Free annual subscription for NexPloit (T&Cs apply) - <AUTHOR> Hello world!
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If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us! <comment><USER2> I think you will get much more traction with a blog post about a success case. What is your better example of a successful analysis and fix of a project? Try to write it very carefully, so the people in the project are happy that you wrote about them. Make the post after they fixed the bugs.(Perhaps give them an opportunity to review the post.)</comment>


Breakfast is Overrated - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/breakfast_is_overrated/ <comment> anon-e-moose This ignores all research already done on the brain and nutrition, and also common sense. Its pretty well understood that the brain runs on glucose. Now of course if you eat too much or eat shitty food, you're going to have an insulin spike and sugar crash, and if you're eating too much you probably have other health problems that aren't helping.

Healthy eating, good body weight, and regular exercise sharpens the brain.

Edit: The number of people jumping on board with this "theory" in his blog comments makes me despair for the state of nutrition and health education.

Learn you a physiology: <http://www.fi.edu/learn/brain/carbs.html>

<comment><USER2> I'll probably be voted down for this, but Scott Adams is constantly making unfounded and usually wrong statements on his blog. He tries to push out big ideas on his blog and usually overreaches. But he has a big following.

<comment><USER3> Has anyone got a convenient phrase for this style of blogging? I love having these kinds of BS sessions with my friends, propounding crack-pot theories and generally playing fast and loose with the facts, but it often bugs me when I see it in a blog post. There's absolutely no reason it should bug me, blogging is whatever the blogger wants it to be, but I think if I had a name for it I could quickly go "Oh, this is just a [blank] post" and not feel the need to take it seriously. Sort of like the way Godwin's law helps you filter the worst comment threads into /dev/null. I bet it would be all kinds of fun to have dinner with Scott Adams, I just don't want to mentally peer review his after-dinner conversation.

<comment><USER4> I'll throw this one out there: "Barstool Blogging"

It's like conversations you have with some random person in the barstool section of a bar. Subject matter varies, but generally it ends with you both talking like "experts" about some random subject neither of you really knows much about, besides maybe a few "factoids" here and there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> By his same logic, breakfast should be essential, provided you don't eat a large breakfast.

You need to be on the edge of hunger to be creative, not into full-blown hunger. Eat a small breakfast and you'll start to get hungry before lunch. Eat a reasonable lunch, and you'll start to get hungry before dinner, etc.

<comment><USER6> >Eat a small breakfast and you'll start to get hungry before lunch. Eat a reasonable lunch, and you'll start to get hungry before dinner

I usually go without breakfast (only coffee). When I do eat it then I'm ravenous by lunchtime. I put it, completely unscientifically, down to waking up your metabolism. Breakfast for me would be cereal of some sort with raisins and milk or granola with milk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found this interesting and appreciate people who think about things instead of regurgitating what "experts" say with a pompous little whine in their voice.

In this case, however, I wonder what is the tail and what is the dog. For me, when I'm in the zen of creating something, I can't be bothered to take time to eat. So, I am hungry when I'm creative, but I've always assumed it was an effect, not a cause.

</comment><comment><USER8> While i don't buy his explanation of the causal mechanism at work, he's almost perfectly described my work cycle: I'm most productive in the morning, get the usual post-lunch valley, and have a nice productivity rise after my (usually light) dinner. I'm also stick thin. It's so stark that i usually will put off lunch as long as possible, and try to schedule meetings/etc for the 3p-6pm area. I always assumed this was a side effect of being really involved, like pdx writes, but maybe i had causality backwards.

I know the plural of anecdote isn't data, but i'm volunteering to be a datapoint :)

Also, w.r.t. the eagerness to write off how half-baked Scott Adams is: There's empirical observations of a black box, and there's the attempt to explain what's inside. You might get causality backwards, or explain the correct behavior in the wrong way, but who cares if the real goal is to maximize the behaviors of the box, right? I mean, who cares if the explanation for putting off lunch is ridiculous, as long as the behaviors it explains really exist.

[edit to clarify -- i don't really care if his explanation is accurate. He so accurately described my mental cycles and my diet that it was interesting to read his hypothesis]

</comment><comment><USER9> I know he said it's not scientific, but what dreck. _Even if_ the premise holds, it's more likely that creative people are too busy creating to eat...

</comment><comment><USER10> Not quite relevant, but I do not have a practice of skipping breakfast. I am _trying_ however, once in a week or two, to fast for 24-36 hours. This is called "intermittent fasting" and has been shown to produce positive effects.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting> has some links to studies.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't know if this is a creativity trait, maybe more to do with addictive personalities. The addiction I feel and the lack of food I experience when I'm in a marathon coding session feels exactly the same as when I was trying to tackle some epic dungeon in World of Warcraft. Hunger would end up fueling the addictive focus I was feeling in both cases.

</comment><comment><USER12> The key may be in the casual mention of 'coffee consumption'.

Many creative caffeine users do their best work while all jacked on caffeine. I know I do. That's often first thing in the morning, and sometimes even before I eat. Caffeine is anorexic, as well, causing loss of appetite as part of the effect.

It's still a better idea to eat. Many years ago, when I took prescription amphetamines, I would force myself to eat at noon, grimly and efficiently munching down a sandwich or burrito. Otherwise I would start hating life.

Normally, I eat a piece or two of fruit with tea for breakfast, followed by second breakfast (often a bagel with hummus and avocado) a few hours later. This gets me through the creative rush I think Scott's referring to, without the obligatory post-lunch hard crash.

</comment><comment><USER13> Breakfast _may be_ overrated, pending double-blind, randomized, placebo- controlled studies corroborated by multiple, independent research teams.

<comment><USER14> While those studies are useful, you can't argue with results, even if you have only tested it on yourself, it at least is true for you, even if you don't fully understand the mechanism.

<comment> anon-e-moose This seems reasonable, until you consider that there might be other factors at play. Maybe he eats food that is hard to digest or causes a sugar rush and then sugar crash, and simply not riding the sugar roller coaster felt better, but he'd feel the same or even better by eating meals with less simple carbohydrates.

The point of these studies is to remove these other factors and test one thing at a time.

<comment><USER14> Then you have only proven that not eating results in feeling better than eating exactly what you used to, keeping everything else the same, not that not eating is better than eating independently of what you eat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Human brain, being a very recent, and thus highly un-tuned, product of evolutionary development, is very energy inefficient machine. It consumes disproportionally significant amount of resources when it really works. Thus highly creative brain activity quickly burns through glucose and may quickly make you feel hungry (please don't mistake with a pure psychological trick of switching to snack in situations when your brain is forced to work intensely, and it tries every escape route to avoid/delay the task )

<comment><USER16> Energy inefficient?

You have no idea what you are talking about. Estimates for how much computation a human brain is doing _start_ at 10^14 flops and only go up from there (Kurzweil, known for his optimism, puts the brain at 10^16). Current record-holding supercomputers, BTW, are just barely at 10^15 or so.

And the brain does this on a watt or two, not 1.3 megawatts (<http://www.top500.org/lists/2008/06/highlights/power>).

<comment><USER17> Voted the OP back up, cause I think it's really just a poor choice of diction. The brain DOES consume a lot of your body's total energy budget. Like roughly 20% when resting, and it goes up when thinking harder [1]. Granted, compared to supercomputers, we might have godly energy efficiency, but when our source of power isn't a 240V outlet, but food, then we have to evaluate the actual energy consumption a bit different.

[1] <http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/JacquelineLing.shtml>

<comment><USER15> thanks for the link.

"Einstein's brain weighed only 1,230 grams, which is less than the average adult male brain (about 1,400 grams). .... However, the density of neurons in Einstein's brain was greater. In other words, Einstein was able to pack more neurons in a given area of cortex."

Personally for me, that completely confirms my theories. Moore's Law for the brain :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is summed up in the old adage, "The hungry hound hunts best."

<comment><USER19> Hey, I didn't know that one, thanks!

The equivalent French saying has a bit more more innuendo...

      "A good rooster is never fat"

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think its an interesting piece, but his leaps of logic are a bit alarming ... in a funny sort of way.

I just think that people who are creative or actively creating stuff don't have time to eat much or sleep for that matter.

Not to put myself in that category, but I often forget to eat and when I do, I wolf down my food so I can get on to more 'interesting' things ... also ... sleeping annoys me ... it seems like such an inefficient way of recharging my body/brain (inactivity for 30% of the day ... wtf?!?!), at one point I'd only get 5 hours of sleep because it felt like such a waste of time ... after having some health issues because of it, I'm closer to 6/7 now ...

</comment><comment><USER21> For me this is true. Again, can't speak for everyone, but for myself I eat when I am hungry, but never over eat. I dont eat breakfast unless im hungry, and I eat in moderation.

Not trying to yank anyone's chain, but I know people who make a huge deal out of breakfast. They make a huge meal out of it, from which they also add a large lunch and diner, and then question why they cant lose weight.

</comment><comment><USER22> The old saying "hungry dog hunts best" sums it up as was already pointed out in another comment. The hungrier I get the sharper my focus becomes, whether it is writing code or hunting, it works!

</comment><comment><USER23> "Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous." -- Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

</comment><comment><USER24> Is it possible that digestion uses resources that could otherwise be used for thinking?

</comment><comment><USER25> I have my creativity spikes when I'm feeding on a specific source of calories - beer!

