Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966 - <AUTHOR> https://www.livescience.com/oldest-hiv-genome.html <comment><USER2> People might be interested in why this useful. Much like with Covid today, scientists are interested in understanding when the disease first appeared. Because that gives us clues about where it came from and how quickly it is changing now. You can estimate this based on changes in the sequence of the genome. Changes (mutations) will appear in the genome at a predictable rate ("mutation rate"), and is measured as mutations per generation.

For HIV, there are plenty of estimates for the mutation rate based off a mixture of statistical bioinformatics and knowledge of genetics. But they are all inferences because we don't have many sequences from before 1988. This relatively ancient genome allows scientists to see how good their estimates are by looking at a genome that will have -20 years worth of mutations. Turns out the estimates are really good. I would then draw the link back to Covid where the mutation rate is estimated in the same way. So it's a good bet that the date estimated for Covid's emergence is pretty close to the mark.

You can see the paper here[0]. I think the actual paper would make a better link on HN, but I guess the press release is useful for those without a molecular biology background.

0\. [https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/05/18/1913682117](https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/05/18/1913682117)

<comment><USER3> It's also relevant to demonstrate now that this virus too hasn't been made in the lab. The "lab origin" is a claim that some like to spread on every outbreak, even in spite of the fact that virologists know that nature produces the viruses very easily and there are no facts supporting anything else this time too.

From the abstract:

"Our phylogenetic analyses date the origin of the pandemic lineage of HIV-1 to a time period around the turn of the 20th century (1881 to 1918)."

At that time humanity didn't even know what the virus really is -- they just knew that something in some _liquid_ transmits some illness. The most advanced lab at that time could only get that liquid using the filters.

<comment><USER4> The question is not really "was this particular one man made?", but "is it possible?" It is pretty obvious 1970ties technology was not advanced enough to pull this stunt. But times change.

<comment><USER5> the "gain-of-function" experiments - ie. increasing the deadliness and transmissibility of a virus - doesn't seem to require any meaningful technology, at least not the way it was done in the Wuhan labs to the coronavirus[1]. Such "improved" virus wouldn't look like a "lab made". In theory similar gain-of-function experiments could have resulted in the human transmissible HIV back then.

[1][https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial- wuhan...](https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab- millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741)

<comment><USER6> Those gain-of-function experiments were done at the University of North Carolina.

But we know for certain that SARS-CoV-2 was not created through gain-of- function experiments. It doesn't use any of the standard viral backbones used in such experiments, it has a receptor binding domain that computational chemistry algorithms would not have predicted to work (meaning that nature "invented" it, not scientists), and the virus contains seemingly random differences throughout its genome from all known viruses - that would not be the case for a lab-created virus.

The boring answer is the correct one: this virus evolved in nature, and then spilled over into the human population late last year.

<comment><USER7> Your statement contradicted itself in several places: a "gain of function" virus would contain random differences, and would look indistinguishable from something "created by nature." Effectively that's how nature makes more virulent viruses; the more virulent examples reproduce more effectively. Just like that's how nature/bakeries makes yeast that works better on flour. No genetic engineering involved.

I don't think there is any evidence of this, despite the usual suspects (neocon types on our side, and militarists on the Chinese side) ginning up the case for an "escape from lab" casus belli, but let's get the facts straight.

<comment><USER6> > a "gain of function" virus would contain random differences, and would look > indistinguishable from something "created by nature."

No, a chimeric virus created in a gain-of-function experiment would look extremely similar to known viruses, because these chimeras are created by combining elements of known viruses. It would not be 4% different from the closest known natural virus. Accumulating thousands of mutations throughout the entire genome takes decades of evolution. In the wild, that means thousands of generations of hosts.

A virus created in a gain-of-function experiment would also use a well-known backbone. It would not be based on some virus that nobody had ever heard of.

<comment><USER7> Yeah dude that could never happen. Except it already did:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/)

[https://norkinvirology.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/genetically-...](https://norkinvirology.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/genetically- modified-emerging-viruses-debate-over-gain-of-function-research/)

[https://www.pnas.org/content/113/11/3048](https://www.pnas.org/content/113/11/3048)

I don't know what your purpose is in regurgitating verifiable but admittedly realistic-sounding bullshit on hacker news, but virtually every statement you have made here is obvious bullshit.

I don't even particularly believe the "possibly released from a lab" meme, and am generally against the shadowy dipshits that push it. But you're not helping here.

<comment><USER6> What happened?

Are you saying that a chimeric virus created in a lab was found to have thousands of seemingly random mutations throughout its genome?

Or are you claiming that a chimeric virus was created using a backbone that nobody had ever heard of?

Be specific, because it's impossible to respond if you vaguely call what I'm saying BS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Those fragments were also from different subtypes of HIV, Gryseels said, > which shows that the virus had been circulating for some time in humans > before the 1950s.

That was already pretty much a certainty from the already known fragmentary genomes (also mostly from the DRC), as well as the phylogenetic analysis of known strains, groups and subtypes.

<comment><USER9> Was this restricted to Africa?

<comment><USER8> Looks so. The virus seems to have "brewed" in the Congo basin for a few decades, _possibly_ amplified by the vaccination campaigns of the early 20th century (as they'd be using the same glass syringes and steel needles for dozens of patients).

If it got out before the second half of the 20th century it apparently didn't manage to gain enough of a foothold to go pandemic[0]. Though the long incubation rate and somewhat mixed symptoms also make it somewhat uncertain.

[0] as may have been the case for Robert Rayford who looks to have been something of a terminal case rather than vector or victim of a more widespread infection

<comment> Engineering-MD I'm skepticism that vaccinations would have increased it much tbh. A needle stick from a patient with HIV has a 1/300 chance of transmitting HIV, so it would probably have had a very limited impact. Needle sharing amongst IVDUs is higher risk due to the repeated exposure to the small risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> TLDR: The "news" is not the age of the samples, there are older ones, but that the virus genome is still intact and allows for a more accurate estimation of mutation rates and origins of HIV.

"There are older fragments of HIV out there, one from 1959 and one from 1960, also from DRC. But those pieces aren't as complete, and thus can't offer as much information about the virus' mutations. "

</comment><comment><USER11> If you have time I would recommend two movies that touches deeply upon this topic. They are 'Philadelphia'[1] which garnered a 'Best Actor' Oscar for Tom Hanks and 'And the band played on'[2] starring Mathew Modine.

'Philadelphia' a fictional movie that touches on the social stigma associated with HIV and 'And the band played on' captures the politics of why it was ignored by Reagan and his supporters for so long and the sad politics and scientific infighting in the chase for a cure.

