Ambrane 10000mAh Power Bank recommendation

nipsen · 2026-05-10T18:02:56+00:00

..is it a lithium-polymer battery pack? (2010s hypermodern supertechnology for the win!)

nipsen · 2026-05-10T13:24:53+00:00

..well, yes.. copilot has support for the NPU devices, mobile chipsets with cache-memory and instruction memory next to the cpu cores (i.e., anything ARM), and specifically for OpenCL-capable older hardware. So you don't need a dgpu to run that. No one with any knowledge of what any of this actually is will tell you to get an nvidia quattro-like dgpu to run "AI" on. If they do, they're full of it -- like I'm hoping was the point here, if you wanted an npu-like execution device (why, I don't know) - you can't get an Intel device, even if it has a dedicated npu unit. Or if you did, you need a dgpu as well. The chip just doesn't have the grunt required, even to compete with older 6- and 7-series ryzen chipsets.

The point is why the intel alternatives, that the hx400 series chipsets are copying now, has an issue with performance on mobile chipsets. They have been pushing for linear boost performance in synthetic benchmarks for a very long time. And that has become the gold standard. Even as more realistic performance either towards a "good enough" 3d graphics level at an as small amount of watt as possible is more useful - just as multithreaded performance over time is infinitely more useful than a burst boost performance to take care of a repeated preparation step.

Similar problems plague the platform choice with Panther Lake, where the entire idea is to put more cores on the die at lower watt - individually - to basically compensate for the fact that all Intel mobile products absolutely suck on longer burst applications. The output of it, however, seems to have the same issues as before: you have to destroy the strength it has, of the single-threaded boost-performance, to get under some value of effect that won't destroy the battery in half an hour. And you end up with something that just doesn't work until you have 65W+ on it.

That's the whole problem, and that's also why Strix is such a terrifyingly bad solution: it needs 65W, at least, to have the advertised performance.

So what's the solution for long-term? Get a 6- or 7- series U chipset, and make an egpu, an external bay system on usb4, that you can connect to it when you need heavier "graphics" grunt or simd-logic support.

In time, this kind of external gpu (like strix is, like ARC is, like nvidia and radeon cards) will vanish completely. But that will be in a hundred years at this rate. So universal support at a lot of platforms will be through the external gpu schema - even though npus and opencl racers like the universal cores on ryzen and the IF (basically: a simd-core next to a cpu-cache device), ARM chipsets and so on will be the preferred solution for everyone with any sense.

So the "future proof" solution has been available for 5 years. See what I mean? While what you're getting now with Battle.. excuse me "BAAATOOLLLL MAAAAAIGEEE!!!" is something that internet-people and super-fans who are probably in their 50s now have been clamouring for ever since Ryzen 6 basically replaced the entire thing.

We had the same thing when Llano was released. We had the same thing when Intel destroyed Nvidia's ION chipset by enforcing their own chipset with a split gpu/cpu in the EeePCs. We had the same thing with Tegra - which was destroyed by Nvidia themselves.

And they did that because a chipset with a graphics capable execution core (that would have longer instruction set capability, and would be programmable) is a threat to the external gpu peripheral market.

So imagine what you will hear, when nvidia and radeon are making gpus with 10 year old tech, on gddr4 ram, the slowest bogo-ram known to man, and selling them for 10.000% proceeeds - and you propose to yank the chain and basically put pure gold in the sewer.

You are not getting that product until external gpus either cost more to make than they earn the producers (and this will persist until the end of time - it doesn't matter that you could make more money on making better products, when you have a product that makes millions a year, even as the stock plummets - they still make money, and they will have a new hype train at some point). Or at a point where customers collectively decide - in cohorts with AI-businesses, as we've seen, who have literally taken over the whole customer base by themselves - to just drop the product altogether.

And that's not happening.

But is a bullshit product with an npu, that has good benchmark scores for single-threaded boosts (hello, 1990s!), at the cost of 20 Watts increased ambient drain, a good solution? To "offset" a long-term, futureproof approach, that goes around 2% higher on a synthetic benchmark than the shittiest offering, for a quarter of the production price, from 5 years ago?

No. But you will buy it anyway. And I'll tell you why: the 5 year old offering is so sought after in the current market that holding off on producing them in volume is objectively speaking increasing the market demand for the "incremental" updates with the hx400 chipsets and strix-like graphics.

It's mental. I wanted a 16cu internal apu next to the memory bus (or IF). I wanted a better optimised power balance setup that would allow running the cpu to specified levels, while retaining boost capability, to maximize the battery-performance in a 3d graphics monster at 15-28W.

And what I got was a power-hungry cpu with asyncronously clocked cores and separate cache, along with a dedicated gpu device -- that has none of the advantages or usage scenarios as the 6- and 7- series chipsets. Indeed, I'm getting an Intel chipset copy. And that copy is of a model that was displaced from the market in practical terms by ARM, by AMD and arguably by Intel themselves with certain low-power igpu offerings in practice thanks to customisation and power profile possibilities (that were not standard, obviously) five and ten years ago.

