launch the instance, wait for it to come up, then attach the EBS, it's not that much more complicated.
