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- Hacker News
- Can't rip the plastic wrap off to smell for rottenness.
Absorbent pad adds to the price also hides the "purge".
Harder to find meat without thousand poked holes (tenderizing)
Can't tell if meat are colorized to hide browness.
Time for me to visit my local butcher for a quarter cow, butchered.
Also a bigger freezer chest too!
"Packed On" or "Processed On" is the most accurate way to label meat, IMHO.
by egberts1 - You're not charged for the absorbent pad anymore than you're charged for the packaging. You can weigh the meat when you get home to verify yourselfby malfist
- can’t wait for a new Regulatory Liability fee to be added to checks hereby yieldcrv
- > Experts say the term “sell by” is generally for retailers to know when to rotate inventory, compared with labels like “best if used by” and “use by,” which indicate quality.
...
> Under the state’s bill, “sell by” dates can still be included on products as long as they are “coded” — information that is aimed at retailers rather than consumers.
This is about obfuscating "sell by" dates so customers don't get confused. They might not necessarily add another date you can read easily. Then if the grocery store forgets to replace old stock, you will never know.
But maybe someone can write an app to read the codes?
by skybrian - It’s be pretty cool if they figured out their water problem instead of passing all these nebulous laws that don’t push the needle any.by irishcoffee
- The only water problems are for farmers growing in a semi-arid valley. California has droughts, not water shortages.by lokar
- In the end, standardization of this type of things can only be good even if the effect on waste is small. There is no need to create additional ways to confuse people.by sega_sai
- Previous discussion when the bill was passed in 2024: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41765006
- This is a pretty nothing law when you look into it.
All it does is standardize "sell by" labels to be more transparent. The extent of the ban is the explicit phrasing "Sell By" which is itself confusing since the manufacturer has some estimated consumption interval that is tacked onto their actual expiration date. Sell By gives the customer has no idea how much padding they are adding to their estimate and when the thing actually goes bad.
All this law really does is it standardizes the labels manufacturers can use to "BEST if Used by" for quality concerns or "USE by" for safety concerns. A lot of manufacturers already do this, so it is a pretty minimal law There are probably more pressing issues in Sacramento, but a small improvement is always welcome.
by blululu - To be fair, if we waited until there "no more pressing issues", then we'd never get any "quality of life" regulations passed like this.
- I don’t think it’s a nothing law. Not only does it help with reducing waste, but also a food safety thing. “Best by” or “best is used by” or “expiry dates” are pretty clear: use the product before the date.
In my own case, we have a brand of bread that does “sell by”. There is not uniform standard on how many days after the date, the bread is safe to consume. Internet wisdom gives you a wide range.
- I'm curious why food producers didn't do this on their own, since no one likes "sell by" anyway? Or was there an existing regulation that got changed?
In any case I think the new way is better.
- Presumably food producers benefit if people throw things out earlier, as they will buy more ?by sega_sai
- I'm pretty sure food producers are the ones putting the "sell by" labels on stuff, with the hope that people will needlessly throw away food and buy more because of that label.by m4ck_
- They don't want grocery stores to carry product that's too old because customers will try it and decide they don't like it, not realizing that it's old. And a grocery store worker won't know when to get rid of it unless someone tells them.
And from a grocery store's point of view, product that's on the shelf too long isn't selling. It's taking up space that could be used for something else.
by skybrian - >With 395,608 regulatory restrictions, California is the most heavily regulated state in the nation, according to the report. On average, states have 135,000 regulatory restrictions in administrative rules, with California's regulations more than doubling the national average.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-11-03/...
I wonder how many they've added in 5 years. Do all these laws improve peoples lives?
by Cider9986 - At first you might think "How the heck can a state have so many regulations!?". Even the ~40000 regulations of the states with the least regulations might seem like a lot. How the heck are people supposed to be able to keep track of all those regulations so they can avoid violating them?
But if you look closer there is a hint to what is going on. According to the US News article these are the 10 most regulated states: California, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Texas, Oregon, Washington, Florida, Massachusetts, Louisiana.
These are the 10 least regulated: South Carolina, Michigan, Wyoming, Kansas, Arizona, Nevada, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho.
Note: the US News article says they had to omit some states due to limited availability of data. Also that list is from 6 years ago. I found a later list without those omissions.
It is mostly the same, with the addition of some of the states the US News list had to skip, and the order is quite a different in the two bottom 10 lists.
Combining the lists these are the most regulated states (in alphabetical order): California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.
These are the least regulated: Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming.
One thing that stands out about the first list is that most of them are major players in a variety of major industries. The second list doesn't seem to be nearly as diversified.
I bet if you dove into the details of regulations this would be a big factor. The top list has more regulations simply because they have more to regulate. In any given field they don't necessarily have more regulations than other states, but they have more fields that are big enough to need regulation. More diversity also means more conflict between different industries which will tend to increase the need for regulation.
A key aspect of this, and why we aren't overwhelmed with just keeping up with regulations, is it is the breadth of the regulatory systems that leads to the high counts. not the depth. You only have to deal with a few branches in this wide tree.
For example the US News article says that the most regulated industry is administrative and support services, such as unemployment services, collection agencies, and call centers. All of us not involved in such services can pretty much ignore that big chunk of regulation.
There is a similar thing with the federal tax code. The Internal Revenue Code is around 7000 pages, and the Federal Tax Regulations are another ~70000 pages. But a lot of that is because of the breadth of the US economy, and another contributor to the size is that the government uses per industry tax incentives and penalties as a way to encourage or discourage things that they want to influence. The net result is the tax code and regulations are full of things that 99% of taxpayers (individual and business) can completely ignore.
by tzs - Is there a reason to think these should or should not scale with size of population?by rconti
- I hope they refactor and harmonize them at some point to reduce duplication, contradiction as well as proliferation.by mc32
- All of them? No. Some of them? Yes.
Some examples:
* ARL / Automatic Renewal Law: If a company allows you to sign up for a subscription online, they also must provide an immediate, straightforward way to cancel it online.
* SB 478: No bullshit junk fees tacked on to prices. Any price displayed, be it for concerts, hotels, or whatever else, must be the full, out-the-door price.
* SB 244: Right to Repair: Electronics and appliance manufacturers must make diagnostic tools, manuals etc available for at least 7 years after manufacture.
by vrganj - Regulations aren't fungible, so this is not a particularly meaningful perspective.by tikhonj
- Because of the power CA has, many of the regulations they pass around health and safety end up benefiting other states because it's cheaper to simply implement it nationwide.by matwood
- > Do all these laws improve peoples lives?
The salary requirement for job postings has been AWESOME. Saves so much time and you can see if your company is paying market rates, realize if you are underpaid etc. Definitely made my life better. Other states are following suit! Employers hate it, haha. California, Colorado, NY, Illinois, Washington, Maryland, Minnesota and Hawaii all have this law now.
- Well despite all that regulation, they're an economic powerhouse, they must be doing something right. CA is far from perfect but at least they occasionally aspire to do something for the benefit of their citizens - not something I can say for my 'least regulated' state that mostly just saps money from the federal government.by m4ck_