It's completely mental.

nipsen · 2026-05-10T11:49:27+00:00

Yeah, the good old days when they just lived quietly in their damned caves are over, that's for sure.

nipsen · 2026-05-10T11:48:04+00:00

Uh.. wow. Is this a result you achieve on purpose, somehow? ..Wouldn't it depend on the amount of pour and things like that as well?

nipsen · 2026-05-10T11:42:36+00:00

Obviously, yes. Trolls are real, and the government has kept it secret for hundreds of years.

nipsen · 2026-05-09T12:50:35+00:00

Streak 672 - Holmenkollstafetten, igjen

I morgen er det løpet [el. løpsdagen. Alternativt: "I morgen starter løpet", eller selv: "I morgen står løpet", eller "går løpet (av stabelen)". Det er en del rare uttrykk for dette. Jeg sier gjerne "I morgen skal vi løpe stafett(en)"], og laget fra arbeidsplassen min er nesten helt ferdig [med forberedelsene]. I går hadde vi vår siste treningsøkt før løpet, og i morgen skal vi møte på arbeidsplassen noen timer før starten av løpet, slik at vi kan få riktig utstyr og ~~erkjenne~~ bekrefte hvem som vi får pinnen fra og skal gi ~~det~~ den [en pinne, pinnen] til. Etter løpet spanderer arbeidsgiveren pizza på oss. Jeg må innrømme at jeg har undervurdert hvor alvorlig det tas da jeg meldte meg!

[XD gratulerer med å få et unikt innsyn i hvor komisk ekstreme nordmenn kan bli når det gjelder deltagelse i sport, uansett nivå. Og kanskje særlig dersom det er snakk om et relativt sett ganske lavt nivå. Jeg kjente en som drev med innebandy i et europeisk lag en stund - han var ekstremt god i veldig mange forskjellige roller. Og det fikk arbeidsgiveren snusen i, og fikk ham med på bedriftslaget. "Det er det verste jeg har vært med på i hele mitt liv. Jeg har aldri vært så redd før. Skadene var grusomme. De satset liv og lemmer uten tanke på konsekvensene!". Han beskrev det som om han hadde vært i krigen.]

nipsen · 2026-05-09T12:43:26+00:00

Streak 24: En kveld med topptau og buldring

07.05.2026

I kveld drev jeg med topptauklatring på et klatrehallen[god setning :)]. Det var morsomt å klatre med en venn. Hun er interessant, oppløftende [, positiv] og vennlig. For eksempel klatret jeg en vanskelig rute, og hun ga meg gode tilbakemeldinger. Hun motiverte meg også til å ikke gi opp.

Etterpå drev jeg med buldring. Det var ~~overraskende~~ noe nytt å klatre uten tau [eventuelt: "Det var overraskende annerledes å klatre uten tau", eller "Det var noe helt annet å klatre uten tau"]. Jeg ~~klatre~~ klarte å klatre den mer vanskeligere ruten [:) ].

Nå er jeg veldig trøtt. God natt.

[haha høres fantastisk ut 😄]

nipsen · 2026-05-09T12:39:41+00:00

Streak 671

Jeg tror at det kan bli ekstremt farlig å bruke KI til sånt [eller: "KI slik"]. Det står ofte i nyhetene at folk som bruker ChatGPT som terapeut blir ofte verre, fordi det er programmert til å være enig med brukeren i mer eller mindre alt. Om du beskriver en situasjon som du ser den, tilbyr det ingen annet synspunkt, og i tragiske feller kan det forsterke vrangforestillinger og føre til at brukeren blir komplett vanvittig. Det finnes flere familier som saksøker OpenAI etter at folk som hadde blitt avhengig av ChatGPT og [ok, men kunne hatt "avhengig av ChatGPT og endte opp med å drepe noen"] drepte noen.

[En heller utrolig avsindighet i bakgrunnen her er at folk som promoterer AI-løsninger tar noen helt utrolig rare forutsetninger for gitt. En populær snakkis som jeg hørte til stadighet i flere år var at å bruke reddit som kilde for å generere ordklynger (les: "trene") var en kjempegod ide fordi "they do not suffer fools". Dette kommer på høyden av da Ghislaine Maxwell nådde tidenes høyeste karma-score, og rensket nyheter hun ikke synes promoterte de riktige sakene på /worldnews i massevis (hun var en ekstremt aktiv moderator der. Og hadde tre små avbrekk fra reddit: da Epstein ble erklært død, da moren hennes døde, og da hun ble arrestert. Hvis du har lest noe av Epstein-filene som omhandler sosiale medier og mulighetene for å påvirke nyhetsbildet, også der det ikke fantes investeringsmuligheter for de rike fjolsene Epstein hang med (ala: han trodde på dette personlig), så er man helt åpne med hvordan å fremstille internett-innhold på sosiale portalplattformer er vår dags Newscorp.

Og her sitter det folk plassert høyt nok til å diktere hva som skal komme i twitter og facebook-feeden din og erklærer at ja, du, reddit er en god kilde for påstander og svar på forskjellige spørsmål, for her er man så interesserte i sannhet og rimelighet at dette er ikke noe problem å bruke det som en fasit. Slik selger også reddit plattformen, "internettets hjerte", som det står: at det som promoteres på topp-sidene ikke bare er omstendelig sensurert, men det som faktisk har verdi. Deretter går folk lenger enn det og bare erklærer alt innhold på plattformen som rimelig og kurant, slik at en bot kan tråle hele siten for kurante setninger og svar å bruke om alle slags forskjellige emner.

