Particle Video (flash) - <AUTHOR> http://unitzeroone.com/labs/particleVideo/

<comment><USER2> I think Fairlights recent demos deserve mentioning:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ2iQQvofCE&hd=1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ2iQQvofCE&hd=1) Ceasefire (all fall down..) by CNCD vs Fairlight, presented at Assembly 2010

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk_hlhVqg_8&hd=1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk_hlhVqg_8&hd=1) CNCD vs Fairlight: Agenda Circling Forth, presented at Breakpoint 2010

</comment><comment><USER3> It's amazing but it makes my eyes hurt. It reminds me of an old B/W "Опера" TV set.

</comment><comment><USER4> I tried playing some heavy metal clips with it. It is now the tool I use to watch video clips.

</comment><comment><USER5> Really impressive! Good job</comment>


Meat-free 'Impossible Burger 2.0' tastes even closer to the real deal - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/07/impossible-burger-2/ <comment><USER3> Congrats to that team for building a great product. I hope they see a lot of success. Long term, I hope plant based meat alternatives become commoditized. If there are a bunch of alternatives that taste just as good and importantly _are cheaper than meat_ , most people will switch. That's a huge win for the environment (and also animal rights), and I can't wait to see it happen.

<comment><USER4> Until the people currently destroying forests to grow cattle, start destroying forests to grow ingredients for these burgers. Soil depletion is also a thing. I still remember the argument for biofuel and where it ended up.

More options in the mix is always good, but trying to replace everything with vegetable stuff is not going to work in the long run.

<comment><AUTHOR> Plant-based foods are almost always significantly more efficient to produce than meat since you no longer need to grow all of the food to feed an animal for its entire life.

From another article ( [https://www.cnet.com/news/impossible- burger-2-0-tastes-like-...](https://www.cnet.com/news/impossible- burger-2-0-tastes-like-beef-really/) ):

> But Impossible Foods can produce a burger using a fourth of the water and > less than 4 percent of the land -- and emit one-tenth of the greenhouse > gases -- than a conventional burger, Brown said.

So yeah, we might still destroy forests to make veggie burgers, but it'll be 1/25th of the forest destruction (if you believe the numbers).

<comment><USER5> The rolling hills of Wales and northern England are never going to be great for crops, but they are perfect grassland for feeding cattle and lamb.

The grass hills are beautiful, it would be a great shame to see them converted to crops. I would argue they won't be, and therefore the cattle raised on them is effecient.

<comment><USER6> Decreasing meat consumption would dramatically decrease the amount of land amount used for crop agriculture, not increase it. 85% of the UK's landmass is grazing land and crops grown specifically as animal feed[1].

In 2010, the British livestock industry needed an area the size of Yorkshire just to produce the soy used in feed. But if global demand for meat grows as expected, the report says, soy production would need to increase by nearly 80% by 2050. [2]

From a completely theoretical standpoint, if humans were to stop consuming meat we would actually need to close 1000's of crop farms, not open them on rolling hills, even when accounting for our dietary increase in plants. I'd therefore argue that it's a shame the land has to be used for agriculture at all. Better would be to maintain them as national parks and the like.

[1][http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378017...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378017301176)

[2] (PDF WARNING) [https://www.wwf.org.uk/sites/default/files/2017-10/WWF_Appet...](https://www.wwf.org.uk/sites/default/files/2017-10/WWF_AppetiteForDestruction_Summary_Report_SignOff.pdf)

<comment><USER7> More national parks! As a recreational hiker and walker that would be a dream. I'd go vegetarian myself if it guaranteed even 50% more parkland.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> These burgers are not a suitable nutritional replacement for beef. Beef contains cholesterol, zero carbs, and has a different vitamin/mineral profile.

This stuff has no cholesterol and (a small amount of) carbs while also containing way more salt, thiamine (vitamin B1), and folate (vitamin B9): [https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/beef- products/6205/2](https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/beef-products/6205/2)

[http://livablefutureblog.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/05/impo...](http://livablefutureblog.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/05/impossburger-nutritfacts-copy.jpg)

FYI, both folate and thiamine over-consumption may be linked to cancer:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29529163](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29529163)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4178204/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4178204/)

So while it is fine for people to eat it for "pleasure", it may be dangerous to trick the mind into thinking it is consuming a real burger.

<comment><USER9> That is interesting but I don't think that it would be healthy for people to eat beef burgers as their primary source of nutrition either. What annoys me about the fake meat is that in the dystopian future soymeat was supposed to be everywhere and cheaper where real meat was a sought after expensive delicacy but due to government subsidies and hding the costs of environmental externalities real meat remains much cheaper than the fake meats in general. Just saying.

<comment><USER8> The economics/politics of it is a different issue. I am concerned about the danger of tricking people's minds into thinking the body has consumed something with nutritional value other than it really has. Humans have been consuming beef for a long time.

<comment><USER10> > I am concerned about the danger of tricking people's minds into thinking the > body has consumed something with nutritional value other than it really has.

I think you're overreacting here. Impossible Burgers are slightly different, nutritionally speaking, from regular burgers, but it's not like one is 100% carbohydrates and the other is pure protein. They're relatively similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's really cool. Although I wish there were more vegan food that didn't try to replicate non-vegan textures and flavors. Imitation can only be playing catch-up. The best vegan and vegetarian food does its own thing.

<comment><USER12> Being born in India, I've had the privilege to eat vegetarian meals that can rival even the best meat based meal.

While I welcome 'impossible' meat replacements, it is funny that the meat reduction movement is looking at such impractical and immature products instead of simpler solutions such as bringing veg friendly cuisines to the fore.

I am opposed to advocating for cold-turkey veganism though. Milk products and eggs are great meat substitutes, and the lack of both makes entire cuisines inaccessible.

<comment><USER13> Being of Indian descent, I might be biased. But Indian cuisine is the only cuisine I'm aware of where being vegetarian isn't a compromise in the creativity, quality, and sheer flavors available to you.

For other cuisines, where centuries of culinary creativity mostly went towards making meat, this is the only viable approach to weaning us off growing animals for meaty foods.

<comment><USER14> There are also quite a few German/Austrian dishes that are sweet but are a full meal. Look up "Kaiserschmarrn" or " Zwetschgenknoedel". "Kässpätzle" are not sweet but also a full meal.

<comment><USER15> But to be frank, while Austrian desserts-as-main-course could qualify as vegetarian cuisine, most main courses aren't vegetarian, and at least include a little bit of bacon here and there.

<comment><USER14> The dishes I mentioned aren't considered desserts. They are main courses.

<comment><USER15> Well, I am Austrian, and I consider them both desserts and main courses.

<comment><USER14> I guess you Austrians must be doing things wrong :-). In Bavaria I have never seen Kaiserschmarrn as dessert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm really curious about the "fake meat" products that exist in other countries. In the Netherlands, there's been enormous growth both in the number of vegetarians and in the number of "fake meat" products that have become widely available, and the quality of the latter has improved dramatically. Before, these products were mostly useful for the non-vegetarians wanting to prepare a meal for vegetarians without having to relearn how to do it (with actual vegetarians preferably preparing vegetarian-first meals, e.g. with nuts and beans rather than fake meat). However, nowadays these products have become so good that they're actually of added value to a meal in terms of taste.

Interestingly, they do not appear to place as much focus on matching actual meat as much as the foreign products that are usually the subject of articles like these. Instead, they merely have to taste good and have good texture - <USER2> doesn't matter if it's still somewhat different from actual meat (sometimes they even taste better).

At the forefront of this has been the Vegetarian Butcher (that's a brand name). They've recently been acquired by Unilever and will likely expand internationally more aggressively. I have the feeling that the Netherlands is friendlier to vegetarians, on average, than other Western countries, and if that will give them an advantage. Time will tell!

<comment><USER17> We have a few available in the US, my favorite is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn#Production](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn#Production) which is not vegan as it contains some amount of egg. But the majority of the product is made from soil mold protein, which is what makes it unique among the options I have available.

<comment><USER16> Ah, you have Quorn as well? Back when there was not that much choice in the Netherlands, Quorn was one of the few brands that was available. It doesn't taste as good as most others in my opinion, though, and also has the disadvantage of not having added some nutrients that vegans and vegetarians often miss out on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of the smaller Asian grocers in New York City has made the best fake meat I've had by far, and I wouldn't be surprised if it sources for many of the vegetarian Asian restaurants in the city. [http://www.maywahnyc.com/](http://www.maywahnyc.com/) I wonder how many other places exist in the world like it, and how much a little bit of marketing would do for them.

<comment><USER19> The tradition of "mock meats" in Buddhist culture is one of the oldest. I've found some of their veggie meats to taste really close to real meats, and they tackle things like fish and tuna, which hasn't been addressed much in the west. [https://www.tastecooking.com/buddhist-mock-meats- paradox/](https://www.tastecooking.com/buddhist-mock-meats-paradox/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm disappointed they switched away from seitan / gluten protein to soy protein. I just like wheat protein better, it feels better to me. But there's tremendous--and unfounded--pressure to eliminate gluten. Sad.

<comment><USER21> It's not unfounded ... for whatever reason, it seems very few people are allergic to soy, whereas more than 1% of population (Americans ? not sure) have 'allergies' to gluten.

