Ask HN: At what point did you incorporate for your startup or side project? - <AUTHOR> At what point did you incorporate (if at all), and why did you choose to incorporate when you did? <comment><USER4> I haven't incorporated and don't intend to. I don't need limited liability, and I am not working with companies that require me to incorporate.

Incorporation would mean a ton of paper work, more taxes (in Canada at least), more complications, and 3x the accountant's fees.

For what it's worth, my project nets 200k, is 3 year-old, and I have a degree in accounting and taxation.

<comment><USER5> I run a sole prop in Canada too. I agree for the most part, but I think the "more taxes" aspect would be very situationally-dependent. Perhaps if you intend to flow all of the corporations earnings through as income immediately then you may pay more taxes, but often one reason to incorporate is to be able to defer those taxes by only taking the income that you require at the time (tax deferral to years when you'll be in a lower bracket). The only way I've been able to avoid huge income tax bills as a sole prop is by making massive RRSP contributions. Being incorporated would give me a bit more flexibility in that regard.

You could also employ a spouse in a role (e.g. administrative) to provide a form of income splitting (although the gov't is planning to crack down on abuse of this).

<comment><USER6> This is all true, but if you haven't seen them already, you'll probably want to read up on the changes that are being proposed to taxation of CCPCs currently. All the details are supposed to come out with the 2018 budget, but here are some blog posts covering the developments so far:

[http://www.thebluntbeancounter.com/2017/09/tax-planning- usin...](http://www.thebluntbeancounter.com/2017/09/tax-planning-using- private-corporations.html) [http://www.thebluntbeancounter.com/2017/10/tax- planning-usin...](http://www.thebluntbeancounter.com/2017/10/tax-planning- using-private-corporations.html) [http://www.thebluntbeancounter.com/2018/01/the-revised- tax-o...](http://www.thebluntbeancounter.com/2018/01/the-revised-tax-on-split- income-rules.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unless your customers need you to incorporate, the idea is to incorporate when you start seeing potential liability. One of the earliest sources of potential liability, is when you hire a W2 employee (in the US). So that is a great time to incorporate i.e. before hiring your first W2 employee. And if you don't intend to raise money, issue stock, or setup international offices any soon, then LLC is a far simpler, cheaper (taxation at exit) structure to setup.

<comment><USER8> The LLC is great for smaller businesses and startups. Which is why it's a shame countries like the UK and Canada have no such structure and business owners are left to choose between sole proprietorship and a corporation. I have lived in both of these places and I know the governments in both talk a lot about promoting small business and entrepreneurship but talk is easy, they need to do the work necessary to make company structures available that would work for this group. I have written to the relevant UK government department and received no response.

<comment><USER9> I'm not too sure what problems you feel a UK private limited company has. It's super easy to set up, requires minimal paperwork, and indeed most IT contractors I know work through their own limited companies.

<comment><USER8> They have no other choice. A private limited company is like a US corporation, it doesn't have the pass through income an LLC does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A few years ago, some friends and I entered a local government innovation competition, made a "bid", gave a presentation and were selected to deliver a proof of concept.

We incorporated pretty much immediately upon being advised of our selection for the PoC. This involved ~AU$600 for government fees and incorporation services.

We then retained a lawyer to provide us with a shareholders' agreement (~$1500) and obtained our legally required workers' compensation insurance (~$500).

We didn't sign the contract for the PoC until that point.

Conveniently, the rules of the competition allowed us to expense all that to the customer...

As for why we chose to incorporate - the majority of my team are somewhat risk-averse and legally-minded, and even though we were and remain close friends, we wanted to formalise our business structure to help manage any potential for disagreement later down the track.

As it turned out, our government customer was very happy with the PoC and was interested in engaging us further, but their timelines didn't match up with ours and we ultimately decided to take the $12,500 prize money, open source our PoC code and move on to regular megacorp/government careers.

Had we chosen to continue on, however, having a corporate structure would have been an absolute, non-negotiable necessity for taking on a proper government contract.

During the period our company was active, we never got an accountant - <USER2> learned more than I ever wanted to know about how to fill out an Australian corporate income tax return, with pen and paper...

</comment><comment><USER11> I have one corporate entity that I use for both my "side projects" and for consulting work. Mostly did it to ensure limited liability. Also, if one of the projects goes big, it will make things easier later on. Also, if we're talking about iPhone apps and such, a corporate name looks more professional in the app store.

<comment><USER12> I realize it's state specific, but what were your approximate total charges for incorporating?

<comment><USER11> In my jurisdiction the actual incorporation is actually quite cheap (don't remember exact numbers unfortunately, but cost wasn't an issue at all). What's expensive is the services of a lawyer, but you really don't need it for a basic incorporation, the process is pretty self-explanatory. (Of course, if it's a startup with multiple co-founders, outside investment, etc, then a lawyer is definitely a must-have). The major cost, for me, is all of the ongoing tax accounting - you either need to pay for expensive bookkeping+accounting, or spend _a lot_ of your time learning to do it yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I ran a side project for about 12 months as a subsidiary of my main business, but as soon as I brought a co-founder on board for it (as the side project grew), I filed for creating a separate company (Australian Pty Ltd - <USER3> though my co-founder was US based). That way, I could formally list both of us as directors and shareholders on it. Much cleaner legally (and tax wise) too, plus it made it easier to set up a separate bank account etc.

</comment><comment><USER14> I incorporated at the very beginning, after a few beers at 2am. Ignorant of the law, I thought it was necessary to form right away. If I was doing it again, I would still at least have an LLC or equivalent entity for liability protection and to "look official". It has also come in handy for consulting work.

<comment><USER15> How did you incorporate at 2am?

<comment><USER16> You go to your state website and fill out the forms. Takes 30 minutes and a filing fee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I had a side project that made some money and was eventually sold. Of course it became an official business entity much after I started working on it. I don't remember the exact timing.

At a later time, when I was applying for a job at a big company, I was informed by HR there was a mistake on my resume. They said I had the wrong start date on my one man company! I assume they looked at the incorporation date and then thought I was fudging my resume.

</comment><comment><USER18> I did so for previous ventures. For my current consulting business I'm a sole proprietor.

I'd advise against incorporating early. Especially with product-based startups there's this temptation to "do it properly right from the start" and plan ahead for when you need to do things like raising venture capital.

This is the business version of premature optimisation. In all likelihood you aren't going to need it and you most certainly don't need it when you're starting out.

In general, I'd say that incorporating only makes sense if either

\- The risk becomes too high for you to assume personal liability. This can happen due to several factors such as needing to hire more staff or investing into machines or infrastructure (please note though: Banks generally expect the principal owners of a business to act as guarantors for loans anyway. So, limited liability doesn't help all that much in that case.).

\- Some third party wants to invest money in your business in exchange for company shares.

</comment><comment><USER19> I incorporated after I decided I was going to make money, but before I actively started trying to make money. I figured it'd be easier to talk to potential customers if I could say the product was backed by a corporation.

I'm in a bit more conservative of an area than SV though, there's a different set of values. YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER20> Somewhere around the 100k revenue point. I don't recall the exact reason, it was getting more serious at that point, I guess.

I wish I'd done it earlier, as certain loans (SBA) are only eligible if you're at least 2 years old. If you might pursue bank funding later for this, incorporate as soon as possible.

<comment><USER21> On the flip side, what would the downsides be of incorporating early?

<comment><USER19> Depending on where you live, as soon as you incorporate, you have to start paying taxes. If you're not making money, it's just an additional burden and likely extra money involved.

You may also have to submit paperwork to the government every year describing your business in some fashion. Failure to do so might land you in some hot water. Basically, almost every business is subject to at least _some_ kind of regulation in most jurisdictions, even if it's just bare minimum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Around the time my hobby started making as much as my day job. Probably should have done so earlier, but had no clue at that point!

