Fashionable Problems - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/fp.html <comment><USER3> I think pg understates the problem. It isn't just fashionable. Think about how the solutions we use today evolved.

Someone had an idea originally and certain decisions were made about that approach.. those that best adapted to the conditions of the time were successful... rinse and repeat over several decades.

Those ideas that preserved the past were more likely to succeed because they preserved the ecosystem that already existed. Ideas that diverged too much from the existing successful tech had a huge obstacle in their way: they had to recreate all of the existing solutions in their new model. So even if they would lead to a better solution over time, they may never get past that initial roadblock. And the longer we stay on the path, the bigger that roadblock becomes.

If we are all thinking of ideas around the existing model and assuming all of the existing assumptions, then we end up with similar solutions (fashionable solutions). We've reduced the solution space, leading to a limited number of solutions.

Perhaps groundbreaking/valuable tech can be found by questioning those existing assumptions; identifying where tech is still built on assumptions that are no longer true; or reexamining past solutions to see if they can be solved in better ways today with what we've learned since then...

<comment><USER4> This is called "first principles thinking" and is one of the most reliable methods for producing novel insights into a problem space. It is uncommon in practice because it has a high cost both economically, because you are re- deriving everything you think you know from scratch instead of "standing on the shoulders of giants", and socially, because you are deviating from orthodoxy promoted by high-status individuals.

This kind of relentless indifference to conformity is a rare quality in people.

<comment><USER5> There's also the cost that you are likely to just spin your wheels retreading old ground. Examples to the contrary are notable, but notable _because they are rare_.

<comment><USER4> I made this assumption for many years, and yes, that cost would be high. I eventually discovered that, more often than not, everyone assumed that someone must have already investigated a particular hypothesis but if you tried to identify that "someone" it turned out that they didn't actually exist. After doing this exhaustive search a few times in a few different domains and coming up empty handed, it changed my perspective on the matter, to my great benefit.

Searching for evidence that someone has actually done the work is relatively efficient. It never fails to astonish me the number of times that _everyone_ believes a particular bit of ground has been thoroughly tread yet, if I try to find concrete evidence that someone has done the work, there is no evidence that anyone actually has. There is a strong cognitive bias (I don't know if it has a name) where everyone assumes that someone else has already tried every obvious or reasonable approach and that belief is treated as factual.

<comment><USER6> >if I try to find concrete evidence that someone has done the work, there is no evidence that anyone actually has

Unfortunately, the fact that negative results tend to get little if any publicity works against you here. And it's probably worse outside, not inside of academia. How often would a project team in some big company, or a couple of guys in a garage try out some promising alternative approach to something, fail to realize an advantage over the conventional approach, and then go out of their way to publicize that failure? That would be extra work for no - <USER2> even negative - gain.

It might just be meant to be humorous, but even "If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence you even tried" sounds more likely than "If at first you don't succeed, put some extra effort into telling everyone".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This post sorely lacks evidence for its big first claim:

> I've seen a similar pattern in many different fields: even though lots of > people have worked hard in the field, only a small fraction of the space of > possibilities has been explored, because they've all worked on similar > things.

Anyone want to step in with some examples? Without them, the thrust of the essay seems to be: "If only other people understood what problems are worth working on! Especially in the well-studied areas of essays, Lisp, and venture funding! Too bad they do not. Well, goodbye."

<comment><USER8> I am wondering how far the essay would go if it were not from PG.

<comment><USER9> This is basically my biggest critique of PG and various other YC leaders. Many of the conclusions, while likely be probably being more "right" than "wrong" in virtue, are derived from intuition and observations, not evidence based. It's even more ironic, given how much emphasis the firm places on evidence based thinking of its portfolio founders versus anecdotally thinking.

Great example:

 _" One quality that's a really bad indication is a CEO with a strong foreign accent"_[0]

The danger is that I think pg has been "right" about so many things that every time he pontificates about something it's treated as dogma. So when he's "wrong", it'll be ignored. Impressionable people (which likely fits the characteristic of many young tech entrepreneurs) will therefore be lead astray.

[0] - [https://www.forbes.com/sites/knowledgewharton/2013/12/19/292...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/knowledgewharton/2013/12/19/292013/#539787e916a6)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems like a lot of weirdly defensive people in this thread.

But the essay doesnt really seem that revolutionary more common sense. If you want to make an impact, dont work in an oversaturated field. The low hanging fruit is probably already picked and other people will probably get there before you do. But you also dont want to work in a field nobody cares about as noone will care. Working on a problem with proven demand, but seems "boring" and hasn't changed much recently is a good bet, as there is probably new insights you can apply and new contexts that have appeared since last time there was a frenzy for that field.

<comment><USER11> The advice to not work in an oversaturated field, if you want to make an impact, looks to me a bit like the reverse of looking for one's keys under the lamp post, because that is where the light is. We should give some credence to the proposition that saturation is the wisdom of the crowd at work, figuring out where a breakthrough is likely, and it is usually only with hindsight that over-saturation is apparent.

<comment><USER10> I somewhat suspect by the time something is "popular" it is, almost by definition, oversaturated. Its sort of like weird investment strategies (e.g. always buy stocks on mondays, or whatever I dont actually know anything about stocks). Sure some of them may work originally, but unless i am extremely well connected, by the time i hear about it, everyone else knows too and the market has corrected for it.

Perhaps another metaphor is a gold rush. Even if there really is gold in those hills, if everyone knows there is, its probably already too late to go out and buy a shovel.

That said, i agree that there is plenty of survivorship and hindsight bias when it comes to any advice on how to be succesful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just listened to a podcast with a VC who applied this pattern to nuclear power. The big problem, which almost nobody was investing to solve, was nuclear waste. He went out, attended a number of nuclear power events, and found some people who thought they had a productive attack. They did, and after he threw some money at them, ended up with a 40 or so X return.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2019-08-16/josh- wolfe-d...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2019-08-16/josh-wolfe- discusses-innovative-investments-podcast)

</comment><comment><USER13> > Even the smartest, most imaginative people are surprisingly conservative > when deciding what to work on. People who would never dream of being > fashionable in any other way get sucked into working on fashionable > problems.

This makes no sense. The concepts of "conservative" and "fashionable" are almost polar opposites. Becoming a musician or an actor is fashionable and the dream of many. But it won't bring any money to most people who choose that career. It's no conservative choice. Instead, it's conservative to go into STEM, law or finance. But those fields are "boring". The pattern repeats inside a field as well. It's conservative to be a cobol coder or a DOS expert, and you'll certainly make money. But it's not fashionable. How come you aren't building a cryptocurrency using self driving car that has a drone port on the roof! It results in the woke fields being overrun with very smart and capable people and capital, while tons of fields that use slightly outdated stuff are ripe for harvest but nobody is around to do it.

<comment><USER14> I think here by conservative he means doing what everybody else is doing. Risk averse. Following the mainstream. Going into COBOL May have been a conservative choice 40 years ago, but not anymore. The conservative choice is to go with the herd.

<comment><USER13> > The conservative choice is to go with the herd.

That's not conservative. Being conservative means that you only follow a change if it makes sense. If you adopt some new technology, you should do it because it convinces you that it's better, not because it's new, wasn't available before, everyone else is doing it, or any other such reason. If you are conservative, you don't neccessarily end up doing what the majority is doing, as most times, the majority is following some empty hype.

That's because his use of that word is wrong: everything said in that article contradicts that statement.

<comment><USER15> I think your definition of conservative is correct, but it assumes the thing you're trying to conserve is something like energy spent on new/different approaches. I think pg's definition of conservative in this case assumes the thing being conserved is something like prestige or credibility.

As an aside, in my experience it's a fairly common usage to describe any behavior that avoids risk along some dimension, which could very well mean going with the herd, if you're trying to conserve social status.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this the first PG essay that was composed on Twitter?

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1183686114844069888](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1183686114844069888)

<comment><USER17> Many articles now are cleanly formatted tweetstorms.

<comment><USER16> Many PG articles? Which ones?

<comment><USER17> Just a general observation. Wasn't specifically answering your question about PG's writing.

<comment><USER18> Lol what do you mean a "general observation"? You stated plainly that "Many articles now are cleanly formatted tweetstorms". Which ones?

<comment><USER19> Curious questions are great, but please don't cross examine. That's in the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _If you want to try working on unfashionable problems, one of the best places to look is fields that people think have already been fully explored: essays, Lisp, venture funding – you may notice a pattern here._

Do people really think the fields of essays, LISP or venture funding are fully explored?

<comment><USER21> I think so? They're all expanding, of course... but none have really changed that much over the past few decades. There's a ton more VCs than there were a decade ago, but has it really changed as a field? People tweak the formula a bit, but we haven't seen a shift in the same way YC shifted things. To a lesser extent, pg was one of the first "tech essayists" (now it's a genre, [http://waitwho.is](http://waitwho.is)).

I don't think pg is saying they're being ignored, but rather that there's a sense of "yup we figured it out, let's just iterate slowly on it".