My daughter has diagnosed celiac disease, so I'm glad for any pressure to eliminate gluten :) I'm also amazed at how many things you wouldn't imagine have gluten :(

<comment><USER20> "Celiac disease" is not an allergy. It's an autoimmune response.

[https://www.chop.edu/conditions-diseases/celiac- disease](https://www.chop.edu/conditions-diseases/celiac-disease)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I unironically can't wait to read release notes about newer versions of my food

<comment><USER23> Not only this, but we should have continuous integration testing.

Each batch of every product should be run through a litany of health and safety tests, and such a thing could be crowdsourced.

<comment><USER24> Would be cool if first X% of every batch got a discount, provided they submit a simple QA report.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Whether accurate or not, lots of opinion swirls around the effects that eating soy has on testosterone levels in men. Even if these plant based "meats" are indistinguishable in flavor and texture, they might end up losing to lab grown meat in the long run because of concerns like that.

<comment><USER26> That sounds like concern trolling, but I'll bite: a meta analysis of controlled trials is unequivocal [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19524224](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19524224)

<comment><USER27> Having looked at a few of these studies I found the following problems

1\. Industry sponsorship. Which has been shown to produce wildly biased results.

2\. Small, short term studies which can only find a "significant" (i.e. statistically significant) effect if the effect is large and immediate.

In some of the studies an effect showed up close to statistical significance but the headline was "no effect found"

3\. I don't know about this one, but some analyses have found that a majority of review papers were ghost written by industry PR hacks who them paid professors to put their names on them.

I suggest read the papers closely and looking hard at sponsorship issues before believing them.

Also note that these studies were on adult men. There is every reason to suspect that the developing male fetus is orders of magnitude more vulnerable to environmental hormone disruptors of all kinds.

<comment> village-idiot Honestly, industry money is so prevalent in nutritional research that we might need to throw away everything after Ancel Keys and try again

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Blinks- I wonder if they balanced the amino acid profile correctly, if this is not a complete protein then it wold detract from the main reason I eat meat, for simple exercise recovery. One of the problems I have with grain protein sources is they are rarely formulated in a way that allows for slow absorption and it forces me to look up what amino acids I need to supplement with.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sort of interesting seeing this at the Consumer Electronics Show. Most food startups I've seen would never think of trying to exhibit at that kind of venue, but clearly it's an effective way for them to reach their target demographic with coverage like this. They're probably also exhibiting at food industry conferences, to get the restaurant & supermarket distribution deals, but CES gets them TechCrunch & HN readers.

</comment><comment><USER29> BTW, the vegetarian products manufactured by Rügenwalder Mühle (available in most of EU) taste incredibly like their meat-based counterparts.

This vegetarian salami fooled many friends of mine in various double blind experiments: [https://www.ruegenwalder.de/en/products/vegetarian-salami- cl...](https://www.ruegenwalder.de/en/products/vegetarian-salami-classic)

</comment><comment><USER30> I've tried Impossible burger a couple of times in the last few months. Both were in New York - one in Soho House and one in Lucky's in Chelsea. The former cost about $25, and the latter about $13 (a burger in Lucky's runs about $8 so this is hugely expensive).

The Soho House on was just about the most disappointing thing I'v ever eaten. It tasted like a bad veggie burger. The Lucky's one was fantastic, but whilst meatier, again didn't taste like meat. I think if you served me the patty by itself I'd be able to identify it as not being meat.

My extremely limited sample has led me to conclude that the cooking skill is critical, and that you can go a long way towards persuading someone of a patty's 'meatiness' by dressing it in burger sauce, cheese, etc.

I'm not quite sure that the mission here is something indistinguishable from a real burger, but if it is then it's not there yet. But a great mission and I'll continue to fork out absurd money for them whenever the urge for a beef burger strikes me.

</comment><comment><USER31> Had one of these recently. I was shocked. The texture isn't 100% but very, very close and the taste was amazing. It was much flatter than photo; looked and tasted like Shake Shack.

<comment><USER32> IMO the texture of the 2.0 Impossible burger is spot on. And the flavors are improved too. I would say its a huge improvement. Plus this one is grill-able. It honestly hits all of the targets for what I want in a burger. Super impressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> They said 1.0 was "indistinguishable from meat" and yet when i was erroneously served it, i distinguished it quite easily. It had the texture of wet bread and the taste of stale wet bread soaked in rotting pig blood. Bring on the blind taste tests before claiming it tastes like meat.

</comment><comment><USER34> Glad this version is made without gluten, unlike the current Impossible Burger. In the mean time, Beyond Meat has been my goto burger for a few months.

<comment><USER35> I think Impossible (even v1.0) is more meat-like, but I actually like Beyond better. I _like_ the ever so slightly stiffer chew and legume undertone. When I go to my favorite Seattle burger place (Lunchbox Lab) I go for the Beyond version and it's awesome.

It's great that there are meatless options almost indistinguishable from real meat. It's also great that there are tasty options which resemble meat only slightly. And everything in between. The more the merrier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm curious if anyone else has stomach issues after eating the Impossible Burger, the Beyond Meat burger, etc.? Something about the protein isolate or who knows what else doesn't sit well with me. I've talked to others anecdotally about the same thing, but is this a widespread occurrence?

It reminds me a bit of when Frito-Lay tried to introduce Olean into their potato chips and it gave everyone the 3's...

<comment><USER37> My girlfriend and I tend to get them about once a month at a local restaurant and have no problem with them.

Could it be something else in the meal? For instance, our restaurant serves it with vegan Bun, Cheese, and 1000 Island dressing; all sourced from other local businesses. Maybe it's one of those toppings?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The other thing I am not seeing in the comments is that most store bought meat from big chains like Vons, Krogers, Walmart, etc- doesn't really taste that good. When cooked, likely chewy, dry and tasting "off". When we think of the "good burger" bite, we arnet thinking of discount ground meat from the market, we are thinking of a good burger from some restaurant.

<comment><USER39> Here's one. I buy grocery store ground chuck, and I've never had a restaurant burger that surpasses my own. Now fries are another thing, since I don't have a deep fryer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Does anyone know what the retail pricing is likely to be? A restaurant owner I talked to says he pays $11/lb for the stuff. If they ramp up production then they may be able to lower the price a bit. Or they could just spend VC $ to subsidize the price and gain market share. Either way, I'm excited to try it out when it's available!

<comment><USER41> I have no particular insight, but I would guess the price will be a dollar or two per pound more than you would pay at Whole Foods for an organic ground beef with roughly comparable fat percentage. Any more than that and I would think they would have trouble moving enough product to make it worth it.

In restaurants, the price of the food is a relatively small proportion of the total cost, so having slightly expensive ingredients doesn't make a proportional difference in price. At the grocery store, however, you see exactly what you're paying for the meat itself, and I would think if it's vastly more than a comparable product, they'd have trouble moving much quantity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'd love to use this as a meat-replacement but can ordinary consumers buy it yet?

I just want to make chili. Please let me give you money!

<comment><USER43> Their website states that they are going to start shipping to grocery store chains in March of this year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> In the early 70s, my dad worked at a place that (as a side business I think) made a meat substitute called KESP. He used to bring samples home and mum would make pies from it. Tasted awful if I remember correctly but I'm surprised it's taken this long to get to a viable meat alternative.

</comment><comment><USER45> As a person who was born in a family with tradition of vegetarianism, I find this "veggie meat" obsession fascinating and fear a future where I cannot even eat the one veggie burger on the menu.. because it tastes like a hamburger.

<comment><USER46> Why wouldn't you be able to eat the Impossible Burger? Does your family have a tradition of vegetarianism because you don't like the taste of beef?

<comment><USER47> Some people who are vegetarians have or develop a strong aversion to meat smell, let alone flavor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I've had the Impossible Burger at a restaurant as well as the Beyond Burger at Epic Burger. I'm not sure which tastes more like meat, but the Beyond Burger is far tastier. I sometimes daydream about that sandwich.

<comment><USER49> I agree. I'd heard the hype about Impossible so I was excited to try it when I finally saw it available at a restaurant near me, but found that it tasted pretty similar to a Morningstar Farms Griller's Prime patty. Since it cost me as much to sub an Impossible patty as to buy a whole bag of Griller's Prime, I wasn't impressed.

The Beyond Burger though, man that's good. I haven't had real beef in years, but people tell me it looks and smells pretty similar when cooking and I think the taste and texture are really close too. I love 'em.

I really wish the Beyond Sausage shortage would end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I wish they would release this into the supermarkets sooner than the end of the year though. I would love to include this in my weekly dinner options at home. I am not a vegetarian but I do like to mix things up and this will help to make one more dinner at home a veggie version.

The price is the key part right now. Hopefully they can scale this fast and reduce the prices. My guess is that they are doing a controlled release to ensure a better chance of success for the product. Early feedbacks should help to correct issues.

<comment><USER51> You can find the Beyond Burger pretty easily now, especially in Whole Foods, but the taste can be off putting to people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Do vegan/vegetarians really want something that reminds them of meat products? Why not just make a good meat-free sandwich that doesn't imitate another product?

