In germany - I think - blood and plasma donations are most commonly done with the DRK (German Red Cross). I might be wrong, but DRK is not a for profit organization, but “gemeinnützig”. Organizations with that status get controlled by the government for it, so they are non-profit. I think the 25€ are an incentive to come and donate, just as the chocolate and drinks and the small goodies, that you get there. And you only can get the money, if you go to one of the fixed DRK locations. If the DRK comes to somewhere near you (as they often do with churches, town halls, schools and universities) you don’t get any money. I can at least believe, that these two are monetarily similar for the DRK. If you come to them, they don’t need to pay for getting the equipment and people to you. And providing incentives for donating blood is in effect a good thing, as they are working, thus we have more blood to save lifes.

Ofcourse actors later in the chain are probably profit oriented. Though there I would see the discussion disconnected from the donation. It is more about if we want profit oriented actors in healthcare.

And - as always - the US healthcare system seems to do the worst thing possible every time. Sorry, americans, don’t want to bash you, but capitalism…

An interesting customer base might be small communal organisations. At our local scouts troop I had a discussion with a friend, who is also in IT. His idea (not fleshed out) was to provide small local organizations with a stack of already configured open source software to support the typical needs of such organizations (like a wordpress website, a nextcloud for file storage and common calender, limesurvey for surveys and event registration, mailman3 for mailing lists,…). Depending on the needs you could sell the initial setup process (your personal work in setting up and skill transfer) or ongoing support. Though such organizations normally don’t have much money to give away. So probably its not really worth your time financially (though probably really appreciated in the community).

I cannot find callibreoffice. Where can I get it to try? Or do you mean Collabora?

I really need a libreoffice calc on my android phone. Not just opening (where currently only Microsoft Excel on Android works for me) but also editing and saving to my connected nextcloud (where I have also problems with Excel)

This seems to me like a categorical error. You speak about proof and facts, which are ultimately connected to the scientific method. Scientists often say “There is no evidence, that this happens/exists” (that phrase is important) and will disregard it, until there is evidence. That doesn’t make them close minded. Changes in knowlege are applied when they arrive, not through speculation without evidence beforehand. That way we can approximate the truth in our physical world. There is no scientific evidence of a god existing, so scientists disregard her, until such evidence appears.

Now you could say, that a god would exceed the physical limits of our world/existance. But then the whole scientific method becomes useless (as how would you get scientifical evidence for something outside of the scientific world) and you cannot speak about facts or truth or proof. This is the realm of belief, not science. And it will stay this way until a god would bridge over this devide.

So i would say: When talking about science, proof and facts, you need to stay in the reach of the scientific method. When talking about something outside of its reach (metaphysical), then its belief. Even you talking about the possibility of a god is a question about belief.

Eh, Wonderwall sounding right is really not a kid level song. I struggled for some time with it. Lady in Black is the absolute beginner song. Good for practicing a 4/4 strumming pattern and 2 of the easiest chords (Em and D).

Or different managers in the company each send a weekly newsletter to all employees. Additional to the Did-you-see-this-shit-on-our-comporate-social-media-platform mails, for which I don’t know any colleague, that actually reads them.

Individuals and corporations both rent out houses/apartments to get more money out of it than by selling it again. Your model would absolutely lower the return on renting property out. So increasing the rent would be a logical decision for them. Or if your rules make renting unprofitable, noone will build more houses/apartments than their own. Sure, the house market might see low prices, but at some point it might be more logical to hold the property than to sell for a very big loss, hoping for better times. So a lower limit would be there. Then you have many non-sellable homes sitting around and still many people, who cannot afford to buy but also cannot rent (since nobody rents out anymore).

One interesting thing in your scenario would also be, how to handle the part ownerships. Lets take a student at the university renting a small room/apartment for the time of their studies. They might make payments towards ownership for a few years, accumulating something like a few percent of ownership. Then their studies are finished, they move and another student comes in. Rinse and repeat. You will get property owned by tens of persons this way, even when not every tenant wants to do the payments. Would be a hell to administer. Nothing would work anymore regarding decisions and work relating the property.

I think nothing can work around the fact, that we need many and good publicly owned properties for renters, where the rent is no driven by the profit motive and in effect is decided in democratic structures (like city government). Maybe in your scenario you would also want public entities buying homes to then rent without profit.

Do english speaking dads really do that? Kinda weird

Yeah, sure, delusional. Until you call a local polititian “so 1 dick” on some online platform, leading to you and also your ex grilfriend getting raided by the police, all electronic devices taken by them as evidence for an undetermined time and the low key threats from the prosecutor about what would happen next. Or until a journalist dares to link to a website, that the state recently criminalized the creators of, though the state itself links to that specific site, too. And depending on how easy the access for the police is: You might wanna refrain from being too popular (like a famous singer or actor) or from being active against climate change or right wing extremism. Your personal data is easily leaked through the police to anyone of their friends.

You might think, that this is overly specific and won’t really happen? Well, it already did. In germany. Sure, most people won’t have the states crosshair on their forehead. But nontheless you might easily be one of the exceptions.

Other countries also have Call of Duty, but not such a big problem with mass shootings. So I don’t think its that easy. I think it is more interesting, what the NRA is doing. Such a big and powerful lobby organization should have way more influence, than a video game series.

What is currently the state of things for nuclear waste in the US? In germany they still search for a place for storing it long term. Gets in the news now and then. Did the US have more success with finding a good site? Or is this again just companies betting to hand over the waste to the public when they are done? As I remember in germany the companies got a cheap buy out for the waste after the closure of nuclear power plants where setup.

I think these nations setup the ISPs to look for the packets using a VPN protocol. This protocol is only used between the user and the VPN provider, so the target website doesn’t see it. Though I think this can be evaded too with a bit of work (masking the packets as normal web traffic). One reason why repressive regimes also want to control the devices of the user.

Or something like Rapture XD

I’m not sure about the weekly limit, but I guess it has also to do with the absorbtion of nitrogen into your blood, which is why you make safety stops after going deep and why there are daily limits.

Depending on how deep and how long you dive, more nitrogen will get dissolved in your blood due to the increased pressure. It stays there until you get into lower pressure ( ascending to the surface). If you do that too fast, the nitrogen will build up bubbles. And bubbles in the bloodstream is really really bad, hindering the flow of blood. Doing safety stops in lower depths gives some nitrogen the time to leave your body through the lungs while breathing. Not diving for a certain time after your dive sessions will give time to release all additional nitrogen from the blood, preventing a builtup over each dive.

How could one protect electronics/hard disks/etc from a Crrington type event?

I’ve previously printed custom lego pieces for the Lego League kids, that my wife has at work. I’m using a Creality Ender 3 S1 with 0.4mm nozzle. Though I’ve not tried smaller parts. They were 8x2 units and 2 or 3 units high. They have the name of the kid on the side. It took some tries to get the tolerances good enough, but now I can print them with normal speed and minimal post processing.

So I think it depends on what pieces you want to print.

And the PineTime as an Open Source Smartwatch. I’m not using much of the fitness tracker functionality, but counting my steps is very important for me.