(I will say I can think of much better examples, but I don't blame pg for picking the three examples that sum up his entire career. He picked those three things when nobody else cared.)

<comment><USER22> Cryptocurrency ICOs showed venture funding could be innovated on way more fundamentally than "tweaking a formula". The simple ICO model may arguably have been largely misused, but it kickstarted a lot of promising research and experimentation[1].

[1]: e.g. [https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/10/24/gitcoin.html](https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/10/24/gitcoin.html), [https://www.zfnd.org/blog/dev-fund-guidance-and- timeline](https://www.zfnd.org/blog/dev-fund-guidance-and-timeline)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > If you can find a new approach into a big but apparently played out field, > the value of whatever you discover will be multiplied by its enormous > surface area.

If you found something in a big, fashionable field with a huge surface area (cough ai/ml cough), wouldn't this multiplier apply to that fashionable field, too?

<comment><USER24> Fashionable _problem_. Played out _field_.

So, essentially, yes - fashionable fields will be well explored; the essay is about not getting sucked into fashionable _problems_ in whatever field you're working in.

<comment><USER25> So in the case of AI/ML, the fashionable new thing is unsupervised learning, self-supervised learning, reinforcement learning, GANS, etc. The played out problems are image classification, speech recognition, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Humanity as a whole as problem solving algorithm might be similar to particle swarm in very complex neighbourhoods and topologies.

Particles (individual humans or small groups) move around in problem space as particles with position and velocity. Each individual's movement is influenced by its best known position locally but also the the best known global positions in the search-space. When better positions are found by others, individual change their course (take hints) and move towards them.

The problems would be the same. Too much randomness and it's just a random search. Too much convergence leads to local optimums.

</comment><comment><USER27> This advice is just so... airy. Like most of his advice. "Build something people love" Got it, now what? What do I build, exactly? Like the incredible Onion talk on startup: "Step 1: come with up an idea. Step 2: Build it. We're at step 2 - we're half way there"

</comment><comment><USER28> I think there are still a few major breakthroughs left in our understanding and use of electricity.

</comment><comment><USER29> I love this mini-essay.

The counter to this is that it'll be harder to raise capital for un- fashionable problems.

If you pitched "ML for sandwich makers" right now you could raise a million bucks because so many VCs are making fashionable bets on ML.

<comment><USER30> So what? Raising is not success.

<comment><USER31> It's pretty successful as failures go.

<comment><USER30> I guess, if you define "success" as "managing to borrow money"...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Fashionable problems are the ones for which you'll have the easiest time recruiting employees, raising funding and generating press coverage, even taking into account that their fashionability leads others to pursue them.

</comment><comment><USER33> Well that's the whole paradox of Fashion isn't it? You want to follow fashion but be almost at the top of it. If you are too much next year's style nobody thinks you fashionable but just crazy. But if you follow last year's trend you are also unfashionable.

The paradox is that nobody really knows what will be the next fashion and similarly nobody knows what's the next worthwhile problem-area to work with.

There's a good reason why fashionable problem-areas are well-researched it is because the results so far have been useful and promising.

</comment><comment><USER34> My worry in solving an existing problem in a novel way is that the incumbents can catch up faster than you can scale.

If I were to take on Netflix/Disney/Twitch with some new kind of video entertainment product, they'd have deep pockets to fund a competing offering.

The lever of equity might work to attract better talent, but only if you succeed. There's a lot of risk.

Scaling rapidly also means giving up control as you seek capital. It'd be hard to organically grow and go unnoticed.

<comment><USER35> My experience working for the 800lb gorilla incumbent was that we didn't take competition seriously at all. Even stuff competitors did that would be trivial for us to replicate got put in the "not a priority" bucket. The few cases where we were forced to match a feature you were looking at a lead time measured in years, tending to infinity if it threatened the influence of a powerful department. And this is the reactive stuff. Forget actual innovation, other than a few toy projects that never escaped the lab!

However, this was justified: even the most promising-looking competitors tripped over their own bad assumptions long before becoming a threat. We saw plenty of novel ideas but they'd always be sunk by a failure to understand the basics of how our market worked - things like trying to put a complicated app with a thousand options at a point in the journey everyone is trying to simplify and time-optimise, etc.

If someone who knew the market well had gone at it seriously and solved hard problems rather than apply the usual hand-waving "tech! blockchain! magic!", by the time we'd noticed it would have been too late to respond. You'd hope more recent incumbents like Netflix or Twitch might be a bit more responsive, but corporate inertia can build up surprisingly quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Well, I have a hard time thinking of a field that I believe is fully explored. History has shown time and again that it's really easy to be fooled in that respect.

</comment><comment><USER37> Agree. It is also a good reason for having multidisciplinary interests so we might have different ideas for looking for very different solutions to problems.

</comment><comment><USER38> In this thread a guy talks about using the Q language and then someone else jumps in and says 'it's not scalable etc.'

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21854793](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21854793)

What if all this cloud/k8s / serverless stuff is really all piffle? What if running stuff on dedicated hardware ends up a better solution in some fashion?

<comment><USER39> It may be fashionable and overused, but I don't think we can talk about the cloud as if it was still something new and unknown. By now I think one can already do an informed decision on which to use for a particular problem.

<comment><USER40> > an informed decision on which to use for a particular problem

I doubt that really is the case. I think most decisions are made based either on anecdotes, or whatever someone happens to have experience with.

It's rare that you can accurately predict the kind of workloads you'll have to deal with ahead of time, and it's even rarer that the people making the decision have experience with multiple completely different stacks.

And I don't really think it matters that much. Some people solve the problem with distributed document stores and key value stores, other people use a big transactional database and just keep putting extra RAM sticks in their server... I don't think there's always an obviously "better" choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Let's write "The Online Packaging System To Ruminate About Them All" (TOPSTRATA).

Are we not eternally one packaging system short of Nirvana?

</comment><comment><USER42> Is this a repost? I feel like Paul has already written this essay.

Edit: Oh, it was originally a tweet: [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1183687634763309056?s=20](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1183687634763309056?s=20)

</comment><comment><USER43> I'd suggest focusing on people and the problems they have rather than industry, your space, the news and your colleagues. That way you'll serve real needs rather than getting a ton of street cred as you dissapear down an academic rabbit hole.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Fashionable solutions" are a related phenomenon to fashionable problems. Solving a problem the same way as everyone else (and often expecting a better result).

Both are widespread.

<comment><USER44> "Fashionable Solutions" are major problems. An actor with lack of experience solves a challenge (a challenge coming from of a million+ times solved problem) not with a proven solution, but with a fashionable one (one that currently has some mindshare and good PR). the research most of the time is looking at alternatives that try to solve the similar thing in the same fashionable way. therefore no real research was done.

an example: a fashionable solution for a static webpage is a fashionable static site builder, a unfashionable solution is an HTML page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> People are different, but I cannot imagine how someone could seriously work on (as in: devote their whole working time to, by their own choice, as an entrepreneur, researcher or hobbyist rather than an employee or student) problems they don't genuinely love. Sure, some do it for the money, but then they probably just love money and found a promising opportunity to earn it.

</comment><comment><USER46> It's not just people's desires and people following what is 'fashionable'. I read a while back that in Physics it was impossible to get funding for anything outside of what was fashionable, String Theory was their example.

</comment><comment><USER47> Funny, we've just launched EssayMash.com yesterday trying to accomplish what PG writes about: further exploration into essays. We host monthly essay competitions on an important topic with $300+ in cash prizes.

</comment><comment><USER48> What I understand from PG words is that people, even the creative ones, by lack of courage or macro vision are not a 'Elon Musk' and go with the herd building yet another crypto or yet another SAAS.

</comment><comment><USER49> Nice to see the recent burst of writing activity from PG. Also nice to see people here putting it through the paces. Would expect nothing less.

</comment><comment><USER50> yeah but i am afraid pg is not relatable anymore (to most of us anyway).

devoting more than 20 percent of your time to problems that are unfashionable but dear to you is ill-advised because: a. they don't pay the bill b. they take time and in the grand scheme of things spending time with others on things you all understand is better than being happy alone.

but of course there are exceptions...

<comment><USER51> b) not true for everyone. the way different people want to live their lives is, well, different.

his essays don't necessarily have to be relatable, they just have to be useful. he isn't a life coach (though I suppose that is arguable). his expertise is in tech and startups, that's where he's proven himself, and that's the area where his advice carries weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Paul is confusing ignorance for insight here. It's the same phenomenon whereby a weekend visit to Paris has your uncle explaining the European soul but your year in Kyoto leaves you barely able to generalize at all from your (actual) knowledge of nuance, complexity and diversity of another culture.

Everyone is trying to break the mold at various scopes.

Meanwhile, you're welcome to reproduce your late-90s success at any moment, Paul. We'll wait.

<comment><USER53> Does YC not count?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Sounds grand. There are a lot of us who just want to pay the rent. If that means a React job, so be it.

