Having used Teams for years in an enterprise environment, I despise it. It is absolutely useless as a text chat client, especially for sharing code snippets. It took years to stabilize even basic features. Video conferencing works ok but is unpleasant overall. Searching through conversations and organizing content is a nightmare.

But the worst thing is that almost every single enterprise here in Sweden has gone all-in on Microsoft. The selection process is no longer based on merit, but on "free as in sunk cost", so the "free beer" argument for FOSS software is no longer working.

And the general Windows experience is just deteriorating on top of that. So I welcome anything to make alternatives more viable. At this point, Microsoft is "old iron" and the reason it is chosen often seems to be "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft".

Today I was told to completely power off my laptop before putting it in my backpack. Because apparently sleep does not work on Windows 10. It has worked on every other laptop I had, from my X41 Thinkpad running Linux back in 2005 to my HP ZBook running Windows 7 at my last workplace.

Linus Tech Tips made a video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Apparently it is not a bug, but a feature!

Link (repo): https://github.com/vermaseren/...
Homepage: https://www.nikhef.nl/~form/
Written in C, using libgmp and libz. Has complete autoconf/autotools setup.

Thanks for the tip, but I already own a RadonEye RD200: http://radonftlab.com/radon-se...

It is a Bluetooth-connected logger with an excellent app and a real-time display. It measures in 10 minute intervals and applies a sliding window average. It can give a momentary reading in about an hour and runs on 12V, so you can even spot-check buildings on the go. Mine has been going strong for 3+ years now, but officially needs calibration after 2 years.

You can download graph data over Bluetooth as text files via the app. I want to hack it so I can export the data rapidly to a PC, but the also have a Wifi-model for this use case, albeit more expensive.

I was focusing mostly on concrete due to the fact that it is such a widespread problem here, used in many old apartment buildings. But radon also comes from the ground, especially rock- and sand-rich environments. In Sweden our municipalities publishes color-coded radon maps based on data from the Swedish Geographical Survey office. You can use these to get a rough estimate of the risk.

The best thing is to actually measure the levels, provided you can stomach a bad result. Unfortunately in Sweden, if you are aware of elevated levels you might be required to disclose this when selling your house. This creates a strong incentive to NOT test. Myself I have an electronic CMS (Continous Measurement System) that shows the levels in real-time, but you can use disposable test pods that you send off to a lab to get a reading from. These should be deployed during winter, when the radon levels typically peak due to environmental conditions.

The spanish nuclear protection agency, Consejo de Seguridad Nuclear (https://www.csn.es/en/) has an older, 40 minute long video that covers a lot of details. It is luckily in english and has neat music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Some important points in the video:
https://youtu.be/hOn4Qk-XfJ0?t... 20:00 Radiation alarms goes off at a nuclear power plant in 1985 due to radiation from home.
https://youtu.be/hOn4Qk-XfJ0?t... Nordic countries, oil crisis history, air exchange rate, building materials.
https://youtu.be/hOn4Qk-XfJ0?t... 23:10 Measurement methods.
https://youtu.be/hOn4Qk-XfJ0?t... 26:56 Risks with radon.

During the last oil crisis in the 70:s, we insulated our homes heavily and cut down on ventilation. This created elevated levels of radon. And now we face another energy crisis. Funny how things repeat themselves. As a side note, as mentioned in the video, the standards set by the Euroatom directive will probably prohibit export of swedish concrete to the rest of EU unless it is diluted. It is that radioactive; confirmed by reports from the industry themselves.

I am curious how this affects the view on radon. Radon is a noble gas emitted from natural rocks which decays and releases alpha particles. This is extremely bad to inhale and is the leading cause of lung cancer after smoking, according to present knowledge.

There is an excellent and dramatic TED talk on the subject here: https://www.ted.com/talks/aaro...

I have long suspected the mixture of radon and fine particulate matter to be dangerous, as radon daughters are known to attach to them. This is even used in animal studies to find out where nano-particles migrate to when inhaled.

In Sweden, the rock material used for concrete is very rich in uranium and historically we have used alum shale to create lightweight "gas" concrete. The latter has high enough uranium content that it was once mined for our indigenous nuclear programme.

The use of this construction material did not stop until the late eighties and ever single house I have lived in on the west coast of Sweden has used this conctrete. Our current radon level limits are twice that recommended by the WHO and 45% higher than US EPA limits.

A recent vote on lowering the allowable limits to WHO standards failed, motivated soley by cost. Despite 500 yearly lung cancer cases in Sweden (compared to 350 yearly traffic deaths) it was considered cheaper to let people die than to fix the problem.

