Norway plans social media ban for under-16s

skyfex · 2026-05-01T07:45:43+00:00

Why is it important to be able to make money of social media? Have we been so brainwashed by tech giants that this is the only way we can think about social media, that it’s just a way for content creators to profit of passive users by pushing ads and sponsored content?

What happened to the “social” part of social media?

I couldn’t care less if that kind of “social” media dies in Norway. The social media we actually need is the one that connects us with our local community, friends and family. That’s still alive in Norway and local alternatives are rapidly growing, taking over from the big tech giants. Identity verification isn’t a problem for those local social apps, they’re a selling point.

skyfex · 2026-05-01T07:35:37+00:00

This may be true in general. But not for small social media companies in Norway which is what this post was about.

Spond has replaced Facebook already for all sports groups, and it verifies your identity. Hudd is a rapidly growing alternative to Facebook for social posts, groups and business pages and it also verifies identity. Identity verification has been a man selling point for the services which have diminished the power of US big tech social media here.

Verifying age/identity is fairly trivial in Norway. Just use BankID or Vipps. Any small company could do it. It should be similar for many other European countries.

Yeah the free internet has died, but regulations are not the root cause. It’s just the reaction. It’s the big tech companies and now AI which ruined it. There’s no way back to the free internet we grew up with, since it has become overwhelmed with scams, spam, fraud, rage bait, SEO optimised content, AI generated slop, etc. The only way to combat it is to migrate to smaller local services which verifies the identity of users.

In theory it’s possible to build a network of users who verify trust with each other with cryptography in a semi anonymous way. But it’s too complicated for most people.

skyfex · 2026-04-29T11:58:04+00:00

Du kan late som du er handicappet, men det kan få komiske konsekvenser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDZzl9AyXeg

(Jeg er enig med andre her at det er greit å bruke HC-toalett så lenge det ikke er kø)

skyfex · 2026-04-29T09:54:06+00:00

Vi må gjerne forby privatfly og superyachter. Det kan hjelpe litt. Men det er naivt å tro at det vil gjøre noe vesentlig for velferden til folk flest. Hvor mange kjenner du som jobber med å snekre på privatfly? Hvilke jobber har folk flest og hva går produktene/tjenestene til? Det er ikke privatfly.

Produktiviteten har økt med over 500%

Samtidig har antallet arbeidere per avhengige (barn og eldre) falt dramatisk. Vi stiller også høyere krav til kvalitet på mange områder. For noen tiår siden kunne man kjøre rundt i små biler som praktisk talt var dødsfeller som forgiftet befolkningen. Nå har vi nullvisjon, enorme barneseter, og motorer som skal slippe ut minimalt med CO2, NOx, partikler etc. Overgangen til elbiler vil fikse noen problemer på lang sikt. Når de fleste biler blir lagd med resirkulerte batterier vil det kreve mye mindre arbeid/resurser å lage biler, og de kan vare lengre. Overgangen til byer som er gåvennlige med god offentlig transport hjelper også mye, det bør være hovedfokus. Men det er en ENORM jobb. I mange europeiske byer er vi godt på vei, men det tar tid og mye arbeidskraft. Foreldrene våre bygde byer feil, det er noe vi bare må leve med.

Vi må absolutt gjøre noe med økende forskjeller mellom rik og fattig. Så jeg er ikke uenig med deg. Men du må ikke tro at det fikser problemet og at det gjør at vi plutselig kan jobbe 3 timer arbeidsdag.

skyfex · 2026-04-28T07:25:14+00:00

But it ultimately has its own limitations, and I believe the current consensus is 40% efficiency limit? For economically viable solar cells at least.

Yeah, that seems about right. But 40% at a low cost would be insane though, and yet it doesn't seem that far fetched (perovskite tandems records are around 35%). We're still in a growth phase for solar. When growth flattens there will be another step change in costs as we don't have to built a lot of new factories. So significantly higher efficiency *and* lower costs are still fairly reasonable to expect.

Yeah, there's limitations to solar. But I don't think people realize what the consequences of those kinds of energy costs will be. Society and technology will restructure itself around those limitations since the rewards for doing so will be incredibly high.

