[HN Gopher] So Much Blood
___________________________________________________________________
So Much Blood
Author : debesyla
Score : 304 points
Date : 2025-05-07 09:41 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dynomight.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (dynomight.net)
| blakesterz wrote:
| It's worth a read, even if it's not obvious what it's about from
| that title. "To get the actual data, you need to
| go through a website maintained by the US Trade Commission. This
| website has good and bad aspects. On the one hand, it's slow and
| clunky and confusing and often randomly fails to deliver any
| results. On the other hand, when you re-submit, it clears your
| query and then blocks you for submitting too many requests, which
| is nice."
| andai wrote:
| On a vaguely related note, I hacked together a WayBack machine
| type thing on top of Common Crawl in like 50 lines of Python.
| So it transparently lets you load any page directly from the
| dumps (it loads only those few bytes from the crawl dumps, and
| gunzips them).
|
| It was really easy, and I was surprised it apparently hadn't
| been done before.
|
| The only problem is the index IP blocks you if you query it too
| often, and it gets queried once for every resource on the page.
|
| I've been informed that there are ways around this (download an
| index?), does anyone know more about that?
| speerer wrote:
| This sounds a fantasic idea. Will you be releasing it?
| RestartKernel wrote:
| Couldn't this still work as a service if you run all queries
| through the front-end?
| skylerwiernik wrote:
| I imagine that they'd get blocked by CORS
| boesboes wrote:
| Funny, because it is illegal to pay donors here. I used to be a
| donor, but the energy and effort it takes were too much for me at
| the time. And plasma donors have to 'free up' a lot more time.
|
| Not to mention how i get a cookie and the semi-goverment
| organisation charges >600EUR for a baggie to hospitals. Someone
| needs to pay for that CEO's third house and car collection!
| simonw wrote:
| Which country are you talking about? I believe it's legal to
| pay donors on the USA.
|
| Presumably a European county given you quoted euros?
|
| Looks like the EU encourages member states to encourage unpaid
| donations:
|
| > Furthermore, Member States should take measures to promote
| Community self-sufficiency in human blood or blood components
| and to encourage voluntary unpaid donations of blood and blood
| components.
|
| From https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2002/98/oj/eng
| boesboes wrote:
| Yeah, I am in the Netherlands.
|
| They say paying donors puts them & patients at risk, because
| it would stimulate donors' to lie about their health when
| donating and we can't be asked to test blood for everything.
| And the say it is unethical to pay for human tissues.
|
| Except when they are selling it ;)
| ozornin wrote:
| I have the same story in the same country with presumably
| the same organization (Sanquin). I used to give blood, but
| not anymore because I don't find what they're doing
| ethical.
| aeternum wrote:
| Does it just not feel ethical or is one of their claims
| false?
|
| Both of the key claims do seem to have evidence to
| support them:
|
| 1) Paying for blood shifts the socioeconomic distribution
| of the donor pool.
|
| 2) The socioeconomic shift results in more contaminated
| blood due to greater incidence of drug use and/or related
| blood-borne diseases that cannot all be tested for with
| high accuracy.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Surely the second claim would apply even more to the US.
| So if it's true, how can we import american blood?
| n4r9 wrote:
| It is legal in the US. In fact you can potentially make a
| decent bit of money if you're paid $70 per donation and can
| donate 100 times per year [0]. Don't know if it would be
| worth the time to travel to the centre and wait in line, for
| many HN users.
|
| [0] https://www.goodrx.com/health-topic/finance/how-much-
| donatin...
| psini wrote:
| You can donate every 3~4 days in the US? In France I
| believe it is only once every 2 months for men and every 3
| months for women!
|
| edit: confused plasma donation with blood donation; it is
| still only every 2 weeks for plasma donations over here
| aidenn0 wrote:
| You could sell your plasma twice a week in the town I went
| to college. We also found that it took significantly less
| alcohol to get drunk if you had nearly a liter less plasma
| running through your veins, so it would _also_ save us
| money in the evening!
| mcculley wrote:
| My understanding, at least where I live, Florida, is that
| plasma can be sold, but whole blood must be donated. I
| still get a $25-$35 gift card every time I donate a pint of
| whole blood (as close as possible to every 8 weeks).
