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’ve had two USB C ports fail on HMD phones.

Yeah, that’s what got my HMD made, Nokia branded, 7 plus. And from a search at the time this was a common problem

The issue is that I bet modifying the firmware will have consequences on insurance and liability in case of an accident. Regardless of whether or not one is at fault or not, and that it didn’t have any effect

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.

A tiny badge with a spanish flag.

Her Spanish semi-final opponent in badminton injured herself during their match and had to withdraw. source e.g. here

Fallout probably got a boost from the new series, that was quite well received.

Same. The thing lacking is user base and content. Also a backlog of older content as knowledge source, but that would come overtime with through the former.

As far as usability goes Iemmy is just as good as reddit was for me. My instance (lemme.ee) is stable and the app experience (currently “connect”) is just as smooth as it was for reddit (where I used “relay”).

I sadly have to admit that I don’t contribute enough in terms of creating and posting threads.

Is the 10 VI Sony’s midrange? It’s certainly priced like one, but within their lineup it would be the lower end, no? The 5 would be their midtier offering.

Yeah, slightly better now, but still lackluster in a phone of this class.

Especially considering that eventually every phone in the EU starting June 2025 will be required to offer at least 5 year updates. You’d think that they could offer that level of support slightly earlier to someone willing to drop well over 1k€ on their phone. Unless of course they plan to pull out of the european market at that point.

I mean there definitely are some valuable metals in there, but I can’t imagine that this is a competitive price to pay for them, especially since extraction wouldn’t be easy. And some parts do have value, even if it ends up being the case that running the full cluster isn’t economic anymore.

I do wonder who at this point could use all those processors (and Mainboards), but the ram might still be reasonable to use, maybe the cables, the cabinets themselves too. And I think the video also mentions that there are two managing servers. Those might be most likely to actually be useful for their original purpose.

Ian Cutress recently did a video on the topic here (I think he changed the title to reflect the end price of the auction), which does a bit of a breakdown. You for example also have to add shipping costs (from a certified company) to the price.

Pretty crazy to think that it is actually not sure whether spending less than 500k on a supercomputer is worth it. Goes to show how far technology has come.

I guess if everything sells you might make profit, but then it also comes with a lot of hassle and risk. And for actually using it, I imagine that electricity cost would be a huge factor.

I don’t understand why there isn’t higher demand for audio phones like there is for camera phones.

I agree that there should be demand for a large enough niche audience, but it won’t be even near the same demand as for good cameras.

For most people smartphone are their primary and usually only camera. And there are plenty of situations where you want to take a nice picture or video.

With audio the trend nowadays is wireless for the vast majority of people. And for that a build in DAC doesn’t really help at all.

Yeah, i’d have also loved if we moved to an “opt-out” system or one where you are asked to choose at some point.

If we had more than enough organs for everyone we might be able to afford the “luxury” to not adress the issue, but we don’t. And compared to the very real consequences this deficit has, it really isn’t a burden to reverse the burden through opt-out or at least force people to choose. Not making a choice has just as much consequences, if not more (since it leaves it ambiguous for others that might later have to make the choice for you).

And as you said the majority probably has no problem being a donor, but the default state is a form of apathy/lazyness/ignorance. So like with many other issues a top down approach would be way more effective, compared to putting the burden on every single individual to be proactive.

I am not registered, but I have a organ donor card (where I approve organ donations).

Background:

Germany just recently (18th of March this year) launched an online database where you can register your preference. Until then there was only a small organ donor card that you could fill out and carry with you.

Reason I haven’t registered there yet is that I first need to unlock the online function on my passport (nowadays always enabled, but I still have one from when it was optional). So I’ll eventually get around to doing both.

As for my reasoning behind being a donor:

• I would like to receive them in an emergency (or for someone I care about to do so).

• And in case I become a donor I am not there anymore to care about what people do with my organs.

I haven’t used it, but maybe look at Cockpit? You could install it on your generic Debian server and it would give you a nice gui and tools, while letting you do whatever you are currently using it for.

I am using openmediavault for my NAS, which seems reasonably lightweight and is debian based. If that fits the bill

To me price and software support are somewhat linked. Supporting their devices for such a short time is unacceptable especially for expensive high end devices. And by the time prices come down over time the phones are already closing in on the end of their software support.

Regarding the cameras in the midrange you are forgetting the Google pixel A series. I think they are increasing the prices with the 8 series, but the 6a/7a are in the same price range as Samsung’s A5x series. And outside of lacking zoom capabilities they offer flagship quality cameras.

By banning porn. Out of all the things that could motivate people to search for alternatives, this might be the most durable driving factor.

Outside of that I think it will be a slow decline in quality. Eventually quality content will decrease more and more, and low effort memes and bot content will take over.

3D movies always felt weird to me

I think the big issue is that for most 3D releases it’s more of an afterthought. It is however pretty cool in movies specifically made for it such as the Avatar movies.

Not sure if that counts, but they bought MGM and they’ve made an MGM+ channel that you can subscribe to for 5€/month, but only if you are a Prime subscriber aswell

Yeah i guess a good case makes a phone durable enough for most people and if you want an iPhone that is your only option anyways.

I’d have imagined that a purpose build phone would still offer some benefits. Like operable with gloves, maybe being the ports better protected against things like dust, or they have removeable batteries. Suprisingly i had to learn (after a quick search) that they don’t seem to offer much brighter displays for better visibility outdoors. I’d have thought that could be another feature.