</comment><comment><USER22> I work on a nonprofit and to receive donations, you need to have 501(c)(3) status, which can be a very painful and long process (took us 8 months, I've heard of it taking as long as 18 months).

The nonprofit industry has collectively come up with a hack to avoid this process called fiscal sponsorship. Through fiscal sponsorship, you basically "rent" someone else's nonprofit status for a percentage of your revenue (typically 7 - 12%). You operate as an independent project under someone else's 501(c)(3), so contributions to you are tax deductible and you don't need to wait on the state and the IRS before you can start taking contributions.

We had a fiscal sponsor and incorporated as soon as we could reasonably justify the expense (our lawyer cost ~$6k for the whole process) because being under fiscal sponsorship is so painful. You typically don't get access to your bank account directly, payroll has to be done through your parent org and sometimes they won't have systems in place for seemingly common situations, like hiring international contractors, and every large expense (large being >$500) has to be sent through their accounts payable department.

I'd really love to see someone start the Stripe of fiscal sponsors. I think you could enable a lot more people to start a lot more nonprofits without being stunted by fiscal sponsors or the large (for new nonprofits) legal costs.

</comment><comment><USER23> I guess it depends on type of business. If you end up running like healthcare etc which is heavily regulated, it is better to incorporate as soon as possible. Otherwise delaying it a bit is fine too.

</comment><comment><USER24> You should incorporate when you make $1500 and/or when you need to start signing contracts. Why $1500? Stripe Atlas is $500 (comes with enough AWS credits to host your app for at least a year) and your increased accounting cost will be ~$1000 which is a high estimate.

Your company will start at break even, and you will be able to start a clean paper/bank/accounting trail for your profits and expenses.

<comment><USER25> Are you saying sign up for stripe atlas?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> About 4 months after starting - basically before we had to start paying our vendors. In retrospect, I think we could have done it even later, just before opening the online store.

I guess it matters where you are and what your business is. In our case, we are based in Europe and run an ecommerce company, so we had to be incorporated quite early on.

</comment><comment><USER27> Formed a Florida S-Corp for my side project about 5 months ago (Single member LLCs in Florida don't provide as much liability protection as they do in the rest of the country).

Started accepting sign-ups about 5 days ago. Have had 2 trial sign-ups, $0 revenue so far

Maybe I should advertise? :D

<comment><USER28> Rough cost to S Corp incorporate in FL?

<comment><USER27> The initial filing fee isn't bad: ~$80 or so. Annual reports come with a fee of $150 though.

<comment><USER28> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Similar question but for those who live in a place where legal liability is not a concern and are working solo. Is there any significant advantage to incorporate until you are "big" ? It's just a lot of paperwork & compliance headache IMO.

</comment><comment><USER30> From what I remember, in order to sign a lease for the solo office I was using, the property manager required payment from a business banking account (not an individual) and to have incorporation documents. It was at that point that I incorporated.

</comment><comment><USER31> Was doing long-term contract work for two companies. Incorporated (Washington S-Corp), moved contracts over there for liability, tax, structural reasons. Huge pain in the ass. Basically took a year of my co-founder's time to set everything up properly and learn everything necessary to drive the thing financially.

On the other hand. Now we have revenue, payroll (Gusto), health insurance (Premera), an attorney, proper corporate paperwork, and products that we wanna make. Pretty happy to have done that all before looking for investment. Seems like we're likely to retain more of our independence than other potential paths.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've been running a site that started in 2000, never incorporated. Looked briefly at turning it into a non-profit a few years ago when I thought I was going to transfer it to new owners.

</comment><comment><USER33> When I began creating projects, I figured I would someday turn them into a business and since I would likely be charging people, it would have been kind of weird to receive a charge from my own personal name, so I decided to choose a company name. I incorporated about 2 years before I released my first pay- to-use project. In my opinion: other than accepting donations, you should incorporate with at least an LLC to protect yourself and have a more professional appearance as well.

</comment><comment><USER34> Right after I quit my job and just before I decided to raise money.

</comment><comment><USER35> One more reason to incorporate as soon as possible is to ensure/improve the sellability of your startup/project. If everything (from saas accounts like analytics, emailing over monitoring to source code comments) is tangled with your name/main business it is much harder to sell a project.

</comment><comment><USER36> Highly recommend this Stripe Atlas guide on incorporation: [https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/incorporation](https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/incorporation)

</comment><comment><USER37> When we started to make money.

</comment><comment><USER38> I never incorporated, but I formed an LLC. I did it when my startup: 1\. made money 2\. could become a legal liability

<comment><USER39> Cant agree more. Whenever I will feel more confident and ready.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> When I had a confirmed deal and knew I would be invoicing in 30 days.</comment>


Now possible to open a business bank account online in Estonia - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/e-residency-blog/a-new-era-for-location-independent-entrepreneurs-has-begun-ece91cbf8876 <comment><USER2> My analysis, and before you get excited [ US citizens cannot take advantage of this. ] Registering puts you in a pipeline for service sales, i.e., you will need a service provider (pick from 3) who can introduce you to banks who are not guaranteed to work with you. Doing this requires a local address, which they provide as a 'virtual office service' complete with telephone answering and mail. Notably, three links deep into the 'how to' process, everything you need gets complicated, but is naturally available as a service, and the focus of discussion shifts to taxes. Taxes and avoidance of unfair taxation errors are conspicuously discussed in detail, as the service providers focus on their most common need, protection of assets. They emphasize the fact that their smart cards are used for encryption as well as authentication while doing business, implying you can speak behind a 2048 bit privacy curtain about your "asset protection" needs and hear about more services. Your "government issued ID" does not bear a photo, explicitly is not an ID for travel or individual identity. The card, once collected securely in Estonia or within an Estonian embassy, can be used to secure all further discussion of these sensitive matters. Secure delivery means freedom from fear that 'prying eyes' like your oppressive local government will be able to read anything about your search for "asset protection services" and cause you trouble. Of course another prominently advertised service which seems obligatory is legal advice for international tax structures. Sad that the idea seems so pure on the landing pages, yet quickly evaporates leaving yet another offshore tax shelter scheme. I know what my taxes pay for, I've always paid them without one complaint except I'd like the money spent more efficiently. Thank you, but no, Estonia.</comment>


I Grew My App to $14k-Mo by Using Other Apps' Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/506709a593 <comment><USER2> Aka a personal analytics app with a weird clickbait article title.

<comment><USER3> The reality is that you need a compelling title to catch people's attention (look at the front page of HN right now or at any other time really and look at how many articles you think are "clickbait"). The title is accurate and I for one thought the content was compelling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Exist is pretty good but suffers the same "whims of the other" as something like IFTTT (cf the Instagram shenanigans.)

(Although some of the correlations are terrible bonkers.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Some cool growth hacking tricks</comment>


A Short Ballad Dedicated to the Growth of Programs (1986) - <AUTHOR> http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~wiseman/humor/large-programs.html <comment><USER2> I once read "Versekunsten", an entire book on rhyme and rhythm by the Norwegian poet André Bjerke, (which I'm highly recommending to any Scandinavian speakers with a thing for language and literature). The most interesting out of the hundred things I learned from that book, is that the amphibrach metrical foot (the rhythm of the word "potato") is the most common, and perhaps also the quickest, way to convey a jocular feeling; take the limerick genre and this poem as examples.

> In English accentual-syllabic poetry, an amphibrach … is rarely used as the > overall meter of a poem, usually appearing only in a small amount of > humorous poetry, children's poetry, and experimental poems.

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

Is this the case in languages other than Scandinavian and English?</comment>


Steve Yegge on Rhino on Rails (video) - <AUTHOR> http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/01/interview-with-steve-yegge-on-rhino-on.html

<comment><USER2> so javascript is becoming probably the most portable language ever! * Browsers (all of them!) * Java VM * .Net * Windows scripting * infopath * Ajax * Rails

Interesting! Learning javascript nowadays is definitely a good time investment.

