Free Republic

The names of the tech workers in this story have been changed.Ten thousand miles from Silicon Valley, in a room near the Black Sea, Yegor Karpenchekov dreams of money. At night, while the rest of Odessa sleeps and cocaine smugglers drift in and out of the port under cover of darkness, Yegor logs onto FaceTime and talks to a 70-year-old woman in San Francisco. Her name is Sally Faubion, and five months ago she recruited Yegor from the freelancer marketplace UpWork to code her apps. She believes "divine intervention" brought them together; for Yegor, it was likely $20 per hour...

Nootropics, the new staple ‘brain enhancers’ in Silicon Valley that purport to increase productivity and perception, exist in an unregulated legal gray area in the U.S. In Colombia, you can pick up even the shadiest kinds over the counter. I did just that. In the months before a recent trip to Colombia, off to visit an expat friend living there, I had been hearing about nootropics. Or “smart drugs,” as they’re referred to. Brain enhancers. Mental magic. Depending on which site you’ve read that’s proclaimed them the new “It” drug for bio-hackers of every stripe, all roads lead to the...

Students should be allowed to take “smart drugs” to boost their performance in exams, according to an academic. The use of drugs such as modafinil and Ritalin is no worse than sending children to a private tutor, said Vince Cakic, from the department of psychology at Sydney University. The comments are made in an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Some academics have claimed that smart drugs, or “nootropics”, which are often widely available over the internet, should be banned over long-term safety fears. Mr Cakic said universities in the future may attempt to impose random urine tests to...