</comment><comment><USER55> The heuristic of trying to work on what you genuinely love is not helpful or practical for most people. It sounds good, but it is just a platitude. Genuine love and fake love feel and look pretty similar. Most people naturally start loving the life they live in, if it is generally positive. Then, they make up a self-affirming, coherent narrative that justifies their emotions, decisions, and interests. If you do an AI startup, life goes well for you, and you embrace that decision and life, how can you differentiate whether it was really a genuine interest or not?

<comment><USER37> Cal Newport makes the good point that people learn to like/love things after they get very good at it, whatever "it" is.

I love Joseph Campbell but his advice to his students to "follow their bliss" may not always be optimal.

I read the AI book "Mind Inside Matter" in the late 1970s, and even though I have done a ton of non-AI architecture and software development, I have also been able to work on AI problems like knowledge representation, expert system, NLP, neural networks, and deep learning starting in 1982. I definitely followed my bliss, but I have never been world class in my profession, but I have enjoyed myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I think it goes much deeper than people choosing to work on fashionable problems. Here are my thoughts

1\. The more defined and mature the problem space is, the more the assumptions that underpin that field are taken as a given.

2\. These assumptions may become so deeply ingrained that people become effectively blind to the entire range of possibilities.

3\. These assumptions frame how the problem/solution space is looked at. Therefore the solution space is constrained by the set of assumptions (about what the problem is , how to solve it, what to do)

4\. These assumptions are recursive, in that they are contained within other assumptions. It is turtles all the way down. At some level, someone working in the space may not even understand what the core assumptions are. We have to have these assumptions though. See the next point.

5\. The interesting thing about this is: The constraining of the problem/solution space is actually a _positive_. It enables co-ordination and incremental improvements and refinement. It allows people new to the domain to quickly get productive.

I like to think about it this way:

Picture yourself in a massive area that is pitch black. You are grasping around and can not see much. Someone figures out how to get a tiny fire started. With this tiny fire you get to see a little bit. Using this you can build a bigger fire illuminating more of the area (but still leaving the entire space unexplored). This eventual results in the ability to build a permanent light illuminating a specific corner of this space.

This specific space with light illuminating it becomes highly productive, people can do all sort of things. Like read etc. Yet, there are still areas left unexplored. The light cannot simply be taken across. It takes work, and it takes turning your back towards the current "lit" up space, and taking a step back into the dark. A scary thought for some.

5\. Importantly: These assumptions have been inherited from the past. So they existed and were relevant at a specific point in time. They may or may not be relevant as of today. We would have to peel several layers to get to the core.

6\. While 4 is a positive, it is also a negative. The idea/areas greatest strength (maturity, constant improvements, efficiencies) is also its greatest weakness (constraining the search space)

To take a step into the dark, is to turn your back to the lit up parts. You have to question the underlying assumptions and see if they are still relevant. If you discover an assumption about the world that is no longer accurate, then you found a new space to illuminate.

To put it in another way, to explore the dark is to shift your perspective on the problem/solution. It is to see with "new eyes". Initially it may be dark, but slowly with diligent work, and passion you could light up a completely new and novel area.

</comment><comment><USER57> Area man write blog post saying things are great and just so happens to overlap exactly with what he does

</comment><comment><USER58> > Even the smartest, most imaginative people are surprisingly conservative > when deciding what to work on. People who would never dream of being > fashionable in any other way get sucked into working on fashionable > problems.

How can a statement like that be made? Is there some kind of authoritative directory of 'the smartest, most imaginative people' being 'surprisingly conservative when deciding what to work on'.

Implied I guess Paul means 'who I've met or who I know of'. So then say that.

It's a big world out there. Who knows what anyone is working on or what they are thinking or have tried and why they haven't pursued it.

This is a bit like saying 'people love their dogs and will do anything for them if they are sick'. Just a general statement of opinion by one person (and generally accepted as being correct) but based on not anything even close to being scientific and/or backed up by any actual data. That part is fine. But if that is the case state it as such and not some absolute. Why does this matter? Because when someone like Paul writes something it will be taken by others to be some kind of important thought or fact.

<comment><USER59> Most of his essays have that wise old man who has seen the world kind of vibe to them. If anybody else writes the same things without the success he has had it will be ridiculous to read.

I don't think anybody who reads his essays is looking for any scientific report based on facts. They are looking for some sort of confirmation that they are not crazy when they have similar thoughts.

<comment><USER58> It's in some ways the writing equivalent of the NPR calm and measured voice the intended impact to make it more believable and important and entirely rational sounding and correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Silicon Valley's biggest problem is that is tends to see problems as opportunities and opportunities as problems. There is no opportunity in that problem.

</comment><comment><USER61> As a long-time pg supporter, it pains me to say this: I think at this point pg could write anything and it would show up immediately with critical acclaim.

It was more charming when he had to work hard to make his points known.

But hey, fame, right? Just famous people things.

There's so much more to say in this case, though! _How_ do you avoid the traps? Waving a wand like "Just love something" leaves far too much to the imagination. Pointing at a prior essay at loving your work is helpful, but different.

Often, you have to actively offend people in order to find good problems to work on. The idea that people have devoted their lives to the wrong thing is inherently offensive to them. That's a point not covered here.

For example, I imagine that a lot of people who've studied 3D rendering for their entire lives are about to feel very outdated the moment neural network renderers displace them. And that's also a good counterexample to the point that "Often, the best place to search for new ideas is a place thought fully explored." It might often be true, but it's not always true.

And then there are the in-betweens. Bitcoin was in a field both thought fully explored (crypto + finance) and also unexplored, in a certain sense.

<comment><USER62> Had the same thought.

Some of his essays, no one else could have written them and brought a fresh, nuanced perspective.

These couple paragraphs wouldn't get any attention if not for the name of the writer. Maybe that's fine—great writers have their share of banality—but does reveal how susceptible we are generally to brand name over substance.

<comment><USER58> I am actually surprised that PG doesn't feel uncomfortable about the 'acclaim' that he is getting for writing many of the things he has said that are not related to anything he has expertise in. Reminds me of celebrities who opine about politics with their thoughts (sometimes not always with PG).

Paul is authoritative on many topics. General thoughts about life and people are great to hear what he thinks. Why not? But he is no more special than 100000 other people who have no audience. Does he know this?

I've often thought he should do some A/B posting with his thoughts. Write something and then randomly decide whether to put it on his blog or some other place and see what the interest level is.

<comment><USER19> They're essays. The word means 'attempt' and the genre has always been about non-expertise. Montaigne was the ultimate non-expert.

<comment><USER63> > The word means 'attempt'

It can, but doesn't in this context. 'Essay' was a sort-of polyseme (like 'passion', which can still mean 'suffering') that has long since severed ties with its origin. Outside certain narrow academic discussions, the etymology and current use of 'essay' have effectively nothing to do with one another.

In any case though pg does pretend to some amount of expertise. "How to Do Philosophy" is an example.

<comment><USER19> Of course it does; it has kept a close association with this meaning throughout literary history. An essay is an attempt, a sketch, thinking out loud. It's the literary genre equivalent of informal conversation. In an essay, you discover what you think by writing it, just as in exploratory programming you discover what your program is by programming it. To say that essays aren't for non-authoritative musing is like saying novels aren't for depicting human experience.

<comment><USER62> I strongly disagree with this.

The greatest essayists are not putting a "sketch" into the world. I cannot imagine reading an Isaiah Berlin essay and saying, "this is just informal conversation."

Consider Didion, Foster Wallace, Sontag, Mailer, Orwell, Hitchens, Paine, Zadie Smith, the founding fathers of the United States via the Federalist Papers.

There is no lack in seriousness, no lack in rigor, and no lack direct purpose backed by thoughtful consideration and ample evidence.

There are _also_ informal or unserious or musing essays, but please do not lump together the entire genre of essays with a description of Medium posts.

<comment><USER19> I think we got some signals crossed. I wasn't talking about being unserious—just that you don't have to be an expert to write a fine essay.

I haven't read all the authors you list, but the ones I have support the point. They were not specialists writing about topics they were authorities on. They were good writers and thinkers exploring the topics they were writing about.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How do I pivot from content consumption to creation? - <AUTHOR> I feel that I spend too much time on consuming content, rather than on creating things.
To some extent I feel like that this state is influenced by the current world we live in. For example, Youtube videos always suggest the next great video that you should watch.
Do you have any tips on how a person can pivot themselves from content consumption towards creation?
I should also mention that this topic is also applicable to my computer programming studies. I feel like I am always studying some book, rather than actually creating programs. This might have something to do with why I never feel quite fluent in my coding.
I'd appreciate any tips from anyone who has made the transition successfully. What did you change in your life? How did the changes impact you? <comment><USER2> 1st you learn, then you copy and lastly, you create.

What you do is decide what you want to learn and learn while copying something that you find good. If you can't decide then you pick at random. Do that over and over until you feel comfortable with what you are doing. Once you are comfortable you slowly start to be creative. After many years of creating with an eye towards mastering. You will master. You'll need someone to critic you. There is no shortcut. You have to follow the process.