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Possibly Canadian, where it isn't legal to buy human blood.
| criddell wrote:
| Have you actually looked up what how much a blood bank CEO
| makes? Is it a lot?
|
| Edit: I just did a bit of research and didn't come up with a
| lot. I found this example [1] where the CEO's total
| compensation is $414k. That doesn't seem all that high...
|
| [1]:https://givefreely.com/charity-
| directory/nonprofit/ein-57066...
| boesboes wrote:
| Well, not in the us. here that is considered an unenthical
| amount for a semi-public servant.
|
| In 2011 they made 260kEUR, which was at then time about 50%
| more then our prime minister made. Which is used as a norm to
| limit how much you are allowed to make when working for
| public services.
| Permit wrote:
| Is it enough to have three houses and a car collection as
| you previously stated?
| skrebbel wrote:
| Pretty close? Like 80k for your regular living expenses
| leaves you 180k/y in savings. That's a nice holiday house
| in France every few years.
|
| I mean to really get to a mansion _and_ multiple holiday
| houses _and_ a bunch of fancy cars you need to work the
| job for like 15 years, but still. In NL (where I think GP
| is from) earning that kind of money qualifies you as
| "seriously rich". Even more so if the salary got
| inflation-adjusted since 2011.
| kortilla wrote:
| Does your country not have taxes? Progressive taxation
| eats a lot of that quickly and all of the tax benefits of
| home ownership aren't available for secondary homes.
| Additionally, vacation homes in desirable vacation places
| cost even more than normal homes.
|
| Someone making 3x a normal salary is not excessive by any
| means.
| keybored wrote:
| > That doesn't seem all that high...
|
| Maybe not that high by SC/HN standards.
| delfinom wrote:
| That's nothing. In NY, the "non-profit", "New York Blood
| Center" has a monopoly on blood harvesting, even the Red
| Cross has no blood drives here as a result.
|
| Their CEO makes $3 million, most of their executives above
| $400k.
|
| https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/131.
| .. (look under Compensation)
|
| Fuck this shit.
|
| They also award them bonuses.
|
| They are so bloated that they invest in PE funds with their
| spare cash.
| treis wrote:
| I interviewed at a place that made the software to track
| blood as it moved around. It's a regulated thing to make
| sure that the blood stays cold and that they can track who
| donated. Anyways, the point is that the guy who interviewed
| me casually mentioned that the PE firm bought up companies
| until they controlled 90% of the market. I'm sure they're
| making bank off blood as well.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| I need to shout into the HN void that, yes, $414k is a very
| high compensation.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| The CEO of a blood bank likely has the skills and
| connections to be a CEO of many other for-profit companies,
| where they would make much more than $414k. Intermediate
| FAANG employees are paid more. I'm perfectly happy that
| this person gets $414k for their role in _saving lives_.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| I'm not convinced that any CEO is worth what we generally
| expect they be paid.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Emotionally I agree -- what could these people be doing
| to uniquely add millions of dollars of value? However,
| the fact that they aren't replaced with cheaper options
| is (imo) pretty good evidence that they are uniquely
| worth that pay. If there was a cheaper option, the board
| of directors would replace the CEO, and enrich themselves
| and other shareholders with the saved money.
|
| Either way, that's kindof disconnected for the CEO of
| this bloodbank. Their opportunity cost is quite high.
| They choose to work for comparatively low pay, but have a
| positive impact on the world.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| i think i understand where you're coming from, but i
| think you're begging the question a little bit (ie, ceo
| pay is high because it _is_ high).
|
| i do think it's more likely that the executive class has
| a vested interest in keeping their own pay high (not just
| CEOs, but board members as you've mentioned), and they've
| got a lot more class solidarity than the rest of us,
| though they'd never put it that way - it's just The Way
| Of Things, you know? divide and conquer.
|
| i should maybe mention that i'm a public employee and my
| "opportunity cost" is also relatively high, but... hell
| is hot, and i want to be able to sleep at night.
| -warren wrote:
| Funny data story time.
|
| I used to operate a database for a large North American alcohol
| retailer. We had a problem with our data that said that 30% of
| the ring from a particular store saw the name "A GIFT FOR YOU"
| on the CC stripe. After months of bitter accusations of my
| database being incorrect, we flew someone out to investigate.