Both are incredible movies.

[1] [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107818/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107818/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3)

[2] [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106273/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106273/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)

<comment><USER12> Both are really incredible movies, and I'd also highly recommend them. "How To Survive A Plague" is pretty great too (it even features everyone's favorite NIH official, Anthony Fauci!).

One thing worth being aware of with "And The Band Played On": it's quite old, and science advanced a lot after the book it's based on was written, so it's sometimes factually inaccurate (Gaetan Dugas didn't personally cause the pandemic, and the incubation period is longer than they thought then). It's _not_ a work of history or a documentary, but it makes for fascinating viewing precisely because it was made so close to the events that the story it tells is not neat and polished with the benefit of decades of hindsight and narrative shaping. It's chaotic and emotional and raw and authentic and, inevitably, sometimes wrong about stuff that wasn't known then.

<comment><USER13> The Gaetan Dugas thing seems to dominate every discussion about And The Band Plays on which is too bad because the book is like 600 pages long, tracks dozens of real life individuals, has tons of incredible primary source material, and gives a very touching, grounded, contemporary look at AIDS in the early 80s.

And out of the small portion of the book that talks about Dugas, I never got the impression that Schilts was trying the blame him for causing the pandemic, but rather that he was using him as a real life example of the type of man that existed in that era, who flew around the country having sex with thousands (yes thousands) of other men, whose behavior doubtlessly and unknowingly sped the spread of AIDS.

<comment><USER12> Most people have only seen the film, I think (I only read half the book). Gaetan Dugas is much more prominently featured in the film, which pretty strongly implies he was a key factor in the wide spread of HIV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I didn't understand the AIDS epidemic until I listened to a podcast [1] where they interviewed a gay survivor. I can't imagine my friends dying off one by one around me from an unknown specter. The government pretending you didn't exist and ignoring you because it was a "gay problem". Society demonizing you.

He said that even after it was understood that AIDS was not transmissible by touch, morgues would refuse to accept the bodies of gay men. When people knew they were at the end of the rope, they would ask their friends to throw their ashes over the fence into the white house lawn. That way as their final act, they could tell the government that their active silence was literally killing people and that even if they considered them others, they wouldn't be ignored.

It's heartbreaking, but I'd recommend anyone to listen to the interview if you don't know much about that period in history.

[1] [https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/shame-on- you/e/66787240](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/shame-on-you/e/66787240)

<comment><USER15> The white house lawn comment sounds powerful. But I don't see any evidence it actually happened. Right?

<comment><USER16> I followed the AIDS crisis in the newspaper from Day One, starting with one- inch long columns about "mysterious purple lesions called Kaposi's sarcoma" to shrines with hundreds of photos occupying whole sections.

The similarity with corona in 2020 is that so little was known, but for years, not months. The difference was that AIDS was 100% fatal until drugs were developed, and AIDS killed a generation of young adults rather than older people.

(There were interviews with a handful of men who were immune to the AIDS virus, but had to endure all of their friends and partners dying, and had to deal with inheriting a lot of possessions that reminded them of dead people.)

Almost all hemophiliacs in North America used pooled blood products from thousands of donors, so just about all of them died. (There's a Canadian film on Youtube that covers this.)

<comment><USER17> Isaac Asimov was so embarrassed to have contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion that it wasn't mentioned 'til after his death.

<comment><USER14> I had no idea that he died of AIDS and that was in the 90s. It's terrifying how recent it was that he would have received public backlash for contracting a disease during a surgery.

<comment><USER18> I feel like you're leaving homophobia out of the equation. Asimov was ashamed, and there would have been a backlash, because society associated AIDS with gay men. If people had really believed that he'd got it through surgery, there wouldn't have been a bad reaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I remember how _little_ was known in the beginning, when it was called GRID. For a while it was theorized in the media that semen hitting the bloodstream was causing the immune system to freak out; my friends, who had just started puberty, asked me (as the designated science nerd) what I thought of that, as they had somewhat random scenarios of nocturnal emissions striking road rash from skateboarding. I thought it unlikely, given what I knew of history.

We had very little idea of what constituted "transmissible" and what did not for a period of time, and so while our parents had "free love" and The Pill, with the biggest risk being herpes, at least a section of my generation got "sex = death" internalized on top of all of the other apocalyptic gloom.

Of course, even what would be transmissible was subject to propaganda: on one side, you had people arguing for any gay sex being a risk, but on the other side, some activists _insisted_ that heterosexual intercourse was exactly and precisely as risky as homosexual (male) intercourse. Quite a lot of misinformation floating around.

<comment><USER9> There are still a lot people spreading the misinformation that hetero sex is as risky as anal sex, because they have some odd agenda to push.

<comment><USER20> You understand heterosexual people have anal sex too, right? It's become quite trendy.

<comment><USER19> Everyone here knows precisely what was being discussed. Me, the writer, you. Why quibble?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "When AIDS was funny" [https://youtu.be/yAzDn7tE1lU](https://youtu.be/yAzDn7tE1lU)

It shows the challenges of the press to have serious conversations about the disease with the Reagan administration.

<comment><USER22> Is it that much different than how _everyone_ jokes about HSV1 today? It is still a (ridiculous and stupid) running punchline on SNL. Obviously it is a far less dire virus (as far as we know, today) but, we as a species (generally) compared to our individual potential, are absolute idiots and almost always take the easy intellectual route (humor and bullshit) when faced with uncommon information.

The video really seems like par for the course and not surprising in the slightest...

<comment><USER23> "far less dire" is an understatement. HSV-1 causes only cosmetic effects in the vast majority of cases.

<comment><USER22> That is... not exactly true: [https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2018/06/21/6219083...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2018/06/21/621908340/researchers-find-herpes-viruses-in-brains-marked- by-alzheimers-disease)

I was not trying to diminish the atrocity that is how the AIDS epidemic was handled, I was only trying to illuminate that people (and the super-majority of our lawmakers) are immature and uninformed when talking about all infectious diseases.

Edit: just look at our President's response to Covid... it is bumbling and moronic.

<comment><USER24> So what, this tentative research that shows _no_ causal link whatsoever between HSV-1 and alzheimers is the same as the 32 million killed by AIDS globally?

No. It isn't. Stop trivializing HIV. I don't know what you're getting out of it, but it comes across as incredibly tone deaf.

<comment><USER22> I truly was not trying to offend or trivialize anything: my only point, as best as I can distill it, is that people react irrationally and inappropriately to infectious diseases. And we need to work on that. This is not at all unique to HIV/AIDS, even though people suffering from AIDS have born the brunt of the actual suffering. If we can't have open, rational discussions about HSV, how can we do the same with HIV?