</comment><comment><USER3> Creation happens naturally when you care about something very much, and try to optimize.

I was raised on my mother's delicious cooking, and have traveled extensively to Asia. One particular dish I fell in love with was Japanese curry.

The restaurants serving Japanese curry around me closed, so I decided one day to learn it. I've made it a few times since then!

Creation happens naturally - so I'd suggest instead to find out what you enjoy. If you enjoy something enough, you will create it when it is missing.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's not a pivot, that's learning and practicing completely different skills. Anyone can read or watch a video. Writing something interesting, or making a video, require different talents and skills. Passive vs. active. Spend more time actively creating and less time flipping through YouTube.</comment>


Ask YC: Large Hosted Backup Solutions? - <AUTHOR>

With hard drives becoming ever cheaper, it looks more and more attractive to host backups in the clouds or at least off-site. The problem is I can't find a solution for my own needs:
* 200 gigs of data across 10 computers.
* Would prefer simple shell/cli access (scp/rsync/etc.)
Here are the major suggestions from browsing old discussions and why they don't work for me:
Amazon S3 - Would cost too much at $.15 per gig.
Mozy - No cli, costs too much at 5.95 per computer. Would also rather blur distinctions between computers.
Dreamhost - Pursuing those breaking TOS.
A solution such as Dreamhost would be perfect for me, but I can't find a shared host that allows using their services for backups/persistent storage. And Slicehost doesn't support expanding hard drive space (although I'm sure it would cost too much if they did.)
Am I stuck with my brick at home I currently use to do backups? <comment><USER2> _Amazon S3 - Would cost too much at $.15 per gig._

You're really not likely to do much better than this if you care about making sure that you don't lose data. Go around to hosting companies and price out servers with 1TB drives, and keep in mind that you need some sort of RAID to avoid losing data when a drive dies... you might get down to $0.10/GB/month, but I doubt you can get below that.

In the long run, any company which is selling you storage for less than what it costs them is either going to go bankrupt or throw up TOS roadblocks (like dreamhost). There really is no free lunch.

<comment><USER3> i agree with this. if the OP thinks S3 is too expensive, you probably need a reality check. or you could continue to host your own stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm less worried about reliability and more worried about having easy access to my stuff when on the road. With 10 computers, I inevitably have copies of my important data distributed everywhere -- it would just be nice to have a cheap canonical source I can pull from occasionally.

I'd also be okay with paying a large upfront cost (say $500) to buy hard drives and then paying small monthly fees for bandwidth/electricity/support. It doesn't seem to be too hard to make a profit doing something like this.

The last solution I can see is to make upfront and ongoing fees cheap but make me pay through the nose for downloads. I'd be willing to pay $50 per gig to download if it were free to upload/store. (I have really low usage requirements asides from storage.)

So I feel an entrepreneurial company would be able to make a profit in this realm (correct me if I'm mistaken) -- I'm just not sure where one is.

<comment><USER3> the cloud is easy to access from anywhere, as long as you have internet connectivity.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Draft – A distraction free gist viewer - <AUTHOR> https://draft.gq <comment><USER2> Very nice UI.

Here are more similar services

[https://gist.io](https://gist.io) [https://roughdraft.io](https://roughdraft.io) [https://bl.ocks.org/-/about](https://bl.ocks.org/-/about)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish there was more of this, for other kinds of data. Or, better, a very easy way to fiddle with views for other kinds of structured, predictable data.

<comment><USER3> Not that I have an immediate use-case.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have one either. Draft is just a technical demo to show that code snippets can be beautiful.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Make Money from Your Software Blog Without Hosting Ads - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@yourboybigal/how-to-make-money-from-your-software-blog-without-hosting-ads-3f4f46d5cdc2 <comment><USER2> I didn't' see anything in the article about having your own website. Yes, there is Medium, but does it make sense for a person to have their own website and then also post to medium?

<comment><AUTHOR> > but does it make sense for a person to have their own website and then also > post to medium?

This is something I have thought about for a while, and I think my words in the article sum up why it's a good idea.

> The group of people who want to read your blog content isn't the same exact > group that uses Medium.

To achieve max coverage, having it in free places and paid places is fine.</comment></comment>


Patent Exhaustion and Open Source - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/780078/2d222693108e12e7/ <comment><USER2> Hi, I'm the author of this talk. A couple quick notes:

First, the source materials I relied on are available at <[https://github.com/google/opencasebook/blob/master/patents.m...](https://github.com/google/opencasebook/blob/master/patents.md>). If you are interested, please read them.

Second, about Bowman v. Monsanto. The logic of Bowman is a pretty serious challenge to what I presented above. It might invalidate certain parts of my argument. Specifically, the question is whether it is even theoretically possible to exhaust the exclusive right to "make" a patented item.

I haven't yet been able to go back and do further research. But what I would be looking for is a case where someone sold an item - like a software application - with a license that says, "make as many copies as you want for internal use." If the buyer then transferred the software, would the new buyer get the right to make copies? I'm not sure. But if so, that would be evidence that a sale could exhaust the right to make.

Third, I thought this was a fun rabbit hole - and, as I said in my talk, a "surprising" result. The surprising bit is important. It is entirely possible - and even likely - that a court could agree with all the precedents I cited, and "distinguish" them to come to a contrary, non-surprising result.

In short, I think exhaustion is more important than people may be considering, but don't take this analysis to the bank.

<comment><USER3> Your link is broken due to the brackets you put around it.

Unbroken: [https://github.com/google/opencasebook/blob/master/patents.m...](https://github.com/google/opencasebook/blob/master/patents.md)

<comment><USER4> (Which, I may add, is very disappointing since <> was _expressly designed_ as delimiters to safely contain a link in emails and other plain-text formats, and has always been well-supported as such by other systems.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had the opportunity to hear Van give a talk of his at OSCON last year. His talks are very interesting (he is a former sofware developer, now a patent attorney) and if anyone sees him on a conference schedule, I really encourage them to go have a listen.

</comment><comment><USER6> The talk seems to conflate distribution of source code and software licensing. Sometimes code is published for inspection but a license must still be purchased. It would be helpful if the discussion isolated rights that are passed on by possession of the source code vs possession of license rights.

<comment><USER7> Code published for inspection needs a specialized license where it disallows any sublicensing or redistribution to close patent exhaustion. Albeit the interesting part is that it could be contrived as a business relationship still in some cases, causing patent exhaustion for the specific bodies allowed to inspect it. That would be for the court to decide though.

Allowing redistribution or sublicense right pretty clearly invokes software patent exhaustion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand the Microsoft/Github bit.

Is pushing your repo to github "distribution" that exhausts a patent? And what has Microsoft to do wit it?

<comment><USER9> I think the idea is that any code you distribute as a company falls under that patent exhaustion clause. Microsoft distributes the code that someone uploaded to GitHub to all users of GitHub. Thus they all get patent licenses for any patents involving that code. That's at least the idea. Whether courts will go with it, I doubt, because it would mean that any company that allows people to upload anything, including comment sections, is under the risk that their patents get exhausted.

<comment><USER7> Not exactly get licenses, but the licensing requirement is voided for code distributed in such a way.

That is, suppose Startup Inc. published code related to software patent on GitHub owned by GitHub Inc., to which it has granted license. This means anyone who downloads the code from there, no matter the license, has no licensing requirement (not the same as grant or getting a license).

If the code is published under a license that does not specifically exclude a patent grant, it is also patent exhausted. (Of course, if the license prohibits redistribution, GitHub cannot host it for the public.)

<comment><USER8> This would only apply to MS patents used by _github_ right?

That is, if MS had a patent on, say, making a bird whistle, just uploading a program to GitHub wouldn't give you a license to it. While if MS had a patent on, say, putting line numbers when displaying source code, anybody who uploaded a program to GH that did so would be able to use the technique in the patent?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would this almost certainly apply to all users (commercial and non-commercial) of AES-OCB in OpenSSL, seeing as OpenSSL already has a license from Phillip Rogaway?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCB_mode#Patents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCB_mode#Patents)</comment>


A sysadmin talks OpenSSH tips and tricks - <AUTHOR> http://www.tenshu.net/2012/02/sysadmin-talks-openssh-tips-and-tricks.html

<comment><USER2> Author does not understand SSH Agent forwarding.

Author gives directions such as "don't use X!!" without explaining why, or what. That is terrible. Please inform people, instead of making empty statements.

SSH Agent forwarding let the remote host query your local agent. The agent responds to challenges. The private key is NEVER transmitted.

So no, its absolutely NOT equivalent to storing your private key on the remote server - did you think OpenSSH were that dumb?

The risk with SSH agent forwarding, is that _as long as your session is running with agent forwarding on_ the remote host can query challenges and use them to authenticate anywhere you're allowed to authenticated to, granted that your ssh-agent keys are currently unlocked.