|
| We found that a block away from the store was a plasma
| "donation" facility. In order to skirt various laws, when you
| "donate", you are given a prepaid credit card. The name on the
| card is "A GIFT FOR YOU". Donators then took that card directly
| to the alcohol store.
|
| All of the data was correct; 30% of the ring from one store was
| paid by credit cards from the plasma "donation" facility with
| "A GIFT FOR YOU" on the card. A large reputational battle then
| commenced as the retailer thought of themselves as a high-end
| "wine and craft beer" store, when ultimately it turns out
| Budweiser pays the bills.
|
| *edited for clarity
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| There's an industry piece that points out that a remarkable
| percentage of beer sales in the US are single cans stored
| cold, sold at convenience stores. Most residents of the US
| drive to convenience stores. Given that they are buying 1-2
| cans at a time it doesn't take much in the way of inference
| to figure out that they are buying them to be consumed while
| driving.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I'm not following the logic. Why do you assume they aren't
| drunk at home?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Pretty much everyone in the US owns a working fridge. If
| you just want to get drunk at home, you just buy a case
| of beer and leave it in there. It's actually much cheaper
| to buy beer by the case in most places
| bombcar wrote:
| Not if you're the type of poor person who buys lottery
| tickets, cans of beer, and cigarettes by the single.
| IdPreferNotTo wrote:
| warm beer is better
| bee_rider wrote:
| Better beer is served warm I think, but much of our beer
| is not that type.
| Cerium wrote:
| There are also other good reasons to buy a single can
| from the fridge. For example, I do it frequently when
| staying at a hotel.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Although I also assume people are drinking these beers in
| the car, it does seem like a bit of a leap... I mean, an
| alternative is that they just figure they'd rather have
| the beer ready right when they get home (instead of
| sticking it in the fridge for a bit).
| jonas21 wrote:
| But that requires planning ahead. The whole point of a
| convenience store is that it's a convenient place to get
| small quantities when you didn't plan ahead, and people
| are willing to pay a premium for that.
| kortilla wrote:
| Some people don't want to get drunk or buy a whole case.
| bombcar wrote:
| I'd actually be willing to take that bet against the
| inference. Here's my logic:
|
| The only places that sell individual beers are convenience
| stores
|
| Some of them are driven too, sure, but lots are also in
| city areas
|
| Even so, people who only have a few bucks drive to the
| store where they can buy the beer, and drive home and drink
| it
|
| If these were common cases, cops would lay in wait and nab
| them for open container.
| IdPreferNotTo wrote:
| did you know you can buy a single bottle taken out from a
| multipack at any us grocery store?
| dbbr wrote:
| Sauce?
| pixl97 wrote:
| >If these were common cases, cops would lay in wait and
| nab them for open container.
|
| I mean, they do. One of the big issues is coverage of
| enforcement. Here in Texas you see disparities where
| arrests in big cities converge on public intoxication,
| where in smaller cities you run into a higher ratio of
| open container because of cops having time to sit and
| watch stores.
| raddan wrote:
| When I was in graduate school, my wife and I bought an
| affordable house in a neighborhood with a big factory next
| door. It was otherwise a lovely place, and so my morning
| jog often took me up and down the rural roads around the
| factory. On every road within a kilometer of the factory,
| the roadsides were littered with beer cans. On one
| particularly early morning, I was running when the late
| shift got out, and I watched somebody finish work (around
| 6am), get in their truck, pop open a beer, start driving,
| and then throw the can out the window as they drove past
| me. Given the quantity of cans on the roadside, this
| probably went on for years.
| neutronicus wrote:
| IDK
|
| I live in Baltimore and I see a lot of people drinking
| singles out of a paper bag on the corner or their stoop.
| I've seen it on the bus, too.
|
| Might be more of a hood corner store thing than a rural guy
| in a pickup buying a beer for the drive home type thing.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| Same thing with nips (1oz liquor bottles) which you see
| everywhere on roadsides in some parts of the US - The
| product basically exists to make open containers
| immediately disposable
| neutronicus wrote:
| I thought it existed so you could cheaply spike drinks at
| baseball games
| the_jeremy wrote:
| The majority of litter on the sidewalks of the through
| streets near me is those 1oz shooters. Followed by
| aluminum cans (mostly beer), fast food trash (plastic
| cups for sauces, disposable drink cups), and then
| household trash that looks like it flew out of a trash
| can on windy days (empty boxes, plastic wrappers, a
| bottle of laundry detergent, etc).
