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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.


  • 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.





  • 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.







  • HDR vs no HDR makes a big difference in colours to me. And if you compare compressed low Bitrate footage vs higher Bitrate there will often be artifacts or color banding, particularly in darker scenes or wherever you have gradients.

    It ofc also depends on what device you are watching it on. But I would say that yes if you have a movie (made up example) that is compressed to 5gb total size vs 25gb vs 70gb for the uncompressed Blu-ray quality, then the first jump will be a very noticeable difference assuming you have capable hardware. Whereas the second one will be much much less noticeable and also come with other drawbacks that need to weighted off, e.g. storage requirements.


  • Is that actually the case? I was under the impression that at least under US teenagers the iPhone usage was insanely high. And those are far from cheap, so at least there parents seem fine in spending big.

    Also the cited article mentions $250 for the se watch vs $200 for the Samsung (although I guess that one might have bigger discounts). $50 difference doesn’t seem large for the “Apple tax”.


    To me the plastic part would just seem like a risky gamble. Apple has the premium image and it might cheapen it. Especially on a device that is constantly visible, has skin contact and isn’t used with any case.


  • Doesn’t look great:

    • No progress with health features, which seem like the most exciting evolution.

    • Who truly needs the larger screen and faster chip. Especially the former will presumably reduce battery life, something that very much matters with watches.

    The company is also working on a new version of its lower-cost Apple Watch SE model, which it last updated in 2022. One idea the company has tested is swapping the aluminium shell for rigid plastic. It’s likely to lower the cost to something that could better rival Samsung’s cheapest watch, the $199 Galaxy Watch FE. The SE currently starts at $249.

    That really doesn’t sound like Apple.


  • The performance was never the consideration for Nintendo. They want a handheld that can last a long time, so they will always clock their chips down.

    I fully agree with the first sentence, but i don’t think the second quite hits the mark. The real reason is simply cost.

    If Nintendo was concerned with battery life, then they’d still go with a modern processor, but as you say clock it down to hit the efficiency sweet spot over chasing performance. But instead they usually choose something that is already dated at release (even accounting for development time), as opposed to a company like Apple that pays a premium to get first dibs on any new processing node.