You are a scholar and a gentleman.

Way back in the halcyon days of 2005, a company called Cenqua had an April Fools' Day announcement for a product called Commentator: an AI tool which would comment your code (with, um, adjustable settings for usefulness). I'm wondering if (1) anybody can find an archived version of the page (the original seems to be gone), and (2) if there's now a clear market leader for that particular product niche, but for real.

The word for a drug that causes loss of memory is “amnestic”, not “amnesic”.  The word “amnesic” is a variant spelling of “amnesiac”, which is the person who takes the drug.

Thanks! Fixed now.

Oh yeah, I guess that could be a learning effect. When reading it I assumed the lack of need for repeating the numbers was just because the drug was wearing off.

Another class of applications which we discussed at the retreat: person 1 takes the amnestic, person 2 shares private information with them, and then person 1 gives their reaction to the private information. Can be used e.g. for complex negotiations: maybe it is in our mutual best interest to make some deal, but in order for me to know that I'd need some information which you don't want to share with me, so I take the drug, you share the information, and I record some verified record of myself saying "dear future self, you should in fact take this deal".

... which is cool in theory but I would guess not of high immediate value in practice, which is why the post didn't focus on it.

I would love to hear suggestions for other things I could try. If you have any, let me know in a comment!

My answer.

Do you know what the drug was which did this?

Nitpick: you're talking about the discovery of the structure of DNA; it was already known at that time to be the particle which mediates inheritance IIRC.

I buy this argument.

I buy this argument.