<comment><USER53> I'm not a vegan/vegetarian but I want this product. I'm concerned about the environmental cost of raising beef cattle and I'd like a better option. My family has already cut down our red meat consumption. We use ground turkey and chicken quite a bit. I still want the ability to grill a good steak once a month, but I'd love to use some of this ground meat in pasta sauces, taco's etc.

<comment> village-idiot By the by, most of the original takes on cattle emissions were fatally flawed and retracted by their authors. It appears that US meat consumption represents about 3.9% of US emissions. That number is still falling as we get more efficient with our animal husbandry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Does anyone know the latest findings from studies that linked soy consumption to estrogen increase in men?

The impossible burger being non soy based was a huge selling point for me...

<comment><USER24> Examine has a good writeup, jump to "Men's health and testosterone"

tl;dr: "Reasonable intakes of soy foods and soy isoflavones do not affect men's testosterone levels, estrogen levels, or fertility, although case reports have documented adverse effects from incredibly high daily intakes of soy for 6–12 months. Men who are at risk of developing prostate cancer might reduce their risk by eating soy foods, but soy foods do not appear to benefit men who already have prostate cancer."

The case studies regarding feminization seem to have been cases of people ingesting 300+g of soy protein a day for 6+ months. That amount of protein would require nearly 100% of your calorie RDA if eaten in soybeans, so it seems likely these two people had quite odd diets that could confound drawing conclusions these cases. If they were taking a soy protein extract, I would want to study if questionable supplement purity/contamination issues had any effect - solvents and heat could transform some of the isoflavones or solvents could remain in final product.

[https://examine.com/nutrition/is-soy-good-or- bad/](https://examine.com/nutrition/is-soy-good-or-bad/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Nobody ever seems to question what's in these burgers. Just focusing on taste is not good enough. Any independent research/investigation (besides Impossible Food's own marketing materials) on the healthiness of the ingredients? Even if the ingredients aren't inherently unhealthy on their own, if I'm just eating a bunch of filler without much nutrition compared to real meat, that's still a problem.

<comment><USER56> A list of ingredients from the company's website:

Water, Textured Wheat Protein, Coconut Oil, Potato Protein, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of: Leghemoglobin (Soy), Yeast Extract, Salt, Konjac Gum, Xanthan Gum, Soy Protein Isolate, Vitamin E, Vitamin C, Thiamin (Vitamin B1), Zinc, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin B12.

source: [https://impossiblefoods.com/faq](https://impossiblefoods.com/faq)

Seems like a regular old veggie burger, with some more slightly exotic additives. I had not heard of Leghemoglobin, which appears to be some sort of hemoglobin-like protein found in legume plant roots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> The best fake meat patties I've ever had were the veggie patties ("Soul burger") at Hero burger in Canada. My wife (who is vegetarian) thought it was real at first and was upset they had made a mistake and had me try, and I also thought it was real. But it was actually vegetarian!

<comment><USER58> So how did you make sure they weren't meat?

That's a problem I would see for vegetarian. That mostly involves trust. A similar scenario already happens with halal and kosher food though.

<comment><USER57> Well, I've had them many times since and just as good... So either this burger chain is fraudulently selling meat patties as tofu veggie, or they're legit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Is it also legume free? I'm allergic. Also, is the protein/amino profile complete and balanced? Also, I tend to believe (based on dieting research and other experiments) that protein sources should generally be consumed with 1:2 1g fat per 2g protein roughly speaking.

</comment><comment><USER60> And probably still not a great choice for diabetics... Unless it's made only of fat & protein....

<comment><USER61> Per the article:

>It has as much bioavailable iron and protein as the same size serving of ground beef, with 14 grams of fat and 240 calories per quarter-pound patty.

Also, per Impossible's site, changes to nutrition for the new recipe are:

>The new Impossible Burger features 30% less sodium and 40% less saturated fat than the current recipe and just as much protein as 80/20 ground beef from cows

The original recipe only has 5g of carbohydrates per serving, so assuming that remains constant, this doesn't seem terribly problematic for those on a low- to-moderate carbohydrate diet.

<comment><USER62> >It has as much bioavailable iron and protein as the same size serving of ground beef

Which ofc it's nothing but marketing nonsense considering that the most bioavailable form of iron Heme-iron is found only in meats.

<comment><USER63> "Most" doesn't mean "only". Non-heme iron is real, I promise.

Hell they could really cheat and just throw ferrous sulfate directly in the mix rather than using naturally occurring iron in the veggies.

<comment><USER62> "Most" doesn't mean "only". Non-heme iron is real, I promise.

No, it means that the Non-heme is less bioavailable i.e less efficiently absorbed from the body.

<comment><USER63> If I give you 100G of iron at 10% bioavailabilty , and Tom 10G at 100% absorption, who absorbed more iron?

If you insist on reading the statement as "this burger has non-heme iron at quantities comparable to heme iron in meat that will also be just as bio- available" then yes, it's impossible.

However, I was trying to point out that there are several ways of reading that statement without it being marketing doublespeak.

TL;dr- I think we're arguing different points here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> i tried at rubis diner the 1.0 version and i was surprised how good it was but was way too salty and krispy like some alternative meat but still meat. they are on the right track so am expecting greatness for 2.0.

</comment><comment><USER65> I love the idea, but the saturated fat seems a bit high for a plant based food?

<comment><USER66> Yeah, plant-based and healthy are not necessarily the same. This at least free of cholesterol vs meat, but I think the main draw is the plant-based aspect rather than healthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I love a veggie burger but they are always so expensive at the supermarket. Maybe things have changed since I started eating meat again but being a vegetarian was really expensive.

</comment><comment><USER68> I tried the Impossible Burger 1.0 at Stanford, and it tasted really good! Not a 100% like meat, but good as an alternative. Looking forward to trying the new one.

</comment><comment><USER40> If this does indeed taste like real meat, then they may move in the direction of making healthier products. That is, they've said from the beginning that their goal with the Impossible Burger is to mimic the taste and health profile of ground beef. But there's a lot of fat in there, and many people (like me) don't really ever cook with ground beef for that reason.

But if they've nailed the taste, then perhaps they can start making something leaner, akin to ground turkey? For me, that would have a larger impact on my regular diet.

<comment><USER69> The only thing worth eating there from keto diet perspective is the fat but it better be good fat! (No cheap vegetable oils or hydrogenated fats)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> The 1.0 version was not very good, at least to this meat-lover. I tried it at White Castle several months ago and I'd never order another one. Here's hoping the 2.0 version is good enough to move me further in the vegetarian direction.

<comment><USER71> I wonder how much the purveyor makes a difference in the quality of the product (I'm hoping not much). I had the opposite experience as you, but I bought my Impossible from an Umami Burger and it was seriously a surreal experience for me and my gf. I was so pleasantly surprised by how good it was that we went back the next day to get another.

<comment><USER72> Same here, fiancée and I had one at Umami Burger and were very impressed, had several since then (and we do eat meat), and always introduce friends to it when they are in town. Also tried it at some non-chain (I believe) SF restaurant and they nailed it, too, though in both cases I can imagine they know how to prepare it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I really can't wait for these to show up in Canada

</comment><comment><USER74> Why do some vegans and vegetarians want to eat something that looks like meat?

This is not to say vegans and vegetarians are the only market for plant-based "meat" or "burgers".

<comment><USER75> > _Why do some vegans and vegetarians want to eat something that looks like > meat?_

Why _wouldn 't_ they? Most humans are hardwired to enjoy meat, whether or not they choose to indulge. Vegetarianism/veganism as an ethical stance is about humane treatment of animals. Enjoying the taste and texture of meat is completely orthogonal.

I've spoken to several people who think that veganism is just about personal taste, including a couple of actual vegans, and I don't understand where this idea comes from.

<comment><USER76> >Vegetarianism/veganism as an ethical stance is about humane treatment of animals.

No doubt, but there are health-related reasons to do it as well; I'm not as concerned about a plant-based meat substitute triggering my diverticulitis, for instance. I actively avoid eating burgers because too much red meat definitely does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Would it kill them to provide some decent nutritional information? Like how much salt is in the product?

I found in the past that all the palatable meat substitutes were loaded with salt.

<comment><USER77> From their FAQ: 430 mg sodium in 3 oz

[https://images.ctfassets.net/hhv516v5f7sj/5p1YQzJxduEoC2gIWa...](https://images.ctfassets.net/hhv516v5f7sj/5p1YQzJxduEoC2gIWaWaEg/a23f00495d6d2e7edabbfd898a96fc6f/Oriole-1_85g_3_oz_Label.png)

[https://impossiblefoods.com/faq/](https://impossiblefoods.com/faq/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> I'm happy to see continued growth in this area, but I'm disappointed to see them shifting more toward soy. I'll be sticking with the Beyond Burger for now.

<comment><USER79> I'd like to see more non-soy veggie convenience products myself. I'd like to eat a more varied diet full of fruits and vegetables, rather than simply replacing meat+dairy+grains with soy+soymilk+grains, but it's really hard to find non-soy veggie products without cooking everything from scratch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> The concept of meat alternatives is interesting, but there are of course some possible issues.

First, with soy: the jury is still on the effects on men. Maybe it's fine, maybe it's not. Until the full effects are known, I'm not comfortable risking growing breasts. It might not even effect most people, but if it does for some, I want to make sure I'm not one.[0] Also, it's possible that some chemicals in it cause cancer.[1] Though with that said, I've started to wonder if everything causes cancer in one way or another.

