skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I realize now that I have generated much more controversy than I would have if this was made clear, but kratom is sold on my website purely as "not for human consumption." All of the kratom sold in the USA is sold not for human consumption. As a plant that is neither a food, a drug, or a supplement, I am not allowed to sell kratom for human consumption, so I don't. My customers have all learned what kratom does from sources of information other than myself, which makes marketing very difficult.

Rather than make my own claims for what kratom does (which I believe are true, but which I don't have more than anecdotal evidence for) I should have linked to the studies on Pubmed about animal testing with alkaloids of mitragyna speciosa. However, I stand by my claims and feel that they would hold up to scientific testing. Please, please finance such studies and test my claims.

The DEA is completely wrong with regards to Kratom just like they are wrong about THC. They are not a reliable source.
you know what is hilarious is after reading your article i looked into a few of the apps you discussed.

we're now incorporating basecamp into our project management, what a powerful app.

:)
Is there anything you wish you knew at 16 as you made decisions that shaped the rest of your life?
It's funny how everyone is against rms on this issue; I don't get it. Maybe he's promoting his business too much here? I don't think so. And AFAIK his business is legit (there's nothing wrong with selling drugs to adults who know what they're doing; selling drugs to kids or uneducated folks is another matter). The only thing he should change is the bullshit on his website "It is for incense purposes only." Come on.
using a new im client is going to be a huge barrier, imo.

look at how many ppl still use aim, and how few people use even very powerful integrated clients, such as ichat, gtalk, and even msn messenger (lol).
You are a liar if you claim you are selling it "not for human consumption". The whole controversy that lead you to post this thread came about because you were advocating kratom as a substance for "chemically enhanced social interaction", saying it is "well suited to truly enhanced discussion".

While your website claims it is not for human consumption, this is a dodge that likely won't help you very much if you ever get in trouble with the law. You know full well that people are buying it for use as a drug, and if you have been promoting it as such here, you likely have been promoting it as such elsewhere.

As to your claims about the DEA, please provide scientifically verifiable evidence that the DEA is wrong in this case. Studies have been made and analyzed about THC; I'm not aware of any such studies of kratom.
"What do you think pharmacists and Chinese herbalists are?"

1. I think pharmacists have pretty easy, lucrative jobs. Good for them. I also know a lot of student pharmacists. Some of them are very cute. Good for them.
2. I think Chinese herbalists are naive and, in general, smell strange.

I hope, maybe, to be a pharmacologist one day. Our work is somewhat different than yours. You get people high. We kill the plague.

I am trying not to dislike you. But you said, "I am sure though that the effectiveness would be demonstrated." Really you are sure? You are sure you aren't poisoning people? I am not.
Core Memory--Computers Are Sensual
I think that you can leverage your position into the fetish market. Buy a camera. Bootstrapping sells.

check out Paul's early work at pg13bootstrapping.com [nsfw] [login required].
Work on your SEO Bountii! A big source of your traffic is going through your organic search rankings. Theres some very simple things you can do which will give you a big boost. http://www.websitegrader.com/wsgid/361302/default.aspx

Rewrite your urls, eg:
http://bountii.com/search.php?item=ipod%20touch%208gb should be something like http://bountii.com/ipod-touch-8gb

Congrats on getting something up, you have a long way to go though.
Moving to San Francisco? Some Tips.
So, the decisions for this YC funding cycle will be out in a few weeks. This means that a bunch of Hacker News readers will be moving to the Bay Area soon.

Since I already live here, I'm putting together a brief guide to bootstrapping in SF. It's not as hard as you'd think, but this is a very different kind of city and there are some things to consider before you arrive. Hopefully this will help!
too bad the word "bounty" is so closely associated with paper towels.

other than that, congrats for launching after taking on an ambitious idea.
There is no fraud involved in selling Kratom, nor any force. rms is not making misleading medical claims, he's been clear it hasn't passed rigorous scientific standards.
It seems blatantly obvious that rms has a positive opinion of kratom, but that he's selling it in the style of "use at your own risk and discretion". There's nothing dishonest about that.
The DEA never made any claims that it WAS harmful. They provide no evidence for this. All they claim is that it has "no medical uses" and use this to justify making it a controlled/illegal substance.

Alcohol, however, is the worst drug you could do other than methamphetamine. It is quite literally a poison. It is impossible to overdose on THC. How many other drugs, legal or illegal, can the same be said for?
"Would kratom be ok if I was a pharmaceutical company and I told you that Kratom could help you lose weight, be happy, and be more productive? It is an incredibly viable alternative to oxycontin for pain management. How about as an alternative to SSRIs/Benzodiazepines as an anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medication? How about that kratom can seriously enhance productivity, more so than caffeine but less so than amphetamine and with fewer side effects than either?