|
| Source: new year's resolution to pick up at least 1 piece
| of trash per dog walk.
| afandian wrote:
| Refrigerated beer is not allowed in retail shops in Sweden!
| Tangential but interesting.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systembolaget
| dehrmann wrote:
| Their mission statement:
|
| https://www.omsystembolaget.se/english/systembolaget-
| explain...
| nfriedly wrote:
| The obvious solution is better public transit!
|
| (Joking.. but not really.)
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Speaking of public transit: bus stops and train stations
| are prime locations to drink your singlet can of beer and
| drop it on the ground, in a planter, or just leave it on
| a seat for someone else to move it later.
|
| While it is not easy to drink an open container on a bus
| or train, drunks will consistently stop in a nearby
| convenience store, have a cold one before boarding, and
| leave it there for others to clean up. I suspect that a
| high percentage of convenience-store sales for singlet
| cans and bottles may be attributed to pedestrians and
| transit passengers.
| nicbou wrote:
| For some people, a beer is a once-in-a-while add-on to
| their purchase, a bit like a chocolate bar. I rarely drink
| at home but I can be tempted by a balcony beer when the
| weather is right.
| kortilla wrote:
| This isn't a correct assumption. I buy one or two singles
| to drink at home when I don't feel like committing to a
| whole six pack.
|
| And I buy them cold because I want them right when I get
| home. Not after an hour of cooling down in the fridge.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| On the other side, it is legal to pay donors where I am, but
| then it makes it feel like a waste to donate because you could
| be getting paid for it
| tshaddox wrote:
| No more of a waste than, say, any monetary donation.
| riversflow wrote:
| Yeah, same. Illegal to pay donors here too. I've donated
| multiple gallons, kinda felt it was my duty as a driver on the
| road... but at some point I came in to donate and got told they
| were extra short staffed and I'd have to wait at least an hour.
| The clinics already have terrible hours that seem to mostly
| cater to retirees, never open in the evenings and most clinics
| are closed on the weekends too, the one nearest me that I was
| going to stopped opening on the weekend entirely, meaning I had
| to travel quite a ways. I'm basically poor and the cost in
| terms of time, travel, energy and food is not insignificant.
| Meanwhile the high level staff making the cuts to the clinics
| have secretaries to reply to the emails they solicit from
| donors. Even though I sent them a long, insightful email, with
| followups, about my detailing why they are struggling as a
| young millennial (supposedly an audience they are trying to
| attract), and after all of it I get phone calls from the
| vampires minimum twice a week every week, sometimes every day.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Do we really have 38% of Europe's BLOOD as a bargaining chip in
| trade agreements? This does not bode well for them.
| busterarm wrote:
| Globalization has led to most countries deluding themselves
| about supply chain vulnerabilities for a long time. COVID was
| the first shock. Now Trump's tariffs are the second.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| However, I think people grossly overestimate the degree to
| which this state of affairs is static. If the supply chain
| shows itself to be vulnerable, economies often adjust quite
| easily. Even when it's not "easy", like natural gas in Europe
| post-2022, it's still very much doable without too much
| hullabaloo and frozen seniors.
|
| Point being: if it no longer makes sense to import 38% of
| blood from the US or whatever, it'll be imported from
| elsewhere or made locally, and that's pretty much the whole
| story. This is true of most goods and services, though not
| all.
| busterarm wrote:
| That's only really true for raw materials and assemblies.
|
| Chip production is the very obvious and real hole in this
| argument. It'll take half to a full decade to get new chip
| fabs up to what TSMC's Taiwan fabs are doing now.
|
| Quality steel production and machining is going to take
| time and investment as well.
| abxyz wrote:
| it's outsourcing by choice rather than necessity. Europe can
| grow its own blood. The much more permissive laws in the U.S.
| which cause an oversupply for local usage mean it's cheaper to
| import it. During periods of high demand that exceed current
| supplies, countries are typically able to increase donations
| substantially to cover the shortfall, and long term, could
| pursue similar laws to the U.S. There is no prospect of blood
| being a meaningful bargaining chip in a trade war.
