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What Happened to Lee

(wired.com)
1298 points jgrahamc | 3 comments | 15 Apr 20 14:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.57s | source
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thephyber ◴[16 Apr 20 00:13 UTC] No.22884715[source]▶
Sandra did a wonderful piece in capturing Lee, his family, his work, and his degeneration. Lee was a coworker and roommate of mine for years.

Some additional info that might be of interest to this crowd:

He was fantastic at video games (RTS and RPG) and chess. He had impeccable hand-eye coordination. He co-founded a gaming clan. None of that is relevant anymore.

There is nothing to be done. His condition can't be solved (within his timeframe) by medicine or technology. eastdakota offered to spend whatever it took, but the least worst option was to move him across the ocean and turn him into a test subject for tests that he probably wouldn't tolerate in his current state.

He was deliberate in "minimizing toil". His university projects morphed into patents and a job at UnSpam and Project HoneyPot. Project HoneyPot's technology unlocked the core value to CloudFlare, which he cofounded. His projects and stacks were deliberately chosen for maximal reuse and to minimize wasted effort.

I thank Matthew and Michelle for keeping the story of his journey alive. I can't imagine the tech periodicals are knocking down their doors to write stories like these. Connie Loizos had another piece on him at TechCrunch in 2019[1]

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/15/cloudflare-has-a-third-cof...

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1. Tycho ◴[16 Apr 20 00:42 UTC] No.22884907[source]▶
Can I ask you, when Lee’s personality began to change drastically, did he maintain the same level of technical proficiency (in coding or gaming)? It is a wonderful piece on a very sad story, and after reading it that’s one of the things that I’m interested to know more about, to understand the general condition.
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2. eastdakota ◴[16 Apr 20 01:20 UTC] No.22885136[source]▶
I don't know about gaming, but I do about coding. First, if I look back over the 18 years I knew him, I can see some things that make me think he had the disease the whole time. He was a brilliant coder when he first started working with me out of college, but I think he really hit his peak ability to focus and do amazing things around 2014 — right as we were rolling out Universal SSL. But, even to the end, he was great at coding. In fact, I was told that the doctors said one of the things that was unique about his presentation of the disease was that while most people lose the ability to complete complex tasks first, Lee almost seemed to do the opposite — still thriving on the complex. We brainstormed whether there were coding challenges we could keep sending him after his diagnosis to keep that part of his mind active. It never ended up happening in part because he lost a lot of his verbal communication skills around the same time, but I wonder when you hear him counting under his breath what puzzle he's still solving in his head.
3. thephyber ◴[16 Apr 20 01:58 UTC] No.22885320[source]▶
I spent most of my time with him when he only starting a family and his business tasks were few. Most of the symptoms described in this article happened after his family and work responsibilities grew, which both reduced his time for MMORPG / RTS gaming. When his older son was old enough, they would play casual games together, but that's a completely different realm of proficiency required.