Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

polygon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 284 posts

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#181

Post by verisimi »

chrisshroba wrote: post #116
tialaramex wrote: post #53

Yes. In the EU product "denatured alcohol" for most purposes is likewise treated with the same agent. This replaces the widespread use of methanol and similar products which are poisonous (yes even if you call the product "meths" it probably isn't methanol in the EU today). The rationale is that poisoning people is not an appropriate reaction to attempted tax avoidance. Alcohol is only "denatured" because booze is ta…

I'm sorry for my ignorance, but could someone give more context on this? I don't understand what "denatured alcohol" is, how it relates to tax avoidance, or what illegal use people are finding for it?

This is governments protecting their tax margins.

They tax stuff some people like, because other people think its bad. But some stuff they can't tax because companies want it, so they make it taste awful or poisonous so people won't like it.

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#182

Post by Gigachad »

exmadscientist wrote: post #144
tialaramex wrote: post #53

Yes. In the EU product "denatured alcohol" for most purposes is likewise treated with the same agent. This replaces the widespread use of methanol and similar products which are poisonous (yes even if you call the product "meths" it probably isn't methanol in the EU today). The rationale is that poisoning people is not an appropriate reaction to attempted tax avoidance. Alcohol is only "denatured" because booze is ta…

> there's no technical reason to use poison Yes, there is. Methanol and ethanol are very chemically similar and small amounts of methanol in your ethanol is usually acceptable from a chemical standpoint. But denatonium benzoate is not like ethanol, and can be a contaminant that destroys the process. To get around this, you either have to find old-fashioned methylated spirits in very high purity, pay the alcohol taxes…

Can you distill out the denatonium? I'm guessing it would just be too much work to make it worth it if so?

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#183

Post by heavyset_go »

chrisshroba wrote: post #116
tialaramex wrote: post #53

Yes. In the EU product "denatured alcohol" for most purposes is likewise treated with the same agent. This replaces the widespread use of methanol and similar products which are poisonous (yes even if you call the product "meths" it probably isn't methanol in the EU today). The rationale is that poisoning people is not an appropriate reaction to attempted tax avoidance. Alcohol is only "denatured" because booze is ta…

I'm sorry for my ignorance, but could someone give more context on this? I don't understand what "denatured alcohol" is, how it relates to tax avoidance, or what illegal use people are finding for it?

Ethyl alcohol is an industrial solvent. People like to drink it. The market is bifurcated into industrial use and recreational use. The former can often use impure alcohol for their purposes, or explicitly require it, but those impurities are poison if consumed.

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#184

Post by martyvis »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #153
exmadscientist wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's no technical reason to use poison Yes, there is. Methanol and ethanol are very chemically similar and small amounts of methanol in your ethanol is usually acceptable from a chemical standpoint. But denatonium benzoate is not like ethanol, and can be a contaminant that destroys the process. To get around this, you either have to find old-fashioned methylated spirits in very high purity, pay the alcohol taxes…

Labs aren't buying their stuff at Walmart, so I don't know why they'd by affected by any remotely reasonable law. The supply houses can keep selling methylated alcohol, but let's get the unnecessary poisons off store shelves and out of consumer cabinets.

Except 100% ethanol would be considered a poison too. 100ml (4 ounces) could likely kill a 5 year old child. https://www.alcohol.org.nz/alcohol-its-effects/health-effect...

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#185

Post by kdunglas »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #84
southerntofu wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for the same reason it doesn't execute or torture criminals. I don't disagree with the idea, but to be precise torture and execution at the hand of police and secret services is still a thing in the EU. Especially since the covid lockdowns started almost two years ago, it seems police murders have raised significantly in some parts of the EU (like France).

The best data I could find was the following https://wp.unil.ch/space/files/2021/12/SPACE-II_2020_Final_r... Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics – SPACE II – 2020 - so evidently 2021 not published yet. that is the full report maybe take this https://wp.unil.ch/space/files/2021/06/KeyFindings_Probation... which is the keyfindings and a quicker read. Figure 3 on page 5 (in the keyfindings document) - Probation an…

The OP is probably referring to this well known article (in French): "In 2020, 27 deaths as a result of law enforcement response, including 12 during containment"

https://basta.media/recensement-interventions-policieres-let...