| Sanzig wrote:
| Yep, blood donation infrastructure isn't like an oil pipeline
| or a refinery. Sure, it'll be painful for a little while, but
| it doesn't take nearly as long to set up, especially if
| there's an urgent shortage motivating a country to move fast.
| debo_ wrote:
| Yes, all the blood economy needs is a shot in the arm.
| layer8 wrote:
| Denying the blood would _increase_ the US trade deficit though,
| so it would cut both ways.
| keybored wrote:
| People could just donate more. Just make a campaign that you
| can Stick it to Trump and Help Your Country and you would get
| an influx of plasma.
|
| As long as the demand is not steep. Since you can do it only a
| dozen or so times each year according to recommendations.
| (American Red Cross recommends every 28 days; _private_ donors
| are not beholden to that)
| tomjen3 wrote:
| You also have most of our digital services.
|
| Use either as a bargening chip and you are likely to lose them.
| riskable wrote:
| Blood from US
|
| Sweat from China
|
| Tears from everywhere else
| pkaye wrote:
| In the past the WHO recommended countries don't compensate for
| blood or plasma donations. The following countries countries
| decided to still allow compensation for plasma donations for
| drug products: Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, and the
| US.
|
| Its just that the US has the largest population of these five
| countries. And generally the rest of the countries outside the
| five don't get sufficient plasma donations to make the drug
| products needed for their patients and have to import it.
|
| The plasma can be separated out to different products to treat
| various diseases many of them genetic.
|
| https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/approved-blood-...
|
| The only ones to hold accountable are the WHO and those
| countries that followed their advice. If more countries paid
| for plasma donations there would be more supply of these drug
| products available.
| AlfredBarnes wrote:
| A nice write up! Thanks for making it.
|
| I used to donate ever opportunity I could. I only stopped for
| medical reasons. I know there are a lot of companies that sell
| the blood, but it's still needed and can save a life.
| weinzierl wrote:
| 0.5% of all goods is still _a lot_ and much more than most people
| would have expected.
|
| Also interesting: _" In 2023, total US goods exports were $2,045
| billion, almost exactly 2/3 of all exports, including
| services."_
| Havoc wrote:
| It's because the US has a massive blood for money industry
| while other countries explicitly ban payments.
|
| That distorts supply/demand between countries
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| if I understand correctly you can only sell "plasma" which is
| just one component of blood
| orwin wrote:
| And less dangerous to the donor to harvest I think.
| hlovdal wrote:
| The podcast https://behindthebastards.com/ had two episodes about
| the surprisingly large export of blood (products) from USA.
| Spoiler alert, it is mainly rooted in exploitation of the
| insanely large prison population:
|
| https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
|
| https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
| aezell wrote:
| Bummed there wasn't one vampire joke or pun or allusion in this
| entire article.
| panzagl wrote:
| Or Garth Marenghi quote.
| fmsf wrote:
| Fascinating article, fun that even blood has tariffs
| https://www.searchtariff.com/?q=blood
|
| I wonder when we are going to start seeing proper effects of all
| these tariffs in the market.
|
| Disclaimer: I am the founder of DataLinks which in turn powers
| the searchtariff website
| ilikecakeandpie wrote:
| Behind the Bastards recently did a two part podcast on the blood
| industry in America, particularly how lack of regulation and
| taking advantage of the incarcerated (focused on Arkansas) led to
| the spread of blood borne illnesses and how it killed a lot of
| people. I had no idea blood was such big business and that it was
| in our top 10 domestic exports
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/part-one-how-tainted-h...
| tvier wrote:
| > and that it was in our top 10 domestic exports
|
| Note that a main point of the article is that it is _not_ in
| the US ' top 10 exports
| ilikecakeandpie wrote:
| Well one of these has to be incorrect then as this was said
| it was the US's ninth largest export
|
| https://app.podscribe.com/episode/130950753
| abound wrote:
| Like the GP said, the whole topic of this article is
| getting an accurate figure, and how the 2%/9th largest
| figure is incorrect.