I still wonder if the google ppl ever checked helma <http://dev.helma.org/>

<comment><USER3> yeah its a decent language. even has a formal specification and all ! Plus there are many increasingly tight implementations of engines for it (webkit, firefox, adobe, rhino, ... etc). So people are getting real good at optimising it for the platform it runs on.

We could do worse then JS being the "next big language" as steve likes to put it.</comment></comment>


Sales is awful. I want to be a web developer. Where should I start? - <AUTHOR> When I was much younger, I spent the majority of my time immersed in web technology and eating up any scrap of information available.  But then something very, very tragic happened.
I learned about sales commissions.
I'm nearly 7 years deep into advertising sales with an excruciating year in pharmaceutical sales.  I frequently find myself fantasizing about the ROI of "accidentally" cutting my finger off in an apple slicing accident in the break room so I can go home for the day and continue with my self-teaching of web development.  Other days, I've painted an image in my mind where I survive a non-fatal traffic incident and due to my bodily injuries, I am limited to listening to books on tape – all of which would be about XHTML and the like -- while cocooned in a full body cast.
If I have to spend one more day prairie-dogging in sales cubicle hell, I am going to lose it.
In my spare time, I draw interesting websites I'd like to create and mobile apps that would make my life a billion times easier (perhaps yours, but that's kind of a crapshoot bet, right?).  Too many times, these plans have been executed by someone else either because I'm subconsciously a no-talent plagiarist or because maybe I actually have some great ideas but I have no idea where to even start to bring them to fruition.
So, Hacker News, if I want to develop these life-changing sites and mobile applications while simultaneously experiencing the Heaven-parting/angel singing/riding on a unicorn kind of joy of leaving sales at some point, where should I start?  I'll gladly do an unpaid internship outside of work hours, or maybe I should take evening classes at the local community college?
What would you do if you had to start all over again?
Your advice is greatly appreciated! <comment><USER2> Well, I'll take this as an opportunity to pimp my free book I'm working on:

<http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index>

Depending on how much code experience you have it may be great or dead boring. Try it out, and drop me your comments in the ticket system on the site.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a typical outline that assumes that you will ultimately want to work for yourself and don't have much to tie you down to your existing career path:

Figure out a business you want to be in that makes use of web development. "Web development" itself is not a business, unless you want to be an employee or a consultant, and most people ultimately loath that kind of labor just as much as sales. You might want to be an employee for some time to learn from others, but a motivated learner is probably going to extract most of the value from employment after a year or two.

Then save money, downsize your lifestyle, quit the job, and start on the business. Or preferably start on the business before the other things and gradually squeeze it into your time. It doesn't matter too much if there's a competitor(that's proof of worthiness) as long as there isn't a capitalization or path-dependency(aka. "lock-in") problem that will significantly hamper your own efforts.

Then expect to lose money for a year or so, but at incrementally slower rates until you break even.

</comment><comment><USER4> Get a book on PHP, Python or whatever language your mobile platform of choice uses. Learn the language and try actually doing the examples in the book and getting them to work.

Once you've done that start making things. It doesn't need to be novel, just make a simple twitter clone or something like that. You'll learn how to setup a server, a database, make a website etc. I've found the best way to learn something is usually by doing something your interested in (i.e. a project of your choice rather than an internship) and it also gives you flexibility in terms of how much time you can choose to spend or not spend on it. Try to Google answers, but if you're really stuck you can ask questions on a site like StackOverflow.com

</comment><comment><USER5> Other people here will tell you how to get into web development. But it sounds like you're very unhappy with your job (though don't overlook that there could be a different/other problem). Why don't you quit your job and get by doing something you don't hate?

<comment><USER6> 1\. QUIT ! 2\. Then take on an entry level job doing what you love.

As for commissions - if you are earning good commissions, then how much have you saved? How long can you live on a much reduced income? If you have been promised big commissions and are being conned, then another job should be no worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I guess it really depends on how you learn, but IMO you should avoid buying a textbook. There are plenty of resources online and often they come with "real" examples from users, etc.

My advice would be to just do it! Think of a project you want to do and start playing around. Start hacking, make it work, iterate. Later on, if you find something you did isn't the best way to do it - go back and rewrite it. You will learn a great deal from your mistakes - I know it was the best way I learned things.

You said you are interested in developing a website - start with HTML/CSS and PHP. There are TONS of php resources online, it is a powerful language, and quite easy to learn.

Good luck and be sure to post back when your product is launched :)

</comment><comment><USER8> If you are interested in Rails, I recommend <http://guides.rails.info> (Rails 3.0) or the excellent <http://www.railstutorial.org/> (Rails 2.3.5)

</comment><comment><USER9> Learning web development will take time. How you approach it will depend on your financial situation and general life flexibility. Even if you need to keep your day job, you should be able to start learning on your own in your free time. It would be best to focus on a smaller project first that you can complete. Try HTML and CSS, then either Django, Ruby on Rails, or PHP. If you're brand new to web stuff, buy the book Head First HTML and CSS and set a goal to build a simple website in a month. After you've spent some time working on it, then you'll have a better idea of whether or not you really like it as much as you thought you would.

</comment><comment><USER10> Move to Boulder, CO and come to our Web Developer university at Wall Street on Demand. It starts June 1, and we pay you to learn for 6 weeks about cutting edge javascript and standards-compliant XHTML/CSS.

<comment><USER11> Tell us more. You pay people to learn? What do you get out of it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You have part of the solution already. If you know sales well and are good, you have a valuable skill that you can barter with an independent programmer for instructions. Heck you could even end up making some money together. FYI, I'm in Seattle and would barter instruction for some sales help! PM me nm1161 (at) gmail if you're interested

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would like to "not hate" a job in web development.

Don't get me wrong, there are some days I LOVE my job and I certainly love everyone I work with, but it's just not clicking despite my extensive efforts. It feels like a loveless marriage and I'm on my way to starring on "Snapped."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> You are all so helpful and chipsy, dead on. Thank you so much for your input everyone!

I'm in Seattle, but Boulder does sound interesting...

<comment><USER13> BTW, we have nested comments here: you can reply directly to an individual comment using the reply link at the bottom of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, thank you! See? I need help. Lots of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Programming and web development is awesome, I've taken a 3 year course in Software Engineering and have been working the last two years developing apps for a government agency and a publishing house. To get here I had to exit my career as a law enforcement agent, but it's been a worthwhile choice. I actually love going to work, and working from home on projects in my spare time. Learning new and exciting technologies every day.

I'd say, take the plunge, get a community college degree in software in evening school, or self-study for MSCE and CCP exams. You'll need to start at entry level in your new field, but a lot of your sales skills will transfer over well in writing proposals and performing user acceptance testing. Read some books on languages that you want to learn- it's the kind of thing that will totally kill your free time though, prepare to have no social life for awhile.

And forget about getting out of the cubicle- although you may earn a private office after a year or two of programming, esp. if you target start-ups.

Best of luck to you!</comment>


Covid-19: How can this community support? - andreas-schrade Without doubt, there are many smart people with different background on this platform.
I am wondering:
Is it possible that this smart and large community can somehow contribute to fight against COVID-19?
Random thoughts: - is it possible to "design" a DIY face mask? To protected people who couldn't buy a mask? - has anyone contact to a company which could produce medical equipment?
What do you think? <comment><AUTHOR> There are definitely ways for us to contribute. I think the most immediate contribution is through education. I recently published an article recommending various productivity tools for businesses that are being forced into remote work and have not prepared employees for it.