So indeed, using SSH agent forwarding every where is bad practice. But it doesn't mean you can't use it. You just need to know it's limitations.

When not used, you can use ssh -oProxyCommand='ssh -W jumphost targethost 22' targethost and/or put it in the ssh config, which is actually more convenient in most common cases.

It's also tiring to see so called ssh tricks every next day, asif everyone didnt see yesterday's one. And with incorrect statements, its worse.

<comment><AUTHOR> I always go in hard on agent forwarding because I don't think most people understand the limitations. If you look at my wording I said:

"as if they had your private keys, because functionally speaking, they do"

The remote hosts may not have the actual private key data, but they can operate as if they do. I will expand that section a little, but not at the expense of warning people off the feature.

Thanks for the reminder about -W though, I meant to add that to the jump host section with a note that it's only available since OpenSSH 5.4.

I apologise for tiring you, best of luck with your recovery :)</comment></comment>


Twitter Steps Down From the Free Speech Party - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/twitter-steps-down-free-speech-party <comment><USER2> It's funny how a lot of people (especially those of the anti-capitalist / left'ish wing ilk) cite cyberpunk literature in which corporations achieve a level of power approaching - or exceeding - that of Nation States... and decry that hypothetical scenario as a horrible and undesirable thing.

But in this case, what we see is a situation where we'd _like_ to see Twitter stand up to various world governments... perhaps even the US government. But we all know that, in the end, there's a limit to how much they can contest the will of the government because the governments are the ones with "men with guns".

Maybe companies / corporations with enough power to _actually_ challenge the governments of the world isn't such a bad thing after all. Or, perhaps it would be better to say "maybe corporations with enough power to challenge the governments of the world" is, at least, _not_ a universally _bad_ thing.

<comment><USER3> > Maybe companies / corporations with enough power to actually challenge the > governments of the world isn't such a bad thing after all.

Corporations are entities who owe their existence to government and can be terminated at a whim by government. If the government chartering a corporation decides it shouldn't continue to exist, it doesn't exist anymore.

This gets obscured a lot by the fact that the same class of people that derive the most benefit from the existence of corporations also have disproportionate power over government, so that this power is very rarely exercised, but that's not because corporations are powerful enough to resist government or even theoretically _could_ be, its because corporations and governments ultimately are run by the same people.

<comment><USER2> _Corporations are entities who owe their existence to government and can be terminated at a whim by government._

Yeah that's the way it works today and in Real Life. Clearly the cyberpunk scenario is a hypothetical, but it might not be as far-fetched as it seems.

Whether it's a Good Idea or not is, obviously a big question.

<comment><USER3> If corporations were independent of sovereign governments, they would _be_ sovereign governments, not challengers to them.

<comment><USER2> Maybe, but not necessarily the _same kind_ of sovereign government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Which is one of the reasons major communication systems should be distributed and standards based like email, rather than proprietary and run by a single company.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that in the short term, it is trivial for a well funded private company to offer a better product in the eyes of the end user (eg. GMail when it came out over every other open source mail system).

The only solution to that problem that I can think of is to better educate the end user, and to make them see that even though company X's shiny product seems better right now, in the long term there is everything to lose by using their communication systems. That's a hard fight though.

<comment><USER6> In other words, we need to train end users how to accept poor user experiences for their own good?

<comment><USER7> Not poor, just less shiny, and even that mostly at first. That is, _if_ everybody used the stuff regardless of it being less shiny, a lot more development would flow into it, and it might even end up just as shiny. It's a bit of a chicken/egg thing.

<comment><USER6> Many idealist developers brush off well designed and feature rich artifacts as shiny because they simply just don't get it and never will. So having users use a "less shiny" but more "ideal" artifact isn't going to magically make it better; the developer is still oblivious.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, but I don't, and I don't see how that follows from what I said either. I was actually more thinking of things like old Opera vs. the current minimalistic trend in browsers - "shiny" to me has nothing to do with features, and in the worst case features even get sacrificed for shinyness. If two things have the same functionality, the more "shiny" one wins, obviously. But that wasn't what I was talking about at all; I have nothing against beauty, but form should follow function, and function should be king.

<comment><USER6> Unless you can define "the shiny" as anything more than a self-constructed pejorative, your argument lacks substance. What is the shininess? Why is it worthless? Why are users still attracted to it even though its worthless?

Believe it or not, people are actually kind of rational, and pick product A over B for some real reason. Usually B, if feature equivalent or even feature advanced of A, has a hideous UX (command line, really?) and/or visual design (e.g. ugly fake chrome). It might also not be up to date on what is in fashion, but we don't buy unfashionable cars either unless we are going for something retro (part of our culture); consider that "the shiny" at your own peril.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Last week, Maxim Ksenov, deputy head of Roskomnadzor, took to Russian > newspaper Izvestia to complain about an unnamed Twitter account that > "published monstrous things" and called for the overthrow of the political > regime and the destruction of capitalism. Ksenov threatened to block Twitter > entirely unless they "listen to us and periodically remove illegal content."

Wait, so calling for the destruction of Capitalism is illegal now in Russia?

That might be news to the quarter of the Duma who are Communists: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_the_Russian...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_the_Russian_Federation)

<comment><USER9> There is a saying: Умом Россию не понять (You cannot understand Russia with your mind).

<comment><USER10> That reminds me of an argentinean comic's line: American: "Can you explain argentinean politics to me?" Pinti: "Noo, no chance. You have it, you endure it, but you can't explain it."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it better to censor an open forum than delete it entirely? This is a hard answer for a fan of free speech. I reserve respect for those willing to open a dialogue in an adverse environment. I respect Twitter, at least, for being open for business and allowing people to post. At least some people view it versus none. However, one must consider that when a government is allowed to censor, or "manipulate," the content that is being seen by its own people, and possibly the world – then we have essentially created a forum for propaganda that may not represent how the people of that society actually view the world. Consider what we know of media in North Korea – are all North Koreans really in full love and support of Kim Jung Un? Think about how such a platform could have been used to support the Nazi agenda in World War II. Personally, I feel that when an autonomous corporation that was designed to allow for the free passage of ideas and experiences comes under the control of an oppressive government or dictatorship, that corporation is lending itself to corruption.

</comment><comment><USER12> > _There can be no doubt that the Russian government is putting tremendous > pressure on Twitter as part of its effort to crack down on free expression > on the Internet._

The case for free speech is important, but it's dissapointing to see foreign powers with huge resources sponsor whole campaigns and try to influence public opinion, policy and election outcomes in third countries, trying to get friendly lackeys in power.

In tons of countries where there are large external "strategic interests" wanting to rip them off, there are paid (or indirectly sponsored through other means) "activists" and "vocal minority leaders" that are used as propaganda personel for foreign powers.

So it's not enough that speech should be free -- it should also be independent.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Experts in the country question whether these requests have any legal > authority

As much as it sucks that Twitter is forced to do this, the government of neither Russia or Pakistan has a legal system which I would trust to fully respect the rule of law in this matter--either is likely to simply block the service if the requests are not acknowledged.

As principled as Google's stand was in refusing to pull an offensive video, it probably did more to stifle the free flow of information than had they pulled the "offensive" video on request. At least that way people would have an idea of which specific videos the government didn't want them to see, rather than the entire site being blocked out.

<comment><USER14> No, really, no. Russian users will notice that Twitter is being blocked by the government a lot more than they'll notice that a few tweets have been blocked. Twitter has the position, and responsibility, to play hardball with these governments. A few days of lost revenue from a Russian block is nothing compared to the lost revenue from an entire nation under tyranny.

Only in China do you have a population so brainwashed that they think these things are being done for their benefit. Russians have an active dissent. Feed it; It will bear fruit.

<comment><USER15> I'm from China and I just don't know how to refute your last line. Google has been blocked for about half a month now, but average people would not feel a thing about it.

That's just sad.

<comment><USER16> I think that is because China has such a home grown ecosystem for google/twitter etc. alternatives

Russia? Not so much I think.

<comment><USER17> Yandex is the 4th largest search engine in the world and #1 in Russia. I'm pretty sure they have a large local social network as well but the name has slipped my mind.

<comment><USER18> VKontakte?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The same money-grabbing Ferengi as the rest of the U.S. No surprise there. Any of us would sell the Constitution to the lowest bidder, just to get rid of it. Never let anyone's "rights" stand in the way of profit!

</comment><comment><USER20> Weird to title this as steps down. It kind of implies they actively said something to the eff rather than passively changed their behaviour.</comment>


Remember When Microsoft Almost Bought Yahoo For $50 Billion? - <AUTHOR> http://massivegreatness.com/turning-purple-into-red

<comment><USER2> Perhaps once bought by Microsoft it wouldn't have gone so bad.

<comment><USER3> > Now, it's of course possible that Yahoo would have done well under > Microsoft. It's also possible that unicorns are real. There's essentially > nothing to suggest that Microsoft/Yahoo would have worked. Meanwhile, > there's plenty to suggest that the opposite would have happened — namely, > what happened with aQuantive post-acquistion. And the fortunes of Yahoo > since the rejection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I bet MS is regretting not pushing it right now. That meant they could have possibly ended up with Mayer instead of Balmer as the CEO.