Disclaimer: Kratom can cause nausea, itching, and constipation, just like other opiates. Like other opiates, it can seriously potentiate other pharmaceuticals and you should ask your doctor if kratom is right for you."

If you don't recognize where that came from, just look up at the top of the thread. I'd like you to point out the part where he admits he has no scientific evidence for any of his claims.

Moreover, if you're making medical claims for which you have no scientific evidence, you have no way of knowing if you're making misleading claims or not. He has a responsibility to his customers, and he is not fulfilling it.
Thanks for that post. Can you edit the numbered statement to get rid of the leading space? This triggered the code mode which is causing horizontal scrolling on my screen.
You stand by your claims? So what. Animal testing on alkaloids from the same species? So what! You feel it would hold up to scientific testing? What on earth have you feelings got to do with scientific testing.

You're selling a product on the basis of it not being consumed by humans knowing full well that it is. Your claim that your customers don't get any information from you is at odds with the advocacy for kratom you've displayed on this forum for one.
I've done kratom, as I'm selling it with rms. I've also taken prescription pain killers, and I can assure you that it is definitely the real thing.

A web startup is not for everyone. The problem with web 2.0 is that most of the time, there simply is no business model. Selling kratom does have a clear business model. I fail to see what the difference is between selling kratom and selling something as a "health supplement". Neither have been FDA tested or verified. Yet people are perfectly fine with selling and buying supplements which are usually just placebos.
There certainly is something dishonest about saying "I am not selling product X for purpose Y" when every time we see him promote product X, he is discussing it in the context of purpose Y.
Make good friends. Hang around smart intelligent educated 'moral' people. Form networks - these networks matter to get jobs, etc. Remember, 90% of the good things you get in life (jobs, stock tips, hot dates) will be informally, via your network of friends/colleagues.

On my first day of high school, my dad gave me a priceless piece of advice: Don't be friends with people just because they're available and easy to be friends with. Seek out the people worth befriending, and become their friend no matter how hard it is.

I didn't really understand him at the time, but 15 years later it strikes me as one of the most valuable things anyone has ever told me.
Thanks, great post, look forward to part 2.
Overdose is not the only factor to consider. What about cancer? Birth defects if a pregnant woman uses it? Neurological effects? These are the things that a scientific drug test is designed to discover. Without a properly designed scientific test, you cannot claim there are no harmful long-term effects. You simply don't know.
This looks like an excellent time to split hairs and point out that snake-oil is actually good medicine, despite its metaphorical usage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil
If you are actually into the pharmacology industry, then you would know that most pharmaceuticals are derived from plants, fungi, or other organisms. They simply then add or remove functional groups to tweak them to be a little more effective or patentable. Pharmacology also has developed drugs to let you keep an erection for 4 hours and to put you in a better mood. So I fail to see the difference. Furthermore, how many drugs have been granted FDA approval only to later be found to be dangerous? FDA approval really doesn't mean that much...what DOES is if something has been commonly used for centuries by a particular culture; if it was "poisoning people", they wouldn't have continued using it.
I'd just go ahead, move to SV and build your product.
Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean
>That other non-customers dislike your product and don't want anyone to have it? Fuck them.

You can apply that to many other "hater" type scenarios on the web. As soon as some technology comes out, there seem to be a greater number of haters who say its evil. Always seems to be out of proportion to the "positive" hype. if you don't like it, don't use it ! I don't understand the "hate" that seems to be everywhere.
>The US DEA says "there is no legitimate medical use for kratom in the U. S." and has placed it on its list of "drugs and chemicals of concern".

This means nothing. Alcohol can also be said to have no medical use. The active ingredient in Kratom however, 7-hydroxymitragynine, is absolutely an opiate and consequently a pain killer. Therefore, it absolutely DOES have medical use.
>So you are insinuating, that Kratom is an opiate of some kind. As a matter of fact, it's a plant and contains many known and unknown substances.

And you are wrong. It most certainly is. Chemical analysis of kratom shows that it contains 7-hydroxymitragynine, which is in fact an opiate several times stronger than morphine.
Apple Now Worth more than IBM
>Animal testing on alkaloids from the same species?

Animal testing on alkaloids extracted from the kratom plant, mitragyna speciosa.
I think it's assumed by this point that a pregnant woman should not take any drug while pregnant. You would have to be an idiot to even think otherwise.

We do know that there are no long term effects, at least not those that the FDA would discover during their test. Kratom has been used for centuries in Southeast Asia. If it was causing serious harmful long-term effects, these people would have figured it out by now.
Shooter, what's your email?
Ack. I'm sorry I have to communicate through these means, but I've searched your comment history and submission history and haven't found your email address anywhere. I'd like to talk to you.

Apologies for the 'spam'-ish thread, all.
Can you show me that tobacco was used habitually for thousands of years? It wasn't until Europeans started growing plantations of it in the Americas that it was used like this. The native people used it during ceremonial purposes, but this small of usage isn't harmful.

We arrived that these beneficial uses from what others have said and from personal experience. I can testify that one "dose" of kratom is similar in strength to 20-30mg of hydrocodone. There also have been studies showing that the active ingredient is in fact an opiate. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db...

As for a doctor's opinion, I have several friends who are medical doctors and have tried kratom. They unanimously approve of kratom for medical as well as recreational uses.
Touching on Apple's Mouseless Future - Is Apple about to kill mouse?
Just as an update, I have several friends who are medical doctors and have tried kratom. They unanimously approve of kratom for medical as well as recreational uses.
ProQuo Will Kill Junk Mail
Sunlight cuts risk of many cancers
Be very careful with advice from people who don't know you and don't necessarily care what happens to you, i.e. people on some anonymous forum.

For example, #1 on the highest rated comment is horrible advice. It has screwed up the lives of many, many people and will adversely affect all the future relationships of anyone lucky enough to get away with it.
"A doctor who prescribes treatment for himself has a fool for a patient." (said by a physician acquaintance of mine)

Just because several doctors who have used kratom think it's a good idea does not mean you don't have to subject it to the usual rigorous scientific testing process.
That's not true at all, they could very easily use something harmful for centuries and not figure it out. That's what science is for: without it, it's extraordinarily easy to fool yourself, or not notice things.
I don't know how many people use Jabber, but when I first tried it it was pretty confusing (I figured it out 2nd time trying it, but IMO it should be a lot easier), so I imagine for a normal user it might be confusing to start using Jabber too.

As for your own IM client, users might be reluctant to download a new one unless there is a really good reason to download it (and to start it up each time you start the computer). If there is no good reason to be on it, then they might not. But you said that they'll have motivation to use it so I guess it should be fine. But if the motivation is that their friends are also using it, then getting their friends to use it too might be a problem.
They can say what they want...every other study suggests that the sun is bad for your skin overall....free radicals, basal/squamous/melanoma, etc. Plus, you can get Vitamin D from other sources.

How about the glow from my LCD screen though... Does that prevent cancers?
Seems like arbitrary morality is the only thing against safe sex.
> I think it's assumed by this point that a pregnant woman should not take any drug while pregnant. You would have to be an idiot to even think otherwise.

No, you are the idiot. Of course women take drugs while they are pregnant.

> We do know that there are no long term effects, at least not those that the FDA would discover during their test.

How do you know this, if it was never tested?

> Kratom has been used for centuries in Southeast Asia. If it was causing serious harmful long-term effects, these people would have figured it out by now.

Oh, yeah, that's proof alright. Why not send this to Lancet while you are at it.

Dude, shut up.
Ok, didn't understand that in your initial reply. Animal studies aren't human studies.
Somehow these modes were turned off and the student had one eye closed and was counting parentheses. Not fun for him.
Personal attacks make everyone look dumber.
There is a huge difference between a fully developed drug and peddling a bunch of leaves.

Just because there are a couple of papers about a substance extracted from this plant does not legitimize your false claims.
Especially you. Besides, this post was a reply to Ingenium (who seems to have picked the wrong handle).
> As for a doctor's opinion, I have several friends who are medical doctors and have tried kratom. They unanimously approve of kratom for medical as well as recreational uses.

I'm sure they will write you a glowing endorsement for your website, name and all.

I'm a doctor, and I unanimously disapprove.
Tobacco was used for a very long time habitually before we understand its dangers.

Personal experience is not scientific evidence. While it seems reasonably well established that kratom is a minor analgesic like codeine, there seems to be basically no evidence for the other claims. Additionally its addictive.
How much memory (on average) is your data point? Are we talking number crunching, only? I mean, no analysis on strings?
Make sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
Believe me, I'm used to it by now.

You sound really miserable, have you considered anti-depressants?
I wouldn't say every study suggests it's bad. Many do but many also many say that Sun is good for you. Look at this older study for example: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/05/050526091912.ht...

It comes down to an amount of sun you get. UVB is really bad for you so if you soak up some Sun when it's not strong (around mid-noon), getting that Vit D should be good for you overall.
>> So you are insinuating, that Kratom is an opiate of some kind. As a matter of fact, it's a plant and contains many known and unknown substances.

> And you are wrong. It most certainly is.

Kratom is a plant, not a compound. You don't seem to know the difference.

Plants, Mitragyna speciosa in this case, are full of different compounds. One of them is 7-hydroxymitragynine which has agonistic effects on the mu-opiod receptors.

So what? There are many such substances, but one animal test paper does not make this a drug safe for human consumption. God knows what nasty side effects is has.

> Chemical analysis of kratom shows that it contains 7-hydroxymitragynine, which is in fact an opiate several times stronger than morphine.