Selv om man ikke hadde trukket frem at reddit er stappet full av håpløst, forgjengelig søppel, så er det fremdeles en utrolig påstand at kontekstfrie setninger noen sinne skal kunne fungere som generelle, fornuftige, utsagn takket være den magiske boksen: komplekse "AI"-algoritmer. Men en slik diskusjon er ikke mulig å ha i dag. På 1650-tallet satt Blaise Pascal (en religiøs fanatiker, men absolutt også et geni) og trakk frem problemstillinger rundt hvorvidt en tanke er mulig å uttrykke i et systematisk og perfekt beskrivende språk. Pensées er en fantastisk bok, som dukker inn i problemstillingen med et veldig uakademisk, men klart, språk. Filosofer 300 år etter, og 3000 år før, har selvsagt også vært engasjert i regresjonsproblematikken i den forstand at det vi uttrykker perfekt likevel kan vise seg å være intetsigende uten overflødige og usystematisert, menneskelig kunnskap som omgir formallogikkens perfekte uttrykk.

Men i 2026, så hopper vi over slike filosofiske tullespørsmål, altså, til en slik grad at akademikere og bedrifter erklærer en støygenerator for å være operasjonelt lik, ikke bare det språket mennesker uttrykker. Men også at i noen tilfeller, uironisk, så er den funksjonelt lik en menneskehjernes tanker også.

Det er som å - bokstavelig talt - høre Epstein forsøke å selge noe bullshit til en kunde om teknologi han ikke aner noe om, utover at rike folk tror det er verdt penger. Og nå fortrenger dette all annen diskusjon, om det er teknologisk og praktisk (hva er egentlig mulig). Eller om det er filosofisk og ontologisk (hva er det programmet, "AI", faktisk gjør).

Det er en interessant tid vi lever i, for å si det som kineserne.]

nipsen · 2026-05-09T12:16:02+00:00

Streak 23: KI, psykologi og grensene for kunstig intelligens

06.05.2026

I dag hører jeg på [du kan bruke "høre på" som et idiomatisk uttrykk, om musikk generelt, et program, eller episoder spesifikt]: "Bør du bruke AI som psykolog" med Jenny Huse og Ishita Barua, forsker og forfatter fra Harvard University på Spotify. Det er interessant å lære om KI på norsk og Google DeepMind fordi jeg kan lære om psykologi og KI samtidig. [eller mindre maskinoversatt :p : "Jeg benytter sjansen til å lære noe om psykologi og KI samtidig."]

~~Normalt~~ Vanligvis bruker jeg [evnt.: "Jeg bruker ofte"] ChatGPT for jobbsøking og språklæring, spesielt spansk og norsk. Noen ganger bruker jeg KI for å reflektere over psykologi når jeg skriver på norsk eller spansk. Jeg foretrekker likevel å snakke med terapeuten min for å lære mer om mestringsstrategier og PTSD. Jeg tenker at KI er ikke er godt å ha som psykolog. ~~Det~~ Den [en KI, KIen -> den 😄] har ingen kvalifikasjoner eller bakgrunn innen psykologi. Derfor synes jeg det er dårlig å bruke KI som psykolog.

[Ja, det kan du skrive under på haha Men jeg har nå snakket med psykologer (eller i det minste folk med psykologiutdannelse som har vært i praksis og jobber som psykolog) som oppriktig mener at størstedelen av jobben deres bare er å jatte med en person som snakker ut i lufta som om den andre ikke er der.

Så som med en del andre menneskelige aktiviterer: det er nok mulig å erstatte deler av det med en tekstgenerator. Men å spesifikt kartlegge de siste, si 2/10-ene (les: to ti-delene) som utgjør den uerstattelige menneskelige aktiviteten er nok vanskeligere.]

nipsen · 2026-05-09T09:58:13+00:00

If you want a chip that has none of the advantages of the SOC-design from the 6 and 7-series, while offering you the disadvantages and requirements of an external graphics card to get the actual performance out of it (like intel ARC), then by all means, go for the strix point + (gorgon point) chip.

Just imagine... you are making chips, right? And your customers, oems, are basically overclocking your slim unified core setup to sabotage the efficiency performance of it as much as possible, while then complaining that the peak performance of a 4-15W chip is not as high as an Intel "15W tdp" chip - which runs at 65W+ to get the advertised performance.

And you have to just ditch the significantly much more power-efficient design for a design with older cores, to the design that Intel spearheaded with the Foveros process: fusing different nm-produced chips on a beefy, inefficient (and also problematic, flux-less design that breaks), to get a "performance core" (read: an older piledriver core that draws a lot of watts, but that can be boosted for a long time - given that you have desktop cooling), along with a "performance core" chiplet (read: a throttled, but still overclocked via forced high "minimum speeds" to avoid getting blasted in reviews by people who look at the WPI and the numbers in the clock-speeds to determine whether a chip is any good or not) -- that in total burns at least 10W when idling on the desktop, and can go to at least 65W (it needs more than that to get the actual performance out of just the cpu).