Second, we don't know if some people are better/worse equipped to process soy. I'd analogize this to japanese having special gut bacteria to process sushi and seaweed.[2][3] Maybe those races which have eaten more can process better? Who knows. Maybe it could cause injuries to liver or kidney in people not as well equipped to process it? Large quantities of many things can do this.[4] Again, if we want to tell everyone to replace meat, further research is undoubtedly necessary.

Lastly, thinking you ate something can make your body do certain things it normally does, even if you didn't. This is called the cephalic response.[5] If you've ever heard that looking at pictures of dessert can raise your blood sugar, this is the explanation. This is down to total guesswork, but who knows what could happen? Cephalic response means more hcl is secreted. Let's say we're calibrated to release 10 arbitrary units for meat, but 4 for veggie (meat takes more to break down). So you smell and taste meat, and release 10 units. But you eat veggie, so where does the rest go? What if it contributed to an ulcer or heartburn? And could this extend to the delicate balance of enzymes in the rest of the body?

Sustainability is a laudable goal, but we shouldn't try to radically alter people's diets without being really, really sure that we're correct. I view anything less as irresponsible. Go back to when people thought fat was evil and sugar was fine, and so people got fat and diabetic. Let's all try to be more responsible this time.

[0] [https://worldnewsdailyreport.com/england-man-grows- breasts-a...](https://worldnewsdailyreport.com/england-man-grows-breasts- after-drinking-too-much-soy-milk/)

[1] [https://www.breastcancer.org/research-news/soy-may-turn- on-g...](https://www.breastcancer.org/research-news/soy-may-turn-on-genes- linked-to-cancer)

[2] [https://www.wired.com/2010/04/sushi- guts/](https://www.wired.com/2010/04/sushi-guts/)

[3] [http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/04/japanese-guts-are- mad...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/04/japanese-guts-are-made-sushi)

[4] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4435388/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4435388/)

[5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalic_phase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalic_phase)

</comment><comment><USER81> Ew.

</comment><comment><USER82> Does anyone else get indigestion after eating one of these modern meat substitutes?

<comment><USER83> Very unspecific. Things that get tagged 'meat substitutes' are a large amount of different things with totally different stuff in them, there is nothing to generalize here.

<comment><USER82> Ok, I just mean beyond beef and impossible burgers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> I tried 1.0 it was horrible. even a macdonald hamburger was more edible. I doubt that heavily process soybeans (known for developing breast in men) are the way to go. but who knows im not a marketing manager.

</comment><comment><USER85> Is the Impossible Burger much better than Beyond Meat? Because I've had the Beyond Meat patty (from a vegan chain called Lord of the Fries, their standard beef substitute is great) and it was awful - very obvious that it was made from plants (tasted like root vegetables with a weird chemical/metallic tang to me) and the texture was way off. It could have been prepared poorly though.

<comment><USER86> I do think that the Impossible Burger is much better than Beyond Burger. It's a lot of subtle things that Impossible gets right. (The fact that it "bleeds" is fascinating and interesting part of its appeal to old carnivore instincts.)

That said there is room for both at the table and right now they both have different strengths (Impossible handles "medium rare" much better; Beyond hits greasy spoon / fast food "medium" or "medium well" better).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Browser Based or Desktop App? - <AUTHOR> Curious what HN crowds experience has been in releasing a desktop enabled version of their product?
Slack, for instance, pitches a 33% overall speed improvement, 10x benefits in some cases, etc.(a)
With those benefits one would expect that overall satisfaction would track up, leading retention and usage.
But I can't find much topical data.
I'd love to understand:
1 - What is your overall "take" rate from customers and do those cohorts behave differently?
2 - Any data that you have or studies online that make the business case?
(a) https://slackhq.com/introducing-a-more-efficient-slack-desktop-experience <comment><USER2> datapoint 1: if the user is not on the platform you provide your desktop app, you lost that client.

this alone would steer me into browser based. And by browser i mean browser, javascript even as an enhancement. but i guess on this i am on the minority since most people here assume browser means chrome. sigh.</comment>


Inductive Programming Meets the Real World [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/sumitg/pubs/ip-cacm15.pdf <comment><USER2> Non-mobile link[0]. The text contrast on the mobile version is horrible.

[0] [http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/11/193326-inductive- progr...](http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/11/193326-inductive-programming- meets-the-real-world/fulltext)

<comment><USER3> The site is using pale text on a default background, so it looks fine with my white-on-black GTK theme, but I imagine is unreadable for most of the world.

Many sites make the mistake of mixing default and non-default colours, but this is the first time I've seen it work in my favour ;) Presumably most devs aren't doing any kind of contrast analysis on their CSS, and are only testing with a black-on-white colour scheme.

Of course, I _could_ avoid this problem by giving up my preferred colour scheme; but why do that when I can walk the DOM after page load, and invert all of the low-contrast colours? [http://chriswarbo.net/git/warbo- dotfiles/branches/master/con...](http://chriswarbo.net/git/warbo- dotfiles/branches/master/conkerorrc/fix_page.js) ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We changed the URL from [http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/11/193326-inductive- progr...](http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/11/193326-inductive-programming- meets-the-real-world/fulltext) which was causing trouble.

</comment><comment><USER5> Website gives a 503 error. Perhaps the real world struck back?

</comment><comment><USER6> The PDF document, "Inductive Programming Meets the Real World", is available from Microsoft research site:

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/sumitg/pubs/ip...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/sumitg/pubs/ip-cacm15.pdf)

The author, Sumit Gulwani, is a researcher at Microsoft. His home page is:

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/sumitg/index.h...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/sumitg/index.html)

and his publications are available at:

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/sumitg/publica...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/sumitg/publications.html)

<comment><USER7> Note that the PDF on author's site is much more readable than ACM PDF version.</comment></comment>


How Finland's Basic Income Experiment Will Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcoexist.com/3052595/how-finlands-exciting-basic-income-experiment-will-work-and-what-we-can-learn-from-it <comment><USER2> This story already had a major discussion ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10688207](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10688207)), but the current article contains more information about what is actually planned.

Instead of treating this as a dupe like we normally would, let's try leaving it up with the request that people discuss the specifics of this experiment, and perhaps what other sorts of experiments could be run and how one might evaluate them—and leave the more generic for-and-against basic income stuff to the other thread.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's hard for these experiments to yield answers to important questions about basic income because of the fact that participants know it is an experiment.

With a 2 year length, people aren't going to adjust their long term plans regarding the expectation of how much they will have to work. The extra cash is just a windfall. Reaction to a long term political commitment will be different - once people trust that the basic income will "always be there."

Similarly, some local landlords and businesses may raise prices to soak up the extra disposable income, but they know that their actions will be scrutinized and publicized. Is 2 years of marginal extra profit worth the loss of good will? Again, I think the answer is different once there is a long term political commitment.

The answer to this last question is important, because it likely leads to the basic income being adjusted for price inflation, and then an inflationary spiral or price controls. To me, this is the central problem with basic income (I think the "motivation to work" issue is a red herring), and I don't see how basic income experiments can shed light on it.

<comment><USER4> A huge benefit to BI in the long term is it allows people to move to cheaper areas. Subsidized housing on the other hand creates lot's of perverse incentives. So, ideally you don't want to adjust for regional cost of living.

Remember, if a store in NYC can't find anyone willing to work at X$/hour they must raise wages and prices. This sends really important signals up and down the economy.

<comment><USER5> > A huge benefit to BI in the long term is it allows people to move to cheaper > areas.

And do what? Abide?

One thing that people want to test is whether this would disincentivize work. People choosing to move to where there may well be no jobs sounds as if it _is_ disincentivizing work.

<comment><USER6> >And do what? Abide?

Why not? Not everyone is ambitious. Heck, I doubt more than about 25% of any generation would work if they didn't have to. It's one thing to be pulling down $100+/hr in a rewarding job building the digital future, but if you're working a fry vat you're gonna quit the first time the boss pisses you off.

<comment><USER7> Unless you want any money beyond a basic standard of living to save up for travel, furniture, drinks, or whatever you want. If there's a job with a better boss, the basic income will help you transition, though.

<comment><USER6> Sure. I just think there are a whole lot of people who will be perfectly happy spending all day smoking pot and playing CoD. Assuming they eventually get tired of that lifestyle, it's still hard to imagine a 30 year old guy who's done his own thing for fifteen years actually getting up and going to work every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's nothing concrete decided yet for this, only a preliminary study has been started [0]. According to this press release, the next steps in the plan are

1\. The preliminary study was launched at the end of October 2015.

2\. A review of existing information and experiences [...] will be presented [...] in spring 2016.

3\. Following on from this, an analysis [...] will be produced in the second half of 2016.

4\. The universal basic income experiment is planned to be launched in 2017.

[0] [http://www.kela.fi/web/en/news- archive/-/asset_publisher/lN0...](http://www.kela.fi/web/en/news- archive/-/asset_publisher/lN08GY2nIrZo/content/contrary-to-reports-basic- income-study-still-at-preliminary-stage)

</comment><comment><USER9> All three of the photos in the article are taken within a block of each other, and I know the woman in the pea-coat walking away from the train.

Finland is a _really_ small place.

