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Comment Re:BitLocker is fake disk encryption (*) (Score 1) 83

> If your only goal is to hide things from the police, who have a warrant.

How comfortable would you be with Chinese developed encryption systems, where the Chinese company held the keys, if you were say American or European?

Now, how comfortable do you think it makes non-americans that an american company holds the encryption keys. Especially with the current US administration and how they treat other countries ...

Comment Re:Barring foreign students doesn't help (Score 2) 146

CAD $50K for four years?! That's something like 36000USD.

To study at the University of Oslo, the tuition (semesteravgift) is about $100USD per 6 months, or .. $800 for 4 years.

Of course, there are books and living expenses in addition, but the tuition is .. cheap.

Comment Re:So what? (Score 1) 199

You need to look at a map. Seriously. It's entirely true that the land area is pretty small, but you need to look at the shape of the country.

Take a look at this:

https://thetruesize.com/#?bord...

You also have to realize that Norway is quite, quite rural. There's a one "big" city (Oslo), then smaller cities like Bergen, Trondheim, Kristiansand and Stavanger. