neworbit

This isn't a particularly new claim - back when the fad weight loss supplement was ephedrine (or a "ephedrine/caffeine/aspirin stack") the purported mechanism was brown fat thermogenesis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedrine

First I recall hearing about it was the mid-80s book Life Extension Weight Loss Program from megavitamin proponents Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw. So this has been known of for a while.

It was also thought to be debunked because "adult humans don't have brown fat" - which, as this article makes clear, is more "don't have much". But better imaging techniques have brought brown-fat thermogenesis back around.

If you're trying to do this with vitamin/herbal supplements, I think the current trend is to use "bitter orange" instead of ephedrine. I find it's not very effective for me, but I wasn't a fan of ephedrine either.

Man, if I had the spare cycles to do it, I would love to build this as a browser based service that just calls a (cloud) back end compiler and produces output files. Ajax UI design plus templates would seem like an ideal basis to build trivial apps, and maybe a Chrome plugin or native code conduit to let you talk to the connected USB device and walk you through configuration thereof.

Configuring Android development on the desktop is not terribly complicated, but it's a high bar for new adoption as compared to "install and launch Dreamweaver".

I guess that's sort of the market for Titanium Appcelerator, but that's still a beast by comparison to "this should all be doable in a browser environment". But I don't delude myself that this would be a small project :)

My take: because Monsanto or similar firms are not supporting legislation that immediately threatens YC and the internet in general. SOPA et al is pretty much a declaration of war, it shouldn't be much surprise there's a response to that.

A lot of that isn't available internationally, due to market segmentation by the movie/music cartels. I have no idea how much of the world TPB serves as compared to US only markets, but I suspect it's pretty ubiquitous anywhere there's broadband - whereas legit access to that media is not.

OK, so where's the source ;)

Dropbox or Evernote are far more useful to me and far cheaper, and it took me quite a while to bite at their price. This would have to be much much more capable than it appears.

For software tools along these lines I adore foreui - the skinning feature is great for placating pointy-haired bosses^H^H^H^H^H^H customers

This article also raises the point that if nationally mandated sales tax equality is instituted, Amazon and its competitors are in the same boat - but that would also free Amazon to actually open physical stores or showrooms across the US, as well as hiring in various locations, without worrying about creating tax nexuses.

The only way Spotify can avoid this problem is by becoming too big to ignore, a la iTunes for digital distribution or Walmart for physical goods. At that point the labels have a hard time saying "we're going to pull our inventory unless we get a better pay rate" because though it may dent Spotify's customer experience, it will also mean a substantial hit to the bottom line of any given label who walks.

If you can't get to the point where you're the 800 pound gorilla, however, you are very much still at the mercy of the content owner.

...yet ;-)

To a certain extent Amazon does; they wield a lot of clout in book pricing and an enormous amount in ebook pricing. Outside that traditional core competency (and Amazon Android Appstore) not so much

There's a reasonable and pragmatic expectation that a consumer is paying for an unlimited license to listen to whatever music they want (Spotify, Rhapsody, whatever). They are dealing with legacy devices by downloading tracks that work on those devices. In practice, this doesn't match the contracts that the unlimited streaming services have with the labels, but the nuance may be lost on customers who see this as simply "the music guys are trying to double-dip by making me pay twice when I'm already paying for an unlimited usage model".

Customer perception of dishonesty and corruption on the part of the music industry is... not new, and may well serve as justification there. Customer expectation that music is free (because radio is) and that recording songs off the radio (for old farts like me who used to do that as kids) is legit also plays a part of it.

Ultimately I suspect this amounts to "a ubiquitous celestial jukebox wins the consumer wallet", but we're not quite there yet.

That's true if you only consider human diseases; I suspect you could find trillions of copies of e coli

Clancy's book is Rainbow Six, though the derivation from Seal Team Six is pretty likely.

I think that was the book that made me stop reading Clancy novels, come to think of it.

Scuttlebutt from the Seattle network says valuations are lousy there as compared to the bay area. Did you happen to notice anything either confirming or contradicting that?

There are all sorts of cottage industries in the firearms business. My midwestern and southern relatives are extremely enthused about such things. Mostly it amounts to "customizing a stock weapon with aftermarket accessories" as far as I can tell - personalizing it and suiting it to your tastes and build. I'm not much of a gun guy - I can tell that this one has a better scope or a more comfortable grip, but the rest of it's kind of lost on me.

I think it's much the same sort of mindset as the folks who who like to customize their vehicles. In some cases, it's the same people, but if my relatives are any indication the overlap between those two circles isn't that high.

I contributed based on it being an open source license; if some group decides to change that so they can make money off it, forking and keeping it free is not "cheating them" - it's keeping them from cheating me and every other dev who has helped them.

They got a factory on the cheap from Toyota that was being closed - not quite the same arrangement. c.f. http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/10/teslas-got-the-factory-...

Liked Cars at least better than Monsters Inc. Cars 2, meh. I keep going to see these under the guise that I'm seeing what Pixar technology is capable of, but I think it's at least as much that I like the films.

It helps if you have

a) the right business connections in the space you want (as opposed to a wild hair "I'm going to reinvent this industry because it looks broken from outside")

b) Funding enough to see it through

c) some track record of delivery

d) The ability to articulate not just what you want built but how it'll work and WHY

Maybe for the drugs

They fund a lot of things, but yes, I don't think I'd like to be on the receiving end of "You bear a distinct resemblance to someone we'd like to explode."

Well, it is kind of creepy. I wouldn't want a "social network helper tool" to out me if I was still in the closet. Some things should be your own decision.

From a user perspective, it'd be nice if it just came with Chrome.

I'm sure Dropbox would be horrified

Well let's be fair, this is in the context of a story about pirating textbooks - if nothing else, the original post is about (mostly) not getting paid.

For other similar* businesses that I'm aware of, streaming isn't more profitable on a per unit basis as compared to DVD rental/sale (but subscriptions to unlimited streaming are much more profitable, because usage tails off but people don't cancel).

* similar = streaming and disc media - it's the adult space, not mainstream video

That shouldn't be too strange. I'd consider buying one, and I don't use many MS products. No reason not to evaluate it in a purchasing decision.

All things being equal I'd probably buy another Android device, but I'm not zealous enough to say "if MS makes a better product I won't buy it!" (Though if you do say that about Apple or Microsoft, I can understand the sentiment...)

Yes. They're great. But don't spend too much time inverted.

That's a bit baffling. It seems like there are at least tens and probably hundreds of millions of people who play flash games every day (Zynga being rather happy about that). They may not be power users but they are everyday consumers. A lot of that isn't going to be casually rewritten into HTML/JS.

Probably because you're awake playing Starcraft or doing an all night coding session.

Ok, maybe that's just me, but I suspect I can't be the only HN reader who uses his home PC at 3 AM more than he does at 3 PM.

I traditionally use yousendit for this sort of thing, though they've gotten awfully spammy about trying to upsell you on stuff you don't need. Dropload used to do this, but I think they're gone too.

For that matter, I used to put stuff in my Yahoo Briefcase. But I might have been the only person to do that :)