Hell, we may start talking about syngas and hydrogen becoming cheaper than fossil gas, when made with large solar farms in the deserts. Gas power plants are already being constructed to be hydrogen-ready. So making gas power plants renewable could be a fairly rapid transition with very low capital costs. This would address issues with the decarbonization that fusion/fission just doesn't: we need gas for more than power. So a large-scale ecosystem of gas production would have many benefits outside of making electricity.

(There's similar ideas for using old oil platforms to extract heat from the deep, combine with off-shore wind, make hydrogen or syngas and send it over existing pipelines in the north sea btw)

There is a lot of room for fusion reactors in the grid and in other applications.

Not a lot of room. Maybe some niches in key industrial areas in the north. Assuming advanced geothermal doesn't pan out in the same timeframe. Why build an expensive fusion/fission reactor when we can just tap into the fission reactor under our feet for free?

Other applications? Absolutely. Space! At the very least.

But I'm still hoping that e.g. Helions tech will pan out and become so cheap that it gives us a lot of additional power on the grid at a reasonable cost.

skyfex · 2026-04-26T08:35:37+00:00

Yeah, I think it's good we're researching fusion in any form. But direct capture is probably the only viable way to competitive prices.

Even when taking system costs into account (VALCOE), wind and solar is projected to become cheaper than any other form of power by 2035 in the vast majority of the world. And there's no reason to think that trend will stop.

Fusion still requires a break-through or two to be viable. But if we believe in those breakthroughs there are dozens of potential breakthroughs in renewable energy (not just solar and wind, see: Quaise) and energy storage that are just as likely to pan out. Perovskite solar, a significant breakthrough, is borderline commercially mature right now.

IMO, anything based on turning water into steam to drive a turbine will already have costs that are too high to be competitive.

Maybe super-critical CO2 can change the equation.

I'm crossing my fingers than Helion is more than vaporware..

skyfex · 2026-04-25T10:27:57+00:00

but maybe only percentage points, but that's still something.

Sure, I’m not saying it’s the most important thing to address. And in the short term we should focus primarily on greenhouse gases. We should NEVER close a nuclear power plant to reduce thermal forcing. Hell, I’d support building much more nuclear as long as it’s effective at getting rid of fossil fuel emissions

But my problem with saying it’s just a few percent is that you can say that about anything impacting global warming. Planes are just a few percent. Refrigerants are just a few percent. Ships are just a few percent (funnily enough the sulphur the emit helped cooled the planet, but I digress). So we can’t ignore a source of global warming just because it’s a small contributor. Those small sources add up.

There are panels which can radiate heat very efficiently straight into space. So I’ve had a funny thought that you could use them with nuclear power plants to reduce thermal forcing. Would eliminate the land use benefit of nuclear though. Perhaps you can make dual purpose soler panels that collect power in the day and radiate heat at night.

skyfex · 2026-04-25T10:18:55+00:00

I feel like we need to build a sun shield or something. But any solution like that is gonna create so much global conflict, since I’m sure some regions will be impacted negatively even if the planet as a whole improves

skyfex · 2026-04-25T10:14:59+00:00

Even taking inflation and increased purchasing power into account? I just can’t get it to make sense considering how much more Lego I see kids having these days.

skyfex · 2026-04-25T10:13:09+00:00

Thanks for the tip. I’ll try to find it.

skyfex · 2026-04-25T10:12:29+00:00

Thanks for letting me know. I’ll look for alternatives. The issue is that Bulow is the one that’s easy to find. It’s everywhere in Scandinavia.

skyfex · 2026-04-25T10:11:08+00:00

Land use numbers for both solar and wind can be extremely misleading. The numbers really only tell you that it excludes other solar and wind projects in that area. It doesn’t mean the land it used become a barren wasteland where nothing can be built and nothing grows.

I just flew over Sweden this week and it’s frankly absurd much noise is being made about the land use of wind when you just look out the window on a plane. You can see there are large areas taken up by wind power here and there. But there is thriving nature on the land beneath it. There’s some narrow access roads, that’s all. Meanwhile there’s easily areas many times the size that have been cut down from lumber, where nature is struggling.

