Right, but the people they are marketing it towards are probably also the ones who will justify eating [spoilers] as a purely practical matter.
This isnāt what Soylent is about though. Itās not about replacing socializing. Itās about optimizing nutrition intake and creating a full meal solution that could also be used at some point to improve food availability in regions where that is a problem. Engineered nutrition is also going to be very important for landing humans on Mars and achieving further human space flight. Itās great in that I can use it to have a very quick meal, concentrate on something other than obtaining food, avoid driving and burning fuel to go get food, use less electricity or gas, since I donāt have to cook, etcā¦ It doesnāt prevent me from still going out and enjoying food at restaurants or social settings, or going to the grocer and buying stuff to make stir fry or whatever, whenever I want. But fewer dirty dishes, lower carbon output, and proper nutrition, are a great win.
Also, the Soylent makers are very picky about the taste. Itās one of the big reasons why itās taken so long for initial shipments to get done. Theyāve done taste testing on changes to the mixture for different grains for probable fulfillment, and refused to use them because the taste was altered in the wrong way. Itās totally tasteless, and certainly isnāt the best tasting thing in the world, but itās quite a lot better than many other food replacement mixtures that have been on the market for years.
I donāt think so. Try to think about it more of an API than as food. Instead of a frozen pizza for example, which already has all the ingredients combined, and has a certain set of flavors, and may not provide the full nutrition you need for a single meal, Soylent is a set of nutritional requirements distilled into its base components, and allows you to give it whatever flavor you want, and still be provided a complete nutritional intake. With traditional food, to get a complete nutritional intake for a single meal, the different types of foods you would need to eat would have too many flavors that disturb the flavors of other ingredients, youād have to eat more than required, becasue the amounts needed are not balanced across the spectrum of food required, and you would produce a greater amount of waste, either as solid, liquid, or fat.
I think we all agree this is a good thing when applied to scenarios where there isnāt enough food (e.g. famine-stricken countries or space travel), but my concern more broadly is with the kind of people who are so focused on one thing they donāt take time to eat.
Also, I do have a side-concern that in the future we will discover that Soylent was bad for you all along. I just think it is safer and better to get your nutrition from the traditional places: fruits and vegges.
1 Like
Itās not just about the time to eat though. For me, there are very many annoying things about the whole traditional food process. I live alone and work from home, and I can only eat so much at once, in the way of traditional food sources. Traditional food also doesnāt have particularly long shelf life, beyond some special things. I also donāt live in a location where I could walk to a corner market, and buy food in small enough quanties for a single meal or two, and place the burden on fresheness on the marketplace. If I go to a grocery store to buy food, to prepare, Iām literally going to end up throwing half of it away, most of the time, because it will go bad, simply beause itās too much and I canāt eat it all before then. I love good food, but I absolutely hate cooking, preparing, shopping, cleanup, etcā¦ As a result, Iāve ended up with a really crappy diet, and a quite expensive monthly food budget, as I just end up eating out all the time. Soylent basically solves all these problems for me. It takes only a couple minutes to prepare. I only have to do it once a day. Cleanup is only washing a few pint glasses and a pitcher. I donāt have to drive anywhere to get it. I can save about $600 a month on food. I donāt have to worry about what pesticides were used on the produce that Iām buying. I donāt have to wash my food before I cook it. I donāt have to worry about the food going bad. I donāt have to worry about salmolnella or e-coli recalls in peanut butter or strawberries. I donāt have to think about nutrition at all. For someone in a similar position as myself, itās pretty much perfect.
I actually have toyed with the idea of starting a company that builds steam boxes. Would that count as shipping? 
1 Like
If you ship to consumers, sure!
1 Like
@bryanlunduke So it only counts as a steam box if the back end is Linux even thought the front end is the same (steam in big picture mode)? Sounds to me like you are splitting hairs.
What is a steam box going to look like?
I have a PS4, but I love the idea of all this cool PC gaming.
Pssh. Thatās Valveās own definition of what a āSteam Machineā is. Has to be running SteamOS.
Donāt get me wrong. Iām not above splitting hairs in order to winā¦ but in this case I donāt think Iāll need to. 
Donāt see that as splitting ends, otherwise any windows machine in big picture mode would count?
1 Like
Except this is a box designed to be under the TV like a steam box should be. You can even fully ignore the windows UI if you like (out of the box). In short, if you gave this to your mom and the same hardware running steamOS your mom wouldnāt know the difference.
This is very much a case of splitting hairs.
Maybe. But itās splitting hairs by the company that makes Steamā¦ as itās their definition.
1 Like
Ok, I will give you this one, but it still meets the hardware spec outlined by Valve for Steam Boxes.
I will gladly accept.
Because thatās what I do.
Accept victory.
Constantly.
Victories are not given. Victories are taken. 
Done.
Wrong in 60 Seconds: what a good idea 
Stuart just (re)invented Subscribe2Web: https://air.mozilla.org/subscribe2web/ .
I did indeed. And, as @jeremy pointed out, Google Contributor. The difference here is that I donāt want this to work only on opted-in sites. I want Google to not show me ads after Iāve paid, regardless of what the sites want. Subscribe2Web is opt-in for sites because it has to be (theyād have to choose to use Subscribe2Web explicitly); Contributor is opt-in for sites because Google have decided it should be (I am hoping that thatās because itās still in beta).