<comment><USER26> I'm about 270lb construction worker. I have never seen a design in my life. At 15 I got a job as a reviewer because I lived in the sticks I couldn't get anywhere to work to be able to pay for video games and movies - plus I was too overweight and lazy to be up to do a paper route. I did however use ingenuity and talent to start writing reviews, getting free games and movies and trading for what I wanted.

I worked as an electrician at 17 with a licensed electrician. We never did new construction so all our work was after-fact and involved a ton of creative work arounds (I was like 200+lbs, you think I'm crawling in loft space in the eave of a house? No fucking way - genius kicks in fast). I currently work doing siding, windows, soffit and eavestrough. Not only do you have to be able to make your own cappings, but our instructions are literally - "[x] inch insulation, and [x] type siding" for a full house with windows, vents, gas and hydro stacks, pipes, and all sorts to work around. Seen a badly sided house? It looks horrible, and worse you get leaks in your house.

I'm 22, in 5 years the only thing I'm unsure about doing in making a house is the foundation. I've done everything else or know I can without a doubt without ever doing it - roofing for example, cover your nails and stagger, I've worked with roofers and they literally aren't that smart. If you can't roof - find a god and pray for help.

In my free time I still write, on a nearly daily basis. Either blogging, or working on a novel or short stories. This writing is usually fed with beer, sometimes rum, always a sugary liquid like pepsi or coke on my non-alcohol nights. I'd feed my other work with booze if I could, but a drunk guy up a 32ft ladder is a _bad_ idea.

I think creativity involves the ability to jump to tools you barely know and to still excel.</comment></comment>


Pytext: A natural language modeling framework based on PyTorch - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facebookresearch/PyText <comment><USER2> Wow, I just used the AllenNLP mentioned here and it is quite amazing! I took a random article from Google news which happen to be about Flynn's FBI criticism. I asked a couple question like "who is going to jail" or "who is leading the investigation" and it worked flawlessly. The article is only around 15 sentences too!

Edit: Super wow, the documentation is amazing as well ([https://allennlp.org/tutorials](https://allennlp.org/tutorials)).

<comment><USER3> A few years ago I read the novel "Galatea 2.2" by Richard Powers which is all about training a neural network to do just that and thought "now this is some bullshit".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love textacy, it has soo much out of the box. Topic modeling, topic extraction, summarization, and its built on top of Spacy. [https://github.com/chartbeat-labs/textacy](https://github.com/chartbeat- labs/textacy)

</comment><comment><USER5> If anyone from the dev team there, can you look into integrating the "make the research into production" part into allennlp. Facebook currently has fairseq, this and other nlp repos. Allennlp makes it easier to model most classes of NLP problems with a clean dependency injectable interface with most common tasks abstracted out cleanly.

<comment><USER6> PyTorch dev here. We'll talk with the AllenNLP folks to see if we can make this can happen.

We just released PyTorch 1.0 stable last Friday that adds stable production capabilities, so the stuff is just out of the oven. [https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/releases/tag/v1.0.0](https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/releases/tag/v1.0.0)

<comment><USER7> AllenNLP dev here. We're going to do a "PyTorch 1.0" release of AllenNLP next week, and then after that we're planning to investigate how to incorporate the new "production" aspects.

<comment><USER8> Could you guys elaborate on the relationship between PyText, torchtext, and AllenNLP? I've briefly used the latter two, but with how quickly things are moving it'd be nice to have a quick answer from the devs themselves.

<comment><USER9> PyText dev here, Torchtext provides a set of data-abstractions that helps reading and processing raw text data into PyTorch tensors, at the moment we use Torchtext in PyText for training-time data reading and preprocessing.

AllenNLP is a great NLP modeling library that is aimed at providing reference implementations and prebuilt state-of-the-art models, and make it easy to iterate on and research with models for different NLP tasks.

We've built PyText to be a rich NLP modeling library (along the lines of AllenNLP) but with production capabilities baked in the design from day 1.

Examples are: \- We provide interfaces to make sure data preprocessing can be consistent between training and runtime \- The model interfaces are compatible with ONNX and torch.jit \- A core goal for us in the next few month is to be able to run models trained in PyText on mobile.

Among other differences like supporting distributed training and multi-task learning.

That being said, so far our library of models has been mostly influenced by our current production use-cases, we are actively working on enriching this library with more models and tasks while keeping production capabilities and inference speed in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is a good data structure for holding your parsed corpus? Ideally I'd like to be able to count number of sentences, paragraphs, average word counts for these and easily do queries such as "nouns that fit this regex" or "POS that precedes a named entity"

I've been looking at Spacy, but as far as I can tell it is hard coded to use universal parts of speech.

</comment><comment><USER11> What's NLP in this context?

<comment><USER12> Natural language processing

<comment><USER11> Thanks. I had assumed Neuro Linguistic Programming.

<comment><USER12> Agreed, it is potentially ambiguous if one doesn't follow the field.

Clicking the link takes you to the Github repo, which states 'natural language processing' in its title (though perhaps it didn't earlier).

The title of this HN post has been edited now anyhow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is this like bare Dialogflow?</comment>


Kedro: open-source library for production-ready machine learning code - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@QuantumBlack/introducing-kedro-the-open-source-library-for-production-ready-machine-learning-code-d1c6d26ce2cf <comment><USER2> I've spend 10 minutes on this and still have no clue what it actually does. Seems to be focussed on beginners with very trivial and general tips on Git and terminal commands.

<comment><USER3> If you're still wondering and/or interested in finding out, there's another thread with some discussion here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20100492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20100492)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Saw this yesterday - isn't it trending on Github?

</comment><comment><USER5> I like the promotion video.</comment>


Nautilus 100 – Royal Navy unveils radical new submarine concepts - T-A http://www.uknest.org/naval-programmes/concept-fleet/nautilus/ <comment><AUTHOR> _"In battle situations where high speed was necessary, the mothership would be powered for short bursts by a Casimir1 force battery using zero point energy to produce enormous power."_

Hmm, OK...</comment>


RC: a dialect of C that adds safe, region-based memory management (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://www.barnowl.org/research/rc/ <comment><USER2> It looks like an important difference between RC and Rust is that RC enforces at runtime (via reference counting) what Rust enforces at compile time via the borrow checker.

</comment><comment><USER3> It was interesting. My favorite in this category is SoftBound + CETS given its stronger protections:

[http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~santosh.nagarakatte/softbound/](http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~santosh.nagarakatte/softbound/)

Also integrates with LLVM and has a hardware-accelerated variant. Could be combined with Rocket RISC-V, Gaisler SPARC, or Cambrige BERI MIPS CPU's.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks rather old to me

<comment><USER5> Cyclone is another interesting project that adds regions to C (and much much more )

[https://cyclone.thelanguage.org/wiki/User%20Manual/](https://cyclone.thelanguage.org/wiki/User%20Manual/)

unfortunately it doesn't look maintained anymore ,which is a pity because the language looks fantastic. Just learned about it this year...

<comment><USER6> AFAIK Cyclone was a major inspiration for Rust, so you could say its legacy lives on.

[https://twitter.com/rustlang/status/528221679961399296](https://twitter.com/rustlang/status/528221679961399296)</comment></comment></comment>


The bare essential guide to Emacs - <AUTHOR> http://www.eatingair.com/post/4463441219/the-bare-essential-guide-to-emacs <comment><USER2> Am I the only one that feels that this article isn't HN worthy? Everything that is said is well documented in the official documentation and it isn't a guide at all.

The information in it will get a beginner nowhere without reading the tutorial and if he reads the tutorial the information in this article becomes meaningless to him.

<comment><USER3> I was expecting something much better for 40 points and the front page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A much better (alternative to the C-h t tutorial, which is very good) intro to the bare essentials is the beginner articles from Mastering Emacs:

<http://www.masteringemacs.org/articles/category/beginner/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Regardless of your stance in the editor wars, the 'first' key or key chord you need to know about is what it takes to leave the application. How to get in and how to get out first--- everything else second. The chord BTW is ^x^c I suppose you could claim that ^z leaves as well, but it is not quite the same thing. Although many never kill emacs, they just pause and return...

<comment><USER6> I would observe that modern emacs has menus so the getting started learning curve is no more difficult than Notepad.

<http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/>

The command short-cuts are on the menus, so as you get tired of reaching for the mouse you can begin to use them.

A couple of good reasons to use emacs:

1\. It runs on most platforms. 2\. It's a gateway drug to Lisp. Emacs is really just a big Lisp interpreter.

<comment><USER7> I'm curious; do you have experience (or know of someone who does) of learning Emacs by using it like Notepad and slowly learning the keyboard shortcuts by looking up things in menus? I'm skeptical that this approach would work; I think there are a lot of basic (non-obvious) things specific to Emacs that you need to know to use it well. If you just use it like Notepad and lookup shortcuts for copying/pasting, then I predict that you would just end up using it like Notepad.

<comment><USER8> This has pretty much been my process with it. I started using it sometime last year. Fumbled completely for a day or so, but started out just using menus and slowly changing to keyboard commands. That, and googling when I wanted some behavior that wasn't immediately clear to me.

What I need to do now is read a fairly substantial book/site to tell me about the things I don't even know I would want to know. The Rumsfeldian unknown unknowns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In Emacs docs, <Ctrl> is C and (by default, usually) <Alt> is M (for meta).