| jknoepfler wrote:
| Incorrect, yes, but to be fair .67% and 2% occupy the
| same "wow, that's a large proportion of the economy"
| order-or-magnitude band of surprise (for me). Obviously
| not as charismatic/sensational, but still significant and
| surprising (to me).
| tekla wrote:
| BtB is not a serious news source, its mostly ragebait.
| make3 wrote:
| I remember reading that the presence of for profit prisons in
| an area increases the rates of incarceration in that area. So
| many of them have heavily under minimum wage, almost free
| forced work, and now blood harvesting. Modern USA is so
| dystopian in a lot of places
| ParacelsusOfEgg wrote:
| I think there might be some confusion by commenters in this
| thread about selling blood in the US.
|
| Blood can be separated out into its plasma, red blood cells, and
| platelets by an apheresis machine. The machine cycles the unused
| components back into the donar so only one component is donated.
|
| Blood plasma (~55% by volume), the amber colored water and
| disolved proteins, can be sold. Red blood cells (~44% by volume),
| and platelets (~1% by volume) can NOT be sold in the US by
| donars.
|
| Most blood drives that you'd experience at school or in the
| workplace takes whole blood (so there is no need for the
| apheresis machine) which is more exhausting than if just one of
| the components was taken.
|
| Source: an O+ blood donar with 50+ pints donated.
| smallpipe wrote:
| Didn't expect to see Thor mentioned so much in a comment about
| blood donations
| dvaun wrote:
| Fun reference (I had to look up what you meant).
|
| For anyone reading: Donar is "Old High German" for Thor.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor#Post-Roman_era
| Symmetry wrote:
| Mostly because its a lot harder to acquire an infection via
| plasma, though there are some diseases like Hepatitis E that
| can be transmitted that way.
| hamaluik wrote:
| Plasma can be used outside of prophylactics as well, I don't
| think this is accounted for in the article (human plasma is
| used in cosmetics for example).
|
| A lot of plasma is also separated out of whole-blood donations
| and manufactured into all sorts of things. I don't know all of
| the end-user financial ramifications of this, but hospitals
| absolutely do pay (sometimes quite a pretty penny depending on
| rarity of antigens and antibodies) for RBCs and platelets (and
| plasma) from suppliers like the American Red Cross.
|
| Purely anecdotally, I have heard stories of some donors being
| compensated extremely handsomely for their regular donations
| because of the rarity of their blood attributes - even being
| flown across the country and wined and dined to obtain their
| blood on top of thousands of dollars per donation.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Am I misremembering that, also, donating plasma for whatever
| reason tends to be much rougher on the donor for some reason?
| mehulashah wrote:
| First -- 0.69% of total exports is blood still is surprisingly
| high! Remember, you can get blood from humans in your own
| country, and prepare it there. So, why do you need it from the
| US?
|
| Second -- it's amazing the detail that you can achieve from
| public data.
|
| Third -- I'm left wondering if a true "Deep Research" like tool
| would be able to provide the same analysis. I find that Deep
| Research is fine for secondary sources, but not for Deep Analysis
| of primary source data.
| youainti wrote:
| The reason the US exports blood products is because it is one
| of 5 countries that allow commercial blood product harvesting.
| Well, at least plasma. I don't remember which organization it
| is, but there is an international organization that tries to
| get countries to be "self-sufficient" in blood products so that
| they are not internationally traded (the organization is
| something like WHO, UN, or Red Cross). Only those 5 countries
| that allow some level of commercialization actually meet their
| goals of being self sufficient (and export as on top of that).
|
| Source: A guest lecture at my university by Al Roth, Nobel
| prize-winner in economics, who is currently focusing his work
| on these type of markets. Most of his work is on kidney
| exchanges right now.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Man it is weird that the word for that is "harvesting".
| bliteben wrote:
| Just wait till these robot maximalists figure out that a
| pile of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen is much
| cheaper than robots made out of steel and carbon fiber.
| caycep wrote:
| I mean, they haven't glommed onto the daily experience of
| giving a kid a snickers bar and asking them a question is
| cheaper than building a nuclear reactor to power GPT4o
| levels of LLM...