Edit: grammar

<comment><USER24> I understand the point you were trying to get across. Many STIs have substantial stigma around them and it makes it harder to fight them.

I just want to caution you that making these forms of equivalences is a common tactic to derail and discount the impact of HIV or the experience of populations disproportionately harmed, in the same way that people derail discussions about the disproportionate killing of black people by police with statements like "why focus on black people? nobody should be killed by police."

I believe that you were not intending to do so, but I also hope that you understand and can be cognizant of that dynamic.

<comment><USER22> MiroF - I (could not initially) reply to your comment directly, but that was a perfect analogy to make your point. I can definitely see how my first comment could be taken that way, and that was not at all my intention. As with many things, I gotta work on my contextual phrasing and presentation!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Semi-related: Thinking about this era I wondered how long it look for AIDS to kill 100,000 Americans. The answer is about 5 years. CoViD did it in 5 months.

<comment><USER26> It's disturbing that we are being told to learn to live with the virus when there is such a high risk of contraction.

<comment><USER27> High risk but most infected have close to no symptoms which is nothing like AIDS which used to be a death sentence.

<comment><USER2> But even a tiny mortality rate is catastrophic when talking about city and country sized populations. The lockdowns happened for a reason, because this disease overwhelms public health.

<comment><USER28> And if enough people start dying the disease overwhelms public _everything._

In the UK, some schools are refusing to reopen and some people are refusing to return to work in spite of government orders.

<comment><USER2> Indeed, mass panic is an under appreciated risk in the discourse in some countries. We may have the misfortune of discovering just what that looks like in the coming months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> [https://youtu.be/0KthBMpST7Q](https://youtu.be/0KthBMpST7Q)

A 90's film telling the story of how AIDS was ignored.</comment>


Why Juicero's Press Is So Expensive - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so-expensive-6add74594e50 <comment><USER2> I'm not a mechanical engineer, but it seems like a roller would be able to provide a more efficient and focused method of squeezing than a press they're using now.

What we see in most products is a result of the accountants saying "no" to too much. Cheap parts, assembled cheaply, pennies saved per part. What we see here is the exact opposite: the accountants didn't say "no" nearly often enough. Apple manufactures custom everything because they can, and because they sell at massive scales. Juicero wanted to be Apple quality without selling at Apple quantity.

I fully believe you get a better cup of juice squeezing with their massive press rather than by hand because it can press over a bigger surface. I also believe it doesn't matter a bit, because this is a worthless piece of equipment. Beautiful engineering, though.

<comment><USER3> I am a mechanical engineer (a machine design engineer in fact) and this press looks like would happen if you hired 30 of 23-year-old me fresh out of college, gave them an effectively unlimited budget and said "make me the swankiest press you can imaging". Lots of clever ideas and fancy machined parts with no thought for cost savings or whether there's an easier way to do something.

15A 330V DC motor? To squish a bag of pulp?

The best things I've gotten career and skill wise from more senior engineers has been the feedback where they looked at a design and said "looks fancy, but what were you thinking?".

This machine looks like it needed some more grizzled manufacturing veterans to inject some sense into the design process.

<comment><USER4> I think you've also just well described so much of startup software development as well. Great ideas, a grand pool of undiluted computer science theory, nobody going "why do you need 120 servers to run a webpage?"

<comment><USER5> > Great ideas, a grand pool of undiluted computer science theory, nobody going > "why do you need 120 servers to run a webpage?"

I actually untangled a mess like that (only it was some 200+ VMs on 20 fancy HP blades + SAN to serve 5000 users daily), don't even joke about it.

If you arrived with something the size of a semi-trailer to squeeze some juice people would likely ask you if you're all ok in the upper department but if you do the same in computer land they call you 'architect' and promote you. So much of that complexity is hidden and your average business owners have no clue what is required and what is overkill.

<comment><USER6> So why is it then that 23 year old engineers are building everything in SV? It certainly explains a lot about what I see happening there.

<comment><USER7> Hiring ten 23 year olds and paying for 20 servers is cheaper than hiring five 40 year olds and paying for 3 servers.

It only becomes a problem when you need to stop burning money, because you can't easily reduce the hardware cost.

<comment><USER8> Also have to take into account that hardware is ridiculously cheap nowadays. You can rent quite a lot of raw computing power with the salary of one engineer.

<comment><USER9> Not to mention one engineer can spin up and operate a big horizontally scaling cluster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This was great reading, I really enjoy this style of content: someone with expertise tearing down electrical and mechanical equipment and commenting on which parts are well done or poorly done.

I'll definitely be on the lookout for other write ups from Ben Einstein. To anyone wanting more content like this, I also recommend the "Bored of Lame Tool Reviews?" (BOLTR) series of videos from YouTuber AvE:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil](https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil)

<comment><USER11> You might like the EEVblog teardown videos. There is indeed something strangely compelling about a knowledgeable person providing an unbiased running commentary on somebody else's work.

<comment><USER12> As an electrical engineer, I find EEVblog to be pretty salty. He complains (like huge rants) about pretty minor things. I prefer MikesElectricStuff. His criticisms are usually more valid and he is sure to praise ingenuity when he sees it.

<comment><USER11> Right... also, during a tear-down, he'll occasionally leap to some conclusion about how something was done, complain about it / praise it, and then completely contradict himself a few minutes later (or in a text overlay) once the facts emerge. Still, it's good entertainment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Part of the problem is that the cold-pressed juice fad is not really rational to begin with. Somehow customers are convinced that the method of juice extraction is extremely important to the juice's health benefits, to the point that it's worth spending 3x comparable juices. It's great marketing on the verge of fraud. In order to capitalize on the fad the startup probably thought they needed a really fancy, distinctive press since the press has become of mythical importance in the customers' mind. And since cold-pressed customers have already proven to be cost insensitive they figured price is no object, so let engineering go wild!

<comment><USER14> To me, cold pressed orange juice I buy tastes 3X better than any other orange juice I've tried at the store. To me, that's worth 3X more. Some people value taste more than others, to each his own.

<comment><USER15> It tastes better, but is juice (of any kind) _actually_ good for you? I'm not convinced.

<comment><USER16> Of course it is good for you _. Vegetable more so (I would imagine) but fruit juice as well. Would it be better to eat the fruit and veg, sure. But is having juice better than nothing. Yes. Is it better than some other liquid refreshments. Yes.

Is it as good for you as some would have you believe, no. Do some over market it as a cure all. Sure. That doesn't mean, it is bad for you_*

* to an extent __amount and fruit depending.