As a swedish citizen, I am unfamiliar with details of the britsh real estate market. But I do see similar pushes here in Gothenburg, where old, open and green-rich areas are replaced with new, closed, concrete-covered ones. Higher density, yet much higher living cost for less space. Gated off with code locks and cameras, unheard of and unneeded in the old areas. All the paved ground causes massive water flow to the sewer system, overloading it, whereas all the old green served as distributed water absorbtion, ground water infiltration and biodiversity islands.

We're having national elections in about a week, a lot of opportunit to talk about these things with representatives have presented itself. 15+ years of loose money policies have redistributed enormous wealth. "Growth" nowadays seems to be less about ingenuity and improvement and more about inflating real estate value. The article laments legally mandated "equality" calling it ill-defined, wanting it replaced with "growth". It accuses democratic participation for slowing growth; I suspect the proponents of this particular definition of "growth" disproportionally benefits from it.

The saddest part is that inflating real estate is something easily done by any politician, while creating sustainable, true growth is something that can only be done by smart, hard-working people under a honest government.

I did not dislike the potatoes analogy, I thought it was a clever. Your point was that hoarding was bad for society. Once you got me to agree on that, you could point out how potatoes spoil over time and exclaim; "..and that's inflation for you!".

I am not sure why we are using these analogies. A savings account in a bank with rates above inflation, backed by deposit insurance by the federal government, is ideal for normal people who are saving up yet need access to the funds in short order.

But if the asset you are saving up to appreciates so much faster due to monetary and fiscal policy, you are forced to take greater risk. Either by taking out loans or high-risk investments. And investments in real estate are not even productive. The result is just a greatly destabilized financial system.

The real estate market in Sweden is insane. It even displaces investments in productive assets, yet our central bank directly buys bonds in this market to further boost it and keeps interest rates at zero. We had a rate of -1.5% for several years. And the mortgages are tax deductible, payed for by other tax payers who does not benefit from it. Dept ratio is at a record high and keeps rising. Municipalities benefits as the value of their land goes up, being sold for new developments. And homeowners benefit, making it politically impossible to phase it out as other nordic countries do.

Investing isn't immoral. Quite the opposite. Directing resources to worthwhile investments is an incredible important function in the economy. It should be rewarded with increased gains. Not forced under threat of devaluement. There is a simple solution to this which existed when I was a kid; a savings account with interest that exceeds inflation rate. In Sweden our pension funds are now forced to take excessive risks to meet their promised minimal goals, to the point that they have had to change their governing rules.

Your potato analogy is interesting since potatoes will spoil over time, so not investing the potatoes will make everyone worse off. However, potatoes can not be created out of thin air as fiat money can. It takes seed potatoes as well as time and hard work. I think that expanding the money supply excessively simply concentrates wealth rather than making everyone better off.

All I am asking for is a safe, easy way for everyone in society to isolate their savings against value erosion. And for the erosion to be measurable and verifiable.

I agree with your conclusion that inflation does not target the rich and that it causes asset bubbles. Which is why I think it is immoral, the single largest transfer of wealth in the economy, forcing normal people into the stock market and rewarding those who indebt themselves by taking from those who saves. Then we subsidize the asset bubble via mortgage tax deductions, while decrying rent control for not being "free market".

I don't agree with your solution however. It only solves the asset bubble part.It scares me that something so important as inflation seems to have no standardized way of being calculated across countries or time. The quality factors alone seems to vastly affect the outcome. The cost-of-living index seems more honest in this regard.

Hydroelectric power accounts for more than 50 percent of Sweden's energy production. Most of this production is located in the northern parts, along with major mining and forrest operations. Transmission capacity to the southern parts are rather poor and has not kept pace with demand. The closure of several nuclear reactors in the southern and central parts have only worsened this. Massive wind farms are erected in the northern parts, as the air force forbids them in the southern and central areas.

The Hybrit project is backed by state-owned Vattenfall, whose name literally means "Waterfall". They operate many of the hydroelectric and nuclear power plants. The idea is to use "green" energy to create hydrogen through electrolysis and fuel the steel furnaces with it.

I say "green" because Sweden had to fight the EU to actually classify hydroelectric power as "green", part of the reason is probably this project as it carries a lot of prestige. The reason we built nuclear plants was that almost all rivers were tapped for energy already, with growing public opposition to it's expansion. For decades none of these hydroelectric power plants were subjected to any environmental impact review. But that all changed recently, with the expected result that many of them will have to be closed down. A future energy mix with unpredictable renewables will need stored energy, which hydro (and hydrogen) provides.