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#186

Post by [deleted] »

martyvis wrote: post #184
AlotOfReading wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labs aren't buying their stuff at Walmart, so I don't know why they'd by affected by any remotely reasonable law. The supply houses can keep selling methylated alcohol, but let's get the unnecessary poisons off store shelves and out of consumer cabinets.

Except 100% ethanol would be considered a poison too. 100ml (4 ounces) could likely kill a 5 year old child. https://www.alcohol.org.nz/alcohol-its-effects/health-effect...

[deleted]

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#187

Post by GlitchMr »

RC_ITR wrote: post #114
jmole wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sony is Japan’s Apple if anyone is. A company like Nintendo doesn’t seem like it has an American equivalent, and I actually can’t imagine a company like that surviving the ups and downs of the 80s/90s/00s tech cycles in the US, especially with our tendency towards M&A.

I would disagree - No one ever really assumed Sony would go out of business from a fundamental standpoint. They may have gone through a period of diminished value and failed projects (laptops, smartphones, etc.), but the PlayStation has always been a hit, the media arm has always been a 'Top 4' player, the headphones were always category-leading, the camera sensors were always top notch, and I'm sure I'm missing many…

Nintendo has a lot of money, a failure of a home console after Wii U probably would kill their home console division (no reason to continue making products if they all fail), but it wouldn't kill the company as a whole, in particular they would keep making handheld consoles.

Since Sony has entered home console market, Nintendo was essentially unable to compete with them. Nintendo 64, GameCube and Wii U weren't successful compared to PlayStation. Wii and Switch on the other hand succeeded by doing something completely different to what PlayStation did.

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#188

Post by dijonman2 »

wodenokoto wrote: post #121
chrisshroba wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry for my ignorance, but could someone give more context on this? I don't understand what "denatured alcohol" is, how it relates to tax avoidance, or what illegal use people are finding for it?

You tax alcohol for consumption but not for cleaning products, like rubbing alcohol. Now you need to figure out a way to stop people from consuming cleaning products.

Or lower alcohol tax

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#189

Post by noduerme »

jessriedel wrote: post #151
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's extremely rare, then this is a reasonable use case I don’t really see the point of risking poisoning people as a way of dissuading tax dodging especially when alternatives exist. In the same way we don’t put solid barriers on roads unless people walking need to be protected - when a barrier is there to dissuade a driver it’s designed so a car runs through a barrier without hurting the driver and passengers.

> I don’t really see the point of risking poisoning people as a way of dissuading tax dodging especially when alternatives exist. You're not disagreeing with what I wrote. > In the same way we don’t put solid barriers on roads unless people walking need to be protected Not true. We also put up barriers when people driving over the line would merely be a nuisance, e.g. in parking lots or to keep people from entering c…

Those nuisance barriers you mention are often intended to cause limited damage. For example, water barrels in a gore point or the gates of a parking garage which are made out of wood and intended to snap off.

The problem with the first sentence of your initial post is that you seem willing to justify some degree of death if it serves as a deterrent, even though you later claim that if other options are equally good deterrents then they should be used. This leaves open the possibility that if bittering agents don't deter as well, poison may be a reasonable choice. Yet the only thing we're talking about deterring is tax avoidance. In which case poison seems completely unreasonable. This leads one to suspect that you believe there are other public goods brought about by deterrence which would equal the weight of an occasional poisoning.

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#190

Post by kbelder »

jwineinger wrote: post #77
xen0 wrote: post #50

If you own a Switch, I encourage you to drop whatever it is you're doing and go lick one of the cartridges. You need to experience this.

I'm gonna avoid licking the cartridge I checked out from our library.

Uh, this is a tangent, but what? Libraries have Switch games? Is this common?
Post reply on HN