<comment><USER6> It's probably better to avoid the fruit entirely. Modern fruit has been bred to increase sugar content far above what was natural. If you can fine real wild berries those are probably OK but they will taste sour if you're used to supermarket fruit.

<comment><USER17> Have a source for that? Or even an example of a fruit where it's the case? It certainly isn't true for apples - heirloom varieties often have higher sugar content than modern apples. Modern apples taste sweeter than many heirloom varieties due to lower acidity, not higher sugar content.

Many modern cultivated fruits don't contain nearly as much sugar as they could because they're picked early, before their prime.

In the Northwest, Rubus armeniacus is an invasive species which has never been heavily bred, and is one of the sweetest fruits you can find - especially in late summer.

Grapes are one of the only fruits which have enough sugar to make wine with unless you use chaptalization. (Though some berries like Blackberries get close.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That's a cute piece of mechanism. I can see how they got into that overdesign. There must have been insistence that the pack must be crushed between two flat plates. Once you insist on that, it gets complicated.

I once got a chance to look closely at the mechanism of SF's JCDecaux overpriced automatic street toilets in SF. Those cost about $150K each. The mechanism is all Telemecanique industrial control components. If you built a washing machine that way, which you could, it would cost $5000-$10000.

Compare the Portland Loo.[1]

[1] [http://theloo.biz/](http://theloo.biz/)

<comment><USER19> Not sure what the Portland Loo comparison is meant to suggest -- from what I've read, they also cost ~130k, and at least in a few cases, much more: [http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/sdut- portl...](http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/sdut-portland- loos-sticker-shock-restroom-2014dec26-story.html)

</comment></comment><comment> TD-Linux The two strangest parts of this are probably the door locking mechanism and the DC motor supply. The door locking was pretty well explained, but I was really surprised at the DC motor. From previous pictures I had assumed it was a 170VDC motor (using just a rectifier + filters for noise) but according to this it's actually a 330V active power correction boost converter. I guess that gets you 100-240V range support, but it seems horribly expensive for driving a motor. Even 170VDC permanent magnet motors are pretty uncommon - they fill an awkward middle ground where the motor is too big to reasonably use a low voltage DC one (due to power supply costs), but too small to use a universal AC motor directly off line power. The only tools AvE has reviewed of this design are the Kitchenaid mixer and Drill Doctor, for reference.

Also, I don't believe "330V 15A" for a second. Maybe 2A...

<comment><USER20> > 330v 15a

Just do the math. You get about 13a tops on a 115v plug before any household circuit will trip. That is over twice that. Same with those '5hp' power tools.

<comment><USER21> 1.5a 330v would make more sense (or in this application, less nonsense).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, that is amazing. I've seen less engineered products never make it to production.

I would quibble about the custom power supply though, they are not as difficult as they were in the past. Much of the 'magic' of building good SMPS supplies has been encapsulated into very clever chips and certification bodies have seen enough of them now that the checklists are pretty straight forward.

I don't get the outrage though.

<comment><USER23> If it actually _made juice_ then it would be an interesting product. Instead it squeezes packages with pulp and juice to force the juice out.

That's not a juicer. That's an inefficient, over-engineered sieve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow, this is an amazing teardown of the machine. Re the "apply force to the whole thing equally at once" problem mentioned at the end, I wonder if you could do something more like a roller on one side and a plate or another roller on the other, that rolls down from the top of the pack to the bottom.

Also, as overwrought and unnecessary as the Juicero product is, I can't agree with the "it's useless because you can do it by hand" argument. I could probably hand wash my clothes as well as the washing machine does in the same amount of time, but it's hardly useless. While the Juicero is pressing your juice you can be making your lunch or something.

Who knows why the CEO's response skipped straight past "having the machine do it saves you time" to "it can automatically lock you out if your pack expired."

<comment><USER25> My biggest problem with the product is that the QR-scanner, the wifi, the app, all of that has the single purpose of sometimes saying "no" when you press the button to press a pack of juice. That's all it does.

If you remove all of that crap, you get an overengineered juice-press that never says no, and always presses the packet you put into it.

Nothing is more infuriating than machines that randomly say no and refuse to do the thing they're supposed to do. The consumer value of all of that crap is negative.

"But the machine can alert you if the juice pack expired or was recalled"

Look, if you can't read the best-before date already printed on the pack, and if you can't smell the juice and tell if it's funky or not, you are a useless human being. I'm sorry, but you are.

<comment><USER24> IMO the even worse part is that you can only use their own packs at all. You know the company is most likely going to be gone within five years and then you're stuck.

The recall thing is so ridiculous though. The CEOs letter mentioned a hypothetical "spinach recall" that you would want to know about. Never in my life have I had to worry about my _vegetables_ getting recalled. Why on Earth would I be looking to buy a product that can tell me about something that in my experience never happens?

<comment><USER26> Actually, in the past few years there has been a number of packaged vegetable recalls.

Last ones were for packaged spinach.

<comment><USER27> Yes, we've gotten a couple notices from Costco about recalls on frozen vegetables.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if the upcoming season of Silicon Valley will feature a startup called "Juicaneros" which features a technology that tests blood collected by pricking a single finger, and then squeezing all of the blood out of an arm through the new pricked hole by putting the arm into a 4-ton press.

</comment><comment><USER29> They could have (and seems should have) created an elegant manual press, maybe with a crank mechanism of some kind. Would have arguably taken about the same amount of counter space and I still think that something beautiful yet manual would have played with the demo. Think pour over coffee crowd... a bit of easy manual work makes you feel like an artisan. Still would have packet subscription, still would have app potential for expiry notices and subscription management.

<comment><USER30> They did use an elegant crank mechanism, but it was in the funding model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think the machine is fine and I don't feel like $400 is very much for a well built appliance. What kills me about this thing is the fact that they take so many steps to lock you in to their juice packs, which are priced so high that a regular user will have spent more on juice in the first month than the entire machine. Couple that with requiring a nanny QR scan to make sure you can't press "expired" packs as if we are unable to simply read an expiration date and it gets ridiculous. By the way, has anyone mentioned that the expiration on the packs is 8 days after the date of manufacture? Subtract shipping time and you literally have 4 days to use your packs before you shiny new machine says "gotta buy more!" What if I'm ok with a 9 day old pack? Too bad. I think that's what will kill the Juicero. It makes customers feel like they're being hustled.

<comment><USER32> The $400 is fine. I got a factory refurb model but Vitamixes are in that sort of range. However Vitamixes can just use random fruit and vegetables including prepared versions from the produce department and freezer section of the grocery store.

I agree that it's the $400 + juice packs + nanny scans. Making smoothies isn't a big deal. And if you're willing to trade off a few $$ for a little prep effort savings there are tons of options--including ingredient subscription services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Beauriful but over engineered for its niche and utterly useless.