[https://www.invonto.com/insights/working-from-home-amidst- co...](https://www.invonto.com/insights/working-from-home-amidst-coronavirus/)

Maybe there are more tangible things to do. Definitely getting some ideas together is how it starts!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is the face mask something that could be produced with 3D printing?</comment>


Ask HN: Why is there no cafe on the Moon? - <AUTHOR> We are talking about space tourism and visiting Mars. Wouldn't something like building a small building on the Moon, with a bar and a couple of tables be much more easier to pull off?<p>I bet there are many rich people who would pay millions for a trip and a drink on the surface while looking at the Earth in the distance through some thick plexiglass wall. <comment><USER2> "Space tourism", for now, means "putting people into LEO for an orbit or two" or just "getting out of the atmosphere". That's significantly easier than putting someone on the moon and returning them home alive.

Would a moon cafe be easier than sending someone to Mars and back? I mean, that's pretty freakin' obvious, isn't it?!

Why isn't there such a thing? Because it's still hard, expensive, and dangerous. It's not clear to me why this isn't obvious.

</comment><comment><USER3> For political reasons. NASA decided that it would be easier to get funding for a flashy Mars expedition than to do something boring like going back to the Moon.

And the private space industry is just barely getting big enough to think about getting a payload to the moon. At that point it's about whether any sufficiently rich people want to do it badly enough. Maybe they have other priorities.</comment>


The poor can't afford to follow public health advice - <AUTHOR> https://www.hsj.co.uk/comment/the-bedpan-the-poor-cant-afford-to-follow-public-health-advice/7025532.article <comment><USER3> >If everyone followed Public Health England's eating advice, people in the bottom decile of household income would spend 74 per cent of their income on food

I find this very interesting. I'm a graduate student in Midwest of the US. My income places me in the bottom 20% of household incomes. Not poor, but money must be carefully managed. In my experience, eating well isn't that expensive in terms of time or money, provided you are willing to adjust your diet. I keep good track of my finances and diet, and I spend nowhere near that figure (and I still wouldn't, even if I made half of what I do) and I have a pretty healthy diet and reasonably active lifestyle.

What are in these guidelines making them so expensive? Or in the US, particularly in the Midwest, is the cost of food _that_ much cheaper than the UK?

<comment><USER4> Part of the advice [0] is "Over a third of the diet should come from fruit and vegetables". Also "Aim for at least two portions (2 x 140g) of fish a week".

Neither of those two are necessarily cheap. However I don't see that approaching 74% of the income either when you choose sensible options for vegetables and fish.

0: [https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/742746/A_quick_guide_to_govt_healthy_eating_update.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Things like dried beans/peas, eggs, full grain rice, sunflower seeds, whole potatoes, green leafs, tomatoes, brassicaceaes, onions, apples, bananas and carrots can all be obtained at a fair price. You can cover a lot with these, and it's much better than fried chips and pasta.

My take is more than:

\- a scary amount of people of my generation are completely uneducated about food. They don't know what a balanced diet is. They don't know how to cook. They don't know where to shop. They don't know how to choose a product. They don't know how much their health is affected by this. And they rather spend an hour on facebook than starting to figure it out.

\- food is hard. Our society make it harder: we have a huge quantity of low quality food at our disposal. We solved the starving problem, but replaced it with a malnutrition problem, aggravated with the desire to make money which lead to the promotion of shitty food and the production of it. Getting proper information on nutrition is a hell of confusion, contradictory messages, social pressure and guilt.

\- tasty balanced food is expensive and requires time + work + planning. Anybody can buy the stuff I talked about. But if you go to your usual supermarket and buy them, they will taste like crap. In fact, it's even hard to find nice food at the farmer market nowadays. So of course they don't want to eat them. I mean, between this red plastic ball they call a tomato and a kit kat, why the hell would a kid not choose the kit kat ? Why would the exhausted parents fight again and again to force the kid to eat something themselves think taste bad ? Life is hard enough.

\- there are too many of us. To feed everyone we need to use use production, processing and distribution methods that lead to crappy food. Over population affects everything, from medical care quality to democracy. Food is no exception.

\- our culture is messed up. We made it so that eating meat was a social status indicator. So everybody started to want to it meat. Then everybody started to eat it every day. Producing meat is incredibly expensive, so we have to use tricks to produce such a quantity, which lead to terrible food again.

\- morality is an issue. I've work in OHS for some times. The amount of disgusting things that are done to food for profit is astonishing. And people just shut up. SEP field. If you photophop food for a living, if you participate to those marketing studies, if you work in a factory making crap, if you cook in a fast food, if you sign on contracts for bad food, if you code a website for an immoral actor, you are part of the problem. I know people have many constraint, and I don't pretend to have the moral high ground. I'm part of it as well. But my point is, we are responsible too.

<comment><USER6> > \- a scary amount of people of my generation are completely uneducated about > food

A scary amount of my peers are afraid of cooking; I mean they're suddenly comfortable w/ their Blue Apron w/ instructions, but having a home standby is unheard of them for the most part.

<comment><USER5> Afraid ? Like afraid, afraid ?

<comment><USER7> Is it not within the bounds of believability that the same generation that has safe spaces and fears of sauce ([https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/style/snowplow- parenting-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/style/snowplow-parenting- scandal.html)) on college campuses might also be literally afraid of cooking.

<comment><USER8> Saying a generation has a "fear of sauce" seems a little exaggerated, given that the article quoted one college student who came home because she "didn't like food with sauce", which was clearly an outlier given that her parents went way overboard throughout her childhood helping her avoid sauced foods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _" If everyone followed Public Health England's eating advice, people in the bottom decile of household income would spend 74 per cent of their income on food"_

Bullshit.

I'll preface what I'm going to say next by saying I'm in the US and I know this was a UK report - but I highly doubt things are so incredibly different over there in terms of cost. That being said, there's utterly no way that has to be the case. Raw produce (not meats) from a farmer's market or most major supermarkets are very cheap. I can spend $30-$40 and have enough for 3-4 people for a full _week_. Also, sausage is usually very cheap. I buy the store brand (which happens to be delicious) and it's usually <$3 per lb. The 73% beef from Walmart is cheap as hell and usually hovers around $3-$3.25 per lb most of the time. One of those burgers (quarter-pounder, so 4 oz) has 340 calories and is a dream for anyone doing keto. So that $3 package contains about 1350 to 1400 calories! The cereal I make myself has only 4 ingredients and is loaded with healthy carbs (steel cut oats, flax seed, walnuts, and raisins). $12 to $15 dollars buys a bag of each of those ingredients which all have around 15 or so servings - that's over two weeks...or less than a dollar a day (per person). And that is a very high calorie breakfast, BTW. Water costs essentially nothing per gallon. Eggs are cheap and super healthy. There's plenty of cheap, tasty cheeses you can buy in bulk, too. You can get whole seasoned, rotisserie, _cooked_ and ready-to-eat chickens for $5! That's multiple meals for a single person or a meal for an entire family. And I don't live in a rural part of the US where prices are cheaper - I live in an expensive area of the northeast.

You can _easily_ feed a family of 4 on $125 a week using the items I outlined above (along with other cheap options).

<comment><USER10> In the US you have sacrificed ethics and standards for price and profit. Its why there is such a panic around Brexit leaving us open to US farming practices. You also have hugely cheaper transportation costs. I'd like to compare the cost US to UK, i wouldn't be surprised if it was x2 or x3 times more in the UK overall, fruit is especially pricey eggs locally are as much as 3$ for 6. 74% is a bit much though, most of the poorest spend at least half of their wage on rent as the last thirty years of government has brought right to buy with no new social housing.

It is expensive to be poor, where i can buy in bulk, saving some money, poorer people have to pay through the nose, wealthy people have pantries and chest freezers, poorer people generally have small fridge freezers that hold a week of food at most so they can't take advantage to most deals. Farmers markets are not generally much cheaper than supermarkets and you would be lucky to live near one. There is a minimum limit on delivery from supermarkets (about $60). I'm quite close to a supermarket only about $14 in diesel for every trip. I cook everything, and freeze dozens of meals at a time, I've been able to get down to about $2-$3 per day, but couldn't get near that if i was poor, and my diet has almost no fruit to speak of.