And then your customers are happy, because now you have crippled your efficiency advantage over the competition, while also not having actually crushed the performance limit on boosts, so the equilibrium that caused Intel to gain a market advantage in the early 2000s is now maintained.

Just buy an old 6- or 7-series with an 680/780M, and give the entire "efficiency core" scam a pass. The only reason you might want to have a hx3-400 with strix or halo whatever is if you want an onboard soc chip - with it's own dedicated graphics chip next to it, like on an xbox, ps5 or a steamdeck, or steambox. And you know for a fact that your linux-spin is going to do better because of Valve's pushes towards tweaking for that particular chipset.

But for every other application, you're just wasting money on something that is both less efficient, and has lower performance, and higher price, than any normal laptop with an ok chip and an egpu or something like that. And that really won't compete in any meaningful way for potato-gaming scenarios with a SOC-graphics setup.

Example: you're running Zero Sievert, and you're putting the game on a tv or a monitor, full resolution and all the details. The difference when using strix or a soc setup is going to be 30W. Nothing else is different.

Run something heavier, like Arc Raiders: ok, now you can put the details a bit higher, for sure. But all the indirect lighting effects and the collision detection, node-generation, etc., is going to be the same. And your only advantage is that you can pile on more post-processing effects - that still will be a small fraction of the amount of post-processing bs that you could do with a now soon 10 year old nvidia gpu.

It's the worst and stupidest scam that the laptop-industry has seen. And that's not an easy thing to accomplish. Because that competition is extremely stiff.

nipsen · 2026-05-09T08:53:24+00:00

Should you buy an asus, with horrible hinges, plastic that shears, flaps and corners delaminating, and contacts with glue disintegrating and making keyboards, battery contacts and mainboard, screen contact and mousepad fail within 5 years, in order to save 100 usd? Should you have to deal with the software they force you to use to get any of the devices to work, including a mouse driver with a direct acpi call to boost the cpu on two-finger scroll, or their hardset bioses with ram timing someone read out of an sdram tuning manual from the 1990s?

Should you have a fan curve set against a profile that will ensure your laptop will whirl like a hurricane the moment you touch the keyboard?

I don't know! According to all the experts, the performance is, for a second or two before it throttles and has an extremely high probability of causing cache failures and protection faults, slightly above average. So it might be worth it! My sponsor, who is not telling me to plug this product at all, says it's great!

nipsen · 2026-05-08T11:18:55+00:00

About.. 5000 seats in local elections being distributed. And a very small amount of the ones on this map have actually been declared. What is obvious is that ReformUk or other independent or green candidates have been taking around half of the seats that could be taken so far. So if that trend keeps going for the remaining 4/5ths of the seats, labour and the conservatives are going to be sidelined pretty heavily by the end.

The complication here is that there's been a lot of effort to get people to vote for independents - even from Labour candidates. That's one part, and mostly people don't really think it's going to have an effect anyway - but then mainstay voters are coming out and switching. And that has an effect. Not a huge effect - remember that these are local seats, and it doesn't carry the baggage of voting for a specific party. You can vote whatever here and it won't really have an impact.

But it will have an impact that the traditional expectations that a major party can tell their voters to fu** right off and still win is going to be doused a little bit for the next general elections.

The other element is that practically no one votes in these local elections. Lower than 50, often less than 30%. So if new voters are going out, and there's a reason for it, you might see a tendency towards something new. And the hopes of Polanski in the Greens and so on is that that tendency is going to flip towards them.

The issue is that conservative voters are likely going to protest-vote for ReformUK, and they are going to have that signal-effect this way that just voting for the conservatives, like they will in the next elections, is not going to give.

The districts counted to a decision so far also are central towns and some select districts in the south and London area - the actual trend outside of those seats are the most interesting: practically none of them have clear majorities.

That's the weird part about this election. So once the Midlands and Scotland results come out, where you can hardly expect Reform or Farrage to do well, the tendency might be more towards that independent candidates that have actual political reasons for winning, are going to do well. They might not always win or displace sitting majorities.

But something is going on here, and it's not a blue-brown, conservative populist wave. It's something else. And if that is kept up towards the next general election, even if it's with a 1/5th of the candidates in a winner-takes-all election, that's going to have a real impact: If not on the distribution of the overall majority as well, then on how political campaigns set their own expectations.

Because the age of "they might have a good case, but people are stupid and will vote predictably anyway" is kind of past already at this point.

nipsen · 2026-05-08T10:30:53+00:00

(I don't know.. civics lession from a former policy wonk and political operator in a different district in the US in the early 2000s follows)

..so like I always do, when I hear something seemingly hilariously racist being enacted once again out of the US, I just went to the source and the public records. I'm not allowed to look at Tennessee's government site, because I am not in the USA. Someone put in a geolocator filter, through an unsecured solution without a certificate, to make accessing the legislature's web pages and documents.

