skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah really. If that figure is incorrect, building a better cook stove would be an excellent place to apply some engineering know-how. Reinventing food is less so.
Certainly. I'm looking forward to the invite! Do you have any API docs at this time?
It's a pretty important fact. If the creator is trying to justify the adoption of Soylent as a meal replacement by using this fact (obviously not by itself) then they need to be careful to use facts clearly. The phrasing in the pitch blames 2 million deaths upon indoor cooking, which is inaccurate.
In the end though, it's just food. I could launch a kickstarter campaign that sold veggie shakes and claim it makes people feel healthier when they drink them and it would be no more harmful than this campaign.
Microsoft said ahead of time that all software-related discussion would be saved for E3. This was a features and hardware-only event.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/20/4347614/microsoft-reveals-i...
I think you are right, but organized movements only work with grassroots efforts. It's up to organized movements to mobilize a grassroots base to effect change. We've seen how successful this is in political campaigns (the Republics were hurt in numerous elections by their lack of "ground game"). Additionally, and I mention this elsewhere, this is really a social problem, not technological. If the government (or corporation or powerful individual) wants to get me (via surveillance or anything else) the only thing that's stopping them from doing so is social norms and the laws those norms reflect. Without those, no amount of technology will keep me safe. With them, we can hope for a normal existence with all its requisite benefits (i.e. technology).

The only way for us to protect ourselves is through political and social action.
If any of you are foolhardy enough to try this stuff, please please please get your physician to do a full workup before, and do regular repeat checkups.
Re-read his first post. It initially cost him a little over $150/month.
But I expect a book for that sort of money. I'll gladly pay shipping costs on top of that price. On demand printing costs $4 per copy, I just checked.

Buy it, upload the PDF to an on demand printer, send yourself a copy? :-)
"Soylent is perfectly balanced and optimized for your body and lifestyle, meaning it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition."

Bull-fucking-shit.

This is a product made by four twenty-somethings, none of whom appears to have a background in nutrition or any kind of health studies. To trust your health to these people would be fucking stupid. Jesus.

Also: They've got to be violating some kind of FDA rules. So that'll be fun. When they get sued. Or accidentally harm someone.

Please. Do not back these people.

-----

Edit: What FDA rule do I think they're violating? I don't know, exactly. But I doubt you can say things like "it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition" without having some actual data backing you up.
I'm actually curious to hear how you built this! :) As someone learning to code, myself.
The same could be said for a McDonalds.
Agreed. I'm a pretty good cook, but I can't stand doing it upwards of 99% of the time. I appreciate the shit out of a good meal, but I appreciate a mediocre meal that took me 0 effort to acquire much, much more than even the best meal that took me so much as 1 effort to acquire. Pour water into container and shake is about as low effort as I can imagine for a nutritionally complete meal, and if I die from liver failure after a month then I just wasn't meant to be.
I think it says something that a person like myself, who could previously be counted on to buy each new generation of console is unmoved by Xbox One.

Maybe you just got old? It takes a lot to get me to play a video game these days.
thanks but no thanks. my teevee comes with android play.
This would possibly interest me, but including nootropics without listing them seems incredibly scary. It's one thing to include all the normal vitamins and minerals your body needs, but to take it a step further and include mind-altering substances seems absurd and questionably legal.

Maybe by "nootropics" they just mean everyday vitamins that have been shown to benefit your brain, but that's certainly not what I think of when I hear that term. Then again, maybe there's somewhere online where they actually list what they're using, but I couldn't find any details on the campaign page.
There was some discussion regarding the Facetime and open sourcing it on HN a while back, I can't find the source this quickly, but it was mentioned that Apple found itself on the barrel end of a lawsuit gun... and that because of that they have not improved Facetime much, nor innovated on it, or published any of the spec.

---

Edit: Found this: http://www.joecieplinski.com/blog/2013/03/30/hey-apple-where...
http://www.imore.com/apple-fined-368-million-facetime-patent...
http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/virnetx-slaps-ap...
We don't have to use Google, nor Facebook, and we can still buy prepaid mobile phones with cash, and it's up to us just how much information we share online.

Maybe I'm a hermit, but I'm online every day and images associated with my name are quite scarce.

Add to that the fact that there are literally dozens of Americans who share my exact name, my privacy worries are negligle within the context proposed by the author.

That said, I do agree with the premise that surveillance is growing increasingly intrusive, thus my habits outlined above.
Wow, it's like the "Hacker News Is Depressing" Article didn't happen. I trust the Soylent folks more than I trust myself purchasing frozen meals in a grocery store. It's hard to be worse than that benchmark.
thoughts anyone?
Poor Uni student here, I spend ~$2.75/day on Soylent Orange. Blood work after 8 months is peachy. Of course I still buy food, but my overall food bill is way lower than anyone I know.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjA38cUd4BZBdGZ...
Is this true for Xbox One as well?
Food Swapping
In my experience I read faster than I listen and more importantly, I pay more attention. Can't focus on video instructions for the life of me.