<comment><USER11> The 74% is disposable income once the cost of housing has been removed. It still seems a little high but not completely fanciful [https://foodfoundation.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/The...](https://foodfoundation.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/The-Broken-Plate.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's not about economic poverty. Firstly food is (as I understand it) pretty much at its cheapest ever, even zero cost from food banks (notwithstanding the supposed shame, and I can tell you my family would have had no shame in taking food from a food bank when they were starving in rural Wales during the Great Depression, and this family history somewhat limits my sympathy to arguments about the shame of using food banks); secondly people are not poor in economic terms, with our definition of poverty having had to be changed (making it a relative measure) because it had ceased to be meaningful; and thirdly under rationing food was obviously strictly limited, and yet the nation was so (we are told) never fitter.

The problem is that the person at the sharp is incapable for whatever reason of providing nutritious meals despite the basic conditions generally being available for them to do so. It's a poverty of history, culture, community, education, imagination, willingness, instinct, morale perhaps, but not money. None of that is the fault of the socially deprived, but the idea that more money will magically fix everything (as the left constantly parrot) is just as much of an untruth as the idea that the poor are too stupid and lazy to sort out their own lives.

Apart from that I do think it's amazing that politicians are surprised that despair is increasing. When was the last time you heard a politician stand up and praise Britain and the British people absent virtue signalling about diversity etc.? Constantly demoralise people for decades, do nothing to properly integrate minorities nor construct a cohesive unified nation: get demoralised people.

</comment><comment><USER13> I ran out of money in college and didn't think to turn to loans, grants, parents, food bank or anything. I managed to keep paying rent but ran out of food except for a bag of flour and a gallon of oil. I literally lived on nothing but Navajo style fry bread. Just a simple water flour dough fried in some oil.

It's absolutely insane to look back on, but it makes me understand how people fall into eating so terribly when you're poor.

Looking back I would instead just eat potatoes, carrots, rice, beans, and try and throw some apples/oranges in there occasionally. Homemade bread when you've got time is a nice and cheap addition as well. You can live just fine on everything I just listed and it won't cost you much.

<comment><USER14> A friend of a friend, as a poor MIT student, actually got scurvy, from eating mostly instant ramen noodles, plain (without the seasoning packet).

Presumably the student had previously taken health classes in primary school, and probably gotten good grades. But it's very easy to be slammed with work and stress (like a poor person might be), and just not have the time/energy to think about nutrition.

<comment><USER13> That's what I find so interesting about Samin Nosrat's "Salt Fat Acid Heat". Sure it's a list of what it takes to make food taste good, but it also happens to be a comprehensive list of what you need to stay alive. It's also why I added oranges into the list, although there's probably a cheaper way to not get scurvy?

<comment><USER15> Onions actually! They keep pretty long, they go well with a lot of dishes, and they have a fair bit of vitamin c!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder why supermarkets themselves aren't making more blue-apron style meal plans aimed at different income categories. It is a relatively inexpensive way to value-add items you already have and differentiate yourself from other supermarkets. And you can help people that either don't know/don't care about nutrition (enough to come up with a nutrition regime) eat healthy; perhaps creating the meal kits could be partially subsidized by the gov.

You can feed someone _very_ well for $50/week. And you can even do it in a way that requires only low-effort cooking: meat that can be baked, microwaveable vegetables, eggs that can be simply boiled or cooked in a pan with butter, pasta and oatmeal. Dairy products, fruits, some vegetables, and nuts can just be eaten without processing. Canned food that can be eaten right out of the can or just heated up.

Assuming a main reason poor people don't eat healthier food is due to lack of time, cognitive overhead, or lack of knowledge (not only re: what food is healthy or not, but also how to optimize nutrition/f(cost, time, effort)) it could help. I don't have time to go into how it's even possible healthy food could take 75% of someone's income (assuming that person has an income of $10k/year, that is over $140/week) but there are surely compromises you can make to get the majority of the benefits of eating healthy food without spending nearly that much.

<comment><USER17> I'm surprised the government, some nonprofit or some university's sociology department isn't doing this. It wouldn't be hard to publish a weekly newsletter with meals for various family sizes that can be made at various price points using all SNAP-compatible ingredients.

How much would it really cost to send a weekly pamphlet of cheap and not nutritionally terrible meal ideas to the address of every kid who gets free lunch?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The word "food" occurs only 2 times in the body of the executive summary. So I think it's a stretch to use "can't afford" as the main title of the article.

The full report doesn't have much to support it, it never shows us what food cost, how they're unable to afford it. At best it talks about "availability" of healthy food as if the supermarkets doesn't sell it.

The report never considers that the unhealthy food might be a taste preference just like smoking even though everybody knows it's very unhealthy and very expensive. Giving up smoking isn't expensive, it's not money that stops people from quitting smoking.

 _Low-income groups are more likely to consume fat spreads, non-diet soft drinks, meat dishes, pizzas, processed meats, whole milk and table sugar than the better-off_ (pg 133)

My personal observation from observing shoppers in a number of supermarkets: poor people buys _quite a lot_ more soft drinks than the well educated.

The health of the poor is not improved much by giving them (free) fresh produce when they drink a couple of liters of non-diet Coca Cola every day. They end up obese or with diabetes which are the mother of all ills. An ounce of broccoli can't cure 2L of Coca Cola.

I think the single most effective policy would be to ban sugar in drinks and severely restrict its use in fast food (and bread). The fat-free policies must be reverted to avoid foods using sugar as replacement for fat.

<comment><USER19> Your prescribed initiative to improve the lives of poor people is to remove one of the few cheap pleasures available to them?

I think many people here understand how stress and mood inform eating habits. Who among us has not indulged after a particularly bad day? Now imagine that bad day was every day, and you don't have the money, time, and energy to drown your feelings with healthier activities like strenuous exercise.

The best way to improve the lives of poor people is to give them money. Enough with this know-better-than-thou ban & incentize crap. Poor people get jerked around enough already.

<comment><USER18> When that "pleasure" ends up making peoples live a lot worse, then yes I do want to remove it.

If we were never to take away pleasures no matter their consequences, you could just as well legalize "the Russian Krokodil" (don't google images that).

<comment><USER19> It may amaze you to learn the world is not a binary between "legalize krokodil" and "ban sugary drinks".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm more surprised when I come across very rich people (e.g. VCs, CEOs, etc.) who are obese. You have all the money in the world and somehow made it to the top without the self-control and determination to take care of your body (and in turn mind)?

<comment><USER21> To me, this indicates that obesity is a function of something other than self- control and determination.

<comment><USER22> Yup, eating to much and doing to little.

<comment><USER23> Nope.

There are many other reasons. The most obvious one is _self-medicating_ , either stress or some undiagnosed condition. People are good at unconsciously developing coping mechanisms.

<comment><USER24> Some people have medical issues causing obesity, sure, but we're the same species we were 50 years ago. Any physiological cause of obesity in people today was also present then, presumably at the same rates. But they didn't have an obesity epidemic.

Whatever thing (or set of things) is driving the change in obesity rates, it is not a biological force that is outside of out control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here, even in super expensive CA, In college I got by with less than 2-3$ per day on rolled oats (70c per lb), Onions, potatoes, flax seeds, green peppers, bananas, whole wheat flour etc, all of which were less than 1$ per lb if you go to the right stores (for example Sprouts).

Going to McDonalds is much more expensive, something like 20$ per day!

With the proper education, you can eat cost effectively and very healthily. And, I know it's really controversial to say this because of the decades of conditioning we've received from the dairy and meat industry, but Meat and Dairy aren't needed in the diet, and have been shown to even cause cancer, heart disease and heart stroke for many. (source Forks over Knives, the documentary, plus the China study -> check it out, seriously.)

<comment><USER26> >Going to McDonalds is much more expensive, something like 20$ per day!

If you're ordering off of the value menu it's nowhere near that expensive in most of the country.