| jjmarr wrote:
| If we could directly convert the food energy of a
| Snickers bar to electricity we could easily power AI. A
| Snickers bar has 250 kcal, which is 1000 kJ or about 250
| grams of TNT.[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=250+kc
| al+in+joule] chatgpt-4 uses 3.6 kJ to 36 kJ per query so
| you could get potentially hundreds of queries on a single
| Snickers bar.
|
| We only need a way to harness the power of the human
| body. Maybe we put people in VR for fun while using their
| body heat to power the AI.
| spookie wrote:
| The snickers bar allows more than a single query for the
| human though
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Temporarily, on the margin. A human would need multiple
| Snickers bars per day to survive, and can't survive on
| Snickers bars alone for more than couple days or weeks.
|
| Also no human is anywhere close to being as knowledgeable
| and skilled as LLMs _at all the things at the same time_
| , so it hardly even compares.
| drilbo wrote:
| _days?_ Pretty sure I could survive at least a couple
| years off snicker bars
| kortilla wrote:
| > and can't survive on Snickers bars alone for more than
| couple days or weeks.
|
| lol, the spoiled times we live in that you think this.
| The human body is capable of surviving on very little.
|
| A thing with protein, fat and sugar would sustain you for
| incredible amounts of time. Many many months if not
| years.
| jjmarr wrote:
| I don't think I could write lengthy responses to hundreds
| of questions on a singular Snickers bar. I would need
| multiple.
| caycep wrote:
| But then eventually you need Keanu Reeves to put boundary
| conditions on the AI
| toast0 wrote:
| I was watching The Matrix Revolutions last night with my
| 14-year old. At one point, he told me "hey, that looks
| like ... Keanu Reeves"
| pfdietz wrote:
| If a person costs $100K/year to employ, at $0.10/kWh that
| would buy 1 GWh/year, or a steady power of over 100 kW.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| They're fully aware of the obvious fact that _LLMs are
| getting better at reasoning than humans_ at scale in
| general, and this includes power efficiency too.
| Meanwhile, what is _not_ getting comparably better is
| robotics. This leads to obvious conclusion about natural
| order of things and division of labor: _computers are for
| thinking, humans are for doing manual labor_.
| caycep wrote:
| Well, don't blame me, _I_ voted for Kodos...
| autoexec wrote:
| > the obvious fact that LLMs are getting better at
| reasoning than humans
|
| I wanted to say that you were wrong, that LLMs can't
| reason and so it certainly isn't an obvious truth that
| they do it better than humans, but when I asked AI if
| LLMs can reason it told me that they can't which (while
| still not being reasoned by the LLM) seems to support the
| spirit of your claim since it gave a correct answer while
| you (a presumed human that can reason) got it wrong.
| umanwizard wrote:
| How are you defining "reasoning"?
| autoexec wrote:
| That seems to be the hangup. I have to use a definition
| that would put it on equal footing to what we do as
| humans since that's the comparison being made.
|
| Computers and software can be said to "understand",
| "think", and "reason" in their own way and informally
| people have always used those words in that context.
| Recently, software which has been trained on human-
| reasoned output is producing text that mimics reasoning
| well enough that it can be confused for the real thing,
| but nobody has been able to show that any reasoning (as a
| human reasons) is what's occurring.
| umanwizard wrote:
| You didn't answer my question.
| falcor84 wrote:
| To all of you complaining about LLMs hallucinating, do
| try to give the same prompt to a kid on a sugar rush and
| let me know if you're getting more reliable responses.
| przemub wrote:
| Pretty accurate though!
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I had that weird moment a few days ago learning that word
| is also used when you slaughter a (non human) animal:
|
| "The chickens are harvest when they're 32 days old"
|
| Let's sprout some semence in the cow (or not).
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| If that sounds weird, the term around here for butchering
| chickens is "dressing" them, as in, "We're going to dress
| chickens today."