      C-x C-c : quit emacs
      C-g C-g C-g : cancel any crazy mess you got yourself into
      C-x C-f : open a file (read a file into the current buffer)
      C-x C-s : save current file (buffer)

<comment><USER10> Also, the "-" in "C-x" means "Hold down Ctrl and press x". It doesn't mean to press Ctrl and then press x, or to press the "-" key.

You are probably used to that being expressed with a "+", as in "Ctrl+x".

<comment><USER9> Good catch. I guess I've been using Emacs for too long. :)

One other thing that I missed when I first started using emacs was how to cut/copy/paste:

      C-space : start selecting text to cut/copy (move cursor to select)
      M-w     : copy
      C-w     : cut (kill)
      C-y     : paste (yank)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there something better than Viper mode for Vim folks? It just doesn't feel complete... I'm trying to give Emacs a shot as I learn Clojure.

<comment><USER12> I came to emacs from Vim, and at first i tried Viper mode, but i gave up and just went with learning emacs as it is. It payed of in the long term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> the title is very accurate</comment>


Ask HN: What needs to be researched? - <AUTHOR> I am choosing a topic for a research paper (4000 word limit).<p>I would like to conduct research (investigative or experimental) in a tech (computer/physics/math/design/etc.) area that has not been thoroughly researched before. What areas are in need of research? <comment><USER2> What kind of audience is this being written for? What kind of position is it being written from? Is the paper a proposal that you're sending to a lab facility? Or is it a report/summary for a high school teacher?

You can probably write about something in neural nets or deep learning that would fit anything.</comment>


Beyond Meat S-1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1655210/000162828019004543/beyondmeats-1a5.htm <comment><USER3> The version linked to is from 2018. Here's the current version (April 22, 2019): [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1655210/000162828019...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1655210/000162828019004543/beyondmeats-1a5.htm)

Things that stood out:

They buy this pea protein: [https://www.roquette.com/product- overview/proteins-and-deriv...](https://www.roquette.com/product- overview/proteins-and-derivatives/). Have committed to $22MM of protein (from 2 vendors)

Founder owns 6%

Co-manufactured by [https://www.clwfoods.com/](https://www.clwfoods.com/) and [http://www.fplfood.net/](http://www.fplfood.net/) (seemingly typo'ed in the S-1 as FLP)

The burger was 70% of 2018 revenue and 48% of 2017 revenue

Q4 gross margin: 25%, up from ~0% a year prior

R&D: 63 food engineers

<comment><USER4> Thanks! We've updated the link from [https://sec.report/Document/1655210/000162828018014471/beyon...](https://sec.report/Document/1655210/000162828018014471/beyondmeats-1.htm).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've gone vegetarian, except for a single grass fed animal I bought from a local farmer. (I live in a city, it was easier than I thought it would be to connect with a farmer out in the rural part of my state.) The transition was way, way easier than I thought it was going to be. I didn't guilt myself when I made mistakes, just stopped eating meat unless I was sure the provenance of it was sustainable and free from cruelty.

There's so much amazing vegetarian cuisine, and things like the Beyond Burger and Impossible Burger both fill that 'gotta have a burger' feeling. I hope we see more like them, and I'm really looking forward to being able to try 'clean meat' from some of the labs who are exploring that.

<comment><USER6> >free from cruelty.

Do you mind if I ask what your requirements for this are? At the end of the day, isn't ending life cruel, no matter the means?

<comment><USER7> If the animal is free from suffering, including lacking awareness of what's happening during the killing, that's as free from cruelty as you can get. If lacking life is what's cruel, then vegetarianism doesn't really solve that problem, since the animal would never be born without farming.

<comment><USER8> I don't think lacking life has ever been an argument vegetarians use. Once consciousness emerges, there is an innate desire to remain alive and to be free from suffering. Even if we could give animals a wonderful life in our current capitalist system, and then kill them without their awareness, we'd still need to justify (from a philosophical standpoint) why it would be immoral to do the same with a human animal.

<comment><USER9> > I don't think lacking life has ever been an argument vegetarians use.

That would make sense, since GP said:

> If lacking life is what's cruel, then vegetarianism doesn't really solve > that problem.

So if vegetarians used the argument that lacking life is cruel, then vegetarianism would be cruel, right? It makes perfect sense (given GP's point) that they don't use that argument.

You're the third replyer that writes as if they disagree about this while making the same point. I'm wondering if I'm reading this wrong, or if GP edited their comment just before I loaded the page.

<comment><USER8> The GP implied that vegetarians use the logic "ending life is cruel" as a basis for their stance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not a vegetarian here, but I'm really excited about companies and products in this space. There's a lot of very poor quality meat out there that can easily be substituted by these products for cost, nutrition and environmental reasons. The way I describe the Impossible Burger to friends that haven't tried it is "If I invited you to a BBQ with decent store-brand frozen patties and randomly inserted Impossible patties, you probably wouldn't notice".

I have a general prediction about these products though: I think they'll follow the broad development of art and games. Initially they will work very very hard to produce something that is as close to meat as possible, just like gaming worked very hard at photo-realism for many many years. But once they reach close enough, people will actually get bored and new and more interesting meat-like products, which traditional meat could never produce, much the same way gaming gave up photo-realism and many hit games started taking on more artistic qualities.

<comment><USER11> "Ethical cannibalism." Some med student is going to eat a surplus lab-grown kidney, and there you'll have it.

<comment><USER12> I expect that at some point, it will be possible to grow meat from any given set of human DNA. At this point, I see two things:

1) Lines of celebrity meat. One might be able to look forwards to, for example, an Angelina Jolie steak.

2) Middle class (well, by then the middle classes won't exist - let's just say "rich people") dinner parties in which the hostess serves her guests herself. On a plate.

Is it cannibalism if it was never part of a whole human, but was instead grown in a vat?

<comment><USER13> >Lines of celebrity meat.

Check out [http://bitelabs.org/](http://bitelabs.org/)

<comment><USER12> My idea! I should have written a disturbing SF short story à la Ray Bradbury while I had the chance. Oh well.

Angelina Jolie salami doesn't sound so good; I'll hold out for the steak. Something off the leg, please!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been vegan for 15 years, and I've tried all sorts of veggie burgers and mock meats available. Some of them are good, but pretty easy to tell they are not meat. When I first had the Beyond Burger last year (just plain with 2 thin slices of bread) it brought back a very strong memory of how meat used to taste. I wonder if most meat eaters would be able to tell it's not meat on a blind test.

I'm curious to try the Impossible Burger, but I haven't seen it in my area yet.

<comment><USER14> As a meat eater, I've had mixed results with Beyond Burger and the Impossible Burger. With real meat, it's pretty hard to mess up a burger; if it's anywhere from medium rare to medium well, it's still going to be a pretty tasty burger. The current burger substitutes require a much more narrow window before they just don't taste very good. That said, I'm extremely bullish on these; they're already great and they're only going to get better from here.

<comment><USER15> Good points about ease of cooking and error.

So much of short-term adoption of these is tied to marketing and time, but their long-term success strikes me as a foregone conclusion.

In marketing, they will need to get past a latent psychological hurdle and in time, waiting for the crotchety older folks who insist, no matter what, on a "real burger." Both things are related to the living generations who have grown up with "real burgers."

<comment><USER14> I genuinely can't imagine an outcome where these don't become commonplace. Not going to predict that they're going to replace beef or anything, but it won't be weird to get a meat substitute burger from Wendy's or the like.

<comment><USER16> Burger King (limited trials) and White Castle (370 outlets), already carry Impossible Burger patties.

[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/apr/02/burger- king...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/apr/02/burger-king-vegan- whopper-meat-free-impossible-launch)

<comment><USER17> White Castle Impossible patties are delicious. I don't order traditional meat there anymore because of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've always thought two things:

\- Subway should have leaned into their use of soy in their deli meat [1] and came in from the high end with it being the more expensive, high end, healthier, better for the environment product

\- There should be high end burger chain which give you an eighth of a pound real meat burger patty for taste reasons and an eighth of a pound vegetarian patty for health and environment reasons. If everyone switched to such a solution, we could could our greenhouse gas emissions from burger production in half. In all honesty, this comment is based on superficial skimming of the following article/Beyond Meat press release [2].

In fact, the Asian means of eating tofu is fundamentally different from the vegitarian way of eating tofu. The Asian means of preparation is typically 75% tofu and 25% is meat for taste. When you go 100% tofu, its no wonder most people won't touch it.

[1] [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2017/03/01/517920680...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2017/03/01/517920680/dna-tests-find-subway-chicken-only-50-percent-meat- canadian-media-reports)

[2] [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/21/how-bill-gates-backed- vegan-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/21/how-bill-gates-backed-vegan-beyond- meat-is-winning-over-meat-eaters.html)

"Producing Beyond Burgers uses 99 percent less water, 93 percent less land, creates 90 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions and requires 46 percent less energy than producing beef burgers, according to a September report commissioned by Beyond Meat."

<comment><USER19> > If everyone switched to such a solution, we could could our greenhouse gas > emissions from burger production in half.

We'd be eating less tasty burgers for no real reason. Even eliminating meat farming entirely would only reduce the average American's GHG emissions by about 3%: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/climate/cows-global- warmi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/climate/cows-global- warming.html).