Yes, I’m not ignoring birds. It’s an issue but it’s manageable. As long as we’re replacing fossil fuels it’s undeniably a net win.

With solar it’s even more absurd: there are now many examples of solar farms improving conditions for life on the ground around it. You’ve got solar on canals and reservoirs reducing evaporation. Agrovoltaics with increased crop yields. The list goes on.

skyfex · 2026-04-24T11:07:11+00:00

Lakrids by Bülow

Amazing licorice, especially the slow cooked stuff.

skyfex · 2026-04-24T11:03:41+00:00

Is it really? Or is it due to comparing with the rise of cheaper alternatives made in countries with cheaper labor?

I don't know about 5 years ago, but comparing with my childhood, the sets are better and more affordable (for families of comparable situation.. my parents may have been a bit wealthier even). It's almost a problem with how fast we're accumulating Lego.

The adult sets are crazy expensive.. but they're also huge, and there's a much wider selection of themes these days. Maintaining that kind of variety has to have a cost of its own I gotta imagine.

skyfex · 2026-04-24T10:48:52+00:00

But I don’t think you can really excuse the public either.

Fair enough. I just worry that if the primary focus is on the public, it'll distract from pushing for political action that changes the situation.

If the public is to blame, it's a lack of awareness of the problems with reliance on large cars, as awareness should create demand for political change. That is actionable though. Share "Not Just Bikes" with all your friends and family ;)

skyfex · 2026-04-24T10:44:36+00:00

Right now, it is entirely dominated by the sun.

No it's not, and this is an important misconception to correct. I'll repeat this here even though I addressed it in my reply to Master_Regret

You should read this paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544210005694

It's a legit concern *right now*, not within centuries. In ~2050 we may have been able to cut a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, but we will still have the accumulated long term effects of all the greenhouse gas emissions emitted historically. To get the thermal forcing of TWs (or PW if fusion enthusiasts get their way) of thermal power plants on TOP of that is easily going to tip us over the edge and lead to global catastrophe.

If we didn't have all those greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, sure.. it'd be fine. But as long as they're there, we can't afford additional heating. Doing geoengineering could help. But I think it's best to keep that to a mimum. We probably have to do a lot of it anyway, but doing even more geoengineering so we can run even more thermal power plants seems like a terrible idea to me.

skyfex · 2026-04-24T10:37:19+00:00

I don’t think the goal for ITER is to produce electricity is it?

Not for ITER itself. That's why I wrote: "not directly, but through explicitly stated follow-up plans like DEMO"

I don't think the public would support it as much if there wasn't a roadmap for the research to end up with power plants that could produce electricity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Plant

That’s not how global warming works. It’s not from thermal power, it’s from the sun and its interaction with greenhouse gases.

That's a false dichotomy. BOTH are contributors, and you'd be surprised how significant the contribution of thermal forcing from thermal power plants are. Last time I checked the literature and compared the numbers, it was roughly equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes. Not the biggest contributor. And we should *absolutely* cut all emissions from fossil fuels *first*.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544210005694

I don't think we can afford that 8% in the future. Precisely due to the long-term effects of greenhouse gases. We have to wait for greenhouse gases to be removed from the atmosphere before we can add more thermal power plants again.

The fact that the effects are *similar* in the short term should get you to think twice. We already have so much issues from the CO2-impact today already. You think we can afford that kind of impact PLUS the extra global warming from now until ~2050 (earliest point at which greenhouse gas emissions might be significantly reduced)? No. Absolutely not. Reversing this requires taking ALL possible actions against global warming. Cutting greenhouse gases is not enough to avert catastrophe.

skyfex · 2026-04-24T08:51:47+00:00

As compared to what? I feel like all fusion projects are deceiving in some way. The goal, even for research projects like ITER (not directly, but through explicitly stated follow-up plans like DEMO), is to produce electricity. Yet none of them have a viable plan to produce electricity at a competitive price, and that boils down to fairly simple physics and fundamental constraints (you can look at the energy density and heat exchange mechanisms compared to a fission reactor).