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| The other countries also export a lot of blood, just
| illegally. Those exports might count as US exports in
| statistics for laundering reasons.
| cubefox wrote:
| > Third -- I'm left wondering if a true "Deep Research" like
| tool would be able to provide the same analysis.
|
| Note that this analysis was performed by Dynonight, a rather
| bright blogger whose articles appeared several times on the HN
| front page. The vast majority of humans (I include myself here)
| probably wouldn't be able to achieve a result of comparable
| quality, even if it doesn't look that hard in retrospect.
|
| LLM Deep Research can already exceed the performance of not-so-
| bright humans, but it is a quite different matter to outperform
| smart people like Dynomight. (I guess "research experts" isn't
| quite the right term here. The mentioned journalist from The
| Economist apparently was unable to research the topic to a
| similar degree, even though research is a main part of his/her
| job.)
| derefr wrote:
| > Remember, you can get blood from humans in your own country,
| and prepare it there. So, why do you need it from the US?
|
| Random hypothesis:
|
| * equipment needs for uranium enrichment for Manhattan project
| in 1940s
|
| => US cornering the market on centrifuges (in both a "we buy
| them all" sense and a "we won't let companies sell them to
| other state actors in quantity" sense) for decades
|
| => US biomedical manufacturing of anything requiring
| centrifuging as a step, quickly outstripping that of all other
| countries
|
| => eventual global logistical dependence on US-based suppliers
| for such products
| philipkglass wrote:
| Centrifuge enrichment was considered for the Manhattan
| Project but rejected because early experiments encountered
| many problems:
|
| https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-
| history/Proce...
|
| Centrifuge uranium enrichment wasn't developed to an
| industrial scale until the 1960s, and it first happened
| outside the United States:
|
| https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-
| fuel-c...
| daedrdev wrote:
| In reality simply that the US lets you pay people for blood
| plasma, an the market does the rest.
|
| There are similar arguments made for kidney donation. Paying
| people a set amount kidneys is exploiting the poor, but most
| those who need kidneys are not well off and there is an
| enormous shortage causing massive shortages, so some argue
| that we should pay since society would be net better off.
| hwillis wrote:
| Well GPT-4o just insisted over and over that it was getting 500
| errors while refusing to actually check the page. So... not
| yet.
| Lerc wrote:
| > _Third -- I'm left wondering if a true "Deep Research" like
| tool would be able to provide the same analysis. I find that
| Deep Research is fine for secondary sources, but not for Deep
| Analysis of primary source data._
|
| In the searches I have done Google's "Deep Research" has been
| better at providing primary data (or very convincingly
| fabricating).
|
| OpenAI's version seems to more likely to give the answer that
| everybody thinks is true. For the blood example I could see it
| finding many sources that repeat the 2% claim, and accept that
| because everyone seems to agree, then it must be right. That's
| a mixed blessing in that maybe most casual users might want the
| commonly accepted answer, but when I have used the deep
| research tools, it has almost always because I know the answer
| everybody gives for a particular question, but I suspect it
| might not be based in reality. This makes my reason for wanting
| an automated deep research tool coinciding with the weakest
| area of the tool itself.
|
| It's also been a bit eye opening how often commonly repeated
| but poorly founded claims, seem to turn up the same names of
| individuals, (or organisations, or individuals pretending to be
| organisations) as you trace them back.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Plasma from teachers who don't get paid enough to cover the bills
| shipped to Europe. There's a great sci-fi novel in there.
| iamthepieman wrote:
| The film "Never Let Me Go"[0] is kind of about that.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Let_Me_Go_(2010_film)
| morninglight wrote:
| Market trends show this as a growing industry in the 2025
| economy.
|
| https://www.cslplasma.com/be-rewarded
| aeternum wrote:
| Excellent writeup. Is there any aggregator that focuses on "let's
| look at the actual data" articles like this?
| archermarks wrote:
| Dynomight (the author of this article) does a lot of articles
| like this, and if you enjoyed it you'll enjoy their other
| content.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| I donate a lot to mosquitoes
| coolspot wrote:
| Bzzz?
| caycep wrote:
| Also - it might be worth looking in donations from Mex/canada.
| The anecdotal tidbit is that during Trump I with the border
| shenanigans and COVID, the drop in Mexican nationals crossing the
| border to donate blood/plasma (paid opportunities apparently),
| led to a nationwide shortage of derived products like IV IG
| infusions, etc. At least according to some of the Pharma reps
| that passed thru the office
| andai wrote:
| The article links to this, which I also enjoyed.
|
| "Please show lots of digits"
|
| https://dynomight.net/digits/
| ch33zer wrote:
| Does anyone know of, when I give blood to the red cross or other
| charities can it end up getting sold for a profit, overseas or
| otherwise?
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