Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick • Hacker News Board

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

#951

Post by tomcam » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 7:22 AM UTC

n72 wrote: post #477

slg wrote: 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.

Pompous

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

#952

Post by tomcam » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 7:25 AM UTC

GrinningFool wrote: post #727

DanBC wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many cats and dogs will eat the same food source almost exclusively for most of their lives without any ill effect. Where "without any ill effect" includes tooth decay, obesity, and death from kidney damage among others.

> Where "without any ill effect" includes tooth decay, obesity, and death from kidney damage among others. Tooth decay: giving your dogs something hard to chew on is essential if you don't relish the idea of brushing your dogs' teeth. If they're not gnawing on actual bones, their teeth aren't get cleaned. Hard chew toys are a good substitute. The only dog I've had with tooth troubles didn't like chewing hard things.…

> kidney troubles have never been a problem for us.

Congratulations on your robust good health! How about your pets?

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

#953

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 7:27 AM UTC

Mordak wrote: post #745

harveywi wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with skipping a meal? (While we're on the subject, what's right about it?) Folks have been sold a solution to a problem that does not exist. Marketing and its various permutations wins again. The use case of this aptly-named "Soylent" product is a load of hooey. When the military starts using meal replacement powders instead of MREs, then I will reconsider my position on this issue.

> When the military starts using meal replacement powders instead of MREs, then I will reconsider my position on this issue. The primary challenge with feeding soldiers in the field is not efficiently delivering nutritionally complete food to them, it is getting them to eat it day after day after day. Soldiers get bored eating the same things over and over again and eventually this drives them to stop eating, which n…

[deleted]

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

#954

Post by tomcam » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 7:30 AM UTC

amelius wrote: post #363

slg wrote: 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…

> 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. One of the biggest flaws of consumers is that they can't tell low tech from high tech. Writing a shiny CRUD website is not high tech.

> Writing a shiny CRUD website is not high tech

Let me know if you still agree with that statement when you write an application for a bank, military use, pharmacological research, a rocket launch, or Wall Street.

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

#955

Post by phillc73 » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 7:57 AM UTC

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #882

huac wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like there's asymmetrical information, a great place for a startup to break into. Or create a better marketplace for seeds!

The question is there really anything to "disrupt" and is the market worth it for a startup? I live on a horse farm and as a result, need to buy hay. Our main "hay guy" is a farmer and his son who lives about 1/2 hour away, has great prices and charges a low fee (usually: sometimes he doesn't bother charging) for delivery. There are online hay markets, and Craigslist. They don't bother with any of that. They just ask…

Reading this story I think the opportunity here is in testing the nutrient levels of the hay.

He is your hay guy and he provides a fantastic personal service, but is his product of the highest quality for feeding to horses? Even if "highest" is not the correct measure, just knowing the nutrient levels and, in patricular for hay to feed performance horses, the protein level, will greatly assist in formulating a correctly balanced diet for the stock.

Therefore, a quick, easy to use test for obtaining the nutrient values could be really valuable to either the supplier, in order to provide confidence and value to the buyer pre-purchase, or to the buyer post-purchase. Each cut of hay is likely to be different.

Maybe a quick convenient analyser like this already exists, but my view is not to disrupt the farming industry but rather to provide added value for stronger outcomes in general.

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

#956

Post by angus-prune » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 8:02 AM UTC

jmcdiesel wrote: post #701

delecti wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That gizmodo article's only "source" of nutritionists is from this article [1] (another article on the same site). That article's only source of nutritionists is someone who just called them up before Soylent was even on the market, and while none of those nutritionists had examined the product. Many cats and dogs will eat the same food source almost exclusively for most of their lives without any ill effect. Obvious…

Most dogs and cat's however are domesticated and have been eating a mostly single-source diet for many many generations... some adaptation has occurred. There is a reason they don't give zoo animals kibble (aside from the herbivores who naturally focus on a single food source, and the pellets are made from that food source). Lions don't get kibble, and they don't even get a single kind of meat, they rotate their food…

This isn't remotely true.

Look at the wiki article on dog food [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_food#History] - diets for dogs have been ad hoc and varied for thousands of years. I'd argue that it is only with the advent of kibble (in the late C19) and canned cat/dog food (in the early C20) that pets started eating single-source diets.

I do not think that this is enough time for adaption, and any selective breeding has been focused on other attributes rather than diet.

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

#957

Post by kuschku » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 8:20 AM UTC

espadrine wrote: post #470

fintechie wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you lose allicin you lose some nice properties (antimicrobial, antiinflammatory, etc): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10594976

Aren't you severely grinding it with your teeth, saliva, and gastric acids anyway? (Honestly asking, I have no idea.)

Correct. Freshly blended food is also no issue.

The first issue is that you don’t immediately consume it after blending, but wait a few minutes or hours.

The second issue is that the grinding with teeth requires you to spend energy, which reduces the energy you gain from the food.

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

#958

Post by kuschku » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 8:27 AM UTC

robotbikes wrote: post #941

colordrops wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious what are your thoughts on GMOs.

Wouldn't it be ironic if one of the GMO ingredients in Soylent was causing the kind of allergic reaction that organic activists are always warning about thus proving the hazardness of GMOs. This is sheer speculation but had to share the thought.

Not unlikely, most GMOs are modified to increase resistance of them for pesticides, or for them to produce pesticides themselves.

And these increased pesticides often also cause several reactions in humans.

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

#959

Post by code_sardaukar » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 9:18 AM UTC

n72 wrote: post #477

slg wrote: 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.

In my high school they had a lot of words for this attitude, including "faggot", "square", "nerd" and "nerd faggot". As someone who grew up in this environment, I'm very interested in the critiques of people such as myself who allegedly held these attitudes.

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

#960

Post by grogenaut » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 9:20 AM UTC

ckozlowski wrote: post #933

ghostly_s wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just plain polymath will do fine, seeing as the last time anyone could make legitimate claim to this title was probably 500 years ago.

I agree with you in principle that they're rather rare. But there's been a few in that time-span. The most recent that comes to mind? Read about Bruce Dickinson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Dickinson

Reading that I see musician who did a solo album and some other bands, common, who flys planes... common in actors, and is an entrepeneur.. in beer (food), all super common for someone who has made money.

I don't see a broad range here, this sounds super common, how much crap does Michael Jordan or John Travolta have in common with this guy.

I don't see: patents, masters degrees (not too hard), charities, news articles, really anything that shows he's able to just pick up anything quickly.