>rolled oats (70c per lb), Onions, potatoes, flax seeds, green peppers, bananas, whole wheat flour etc

Most of those particularly the wheat flour requires significant preparation-- knowledge, time, a stocked and functioning kitchen.

A lot of those people in the bottom 10% of income in the UK aren't going to have an oven.

>With the proper education,

Yes, proper education, plus time, plus a working kitchen. 3 things that the very poor aren't likely to have. And keep in mind this was when you were a single college student, not a working single mother with 2 small kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> ...both financially _and_ mentally.

<comment><USER28> I don't understand what you are saying here?

<comment><USER29> It's too cost prohibitive to be healthy, and even if it wasn't there is too much mental energy needed to be picky about which foods/ingredients you're buying (Checking labels, researching nutritional values, etc)

<comment><USER30> The path of least resistance for the typical American is fatty foods and empty carbs.

It takes effort to do anything else.

<comment><USER31> Is there any good reason for that? Are fatty foods and empty carbs cheaper to produce than less processed, healthier food?

More to the point, is there money to be made by making real food more readily available?

<comment><USER32> > Is there any good reason for that?

No.

> Are fatty foods and empty carbs cheaper to produce than less processed, > healthier food?

They are subsidized by the government, ie: Corn subsidies. That said, even without subsidies, I'd imagine that they'd be cheaper for another reason: You can store them long term without too much cost.

> More to the point, is there money to be made by making real food more > readily available?

Not likely. Any advantage you squeeze out could probably be copied by another company willing to sell less healthy food. So the only your only real option for differentiation would be marketing how healthy your food is. But that requires people to care.

If the government provided free healthy food to everyone, fully cooked, ready to go, at a reasonably well-prepared level, at as many locations as there are fast food restaurants, then, I think it would actually make some impact on health.

Hm. Maybe the government should just subsidize salads at restaurants/fast food joints.

<comment><USER31> > > More to the point, is there money to be made by making real food more > readily available?

> Not likely. Any advantage you squeeze out could probably be copied by > another company willing to sell less healthy food. So the only your only > real option for differentiation would be marketing how healthy your food is. > But that requires people to care.

I wasn't trying to make real food _cheaper_ \- just on par, so that the "path of least resistance" wasn't to eat garbage. We can't make people care. But can we make them not have to care so much, or try so hard?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The trouble is one of priorities. Even if you can't afford to eat fresh fruit you can choose better options. Health recommendations are expressed in a huge package all at once, take it or leave it.

Lean meat and fish in particular are also expensive and over-emphasized. You can get a similar protein/fat ratio by eating cheap meat or cheese with legumes or oats and it comes with fiber.

Eggs are unfairly demonized. Only a tiny proportion of the population needs to limit egg consumption beyond what taste will do naturally. But protein is the most expensive macronutrient and eggs are a cheap source with relatively low fat and loads of vitamins. Cheese also falls into this category, with many people who do not currently have any tumors rigorously avoiding a small increase in their IGF-1, a hormone which performs many essential functions but slightly increases tumor growth rates. You can thank T. Colin Campbell for this absurdity.

Potassium is very confusing. The most economical sources for most people are probably from canned tomato products, beans and fresh potatoes — the latter being a cheap vegetable whose nutritional value is highly underrated thanks to a proliferation of processed potato products. Most people, however, will reach for bananas and avocadoes — delicacies to the poor.

Bread, too, deserves a more nuanced look. It ranges from sweet, thick and highly glycemic to relatively health-neutral and highly pragmatic wrt home- made lunches. "Bread" here can be extended to wraps and tortillas. "Don't eat bread" is very often impractical. Pasta, on the other hand, is loved by diet authorities for its satiating bulk, but it's a mess to make and requires you to wash a pot and a bowl. The rice cooker has yet to assume its rightful place on the counter.

Home cooking in general has been neutered by making everyone terrified of adding butter or salt. So people choose between bland foods with no butter or salt or packaged foods with absurd amounts of salt, palm oil and artificial flavor. This advice should be revised with an eye to taste.

It is not too surprising that health advice designed for the rich does not serve the poor. I don't think the obesity crisis can be solved with health advice alone, but I also think the advice could be a _lot_ better than it is. I don't think we need to teach people to cook — people can learn to cook. Most people, however, do not have the number sense to assimilate hundreds of nutrition labels and prices into a diet strategy. That is difficult and boring. It doesn't help that many products have such tiny serving sizes that the nutrient label is meaningless thanks to rounding errors. The system could be simpler and clearer. (Even with extreme effort I find myself constantly revising my own plans.)

<comment><USER12> It's a real mess isn't it. Personally I'm awed by Japanese cuisine, which seems to have integrated the need for healthy nutrition with amazing flavours and satiety, and embedded it into the culture as a cherished component. Replicating that with a bunch of rules is nigh on impossible I'd suggest.

Certainly not a fan of their hunting of whales though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> My parents were born very poor (they were both taken out of school and put to work at 11 years old - yeah let this sink in for a minute). They did work all their lives until they retired though, specially my mom that having no job formation kept picking up any jobs she could find. My father went to school at night (started studying again while he was forcibly conscripted for war) and had two jobs.

We always did eat very healthy at home. First because my parents saw that as one of the priorities (they never went to dinner out, lunch out, even coffee out in my early years, since they couldn't afford that lifestyle and keep their finances in a proper state... I guess the only luxury we had was having a dog - for which I am very grateful), second because they would take the time and effort to prepare a proper meal (yes, even after arriving home from working all day in their physically demanding jobs) and the ingredients to a healthy meal are cheap, but it takes effort to put that kind of meal together.

All this happened in what is today a somewhat rich western European country.

It really bothers me (and I guess other people like me), this culture of constantly dismissing people lack of self responsibility. In the EU (and I would go as far as saying, in the all 1st world), if you are willing to work and to watch how you spend your money (and this means closely, no 5$ latte like another article today just talks about, or ordering pizza because you don't want to prepare dinner), anyone can end up having a comfortable life.

</comment><comment><USER35> _It must steer clear of the idea that "all we have to do is convey to people how to eat sensibly and then everything will be fine," he says. "That would be a significant step backwards."_

 _"I'll give you an example," he adds, "If everyone followed Public Health England's eating advice, people in the bottom decile of household income would spend 74 per cent of their income on food. So, there's not much point telling them follow the healthy eating advice they can't afford._

I think I can see why. Here is Public Health England's "A Quick Guide to the Government's Healthy Eating Recommendations":

[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/742746/A_quick_guide_to_govt_healthy_eating_update.pdf)

It advises people to eat more expensive meat (oily fish) in place of cheaper meats, and to eat large portions of fruits and vegetables. Those two factors look to explain the cost increase. The other advice (choose unsaturated oils, eat complex carbohydrates instead of simple ones) does not require buying more expensive foods.

If you just bought foods according to the pictures and examples in the Public Health England brochure, you could spend a _lot_ more money on food. It's possible to follow dietary recommendations without spending much (if any) more if you know how to budget and optimize, and if you already have a stove and refrigerator/freezer. I don't really think it's possible if you don't have a refrigerator/freezer. Limited transportation options can make it harder too.

Worst of all, IMO, is that the brochure and linked eating guides contain no sample meal plans, shopping plans, or example prices/budgets. Bridging this sort of gap used to be (still is?) sometimes taught in Home Economics and Personal Finance classes in the United States. (I took both in high school.) It's also the sort of skill that children often used to acquire from their parents, but perhaps acquire less often now. It's _way_ too hard for someone without that skill to go from this Healthy Eating brochure to a cost-and- health satisficing shopping plan with accompanying meal plans.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm a poor person (less than 750€/month) I do art ([https://aszantu.deviantart.com](https://aszantu.deviantart.com))

It's funny how I don't use as much money since I went carnivore. My health has improved greatly, my depression went away.

