kileywm

I'm almost finished with my first shipment (formula 1.3) and my results have been positive. I use it to replace some, but not all, meals in my diet. I think it especially excels in situations where I am in a hurry or too lazy to cook, because it's far more nutritious and cost-effective than the meals I would eat/skip otherwise.

I currently have my subscription set up so that I receive 2 weeks work of Soylent every month.

Breakdown: 500 calories per meal ~$2.33 per meal

How I use it:

Complete meal/snack replacement for breakfast and lunch most days. Rarely have it for dinner.

What I've learned so far:

Don't drink it right after you mix it unless you shake it really really well, otherwise you'll encounter clumps. Given at least an hour to soak in water, it reaches a clumpless consistency.

The taste is fairly neutral with a slight hint of malty sweetness. Some people rave about using it as a coffee creamer, but I myself have not tried that.

The texture is grainy in comparison to a smoothie, but this is to be expected with a powder-based meal.

It's filling, very easy to drink when chilled, and the bowel movements are regular in frequency (and consistency!) with no notable increase in gas.

So far I'm pretty happy with it. It strikes me as a good deal healthier and ridiculously more convenient than anything else I'd make for myself, meal-wise, if you can tolerate sacrificing flavor and texture.

> if it starves the fuel of oxygen

My understanding is that it doesn't starve the fuel of oxygen, but rather starves it of activation energy. I'm fuzzy on the chemistry, but I remember it being like this:

fuel + O2 + activation energy -> CO2 + H2O + energy

The propagating sound waves move two of the input components of the reaction.

fuel: stationary

O2: moves, but is replaced by more O2

activation energy: moves and is missing from future reactions unless/until new activation energy is introduced.

Again, I took chem long ago, but I think that's what's going on.

Summary:

-Card payment processing for major banks took a regulatory profit hit around 2010. Per transaction fees dropped from $0.44 to $0.21.

-The lost profit from transaction fees has simply shifted to more checking account fees for consumers from things like ATMs and minimum balance/direct deposit requirements to maintain a 'free' account.

Can anyone clarify the core causes of antibiotic resistance over the last several decades?

I've heard the following causes, but I cannot substantiate them:

[1] Improper patient usage. Primarily, not taking the prescribed dosage long enough to eradicate all of the target bacterium, leaving (enough) survivors to meaningfully propagate their resistance. Typical to the "Hey I think my sinus infection is gone already! Adios remaining pills."

[2] Improper targeting. A functional antibiotic used on the wrong type of bacterium, or even usage against viruses.

Are there any others? Are my [1] and [2] debunked?

A general comment on how-to instructions:

I really respect and appreciate that this article addressed pitfalls where mistakes are common and disastrous. The step involving a router to clear a cavity: lots of mistakes were made, because it's hard to do that step. It takes courage to for an instructor to admit mistakes, and the pupil learns all the better from those admissions.

For all of the Instructable, Pinterest, and various other how-to articles on the internet, I believe we could all benefit from instructors being more forthcoming about pitfalls like the author(s) of this article.

It would have interesting implications if it was produced by microorganisms. I don't know enough to comment further, but I'm guessing that's what the article was suggesting.

I share the same feelings about overreaching app permissions. My solution would be similar, but deviate notably in that I'd prefer every app have a permissions menu where each permission can be toggled on/off. The permissions menu itself would only be enabled if Developer Options is enabled (via the 7 taps).

This would, of course, break certain actions within the app and would require disabling buttons in the app and/or displaying friendly errors about "This action requires access to your camera. See permissions etc...". Even then, people disabling permissions and 'breaking' the app by their own actions would probably generate some unjustifiably negative reviews on the Play store.

Not perfect, but a great way to reign in app permissions. My only control right now is to simply not install the app (or disable hardware like the radio when I run it).

If there is a DSLAM right next to the crossbox, then these are the two possibilities:

[1] (Common and very likely) The DSLAM they installed there is a fiber node and feeds only VDSL over < 50 ft wire to the crossbox. ADSL also feeds into the crossbox, but not from the new DSLAM. It still travels from the CO (central office) and may still be 1-2 miles of wire away.