700bucks for abag squeezer? Something went terribly wrong.

It feels like they aimed to produce some advanced robotics and built the wrong product. Could turn this into a limb for amputees, makes more sense and actually good use of the resources.

<comment><USER34> I was not familiar with the product and after reading article I question if I am understanding this right. This press is only for their custom bag of pulp ?

<comment><USER35> Correct. You can't use anything else with it. There's a QR code scanner where the bag sits, meaning the press won't even operate unless there's a bag with a recognized (and validated via internet connection) serial number.

<comment><USER36> This company has to be a front for something; there has to be more to this story... I refuse to believe this is real. $120 million raised!

<comment><USER37> Some kid came up with an idea, his bro econ student joined in and drafted a sales pitch, the investment glut means there's too many people with too much money just sitting around in their bank accounts and they thought they could invest in this, because it "surely" will make money since it has analytics (big data) and IoT, and there you have it.

<comment><USER38> It wasn't a kid though. The guy had some pedigree because he opened a chain of juice bars back in the early 2000s. He's also been in contact with Jony Ive and Bill Gates, so I'm sure his connections helped him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I have to say I do find it disheartening that everything is aiming for a subscription model. Software, food, etc. I know that it is a very profitable business model but it does make me wonder if I really want to live in a world where everything is by subscription.

These subscription models, or even machines that require only a certain type of consumable, are effectively leases. Sure you may buy a piece of hardware, but it is only useful for as long as you buy and use the required consumable.

I am comfortable in renting a place to live - especially since I have moved about every 2-3 years in recent memory - and I am comfortable paying a subscription fee for some software and services. But I am not that comfortable when I have to subscribe to food or clothing for example.

<comment><USER40> Completely agree with you. What I particularly despise is the absurd lack of discussion on the amount of packaging waste. Why doesn't that make these piece of shit things non-starters?

Excuse the vitriol, but it absolutely makes my blood boil, the fucking Keurigs, these idiot juicers, Blue Apron, and that one company that even delivers a box of clothes each month? WTF?! I buy clothes every two years, and even I could do better.

Also, even if they offered to collect the packaging, and recycle/reuse it, it's a needless complication to an issue that shouldn't exist to begin with.

Why isn't a low-tech, low-carbon footprint life celebrated more? A french press/moka pot coffee, a mixer to make your juice (because, you know, you take the time to peel the motherfucking fruit beforehand), and cooking your own god damned food on a frying pan.

<comment><USER41> > Why isn't a low-tech, low-carbon footprint life celebrated more? A french > press/ _moka pot coffee_ , a mixer to make your juice (because, you know, > you take the time to peel the motherfucking fruit beforehand), and cooking > your own god damned food on a frying pan.

Reading your comment was deliciously cathartic, and now I know that moka pots are a thing. If I get a coffee habit again I'll have to look into trying one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> A Note From the New CEO of Lobstero

[https://www.somethingawful.com/news/juicero-lobster- pouch/](https://www.somethingawful.com/news/juicero-lobster-pouch/)

</comment><comment><USER43> This could become a collectible piece of hardware. A sort of beautiful tech historical folly. Might be worth the actual price over a 50 to 60 year timeline.

<comment><USER44> > This could become a collectible piece of hardware. A sort of beautiful tech > historical folly. Might be worth the actual price over a 50 to 60 year > timeline.

Remember CueCat? (Actually I was a young kid back then, but I'd really like to have one. I like cats.)

<comment><USER45> A discouraging idea - checking eBay, brandnew Cuecats are like $10. I think that's well below their original selling price, even after all these years of inflation.

<comment><USER46> Actually, no, that's infinitely higher than their original selling price, literally. They were given away for free at Radio Shack. I used to have one; I spent a few minutes playing with it, then stashed it away thinking I'd eventually find something useful to do with it, but never did. I eventually gave it to Goodwill or something.

<comment><USER47> I got quite a few as a nerdy middle school kid who frequented RadioShack. I always thought I'd come up with something interesting you do with them too. Never did...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Incredible. Does this make Juicero the first mass-market example of chindōgu?

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

<comment><USER49> No, that would be the selfie stick

[http://imgur.com/gallery/WJsAZ](http://imgur.com/gallery/WJsAZ)

<comment><USER20> Selfie sticks work wonderfully... for pointing out distracted and self- absorbed people to the rest of us. And taking shaky selfies too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Looks like they are getting a bunch of free press.

<comment><USER51> I lol'ed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Using all those CNC milled parts is simply crazy. CNC is for prototypes, small runs, super specialised load characteristics or runs of parts that are practically impossible to make otherwise. This use does not tick any of those boxes.

<comment><USER53> the whole thing is crazy. this is a slap in the face of anyone who has taken an engineering course, let alone anyone who was able to grow up with common sense

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I bought a $300 juice 15 years ago and it's a simple design and can juice anything. It's basically a giant motor with a plastic assembly attached to the front to hold the food.

If you are serious about juicing you can find cheaper products that don't require packets. This is a convenience item for people with a lot of money. There is no way this company will be worth $120MM unless they design a low cost model.

<comment><USER55> Sounds like the design of the Champion juicer, those things were great. Lasted forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Out of all the Juicero outrage, this is the best. You can still admire something for all its flaws.

<comment><USER23> It's like a museum of flaws and lessons about what not to do that will be educational for other companies.

<comment><USER56> Absolutely. In a Design for Manufacturing class, this extreme example will be shown on day 1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> $400 for a juice machine is not crazy; if you spend that much on an ordinary juicer you can make gallons of carrot juice for a very low price. (It saves money, it doesn't cost money)

You do have to clean up a mess, but if your time is that valuable you can hire a maid to do it for about that $5-$8 price point of the packs.

</comment><comment><USER58> Given the breakdown, it seems like the juicero press could do a lot more than just pressing bags full of pre-chopped stuff. Do you think they engineered it to do more, but then ended up being unable to actually make premade bags that contained big enough chunks of fruit / veg to work?

</comment><comment><USER59> (Half-)joking, but the irony is, with so many interest and high-quality parts, the press looks like it could be a desired object for makers. In particular, it contains:

\- two motors, one of them exceptionally strong \- a durable drive train \- a control board with flash memory, wifi, a camera and a USB plug for flashing without additional tools(!) \- a durable aluminum frame

Those parts look like they could be building blocks for some interesting hobby projects. Did they ever think about selling to makers?