<comment><USER10> That's kind of funny, but it's not really that small. I haven't been all over finland (but a bit of it, helsinki & area, turku, lahti, tampere, and up to oulu.) Still haven't seen the Northern Half of the country. New Zealand is definitely smaller, but it feels easier to visit both islands than the northern half of finland.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This story is so vague, it is basically meaningless. The limited experiment may or may not happen in x years.

I understand that people here WANT it to happen and therefore discuss it as if it WILL happen. Unfortunately reality is going to get in the way.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yes, speaking of experiments, I don't see why the U.S. doesn't run a large scale experiment to see what the effects of a basic income are. Select a small but not insignificant demographic. Pay them a not-means-tested monthly stipend. Since this is only a test, you should be able to pay for it with a modest tax on paychecks for the rest of the citizens. Then wait a while, and see what happens. We would want to make sure it cuts across a broad swath of society, so that special interests don't wreck havoc when interpreting the results. So we'd want rich and poor, of all races, etc.. We should then be able to look at the recipients, and tell if they were more likely or less likely to be employed. And we should be able to see if they spending their time creating cutting-edge art, and new innovative music, while writing inspiring novels, and discovering new scientific facts and mathematical theorems. To be doubly sure that we aren't merely papering over any medical insurance issues (what with medical inflation and all), we might also create a separate medical payment system to cover their medical expenses. Of course, this should be a long running experiment, so that any short term economic and societal effects will have time to average out. Let's propose to run this experiment, for, I don't know, maybe 80 years.

<comment><USER13> In a country as rich as the US, with wealth so heavily stacked to the top 1/3, I'd have to argue in favor of dropping the rich out of any basic income testing or implementation. For the same reason that they shouldn't be participating in any other traditional welfare programs currently. The only way a full implementation of a basic income can work - and be enough to matter - in a country with as large of a population as the US, is by dropping the top economic tiers out of it; make over $X, you don't qualify.

The US could afford to give the poorest 50 million adults a $2,000 per month basic income. Federal + State + Local welfare spending total, is a bit over $1 trillion annually (including Medicaid). You could parse that $2k down to $1k across 100 million adults, but at that level it won't be enough to replace all the benefits people are deriving from welfare today (the health coverage alone would severely drain that $1k level).

The downside is, giving the bottom 50 million adults a $2,000 check every month, would enrage the middle class. One of the benefits of current welfare programs, is you don't see it the way you do cash being spent, and I believe most people think of cash payments entirely differently than they do eg free healthcare.

Want to give all adults enough money? You can't do it. There is no math that will ever get you there, unless you plan to abolish the US military, part of Social Security and Medicare, and raise taxes simultaneously. 230 million adults * $1,000 per month = $2.76 trillion per year (almost the whole federal budget), it's obviously laughable.

<comment><USER14> The problem with a hard cutoff is that people just below the limit end up better off than those just above it. One problem with a soft cutoff is how often/when you adjust for changes.

Basic Income is only a simple solution if it's universal.

Additionally, part of the benefit of a universal basic income is that it covers the ground of programs like Social Security, so at least in theory you _can_ get rid of it. (though I sure wouldn't want to be responsible for orchestrating the transition)

<comment><USER13> Getting rid of Social Security is certainly a lot more viable today, now that politicians can't steal from its inbound surplus.

The basic income concept also collapses when you consider Social Security - that system is designed specifically to only give people at a certain age those benefits. As has been pointed out in the case of Finland, plenty of people will find they are worse off. In the US case, if you spread that Social Security money out across 230 million adults, it would become tiny per person (~$300x per month), which is exactly what you don't want to do (unless the plan is to shift back to a system in which people are expected more so to take care of their own retirement needs, but I don't see how that is going to work out with the median paying vastly higher taxes).

<comment><USER14> > if you spread that Social Security money out across 230 million adults

Clearly that isn't the idea though. The idea would be more like multiplying SS such that all of those 230 million adults get the same payout as what the current recipients get now.

And obviously it isn't as simple as that, not least because that's about 4 times as many people as SS covers currently, and it's already about 1/4 of the total US budget. In addition, the idea is that we shouldn't be required to work, and thus there should be basic income such that you can live comfortably, and arguably SS is already not enough for that. (the total SS budget/# of recipients = ~14k)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The studies in this area are very clear. The most efficient way to help the poor is direct cash grants.

However anathema to our national ethic, this is what works, and form must follow functionality.

<comment><USER16> References?

<comment><USER17> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome)

Mincome was an experimental Canadian basic income project that was held in Dauphin, Manitoba, during the 1970s. It was only half "unconditional", the rest income-dependant, but it did seem to have good effects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm all for this experiment, but please, can we get rid of the Basic 'Income' _doublespeak_? Income is _earned_. Call it Basic ['benifits', 'welfare', 'necessities', 'coverage'].sample. Anything but the _Income_ misnomer.

<comment><USER16> You're think of _earned_ income.

Income is anything that...well...comes in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really like the simplicity and efficiency of Guaranteed Income. Social welfare is one of the 'costs of doing business' in a modern civilization. Cut the crap and just give everyone basic resources without reservations.

The way I see it if someone really does not want to work, they'll go to great lengths to cheat the system and the government will spend a great deal combating these people. Just giving the bum money will be cheaper for everyone.

More importantly a basic income will free up people who will take jobs just because they have to. This will actually open up jobs for people who want to work hard to rise above the basic level. It will give people freedom to explore things that would not be feasible otherwise. This will generate more art, more music, new science and philosophies.

Perhaps my thoughts are too idealistic but I think its more reasonable than trying to police welfare or telling everyone to just be more bootstrappy.

<comment><USER20> There are many people here who spend their day job writing algorithms to monitor people's responses to certain stimuli -even down to the individual level - in order profile users and tailor services to ensure that a few advertising cents per person are spent efficiently.

I'm genuinely unable to fathom why when it comes to solving the diverse, expensive and very real problems a social safety net is designed to capture, that "give everyone a fixed large chunk of cash each year" is so widely perceived as the "most efficient" solution on here.

The separate ideal world argument that BI would ensure that people don't "have to" work (unless they're foreign, obviously) obviously flies a little in the face of the efficiency argument too.

<comment><USER21> > I'm genuinely unable to fathom why when it comes to solving the diverse, > expensive and very real problems a social safety net is designed to capture, > that "give everyone a fixed large chunk of cash each year" is so widely > perceived as the "most efficient" solution on here.

Economists _widely_ agree that cash transfers are more efficient at improving welfare for the poor than transfers-in-kind. It's one of the less controversial statements in the field. "Give everyone a chunk of cash once a year" is probably not the most efficient manifestation of the concept just because peoples' behaviors tend to be different if they receive regular reliable income vs irregular income (see the permanent income hypothesis), but when it comes to the choice of giving the poor cash or services, just giving them cash is widely preferred.

<comment><USER6> >Economists widely agree that cash transfers are more efficient at improving welfare for the poor than transfers-in-kind. It's one of the less controversial statements in the field.

I find that baffling based on San Francisco's experience. When the city replaced its "in kind" services with cash, for the most part the homeless people went out and spent the cash on booze and drugs.

The cash system was such an obvious failure Gavin Newsom was able to build his political career on converting the system back to the "in kind" type.

<comment><USER22> The US is in the bottom half[1] of the education rankings which might impair good decisions. The rest of the world* has a much better functioning health care structure for lower income people as well, medical conditions that may impair their ability to make good decisions.

[1] rank 36/65: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/leaguetables/10488555/O...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/leaguetables/10488555/OECD- education-report-subject-results-in-full.html)

* developed world, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There are two big issues with basic income:

1) Even if you spent the entire $2T annual federal budget on a basic income, it would come to about $500 per person per month. The cost is simply gargantuan.

2) It would not replace welfare, it would come on top of it. This is because welfare isn't about helping the poor, it's about giving political power to the lawmakers. This power comes in the form of large administrative bodies, where political allies can be given cushy jobs, and in the form of an electoral clientele. Basic income doesn't have these two features, so from a public choice theory, it will not replace the welfare state. Case in point, when the Reagan administration tried to apply Milton Friedman's negative income tax, he distanced himself from it as they wanted to do it on top of other welfare programs. This is exactly what public choice theory dictates.

</comment><comment><USER24> Lets start with simple facts, current government is formed by rightwing parties. [Not so rightwing by american standards].

~1000€ is what ultra leftwing party's youth group proposes. ~600€ is what the Green leftist party proposes

The right wing parties talks about creating motivation for people to get to work with the basic income. A newspaper supporting prime minister party's talk about either partial basic income of 550€ with it replacing most benefits or full basic income of 800€ with absolute cutting of other benefits.

What I'd like to see most is basic income combined with true flat tax. No tax deductions, minimal bureaucracy. If we are going to pay certain minimal support to everyone to keep them from going too desperate, we could as well pay it to everyone and then start taxing from first euro earned with the flat percentage.

Instead of current system in which people send lots of separate applications for different benefits and then people paid by government has to work. And when you get raise you probably need to get new tax form from tax office to give your employer.