<comment><USER20> So far as I can tell, that number is speaking directly to methane emitted from livestock which is not where the majority of livestock emissions come from. It's more related to the fossil fuel usage and transportation costs.

<comment><USER19> No, it says farming overall accounts for 8% of green house gas emissions, and animal farming is 42% of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have a stupid question: was there a regulatory change in the recent past that made it easier to file for IPOs? Or is this just a coincidence that all these S-1s were filed around the same time?

<comment><USER22> It's just a good time to file, the end of 10 year bull market right before next year's recession

<comment><USER23> I find it amusing how confidently you state that. As if completely ignoring all the people who have said that same thing every year for the past 5.

<comment><USER22> So you think it will be an indefinite bull market or that the recession won't happen next year?

<comment><USER24> There obviously won't be an indefinite bull market, but why are you so confident it will happen next year?

<comment><USER22> I am not, nobody is ... But a lot of people more knowledgeable than me in this area say it's highly probable we'll have one next year or early 2021. The 'when' don't matter much in this context, alot of people are expecting one and it's coming which makes it an ideal time to IPO

<comment><USER25> [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2019/3...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2019/3/25/18279705/yield- curve-inversion-recession-explained)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've seen this said before (I forget from who), but I honestly think that over the next few decades meat is going to go through a similar transition to tobacco.

I don't think it's ever going to disappear completely, but I think it's going to become something most people only enjoy once in a while if at all. I also think that meat consumption is going to be viewed in a significantly more negative light over time.

<comment><USER27> Why? Do you think global warming considerations are going to be that mainstream? Tobacco has a lot of things going against it - it's bad for you in any amount and it gives off an unpleasant odor that stains fabric and walls. Not much of this applies to meat.

<comment><USER28> Red meat is a carcinogen & spoils quickly. There's the whole animal cruelty thing too.

If the imitations can get good enough and also beat on price to boot, that could seal the deal as well.

<comment><USER29> > Red meat is a carcinogen & spoils quickly

This is overblown and not nearly as well supported by science as you think. Just like how people said for decades that saturated fat is bad for you. It's provably not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think the whole sector of meat-substitutions would be very successful, can't speak about this specific IPO, because of the state of the entire market right now.

But if many big companies, highly invested in meat are investing in substitutes as well, they are not doing it from moral/humane/environmental reasons, they are just doing it for the money, so for those that are dedicated to this, it seems promising (if they can just survive the punches that "big meat" will send their way)

</comment><comment><USER31> Cannot wait.

A+ product that stores struggle to keep stocked.

It's been a long time time since I've admired a company as much as this one.

<comment><USER32> A&W in Canada has a Beyond meat burger and a Beyond meat breakfast sausage sandwich. I go there semi-regularly (being the best fast food restaurant in Canada in my opinion) and I am astonished - almost every second person in line is ordering the Beyond meat option.

Edit: Important to note that A&W Canada is completely independent from A&W in the U.S.

<comment><USER33> Also note that the burgers produced by A&W in the U.S. are complete trash almost every time, not comparable to A&W Canada which produces consistently delicious burgers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> So I've had an Impossible burger (from my company cafeteria), but it was probably over-cooked.

Does anyone know where I could taste-test a Beyond burger vs. Impossible burger?

Definitely interested in this space as it's one of the surefire ways we reduce both energy and water, and I have family who are veggie and this makes it easier for me to connect with them.

<comment><USER35> I haven't found Impossible in my area yet, but this is a big concern for me - trying it out and not knowing if I screwed it up or if it's just not my thing regardless of preparation.

<comment><USER36> I think it depends on how you view meat. If you look at both of them as benign foods where taste is the only important aspect, you may like beef more. But if other factors like ethical treatment of animals or greenhouse gas emissions matter to you, these burger substitutes offer a lot without the same negatives.

<comment><USER35> I think you're misunderstanding my comment.

If I made a creme brulee recipe without having ever tasted it done correctly by someone else, I wouldn't know if the texture/taste was correct.

I have the same fear with the Impossible burgers - I want one cooked the way the company _intended_ , so I know what it's _supposed_ to taste like. Otherwise, my first impression of it might just be due to me over/undercooking it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> For the philosophically rigorous, Christine Korsgaard has a good newer book[1] on animal ethics and their implications that has significant bearing on some of the comments here. (And she's a rather better thinker than Peter Singer.)

[1]: [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/fellow- creatures-978...](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/fellow- creatures-9780198753858?cc=us&lang=en&)

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm not a vegetarian but I do care about the environment. So I always try to find meats that are sustainably farmed etc, but sometimes it's hard and sometimes I just only have time for a quick fast food meal.

But if they have an impossible burger, I'll get that every time, even if it costs more.

My hope is that over time their costs come down so much that the impossible burger is actually cheaper, at which point I think we'll see a sea change in meat farming. If getting the meat free burger at McDonalds costs less than the meat one but tastes the same, that right there would be huge for the environment.

</comment><comment><USER39> Their roadshow video is up: [https://www.retailroadshow.com/](https://www.retailroadshow.com/)

I always find the video presentation more insightful.

Edit: Directly linking to the video didn't work.

<comment><USER40> Session expired.

<comment><USER39> ugh, try just navigating from [https://www.retailroadshow.com/](https://www.retailroadshow.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I recommend watching What The Health ([https://www.whatthehealthfilm.com/](https://www.whatthehealthfilm.com/)) - <USER2> great doc by the same guys who did Cowspiracy, this time focusing on the health and lobyy aspects of the meat and diary industry.

Negative lobbying is something that fills me with anger unlike any other and not eating meat and diary JUST to stop giving those fuckers my money is reason enough. Of course, there are many other great reasons to do so (animal welfare, environment, health) - and no objectively good reason to eat meat and diary.

And no, reasons such as:

\- "We need meat to be healthy"

\- "Humans meant to be eat meat historically"

\- "I love the taste and this is a free country"

Are either scientifically wrong or not objectively good reasons.

</comment><comment><USER42> I've tried Impossible Burger once in a some random bar. Was dissatisfied - texture was ok, but had weird after taste.

Also tried to cook some Beyond Meat burgers the other week. The stench was horrible, even my roommates noticed. Topped with mayo, garlic butter, bbq sauce and onions it did kinda hide the horrible flavour, but still I couldn't finish it. I could feel that horrible flavour for a day or two after.

Really had big hopes for it and will definitely try again, but for now it's a joke.

<comment><USER43> Don't forget they are really selling a wider cknversation/story/narrative/worldview than just the meat. To focus too much on the product itself might therefore be a mistake.

(Besides, that part can always be tuned... )

<comment><USER42> That's why I stick with regular vegetarian meals. Indian thali is amazing. Tofu, tempeh, quinoa - passable.

Fake meat - non starter (same with mylks).

<comment><USER43> I don't disagree that those are nicer items, I've had them countless times myself.. but I think you may be missing the "point" of Beyond Meat if you solely talk about the taste or macronutrients.

<comment><USER42> I think the promise they selling is that science can make it better than regular meat (I think it's certainly possible with genetically engineered stem cell meat), but I am not seeing that yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I remain a keto advocate but I can understand why vegetarians do what they do and kudos to them for choosing to do it. However, if I have to listen to one more skinny white girl angrily try to convince me that I'm evil because I'm not vegan/vegetarian I might crack and yell back.

</comment><comment><USER45> All well and good and as someone who doesn't eat meat it's nice to have more options when getting fast food, but at home I prefer the frozen vegetarian burger patties that have been available from Morningstar or Boca as they tend to be much more affordable and have more protein/calorie.

</comment><comment><USER46> I've always felt quorn ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn)) got a raw deal. They made some stupid marketing positions, they allowed the agenda to get ramped up around allergy when its ratio of risk is significantly lower than other foods including soy, and they walked into a battery hen issue needlessly.

But the fundamentals look pretty good. Its a bioreactor, it scales, it can use varying feedstock, and its good nutritive value.

TVP which proceeded it, in my highly subjective opinion was crap in comparison. It reminded me of badly cooked stewing meat, when the connective tissue is left behind and the good bits are now in the stock: you don't want to swallow this.. cellophane meat "thing"..

<comment><USER47> A lot of their products contain eggs, which sort of defeats the purpose of making plant based alternatives.

<comment><USER46> The quorn and tvp era was focussed on protein shortage and we understood how to make chicken things happen in bulk. It was efficient use of animal product to source binder in egg form deprecating the inefficient grazing behind pork, lamb and beef. Chicken farming is pretty intensive. (I'm skirting the moral aspect here)

It wasn't initially about vegetarianism as a holistic view avoiding animal products, as much as fending off starvation from lack of food. If they had found a way to make beef farming productive enough I think they would would have gone there. The input was surplus product from a flour producer. I don't think they were radical vegetarians.

They did subsequently get on the vegan bandwagon but had lost market momentum, and the whole 'fusarium is not a mushroom' and 'you are allergens' kind of killed it for a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> For people that like to eat healthy, how do you feel about eating something as processed as the "beyond burger?" I get that it's nice to have another option but to me it's hard for me to stomach the ingredients especially with canola being the third ingredient.

<comment><USER49> Processed is not a bad word when it comes to health. What matters are the ingredients. I'm not aware of any consensus on canola being anything but healthy, but am interested in learning more as canola oil is what I use for cooking.

That being said, like any meat or meat-substitute, I wouldn't consider it a "health food".