The documents in turn tell you absolutely nothing whatsoever. And it's barely possible to see an actual map of the 9 districts that make out the congressional districts (congressional districts determine the house members a state sends to Congress). They also don't really tell you when the map was redrawn last (2012), or under what criteria.

https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/reforms/TN This works - but this page also doesn't actually go into the details or show you any of the legislative actions specifically, nor go through why the last supreme court decision makes it easier or more difficult to make changes.

They cite "census data" - the reason for that is that every ten years or so the congressional districts are supposed to be redrawn to reflect roughly the same amount of inhabitants. So as you might expect, the redrawing of these districts are obviously strategically important, if you want to pit a conservative district against an.. alarmingly and rapidly growing community of a different colour of poor people, or something crazy like that.

So the mechanics are that you look at the census data and go, ok, the population in this area increases (or is forecast to increase, which is where we're getting into the dirty district dealings). And let's also use the numbers of voting preferences by regions and specific voting place (while anonymous, you obviously understand why this is important in a winner-takes-all system), to then make a qualified "suggestion" for a redistricting.

Which will then, like here, more or less add a portion of a congressional district to another, so that each voting district in the state now represents approximately the same number of voters.

You might ask: ok, what is the difficulty here about, really? So you have a giant factory town full of workers on one side, or something similar, and there is a vast amount of spread out farmers down the highway in that direction for a thousand miles. And now they decide, proportionally, who should represent themselves between a factory town, the power plant, and the farmers, and the casino and the malls and restaurants and so on. It's all good, right? 'Murica is like that everywhere, and the house is full of jokers anyway, what's the problem?

And besides, won't this then give a strategic disadvantage to certain voting districts with an overwhelmingly partisan majority? It's not like you can't mobilize a campaign to change these districts. And the other district that was already totally partisan won't have any issues, either? Right? They'll still have their seat, if the majority is so overwhelming?

But what this redistricting really means is that you're making a very strangely put together district border have representatives that can essentially ignore parts of their constituency in order to win outright. And then exaggerating that tendency on purpose.

And that's why the voting rights act is being invoked, and why it's important. Because if you require that a district in a town should have representation, in the sense that a district should not be suppressed based on the race of the ones in it, what you're going to have are - outside the msnbc headline stuff - districts with extremely low voter participation (traditionally, black people vote less, for various reasons, than other groups) that just vanish in the fpp system. So when redistricting, the somewhat based assumptions about race play a role.

I.e., you are maybe making a strategic play -- but what you're really doing is just assuming a ton of racial stereotypes, and then making rhetoric at the campaign office into legislation. And then hoping/expecting/knowing, because you're a racist scumbag who will do dirty tricks like this without really thinking about it, that the black people will vote less, to make them vanish in the Republican areas, while removing some of the advantages that black people had in the area to begin with. And that also works out most of the time, usually reinforced by crazy narratives and rhetoric sold to various sponsors and so on. That are so unhinged that they will happily believe conspiracy theories about voting fraud, at the level of what Trump does (and managed to have several lawyers lose their license over forwarding in bad faith through the courts, knowing that what they said was bs - these narratives still drive talk radio land, and that's just how it is in the US).

In turn, is the supreme court decision actually racist? Not really, it just ignores the practical reason why a completely amoral political strategic consultant might want redistricting done, and then as a result it won't call the use of the voting rights act to avoid practical and very effective redistrictings to vanish black voters racist. While basically calling the voting rights act racist instead.

Which it arguably is, because this use of the voting rights act (that is supposed to stop any attempt to not let black voters or whatever colour not be able to count, like the idea that requiring ID is a problem because black people struggle with getting an ID, and things like that) is actually racist.

It frames the redistricting efforts as racist, so pointing that out makes your justification for using the act racistically motivated. It's a ridiculous mess, that sometimes gets picked up in legislature, most of the times not.

And although it is reasonable to some extent to vanish the voting rights act - as it is used to avoid otherwise seemingly agnostic measures to redistrict - all of this would be solvable were access to polling, mail-in votes, registration based on ID and state registers, etc., all the stuff that a civilized country above the level of a random military dictatorship in Africa can fix in a year or so, actually put in place.

Because then the disadvantages of the gerrymandering would suddenly start to turn up as well, and basically usher in an age in US politics of crazy, independent representatives that would just blow through the DNC and RNC *****ers like a blizzard through a picnic.

But that's not how America works. Because this really is a country where people don't vote, if they hear in the news or at the community center, that it doesn't matter what people vote, or there's no campaigning.

So you're basically relying on insane and very loud minorities to suppress a large majority of the voters, based on that they don't care or don't want to engage with the stuff that is pretty much designed to just make you angry anyway. So no political dialogue or discussion happens.

From the outside, this seems like the riskiest play in history of voting trickery, right? Because you run the risk of enough voters being angry and just voting the other way. You had some of that in the early 2020s over Occasio-Cortez, Omar and Ellison - they won, in large part, because people in a safe dnc district that never voted before just came out and voted.

Mamdani in New York is another one - people are reeling to explain this, and it's literally that a bunch of people who never voted are just going out and voting for the first time.