A two-way conversation or even a live person talking work well enough. But if I want to understand something in great detail and be sure that I get it, I'm going to need text.
This is an interesting parallel to another article on the front-page right now:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5743419
facebooked is also a frequent use
a great amount of that waste is time sensitive foods but there are those moments when I been surprised by the date on canned or similar food and wonder, how did I forget that?

I do not think a lifestyle change is required on the Western world's part, this all about politics. Even when disasters strike not all aid is accepted and it is either purely political or with religious overtones.
I still don't see an ingredients list. I believe one will be required to sell this in the U.S.

http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/GuidanceRegulation/UCM2654...
This isn't the talk where I would expect any mention of developer stuff like XNA. It wasn't even core gamer targeted, with such a heavy focus on sports/Call of Duty. This was meant for a wider audience. E3 is the earliest I would expect them to publicly talk about the developer tools.
Xbox One: It's not just about gaming
I built a proof of concept for something like this for someone quite a while ago... what he had that you desperately need is channels. This is entirely useless with any amount of people (particularly when spammers can't be controlled, which is just how the net is). Excellent idea, but it needs some concept of segmentation to be useful.
Rob Rhinehart said he would be doing a kickstarter a long time ago. This isn't news, it's a followup to what he promised. Why is this horrible/end-of-the-world? I don't have the time or knowledge to safely track down and mix the materials myself, I will happily pay a premium for someone else to do so.
I am not a hardware guy so pardon my ignorance, but my question is , if you already have a full general purpose computer running linux on a board, why do you need Arduino on that board also ? can't you just connect sensors directly to the linux box ?
This went from "interesting self-hacking experiment worth watching" to " train wreck of a health and liability hazard" in a fairly short time.

Not good.
According to microsoft you are from a breed as rare as the dodo.

Seems like the real next gen gaming console will be i5 with low profile 7950 shoved in HTPC enclosure.

I want to play some games for fun. But seems we will be getting enhanced online multiplayer socially enabled jump controlled experiences instead.
I'm afraid that even in the console world the gamers are now becoming a minority, Nintendo opened the way and now the others follow, the "hardcore" , whatever that means, gamers are a minority, you need them for the launch and some games but they are really an small proportion of the possible customers.
Which Internet Companies protect our data from the government
It's the blu-ray player.
> Google is the ONE company that you should want to invade a new market

Bull Hockey. Google is the LAST company that I want to invade my market.

Google has gobs of cash that they can inject into a market to produce a mediocre service and provide it to users for free.

Anyone else competing in that market space now instantly loses any chance for profitability because why would someone pay for your service when Google gives it for free?

Time marches on, and everyone leaves that market space except Google. Google still calls the service "beta" while they try to figure out how to monetize it.

Then, since there's no real way that can monetize that service, they discontinue it, leaving users in the lurch (or at best, migrating them to some other Google service which they can monetize).

You can fanboy Google all you'd like, but they are NOT the benevolent Bringer of All The Interwebs at all times.

Sometimes, injecting stupid amounts of cash into a niche market doesn't always help that market out.
Gotcha. Fair enough. Perhaps I shouldn't have said "duh".
Oh come on, no console - including the 360 - has ever been like that. There has never been an anti-virus, much less one that prompts you at startup. Console software updates are few and far between (twice a year on MS's schedule), not to mention it looks like they're doing more and more in the background.

Nor has Microsoft or Sony ever held up anything so you can watch a special offer. This is just FUD.

Go watch the keynote, they cover all of this. They're betting on voice control lowering the "depth" of the UI. Instead of "TV -> live TV -> Sy Fy -> Star Trek" it's just "go watch Star Trek", ditto for on-demand, ditto for sports, ditto for games even. Everything they showed today indicates single-action-to-final-destination.
Why is their Apple logo (printed at the bottom of every page) so horrendously ugly? http://d.pr/i/dCoo
Hey, I'm talking about Salient's way of handling the portfolio arrays are the same[0] as the one on this site.

[0] http://themenectar.ticksy.com/ticket/46881
It's a meaningless platitude.

> it's concrete advice

No, it's not. Your inability to defined whether it's good or bad advice, whether it's helpful or not, does not make it concrete.

It makes it a platitude. Oh shit, I reflected on death. Woohoo.

Now what?
Are we not allowed to criticise anymore? Chasing makes a good point. They simply stated several claims, and didn't even attempt to substantiate them at all.
I find it somewhat funny that the original New Yorker article about the tech industry's insularity is itself hidden behind a paywall; I actually wanted to submit the Packer article itself this morning but didn't bother. Nonetheless, I do think Johnson does a decent job of giving the other side.