What well made basic income should give is instead of having long plateau after the minimum everyone is guaranteed to get one way or other, is a way for everyone to get that minimal guaranteed all the time and any marginal employment would increase income over that. And most of the cost would be got from reducing number of government employees required to handle it. Everyone doing the math should consider that only real cost of basic income is when someone earns less than (1/taxrate)*basic income and more than what government currently gives to poor. And it eliminates cost of MANY government jobs handling papers for benefits, and makes easier to take a job for a day or two or week or two because you cannot loose benefits for it. Or loose benefits for starting your own business.

</comment><comment><USER25> There is another social factor to basic income, and State-based welfare, that I'm not sure is being mentioned: it allows people to become more isolated because they can be less dependent on friends, family, and neighbors. I'm not sure if that's a positive for society in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER26> The minimal income shall be given in exchange for voting rights. Pick one or the other.

<comment> guard-of-terra I'm not sure you're right but also not sure that you're wrong.

We don't know how many people are going to rely on basic income as main mode of income and why.

<comment><USER27> I'm sure he's wrong with that particular phrasing.

If a real problem does arise with a non-working majority perpetually voting to increase their BI, a more flexible answer would be to make the vote conditional on having paid a certain amount of tax, either in that year or over their lifetime to date or some combination of the two. But let's not roll back the clock a few decades on universal suffrage until we're _absolutely_ sure we need to.

EDIT TO ADD: a core principle behind BI is that paid employment is not the only socially valuable form of activity. I believe that. Taking away the vote from people who aren't making a contribution in $$$ form would fly in the face of it.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: TeamChat.me Group Chat for Teams  - <AUTHOR>

URL -> Http://www.teamchat.me (landing page only works for desktop/pc for now)
I'm doing another relaunch soon of this group chat app I've been working on in the past year. I've learned a lot after each launch and since I'm not getting any traffic why not just keep testing different methods until I get it right? Art! Science!
Anyways let me know what you think. If you're working in remote/distributed teams or are interested in using an app that streamlines your internal business communication please let me know I would love to talk to you one on one and get an idea of the challenges you face.
Lastly, clicking Sign Up will bring you to a Wufoo form which you can then add your name and email address so I can contact you when the service is ready.
Thank you!
Anton. <comment><USER2> 1\. Why are the rooms public? it wasn't clear to me how to make a private room. 2\. when I tried adding files, I saw more files that wasn't related to me (looks very unsecured)

<comment><AUTHOR> it just brings you to a public development sandbox. You'll have everything to yourself. I just wanted people to at least click on 'take a test drive'. My problem right now is getting people to even take a look at the site and also to get sign ups (but i think that first problem is almost solved!).

It isn't SSL encrypted yet though.</comment></comment>


Three recent papers uncover the extent of tracking on TVs - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/random_walker/status/1177570679232876544 <comment><USER2> I try to think long and hard before I buy any hardware which has an obvious tracking use case, other than a router and a smartphone, but so many friends and relatives try to one-up each other by filling their homes with Alexas and Ring doorbells, and all sorts of tracking technology.

I'm not saying I'm perfect, like I said I have a phone and a router, and I understand at a point I can't hide certain things, i.e. my ISP can see what I'm pulling on the net and I find it's not worth the hit to convenience to try to scrub or obfuscate that info, but man, one guy I know has an Alexa in every room in his house! Another has IoT'd his place upside down with various Chinese equipment that is collecting who-knows-what data and sending it who- knows-where, and it's not that I have a problem with it, but they don't even think of the privacy implications when they buy these things.

I try to live my life as if I'd become president one day and the CIA/FBI/NSA would use everything in their power to find something heinous they could use to destroy my life, and also so that I don't have to worry about my future children having their entire life uploaded from birth to death because of mistakes I made in the technology I buy. It keeps me humble and skeptical of new hardware and I truly measure the impact it has on the privacy of myself and those around me, but I wonder sometimes if it has no affect because they could always build a profile based on how I've intereacted around others' technology

<comment><USER3> I've got one of these smart devices in every room of my house. Love it. Fantastic experience. Maybe some day I'll pay for this. My take: I won't. I'm going to be fine. And I have no anxiety about this.

<comment><USER4> Corporate surveillance "pollutes" democracy like a car pollutes the air we breathe.

You'll get away with using a internal combustion engine. You'll be fine.

But you are harming me and everybody else.

<comment><USER3> I don't think you've demonstrated the externality. You don't have to come to my house. Chances are I probably won't invite you.

<comment><USER4> > I don't think you've demonstrated the externality.

Forbo's answers points it out.

> Chances are I probably won't invite you.

Can't you come up with a better argument?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't there some way these TVs are violating the Video Privacy Protection Act?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act)

Even the amendment in 2012 seems to make it only legal to add a function "share" functoin for a user to post what they watched on a service. It does not seem to make it possible to just share all viewing info. It also does _not_ make it possible to just add it to a EULA or TOS.

<comment><USER6> > In 2015, a federal appeals court in Atlanta found that those protections do > not reach the users of a free Android app, even when the app assigns each > user a unique identification number and shares user behavior with a third- > party data analytics company.

So the TV company would probably argue that it's not a violation if they don't know your real identity. Even though they share the data with an analytics company that does.

But the only way to really answer the question is to litigate.

<comment><USER7> The main issue in the 2015 case was that the app was free and therefore the users weren't "subscribers" by the court's narrow interpretation. See the discussion near 103: [https://harvardlawreview.org/2018/04/the-video-privacy- prote...](https://harvardlawreview.org/2018/04/the-video-privacy-protection- act-as-a-model-intellectual-privacy-statute/) They mention a later 2016 decision where free mobile app users _were_ considered subscribers.

Typically circuit splits end up in the Supreme Court sooner or later. So if it does come up it'll be some pretty expensive litigation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having thought about it a bit recently, smart-TV advertising and tracking seems like it may become _more_ invasive in some ways than smartphone-based tracking. Smartphone ads at least give the perception of being personal.

Watching TV is a social activity - gathering at a friend's place to watch a new episode, or relaxing with family.

The future implied by these developments is that TV-based tracking will take the home audience into account, and the screen becomes -- in some sense at least -- a camera as well as a display.

Instead of being shown subtly inadequacy-leveraging ads on your own device, now they're going to be interwoven into you and your family's home in such a way as to influence thoughts and opinions.

Gradually adtech will - as it has already - erode the ability to have peaceful, genuine social human interaction while enjoying an artist's intended work uninterrupted.

I'd like to think that alternatives to advertising finance are on the horizon, because the ad business seems to further income inequality. Adtech employees deny and avoid their guilt by enjoying the profits they make, while their audience (who are increasingly also their acquaintances, as peer-based referrals and influence marketing heat up) are pressed to spend and consume, often unnecessarily.

I'd wager the trend towards ads and quantified influence is going to continue until it necessitates radical change.

NB: In reality the capability likely already exists to target ads based on who you're currently with, so this is really just an opportunity for the advertising industry to socialize and normalize these practices.

<comment><USER9> I honestly expect adtech to bust at some point.

At the end of the day, there are a lot of limits on how successful any ad campaign can be. How much budget your target has, how elastic it is, how much demand is inherent to the product type.

Even with perfect 24/7 targeted advertising, Toyota's maximum possible upside is selling me one Camry every two years. Once they reach that point, any further marketing spend is wasted.

There's also the problem of advertising being imperfect. We'll always have faulty data, and importantly an trustless adversarial relationship with the consumer, which will limit the ability to improve ad effectiveness. (Imagine the opportunity to say in one central place "I have bought a widget, everyone I researched with can discontinue the widget post-visit campaign as there's no further chance of victory"\-- advertisers wouldn't go for it and consumers wouldn't believe it). I also suspect tighter and tighter targeting increases the risk of catastrophic ad failure-- where it undermines the brand's reputation or creates public backlash. The Uncanny Valley can be one hostile place for brands.

Do expensive, high-tech ads outperform cheap spray-and-pray techniques like TV spots and dumb banners? Probably. But I suspect the price-performance curve is approaching an asymptote pretty quickly. Billions are spent to chase increasingly small gains in actual sales over older, less creepy techniques. Someone's going to do the numbers and start asking questions.

<comment><USER10> The real advantage of "smart" advertising isn't in better business performance, but of better legibility of the advertisement's performance. The cheap spray-and-pray techniques might work, but you don't know how well they work, so you make a guess and bid on it based off the low end of the range.

With perfect information about how well an advertising campaign works, you can convince the rest of the org to spend up to 100% of the profit margin of a sale on enough marginal advertising to drive one additional sale.

In other words, the end state is measuring ad performance well enough that spending on ad buys wind up cannibalizing all the corporate surplus generated from them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From trying to reduce hostile snooping/malware "TV" behavior for the last few years (as an on-principle techie exercise)...

My current practical requirements: Lately, I mostly watch movies and series from borrowed Blu-ray and DVD discs (which turned out to be a better catalog, IMHO, than Netflix's streaming catalog at the time I switched). I also want to occasionally play PS4 online multiplayer games on the same display.

I didn't want the PS4 to be phoning home when I played the discs, so I found a model of Blu-ray player that does DVD 1080p upscaling, but which still doesn't have WiFi. I did a final firmware update of the (EOL'd) Blu-ray player over the Internet, and then have a policy that the player will never be plugged into the Internet again. (Again, this is mostly an on-principle exercise, and, so far, it's proven practical for me. I've encountered only one Blu-ray implementation bug, which is known lockups of a very small number of titles in 24p mode of some players, and which never got a firmware update anyway.)