</comment><comment><USER5> That deal included some of the most foolish business decisions made in a long time and interestingly enough both sides made the entirely wrong decision. Microsoft was stupid for bidding, Yahoo was stupid for rejecting.

</comment><comment><USER6> Remember that msft sold Avenue A/Razorfish [1] to Publicis for $530mm, plus IIRC something on the order of a billion dollars of guaranteed purchases of msft display inventory ([2] mentions but doesn't know the amount), though I could be way off on that. So msft probably got $1B back from the $6B purchase, so I don't understand how they can write down more than $5B. Anyway, it means the aQuantive purchase was 16% less shitty than everyone reports =P

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_A/Razorfish>

[2] [http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/microsoft-s...](http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/microsoft- sells-razorfish-digital-agency-to-the-publicis-groupe/)</comment>


4 Things Some VCs Do That I Don't Like - <AUTHOR> http://bhorowitz.com/2010/04/13/four-things-some-vcs-do-that-i-dont-like/

<comment><USER2> > The valor to tell an entrepreneur precisely why you are not going to invest > in her company rather than giving the traditional "VC no" by just going > dark.

When I was raising an angel round for my last company, one well-known angel promised us an answer 24 hours after we met with him. He gave us a "no" the next day. But I respected him tons because his quick decision made him stand out markedly from everybody else we talked to, most of whom gave us the "VC No" by requesting lots of meetings and / or going dark.

<comment><USER3> saying NO is really hard, and takes a lot of strength. it's one of the big reasons i am really getting away from investing right now.

<comment><USER4> Joshua, if I may ask: would you mind elaborating a bit? Is it the fear of letting someone down, concern you may be making a mistake in passing, something else? All of the above? Thank you.

<comment><USER3> It's just hard to reject people. I'm an engineer type. I like looking at problems and solving them; the harder the better. The difficulty is often that the entrepreneur is the problem. Giving a real reason is tough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "They confuse pattern matching with knowledge."

Seems we have the same problem on HN...

</comment><comment><USER6> > They confuse pattern matching with knowledge

> Rather than saying, "Most companies who sell at this stage, regret doing so, > and here's why," they'll say, "Don't sell now, that's a stupid idea."

i know why. if they start to explain, the founder will start seek for the reasons why his situation is different. if he really founds, the vc will either fail to explain, either they start an infinite conversation.

that means - pick smart vcs for this not to happen! :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting article. Makes me wonder what people's overall experiences have been with VCs. We're on the verge of taking that step and I've only heard horror stories so far. Any positive stories out there?

<comment><USER3> I loved mine so much I took money from them again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's good to know about this things that VC's do. Especially this last thing about they toughness that sometimes is pointless if potential entrepreneur does not have benefit after they say NO.

</comment><comment><USER9> Good job on making the accurate, non-sensational title HN'ers ask for. I'm sure Ben could have got more attention with, "4 Hateful Things VC's do," but he didn't.</comment>


Why I fled libertarianism — and became a liberal - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2013/12/28/why_i_fled_libertarianism_and_became_a_liberal/

<comment><USER2> _Their saving grace is a complete lack of organizational ability, which is why they are always trying to take over the Republican Party, rather than create a party of their own._

Wow. Total author fail.

[http://www.lp.org](http://www.lp.org)

This guy is fully clueless.

<comment><USER3> Maybe he meant a viable party.</comment></comment>


NSA exploit that powered WannaCry used much more these days - <AUTHOR> https://www.itwire.com/security/82752-nsa-exploit-that-powered-wannacry-used-much-more-these-days.html <comment><USER2> "Let's backdoor all the things, because we can trust the government to never get breached and reveal all the backdoors."

"If you're not doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to fear..."

:sigh:</comment>


Vimroom - <AUTHOR> http://projects.mikewest.org/vimroom/

<comment><USER2> I wrote an xmonad layout manager that will make any application work like this:

[https://github.com/jrockway/dotfiles/blob/master/xmonad/lib/...](https://github.com/jrockway/dotfiles/blob/master/xmonad/lib/AlmostFull.hs)

It looks something like:

<http://jrock.us/almostfull.png>

<comment><USER3> Awesome! I'll be using this. Have you submitted it for contrib?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could you please upload it to vim.org for posterity? <http://www.vim.org/scripts/index.php>

This'll get mirrored to the vimscripts github account and then let us install it via the Vundle vim package manager.

Thanks for the cool plugin!

<comment><USER5> I'll take a look at getting it up to vim.org. Thanks for your interest!

<comment><USER5> And now it's there: <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3766>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice! I recently started using Vim for prose and was mentally writing (in preparation for actually writing) a plugin that would do just this. I couldn't think of any better way to do it either, other than what you've done, setting up splits to the left and right. You've added some stuff that I hadn't thought of that makes it even nicer.

This is something else I use:

      function TextEdit()
        set spell
        set formatoptions=1
        set linebreak
        set wrap
        set nolist
        nnoremap j gj
        nnoremap k gk
        vnoremap j gj
        vnoremap k gk
        set guifont=Monaco:h16
      endfunction

      if has('autocmd')
        au BufRead,BufNewFile *.txt call TextEdit()
        au BufRead,BufNewFile *.markdown call TextEdit()
      endif

It gets paragraphs wrapping at words and and lets you move up and down by visual lines rather than actual lines. The last bit applies the settings automatically when opening a .txt or .markdown file. It looks like your plugin already does this, but maybe it would be useful for someone who wants a partial solution.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you just want full-screen, it's ":set fullscreen" on MacVim, or ":set fu" for short.

<comment><USER8> awesome.

:set nofu to get back

My pet peeve with vim is the :set paste, :set nopaste things why not have :set paste false....

<comment><USER9> You can also do

        :set fu!
        :set paste!

Instead of nofu or nopaste.

<comment><USER10> Learn something new everyday. Thanks, shazow!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Funny, I wrote a plugin earlier this year and came up with the exact same name. I never had time to polish and release it, but if you're interested, here's the source on GitHub:

<https://github.com/mbadran/vimroom>

The feature sets are different, from what I can tell.

</comment><comment><USER12> Found the same thing on emacs: <https://bitbucket.org/phromo/darkroom-mode/>

<comment><USER13> See also: <http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/WriteRoom>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can never focus on something long enough that this would become important.

</comment><comment><USER15> I didn't know I wanted something like this so much.

</comment><comment><USER16> What kind of visual distractions does Vimroom hide with the background color setting?

I must admit, having text centered like that is intriguing. I'm going to give this a try.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wrote a color scheme/plugin to do something similar a while back (I think it's darkroom.vim on vim.org). Never really developed it fully. Ratings indicate people were underwhelmed :) Looks like this guy may have given the idea a much better treatment.

</comment><comment><USER18> Instead of using splits you could set a large foldcolumn combined with word wrapping. Unless you are actually using folding it will result in a large area of blank space on the left of the window.

</comment><comment><USER19> Doesn't really work for me, but there is already an issue on GitHub for this. However, I don't really see the added value if you are using MacVim in the first place.

<comment><USER5> The big advantage over MacVim is that Vimroom works from the terminal, anywhere. I can use the plugin no matter which machine I'm logged into, which is pretty valuable to me.

I fixed the only issue that was on the project before today (errors when mapping keys that were already mapped), and pushed a v0.7. I hope that fixes the issue you experienced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What I do is split the window vertically (C-w v), and resize the left window so that the text in the right window is centered on the screen.

</comment><comment><USER21> How does this stand up when there are split windows? Is this mostly for single window/terminal use?

<comment><USER22> It appears to be implemented using split windows, so the results if you try and use split windows normally are somewhat surprising.

(It also doesn't work well with my settings as it shows a statusbar on some of these split windows acting as padding, so the effect is ruined slightly.)

<comment><USER5> It is implemented using splits, so you're right: if you're already using split windows then your results will be a bit off. :)

Regarding your settings, would you mind filing a bug report with some detail? I'm happy to try to fix things if there's a bug: <https://github.com/mikewest/vimroom/issues>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The article mentions the same is possible in MacVim, but not how to do it. Any pointers?

<comment><USER24> Also curious about this. Entering fullscreen used to do it correctly, but in the latest MacVim the document spans 100%, even if you have "Prefer native fullscreen support" unchecked.

<comment><USER25> Snapshot 61 added maxhorz and maxvert to fullscreen options by default. You have to set fuoptions yourself if you want something different. See my other comment for what I do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How does this compare to just having a desktop devoted to a single instance of vim?

</comment><comment><USER27> love this. I've been crafting my blog articles in vim lately as well and this will definitely make that a more pleasant experience.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sumblime Text 2 has exactly this, very neat.