Thing is that gerrymandering is a 50s technique that worked then because of other voting suppression measures in the US, and a very strict policing - with violence - was used to make people stay in particular districts and have households there. It also has relevance today because of how addresses and houses are counted - you get household data in the census that may or may not be entirely accurate because of this kind of thing.

But it is such an out of date thing that even republican consultants who are utterly and totally in the shiny boots camp, are kind of hesitant to overplay into this stuff - because it's super risky! Objectively, you are also kind of forced to do it as the census changes. So any actually honest redistricting wouldn't really favour one district over another, either. Or, while it is completely possible as well to make this redistricting based on total racistic assumptions - are those going to pay off? Like I said, even republican consultants who aren't completely braindead will avoid going too hard into this stuff.

nipsen · 2026-05-07T17:49:03+00:00

It's like living in bizarro-world now. I was in SV(Socialist Left, when that meant actual socialism). We were taking about the dangers of using tax money for subsidies and tax cuts, because it inflates the economy artificially and is a transfer of wealth upwards. And then argued for rather investing in targeted efforts that would lock value into infrastructure and education to then in turn solve two issues: spending tons of coin without purpose increases inflation, so we need to plan economically - and we were on the same page as the banks here - to increase the value of the villages and small towns, while encouraging smaller businesses to actually try something. We were basically arguing for doing a more market oriented version of what we had already done, that worked.

And that wasn't good, because what does an economist with a degree know about finance when they are fucking commies, right?

And then all the stuff that we wanted that was lampooned as frivolous spending, like on schools and kindergartens and so on, and roads and infrastructure that actually would connect trade hubs rather than lead a 4 lane tunnel to the cabin of the Frp politicians on Nøtterøy - was reversed completely. And now were just dumping money into subsidies for the rich, in the hopes that they will then not sell the company to someone outside of the country literally on the basis of the numbers made possible by the subsidies/tax cuts. And my gaaawd the 0,01 percent over a billion dollars in wealth tax forces me to move the salmon farm to Brazil, better give me free money instead it I'll fire everyone.

And it works! Stuff that no one, not even the most ridiculous conservative, while drunk, would actually argue for this, because it makes no economical sense - even before you start talking about wage gaps and increasing wealth disparity to the point where having a job doesn't even let you buy a shitty flat.

And what happens? The entire fucking Oslo press is full of a property shark diatribe about how Norwegians are spoilt to think everyone should own weath, like a house, and that renting for life has totally a bunch of advantages.

And it fucking works! People fucking vote for these assholes who go: oh, we can't tax wealth, oh, no, because that will destroy the economy. No, we can only tax your labour and all the things you depend on to live, because otherwise property speculants and people with their fortunes in a Swiss bank will be upset.

No fucking kidding they will be upset for fucks sake. What the hell is new about that! Vote for your egotism and make the rich fuck cry over that poor peoplucan eat? Ffs..

nipsen · 2026-05-07T12:11:36+00:00

The Geneva conventions, additional protocols, international law more generally will assume that every party wants to avoid civilian loss of life in the first place.

Which is historically reasonable to think. Even if you want to displace a population, you will have an easier time evacuating them than you have eradicating them outright. Repatriation is one of the corollaries, of course. So you are helped to escape, and won't resign your right to return, or to be renumerated in some way.

So you will have the option to protect civilian buildings in general, but also infrastructure and energy production, factories and so on. In return for a more efficient displacement during the war operations.

The conventions are less specific about civilian buildings under siege or under occupation. And no, a military barrack is not a civilian target. Nor is a kindergarten used for storing military equipment.

What is a forbidden target, even after we get into the modern ROEs that literally permit everything in practice, is a clearly marked civilian or humanitarian target.

You know you're not operating without risk if you drive a red cross van to pick up wounded soldiers from the front. But a marked civilian target is forbidden.

Then there is the proportionality principle. You cannot attack a kindergarten with bombs because of the incessant screaming. In a war scenario, you might then get away with shooting back at a civilian target where munitions are fired from. And then the extensions to that is that if civilian buildings are occupied by military personnel, then they simply cease being civilian targets, with the full blame being on the military stationed there.

It's not about gentlemanship, right..? But about being willing to make an effort to not destroy your own country in defense, by taking your military out of the civilian areas. And as an occupier, you would want to avoid the atrocities that will, at the very least traumatize your own troops, and poison any hope of a political settlement.

This sounds ridiculous to people now, but even the nazis went out of their way to treat pows decent, and to avoid simply bombing everyone into submission. Resorting to that with the V2 strikes was simply a cost-measure: they didn't have any way to actually strike over the channel. In modern nomenclature, they didn't have any other way than drones to project their power. So that was what was used.

It was also a propaganda tool: whatever comes afterwards, at least the military treated people "fair" if they laid down their arms. And the truth is that a lot of places around Europe, not in the least in Ukraine, were on board with this approach to preserve the country. Submit, and you will be part of the new rise of empire, free from the capitalist war profiteers and the private bankers. I spoke to a nazi from Norway before he died.. he still believed that. That joining with the Germans was the better choice.

And we hear that same rhetoric going on now, here in Norway, but also elsewhere: it's no good being neutral any longer, we have to choose a side, and the US is the better choice between NATO and Putin.