<comment><USER48> I agree with you that the ingredients matter, but I also think as a blanket statement avoiding processed foods is smart.

I think this is a pretty good synopsis of why canola and PUFA's (polyunsaturated fatty acids)are bad. I actually think it's possible that we should be vilifying them on the same level as sugar. [https://www.alexfergus.com/blog/pufa-s-the-worst-thing- for-y...](https://www.alexfergus.com/blog/pufa-s-the-worst-thing-for-your- health-that-you-eat-everyday)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The amended S-1 from March 27, 2019 can be found at:

[https://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=133...](https://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=13324109)

</comment><comment><USER50> So great to see all these recent IPOs coming from tech investments and innovation. California is making the Stock Market for everyone much stronger.

</comment><comment><USER51> Here comes billions of ideological vegetarianism and virtue signaling dollars. Might as well be a charity. Great business model. Lose money forever to chase a shared ideological purpose for the benefit of investor's ideological salvation.

It's like funding of the building of a church for the PETA crowd.

</comment><comment><USER52> My biggest question about this "meat" is how it compares to the real deal, nutritionally speaking.

</comment><comment><USER53> Anecdotally seems like impossible burger has been more commercially successful

<comment><USER54> There's definitely a bit of an arms race going on, and it's unfortunate. I find both products to be very different, and we could stand to have some diversity in the area of alternative meat products.

Off the top of my head, in terms of commercial availability I've seen them at:

Beyond: \- Safeway (both meat patties, and frozen boxed crumbles) \- Del Taco \- Carls Jr. \- Veggie Grill

Impossible: \- Umami Burger \- White Castle \- Smaller retail locations \- pilot w/ Burger King

Beyond also has a lot of products, from sausages, crumbles, and different flavors of meat.

I think Impossible is highly focused on reproducing ground beef.

<comment><USER55> > There's definitely a bit of an arms race going on, and it's unfortunate.

I don't follow, how is competition bad in this case? Sounds like the opposite to me.

<comment><USER56> I think they're afraid that one brand will be so much more successful that the other goes away. Each brand has different flavor, texture, and nutritional profiles so if any of those are particularly important to you then it's hard to make do with one of the other options.

For example, both Beyond Meat and Quorn sell meatless "beef" crumbles. Each has a noticeably different flavor and fairly different nutrition (The Quorn has significantly fewer calories, but less protein for example). I would be sad if either one went out of business because I use them differently.

<comment><USER55> It's still such a niche market that expanding it right now is the best thing for all the players. Beyond Meat revenue is $33m compared to say Tyson at $33b. The veggie meat market is also a lot less homogenic than meats since everyone makes their own proprietary blends from thousands of possible ingredients. Compared to say cheap chicken where it's impossible to tell brands apart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Exciting. I would invest in this if I didn't think the market was on the brink of collapse.

</comment><comment><USER58> Instead of competing over burgers, could Beyond Meat or Impossible Burger work on brisket?

</comment><comment><USER59> I see this as just another way to replace some of the natural food in your diet with a garbage mix of highly processed plants and oils. No thanks, I'll stick to the food that has created and sustained human life for 1000s of years over a science experiment. If you want to subject yourself to this, go ahead, but it's not for me.

</comment><comment><USER60> I am an omnivore, but deeply interested in meat substitutes. Before trying the burger by Impossible Foods, it was my opinion that the patty by Beyond Meat was definitely the best.

I am a big burger consumer, and I tend to rank the various substitute burgers on a scale that indicates how satisfied I feel afterwards, and how accurate the imitation is.

I felt like the Beyond Burger was 8/10 in terms of being as satisfying as a burger, but only 6/10 in terms of being a good imitation.

For an example on why I use the different scales, plant-based patties tend to sear differently than real beef, tending to produce a thin crisp layer. This isn't great in terms of being a good imitation, but it actually has really good mouthfeel, so it increases the enjoyment.

Being 8/10 in terms of satisfaction is a pretty important threshold for me. It is at the level where I can eat one and feel like I ate a burger. Most veggie patties are in the 4-7 range (Gardein is pretty good) in terms of satisfaction, and even lower imitation quality.

When I first had the Impossible Burger a couple years ago, it was 9/10 satisfying and 8/10 imitation. It still had the distinctive plant-based patty crispiness, but the internal texture was much more accurate. This was back when the Impossible was only in a few dozen restaurants in the country, so this was at a nice place in Las Vegas. I got an Impossible and a Wagyu beef burger side by side for comparison. By the time I finished, the most obvious physical difference I'd noticed was that the Impossible burger loses heat much faster than a real beef burger.

In January 2019, Impossible began rolling out their 2.0 recipe, and they are now in hundreds of locations. I got the 2.0 at an upper tier burger place ($20 for a burger) and again did a side-by-side test. The Impossible still lost heat faster than a real beef burger, but the characteristic thin crispy sear on the patty was reduced significantly.

Visually, the inside of the patty was virtually indistinguishable from real beef. It's 10/10 satisfying and 9/10 imitation. I think it's indistinguishable from a Burger King quality burger, but still not quite as hot and juicy as a more expensive gourmet beef burger. I imagine they might be able to just make a less healthy version that is packed full of various oils and whatnot to get that quality.

Once the Impossible Burger rolls out to grocery stores later this year, I will never have to buy ground beef again.

To Beyond Meat's credit, their Beyond Brats are the best veggie sausage I have had, and as far as I know, Impossible doesn't have immediate plans to take on that market. I've found that they have supply chain/production issues with Beyond Brats, though, as they are almost always sold out at the Whole Foods near me.

TL;DR I believe Impossible Foods is going to eat Beyond Meat's lunch

<comment><USER54> Interesting take. I've always said Impossible tastes more like meat, but has a bad texture match, and Beyond tastes less like meat but has a better texture.

With that said, I think the flavor and quality of Beyond is higher, for me. Impossible still hovers around low-grade, poor texture ground beef. I want them both to be successful because the more options we have the better.

I think Impossible is likely to be more successful targeting current meat eaters, though, so you may be right about their longer term success.

I've found the variance of each burger to be highly dependent on the preparation, so I think a real fair test would be made-at-home side-by-side. I enjoy the Beyond patty made at home on a skillet without much extra besides a bun and catchup and mustard, this says a lot.

I'm a recent vegetarian (4 years).

<comment><USER60> Have you tried the Impossible 2.0? It's noticeably better.

I agree that preparation has a _huge_ impact on quality. I once had an Impossible 1.0 that was so badly prepared I ate 1/3 of it and then gave up.

I am wondering if Impossible will come up with a specialized cooker (imagine a waffle press sort of thing, but for burger patties) that will automate temperature management and cook time in order to reduce variability. But I assume their final goal is to just make their substitute cook exactly like real beef.

<comment><USER54> I'll have to double check. I had an impossible burger recently but didn't see the version. It was similar enough to previous ones that it's safe to assume it was 1.0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Beyond meat works for financial reasons. Sunlight, pea plant, factory, paddy costs less at scale than sunlight, corn plant, cow, slaughter house, factory, paddy.

It does not work particularly well for dietary reasons. The calorie reduction will reduce inflammation if it is not offset by additional excess calories but the omega 3 fatty acid profile will not compete financially with fatty acid profile of algae or grass-fed protein. The beyond meat diet will therefore lead to more inflammation in the general population and increased rates of chronic illness including diabetes and brain disorders.

A moderate amount of protein and fat from Grassfed animals and oily cold water fish combined with moderate low inflammatory carbohydrate starches and loads of vegetables is the optimum human diet.

Every other diet has a negative externality of increased chronic illness. Health outcomes as measured by life expectancy are not better for the average middle income human who survived to the age of 5 in 2019 than they were for the equivalent dataset living 150 years ago in England.

And then you have the vegans. What is more precious? a virus, a amoeba, a bacteria, a prokaryote, a eukaryote, a fungus, a plant, a insect, a arachnid, a cephalopod, an invertebrate, a reptile, a bird, a mammal, a political ally, a community, a friend, a sibling, a parent, a child or a vegan's theory?

Rhetorical question. Human Parents minimise the suffering of their children and expect the favour to be returned in kind.

The choice between animal suffering and decreased probability of the onset of your child's future chronic illness is easy if enlightened. Beyond meat therefore doesn't work for economic reasons and is a fad of unknown duration.

The negative externalities of a vegetarian diet are currently obscured by the corn lobby and any other political factions currently profiting from the sale of inflammatory foods. They love the vegans chipping in. I often wonder if roadkill slowly dying keeps vegans up at night or If they are sleeping through it? And if if they are, how?

As for grassfed animals. Pastured land is marginal for growing starches or vegetables. Solutions are in development for the reduction in nitrate leaching and methane emission. The positive externalities of a low inflammation moderate carbohydrate, moderate protein grass/algae fed diet and the reduction in chronic illness outweigh the negative externalities of the methane. Put nuclear engines in cargo vessels to trade the meat around, methane problem neutralised, global health enhanced.

Food should be judged on it's toxicity to the general population and nothing else. It is the only objective measure and miraculously the economics results in humane farming practice and better human health.

Pretty hard to judge the toxicity of beyond meat and that's why I choose to eat whole ingredients that I process myself. I think they will make some money dependent on flavour, texture, marketing and distribution capability. Although kraft spent 1 billion relabeling their cheese about 10 years back so good luck competing against that. Eventually the human dietary truth will come out and misplaced idealism won't save the business from public knowledge. That could take 20 years but I think the inflammation and dietary literature is going to converge before then.