But I did send this as a letter to the editor, since it concerns a pet peeve that I constantly see in the media:

George Packer's essay on Silicon Valley's politics makes several references to housing prices, including that "the past two years have seen a twenty-per-cent rise in homelessness, largely because of the soaring cost of housing." But he doesn't mention how supply and demand affect pricing, as Matt Yglesias does in The Rent is Too Damn High or Edward Glaeser does in The Triumph of the City. Both writers have correctly observed that many urban jurisdictions prevent housing from being built to accommodate growing demand; as a result, prices rise. It's not primarily tech companies or their employees who have driven housing prices in Silicon Valley: it's residents themselves, and the courts that have given residents and politicians extraordinary powers to block development—which is why "San Francisco is becoming a city without a middle class."
I get that the name "Soylent" was originally coined in a book that did not involve cannibalism in any way, but it still seems like a very bad choice of name. "Soylent green is people" is much more well known than any allusion to Make Room! Make Room! can possibly be.
What more do you want them to tell you as a gamer about the new system? They released specs and talked about the cloud gaming capabilities. Having more 3rd party game makers demo games for the system doesn't really improve my appeal to the console.

I already knew the new xbox would be the next gaming console. It seems like they went for the non-obvious, and wanted to talk about the other features. The games are going to be the draw for gamers, and I'm sure those will be just fine.
How did they alienate gamers? Gamers know first and foremost that XBox is a gaming console. They should especially know that after being shown the demo of CoD Ghost. This really is a great move for them, as gamers see the benefit of additional functionality and non-gamers see an intriguing entertainment platform.

I'm a diehard PC fan though so I probably won't get a console anyways
Pirate Bay User Downloads Visualized in Real-Time Art Installation
Randy Pausch, the Carnegie professor known for The Last Lecture, once expressed a brilliant way one of his mentors talked to him about being a jerk:

"And he put his arm around my shoulders and we went for a little walk and he said, Randy, it’s such a shame that people perceive you as so arrogant. Because it’s going to limit what you’re going to be able to accomplish in life. What a hell of a way to word “you’re being a jerk.” [laughter] Right? He doesn’t say you’re a jerk. He says people are perceiving you this way and he says the downside is it’s going to limit what you’re going to be able to accomplish."

I always think it would be interesting if that approach could be abstracted into a tool for online community 'civility management'. Could the upvote/downvote approach be amended? Could there be another upvote option for civility? A button to remind people to relax and take the angst somewhere else? I don't know. The best approach might be far removed from the users-as-voters paradigm.
Yes.

Yes, what? What are you replying to? I didn't ask a question.
Where is the ingredients list and/or spreadsheet?
Not announced yet but I'd be surprised if they give up that cash cow.

The only thing they said is that Xbox Live will continue to be based around the subscription you have now. So, Xbox Live will still cost $50/year. What services require Xbox Live on the Xbox One is not announced yet but based on the 360 the answer is probably almost everything.
More than a nutritionist, they probably need a ten year double-blind study. "We tried it on ourselves for a few months" isn't long enough for some deficiencies to present themselves, lacks a control, and both the investigators and the test subjects are aware of what they're taking in.
For me...the first xbox really rocked my world. I dropped in a mod-chip, used XBMC and my eyes for a home-entertainment system that can read digital files were finally opened.

I haven't used an optical disc for a movie since.

I used the original XboX, then transitioned to 360, then to PS3 - now my PS3 does what all of my previous xboxes did.

But....the truth is, with the 360, I was so blown away by how easy it was to connect to all my MSFT networked devices that I would gladly give this new xbox a chance to rock my world again.

MSFT has really gotten XboX right. Every. Single. Time.

I hope they don't try to lock down this one - where you can't play 'pirated content' and they have some hardware DRM or some bullshit like that.

That's the only reason I will wait until others try it out.

If it doesn't allow me to watch the content I want to watch - then I won't get it.

If I can......I just may.

Then again...my current PS3 is already pretty awesome so I may not need to.
I would be stunned if it was. It seems entirely unjustifiable unless it is just an artifact of the 360 software being designed with only with online services that use Microsoft servers in mind. They clearly know that isn't the case anymore though, it would be pretty damn shitty of them to keep ripping people off like that.
YM dietitian. A dietitian is someone with the relevant educational background, at least in the US. (The title of "nutritionist", in contrast, has no legal requirements, so they are perfectly free to call themselves nutritionists if they want to.)
Studies show that it takes less than a second for visitors to determine - based on appearances - whether or not your site will bring them value. The Nielson Norman Group says that in addition to this, you only have ten seconds to provide written-proof of that value:

> the first 10 seconds of the page visit are critical for users' decision to stay or leave. The probability of leaving is very high during these first few seconds because users are extremely skeptical, having suffered countless poorly designed Web pages in the past. People know that most Web pages are useless, and they behave accordingly to avoid wasting more time than absolutely necessary on bad pages.

