viking

joined 2 years ago
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[–] viking 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A malfunctioning device during open heart surgery means a high risk including potential death to the patient.

Liability = responsible for someone's death.

The consequence would be a potential settlement with their family, negative publicity and whatever might negatively affect the financial bottom line, granted. But believe it or not, we actually care about patients surviving.

[–] viking 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (19 children)

I work for a company that manufacturers a comparable product to the cited Terumo device, and I can tell you that it's most likely not greed but pending liability issues.

Those devices aren't in use 24/7, and only need maintenance every 15 uses, so hospital staff trained to work on them get to use their maintenance knowledge like 3-4 times a year, at most. And since there must be a redundancy in the hospital both with machines (1 replacement on hand per 1 in use) as well as staff, this number even goes down since you alternate machines (thus stretching their use without maintenance) and people (so they both get to use their experience).

As a result, you end up with machines that are maintained by certified, yet unprofessional technicians. But since the device ends up with an 'error free' log, if anything were to happen to a patient due to a malfunction, the manufacturer assumes liability; and would then have to try and prove that it's actually a human error by the technician.

The alternatives are either to establish crazy tight recertification windows for the technicians (like every 60-90 days), which is also costly and very annoying for them, and puts a serious strain on hospital staff if all manufacturers were to implement similar mechanisms, or, well, maintain the machines themselves. That way the technicians are better equipped due to doing the same steps routinely, and liability lies with the manufacturer either way.

Not everything is evil corpos at work, sometimes there are actual reasons for certain decisions.

[–] viking 2 points 1 year ago

If you don't have one yet, take this as a cue to get a powerful (!) blender. You can literally chuck every meal ever in there, either individually (sides, main, salad) or as a whole.

[–] viking 11 points 1 year ago

Wise words. Another one for the block list.

[–] viking 3 points 1 year ago
[–] viking 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can pagers receive text messages? I thought they are closed ecosystems, basically?

[–] viking 7 points 1 year ago

Yeah that's completely dumb. Two megalomaniac corporate overlords fighting... Corporate abuse? Sure. No doubt.

[–] viking 21 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Dems had a choice between the progressive wing (Bernie Sanders, etc), versus corporate Dems, but in the end money won and constituents lost. Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.

Ok, so he endorsed the republican party and not its de-facto leader. Please explain how that makes a difference?

[–] viking 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Malaysia:

You wake up early for outdoor stuff, like jogging or longer dog walks. I do that between 5.30 and about 7.30 (=sunrise).

Other activities throughout the day are indoors mostly, shops, malls, gyms etc. are all airconditioned.

Most homes that have a garden come with a roofed porch area with a ceiling fan, so that keeps sitting outdoors manageable except for maybe the most intense mid-day heat.

Houses here are also solid brick & concrete constructions, and retain cold air better than the wooden constructs you see in the US and Canada, so you can actually keep homes at bearable temperatures without racking up electricity bills.

[–] viking 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Quark is a uniquely German thing that I'm having trouble replicating ever since I moved abroad.

It's extremely thick, much more solid than yoghurt, and completely unsweetened. Mixing a box of unflavored cream cheese with a shot of milk and a pinch of salt is what I've been using instead, which gets close enough.

[–] viking 13 points 1 year ago (7 children)

It's Instagram with no content or algorithm. To me it's an empty page, because I have no idea how to subscribe to things that I would like.

I tried keywords like fun, sketch, photography etc etc, but those are catch-all phrases that get too much shit, and narrow keywords are so specific, I see next to nothing.

[–] viking 3 points 1 year ago

Horses ain't cheap, those things break all the time. Friend of my sister got herself one, and pays more in vet bills than my sister on her mortgage.

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