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

#401

Post by kelseydh » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:01 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.

And most software products are just skins around databases. What's your point?

This notion that some development should be considered "high tech" while other development should be considered "low tech" is one that bothers me, both for its elitism and for its simplemindedness.

Yes, the skills needed to make a pretty CRUD app may be "lower tech" than the skills needed for someone to master, say, machine learning.

But there are also many University professors doing work considered "high tech" who couldn't practically architect or code a basic application to save their lives.

Meanwhile you have CRUD app developers contributing to frameworks that powerfully advance productivity being looked down upon because they only work in "kiddie languages" like Ruby or Javascript. Their work, even when it produces very high value appreciated by millions, is looked down upon as little more than copy-and-paste coding -- with zero appreciation given to how long it takes to develop the heuristics to do this kind of work well.

I don't think this attitude is healthy. A more healthy attitude would be to recognize that value can be created in different ways.

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

#402

Post by bbcbasic » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:02 AM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #368

JanezStupar wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A contract you had no participation in drafting and never signed, yet you are compelled at gunpoint to uphold it. Nice spin tho.

well if every generation had to write their laws from scratch we'd never get anything done. You have to accept that as someone coming into an already occupied world that some rules will have been made prior to your birth. You can campaign against them but just don't expect not to be challenged if you break them.

Damn law of gravity!

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

#403

Post by gaius » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:04 AM UTC

nether wrote: post #377

Animats wrote: post #196

Soylent made such a big deal of being a "tech company", and boasted about their overdesigned web infrastructure for a business that did two transactions a minute. What they didn't have is advanced technology on the production side. They write about "sending samples out" to external labs. It's not like they had an automated lab constantly sampling their production line and posting the results to the web. There are pro…

Their main product is their ecommerce tech stack. Soylent is a side project.

Because the world was crying out for another "ecommerce tech stack"?

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

#404

Post by i386 » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:05 AM UTC

JanezStupar wrote: post #330

Quarrelsome wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, law is social contract between peers, not slave=>master.

A contract you had no participation in drafting and never signed, yet you are compelled at gunpoint to uphold it. Nice spin tho.

You can't have a society without having any social constructs.

Nice try at Libertarianism tho.

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

#405

Post by dkersten » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:07 AM UTC

orbifold wrote: post #389

_23sd wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wouldn't eat 3 oranges in a row I would! I tend to go overboard on fruit if I don't stop myself. Apples, oranges, blueberries, cantaloupe, all so delicious...Not always pleasant for digestion and probably a bit of sugar rush, but do you know of any more serious health effects?

Eating too much sugar has serious long term health effects.

Ignoring the effect on your teeth, it was my understanding that the fibre in fruit helped counteract many of the negative effects of fructose (at least, keeping your insulin in check). I don't have any proof on hand, so perhaps I'm wrong.

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

#406

Post by gaius » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:07 AM UTC

Matachines wrote: post #85

djsumdog wrote: post #11

I'm really amazed by all the supporters on here. When I first heard about Soylent, I thought it was a terrible terrible idea. I mean, there's so much to food. It's not just eating it, it's all the flavours and ingredients and cooking with friends and loved ones and parties and such. I'm guessing most people on here use it as a supplement + regular food, but when I saw it originally, it seemed like it was intended to…

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…

Right, but where's the tech innovation? I mean check it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Met-Rx - meal replacement powders/shakes have been around for a looooong time, and you can order online too...

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

#407

Post by gaius » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:11 AM UTC

ensiferum wrote: post #323

Evgeny wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you eat 5,000 kcal a day and not be a huge fat pig? How many miles a day do you need to run to burn that off? On the days when I lift weights I eat close to 5K calories, sometimes even a little more, depending on the commute. All of my daily commute is by bike, including taking my kid to and from the kindergarten, and later to some extra activities (welcome to Denmark), which can be anywhere between 20 and 35…

Thats quite a bit of cycling. Don't you think all that cycling is getting into your lifting? I used to cycle about 10km a day and found that it was already hampering leg training at the gym.

Not if you are eating 5000 kcals and getting enough sleep...

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

#408

Post by sambe » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:13 AM UTC

fintechie wrote: post #365

tomp wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But does that change the nutritional value of garlic (as opposed to changing just the taste)?

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

But those properties may not be relevant to you when consuming garlic anyway. The vast majority of such studies are showing the properties in isolation (petri-dish).

People love to extrapolate that to "garlic prevents colds", but it doesn't follow. I'm not going to pay to read the full article in this case but you at least have to be careful about this.

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

#409

Post by skuhn » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:14 AM UTC

jasonlaramburu wrote: post #32

deepGem wrote: post #26

Man, this is a bummer. As much as I hate the concept of Soylent as food, I see it as the only way to scale food production for the growing population, without killing our planet. The other options are still in the labs. Artificial tissues for instance. Vertical farming is one alternative, but that is again fraught with massive energy consumption. I hope Soylent gets to solve this.

Isn't Soylent primarily made from rice and soybeans? These are commodity crops that require huge amounts of fossil fuels (chemical fertilizer, fuel for tractors, transportation, processing) and government subsidies in order to be profitably cultivated.

Gotta check the latest release notes [1]. No more rice in Soylent Powder version 1.6.

I find the concept of release notes for things I eat pretty discomforting. Not that I would ever put Soylent in my food hole.

[1] http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-release-notes-1-6-en.pd...

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

#410

Post by DanBC » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:14 AM UTC

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #191

warfangle wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still curious why the soylent thing has hit it off in the HN crowd and not, say, Slimfast. Which is basically the same thing but with more production hardening. Maybe fragile masculinity? IDK.

Marketing. I've never heard of slimfast, and if I had I would immediately discount it because I'm not overweight, nor do I eat badly. Soylent was simply the first product I heard of that did the meal replacement "with everything you need nutritionally" thing. Not saying it was the first, just that it was the first I'd heard of it. Never actually went out and got it, but was close because I was at a time in my life wh…

> Not saying it was the first, just that it was the first I'd heard of it.

There are a wide variety of sole-source of nutrition liquid feeds.

The reason you haven't heard of them is because they've been marketed to medical professionals, for use with ill people, and not to the general public.

The lack of caution in the promotion of Soylent is a worrying sign.