Bill Gates isn't a vegan.

<comment><USER47> Your tone is unnecessarily snarky but I don't think you're wrong that these new meat substitutes are probably not as healthy as a more thoughtful plant based diet. I think it's great that they're available but I don't plan to eat them regularly.

As for animal protein being necessary for human health, that's not even true in the ideal natural case, never mind the reality of the horror show that today's factory farmed meats have become.

If you think you can meet global demand for meat with free-ranging grazing cows then you haven't even looked at the numbers and claiming that feeding cows seaweed eliminates the methane issues means you also haven't actually looked at the numbers there.

<comment><USER62> > Your tone is unnecessarily snarky

I disagree. He or she is one of the few intelligent commenters on this thread that is not mindlessly grasping on to this alarming vegan/vegetarian trend. And lo and behold, they are getting downvoted to oblivion.

<comment><USER47> HN is a fairly intelligent and educated crowd by internet standards. Perhaps it should give you pause that so many such people not only consider veganism not alarming but actually positive. And dismissing it as mindless doesn't really signal debating in good faith on your part or his.

<comment><USER62> > HN is a fairly intelligent and educated crowd by internet standards.

Yet intelligent and educated people do hold beliefs not based on facts, and are unwilling to be questioned.

> Perhaps it should give you pause that so many such people not only consider > veganism not alarming but actually positive.

It gives me no pause whatsoever as I'm not someone that so easily follows the crowd. I simply take it to be the case that veganism is the flat-earth-theory of 2019.

> And dismissing it as mindless doesn't really signal debating in good faith > on your part or his.

Good faith on my, and others, part and already have come by and been downvoted into oblivion. Have you been watching this thread?

<comment><USER47> _I simply take it to be the case that veganism is the flat-earth-theory of 2019._

And you wonder why nobody takes your comments seriously. The American Dietetics Association, the largest association of professional dieticians in the world, says vegan diets are healthy and appropriate for all ages:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27886704](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27886704)

Science is on our side. Who's the flat earther here?

<comment><USER63> Science doesn't have the multivariate statistical capability to settle the argument yet. Like I said The literature's converging and if dietitians had anything of value to add why are chronic health conditions escalating. I'm betting on the macro ratios of the pre colonial Polynesian diet, Works pretty well for me. And I can do 40 pressups without any training other than the odd walk and grass fed roast lamb is absolutely delicious and it's biochemistry evolved in synch with mine.But by all means eat the pea goo, it reduces the demand for lamb. Everyone gets freedom of choice to eat what they choose in developed countries, It's a valuable freedom.

<comment><USER47> I agree that we still have a lot to learn about nutrition. What's not controversial is that you can be perfectly healthy on a strictly plant based diet. Dismissing vegans as flat earthers or vegan diets as pea goo just makes you sound defensive.

Also, the diet you choose has consequences for the environment and the animals you eat so it's not simply a matter of individual choices. Red meat in particular has a huge carbon footprint.

<comment><USER61> It is controversial though. Vegans have higher rates of depression and anxiety than the general cheeseburger eating population which has terrible rates of depression and anxiety. They also have higher rates of auto-immune disorders. The major benefit of their diet comes from toxicity reduction from eating optimised daily calories.

A plant sits in one spot thinking how to poison anything that eats too much of it. An animal moves about consuming as little poison as possible.

Once you're assured of enough calories (which used to limit population growth) the primary solution is to eat some calories from animals that evolved systems for processing plant toxins to minimise your toxic load.

I used pea goo in the comment because I went to the beyond meat website and looked at the ingredients in the impossible burger. The impossible burger consists of about 15 chemical compounds, combined by people highly financially motivated to optimise flavour, texture and colour and the primary component is pea protein. If you can think of a more concise name I'm all ears but it's definitely not a iphone or macbook air.

Vegan's choose pea goo over lamb. That's their choice and some vegan's will have the genetic biochemistry to live healthily on a plant based diet. The general population doesn't share that biochemistry. Veganism is the most environmentally sound option if one's health optimises from the diet. Unfortunately this is not the case for the majority of the population. The average vegan should be admired for their sacrifice, not their logic.

<comment><USER47> Citation for your claims about depression and immune disorders being more common in vegans? I've seen tons of studies showing exactly the opposite and also anecdotally in every vegan I know.

Plant based diets are highly anti inflammatory which helps a lot with depression. And the mammalian proteins in meat & dairy seem to be powerful triggers for the immune system to start attacking itself.

<comment><USER61> Vegetarians and rates of Depression [https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1479-5868-...](https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1479-5868-9-67)

I don't have one for immune disorders. I apologise but people with multiple sclerosis don't gravitate towards vegan diets.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181302/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181302/) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6412750/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6412750/)

Can you please share a few of the best studies you've seen on veganism reducing depression and autoimmune disorders, I'm genuinely interested and hope I'm missing something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> >Have committed to $22MM of protein

I've never understood this convention and it always causes my brain to short- circuit when trying to read it. Is that $22 Million Monies, or $22 MegaMillions

I'm assuming that the shorthand is supposed to be read as: $22 Million

So then I spend the next 5 minutes stuck in a feedback loop of what the hell am I supposed to be thinking.

<comment><USER65> M is the Roman numeral for 1000, so MM is a thousand thousands, in other words a million.

<comment><USER66> It is an awkward notation. Nobody says 100M for $100,000, they say 100K. So why should 100 million be 100MM? It forces people to pause, and think unnecessarily.

<comment><USER67> Only if by Nobody you mean every person in the oil & gas industry. I find it funny that people get so worked up about different units in different industries. I get that common units would be great for a variety of reasons, but look around - the world can't even unite on standard units for such tangible things as distance/length. People who work with MM as million are familiar with the vernacular, and it seems unreasonable for them to upend a model that works so a lay audience doesn't have to pause and think.

<comment><USER68> I've been in the oil & gas industry for 20 years (IT side of things). We never use MM, I'm looking at last years half year results, and it's "m" across the board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> This is probably an unpopular opinion here but I don't think these meat substitutes are sustainable for long term health in humans...our bodies are clearly designed to consume meat (especially apparent when you compare our bodies to those of our mostly herbivore relatives) and by extension we need these nutrients to thrive (not just survive, mind you). I understand the incentive for people to go vegan but people should tread very carefully since it's completely contraire to their evolutionary makeup and that doesn't come without consequences.

<comment><USER70> What kind of comparison are you referring to? Are there studies of some kind that you're referencing?

Most of the scientific research[0] points towards plant based diets being the best thing for us.

[0]: [https://www.pcrm.org/clinical-research](https://www.pcrm.org/clinical- research)

<comment><USER71> Most scientific research made by Neal D. Barnard proponent of Vegan/plant- based diet and founder of the said Committee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> The name of this company is hilarious!

</comment><comment><USER73> Has any research been done on the longterm health effects of replacing meat with synthetic meat?

<comment><USER74> There aren't any "synthetic meat" products. These are plant proteins; and my understanding of the related Impossible burger co. uses a GMO to produce an animal protein within a plant.

<comment><USER75> No, heme is naturally found in all plants but in tiny quantities, they put the gene for heme into yeast to mass produce it. Read more here: [https://impossiblefoods.com/heme/](https://impossiblefoods.com/heme/)

<comment><USER76> In other words, it's not gmo, but syn-bio.

(Of course, pretty much everything in the US without an organic label is an unholy mishmash of gmos, pesticides approved by captive regulators, and untold gallons of antibiotics. So probably doesn't make much of a difference anyways...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> pea protein isolate, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, water, yeast extract, maltodextrin, natural flavors, gum arabic, sunflower oil, salt, succinic acid, acetic acid, non-GMO modified food starch, cellulose from bamboo, methylcellulose, potato starch, beet juice extract (for color), ascorbic acid (to maintain color), annatto extract (for color), citrus fruit extract (to maintain quality), vegetable glycerin.

vs

Beef

<comment><USER78> Have you ever gone to a baseball game and ordered a hotdog? What's in that hotdog? My guess is most people don't ask. They're always so damn curios to know whats in a veggie burger... but they don't give a damn about what's in a hotdog.

<comment><USER79> Nathan's Hot dog: Beef, Water, contains less than 2% of Salt, Sorbitol, Sodium Lactate, Natural Flavorings, Sodium Phosphate, Hydrolyzed Corn Protein, Paprika, Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Erythorbate, Sodium Nitrite.</comment></comment></comment>


Criticize Kevin Poulsen in a comment on Wired.com? That's a banning. - <AUTHOR>

Kevin Poulsen posted an article that was plugging his new book, which I thought was pretty tacky. So I posted a comment critical of the article also mentioning that I thought he lacked journalistic integrity for his lack of objectivism concerning the whole Adrian Lamo/Bradley Manning debacle. Within an hour my comment was deleted and I was banned from posting comments on Wired.com. Has anyone else experienced anything similar? Is deleting comments you don't agree with a form of censorship or a websites right? <comment><USER2> It's the site owner's property. They absolutely have the right to control the content. You haven't been censored, as witnessed by your posting of the same complainants here and, most likely, elsewhere. Personally I don't think it's the least big tacky to promote your own book, with the support of your employer, on the site you edit. Perhaps when you become a published author you'll view things differently.