</comment><comment><USER29> vertical split with three windows, adjust their size to control the margins, and set the border to the same color as the background. Put these commands on your .vimrc. Should work too.</comment>


FDA clears 'world's first' portable, low-cost MRI - <AUTHOR> https://www.healthimaging.com/topics/healthcare-economics/fda-clear-worlds-first-portable-mri <comment><USER2> For a change, I can contribute something to HN without being out of my depth:)

Background: I'm a doctor with 3 years experience in acute medicine. AMA

Clearing some MRI misconceptions: 1\. It's indicated ASAP in specific emergencies and will change how we manage them. For acute ischaemic stroke, it detects patients within the recomended time window for thrombolysis. Simply, it shows the cellular swelling in the brain, gives an estimate of the onset and we decide the risk/benefits of dissolving the clot. Second use, for cauda equina syndrome. Again we're looking for acute CNS tissue damage, this time from spinal chord compression, and the change in management is emergency neurosurgery (good luck getting them out of bed without an MRI) For herpes encephalitis, MRI is debatable because you can start empiric treatment. But I've seen it done.

Another misconception for the first use scenario in stroke. The MRI sequences we're interested in only take 1-3min and CT doesn't help us. But in my experience the whole scan takes 2h to organize, so point of care MRI is a game changer. Every minute counts when you're saving brain tissue. And Lower definition with artifacts are acceptable because you're looking for gross changes in a critically unwell patient.

Bonus: A report from when I managed my first suspected stroke as a junior doctor.

"49yo lady day 1 post op for total knee replacement (elective admission). Commorbidities of hypertension, obesity and osteoarthritis. She was just started on apixaban and gabapentin as per protocol, when I was asked to see her for new onset upper limb bilateral tremor.

On examining her I found the symptoms had started 1h ago. She was presenting bilateral upper limb ataxia as well, reflexes were reduced on the left and there was numbness corresponding to C4 dermatome. At this point I was worried about acute stroke whithin the 4h window for thrombolysis. I discussed the case with the acute stroke consultant and examined the patient with him. We requested an MRI brain to assess for acute posterior circulation stroke, because he thought time of onset was unclear (as per WAKE-UP protocol). I acompanied the patient to neuroradiology services. The MRI sequences we were most interested was DWI and FLAIR which only took a few minutes. We quickly scanned through the images noting there were was no DWI-FlAir mismatched high intensity signal areas within the brain parenchyma. This allowed us to rule out acute ischaemic stroke.

6h later the symptoms subsided and I was satisfied they were due to an adverse reaction to gabapentin."

<comment><USER3> Being a neuroradiologist (at Karolinska in Stockholm, Sweden) I really love the idea of this and almost can't wait to start doing comparative studies to find how sensitive it really is. As I see it there are a couple of areas where it could be of tremendous use - first of course the (neuro) intensive care unit, where patients sometimes are to unstable to transport to the MRI, and where every transport is a potential risk for the patient, and where it can be very useful to find out whether they have ischemic lesions in the brainstem (which can be difficult to rule in/out on CT) or extensive diffuse axonal injuries, etc.

Another area would be pediatric imaging, where it could be useful as a first imaging, ruling out larger lesions, possibly lessening the need for CT and decreasing radiation exposure, especially in the group approximately 1-4 years, who often need sedation to lie sufficiently still inside the MRI. Although at my institution the physicists have developed a 'fast MRI' (70 seconds), that gives reasonable resolution and contrast (T1,T2,T2*,DWI), and which we will try to implement in the group of patients who come to 'try' the machine (before deciding whether they need sedation or not).

Also, the low field strength, 0.064T vs 1.5T or 3T, would most probably allow us to image patients with implants which are unsafe at normal clinical field strengths of 1.5 or 3T (would have to be verified though).

For people interested in low field imaging the group at Athinoula A Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Harvard has a homepage at [https://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/lab/lfi](https://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/lab/lfi)

<comment><USER4> The combination of the cost and accessibility look like a game changer for me, a lay-ish person.

With such a device, do you need a Radiologist or other rare super specialist to actually read the images? Or can they be used by generalists?

Will this turn brain MRIs into a tool comparable to the X-Ray scanner my dentist uses or the Ultrasound used by the midwives a dozen times during pregnancy?

If so it looks like a game changer - something which will become a fixture in A&E departments everywhere.

<comment><USER3> You are of course right about the cost and accessibility, low field not necessitating specific rooms or 'no go' zones, and presumably easy operation (controlled via iPad app) being very interesting with regards to increased availability of MRI scans(in Sweden the rate limiting step at the moment is usually the availability of trained MRI technicians). In my initial comment I mostly thought about some clinical situations in my current practice where it would be useful. Sorry if the following becomes a bit rambling.

Reasonably there are a plethora of indications and given that these machines will be installed at the point of care (A&E, ICU, etc) and supposedly are safe to use on basically all patients, one can imagine that it will be used very frequently. Though in this case the scan-time (30 min + change) could become a limiting factor (but, given it's price, I guess you could just buy more machines). The image quality is of course not the same as with a modern clinical system but it is most certainly good enough for a preliminary test, and may very well decrease the number of patients sent for a 'normal' diagnostic scan (though the opposite may also be true, if you see something unexpected in the images, or if there are artefacts which are difficult to interpret). As with the 'fast MRI' I referenced to earlier, my current idea would be that it can be used as an initial screening, but, as always, if the test is normal, but the clinical suspicion persists one would have to continue with other tests.

Regarding whether the image should be read by a specialist or not, I am of course biased towards the specialist :) As I see it the main advantage of having the clinician interpreting the image is that they have 'direct access' to the patient, and can ask them specific questions based on the findings of the test. Though, time-utility wise it's faster for a specialist to read a normal test. During med school I did a rotation at a primary care facility in the north of Sweden, in a municipality with 6000 inhabitants, located almost 2 hrs away from the closest hospital, the GP:s there read chest x-rays themselves at that time. Now the images are transferred digitally to the main hospital of the region and read by a radiologist. One can of course wonder whether it's cost effective to train a large number of radiologists to read all the new studies which will be produced. My hope here is that computer aided diagnostic tools will increase the productivity of radiology specialists.

My experience from working together with neurosurgeons and neurologists who are very good at reading images in general, is that they anyway prefer to consult us for the interpretation, (they would rather operate than become specialist radiologists). In my opinion the professionals at risk of being side-stepped are the general radiologists, and I think this is already happening as telemedicine makes it possible for smaller hospitals to pay for specialist readings on a per study basis.

edit: regarding time utility, one would of course have to include the time it takes for the referring physician to write a request, and for the radiologist to write a report. And another advantage of having the clinicians read the image is that they have more information about the patient than they put in the request. So it's also very possible that radiologists will not be consulted (depending on medicolegal circumstances and reimbursement systems etc.)

<comment><USER2> My experience as well is that there's a relationship of trust between radiologist and surgeon that a trained algorithm cannot replace. Same reason why AI isn't a threat to sales people for high priced items.

I'm actually doing what we call a taster in neuroradiology and it's been fascinating. Strongly considering applying for residency next year!

I did my elective at the PET center in Turku, great team. They even let me play with the rat MRI for Alzheimer's. They had some cool projects under Marco Bucci at the time, I believe he just started at Karolinska.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From what I saw of this at RSNA, they were only demonstrating head scans. The scanning volume is big enough for a head but not a full body. The magnet is low-power enough that you could walk within a few feet of it during operation without danger.

Cool device which could make MRI scans more accessible, and also paves the way for specialized scanners that only focus on a particular body part. I like medical tech that does a "good enough" job in exchange for being much cheaper than fully featured devices.

<comment><USER6> This would still be hugely helpful for brain imaging en route to a medical facility, similar to what's being done with experimental mobile stroke units, so medical practitioners are ready to act upon a patient's arrival.

<comment><USER7> Maybe. MRI is not the preferred brain imaging modality in emergency situations, X-ray computed tomography is.

Consider patients who are unconscious (or awake but unreliable) due to head trauma, stroke, etc. You can't do a proper MR safety screening interview to find out if they have ferrous metal or other conductive objects in their head. The magnetic field can potentially torque an old aneurysm clip or piece of shrapnel, and the radio frequency excitation field can cause heating and burns if there are antenna-like conductors present.

MRI is slow and the images are easy to ruin if the subject moves around too much during the long acquisition time, so bouncing around in the back of an ambulance isn't the ideal setting. A 3D volume with whole head coverage and suitably fine spatial resolution can take several minutes to acquire, versus just a few seconds for X-ray CT. The MRI signal to noise ratio is also proportional to field strength, so low field systems like this are at a disadvantage for image quality. On the plus side, low field does mean less risk of moving ferrous material inside the subject.

<comment><USER8> > You can't do a proper MR safety screening interview

Are we really not capable of detecting such dangers externally without patient input? It seems like detecting even small pieces of metal would be relatively trivial.

<comment><USER9> Presumably with an X-ray/CT scan.

<comment><USER10> Can't you apply a minuscule power and watch out for overcurrent?

<comment><USER11> No, the main field is effectively permanent.