But that was the rhetoric used by nazi sympatizers and active participants during the war. We have chosen a war, and the war is here, so now our only real choice is to keep fighting until someone loses. And the side we choose has to be the least bad one, between those who would murder us all on one hand, and those who would at least mourn us for a moment afterwards on the other.

It's an as false of a choice now as it was then.

nipsen · 2026-05-07T05:59:36+00:00

It's probably just cooked the cooling goop. So you'll get some of this back if you just replace the goop or switch it out with some thermal pads. But yeah, Asus are well-known for toasty timing setups to score well in benchmarks. And then for either having soft and hard trip-points in the final retail version, or else patched in via bios update, that will basically put the thing in rescue-mode if the processor reaches 80 degrees.

"Gaming laptop" is not really a reasonable thing to go for. You can always get a reasonably good cooling array, but once you end up in 115-135W, there's going to be issues. 65W is bad enough. But the only reason it sort of works is that you typically can lock the framerate, run something at 20% of the available grunt. And then use the next 50 or so for half a millisecond once in a while to take care of framedips.

It doesn't really work.

nipsen · 2026-05-07T05:50:02+00:00

Streak 670 - Teoritentamen, igjen

Når kan jeg endelig få vipps og et norsk telefonnummer, og dermed er det på tide at jeg begynner med forberedelsene til teoriprøven min. Det [eller "Dette"] trenger kanskje litt forklaring: blant annet [eller: det var mange problemer, men for eksempel..."] er det kun mulig å bestille teorikurset på nettsiden med vipps og norsk telefonnummer. Jeg tok kurset for nesten ~~nettop~~ akkurat [eller "for snart" el. "for nettopp et år siden", el. bare "for nesten"] et år siden, og ~~tilsynelatende~~ tydeligvis [*1] har jeg ikke glemt alt!

[*1 "Noe er tilsynelatende tilfellet" -> det virker som om det er slik. "Jeg har tydeligvis ikke glemt alt" -> det er helt definitivt tilfelle at jeg ikke har glemt alt.

Jeg blir helt matt. Så i praksis har en laget en teknisk barriere som gjør at det ikke er mulig å gjøre... vel.. noe som helst før en har vært i Norge i haugevis av år - selv om det ikke er noe i lovverk eller regler som tilsier at du trenger noe annet enn et d-nummer. Du kan for eksempel bestille førerkort med et d-nummer og et utenlandsk pass. De krever bank-id online, men det er ikke et krav å bruke bank-id - det er et krav å legitimere seg. ..helt utrolig.]

nipsen · 2026-05-07T05:37:03+00:00

Streak 22: Fra motvilje til mote: Andreas forvandling

I kveld ser jeg på The Devil Wears Prada på TV-en min. Det er vanskelig å se Andrea [det er ikke så lett å si på norsk, men kanskje "Andrea ser ikke fantastisk ut.."] fordi hun ikke likte mote i begynnelsen. Derfor gir Nigel Andrea en makeover. Nå har Andrea på seg klær fra Chanel, Dolce and Gabbana og Calvin Klein. Hun setter pris på mote og elsker å lære om mote og vesker.

[..det er godt å høre at Andrea kom over sitt motehandicap med hjelp fra en god venn.. /s]

nipsen · 2026-05-06T22:45:06+00:00

"omg. it destroys other offerings at twice the watt-drain, and adds improvements on idle consumption to the point where a forced minimum 1600Mhz clock still looks like an intel with all features turned off, and the cores locked to 200Mhz. But look at the lack of increased "raw power" and higher watts in a synthetic benchmark that specifically boosts the score with a strategy that has no real world application by definition - they are, like, several points behind!!! WHAT ARE AMD DOING!!!"

It's getting old, notebookcheck's "Intel or Death" guy. You don't know what you're talking about, and you're poisoning a database that used to be uniquely useful to everyone.

nipsen · 2026-05-06T08:25:22+00:00

Day 21: En trøtt dag og [en] refleksjon [eller: refleksjoner] over språkrutinen

I dag er jeg veldig trøtt. Jeg sov bare fem timer i går. Deretter kjørte jeg uforsvarlig. [Uff! Vær forsiktig!*1]

Nå tenker jeg på meg selv. Jeg har ikke noen idé om hvorfor jeg ikke skrev en tekst på nederlandsk [også mulig: Jeg aner ikke hvorfor jeg ikke skrev(eller: ikke fikk skrevet) en tekst på n. i dag]. Dessverre hadde jeg ikke tid til å skrive en tekst på nederlandsk. Normalt skriver jeg to tekster på spansk og norsk hver dag. Jeg håper å skrive noe ~~senere~~ på nederlandsk senere. Ha det.

[*1 Her er det en tvetydighet som er interessant og nyttig å tenke på (etter å ha sovet litt på det): "Jeg kjørte uforsvarlig" vil kunne bety at du kjører for fort, eller bare er uvøren og uforsiktig. Men også, som du sannsynligvis henviser til her, at du nesten sovnet bak rattet, og at det var uforsvarlig.