</comment><comment><USER3> Happened to me on Techcrunch for a comment about MG Siegler and his unnecessary and irrelevant attack on some random single-parent mom and AT&T employee on twitter.</comment>


Does today's XKCD describe you? - <AUTHOR> http://www.clinkclank.net/getcooking/ If so, can you take 3 minutes to answer a quick survey on why you want to cook more often?  (You'll be helping a side project of mine and I'm happy to return the favor.) <comment><USER2> this used to describe me, but my brother-in-law turned me on to doing all of my cooking on one day of the week, and freezing everything. this has several advantages (and one major disadvantage):

cons:

      * you lose pretty much an entire day cooking

pros:

      * don't have to cook when i get home from work
      * everything i eat now is a real meal,
        (including bag lunches for work, i just
        grab something out of the freezer, and by the
        time lunch time roles around, it's thawed and ready to go)
      * i'm wasting a lot less food/money, because the
        ingredients get used almost as soon as i buy them,
        and the food goes straight into the freezer instead
        of lingering in the fridge
      * i'm (slowly) learning to really cook

<comment><USER3> Freezing meals is a smart way to go if you live alone and can't cook meals that get mostly eaten in the same day.

Most people don't know that the frozen meals they see in stores are typically low quality not because of the nature of frozen foods but because of the expectations of the market and the need to preserve frozen food for long periods of time. If you're cooking on your own then you can use higher quality ingredients and you can avoid the compromises needed for mass-produced, highly preserved foods (meals that will be preserved just fine for up to a month in your freezer are not necessarily suitable for being mass-produced or for being preserved for months to years).

<comment><USER2> actually, i think it's the kind of system that just works well, period, as long as you can devote an entire day to cooking. i actually live with my fiancee, and the practice has become go shopping one day, do all our cooking the next. we just setup a laptop somewhere in the kitchen, and either stream music or stuff off the netflix instant queue. it's done good things for our diet, our budget, and our relationship

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, it does. I'm a young bachelor, and I actually run through this exact scenario every several months. Right now I'm in the point where a few months has passed and I'm thinking of cooking again. During lunch today, I saw an advertisement for pasta primavera and thought to myself, "Wow, I should totally make some of that for Wed night when that girl wants to hang out."

I couldn't think of a real clever solution to the problem besides bundling the necessary fresh ingredients into portions that would feed one or two people. This is pretty much what a meal in a box type thing already does. Perhaps someone can come up with a better solution for this pain point.

<comment><USER5> There are a few strategies I use.

1\. Dinner parties. Nothing formal, just invite people over for food. I am pretty well compensated, so while I spend a little more than is strictly necessary, it is less than eating out all the time, and I can share tasty meals with friends. Further, costs can be amortized by having others bring dishes, and you'll start getting in dinner invites too.

2\. Know lots of recipes and variations for a few ingredients. This helps with the "too much" problem, as you can use stuff quickly without getting bored. When you add new ingredients to your repertoire add them with depth. Eventually you will start learning how things work together and just whip up stuff pretty easily. A good way to get into this is make it a game -- try to figure out how to make a tasty meal from say, only things on shelf #2 or have each friend bring one ingredient and it is your job to make a dinner.

3\. Similar to the previous one: get good at what I call "ingredient chains". There are lots of these, but a classic example: Buy a chicken, roast it. eat it hot. Take some of the meat for sandwiches this week. Take the bones and bits and pieces of meat and make a stock out of them for soup.

4\. Don't worry about throwing away food. Seriously, I throw away ingredients all the time... sometimes I just don't get around to using them, or I change my mind. This is still so much more frugal than eating out, that it is worth it (within reason of course).

5\. Buy the good stuff.. reasoning here is the same as #4. I can pay $100 for groceries per week, getting the quality stuff, and still spend less than eating out at all but the crappiest fast food places.

None of these are clever solutions, but they are a different approach to the situation that obviate the problem by either eliminating the problem via base assumptions or by changing the problem to "not actually a problem".

hth :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't find a way to submit the form. It just stops after the HIGHEST priority question and has no scroll bar, no sensible end, and no submit button. Using Chrome something-or-other on Windows XP something-or-other.

To answer the questions, I cook pretty much every day. I hate it, but it's the fastest, cheapest and healthiest way to eat. It's even faster than take-away, but I wish I never had to cook again. If I had money that's one of the things I'd happily spend it on.

EDIT: OK, now I can complete the form, but you ask if you can contact me for a follow up, but give no way to give you my contact details!

<comment><AUTHOR> man, I suck today. It's added now. If you are interested I'm at cindy at clinkclank.net

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I only started cooking a few months ago, and discovered the secret to delicious daily meals: 1) a piece of meat (steak, salmon, etc.) 2) a handful of veggies (asparagus, broccoli, green beans) 3) sea salt + pepper 4) a frying pan

You can get a fair number of unique combinations out of that, and it only takes 10 minutes to get your meal cooked (6 minutes for the veggies, 4 for the meat).

Maybe I'll get bored of it eventually, but for now, I'm shocked-and-awe'd that I can so simply make food that tastes so damn good in my mouth.

<comment><USER2> were you trying to taste food in a different orifice previously?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not exactly, but i definitely travel through a subloop of this chart. I often buy things at the grocery store that i want to eat in general, but specifically. Bananas area good example. I love bananas but when it comes to grabbing one in the morning there is like a mental block about it, so eventually the bananas go bad....

What somebody needs to do is create a "No Ingredient Left Behind" product that will yell at you to east the tomatoes before they go bad.

<comment><USER9> My house has, on occasion, toyed with the idea of making a piece of software to keep track of what we have on hand and match it with dishes that would use these ingredients, but it always seems like keeping the inventory up to date would be a large enough component of the work that it's not worth doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is the primary problem that you're out of ingredients and don't realize it, or that you see a bunch of ingredients and aren't sure what to do with them?

<comment><USER9> Both are actually pretty frequent, but with a grocery store a block or so away, the latter is more of a problem. The current instance is chicken broth, a baguette, and spinach (and I returned home this afternoon to discover that somebody had bought more spinach), which are probably just going to get used for separate dishes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cindy: Might wanna remove that html {overflow:hidden}

Your site doesn't scroll, obscuring the rest of that form (OSX 10.6, FFox 4.0b10)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - done!

<comment><USER11> Also, the "powered by" link is taking up a column of space the whole height of the page. I was clicking on one of the fields, and it redirected me to the Wufoo home page.

If you can add inline CSS to the "powertiny" link element ... specifically, position:absolute;right:0;bottom:0; it should get it out of the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am a little skeeved out but the unattributed (and presumably unauthorized use of a free hacker webcomic for advertising purposes.</comment>


The Brain of Every Database - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/hyrise/the-brain-of-every-database-c622aaba7d75 <comment><USER2> Table scans are good. \-- Google Big Query</comment>


Impact of GOP Tax Plan on Grad Students - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/grad-students-are-freaking-out-about-the-gops-tax-plan-they-should-be/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussions:

GOP tax bill would tax tuition waivers for grad students (chronicle.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15622544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15622544) (122 comments)

The GOP Tax Plan Will Destroy Graduate Education (forbes.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15646571](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15646571) (97 comments)

</comment><comment><USER3> News discussion, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15646571](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15646571)</comment>


Essential Vim - <AUTHOR> http://www.pixelbeat.org/vim.tips.html

<comment><USER2> It would be nice if that table included the full versions of some of the commands. For example:

      :sp is equivalent to :split
      :vs is equivalent to :vsplit

For me at least, the abbreviated commands become more intuitive if I know exactly what's being abbreviated (most of the time I type :vsplit instead of :vs anyway).

<comment><USER3> I like to know the long version before I start abbreviating things too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Poor guy uses the Insert key to get into insert mode. My wrists already feel pain just from reading that.

A lot of his keybindings are are similarly nonstandard.

<comment><USER5> Same for Esc to leave it, C-[ works much better.

<comment><USER6> Or C-c.

Also pretty popular to remap capslock to esc, I tried it but never got used to it.

<comment><USER7> I have kj mapped to Esc here. Right on the home row, and almost never comes up in the english language.

<comment><USER8> Can you explain how to do this?

<comment><USER9> imap kj <Esc>

<comment><USER10> A lot of folks map jj for ESC and uu for underscore. However, what this means is that on typing j or u, vim waits for the next keystroke before displaying or doing anything.

I can't remember where this used to hit me. Perhaps some abbreviation with u ?? I notice I've commented off "uu" but still have "jj".

I still go up and slam the ESC key after 20 years of vimming. How do i get into the habit of C-[ ?

<comment><USER3> The habit is only formed by training. When I first started learning Vim I used the arrow keys for navigation. I recently null'd them out so the don't work. I couldn't do a damn thing. I still use the arrow keys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Vim is awesome. NERDTree is a must for any developer.

<comment><USER12> a good collection of vim plugins and configs (with an awesome README) can be found here: <http://github.com/astrails/dotvim>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > If you are transitioning from windows, then in order of preference you will > probably want to use, evim, gvim, vim.

