... electrical engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship ... Industrial and Systems engineering. He has worked in finance, procurement, and logistics ...sales, finance, and marketing.... early stage technology companies ... Big Data ... operations and sales ... drives the sales channels ... sales engineer in the desktop video conferencing market ... ...and that's it. So I'm supposed to upend the foundations…
Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders
131–140 of 178 posts
Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is Bitcoin a bad idea, and how do we not know what we are doing?
If bitcoin circulation is, in practice, much lower than it's generally believed to be - “We isolated all the large (≥ 50,000 Bitcoins) transactions which were ever recorded in the system, and analyzed how these amounts were accumulated and then spent. We discovered that almost all these large transactions were the descendants of a single large transaction involving 90,000 Bitcoins which took place on November 8th 201…
That's how I feel about Bitcoin. Circulation might not be a lot, and signs probably show that is not a lot, but it is disruptive. You also have to consider that perceived value is always reckoned into the 'actual' price. It depends on what market theories you ascribe to, but it is generally accepted that current prices reflect the market's capability to guess (and judge) futuer value. So, perceived value is often difficult to 'divorce' from the actual value, especially in the case with something like Bitcoin, where it is seen as both an asset and currency.
Another thing is the continuing trend of providing off-chain transactions (through companies such as Coinbase en Inputs.io).
Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, but I don't trust anyone who uses the phrase "Big ______". Your argument isn't even coherent. You're just making a fallacious appeal by putting the scary capital-B "Big" in front of a random noun and acting like that's supposed to mean something. Who makes up "Big Food"? Who controls "Big Food"? Why does "Big Food" necessarily make less healthy products than "independents"? I agree that a lot of mass produced…
He's not allowed to say "Big", but you can say "mass produced"? Those are pretty close. Why does "Big Food" necessarily make less healthy products than "independents"? I agree that a lot of mass produced food is unhealthy and probably excessively seasoned and sweetened to improve market appeal Take out that hedgey "necessarily" and you've answered your own question. that isn't really an argument To say that Ensure is…
Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
re: 4. Deflation is bad for the asset rich, but good for the asset poor. Inflation is good for the rich and bad for the poor. Those who usually spout the 'inflation is better than deflation' argument are the rich. The argument that inflationary expectation is better than deflationary expectation because during period of deflation purchasing stops because 'it will be cheaper tomorrow' is flawed because such periods of…
No, deflation is bad, period, for the economic actors who depend on deflationary currencies, and this is verified simply by looking at pretty much any historical instance of deflation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Historical_examples Notice how nothing good ever comes of deflation? That should be a hint. I would be highly suspicious of the unsourced "In Ireland" section: http://byline.timetric.com/2010/11/2…
> Perhaps Satoshi simply felt it was easier to implement finite Bitcoins than a constantly increasing supply. I don't think he can be blamed for that. Bitcoin is, if nothing else, certainly intriguing.
No, he was against inflation. In the first block of the blockchain, he added a message; it was something about Bernake approving a new bailout for the banks.
Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders
#135... electrical engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship ... Industrial and Systems engineering. He has worked in finance, procurement, and logistics ...sales, finance, and marketing.... early stage technology companies ... Big Data ... operations and sales ... drives the sales channels ... sales engineer in the desktop video conferencing market ... ...and that's it. So I'm supposed to upend the foundations…
Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's not allowed to say "Big", but you can say "mass produced"? Those are pretty close. Why does "Big Food" necessarily make less healthy products than "independents"? I agree that a lot of mass produced food is unhealthy and probably excessively seasoned and sweetened to improve market appeal Take out that hedgey "necessarily" and you've answered your own question. that isn't really an argument To say that Ensure is…
> He's not allowed to say "Big", but you can say "mass produced"? Those are pretty close. No, because "Big _____" is a Progressive catchphrase that is normally used to villify whatever their target is and rationalize taking away some freedom from the marketplace, wheras "mass produced" just means "mass produced." Of course, some people might use "Big _____" in a useful way, but it's definitely like a code smell but f…
It is true that people will often use it as a lazy and fallacious way of vilifying but please note this is not exclusively a progressive phenomenon. Many of these groups lobby for things like govt subsidies, laws which restrict personal freedoms in ways that help their industry, etc...many conservatives aren't thrilled with such behavior.
In a brief non scientific survey of a few subreddits (r/libertarian, r/socialism, etc) phrases like "big oil" appear roughly comparably.
People on both ends of the political spectrum are (perhaps rightly) displeased with some of the actions of such groups and vilify them - they just disagree about what the root cause is and how to prevent such behavior.
The fallacy comes in when people use some particular actions of some players in an industry to invalidate everything that comes out of it. (such as implying that anything produced by a startup is ipso facto healthier than something produced by a large pharmaceutical company)
Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
re: 4. Deflation is bad for the asset rich, but good for the asset poor. Inflation is good for the rich and bad for the poor. Those who usually spout the 'inflation is better than deflation' argument are the rich. The argument that inflationary expectation is better than deflationary expectation because during period of deflation purchasing stops because 'it will be cheaper tomorrow' is flawed because such periods of…
You absolutely have 4 backwards. Deflation is good for those rich enough to have money sitting around, and who can make money just by sitting on it and not investing it. Inflation is bad for the rich because suddenly they have to DO something with the money, or it disappears.
Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, marketing?
Well, sure, everything can be thrown under "marketing," because obviously if no one knew about it no one would be talking about it.
And it certainly doesn't make a product whose only improvement is marketing something worthy of equal attention to a product that actually improves some other aspect.
Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders
#139Just as Soylent is disrupting the traditional food industry Huh? I've asked this before and never got an answer. How is Soylent different from Ensure Complete? Is it cheaper? Better made? Easier to order? Tastes better? Better for me? Higher quality? Because if it isn't really any different then what Soylent will need to do is market better than those other companies. Because I'd definitely trust Abbott with my healt…
Why on earth should I not eat natural and unprocessed foods?
It seems to me that this is what our bodies are trained to process. Why change that?
Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders
#140Every time I see a Soylent article on HN I hope that it's all just a sick joke that will soon be revealed as an elaborate hoax and forgotten about. Why the hell would anyone in their right mind base their entire diet off of some liquid concoction made up by some random guy who is clearly not a nutritionist? Why don't you guys just learn to eat a healthy and balanced diet?
Can anyone recommend an authoritative compendium of what that is please? Preferably linking to multi-year statistically significant studies that take into account the obvious externalities ( local weather, amount of exercise, genetics, time of eating etc). I don't really want to make nutrition research another time-consuming hobby, but I don't want to unnecessarily kill myself faster either.