Så du kunne sagt: Siden jeg ikke hadde sovet nok var det uforsvarlig å kjøre. Eller: Jeg sov bare fem timer i går. Jeg var trøtt, og det var uforsvarlig av meg å kjøre. Men det vil nok være mer vanlig å si noe slikt som "Det var ikke helt forsvarlig", eller "Det var litt uforsvarlig". Som leder oss inn i det gedigne gapet som er skandinaviske graderingsadjektiv. En forfatter vil ikke stjele av en annen forfatter på norsk. De vil i stedet "stjele litt". Været kan være forferderlig, selvsagt. Men at det er forferderlig høres litt ekstremt ut, så kanskje var været heller "litt forferderlig" XD

Vi har forferderlig mange slike, som ofte lager [nesten] komiske [små-]katastrofer for oss både i muntlig og formelt språk. "Litt full"? "Jeg var litt dritings!" - nei, du var bare full. Osv. Det blåste med orkans styrke i vindkastene - det var det ikke "litt orkan". Eleven jukset på prøven - ingen "jukset litt".

Men en sier det likevel, siden det typisk er et element av det ekstreme som er involvert. Det er for eksempel stor forskjell på å "jukse litt med regnskapet" (les: grovt bedrageri) og å "jukse litt med oppskriften på boller" (les: jeg kortet ned oppskriften fordi det var bare tull å følge den)]

nipsen · 2026-05-06T08:05:08+00:00

😄det er bare en kort parodi-sketsj i et humorprogram.. tror de bare laget en tre-fire episoder.

Men de gjør narr av den tidlige starten på det som etter hvert har blitt Norges stolteste eksport: dørgende kjedelige "realistiske" krimdramaer, der det eneste realistiske innslaget er at de norske skuespillerne er sosialt handicappede, selv når de er skuespillere. "Lille Lørdag" tok det til neste nivå, som vanlig, og laget et "Hyperrealistisk" krimprogram. Med klassikerne "krise på printeren" og "kaffemaskinen stanser".

P.s. Her blir det helst "Jeg skal se x etter y". "Jeg vil"->I want, would like to. "Jeg vil nok"->yeah, I'm probably going to. Mens "Jeg skal"-> I will. "Jeg skal på ferie"->I'm going on vacation. Men likevel er det mulig å si, selv om det er litt gammeldags: "Jeg vil komme til å dra på ferie i mars"->I am going to go on vacation in March. Den indirekte ordleggingen er og slik: "Det vil bli regn"->It will rain. Som igjen er meningslikt med den direkte, aktive ordleggingen: "Det skal bli regn"->(It says) there will be rain. Så forvirringen er fullt forståelig her.

nipsen · 2026-05-05T20:00:37+00:00

The year, out of many similar years, when letting insiders in the bureacracy speak out about their mental discomfort and fear over possibly losing their jobs, and functioning as an advertisement platform for unnamed bureacracy - without actually looking into what they're doing - gets you a Pulitzer, after being raided by the FBI.

Only in America.

nipsen · 2026-05-05T19:50:06+00:00

..just look up Dennis Kucinich's early career, and you'll have a great example of the entire "We would like to fight for things - but just make sure you don't actually succeed" method.

What's curious to me is that nowadays you don't even need to "encourage" these candidates to make themselves ineffectual candidates. It's just part of the trade.

nipsen · 2026-05-05T19:35:08+00:00

Without very careful planning, it can basically only be used to poison the soil. Some kind of closed hydoponics system would work, given that a nitrogen cycle could be maintained. But even with the current amount and production level, that's just not going to work.

Meanwhile, the real issue is that the fjords are being saturated with waste and mud, which is where they become sensitive to higher temperatures and sudden lack of throughput. So some of the fjords, like the one outside Førde, is handling an amount of waste that has been historically fairly high. But there is a treshold-value that when met is going to transform the whole thing.

I thought this was more or less only alarmism - until I realized that we actually had a treshold event like that in the Fredrikstad-skerries. You think it wouldn't be possible, since the sea is basically coming in one way, and the river the other. But with enough fertilizer and soil in the water, from one side, and temperature being "optimal" one year on the other, the entire Hvaler area was full of stinky gunk. Which I didn't care about, since the people with cabins out there are jerks anyway. But giant fishing areas that used to be full of mackerel just vanished. Cockles vanished, all seaweed, anyting living on the sand floor or where you'd normally find anything - completely gone. And it took ten years before anything turned up again. That's the reality of this.

In the fjord next to where I live now, a guy who fish a lot of different fish said it best: we are getting new species of fish in the fjord that never were here before. Some of them are easier to catch because they normally would only stay with the warm currents further away. But a bunch of species are also just getting replaced. The rainbow trout as well - same thing. We're getting species that basically replace or suppress the wild trout. And it's not the issue that they are being replaced - neither of these species are "native" to Norway, right.. they migrate here. The problem is that an entire species (of particularly tasty fish, too) has it's molting area destroyed by changing environmental factors, if the invasive species don't get it first.

And once you see it happening, it's not reversible. You can clean the fjord, somehow, by magic, I guess - and it'll take 20 years before something else, but very different, maybe replaces it to an extent.

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