What advantage does console vim have over gvim

<comment><USER14> Probably "regular" vim goes last in that list because the author assumes Windows users are unfamiliar with the terminal. But it can be easier to open vim in the console for something quick or if you're doing something over the network (say, ssh). For example, I use the terminal often for quick commit messages or short edits and consistently for Mutt. Regular vim is easier with Mutt rather than kicking open G/Mvim and then returning to the terminal to send the mail. (You can automate the right return to focus for the terminal when you close G/Mvim, but it's still a bit jarring.) For very long edits on a good connection, I will open sshfs and use M/Gvim, but in general ssh + vim is simpler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Now, someone give me the equivalent 'Essential Emacs' link please! =)

<comment><USER10> Please go to the catonmat site. It has cheat sheets for vim, emacs and a bunch of other useful things.

There's also a ruby gem named "cheat" which has cheatsheets for 100's of commands and programs. you can access them on your command-line.</comment></comment>


I made a version of 2048 that you can play by waving your hands in the air  - <AUTHOR> http://bennettfeely.com/air2048

<comment><USER2> This is really awesome and creative.</comment>


CARDIAC Cardboard Computer Emulator - <AUTHOR> http://dale-miller.com/?page_id=2442 <comment><USER2> Reminds me of this, which I dug out of a closet in my Aunt's house a few years ago:

<http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17948>

</comment><comment><USER3> Would it be difficult to actually clone it in cardboard? Someone should put up an instructable for it.

<comment><USER4> The second of three PDF files (cardiacmemory.pdf) seems to be corrupted here: <http://kylewiki.mine.nu/wiki/Cardiac_Computer>

<comment><USER4> Sorry - problem seems to have been on my side. I can download that second file now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow. Makes me feel young again! An emulator (for an RCA/Univac 360 clone) was one of the first big programs I ever did - in Assembler, no less!

Was there much point to it, probably not. But it was useful TO ME in that it (self-)taught the development process in a painless, enjoyable way.</comment>


Herbie: Automatically rewrites expressions to minimize floating point error - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/uwplse/herbie <comment><USER2> The OP copied only half my tweet, full title should be "...to minimize floating-point precision errors". This tool is specifically for improving the numerical accuracy of equations when translated into floating-point code-- "minimizing errors" makes no sense without the qualifiers.

I do a lot of procedural graphics on the GPU and am constantly plagued by precision issues (you cannot copy equations verbatim into code, you must observe overflow/underflow and other numerical issues). Herbie is pretty magical in that it can _automatically_ translate math expressions into a form that's friendlier for computers.

Also the reason why the GitHub site source was linked is because the website [1] crashed under traffic earlier today (full site contains an interactive solver and examples).

[1] [http://herbie.uwplse.org/](http://herbie.uwplse.org/)

<comment><USER3> Do you have an example of a graphics algorithm that you were helped with by this tool / a description of how that went?

<comment><USER2> There's actually a great write-up on how Herbie was used in the real-world to fix and improve math.js: [https://pavpanchekha.com/blog/casio- mathjs.html](https://pavpanchekha.com/blog/casio-mathjs.html)

I've personally used it for improving some distance-field approximation code on the GPU (made it easier to translate the math into numerically-stable code).

<comment><USER4> Adam, I'm one of the authors of Herbie. I'd love to hear about the distance- field approximation code you improved using Herbie. Is there any chance you can email me some details? You can use my personal email (on my profile) or the firstname.lastname@example.com mailing list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks quite interesting. Is there a paper/tech report that describes the approach? The website [1] seems to be down at the moment.

[1] [http://herbie.uwplse.org/](http://herbie.uwplse.org/)

<comment><USER6> Yes, this was a best paper award at PLDI '15: [http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~jrw12/herbie.pdf](http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~jrw12/herbie.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The heck is Racket?

<comment><USER8> The language that this site is written in.

<comment><USER9> Huh? Isn't HN written in Arc?

<comment><USER8> Right, meant to say "the platform that powers this site".

Arc itself is an interpreter written in Racket. The site runs on racket.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Should Dropbox fear to also get the MegaUpload treatment? - <AUTHOR>

Discuss. <comment><USER2> Posted a similar comment here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3489356>

@mrkmckz I agree it's a different use case, but any sharing of illegal content by one or more users, might cause the feds to over-react, rather than just looking at individuals involved.

</comment><comment><USER3> The reality of this, I believe, is that Megaupload was a bit of an "outlier" in that the company wasn't based, for the most part, in the U.S. and they were overall rather secretive it seems. Dropbox is a Silicon Valley company and I would think has support from the community as a whole to where I think there would be a major uproar if they tried to do something like this to them.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't think so, total different use cases for the product.

Maybe if Dropbox let you mass share a single file/folder with a link.

I see it as burning a CD and giving that to your friend rather then torrenting the file for your whole school.

<comment><USER5> You can mass share a file with a link on dropbox. There are some bandwidth limitations, but we use this feature every day.</comment></comment>


Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms  - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-ocean30jul30,0,6670018,full.story

<comment><USER2> _"... Jellyfish populations are growing because they can. The fish that used to compete with them for food have become scarce because of overfishing. The sea turtles that once preyed on them are nearly gone. And the plankton they love to eat are growing explosively. ..."_

Interesting comment.

Remarkably similiar to the scenario of _"species collapse"_ outlined in Jarad Diamonds work, Collapse. [0] As species loose their ability to adapt in the environment the whole adjacent species start to be effected. Loose enough and whole groups that are closely inter-related disappear. You have to start questioning what are we doing wrong when the stable marine environments start to change so quickly.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed)

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen I really doubt a complete change of ecosystem is all downside. You lose biodiversity, I guess, and I suppose people miss the megafauna and they have to adjust to the change in the food chain, but beyond that, I don't see why an anoxic food chain is categorically worse than an oxic one.

I also disagree with a more-evolved/less-evolved view on ecosystems. Don't evolutionary biologists prefer to think of things as more adapted or less adapted? Isn't the view that evolution is always progress passé? It's like people confuse "more evolved" with "bigger" because of the focus on the evolution of humans as k-strategists.

<comment><USER3> No one in the article claims it is all downside (the shrimp farmer in Georgia now makes his income from Jellyfish) or a claim on the evolutionary advantage of the system. In a direct way, we can trace our own lineage as mammals to being benefited by the extinction of the dominant vertebrate for 160m years in the Cretaceous extinction.

However, in our current position, humans have a different role and relationship with nature: what we do has a direct impact on our environment. Even if you discount the loss of biodiversity as a minor thing to be waved away -- and even if you do take the fairly nihilistic view that all ecosystems are of equal worth -- there are direct impact to humans from our changing of the environment.

In the case of the oceans, they provide a massive economic benefit directly from extraction industries, which have been in decline due to overuse, and mechanisms like the great ocean conveyor belt (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation>) transmit tremendous quantities of energy into northern climates providing moderate climates at northern latitudes (particularly, Northern Europe). In the case of corrals, diving, recreational fishing and tourism are key components of many of the economies of nations containing them. Without these natural resources, local economies suffer, as has already happened in a number of Caribbean nations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why post an article from a year-and-a-half ago? This link has made the rounds of Reddit et. al. multiple times since it was first published. It seems neither "Hacker" related nor "News."

<comment><USER5> Comments like "why post ...?" don't seem to add much to the discussion. Obviously someone thought the article was interesting enough to post and several people thought it was worth reading (and perhaps worth commenting on). I for one didn't see the article a year ago.

<comment><USER6> _"I for one didn't see the article a year ago."_

Neither did I.

That's the way information are spread. Duplicating them is a side effect and there's nothing wrong with that. If they are still interesting, people will upvote them again, and again...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh, Blimey!

Makes a good story for Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior) game!

<comment><USER8> I played the first one on the NES about 15 years ago.

Memories....good thing we have NES emulators and I can play it again...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I, for one, welcome our new algal overlords.

</comment><comment><USER10> It used to be a caveman walked across the top of a mountain looking for deer to eat. He left trash wherever he went and even introduced "fire hunting" where entire mountainsides would be burnt in order to get the most game.

Now we go visit mountains where we stay on closely-guarded trails and hope to see a deer to frame in a picture. We drive up in our internal combustion engines and hike "leaving nothing behind, taking nothing but memories"

And we feel guilty for doing it.

I'm thinking the caveman got the better deal.

</comment><comment><USER11> Itching Powder 2.0</comment>


I'm bored, what do I do? - <AUTHOR> https://idiallo.com/blog/im-bored-what-do-i-do <comment><USER2> "Switching from consumption to production started to break the thick barrier of habit I had formed in the past."

What works for me is consusly switching from general consumption of social media into consumption of content targetet towards creators. Then I found it easier to come up with something to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> With kids, you have to allow boredom to happen so that they will create ways to entertain themselves......like making toys out of leftover boxes, etc. I should limit the crossword puzzles I do each day to practice what I preach.

</comment><comment><USER4> I spend 12+ hours a day writing code for open source projects that I started, many of which are very innovative projects. I spend my time learning, documenting everything I do, building tools that I want to use so that I can build other tools with those tools. If you are bored, it is because you have a sense of entitlement. "The world exists to entertain me", you may think. "I exist to entertain the world" is how you should be thinking.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great post. I've been working hard to encourage my children to understand this very concept.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it's probably pretty reasonable to refer to most humans as being at least somewhat self-centered. Which implies: There's nothing quite so interesting as the thing you do yourself!

</comment><comment><USER7> Masturbate furiously

<comment><USER8> Please don't do this here.</comment></comment>