> To gain several minutes of user attention, you must clearly communicate your value proposition within 10 seconds.

> http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-long-do-users-stay-on-we...

The author is assuming a few things: (a) that most visitors to your site are there because they intended to be and don't need their hand held to get to the next step, (b) that there is only one 'next step' to send them to, and (c) that your short description is a list of bullet-points as opposed to a sentence or two.

For one, I don't think we can assume the intent and understanding of most users. I visit more sites daily that I don't have a clue about than those that I do, but maybe I'm a small percentage. Secondly, depending on the product, I think bullet points can be just as effective as a short blurb (especially if you have a tagline that does a good job summing things up). Pinboard (http://pinboard.in/) is a great example of this.
Why do people use really inefficient dirty open fires to cook? Why aren't they using better stoves? It's not as if a stove requires huge amounts of resources.

Or better still, why not just let them eat cake? Then they won't need stoves or fires at all! Those poor people out in third-world countries sure are silly....

Sarcasm aside, if someone can't afford a better stove they're not going to be able to afford Soylent, so it's a pretty ridiculous benefit to cite in the first place.
Then it must be the green flavor.
I think that the difference is that Soylent aims to replace (or come close to replacing) one's entire diet.
Netflix on the 360 requiring Xbox Live is not an artifact. It's just a cash grab.

The 360 was the first console to offer Netflix and they had exclusivity for a while so they could do it. Once the exclusivity ended they didn't make it free because they felt no need to because lots of people continued to pay up.
Some spammy things throw away the + because they know they are optional. Having your own domain is nice because you can set it up to make <anything>@yourdomain.com work.
Chasing is clearly spreading FUD. Claiming they are breaking FDA rules, without any backup to that assertion is pretty much the definition of FUD. What FDA rules could they be violating?

----Edit: Also noticed this----

Soylent will be produced in an FDA-approved facility with strict regulatory controls ensuring safety.
This is not a veggie shake though. I'm pretty sure most people who eat this would eat this in conjunction with other foods, but the few that really do try to eat Soylent alone, and for long periods of time, which is exactly the idea they're pushing, that may be harmful.
Thank you Chris. This is one of the best posts I have ever read.

I know what that doubt is like.
I don't know what helping someone through terminal cancer is like - yet. Thinking of you all.
It uses Crowdtilt to process payments, which takes 2.5%. Although the wording of the statement isn't crystal clear; they may charge the people wishing to contribute an extra 2.5%? Regardless, 2.5% gets skimmed off for payment processing.

https://www.crowdtilt.com/learn/fees
Its not like one article would change the behavior of everyone on here.

HN has pessimism in its culture, and most of the best comments are the critical ones.
I really enjoy this campaign because it gave me an excuse to compare it with snake oil labels. (https://www.google.com/search?q=snake+oil+label&tbm=isch...)

The characteristic of this kind of marketing that I enjoy the most is the presence of what I call 'linguistic asymptotes.'

These are words that imply a product has unparalleled or infinite properties.

On the soylent page we have "ubiquitous", "perfectly", "optimized", "automatically", and "optimal" all in the first paragraph.

On a sample of snake oil labels we have 'instantaneously', 'cures all aches and pains', 'always', 'strongest', and 'immediate.'

It's very difficult for a claim that contains a linguistic asymptote to be true, but it's cognitively very easy to understand and process. You don't have to consider your personal medical history, or cost, or anything else really, because the product is 'always' right for you!

Fun stuff.
People are working on this very problem: http://ecozoomstove.com/
The name has nothing to do with Soy, its a reference to a movie titled Soylent Green (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green)
Heh, need to work on my QA. Thanks :-) I'll be sure to check various browsers when I rewrite it.
"We have been testing Soylent on ourselves for several months and the data shows it to have a positive nutritional benefit."

No shit.
Seriously, who is going to try this powder made by this twenty-somethings guys with no background in any kind of health nor nutrition studies.

It reminds me to the Power Balance scam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Balance
They've got to be violating some kind of FDA rules.

Like what?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_Drug_Administration#Fo...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_food_and_dietary_...

"The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 mandated that the FDA regulate dietary supplements as foods, rather than as drugs. Therefore, dietary supplements are not subject to safety and efficacy testing and there are no approval requirements. The FDA can take action against dietary supplements only after they are proven to be unsafe. Manufacturers of dietary supplements are permitted to make specific claims of health benefits, referred to as "structure or function claims" on the labels of these products."