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Soylent partner cuts supply after shouldering blame for recall
Soylent supplier TerraVia really, really doesn't appreciate being blamed for making people sick. The nutrition company has suspended its ingredient supply out of a "high level of concern" that Soylent is perpetuating a "pattern of behavior" that hurts TerraVia's bottom line. Supposedly, Soylent didn't do enough research into gastrointestinal problems before blaming TerraVia's algal flour and removing it for the recently released Powder 1.7 meal. The food alternative firm didn't offer any evidence, TerraVia says, citing an industry expert who doubts that the flour (or any one ingredient) is the obvious cause.
Soylent blames product recalls on algae
It's been a tough few weeks for Soylent. After recalling its new food bars for giving customers vomiting and diarrhea, the startup ended up pulling its famous meal-substitute powder from shelves as well. The company said a handful of powder customers were reporting similar gastrointestinal issues to those causes by the bars. The problem was affecting less than 0.1 percent of all customers, but the complaints were obviously severe enough to halt all sales of two of the company's four product lines. At the time, Soylent noted that its tests came back negative for food pathogens, toxins or outside contamination, and also said that it only affected the most recent iteration of its powder. "This possible connection allows us to narrow the field considerably given there are only a few ingredients that are specific to only our bars and Powder 1.6," it said. Well, the culprit has been found: algae.
Soylent stops powder sales after making some people sick
Crafting a powder-based drink that can replace your entire diet, it turns out, is pretty darn difficult. Following a total recall of its food bars, Soylent has slammed the brakes on its flagship powder product too. The company says "a handful" of customers, or less than 0.1 percent, have experienced "stomach-related symptoms" similar to the ones reported by its snack bar users. (Those, if you need a reminder, include vomiting, diarrhoea and severe stomach pain.) Soylent is still looking for the root of the problem. Its previous powder formula, 1.5, appeared to be fine, so the company is narrowing its search to the ingredients specific to 1.6 and the bars.
TUAW's Daily App: Powder
TUAW's Daily App spotlights one great App Store app, every single weekday. Powder probably isn't the most polished roguelike RPG experience on the App Store (Sword of Fargoal is generally considered to be among the best), but what it lacks in graphical quality, it makes up for in ease-of-use. The genre is sometimes tough to get into, but Powder, originally designed for the Game Boy Advance, uses easy buttons and icons to let you guide your turn-based RPG character through random dungeons, killing monsters, gaining XP, and drinking weird potions of various colors, all while trying to avoid cursed gear. It's still not easy (roguelikes are notoriously ruthless affairs, and permadeath is still the rule), but the controls are surprisingly intuitive, and the included tutorial makes an often steep learning curve much more gentle, even if you're new to the genre. Plus, Powder wins points from me for its flexible save state process; it's very easy to work your way through a dungeon floor, exit out to make a call or do something else on your iPhone, and then dive back in and pick up right where you left off. Best of all, it just recently went free; that makes sense, considering the other versions are free as well. If you still want to support programmer Jeff Lait, you can do so by donating on his Web site. Meanwhile, Powder is a free download in the App Store, and definitely worth checking out.
Ski resorts busted by iPhone app
Want to see past a ski resort's lies? There's an app for that. The iPhone's ability to track snowfall at ski resorts has been well publicized (it even showed up in an official Apple commercial), but apparently there's been an unintended consequence: ski resorts are actually losing money. The UK's Globe and Mail reports that before iPhones existed, people would just call up to the slopes to ask them if there was snow on the trails -- and the ski resorts would more often than not reply that there was, in order to pull in some more weekend customers. It was usually just white lies (no pun intended) -- they'd usually say there was about 20% more snow than actually existed. But now that the iPhone provides a much more objective look at exactly how much powder there is up there, resorts are finding that they can't push that weekend boost any more. And that's cutting into their yearly profits as a whole. Now, you may argue that resorts being held accountable is a good thing, and according to the article, most of the resorts themselves would agree with you: they weren't in it to outright lie to people, because telling people that there was a foot on the ground when you can see grass would have an even worse effect on their business. But hearing from someone on the phone that the slopes are plentiful is a much different experience than seeing a number in an iPhone app, and it's interesting that the difference is directly affecting resort profits in many cases. Not that resorts have too much to worry about, especially the ones who have plenty of snow anyway. It just shows you how much the iPhone is still changing all kinds of industries in strange ways.
Blizzard's splash screen changes for June 26th
The saga of the icy splash screen continues, as the newest splash screen has just gone live on Blizzard's sites under the file name ice4.jpg. This time, the ice has cracked away even further, revealing more of the night sky, and what looks to be a face coalescing from the ice flecks and vapor in the middle of the picture. The identity of the face isn't clear, although Alex thinks it may be a Protoss Archon. We've also received this very intriguing picture from tipster Pact, which shows the face overlaid with a picture of Diablo from the Diablo 2 box. Of course, it's worth noting that it could simply be Arthas' eyes as well, peering out from his helmet. As expected, a new rune has appeared as well, bringing the tally to four. This rune, located to the lower right of the cracking ice, looks like nothing so much as a miniature solar system model -- perhaps related to this model seen during April Fool's? Diablofans.com has suggested it may be a top-down view of an Arcane Sanctum from Warcraft 3 and WoW (You can see one at the Scryer's base in Shadowmoon) as well. As also expected, a new piece of the strange purple monster has appeared as well. It appears to be the hindquarters of the beast. So far, I'm still sticking to my belief that it's some sort of purple penguin. This file was named 16.jpg, which, if we follow the alphabet conversion method we've been using for previous pieces, gives us the letter "P." "Powd" is the best I can get out of that. Does that mean this picture is that of a new mascot named "Powder the penguin"? As usual, you can see all of these graphics in our splash screen speculation gallery, which is constantly being updated with new speculation and analysis as the WWI draws nearer. %Gallery-25975% There's more analysis to come after the break.
Roguelike updates remind us to play roguelikes
Are you one of the four roguelike fans out there? If so, and if you also can't wait for Mysterious Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer's February release, why not play NetHackDS or Powder -- two recently-updated homebrew dungeon crawler ports -- in the meantime? While NetHackDS has the edge in terms of "graphics" and name recognition, Powder has the advantage of being immediately playable in an emulator, so even if you don't have a flashcart, you can still enjoy the addictive game ... if you consider dying a dozen times while trying to figure out how to live longer than five minutes enjoyable.See also: Nethack your DSRead - NetHackDS 1.12CRead - Powder 094