For about 3 months I was keto, basically unaffordable, so I cut the fresh greens and went with meat alone.

3 months of eating 1.5 KG pork every day, still expensive. went with about 500 grams of ground meat for about a year and after I figured out the keto- carnivore thing it's about

1 block of butter every 3 days as well as 250 grams of beef is enough to survive.

I'm building my own mealworm farm for protein and fat as well as a snail hatchery for giant african snails for protein.

as poor person you basically never know when you will have to rely on yourself. So I'm trying to build for self sufficiency with solar panel and car battery as well as my own food production.

so many questions help! 1\. Why? - I wanted to try it for the depression - <USER2> worked for multiple other ailments [https://meatheals.com](https://meatheals.com) has a lot of similar stories - some people live like that for a long time now.

2\. Will I die from scurvey or other nutrient deficiency? - I dont't know. Bloodwork looked okay. Cholesterol is high (Dave Feldman has some interesting things to say about that) Yes I do fear that I don't get some nutrients but I eat some organ meat now and then, add gelatine to my meat, drink milk and eat butter, eggs, cheese, fish, different animals, different states of fermentation now and then.

3\. Did I supplement? - yes, I took magnesium citrate for a while but not taking any now, except for when I have a headache. When I still ate "normal", zinc did a lot for my depression.

4\. why insects rather than plants? - Plants in general seem to give me allergic reactions -> Carbs and sugar seem to make me depressed, greens and onions seem to amplify anxiety, plant oils give me headaches. After having symptoms every time I tried another plant, I stopped trying and these trials are getting less and less. There is something about anti-nutrients in plants that seems to screw with the absorbtion of minerals and vitamins from food.

5\. Did I talk to a doctor? - Yes, I did, she just sat there and noded asked for a blood test and that's it. LDL is high, trigs are low (Dave Feldman prediction for cholesterol)

6\. what about cancer? protein spikes IGF1 or something? I don't know... I don't want to go back to Plants because they make me feel like shit. Everyone dies and I will too one day. There is some article of someone who researched the WHO connection of cancer and red meat, and it doesn't seem to hold up.

7\. do I still have symptoms? - Yes, depression is there sometimes and anxiety as well. I've lived with them for so long that I still have the habits of depression and they're hard to break. But I've accomplished about 500 km of the camino trail in europe as well as worked 9-5 hours which was never possible for me before. Childhood hunger never leaves you,(also it feels like germany is destabilizing as a democratic system) hence the preparation for crisis.

<comment><USER37> I'm genuinely shocked you find an all-meat diet to be the best calorie/protein to cost ratio, especially for red meat.

When I was poor it was beans and rice, maybe chicken, and vegetables were the "fillers," I could get them dirt cheap at the local mexi-mart.

Where are you getting beef and pork that it's cheaper than beans or chicken?

<comment><USER38> But beef and pork are pretty much always cheaper than chicken?

If I go to my supermarket's site right now, chicken is ~€12 per kilo[0], beef is ~€7 per kilo[1] and pork-beef mix (can't get pure pork minced meat) is €5,30 per kilo[2]. And it'll be like that in every supermarket in The Netherlands (and possibly Europe)

[0] [https://www.jumbo.com/jumbo-kipfilet-2-stuks- ca-390g/187400K...](https://www.jumbo.com/jumbo-kipfilet-2-stuks- ca-390g/187400KGR/)

[1][https://www.jumbo.com/jumbo-rund- rundergehakt-500g/131278BAK...](https://www.jumbo.com/jumbo-rund- rundergehakt-500g/131278BAK/)

[2][https://www.jumbo.com/jumbo-rund--varken-gemengd- gehakt-500g...](https://www.jumbo.com/jumbo-rund--varken-gemengd- gehakt-500g/87858BAK/)

<comment><USER36> someone told me that in industrial slaughtering they make the animals thirsty by feeding them artificial sweeteners so the meet will have more water

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > Public Health England's eating advice,

Not sure why there is no question if the Public Health advice is actually good to begin with. In France for decades the French authorities heavily promoted the consumption of milk-derivative products as part of a "healthy diet" and this seems to have sparked the percentage of people suffering from lactose intolerance.

Eating advice is usually based on very poor quality data to begin with, and observational studies is not really good science either.

<comment><USER40> > milk-derivative products as part of a "healthy diet" and this seems to have > sparked the percentage of people suffering from lactose intolerance

You're mixing up cause and consequence

<comment><USER39> Intolerance also develops from increased consumption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Everyone can afford to fast, which is one of the best health levers we have access to.

<comment><USER41> Rather than thinking of the six-figure professional overdoing it on ribeye and baked potato, think about a 20-year old without a job and no family to support them. On a good day they might have one meal of ramen noodles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I am going to get flack for this but I believe both health and wealth are both highly correlated with personal will power. For instance, intermittent fasting for me has been the best thing I've done for my health and I really have no trouble doing it, but I do believe it takes significant will power.

<comment><USER43> If you look at the research then habit formation is all about _not_ relying on willpower. Willpower is a limited resource and is easily drained. People do not form long-term behaviours by willpower alone.

Yes, you need some willpower to start doing something new - but it's all about habit formation after that.

[https://angeladuckworth.com/publications/](https://angeladuckworth.com/publications/)

<comment><USER44> > Willpower is a limited resource and is easily drained

That study unfortunately failed to replicate

[https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/willpower-ego- de...](https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/willpower-ego-depletion- social-psychology-replication)

<comment><USER43> Not the study I'm talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> What I find funny about food banks is that they often have products that are lower quality than you find on supermarket shelves.

For instance, the food bank around here gives out cans of "tuna fish" that contain about 10% protein from soy that are imported from Mexico. They also have Peanut Butter imported from India.

There was an article the other day about how you shouldn't give cans to charity because it is more cost effective for them to buy food through their supply chain but in this case it is more cost effective because their supply chain is getting worse stuff.

<comment><USER46> > They also have Peanut Butter imported from India.

Wow what a scandal.

<comment><USER47> Sorry I'm just checking that this is sarcastic, because why should it matter that peanut butter is from India? Or did I miss a memo about Indian peanut butter?

<comment><USER46> You need to ask the person who thinks it's so obviously an issue to use peanuts from India that it requires no explanation - the person I replied to.

<comment><USER45> I'm not saying it is an issue, but I have never seen peanut butter from India for sale in the U.S before.

<comment><USER48> > _I 'm not saying it is an issue_

You did say that, though. You said "lower quality...for instance...peanut butter from India...worse stuff". If it's not an issue, why did you include it in a statement of issues?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mison: A Fast JSON Parser for Data Analytics [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol10/p1118-li.pdf <comment><USER2> Someone already implemented it in rust.

[https://github.com/pikkr/pikkr](https://github.com/pikkr/pikkr)

<comment><USER3> Looks like this is just a library so far. It'd be nice to see something that could compete with q using this.

<comment><USER4> Do you mean the tool 'jq'?

<comment><USER3> whoops yep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Gson best of the breed? Oh my :(

[https://github.com/eishay/jvm- serializers/wiki](https://github.com/eishay/jvm-serializers/wiki)

[https://github.com/fabienrenaud/java-json- benchmark](https://github.com/fabienrenaud/java-json-benchmark)

[https://github.com/kostya/benchmarks](https://github.com/kostya/benchmarks)

<comment><USER6> They quite clearly state that Jackson is the fastest, later in the paper.

<comment><USER5> But it's not. It's just the default/most popular one.

It's up from 2x slower than fastest Java one, as clearly shown in the links.

<comment><USER6> I read the paper quickly, but Jackson was really really fast. Note that their charts are measuring _throughput_ , so a larger bar is better.

<comment><USER6> Dammit, I re-read the paper and I was wrong, you were right. But I can't delete/change my comment, so please downvote away. (I hate wrong information on the internet, and to be the source of it is a horrible feeling. Sorry.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So the big wins are when only a couple fields need to be read and the majority of the data can be ignored. They've even integrated this into spark. It'd be really nice to see the code released!