<comment><USER10> I mean, some sort of non-super-conducting MRI analogue device that the patient will have to go through.

<comment><USER11> You could find big things that way, but maybe not small things that were deep. I suspect it is hard to make something powerful enough to detect everything that might be an issue in say a 7T field, yet still safe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "According to Connecticut-based Hyperfine, their machine will cost $50,000, which is 20-times cheaper than traditional systems, runs on 35-times less power and weights 10 times less than normal 1.5T MRI machines."

I believe GE came out with MRI machines a while back that were specific for limbs. This really does not seem much different other than it is on wheels and you can possibly position over a torso in a bed if it isn't metal.

<comment><USER13> A hospital billed my insurance $15k for a single MRI series once. This machine could pay for itself very quickly.

<comment><USER14> Lots of hospitals love to use MRI's as a high margin business. I had a contrast MRI where my insurer was billed $20k and paid $16k.

Same MRI at a stand alone clinic is about $2k.

It's ridiculous.

<comment><USER15> A 1.5T torso MRI costs me $260 US dollars in Mexico without insurance and without prescription, radiologist interpretation included. Salaries are higher in the US and I assume the bleeding edge tech is multiple millions of dollars. But even with those considerations, I don't think $20K is justified.

Sure, they don't have fast 3T machines, but still are useful for DIY cancer screening for the paranoid like me (for those that aren't familiar with imaging tech, MRIs don't use radiation).

<comment><USER16> In Russia torso MRI costs around $200-$300 too. Smaller exams on outdated machines could be found for as cheap as $80.

It is solely US thing that medical procedures have astronomical cost.

<comment><USER17> In Italy, my mother did a few months ago a contrast MRI (spine), directly paid in a private laboratory (outside the national service) for around 300 Euro.

Which makes sense if the machine cost is around 1,000,000, appointments were every half an hour, so, let's say they make 15 scans per day at 300 each, it makes 4500 Euro/day by 220 days/year that is around one million Euro/year.

You take out of it - say:

250,000 Euro for the machine (for 5 years)

250,000 Euro for personnel

250,000 Euro for maintenance, power, other costs

50,000 Euro for _something else I don 't know_

And you are still ahead for 200,000 Euro/year, i.e. roughly 20% of your investment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Really nice piece of work.

The key patent makes for interesting reading [1]. They use neodymium permanent magnetic rings. I wonder if building a crude version of Hyperfine's machine is within the realms of a DIY project.

[1] [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=10222434.PN.&OS=PN/10222434&RS=PN/10222434)

<comment><USER19> The MGH Martinos Center has a very nice open source MRI page with hardware and software instructions to build a functional, low-resolution tabletop MRI (I think this is primarily targeting instructional use at a university level, so requires a fair amountof background):

\- [https://www.opensourceimaging.org/project/instructional- tabl...](https://www.opensourceimaging.org/project/instructional-tabletop-mri- scanner/) \- [https://tabletop.martinos.org/index.php/Main_Page](https://tabletop.martinos.org/index.php/Main_Page)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is great. There is a lot of work being done to figure out how much undersampling you can do on a typical MRI and reconstruct a good image. For typical scanners, this gets you faster scan times. It will be interesting to see how much those techniques translate into taking a super low-powered MRI and allow it to yield decent images.

Whether or not such techniques are good for accurately detecting lesions seems to still be a bit of an open question. (It's less relevant to my particular research interests for now, but obviously extremely important for clinical use.)

A lot of the fallout from over-imaging (especially when, like MRI, there is no ionizing radiation so the test itself isn't harmful) is due to physician behavior and standards of care. But those behaviors and standards can change over time.

A bit tangential, but I suspect that at some point, we will think it anachronistic that cardiologists tried to visualize the heart's function by listening to its sounds with their ears.

</comment><comment><USER21> "To reserve your Hyperfine system(s), the following conditions apply:

        You must be an accredited US health care provider.
        System usage is approved for patients 2 years and older.
        Your institution must be able to supply a wired ethernet connection to the device once every 14 days."

<comment><USER22> Curious about that last condition. What is it used for? And what bandwidth does it need?

<comment><USER23> I'm only familiar with other, not medical, devices and my guess would be that this is about firmware updates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I heard that ordinary MRI machines can't ever be powered off or they heat up and the expensive liquid helium boils off. How does this particular machine overcome this issue? Seems like it would be a huge problem for a portable MRI

<comment><USER25> I think fixed machines are like 1.4 - 3 Tesla field strength. The portable one is like .05 Tesla... So maybe it doesn't even use superconducting magnets.

But you can get high temperature REBCO tape now and get super conductors that can be cooled with liquid nitrogen.

<comment><USER26> MRI machines go up to 7T now.

<comment><USER27> Wow, makes me wonder about adverse effects. Could you magnetize the hemoglobin in your blood?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was talking recently with a Haitian doctor, who said that in his entire country (of 11 million people), there is just one MRI machine.

This new device seems like it will break down so many barriers, both in terms of cost and practicality, in Haiti and other developing countries.

I hope it makes its way there!

</comment><comment><USER29> It's a ridiculous thought, but I couldn't help but think of the "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Goods"[1] skit from "The Ten" where neighbours keep one-upping each other by buying CAT scan machines. It's really crazy to think you could almost have an MRI in your own home these days.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ten#Plot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ten#Plot)

</comment><comment><USER30> Reduced power and cost requirements are critical for this technology to be viable for low middle income country (LMIC) settings, particularly in rural areas. In many sub-Saharan countries, there are A handful in the country and use is complicated by unstable grids. High impact tech if use cases for these settings are sharpened.

</comment><comment><USER31> From a quick survey of the article, it sounds like this instrument is likely to be using conventional electromagnets. Is that correct?

<comment><USER32> Permanent magnets, according to this article:

[https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/fda-clears-world-s- fir...](https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/fda-clears-world-s-first- portable-bedside-mri)

Small permanent magnet NMR spectroscopy units first showed up in chemistry about 10 years ago:

[https://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/11/prweb4732684.htm](https://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/11/prweb4732684.htm)

<comment><USER31> Ah. Cool. Makes sense, as the field is clean and stable. NIST's Kibble balance does the same. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Portable is a relative term.

Some hospitals in Germany actually have vehicles containing MRI units which they dispatch when a stroke is suspected.

</comment><comment><USER34> NFL gonna buy one of these per team

<comment><USER35> How does MRI compare to other techniques (e.g. CAT scans) for general diagnostics? Does it make sense to be used as a more routine diagnostics tool if there are many more machines available?

In the US there are 37 MRI machines per million population, even in other relatively rich countries like France this is much lower at 14 per million population [0]. Is it just the cost of the machines, or are there drawbacks that limit their use as general purpose diagnostics tools?

[0] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/282401/density-of- magnet...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/282401/density-of-magnetic- resonance-imaging-units-by-country/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't work in medical devices per se, but I do work in hardware.

I see lots of immediate uses for this. Pro-sports will obviously want it, the military will too, field hospitals in e.g. Africa. Lots of possibilities here.

Can anyone tell me where this device will be manufactured?

</comment><comment><USER37> Ten years ago I got an MRI when they were searching for kidney stone. I think the hospital charge was over $3000. I had one last year and the charge was less than $500. You can point to MRI as one of the success stories for technology in health care.

<comment><USER38> Which country? Doesn't sound like a US hospital.

<comment><USER39> You can get a world class MRI in the Bay Area for $550 from SimonMed Imaging.

<comment><USER15> Is that cash price? Does that include the radiologist interpretation? And can you get one without a prescription?

<comment><USER39> Cash price. Based on how the thing was billed, I am 90% sure it included interpretation, but at this point I can't remember for sure. I don't know whether the prescription is mandatory, but I'm sure you can email/call them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Remarkable they have enough sensitivity at 0.064T. To me, that's the underlying scientific breakthrough. It implies that that there are other, intermediate regimes that would not require bulky, expensive superconducting magnet.

<comment><USER41> I wonder if it would be possible to up sample the images using AI/ML?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wonder how long it'll take for these to appear at the airport checkpoints.

</comment><comment><USER43> I wonder what the resolution on these will be like. As I understand it, bigger magnets and more power = higher resolution.

Will this thing have enough to be useful?

<comment><USER44> The reason for huge magnets is to drown out effects of external magnetic fields which would otherwise cause spatial uncertainty. For me this seems like something that can be partially compensated for in software postprocessing given fast enough scan rate.

<comment><USER13> The magnetic field is to shift the energy levels of the nuclear spin states. The transition energy is proportional to the applied field, and the wavelength of the RF field used for imaging is inversely proportional to the energy. So a stronger field gives a smaller wavelength and thus higher resolution.

<comment><USER45> Oooh, in the same way that the higher 5G frequencies don't travel as far!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What it's like to get online after 25 years in prison - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/santos-getting-online-after-25-years-prison/

<comment><USER2> This may be as close as we'll ever get to the fictional "man frozen for 20 years wakes up in the future" stories.</comment>