(Before the Blu-ray player appliance, I tried using Kodi for playing DVDs, first with a laptop, and then a RasPi 3 setup, but that worked poorly.)

I paired the airgapped Blu-ray player with a nice older Sony 1080p TV with decent integrated speakers, and which had no WiFi, and was not new enough to be fully "smart TV" obnoxious. It has a nice picture, and works well with the Blu-ray player's remote over HDMI. To get this one, I had to do some research, and then do daily searches on CraigsList for a while.

The two main drawbacks to the older, less-smart TV are that it's not 4K, and that it's power-hungry. (20W off, 90W to display no-signal screen, peaks to 140W+ even in a dim room.) For saving the 20W when off, I'll probably move the TV to a secondary position on a smart power switch, but I've hesitated, because I don't know whether the TV was designed for frequent abrupt power cuts, and, if I wear it out prematurely, finding a similar replacement model on the used market looks increasingly difficult.

When I eventually upgrade to 4K or whatever is next, I suspect I'll probably end up getting a non-TV commercial display without Internet, and a separate audio amp and speakers.

Maybe I'll also be forced to give up on borrowed discs, and switch more to streaming, which I suspect will be locked-down with anti-user hardware and software, and (unless regulation really steps up) fraught with excessive corporate surveillance and other misbehavior (and possible attendant vulnerabilities, due to the complexity and methods).

There are some open source media player things I'd like to build, if I can ever spare the time again, but those might be precluded by the available (legal) consumer-hostile media methods at the time.

<comment><USER12> I bought a modern 4K "tv" [0] (actually a monitor) recently without any sort of "smart tv" features. There are a few options out there in the high end monitors or, even cheaper, the "Corporate display panel" genre. I was appalled at how hard it was to get a display that wasn't able to phone home, though!

[0] [https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-43UD79-B-4k-uhd-led- monito...](https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-43UD79-B-4k-uhd-led-monitor)

<comment><USER13> How do you do sound? That's the bit I've been stumbling over. Having a separate receiver and therefore another remote is not something I'm keen on.

<comment><USER14> Integrated speakers in TVs have never been good, but as TVs get thinner, the speakers get worse.

In theory, HDMI-CEC might make it possible to control everything with any device's remote. My TVs are too old for that to work properly though. The receiver should come with a universal remote, which may work for you. I'm happier with the logitech harmony non-touchscreen remotes; model 665 has a nice shape, and the screen is useful for picking activities amd using functions that are hard to map. The configuration software is torturous, however. If you're using an IR remote like the harmony 665, you'll want to group components for easier aiming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> All legal because you clicked 'agree' on a mountain of legalese. It's past time voters and consumers engage in some serious collective bargaining as to what manufacturers are allowed to put in those agreements, and what the products are allowed to do. We've been 'voting with out wallets', isolated and individually, for decades, and things have only been getting worse.

<comment><USER16> Is there a better alternative than discursive agreements with a single yes/no at the end?

People have been litigating this for a while, and the best Google and Apple have come up with is prompting you for permission to access your camera.

That was a form of collective bargaining, and that was the result, I just don't necessarily believe that a congressperson's staff is going to do a better job than the monopolist platform holder.

<comment><USER17> > Is there a better alternative than discursive agreements with a single > yes/no at the end?

T&Cs really just seem like a way to ensure that the company can get away with every abuse of the consumer that's arguably legal. In some cases, e.g. credit bureaus, there isn't really a way to opt out of signing their T&Cs without also opting out of modern society.

Without a government that's actually interested in protecting consumers, it's a moot point.

<comment><USER18> > credit bureaus, there isn't really a way to opt out of signing their T&Cs > without also opting out of modern society.

If anyone's curious, here's more detail.

Opting out of credit bureaus is actually not possible. One can opt out of pre- screened offers of credit ([https://optoutprescreen.com/](https://optoutprescreen.com/), [https://simpleoptout.com/#lexis-nexis](https://simpleoptout.com/#lexis- nexis)), can lock your credit to prevent credit checks, and can opt out of some of data sharing, but financial institutions have safe harbor to release information to credit reporting agencies under the Fair Credit Reporting Act ([https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1681](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1681)).

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act requires financial institutions to let customers opt out of disclosing "nonpublic personal information to a nonaffiliated third party" ([https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/313.7](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/313.7)). That constraint would be fairly reasonable, except that there's giant additional carve-outs ([https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/313.14](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/313.14), [https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/313.15](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/313.15)). The biggest things that no one can opt out of are "(3) To provide information to insurance rate advisory organizations, guaranty funds or agencies, agencies that are rating you, persons that are assessing your compliance with industry standards, and your attorneys, accountants, and auditors;" and "(i) To a consumer reporting agency in accordance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. 1681et seq.)."

This is true even if one has never requested, been extended, or will ever request credit. As you noted, the only way to "opt out" would be to only receive or pay cash for everything and forgo modern society.

The root cause is FCRA's overly broad scope. Instead of allowing credit applicants/recipients and credit providers to establish an equilibrium that works for both parties ("Want credit? Okay, opt in to credit reporting from your other vendors and then we'll review your application"), FCRA forcibly opts everyone in.

You've probably seen this form before: [https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/rules/privacy- con...](https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/rules/privacy-consumer- financial-information-financial-privacy-rule/privacymodelform_optout.pdf). Those FCRA carve-outs are why "Can you limit this sharing?" always says "No" for the top few rows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I never plug TVs into the internet and generally don't connect any device unless it has a clear need to connect.

In the office I've taken to calling connected TVs a security concern, but I didn't realise how right I was. The conference room TVs there are currently connected (before my time) but I'll be disconnecting them next week.

<comment><USER20> My TCL TV power-cycles endlessly unless it has an internet connection. This behavior didn't start until a year after I purchased it.

I can't help but wonder if it's intentional. It did get me to connect the damn thing, despite my severe misgivings.

<comment><USER21> So the tactic worked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They haven't exactly been secretive about it, here is Vizio CTO giving an interview at CES this year over the topic

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/7/18172397/airplay-2-homekit...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/7/18172397/airplay-2-homekit- vizio-tv-bill-baxter-interview-vergecast-ces-2019)

Meat of it starts @15:58

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm in the market for a new TV. I'm impressed by display technology advances, but everything else about TV manufacturers is unimpressive. i.e. all the "smart" software, the OS, menus, apps, apps, and more apps. And surveillance. No thanks. Please give me compliant HDMI, USB, and other connections and let me feed sources of my choosing to your display controller.

My intention is to keep my TV offline right from the start, but maybe I'm screwing myself out of useful (display) firmware updates?

<comment><USER24> That's basically what I do. I don't let my TV connect to the net. But according to this twitter thread, that doesn't matter much, as my Roku is regurgitating my data all over the place anyway...

<comment><USER25> Roku has a setting to disable tracking data.

<comment><USER26> From the link:

> _Here's a doozy: Roku has a "Limit Ad Tracking" option. Turning it on > increased the number of tracking servers contacted It did prevent Roku's AD > ID from being leaked, but a whole bunch of other unique IDs are available. > Even Pi-hole wasn't that effective at limiting tracking._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> They found the Ring doorbell records video when someone moves in front of it? Isn't that what is made for? I'm opposed to subscription cameras and avoid Ring but everyone I know who has one bought it because it records when someone walks in front of it.

<comment><USER28> And locks those recordings away on Amazon's servers, by default.

<comment><USER13> That is in no way reassuring. Edit: Most likely you intended the comment that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't have a TV. I'm not into sports, and there's not much else that I care enough about. What I have is a huge display, attached to a Linux NAS/server with a decent graphics card. With a couple TB of video, from various sources. And even it is offline, except when I need to update stuff.

<comment><USER30> Care to share what display you have? I'm in the market for a TV but this interests me more.

<comment><USER29> LG 27UD58-B

At some point, I'll probably get a larger one.

And for sound, a 100W per channel amp driving a pair of ancient JBL L96s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I would settle for some laws to protect against adding tracking and ads later. Something as simple as, "if a device is sold without tracking or ads, they shall never be added through software updates or other means" and "if device has tracking or ads, it must display this fact on the box/other conspicuous places."

Drives me insane buying a device and for it to get slathered with ads six months later.

</comment><comment><USER32> Discussion of one of the papers mentioned here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100404)

</comment><comment><USER33> Our 25yo analog Sony CRT television just gave up the ghost. I looked online for a new television, but all of them come with 'voice control' and other 'smart' features. Do I really want to engage in yet another infosec fight trying to keep what should be a simple dumb appliance from reporting on what I do in my own home?

<comment><USER34> Simple. Just don't connect your TV to the web. I do this and have a separate Apple TV that I use, because the tv apps quickly become obsolete

<comment><USER35> yep, same. got a good quality Sony Bravia 4K that stays offline except occasionally for firware updates and on an isolated vlan.

built an HTPC that's connected via HDMI that i can use for youtube, netflix, plex/kodi, NAS, etc.

basically a dumb display.