<comment><USER20> Except a maker could just source the parts alone cheaper, unless they bought it used, and then there goes the incentive to the mfg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> This reminds me of the King's Toaster, an ancient allegory about overengineering a food appliance:

[http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/ktoast.html](http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/ktoast.html)

</comment><comment><USER61> Yes, definitely over-engineered and needlessly expensive for it's purpose.

But at the same time, it feels like they have achieved such a great quality that the learning and experience to design and execute could be very valuable as an unintended consequence.

So, maybe quality always wins in the long run nevertheless. Wouldn't you hire these guys and pay a premium, if you wanted to manufacture great hardware?

<comment><USER62> > Wouldn't you hire these guys and pay a premium, if you wanted to manufacture > great hardware?

Well, according to another source* one investor said that he expected the machine to be a lot smaller and that it would mush large chunks of fruit and veg. When the startup demoed at early stage, there wasn't even a working prototype - which is fine but I think it's fair to say that there was a bit of misleading. Only way to justify how it managed to raise $120 million...

*[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-v...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-valley-s-400-juicer-may-be-feeling-the-squeeze)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think Juicero cares one way or another about your ability to side-step their juicer, as long as you buy the packs because _that_ is where the money is. They'd probably give you the juicer for free if you signed up for a 3 years worth supply of juice packs.

</comment><comment><USER63> I blame modern VCs for this. VCs love continuing revenue streams and monopoly suppliers, and this crazy thing had both of those in spades. The funders must have been salivating so much about those factors that they never questioned how stupid the device ultimately was. There has to eventually come a tipping point where consumers just get sick of devices that require constant rent payments in order to continue functioning, with no choice in suppliers. Not to mention ridiculous amounts of packaging waste.

<comment><USER64> Nespresso seems to be doing well. I bet they sold it as "Nespresso for juice".

<comment><USER65> What if they went one step further and hired part time drivers to deliver the juice packs: Uber for Nespresso for juice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> > the massive force required to press the packs across the entire surface at > once. The machine must apply equal pressure to ~64 square inches of surface > area at once, meaning the drivetrain must be able to apply thousands of > pounds of force to squish all that produce.

What if the package was a cube (16 square inches for ex. with 4 inch height) This would roughly fit in the average human palm. Wouldn't we be able to easily more or less apply equal pressure on the packaging? Just a thought.

I would consider buying these cube packs.

</comment><comment><USER67> I thought this was silly until I read this point [1]:

>No prep. No mess. No clean up.

That's brilliant because people don't like cleaning. Cleaning regular juicers is annoying to the point that only few people use them regularly. There are enough people with money to spare that this can become a success. I haven't seen it mentioned, so let me spell it out: This is Nespresso for fruits.

[1]: [https://www.juicero.com/how-it-works/](https://www.juicero.com/how-it- works/)

<comment><USER68> You can buy juice at whole foods....

<comment><USER25> Exactly, if you want really fresh squeezed juice, there are plenty of options with about the same shelf life as these juice packs. There's zero value-add in this product compared to stocking up on a week's worth of fresh-squeezed juice.

In fact, the nanny-scans of the QR-codes that make the machine occasionally go "NO" is of negative value to the consumer.

Imagine buying a bottle of fresh juice, and on the third day you can't open the bottle any longer because it's past the expiry date. And imagine paying $400 for the "privilege" of this. Complete WTF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I think this is a good example of why the Keurig method of hardware sales[1] works so well. People would be okay with buying marked-up juice pouches because that's the real product. The juicer is just a means to an end.

[1] [https://blog.bolt.io/keurig-accidentally-created-the- perfect...](https://blog.bolt.io/keurig-accidentally-created-the-perfect- business-model-for-hardware-startups-18e9c3b4e796)

</comment><comment><USER70> I think there's a big gap between the target market for this device and the average consumer.

A commercial cold press countertop juicer is usually a few thousand dollars. A consumer model is ~$3-400. Cold press juicers are supposed to retain nutrients a bit more, and produce more flavorful juice. (who knows if that is true)

The Juicero is the pro-sumer k-cup version of a juicer. It's not aimed at people who are price conscious at all. Price conscious people could get something close-enough for sub $30. My guess is that the $700 juicer was designed to get a high-end reputation, with lower-end follow on products once they established the brand.

At this point, they are ruined. It's collective common sense that this is a bad deal and the value of the brand is diminished dramatically.

Their engineering decisions are questionable. If you are going for a high-end high quality unique product that will push people to spend double what the competitive product provides, it should be more appealing to look at. It's like they tried as hard as they could to make a cube-shaped plastic lined product as expensive as possible to manufacture. I'm all for sturdy commercial quality components, but not in something that looks like it was manufactured by nintendo.

The Bloomberg article was in poor form. At least let a company get out of the gate and establish itself before tearing them apart. But that's the danger involved with investing big money in companies based on a business plan and not vetting that they are good decision makers. This all could have been avoided if their PR people were on top of things. You'd think they'd have top notch PR people in place for this market segment... another bad decision.

<comment><USER71> Poor form? You could squeeze the bag and get almost an identical amount of juice. They should provide some sort of actual value to their customer.

Was the NYT article on Uber and Unroll.me poor form? Should Unroll.me get some runway to test this revenue model before the NYT includes them in a story?

Why don't we just require that businesses provide some sort of actual value? If they're producing value, they can prove it, and the product will succeed or fail on the market. But being able to get the same amount of juice by squeezing the bag isn't some "fake news" drive for clicks. It's an actual issue, which Juicero was apparently shocked by, and they should have to defend themselves.

<comment><USER70> > Poor form? You could squeeze the bag and get almost an identical amount of > juice. They should provide some sort of actual value to their customer.

I can squeeze a honeydew by hand and get plenty of juice. Pomegranate not so much. Kale, not at all. Celery? Maybe a little, but a few drips compared to what a juice press would give me is not at all in the same ball park. Do any of the juice packs contain hard to squeeze fruits or vegetables? The exercise is left to the reader, who can't do their own research without a $750 spend. Poor form.

> Was the NYT article on Uber and Unroll.me poor form?

I don't know which Uber article that you are referring to, but Uber is in the midst of a sea of bad press and is plenty flush to buy the help of a quality PR firm to see them through it.

Unroll.me - if you go after them, you should talk about how Mozilla uses data along with chrome, facebook, the television networks, netflix, etc. It's lazy to villify a single firm when there's an industry full of questionable practices.

> Why don't we just require that businesses provide some sort of actual value? > If they're producing value, they can prove it, and the product will succeed > or fail on the market

Not every product produces value. In the world of IT, software in general, and most certainly "cloud services", value should absolutely be questioned more. But it's certainly hard to be a consumer watchdog while at the same time doing the same thing. Especially when your biggest source of revenue is a series of other companies doing the same thing.