See above. Moreover, what's the actual concentration of 7-hydroxymitragynine in the plant leaves? Probably minute, otherwise this stuff would have been banned all along.

So, you are selling a product, of which you claim not for human consumption but use as incense, and then go telling everyone it contains some opioid substance? So much for truth in 'incense' advertising.
Consider that you are making people miserable with the drugs your trying to peddle.

I'll feel better when I can put folks like you out of business.
From the people who drank a lot of wine without any clinical trials at all: "caveat emptor". What he should be is transparent about the whole business. Don't try and fool people, give them all the information there is, and let them decide.
Any investor can also play the conflict resolution role.
I'm not offended at all by you guys selling that stuff, but in terms of the "here's my startup" threads, you're a bit different. With a web based thing, I can go check it out, see how it works, and offer some advice. With your business, since I'm not really interested in purchasing this stuff, I can't really tell you much at all. Even with web based sites, I would be irritated if they were posted too often, so with yours, more than once is probably more than I'm interested in seeing.
most other people use it to advertise websites (what this community is mostly about) not drugs
Some people are cool, but the question for the ingenuous is whether you sometimes have to network with people you can't like.
so then by your definition heroin has a legitimate medical use? That is absurd.
I use Trac and I really like it.
Me too. Trac is nice if you are using Subversion.

John.
Who cares if things have a "medical" use or not? Heroin and alcohol both have human uses for which people want them.
Sure, heroin is very good at killing pain. At least as good as morphine. We as a society have chosen not to use it medically because it developed a reputation as being easily abused, but it's not like morphine is any worse as a recreational drug.
It's stuff like this that's molding the minds of newer generations into believing that joy is only found by instant fix using prescription pills, alcohol, and other substances, instead of books, art, constructive hobbies, etc.

Anyways, I have a midterm tomorrow. I'll take two crates.
I find it a bit jarring. Can you imagine a celebrity doing a TV spot starting with:

"If I'm going to be doing chemically enhanced social interaction, my substance of choice is kratom."

And then cite benefits and studies. YCers might put their website on the front page, but I don't see it happening much in the comments.
Why not talk about it? Who cares if some trolls get annoyed? Just disregard them.
Google getting into domain parking?
Any ideas what this page is, or what Google PartnerPages is?
What's for lots of safe sex, that makes it worth lots of time, and worth many repetitions?

Shouldn't we have a DRY life?
I've never used one. Much like version control, I've never felt the need for it. If you have a team of 2-4 coders, and aren't preparing the next version of Firefox, why aren't text files/emails sufficient?
I remember looking at Bigloo a long time ago, but I haven't kept up with the development.
It seems difficult for me to imagine someone holding themselves out as legitimate but yet selling a mind/mood altering uncontrolled substance. I think you need to pick one and do the one you pick full time.
Dan from Stanford talks about their Facebook course (with links to student projects)
The revenue model proposed sounds much the same as yelp.com's.
If you could aggregate user comments from different sources, that would be a very nice thing. I go to amazon.com mainly for the reviews.

This sort of thing reminds me of just how trivial the reasons for using, or not using, a website are. When froogle renamed itself to google.com/products, I pretty much stopped using it. Why? Because when I do a product lookup, I want it as fast as possible. That's the most important thing.

...notice that the "F" and "R" in "FROOGLE" are both on the left side of the keyboard. Thus, I could type "FR" with my left hand and use the mouse to select "froogle.com" in firefox's dropdown in the address box. Can't do that with google.com/products.
When men were men and programs were coded with cards:  Pics of old mainframes
That and the fact that we're way more tolerant about drugs. You really should focus on the european market.
Great job for great person: Director/VP Platform Engineering at Ning
Common Lisp
Does anyone knows if "PG Ansi Common Lisp" exercises are available on the web ?
Details or it's not true!

I've found that advertising rarely even pays for your server bills when you're getting started. More often it just annoys your users and gets in the way of doing something more productive with your time.
It might (obviously) tend to weed out the color blind, but I think these would be hard to crack:

http://www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/Ishihara.html
What kind of university has a whole course dedicated to the study of a corporation's proprietary technology?
RMS, I think you will fail for the following reasons:

1. Being based closely on a plant is not good enough: even if you patent the release formulation, it is too easy for someone to copy. This means you'll never be able to sell it for enough money, to make it worthwhile doing the unbelievably huge investment in clinical trials and FDA bribe money needed to get it permitted.

2. There's too much vested interest in the regulated market of patentable drugs for them to stand by while you sell a pill that is equally (in some cases more) effective but based on a plant. Anything that grows on trees is quickly smeared and banned on the thinnest shreds of evidence.

Having said all that, I have no problem with your product being sold as incense to whoever wants to consume it. But you'll remain a cottage industry for the foreseeable future.