<comment><USER36> Maybe it stores all your data on disk. When you update the firmware, it will send all the data saved before

<comment><USER35> it's possible, sure. most of the tracking features on smart tvs relate to tge use of smart features/apps. the parts that do screen fingerprinting do it in real-time, so hopefully does not store many months of 1-sec intervals of fingerprints.

i should actually intercept the traffic to double check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Samsung smart TV. We had to use it with an external receiver so we set the TV on video input. It works. We turn off the TV, turn it on again, it shows the video input for a brief moment and then hides it with a message that there is no signal and please choose you signal input. No matter what we did, it didn't want to just work.

The solution? connect the TV to internet (in a rural area), wait overnight so it can download the Terms and Conditions without any indication that this is what it is trying to do, sign the T&C and then it works...

</comment><comment><USER38> I have an old Thinkpad T420 with a non-working display that I attached to my (non smart) tv. I'm very satisfied with Kodi and browsing with Firefox in Linux. Next step would be some voice and gesture recognition (open kinect maybe?)

</comment><comment><USER39> Has anyone tried implementing DOS attacks on ad providers with the intention of making them block all traffic from your IP? Are these requests signed?

<comment><USER39> Bonus fun, count all of your requests by campaign, then contact advertisers to let them know how many fake requests they were charged for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> "TV watches you" was discovered at least 6 years ago, here's some discussions from that time:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6759426](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6759426)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6778397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6778397)

</comment><comment><USER41> Can anyone explain this to me? My Roku TV knows what I'm watching even if it's just a .avi file. I'm watching a movie on my Raspberry Pi with Kodi via HDMI. About 30 seconds into the movie it says "You can watch this movie on ... channel."

How does it know what I'm watching? Is it analyzing the feed like Shazam to music?

<comment><USER42> [https://support.roku.com/article/115005739288-how-do-i- use-m...](https://support.roku.com/article/115005739288-how-do-i-use-more- ways-to-watch-on-my-roku-tv-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> My wife and I Watch a lot of entertainment in our iPad Pros, only using our TV when we want to watch the same Netflix, HBO, or Prime content together. We are using a Firestick our kids gave us. I am thinking that an Apple TV would be a bit better privacy wise. In any case, I am going to remove my WiFi password from my Samsung TV's setup config and see if it works without an online connection.

</comment><comment><USER44> That's why I use ad-block hosts file on the router.

<comment><USER45> This is specifically mentioned in the linked article as being at best only partially effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> With how complex these systems are, I wonder when companies will start open sourcing and using reproducible builds to show there's nothing up their sleeves. For Microsoft, it clearly gives away too much, but for a company like Huawei facing bans over security, it gets closer to showing there's no government backdoor...unless it's in the hardware.

</comment><comment><USER47> I read one of the papers, and the channels listed with trackers were largely "long tail" garbage channels that 99.9% of Roku users wouldn't touch. Now, it only lists the ten worst channels, but it leaves it hard to figure out whether or not the use of trackers is prevalent on popular channels like Hulu, Netflix and such.

</comment><comment><USER48> The Pi-Hole lists to contribute to and subscribe to: [https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist](https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist)

<comment><USER49> Oh, good story here. There's an e-reader called Tolino which is somewhat popular here in Germany. You can use it to subscribe to your local library for a monthly fee and rent books.

Recently an old friend crashed on my couch for a week, bringing such a device. He couldn't download any new books from the library while staying. On the last day of his stay we didn't have anything better to do so we researched that problem. After some googling we actually found a long thread in some forum where people had all kinds of problems with a recent firmware update which didn't actually seem to be the problem here, but then there was some guy in this thread casually mentioning that he solved it by disabling his pi-hole. And yes, indeed, that immediately fixed the problem in our case too.

Let that stink in: You pay for your e-reader. You pay a monthly subscription. And then they dare to require you to send your data to googleanalytics.com, a foreign company, and don't even show a meaningful error message if that doesn't work (too embarrassed?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm thinking about buying a screen that has no TV with a basic amazon fire stick (no microphone) for precisely this reason.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

</comment><comment><USER51> Long ago I was dissatisfied with the smart TVs sluggish smart features so I just gave up and never connect them to internet.

Seems like a good policy now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, you need consent with CCPA. This is going to be fine.

<comment><USER52> As long as the dilemma to the user is presented as no privacy and get the job done vs privacy but don't get the job done, consent will be given.

<comment><USER53> > As long as the dilemma to the user is presented as no privacy and get the > job done vs privacy but don't get the job done, consent will be given.

You also get to demand access to your data and can instruct them to delete it (and they must or run afoul of the law).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Does any of that studies look at Chromecast?</comment>


Ask HN: Stallman resignation story disappeared from front page - <AUTHOR> This story was on the HN frontpage and then disappeared after a few hours. Why did it get off the frontpage so quickly?<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990583 <comment><USER2> There is no new or intellectually gratifying ground to cover with this. People have made up their minds, joined their tribes, drawn their lines in the sand and are just throwing bottles at one another at this point. If the subject of these threads weren't Richard Stallman, but some other celebrity, they would all be flagged as mainstream news and flamebait and rightly so.

Let me save everyone the trouble and condense 90% of the state of these threads now and in the future:

\- Richard Stallman did nothing wrong, this is just character assassination by the feminist media complex.

\- Richard Stallman did nothing wrong, this is just an attack on free software by corporate interests.

\- Richard Stallman did nothing wrong, insert tedious, pedantic argument about age of consent and assault here.

\- You can't prove Marvin Minsky did anything wrong either.

(...)

\- Richard Stallman was actually a sexist creep who had no concept of consent and the many, many stories about his behavior towards women finally caught up with him.

      - Richard Stallman did nothing wrong.

The story is worth talking about, but it doesn't deserve more coverage than it's getting here.

<comment><USER3> i think the bigger story is about deplatforming and the freedom to speak your mind. its intellectually gratifying unless we ve given up on free speech and willing to give a pass to every mob

<comment><USER2> The freedom to speak your mind is also the freedom for others to criticize what your mind says.

People can circle their wagons around RMS and attempt to delegitimize anyone who takes issue with his behavior and opinions as merely an angry mob if they want, but their right to express that issue is as valid as his.

<comment><USER3> and i m criticising the mob. the mob didn't lose it s job, rms did

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My best guess is that the slightly quicker drop-off was caused by the number of comments exceeding the number of upvotes triggering the "flame war" detector.

There are a number of posts that talk about how HN ranking works, here are the few I could find:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781013) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9426040](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9426040) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16018430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16018430)

<comment><USER5> Interesting, I thought there was a flame war detector on here. I've seen it happen to a few extremely polarising articles before.

Is there a way to view hacker news in "flame war" mode?

<comment><USER6> Go to page 2 of the home page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The discussion became a dumpster fire / flamewar and was probably repeatedly flagged.

</comment><comment><USER8> Twitter was up in arms over how "toxic" HN is with several high profile people "nice people" taking screenshots and implicitly urging people to flag and call people out.

So, that's likely why.

</comment><comment><USER9> I looked at the comments briefly, then flagged it. The politics of the FSF's decision is relevant and interesting to this community, but that was not what was being discussed, which didn't surprise me at all.

</comment><comment><USER10> Watch this one disappearing too

</comment><comment><USER11> It didn't get off quickly.

It's over day old and has 1665 points. HN news gradually get lower in the rank as they get older.

</comment><comment><USER12> It cracked 2000 comments. Anyone know what the most commented threads of all time on HN are?

</comment><comment><USER13> I am just waiting for a representative backed by big business to fill the void that RMS left.

</comment><comment><USER14> Because it's controversial and HN seems to remove/kill such discussions.

I wrote in such a thread and after 4 posts I couldn't post anything for over 3 hours.

<comment><USER11> Or maybe because there is constant stream of Stallman resigning posts. Few every hour. Latest is 23 minutes old when I'm writing this. The fsf.org linked was the main post with lots of good comments and it's now over day old.

<comment><USER14> Yes but a few was more popular, like the one who OP linked. Stories like that usually exist on the front page (or at least page 2) for more than 1 day.

This is also not the first time I've experienced that controversial topics simply disappear. Maybe you're right but it just seems like it happens too often.

<comment><USER11> > like the one who OP linked.

It was the fsf link.

<comment><USER14> Yes? It is not currently even on page 3 or 4 even if it got almost 2000 points. This is probably due to moderated behavior or else it would still be on the frontpage since it's such a big story.

<comment><USER11> The old HN ranking algorithm is roughly:

        (votes - 1) / ((item_hour_age+2)^1.8)

The current ranking might have some tweaks, but there is exponential decay.

It meas that using the old algorithm, the article with 1667 points and 1 day old (24-48 hours) has score between 4.5 and 1.5. Currently the last item in the front page has 242 points, 11 hours ago, so it would have 2.5 points.

<comment><USER14> I think you are correct in this case. I found the link on page 4, I just searched badly before but in my defense HN can be pretty hard to read sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's called deplatforming / cancelling / damnatio memoriae by someone called Selam Jie Gano. Every system of power needs executors.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ridiculous. HN censoring important news... I guess the best time is over for this site and it's time for something new.</comment>


All Your Biases Belong to Us: Breaking RC4 in WPA-TKIP and TLS [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.rc4nomore.com/vanhoef-usenix2015.pdf

<comment><USER2> This paper was referenced in the article discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9892157](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9892157)</comment>