> But being able to get the same amount of juice by squeezing the bag isn't > some "fake news" drive for clicks.

Are you sure about that? The video looks to me like it was created with the intent of going viral.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Oh this is interesting:

> The two primary exterior plastic parts are huge, detailed injection molded > parts with multiple slides and actions, large changes in wall thickness > (which makes it very hard to mold without imperfections)

Does anyone know why large changes in wall thickness makes molding these parts more difficult?

<comment><USER73> Molding parts with uniform thickness is tricky enough - without great tooling design and the perfect temperature/pressure settings, you'll get hot spots, flow lines and all sorts of visual defects in your part. Varying thicknesses make achieving these "Apple-like" levels of perfection in the plastics even more difficult, thanks to the fact that the material will cool and change shape at different rates.

<comment><USER72> Oh that's fascinating - thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> A machine with that level of quality has a lot of appeal for me. Something generally useful like a blender or stand mixer, that might be kept visible on the counter and used often, I could see dropping $400 or even $700 on.

But this thing doesn't appear "generally useful" based on what I've seen about this story. It seems to want to lock you into using food from a particular vendor.

How much less appealing would my stand mixer have been as a purchase if it were outfitted with a QR reader looking to make sure that the KitchenAid™ cookie dough I was giving it was fresh? That would be a deal breaker.

<comment><USER75> Also, I am not really sure about the "quality" aspect. All that complexity, all those moving parts, high power components next to low power components - seems a lot could wrong down the road. Ofc they seem to be well built so the components could last a while.

<comment><USER74> Yeah, I would wait for a judgement from somebody like Wirecutter or Consumer Reports on whether such a product is likely to hold up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> After reading about the details in this wonderful article I am starting to believe they intended from the beginning to create a piece of postmodern art.

</comment><comment><USER77> Misallocated Capital. Maybe I'm bitter because my startup wasn't funded, but I feel like we can and must do better than this.

</comment><comment><USER78> From a hardware perspective is this well designed?

Forgot what you think of the product and whether it's excessive.

I mean with that handy USB connector to flash the firmware, a $400 appliance that does one thing well is not that bad if you can do that one thing on whatever you want.

</comment><comment><USER79> I'm a little bit shocked by everyone's reaction to this. It is nothing new for people to spend more money than required to accomplish a task. First class plane tickets. Luxury cars. Mansions. Expensive restaurants. And a million other things.

<comment><USER80> > to accomplish a task

People are outraged because it doesn't actually accomplish any task. A number of ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ comments seem to miss that this doesn't actually make juice. You're paying for them to hide 8 oz of juice in $8 packets and then again to extract the juice with this contraption (assuming your internet is working). I suppose there's some entertainment value in "juice press theatre" but you could say the same thing about a gadget that lights your money on fire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> "The enemy of art is the absence of limitations"

\--Orson Welles

<comment><USER82> "The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit... the arbitrariness of the constraint only serves to obtain precision of execution."

\- Igor Stravinsky

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Sounds like they needed the inventor of the AeroPress to be involved.

</comment><comment><USER84> I bet this was really fun to work on.

</comment><comment><USER20> Useless precision. The anathama of profit. I love some engeneering porn, but that is when form follows function, that is dubious here.

</comment><comment><USER85> I hate to point to conspiracy theories but the only reason someone might invest in this company is if they are investing money not in the product (because it is obviously a flop) but to gauge if consumers will eventually be dumb enough to allow abuse from appliances just like they allow from internet and mobile phone companies.

</comment><comment><USER86> What a Rube Goldberg contraption.

</comment><comment><USER87> I hope they will fail miserably together with Keurig, Blue Apron and anybody else who makes simple food preparation into something that produces piles of trash for no good reason other than costing ten times as much. This is totally the wrong direction.

<comment><USER88> Seriously though. Blue Apron made me seethe with anger the first time I saw an ad for it. If you can afford Blue Apron, you can afford to buy 3x as much food and have control over your ingredient choice by just going to your goddamn supermarket. Yeah, recipes are great. Yeah, tutorial videos are great. But that's what the internet is supposed to be for. You don't need some hipster wannabe "chef" assembling boxes of ingredients 200 miles away to decide what you're eating tonight, do you? That box will come with 10 little vacuum sealed plastic pouches, a bunch of packing material, instructions you could have found online, and a whole host of other crap you don't need that's just making waste for waste's sake.

If you already have access to a kitchen, a decent set of cooking equipment (which you need regardless of whether you go for Blue Apron or not) is only a few hundred bucks, and the "basics" (pasta, rice, potatoes, onions, garlic, spices, veggie oil, olive oil, vinegar, flour, sugar, salt) are maybe 50 bucks more. Then, for less than a months' worth of meals from Blue Apron, you're set to start cooking for life.

My fiancee and I spend a grand total of 100 bucks a week, give or take, on groceries. This is in southern California, and usually including a cheap bottle of wine. We could spend even less if we wanted, but we're cooking some gourmet shit at home and constantly have leftovers, while generating 1/2 the trash of any of our neighbors thanks both to reusable containers for everything and composting. You can do SO MUCH better than Blue Apron, both in health and in environmental impact.

The same thing applies to Juicero: If I _really_ want to start making fruit juice, I'll buy myself a decent juicer and get fresh, local fruit because it will _always_ be cheaper than whatever they're sending out in their little pouches. I'd rather spend a couple hundred bucks on a quality machine (or better, just make smoothies since they're better for you and use the money I saved not buying a Juicero to buy a Vitamix) than buy into some cult hype bullshit.

<comment><USER89> Their market is people that don't cook all that often, and want to cook relatively fancy things. It's people that cook so rarely that they throw away half of the groceries they buy, because they don't cook enough, and the dishes they make don't make sense together, from a home economics perspective.

I do my best to cook traditional Northern Spanish food for myself (well, as close as I can given the available ingredients). There's very little food waste, precisely because so many recipes either use long lived ingredients, or just reuse them. Some are built using another dish's leftovers as an ingredient. This makes it very easy to just have an idea of the stock we need for certain kinds of ingredients, and make a high percentage of the shopping list just an exercise of comparing what we have with our ideal stock.

This only works, however, because we aren't really looking at dishes individually, and we cook almost every meal. Someone that cooks once a week, and isn't thinking about efficiency, in either ingredients or time spent preparing, will end up spending a whole lot more and eat less. Unfortunately, there's no money in teaching people how to understand a kitchen like this, and how to add recipes that will both add variety while minimizing waste.