[2] (Uncommon and less likely) The DSLAM has VDSL and ADSL cards in it. In this situation the DSLAM can support high speed VDSL to very close residents and ADSL to further residents. The CO is no longer the source of ADSL signal, and this is typically a nice reduction in loop length for people.

In your shoes, I'd get in touch with the ISP and see if you're CO fed or not. If you're CO fed, there's little that can be done to improve the speeds =(. You could ask if it's possible to do pair bonding to improve your speeds. Just beware, switching to pair bonding means you'd need to lease/purchase a new modem that can do bonding and the ISP would have to roll a truck to wire up the 2nd pair.

Hope that helps!

This makes me wonder: What proportion of our laws make an action illegal, not because it is socially 'wrong', but because it often leads to an already-illegal action in a (perhaps to some) not so obvious way.

It's an interesting distinction.

If your parents are 1/3 to 1/2 of a mile away from the closest box with those speeds, then it's likely the 'box' is a crossbox (wiring junction) instead of a DSLAM (networking card). Where the DSLAM is that is feeding that crossbox... well that could be much further.

If the loop length is .34-.5 miles (which is quite good) with no impedance mismatch or bridge taps or other various copper faults, then you would/should be able to sustain 10+ Mbps on an ADSL2+ connection.

My guess is that the distance is further than it seems, and the line may not have been reconditioned from phone to internet purposes.

Anyway I bring it up because distance is the biggest determinant of bandwidth when it comes to copper, and if the distance is great then there is little that fixing copper faults can do to improve internet speeds at your parents' place.

>> "The woman you helped was still probably quite shocked and dealing with police to thank you and it's highly likely that in such a situation information like where you worked completely went over her head."

Having never truly experienced trauma (closest I came was a low-speed car collision on college campus) I find it fascinating how the victim suspends empathy during trauma. For me, empathy is nearly constant, so it is difficult for me to grasp a state where it wouldn't be so, as ironic as that is for someone with empathy!

As for why people don't help strangers more often than not... I believe this behavior is supported by our modern society. We've institutionalized helping people. Through taxes, we provide emergency response teams like Fire and Police departments. We provide medical, food, and housing assistance to many in need - at least the ones willing to ask for it. And yes - some assistance is volunteer, such as soup kitchens and volunteer fire departments, but I do believe the trend to be real... Taxpayers pay others to help people for them. Helpers in this society get monetary compensation.

I have long understood the primary incentive to patent an idea is to protect research and development investments. It makes sense from the perspective that inventions can often be reverse engineered for a fraction of initial R&D cost. I could be wrong, but if I am not... how much R&D went into this little gem of photography 'innovation'.

My understanding (not a Tesla vehicle owner) is that you may pick the regenerative mode of the car: low or standard. Low allows for the coasting experience of driving a car with an Internal Combustion Engine. Standard allows the electric motor(s) to slow down the vehicle when the pedal is let up for regenerative effect.

In either scenario, I believe both the motor and disc brakes are utilized when the brake pedal is depressed; however, the general theme is that more kinetic energy is lost to thermal from disc brake friction in the Low scenario.

My thoughts are that regeneration of the battery is encouraged, but the marketing of the Model S appears such that Tesla Motors wants to deliver EV luxury & performance first, and foremost and then cleverly extend it behind the scenes in such a way that the user need not think about it. To me, it's not all that different from flagship smartphones. Actively 'hypermiling' a flagship smartphone for battery life would compromise many of the flagship features... which aren't suprisingly luxury and performance.

> Except for my clothes and toothbrush, they’d taken everything. MacBook, iPhone, debit and credit cards and much, much more.

It's surprising to meet someone who doesn't keep their phone on/near their person, even when sleeping. It does; however, raise a good point:

Does everyone have some sort of contingency plan for this kind of event? Show up at a friend's door to use theirs? Library or other public computers? Prior to this article, I hadn't considered how to change passwords/cancel credit cards/notify bank(s) without at least one of my own internet-connected devices.