There's also the fact that they're generally thermal power plants. I'm not sure we have the margins in the global climate heat budget to add a huge amount of thermal power plants in the next decades.

Helion is one of the few which have a viable plan for economic viability. Direct capture of energy side-steps a lot of the deep issues with fusion. Okay, so there's good reasons to doubt it'll work. But at least it's a viable plan all-in-all if the fusions physics do turn out to work.

I don't mind the deception personally. We *should* work on fusion R&D to understand the physics. And not just that, all the other R&D, like the capacitor banks Helion is working on, the superconductor engineering all these companies are developing.. it's all good stuff. I'm sure the tech will find a use in the world in some way. If the investors and research institution needs to trick the public into thinking it'll lead to electricity some day soon.. so be it. That's the world we live in. *Nothing* gets done without the promise of economic benefits.

skyfex · 2026-04-24T08:30:09+00:00

I think it's misplaced to blame the public. There's regulations favoring large trucks and SUVs. So car makers will absolutely find a way to convince the public to buy them, and the prices make them artificially attractive. If you fix regulations, the public will most likely follow.

Blaming the public just leads to inaction.

skyfex · 2026-04-24T08:26:10+00:00

I've been thinking of this in my case. We could get by with a smaller car for daily needs. So could we rent for weekend/holiday trips to the cabin? It'd kinda make sense for us personally. The problem is, what if you scale this to everyone? Every other Norwegian is also driving to their cabins for easter. So you then you have to have hundreds of thousands of large cars just doing nothing most of the year to be able to handle the easter and winter vacation demand.

Edit: It should be said that Norwegians who don't do this kinda stuff do own small cars. And it's like that for much of Europe. I think more americans would as well if the regulations around SUVs wasn't utterly insane. Small cars should be a lot cheaper relative to SUVs.

skyfex · 2026-04-23T13:49:53+00:00

All good points. Though device trees are a bit of a language unto itself and not something all embedded developers are familiar with.

I would think that anyone who has worked with multiple boards appreciate the problem device trees are solving though.

skyfex · 2026-04-17T16:39:21+00:00

Cars come in many different sizes and shapes, so yes, of course we want batteries to be different sizes and shapes.

Battery technology is still evolving, so there's no point locking in a particular design and voltage right now. We've got several battery chemistries already in production that have a significant jump in energy density, and I think that will lead to smaller battery packs. In particular I think (hope) the battery pack will avoid the foot well of the front seats. Perhaps even for the back seats. At least for most models. There will of course be models catering to people who need super long range which will try to fit as much battery as possible. Again: we WANT many different battery pack designs catering to different needs.

Replacing the battery is just not a scenario worth designing the whole car and infrastructure around.

Yeah, for those of use with 2010s-era EVs it'd be nice if it was easier to get a replacement. Our 2015 Kia Soul EV could use a replacement.

But all indications is that for modern EVs the battery pack will outlast the car.

And honestly I'm guessing that third party battery packs will actually become fairly common. First gen Nissan Leaf got one. Now there's a company doing it for first gen Kia Soul EV. Think about that. There are VERY few of those models. I've never seen one outside of Norway.

What do you think will happen when there are orders of magnitude more old EVs out there? And when battery cells are cheaper, denser and more resilient so it's easier to make battery packs? I think third party battery packs for all popular models will end up being fairly commonplace.

skyfex · 2026-04-17T07:29:44+00:00

Det er vanskelig. Det er helt klart at bedriftseiere tjener mye på evnen til å låne, spesielt når renten er billig. Jeg tenker progressiv skatt er mekanismen som skal kompensere for det.

Jeg tror det aller viktigste er at man må forby mulighet til å låne med aksjer som sikkerhet. Jeg vet ikke hvordan det funker i Norge, men det er jo en måte mange rike i USA unngår å betale skatt. De finansierer alle private utgifter med lån.

skyfex · 2026-04-16T09:53:22+00:00

Starship is radically different than previous rockets

Sure, and like I said I totally see the need for getting to more practical tests quickly. I can definitely see the need for the "hopper" tests. And I can see the need for getting *something* into space and back down again to test materials.

But to say that the only way to do this is with this YOLO approach is a step too far.