<comment><USER90> This is an interesting idea, especially for someone like me who cooks nearly every meal but still watches rarely-used ingredients die a slow fridge death. Are there any books you would recommend specifically for this kind of reusable cooking plan?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> Guys, cancer. It's still out there. Donate for research instead of wasting 400 Bucks on a fu*king juice press. No one can justify this useless piece of crap.

</comment><comment><USER92> The so-called hack is that if you squeeze the bag you get 7.5 oz of juice compared to 8.0 oz from the machine.

This clearly means to anyone with technical insight that what is inside the bag is not really sealed raw vegetables in a plastic bag able to handle 10,000 lbs/sq in of pressure, but is some sort of processed vegetable juice that has been artificially processed and embedded within some sort of substrate meant to appear solid-ish.

An actual vegetable press that uses immense pressure does indeed produce a particular special kind of "pressed" raw juice extract that retains the vitamins and flavor. However this machine clearly does not do that and is therefore misrepresenting itself. The evidence that proves it is that people can squeeze whatever is inside it out.

If the inventors and investors of this technology wish to claim otherwise I am more than willing to engage in a personal challenge where we get together and look inside the bag and find out if it is really unprocessed raw vegetables or not.

Disagree? Buy a carrot. Squeeze it as hard as you can. Film the result and upload it to youtube. Do the same for a beet, for lettuce, and for celery. Post the link. Demonstrate that pressed vegetable juice from raw unprocessed vegetable is possible with simple force from the human hand, unleveraged.

<comment><USER93> The bags contain something like a shredded pulp. Basically it's as close to being "juice" as you can get without having to call it "juice"

<comment><USER23> Many juicers have two stages: Shredding and juice separation via pressing or centrifugal force.

The centrifuge approach works surprisingly well, the pulp that comes out of a good one is quite dry, all the juice is gone. It yields a lot more juice out of a carrot than you'd expect.

This "press" simply does the last step in juicing. The hard work of shredding is already done.</comment></comment></comment>


The Swedish Loneliness - <AUTHOR> https://micaelwidell.com/the-swedish-loneliness/ <comment><USER2> I wonder, why do Swedes feel the need for independence? Is it a need for security? Or difficulty sharing life with others?

And why does this problem seem to get worse as people gain wealth? Why does increasing affluence seem to always engender greater separation, especially if it makes us less happy?

I don't think this is unique to Swedes. Other north european peoples seem to suffer comparably, like Norgewians. And I think it's common in America too, and seems to arise in communities of all ethnic origin. Wealthy americans of all regional and ethnic extractions seem to follow the same trajectory, I think, with essentially the same outcome.

Wealth seems to breed isolation, and unhappiness. Yet few with wealth ever choose to let go of Xanadu and return to Rosebud.

<comment><USER3> > why do Swedes feel the need for independence

I suspect it's due to a happy lifestyle. I don't "suffer" from it in my own words. I'm happy and very solitary. It's how I've always been (being the smartest, fearless, capable and most interesting person I know). Now, being that the concept of friendship having different levels of intimacy, you can do the math (see Proverbs 18:24 via Luke Cage S01E09). At a certain point, your learn to shed unreliable friends and real friends die off or move away or change...suffice to say it's rare that you're going to follow alongside their life path _when you have means_. I've been _perfectly_ satisfied with my life about 8 times and most of those were when I was alone. I will probably die very much alone and as close to perfectly happy as I can manage. I just don't see it as a problem, but as a coping mechanism for lower income communities. It's probably true that I could be happy with other people, but I just can't stand most of them outside of work (I can limit relationships to working toward a common goal).

<comment><USER4> In case anybody wants to hear a different bell, I am probably as wealthy as jack9 and equally happy about my lifestyle, but I love people and I've never lived alone in all my life. My opinion is that it's more a matter of having different social needs and sensitivity, than being economically independent. Or maybe it's what you think of yourself -- I know for a fact that there are always smarter and more interesting and different people out there and I'd love to know them and experience life with them. It's a basic need I feel that doesn't depend on whether I'm able to support myself or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How sad.

</comment><comment><USER6> subsidized hikikomori</comment>


Troll thread - <AUTHOR>

Post any of those controversial topics you would really like to talk about, but don't because we don't like trolls here. <comment><USER2> I don't know if this thread is a good idea, but the timing is certainly good for me. Yesterday, I got modded down to -7 for suggesting that a company like 37signals isn't a startup.

A startup is a business whose primary aim is growth. If you focus on revenue, you do so at the expense of growth, because people prefer free stuff over non- free stuff.

Could someone explain to me why I'm wrong? (I am not saying this rhetorically, by the way. If we assume that this community is as smart as everyone says it is, then I must be wrong.)

<comment><USER3> Where is the line between startup and small business?

<comment><USER4> Well, the author topic you replied to specifies a pretty clear line: either your focus is growth, or it is revenue. One can agree or disagree, but it's a relatively clear line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      <Donut[AFK]> HEY EURAKARTE
      <Donut[AFK]> INSULT
      <Eurakarte> RETORT
      <Donut[AFK]> COUNTER-RETORT
      <Eurakarte> QUESTIONING OF SEXUAL PREFERENCE
      <Donut[AFK]> SUGGESTION TO SHUT THE FUCK UP
      <Eurakarte> NOTATION THAT YOU CREATE A VACUUM
      <Donut[AFK]> RIPOSTE
      <Donut[AFK]> ADDON RIPOSTE
      <Eurakarte> COUNTER-RIPOSTE
      <Donut[AFK]> COUNTER-COUNTER RIPOSTE
      <Eurakarte> NONSENSICAL STATEMENT INVOLVING PLANKTON
      <Miles_Prower> RESPONSE TO RANDOM STATEMENT AND THREAT TO BAN OPPOSING SIDES
      <Eurakarte> WORDS OF PRAISE FOR FISHFOOD
      <Miles_Prower> ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND ACCEPTENCE OF TERMS

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Controversial?

Most people here trying to create startups are wasting their time. They want to have a startup so as to become financially free, but it is much quicker and more dependable to save up money, stick it in an investment account and then live overseas.

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.soapboxxer.com/> is better for this sort of thing. Otherwise I'm kinda tired of flamewars/trolls and the like.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not actually anticipating flames and trolls, just people posting things they think would usually get flamed or considered a troll. Just curious what'll pop up.

It'll all be contained here too so as not to bug the other submissions, and you'll only come here if you expect something controversial.

<comment><USER6> but soapboxxer is perfect for that ;). It's all about controversial stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> But it isn't on HN, and I bet lots of people don't know about it. So, posting there effectively silences controversy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> is ruby better than php?

<comment><USER7> is asp classic better then both ruby and php?</comment></comment>