But the Hybrit project alone is expected to consume 55 TWh per year. That is ONE THIRD of all power produced in Sweden. And there is a competing, privately funded company just starting up as well. I don't think the people up north are that interested in sending power down to us city dwellers any longer - with good reason. We have interesting times ahead.

Technical details on Hybrit in English: https://www.hybritdevelopment....

Svenska Nyheter (satire program, Swedish) about Hybrit, the source for 55 TWh figure via Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

The Swedish government is currently running a pilot project called E-Krona (our regular currency is called Krona). We currently have 0 percent interest rate, and had negative interest from February 2015 through January 2020: https://www.riksbank.se/sv/sta...

I was unaware of digital currencies having per-person interest and purchase blocking. I will read up on the technical implementation details of this pilot project. Thanks for highlighting these horrible new potential features.

This is not even a particularily worth entry for a Darwin Award, simply tragic. But I do like mis-quoting my favorite film of all time, so here goes:

"Death.. finds a way."

TL;DR:

* Cloud-accelerated Chromium fork, appears to be closed source.
* No custom hardware client platform as far as I can tell.
* No source available on GitHub: https://github.com/mightyapp
* They store your browsing history.
* They keep logs.
* Your information will be stored abroad.
* Claims to hide ads and cookie acceptance forms, no implementation details.
* No information if extensions are supported.
* Cookies claimed to be under user control.
* Not HIPAA or SOC-2 compliant.
* No pricing information seemingly available.

Front page of https://www.mightyapp.com/
"You will no longer see cookies notices or ads while browsing"

Interesting that they offer adblocking, but perhaps this mean that they just automatically agree to everything and/or send other identifiers to advertisers, like a custom GUID?

https://www.mightyapp.com/secu...

"Your data will never be shared with another person or entity. There are strict policies internally about viewing someone’s browser history: it is prohibited."

Merely prohibited? Why not encrypt all user data with a key you do not have possession of?

"Your cookies are stored on Mighty’s servers on a virtual machine that is isolated from other people’s machines and has tight control over who can access the machine directly. We access cookies stored on our servers so that your browser can be blazing fast versus incurring extra latency. We don't store those cookies anywhere else and you have complete control over which cookies are stored on your instance."

Unclear what they mean by accessing it for browser performance. Do they cache it locally on the Chromium client? Unlikely, as that is probably user access. Sounds like they scrape all user's cookies in order to cache whatever slow third-party requests they regularily make, most likely ad brokers. If replaced by dummy requests, this could enhance privacy.

"Various logs have different retention periods but for most logs that we ingest for debugging purposes only and are stripped of sensitive information are only kept for no longer than 6 months."

6 months seems excessive for debugging. The user should grant debug log permissions on a case-by-case basis - ONLY when noticing a problem.

https://www.mightyapp.com/priv...

Front page says "Let us be clear: your data will never be sold." but their privacy policy looks like every other, with the addition that they share it if:

"Only if we reasonably believe it’s necessary to prevent harm to the rights, property or safety of you or others; or in the event of a corporate restructuring or change in our organizational structure or status to a successor or affiliate."

They will transfer your information abroad, no way to opt out.

https://www.mightyapp.com/term...

IANAL, but the indemnification clause seems very broad:
"Mighty reserves the right to assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter otherwise subject to indemnification by you, in which event you will assist and cooperate with Mighty in connection therewith."

This is a quick-fix for people with old machines with possibly vulnerable browsers.

I am a Swedish citizen, born in 1983 currently living in Gothenburg, second largest city after the capital. Located on the west coast close to Norway and Denmark.

I wish for no change in the current policies. Certainly not curfews or cellphone tracking. Most people abide by the rules and keep their distance, but we could be better at telling people off who doesn't.

Our single biggest failure is that we have let the infection into our elderly population and into some intensive care units. The high death toll compared to other scandinavian countries is proably a direct result.

The health care system has been undergoing rapid change for the last 20 years for political reasons. Large portions is being privatized and public health care is seemingly being scaled back to bare essentials.
Employers and unions now offer private health insure benefits to "complement" the public sector. I don't know if this has aided or worsened the current crisis, but it makes individuals more dependant on employment or union membership. Our current left-wing goverment usually colludes with major unions to the detriment of smaller ones.

We have had brief shortages of toilet paper, dry goods and are still short on face masks and hand sterilizer in public stores. Most shops limit customer occupancy, uses plastic shields and refuses cash.

The government is currently paying 40 percent of my salary as an aid to my employer (large multinational corporation). This means I only work 3 days per week yet receives almost a full salary.

Me and my entire team work completely from home as programmers.

As much as I distrust and despise our current politicans, I think the response so far has been good from most authorities. Not so keen on the massive money printing they keep doing, but that's another story.