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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • I am also from Germany and get payed for donating thrombocytes at my university hospital. The compensation is actually quite substantial imo at (up to) 75€ per session, which can be done every two weeks. The money is however mean to offset the time required, not the thrombocytes donated. So it is correlated to how long it takes.

    You get 15€ (?) for up to 15min (if they have to abort very early for some reason or at your first visit where they just draw blood to test), 50€ for up to 1h (which equals to 1 instead of 2 pack of thrombocytes, usually done at your first real donation or if you maybe dont have enough for 2 on this particular day), and 75€ for anything over 1h (which is the norm).

    Timewise the hospital is on the outskirts of the city, so most will have to travel a bit, then you have to fill out forms, have a quick talk with the doctor, and finally depending on your parameters it takes anywhere from ~55-70min to extract, during which you are tethered to a machine (which takes out some blood, then seperates out the thrombocytes with a centrifuge, pumps back the rest, and repeat).


    One could get philosophical about the topic, but from a practical perspective the money makes a lot of sense imo:

    • It costs them a lot of money to investigate new prospects, so you want reliable repeat donors

    • Each donation already has other costs associated with it. Like for example the kit used during extraction, the staff handling everything and so on. So even those 75€ are just one more expense among many, and from donation to usage probably vanish in the overall costs.

    • For the donor it is quite a substantial time commitment, especially when done regularly every two weeks. Unlike for example full blood donations you’d maybe do twice a year. And you should be reliable and not randomly cancel at the last second, so ideally it also has priority over some other things in your life.

    • the small amount of blood that remains inside the machine is sometimes used for other research (if you agree to it, which i do)

    From my own experience i can say that i might still do it without, but certainly not at the same frequency. And considering the time and effort required i don’t think anyone could be blamed for doing it less frequently without the incentive. So at least in this case it imo is a fair trade and net positive. Although it does also help that this is a university hospital that directly uses it themselves, rather than a for profit company.





  • I don’t think so. The degrading processors are certainly bad, but in the grand scheme of things won’t move the needle. The reputation loss is probably worse than whatever fine they end up paying (and they will drag it out).

    The split would be between design and manufacturing. And it would mean a massive shift, not business as usual.

    The design side is probably in better shape and would increase their use of TSMC instead of using the now spun off Intel fabs.

    The manufacturing side would have it rough. But we are talking about only one of 3 manufacturers of leading edge chips here (together with tsmc and samsung), not something you “conveniently let go bankrupt”. They’d try to raise more money to finish their new fabs and secure customers (while trying to make up for the lost volume from the design side). But realistically I’d say that similar to Global foundries they would drop out of the expensive leading edge race.







  • That is one aspect of it: if you are 10, then 1 year is 10% of your whole life, more if you consider the first few to not really be conscious. If you are 50 it’s only 2%.

    But I think another factor is what stays in our memories vs what gets filtered out. If you are young, you’ll experience lots of “first times”, major changes, and defining moments. As you get older there are more parts of your life that are routine and repetitive. Looking back at a year/a whole life what are the things you can vividly remember?

    This is also what imo causes the shift in perception for the covid period. Suddenly a lot of events that usually create memorable experiences didn’t happen. No parties, festivals, meeting new people, or vacations in foreign places. For most of us it will have been a major change initially, but relatively quickly routines setting in.


  • Photo manipulation has been around as long as the medium itself. And throughout the decades, people have worried about the veracity of images. When PhotoShop became popular, some decried it as the end of truthful photography. And now here’s AI, making things up entirely.

    I actually think it isn’t the AI photo or video manipulation part that makes it a bigger issue nowadays (at least not primarily), but the way in which they are consumed. AI making things easier is just another puzzle piece in this trend.


    Information volume and speed has increased dramatically, resulting in an overflow that significantly shortens the timespan that is dedicated to each piece of content. If i slowly read my sunday newspaper during breakfast, then i’ll give it much more attention, compared to scrolling through my social media feed. That lack of engagement makes it much easier for missinformation to have the desired effect.

    There’s also the increased complexity of the world. Things can on the surface seem reasonable and true, but have knock on consequences that aren’t immediately apparent or only hold true within a narrow picture, but fall appart once viewed from a wider perspective. This just gets worse combined with the point above.

    Then there’s the downfall of high profile leading newsoutlets in relevance and the increased fragmentation of the information landscape. Instead of carefully curated and verified content, immediacy and clickbait take priority. And this imo also has a negative effect on those more classical outlets, which have to compete with it.

    You also have increased populism especially in politics and many more trends, all compounding on the same issue of missinformation.

    And even if caught and corrected, usually the damage is done and the correction reaches far fewer people.




  • My two cents as a random German:

    • regardless how this actually turns out to affect things in the end, it is again a PR disaster. Seems like we are true masters in this regard. Despite imo supporting Ukraine pretty substantially so far, the vast majority of controversies like these seem to be about our involvement. And at least for this year there is a decent pipeline of new stuff already confirmed, plus as we’ve learned nothing is set in stone forever.

    • In principle I don’t really mind the idea that stuff gets financed through these frozen Russian assets instead of directly by us. As long as it’s overall sufficient in providing Ukraine with the weapons they need. What does seem like a huge blunder and pretty bad is to cut funding before this other scheme is in effect or even truly secured. This can (and might already) have negative effects on Ukraine.

    • This really unfortunate timing might have at least partially to do with the upcoming state elections in Saxony and Thuringia on September 1st, and Brandenburg on the 28th. In all 3 the right wing Afd and left Bsw, both pro putin/against support for Ukraine, are strong. Whereas particularly Scholz’s SPD is looking weak. So maybe this is only a short term play to gain sympathy point in those regions? If so they’ve learned nothing in all those years watching these extremist parties grow. In any case I’ll at least partially hold judgement until at least the first two elections are done.


  • Agreed. I remember when lightbulbs got banned here in the EU starting from 2009 to 2012 in steps. Here in Germany plenty of people were mad and hoarding them.

    Nowadays with the larger focus on energy prices, especially in light of the russia-ukraine war, it seems insane that not even that long ago to light a room one or multiple lightbulbs using 65-100 watts were used. That’s like the equivalent of an office PC running just for some light.



  • I think you’ll need to give some more information to receive good advice:

    • What’s your budget

    • What’s your use case? Just web browsing, light office work or something more demanding like gaming or editing?

    • What form factor? Want a larger screen or something lighter and more compact? Touch screen/convertible yes or no?

    I’m nowhere near tech-savvy so it has to be easy to use,

    Easy to use or easy to repair? As far as use goes pretty much every windows laptop will be feel the same to use, same as with apple. I mean it is the same operating system, just depends on what you are used to, but neither are complicated. It’s only Linux where you have a larger variety of variants, some easier to use, others geared more towards advanced users. Bur you haven’t indicated that you specifically want to run Linux.

    I want something that is built to last, as opposed to certain (looking at you, Apple) devices that are desinged to become unusable within a next couple of years.

    Generally laptops aimed at businesses are more durable than consumer lines. Don’t go too cheap unless you are buying used business laptops. And if something is heavilu leaning towards thin and light, then usually it is at the expense of some durability.

    Apple is actually decently durable and I’ve seen quite a few MacBooks running for over a decade while still being ok. Where they fall short is repairability, when something does break and their lowest specs paired with no real way to upgrade later (especially with the newer models that don’t even have SSDs that can be swapped) is bad for future proofing, if demands change. And they make you pay through your nose for reasonable configurations.