<comment><USER7> > It'd be really nice to see the code released!

I'm surprised the conference accepted the paper without the source code being made public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "A key challenge for achieving these features is to jump directly to the correct position of a queried field with-out having to perform expensive tokenizing steps to find the field" \- I think jsoniter does that (or something similar) [http://jsoniter.com](http://jsoniter.com)

</comment><comment><USER9> SIMD optimization is actually not as easy as it sounds. You can use SIMD to greatly speed up looking for ", for example, but with JSON that is not enough, because there could be an embedded " in the string, escaped as \" And if you find a ", checking whether the previous character is a \ is not enough either, because it could be \\\" (an escaped backslash at the end of the string).

The main takeaway of this, to me, is: if you design a language like JSON, make the grammar easily parsable. Escape " as \22 for example, or =22 or basically anything not countaining the escaped character, then you can use SIMD to look for the end of the string very efficiently.

<comment><USER10> My main takeaway is that if you care about performance so much, just ETL the data to be avro, thrift, protobuf, hdf5, netcdf, parquet, arrow, anything but plain text.

<comment><USER11> When I was grinding away on the 128B edge graph on my laptop, literally 85% of the time was parsing integers. Get your data to native binary as soon as you can (edit: or out of plain text at least, per parent).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of the fastest JSON parser written in D[0].

[0][http://forum.dlang.org/thread/20151014090114.60780ad6@marco-...](http://forum.dlang.org/thread/20151014090114.60780ad6@marco- toshiba)

</comment><comment><USER13> I am surprised they don't mention succinct trees in the references. Looks like this was invented independently.</comment>


Taking the Raspberry Pi 2 for a Test Drive with GNU Radio - <AUTHOR> http://www.rs-online.com/designspark/electronics/eng/blog/taking-the-raspberry-pi-2-for-a-test-drive-with-gnu-radio-2

<comment><USER2> This is one of the projects I had in mind for the RPi 2. I've already got the RTL-SDR stick and it works great on my workstation, but having it portable would be even better. I'm happy to see that the RPi 2 can handle the workload. It will be interesting to see if the Pi can also handle trunk tracking.

<comment><USER3> How does one handle portable power for a RPi2? Does a normal USB Power brick (as increasingly used to top up phones) suffice?

<comment><USER4> Yup, if it charges a phone it should power a Pi.

[http://www.adafruit.com/products/1566](http://www.adafruit.com/products/1566) is sold specifically for this purpose, and it has some interesting notes about how it behaves (like output fluctuation when the battery is simultaneously charging and providing power) that might be worth noting. If all you do is run off a battery, then unhook the battery to charge it, you shouldn't have those sorts of issues.

<comment><USER5> 500mA and up will charge a phone (assuming you're not also doing power- intensive things on it), but you'll probably need 1-2A to power a Pi and a SDR reliably.

<comment><USER4> Ah, looks like power consumption west up. B+ listed 600 mA typ, 2B is 800. [http://linuxgizmos.com/raspberry-pi-gets-quad-core-soc- keeps...](http://linuxgizmos.com/raspberry-pi-gets-quad-core-soc-keeps-same- price/)

<comment><USER5> Yep! Plus the tuner card itself can use 200mA or so, and if you want to use any other USB accessories they'll be drawing power as well. I unfortunately have too much experience using "phone chargers" that had enough current to run it 90% of the time, but under hard load would cause enough voltage drop on the 5V rail to reboot the Pi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Got my Pi 2 recently, and it's awesome how much snappier it runs. I've only used them to spin up game console emulator appliances so far. Would love to hear about projects among the HN crowd. I'd really like to use one for something more interesting!

<comment><USER7> My wife's Hedgehog tweets how much he runs every night ([https://twitter.com/runhedgie](https://twitter.com/runhedgie)). Hooked up a RPi NoIR camera, so a video is included in the tweet as well. All the code is here: [https://github.com/jlhonora/iot](https://github.com/jlhonora/iot)

<comment><USER8> This is great! Thanks for sharing, I just got a bird feeder, this will be a perfect starting point for shooting images.

<comment><USER7> Cool project! I guess that with the Pi2 you could do some basic image processing to detect changes and then decide which footage is interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What are some of the popular applications for SDR? I can't imagine it's all pirate radio and such.

<comment><USER10> Almost none of it would be pirate radio, since the most common one (RTL-SDR) is receive-only.

You can use it to tune in 2m ham radio repeaters, or listen to broadcast FM, or pick up weather radio transmissions, or track which aircraft are flying overhead, or build a little yagi antenna and hear people talking via ham radio satellite, or possibly listen to police radio depending on what your local cops use

<comment><USER11> You shouldn't need a yagi to listen to ham sats (transmit you will). A good external omnidirectional antenna should be fine.

In addition to the sats ISS always has at least one ham radio operator. They sometimes man the radio and make contacts with hams. In addition to THAT sometimes they operate SSTV (sending pictures via radio) that you would be able to pick up. Very cool stuff!

Here's a good site to see where hamsats are: [http://www.amsat.org/](http://www.amsat.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice. Now the question is how accurately you can timestamp the ADS-B replies. If you can timestamp them to within a few hundred nanoseconds, and have at least three (preferably four) receiving stations networked, you can draw a radar picture of your local airspace.

<comment><USER13> The problem are the RTL2832U receivers. The sample rate is too low, 500ns resolution with 2MSample/s is not enough. For this reason I cannot recommend using the dvb-t sticks as ads-b receiver (the symbol rate is too high, compare nynquist theorem).

Multilateration has already be done for ADS-B on large scale, but with different receivers. There are receivers available[1] with nanosecond accuracy (and gps time synchronization).

GPS synchronization isn't needed, by choosing other flight paths to provide basic time synchronization between receivers.

[1]: <[http://radarcape.com/>](http://radarcape.com/>)

<comment><USER14> There seems to be "a trick"...

[http://www.rtl-sdr.com/passive-radar-dual-coherent- channel-r...](http://www.rtl-sdr.com/passive-radar-dual-coherent-channel-rtl- sdr/)

(That's on my list of "things to experiment with one day...")

<comment><USER15> Yep, that's been on my list for a while too! :o)

Btw, I just updated the blog post with a link to another post where I ran up a GSM network on a Pi 2 equipped with a UmTRX transceiver.

[http://www.rs- online.com/designspark/electronics/eng/blog/ru...](http://www.rs- online.com/designspark/electronics/eng/blog/running-a-gsm-network-on-the- raspberry-pi-2)

Given that UmTRX is dual channel, has a GPS locked clock and is much higher performance is general, I'm thinking it might make for an excellent platform for experimenting with passive RADAR!

Andrew

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one who thinks this could work as an early-warning system for drone strikes?

<comment><USER17> I'm guessing (those kind of) drones don't have mode-S/ADS-B transponders.

<comment><USER18> They do have radio emissions you could triangulate.

<comment><USER19> Are you sure?

As far as I know they use satellite links. So I imagine they can avoid sending signals towards earth. I also assume they use frequency hopping in a wide range so it's harder to track.

<comment><USER14> I dunno, it's a _long_ way to a satellite, and only a short distance to the ground. Given the space/packaging constraints on a drone I wonder just how directional it's uplink antenna could possibly be. (Although I'd bet the satellite probably has a _very_ high gain antenna on board - which'd turn the tables back in their favour...)

<comment><USER19> Making a drone hard to detect is a major priority. They'll go great length to ensure it's hard to track.

However, it'd be interesting to try it. Sadly there are not many drones where I am currently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What fun projects can I do with GNU Radio?

<comment><USER21> [http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/WhatIsGR](http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/WhatIsGR)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Gotta wonder if there are already communities sharing profile information for recognizing various government agency employees/vehicles by SDR.</comment>