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Comment by LeanderK | Hacker News Reader

>Hotz's initial tweets suggested his move was in response to an inquiry from NHTSA, stating that he "would much rather spend life building amazing tech than dealing with regulators and lawyers,"

well, this is not some stupid web-app that can't harm anyone even if it tried (except from maybe overheating your smartphone). This can kill people, i can't seriously buy dangerous stuff from somebody that says something like this. What's next? Producing food without following proper hygiene regulations? Disrupting the medicine-industry by testing your headache-pills on your customers (those regulations are only slowing us down!)?

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You would have won so much Irony Points if only you had written "Producing food without following proper hygiene regulations? Disrupting the medicine industry with revolutionary tests without sufficient scientific validation?"

Let me introduce to you: Theranos

We all got that. ;)

> Producing food without following proper hygiene regulations?

Sounds like Menu Next Door, who had to deal with regulation meant for restaurants when trying to be the AirBnB of food. Things like you had to have a warning about washing your hands in your own private kitchen.

It's a reference to Soylent.

>What's next? Producing food without following proper hygiene regulations?

Boy do I have the product for you! Question: Do you like the color beige?

I prefer the old school green, in the original formulation.

Random historical reference on green: "anti-establish mint" has to be the best car color ever ('69-71, Ford).

http://blog.macsautoparts.com/wild-paint-colors/

> What's next? Producing food without following proper hygiene regulations?

So... Soylent?

>Disrupting the medicine-industry...

So... Theranos?

Only this would be worse. Someone can choose to buy Soylent or use Theranos for themselves and no one else gets hurt. If you a person buys a crappy self driving car system it could kill me, a totally unrelated person.

I don't care how much of a libertarian you are, that's exactly the reason why we have regulations.

> I don't care how much of a libertarian you are

Also ask how risk-averse/-taking the other side is.

I agree with you, I'm just pointing out that we're already in the age of profitable, harmful bullshit.

As for me, I'm not one of those deluded fools who believes in the law of jungle, and that I wouldn't be dog food in that jungle.

The law of the jungle is fine, but it won't preclude a shitty self-driving car from crashing through your living room and killing one of your kids. It's one thing to suffer harm to yourself, it is quite another to go through losing a child to something like that. I know, randomness, blah blah blah.

Technically, Soylent abides by regulations: they sell flaxseed mixed with peas and oat (I think: I’m in Europe and eat Huel, which has mostly those). None of those are not well-known food sources. There are no regulation about claiming that eating nothing but that is safe; they should (at least, Huel does) have the recommended daily doses of each major molecule on the bag.

I'm thinking more about their recent recalls and stoppage.

There's no indication that those were related to not following existing food production regulations...

There's no indication, period, but it would be one of the safer assumptions.

No, it's just a wrong assumption. They're still selling the pre-made liquid, they just stopped their bars and powder products proactively, even though they couldn't reproduce the issue in testing. Do you even know anything about their production methods?

> Do you even know anything about their production methods?

Hence the purpose of regulations...

Food Allergy seems to be a much more likely cause to me.

> Producing food without following proper hygiene regulations? Disrupting the medicine-industry by testing your headache-pills on your customers (those regulations are only slowing us down!)?

It would have been even worse than that because it could have potentially killed other people, too.

Even ignoring the safety aspect, people buying any remotely major product will have the expectation that it will ideally be supported for some time to come. e.g., buy a car and have the manufacturer around for long enough to help out with servicing, parts, etc.

Saturn, Saab...

http://parts-catalog.acdelco.com/

(ACDelco is a house brand of GM, similar to Chrysler's Mopar or Ford's Motorcraft.)

The auto companies are an interesting example, because all of the major manufacturers have subsidiary organizations which exist just for parts manufacture, and all of them handle parts manufacturing and distribution for far longer than the original manufacturing run. While GM might only make a particular model car for a few years, ACDelco might continue to make consumable parts for it for decades, based on demand.

> stupid web-app that can't harm anyone even if it tried (except from maybe overheating your smartphone)

It can leak very sensitive personal data. That won't hurt you physically but will surely have consequences. The problem is perhaps the lack of regulations in the web-app domain. Any amateur can call himself a programmer and many do.

> The problem is perhaps the lack of regulations in the web-app domain.

There are and perhaps should be more regulations about safeguarding personal information, which for websites would mean salting passwords etc., but I am glad there are no regulations regarding who can and cannot program as that would seriously hurt innovation.

Maybe Linus wouldn't be able to program Linux? or Zuckerberg Facebook?

The current pace of large data leaks is alarming and unsustainable. Any other industry that would fail so badly would be completely taken over by regulations. The silicon valley is only keeping its independence because until now politicians didn't really grasp the scope of the problem. But now that data leaks involve their own email, I suspect Washington is going to start paying attention.

Yes, regulations do hurt innovation and also competition, it creates large barriers to entry (check how many new banking licenses are issued every years!). But the current state of infosec is just unacceptable. It's like if planes were falling from the sky every day.

> Producing food without following proper hygiene regulations?

Soylent, disrupting my rectum since mid 2016.

We've already seen what happens there with Soylent

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