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Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

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Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#821
post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your dismissal is 100% emotional. Do you have any reasons that I should find it compelling or are you relying entirely on emotional resonance to make your anti-soylent case?

What? The dismissal was that the product previously existed. What's emotional about that?

What's not emotional about requiring products you have no hand in to meet your standards of innovation?

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#822
post #477
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest flaws of the tech industry is the belief that being a tech expert is enough to disrupt other industries in which they don't have any expertise. Sometimes they get lucky and it works despite something like Uber's or Airbnb's total ignorance of the law. Sometimes it fails like with numerous cryptocurrency companies relearning why the finance industry has so many dang regulations. Seems like Soylent i…

The founder of Soylent clearly believes he's an expert in many, many fields: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=1331 BTW, anyone know a good word for this attitude? I wouldn't call it hybris, though it's closely related. It's a mix of arrogance, over confidence, ignorance, plus more and very prevalent in SV.

That situation with his house/pod was pretty bizarre too are we sure he isn't slipping mentally?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/27/soylent-ceo-...

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your dismissal is 100% emotional. Do you have any reasons that I should find it compelling or are you relying entirely on emotional resonance to make your anti-soylent case?

How about the company itself taking their product out of the market because it's making people sick?

That wasn't the reason given for the dismissal. I'm not arguing anything in particular about soylent, and in fact I don't care about it at all. I'm just pointing out that personal standards are a boring emotional basis for deciding what is innovative.

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#824
post #784
post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The founder of Soylent clearly believes he's an expert in many, many fields: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=1331 BTW, anyone know a good word for this attitude? I wouldn't call it hybris, though it's closely related. It's a mix of arrogance, over confidence, ignorance, plus more and very prevalent in SV.

"I have not set foot in a grocery store in years. Nevermore will I bumble through endless confusing aisles like a pack-donkey searching for feed while the smell of rotting flesh fills my nostrils and fluorescent lights sear my eyeballs and sappy love songs torture my ears. Grocery shopping is a multisensory living nightmare." This kind of writing is insufferable.

My favorite is when he talks about his enlightened post-kitchen lifestyle.

"I think it was a bit presumptuous for the architect to assume I wanted a kitchen with my apartment and make me pay for it. My home is a place of peace. I don’t want to live with red hot heating elements and razor sharp knives. That sounds like a torture chamber."

Did this dude just leave the stove on all the time and keep the knives pointed up next to the fridge or something?

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#825
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time Soylent is on HN people say this. Why don't people understand? It's so simple: Soylent is for meals you don't care about but need. It's not a) the ONLY food you can eat or b) supposed to replace all meals. I order a box of Soylent bottles every few weeks—they come in handy while working or for a quick breakfast or if I have little time and am hungry. I also cook meals with my girlfriend a few times a week…

> Soylent is for meals you don't care about but need This is the problem. That concept is completely foreign to a lot of people (me included). The combination of my body's needs and the way I was raised lead me to view each meal as an opportunity to be enjoyed, never a chore. Something I observed in the weightlifting community: there are people who need to worry about dieting (cutting) and people who worry about eati…

It depends a little on what you choose to eat. Hitting my calorie goals would be easy if I ate fast food, but I'm trying to bulk while avoiding refined carbs and keeping my fruit & vegetable intake up.

There's a volume challenge - 5,000kcal is only 1.5lb of butter, but 32lb of broccoli.

There's also a mechanical challenge- chewing constantly (e.g. when eating lots of vegetables) is emotionally exhausting.

I do acknowledge it's possible there are people out there for whom there is simply no greater joy than eating, who would eat nonstop with joy. But, not everyone is like that.

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#826

Just a quick counterargument from a regular Soylent consumer: I drink a coffiest for breakfast every morning and drink two liquid Soylents on days when I don't have time for a nice lunch or dinner. It's convenient, healthy and tastes good. I've never had any intestinal troubles. I use it as a meal replacement, not a complete food replacement. It sucks that they included this ingredient in their powder and bars that h…

when you make a mistake at a web tech startup, the worst thing that happens is some people don't get to look at a web page they wanted to look at, or maybe somebody got an email they shouldn't have.

when you make a mistake at a food production startup people get sick or die. this is a different domain and applying the same logic that you would apply to web tech is a horrible idea.

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#827
post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even a "foodie" person and the idea of just eating these meal replacements all the time seems like being in "food prison."

Because once you start Soylent you cannot possibly stop, or skip a drink and go out and eat with friends? Or cook dinner sometimes? Nonsense. I'd call a steady diet of fast food a 'food prison'. That's the addictive stuff that ruins your health.

I'd bet 90% of coders are within 10 minutes of a whole Foods and btw you might actually find a date there and not the kind that grows on trees.

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#828
post #739
post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The founder of Soylent clearly believes he's an expert in many, many fields: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=1331 BTW, anyone know a good word for this attitude? I wouldn't call it hybris, though it's closely related. It's a mix of arrogance, over confidence, ignorance, plus more and very prevalent in SV.

I kind of like "Hybris" even though I assume it was a typo. How about "deludbertise"?

In Greek, the "Y" makes an "uu" sound so it's not entirely incorrect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upsilon

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#829

Soylent’s product itself has zero novelty in it. Meal Replacement Powders (MRPs) have been around for decades and are popular among the bodybuilding crowd. The only “innovation” Soylent has brought to the table was being the first company to market MRPs to geeks and hipsters -- and that's it. Personally, I've never tried their product because the ingredients they use seemed average/fudged at best (and I tend to avoid…

> The only “innovation” Soylent has brought to the table was being the first company to market MRPs to geeks and hipsters -- and that's it. That's not true though. Look at the nutritional information for MRPs compared to soylent. 3 meals on an MRP will give you 21% of your daily value of potassium; Soylent will give you 100%. 3 meals will give you 12% of your dietary fiber from MRPs, 96% from MRPs. The goal of Soylen…

Exactly. Soylent is the first meal replacement to specifically aim for balanced nutrition. It's like OP hasn't even researched this stuff

Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick

#830
post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The founder of Soylent clearly believes he's an expert in many, many fields: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=1331 BTW, anyone know a good word for this attitude? I wouldn't call it hybris, though it's closely related. It's a mix of arrogance, over confidence, ignorance, plus more and very prevalent in SV.

> The walls are buzzing. I know this because I have a magnet implanted in my hand and whenever I reach near an outlet I can feel them. What in the world...?

https://gizmodo.com/5895555/i-have-a-magnet-implant-in-my-fi...
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