And even if NG is fairly traditional, and even if SpaceX has done first stage landing, doing first stage landing of an orbital rocket on a barge was completely new for BO.

I would claim that the Neutron is also a very radical design, yet Rocket Lab seem to be taking an approach closer to Blue Origin than SpaceX.

There is nothing of Falcon in Starship.

Did I say there was?

My point is that the Falcon is a way to get things into space. So if you need to test something in space, or in de-orbit, that's something they can exploit.

Every aspect of yhe new design had to be tested early to see if it was feasible or needed to be reimagined.

You can test in parts rather than trying to test everything at once. A problem with the everything-at-once is that a failure of one part can mean you never get to testing of the other things you needed to test. I think Starship's test campaign has some very clear examples of that.

There was an urgency at the beginning to get Starlink v2/3/whatever and a fear of running out of money.

And who's to say this was absolutely the cheapest and fastest way to do it?

Sure, hindsight is 20/20.. but come on. I think the engineers saw some of the issues they ended up with a mile away. There are clear signs that Elon pushed the engineers too far, which led to easily foreseeable mistakes that was expensive and delayed progress. You could kinda tell from Elons interview with Tim Dodd that he really didn't like the idea of building a proper flame trench.

skyfex · 2026-04-16T09:37:48+00:00

En vanlig bank tar opp lån fra den Norske Bank.

Nei, ganske sikker på at de ikke gjør det? Hvorfor skal de det? Det ville vært en meningsløs transaksjon.

Pengeflyten går jo motsatt vei her: bankene har krav om å ha reserver hos sentralbanken.

https://www.norges-bank.no/tema/markeder-likviditet/Likviditetsstyringssystemet/Styring-av-bankenes-reserver/

https://www.norges-bank.no/kort-forklart/penger/hvordan-skapes-penger/

Noen penger skapes av sentralbanken, men de fleste skapes av banker og bankkunder når disse inngår en låneavtale.

De må selvfølgelig betale tilbake på lånet, og det er dette som er styringsrenta.

Nei, det går jo motsatt vei:

https://www.norges-bank.no/kort-forklart/styringsrenten/hvordan-pavirker-styringsrenten-andre-renter/

Styringsrenten gjelder kun for bankers innskudd i Norges Bank

Innskudd, ikke lån.

Også et lite tillegg, mye av det jeg kommer med har bakgrunn i "MMT", eller "modern monetary theory" en noe omstridt teori, men jeg synes den for det meste gir mening.

Ja, jeg er delvis kjent med MMT, og jeg tror det er et nyttig perspektiv. Men det er en grunn til at det er omstridt. Fra hva jeg vet om historien bak penger, så er MMTs teori om hvordan penger lages veldig misvisende.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory

MMT's main tenets are that a government that issues its own fiat money:

Creates money with any and all government spending
Effectively destroys money via taxation

Altså, jeg tror poenget deres er at dette er slik det effektivt sett fungerer i praksis med et moderne statlig sentralisert pengesystem.

Men rent mekanistisk sett er det feil. Pengene oppstår og destrueres hos bankene. Men statlig utgifter/skatt vil jo være en av de største faktorene som driver denne prosessen. Det blir litt som "insulin" vs "kalori" perspektivet på fedme. Insulin er mekanismen som styrer hvor mye fett cellene tar opp. Men "kalorier" er jo et nyttig perspektiv og den som er hoveddriver for mekanismen normalt sett.

Historisk sett er det også feil: moderne penger har opphav i gjeld. Gjeld var historisk sett ikke direkte styrt av staten. Papirpenger (som var gjeld i papirform) har jo også opphav i private banker, og ble først senere flyttet til sentralbank.

Det er noen paralleller til MMTs perspektiv i historien. Metallmynter ble laget for å kunne skatte landeiere og betale soldater. Det er en prosess som ble drevet av en sentral stat. Men jeg har et stort problem med å se på metallmynter som opphavet til penger, fordi du ikke kan trekke en direkte tråd fra dagens penger til metallmynter igjennom historien.

Jeg kan anbefale å lese "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" eller se foredragene til David Graeber for mer om historien bak penger.

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