Notices by Veronica Olsen 🏳️‍🌈🇳🇴🌻 (veronica@mastodon.online)

Excellent!

A Norwegian court has determined that crypto mining is not "industry", and therefore can be excluded in local zoning plans for industry.

Municipalities in Norway want to exclude them because of the huge energy demands and very few jobs created.

This is a good decision. These data centres are a massive waste of energy and resources.

#Crypto #Miming #Energy #Law #Norway

https://rett24.no/articles/staten-vant-ankesak-om-reguleringsplan--kryptoutvinning-er-ikke-industri

I just felt like sharing some random every day thing.

It's my birthday, so I took the day off from work and instead had lunch with my sister. I missed her baby shower last month since I was sick that weekend, so we went shopping for some things for her soon to arrive baby. I also got her other kid a toy. An alpaca, and apparently she loved it! She's almost 2. 😊

Glad to see she's inherited the "must have lots of stuffed animal toys" gene the rest of us possess!

Norwegians are notoriously bad at caring about information security. I'm sure the fact that we in general have a high confidence in our government has much to do with it. As a people we tend to be incredibly naïve when it comes to Big Tech.

But I'm glad to see that Signal has risen in the top downloads in the Play Store since Signalgate broke. It was at 72nd place then, and just now it sits at 19th.

I would love it if more people dropped Messenger!

#Signal #Signalgate #Meta #BigTech #Norway

@aral @SeaFury @sarajw Same!

Haha, good one!

#Cryptography

Whatever it is those incompetent clowns are doing over there in 'murica, I got multiple contacts who weren't on Signal popping up there in the last day or two.

It's good advertising for the service at least!

#Signal

"We noticed that you have maybe not had the time yet to complete our Guest Satisfaction Survey following your stay at the hotel ..."

Yes, that must be it. As opposed to being so fed up with my inbox being filled with surveys, customer feedback and review requests multiple times for every interaction I have with a business that I'm just about to add a spam filter dedicated to blocking this noise.

#Feedback #Spam #CustomerSatisfaction

When watching SciFi series like Babylon 5 in the past I always thought it was a little unrealistic how obvious these fascists were.

Looking at the US today I realise that this isn't unrealistic at all. These people aren't subtle. They don't have to be, because enough people, who'd otherwise agree this was wrong if it happens elsewhere or at another time, will go to great lengths to convince themselves this is fine and it doesn't affect them.

The Trump regime has already threatened legal actions against businesses w/DEIA policies. Now he's threatening universities that allow "illegal" protests, and threatening to imprison, expel or deport students.

This is another step towards the criminalisation of dissent, and full-on fascism. No doubt inspired by Putin. Whether it will get that far remains to be seen, but it's inching closer.

This reminds me of the same steps from the 90s SciFi series Babylon 5.

#UsPol #Fascism #Trump #Babylon5

After each Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode has been upscaled and encoded, I need to double check with my media library what the correct episode name is. They aren't always in the correct order on the DVD.

One thing I notice when doing this is how many episodes I recognise and can match to the correct title after just seing a few seconds of it. I may have watched DS9 too many times? 😁

Nah. Unpossible.

#SciFi #StarTrek #DS9 #Upscale

From season 6 discs 5 and 6 I immediately recognised "In the Pale Moonlight", which is my favourite episode, and "Time's Orphan". I also recognised "Profit and Lace" quite quickly. One of my least favourite episodes of the entire series.

@obrhoff I have a write-up of the first time I did this, back in 2023. https://mastodon.online/@veronica/110963529478679796

@obrhoff I posted a few examples from the pilot episode when I started the job. It is the episode with the worst quality on DVD. https://mastodon.online/@veronica/113993327905803520

I'm re-running my AI upscale of Star Trek Deep Space Nine to HD, and I'm just about finished with Season 2.

I check every episode before copying them to my library, and I'm noticing that almost every episode in Season 2 either starts with one of the runabouts flying across a star field, or some other ship, but mostly a runabout.

A bunch of episodes also start with Bashir and Garak. So much repetition. 😅

#StarTrek #DS9 #SciFi #Upscale

As mentioned, I've also gotten around to getting myself an electric car. One concern that was raised by a family member is the allegedly high fire risk in EVs.

I was suspicious of this claim, and looked it up. 1 out of 4 cars on Norwegian roads are EVs, and we have solid data on car fires dating back almost a decade. The data is pretty consistent. The chance of a car fire is 4-5 times higher in fossil fuel cars.

So this is basically anti-EV misinformation.

#Cars #EV #Safety #Fire

Well, look who showed up in MacGyver Season 5 Episode 13. 😁

It's Christopher Judge, AKA Teal'c!

#MacGyver #Stargate #TV #80s

@konstantin Hope you feel better soon!

@konstantin Season 6 is great! I'm on season 9.

@mkj @hellomiakoda @jt_rebelo @syndical @bipartisan @libreoffice

Microsoft are some of the worst out there when it comes to UX. They're certainly not a standard to strive for.

True, Open Source is hit and miss due to resources, but I've used Libre Office for over a decade, and it has been pretty damn solid.

If it's true that DeepSeek used OpenAI's model when training its own, it is hilarious irony that OpenAI is pissed about it.

They themselves stole intellectual property for their own profit, and it is a huge mistake that they're getting away with it in the first place.

I guess the saying that there's no honour among thieves is appropriate here.

#AI #OpenAI #DeepSeek