downer

> Choline precursors don't seem to have these same "down-regulation" harmful side effects when taken in moderation to bring brain acetylcholine levels back into "normal range."

"Don't seem"? Human studies needed. Maybe these already exist -- that would be handy. I'm not familiar with neurotransmitter supplementation.

Taking something because you have a deficit is indeed different from trying to massively exceed your nominal levels.

In the context of performance-enhancing mental drugs, exceeding your typical levels is of course the point of the exercise.

> "programmer burnout" which likely involved depleted acetylcholine levels in the brain

Possibly, but that assumption seems like it could be quite a leap.

Kind of like saying coffee works because of depleted caffeine levels in the brain. In fact, we have no data on what caused his particular case of "burnout". We can well imagine that an adrenaline shot, cocaine, ephedrine, and many other drugs could well "restore performance", but that doesn't indicate there was a deficit of those particular substances.

Provigil and Ritalin may also help but that doesn't mean there was a deficit of those, either.

An ACh deficit is only one of a bazillion possible reasons for "burnout".

I aPERUve.

Hmm, those could actually be useful...

Facebook is vulnerable. The obvious way to hijack is to pull a Facebook on Facebook itself -- ask for your FB password and then copy out all your information, and msg all your friends.

If you could click a button and do a horizontal transfer to an equivalent service any time some other service crossed the line of what's acceptable to you, people would migrate in droves. Big companies survive because of inertia -- the truly disruptive technology that the Net should enable is to remove it.

Facebook's evil ways will doom it.

Being "out of date" doesn't make any sense -- today's libraries aren't suddenly going to become less functional later. The stuff that works today will still work 5 years from now.

You change versions IF the new version gives you something you need. You don't change just because it's new.

And, always, the paper tiger is better than the real one. Not doing something today because it'll be outdated in a few years would mean never doing anything in the computer industry.

Oh oh, Million dollar idea: Time travel buddy movie with Einstein and William Wallace. Call it Brainheart.

(Million dollar, as in the revenue. I.e. a complete flop.)

Not in Kazakhstan...

I also have a terrible.... umm... what's it called...

Oh, look, a pony!

"In the central nervous system, ACh has a variety of effects as a neuromodulator, e.g. for plasticity and excitability. Other effects are arousal and reward."

Do you remember Andro (androstenedione, used to be available in stores, used by Mark McGwire)? It's a testosterone precursor. Your liver converts it to testosterone (and also some amount converts to estrogens). So a neurotransmitter precursor would seem to be a bit like steroids for the brain.

Not sure how external supplementation affects endogenous neurotransmitter production, but with hormone precursors the biofeedback loop tells your endocrine system to stop its own production. E.g. if you take testosterone, your body shuts down its own production (when your testosterone level hits a certain point, your body thinks "oh, that's enough for now" and hits the off-switch on your testicles. This turns off ALL their functions, so it's actually also a form of birth control. And since they aren't doing anything, they atrophy).

Fun note: Your body tries to keep your testosterone:estrogen ratio at about 50:1 (for young men). So if you take androgenic steroids, your body increases its own estrogen production. Once you hit a certain absolute amount of estrogen, you're growing breast tissue.

Then you are a man. With titties.

(Bodybuilders combat this by using certain steroids that don't aromatize into estrogen as much, and also using anti-estrogens that either bind to the aromatase enzyme to stop conversion into estrogen, or bind to the actual estrogen receptor sites like Clomid. One interesting effect of Clomid -- that makes it attractive to male porn stars -- is it causes big pop shots.)

Drupal -- RuPaul?

Note that maintaining control is different from hoarding all the money. The people who understand it best should be in control, regardless of how much equity they give to investors. This is not just in the early stages -- look at Steve Jobs calling the shots at Apple.

> As a leader, you should always strive to ensure that you can be replaced, and that the company can and would continue without you.

That's just not how startups work, at ALL. Losing a founder basically dooms a startup.

It only applies much later on, when the company has a huge bankroll and a life of its own.

Basically, if it costs N dollars today, it will cost roughly 2N dollars over its lifetime.

Today wins.

I've never understood that mindset. Java is about the opposite direction from Lisp.

At least C++ has generic metaprogramming.

It's not like suddenly everyone is going to switch to 3.0.

I recommend using PHP and Java.

Java's really that bad, is it?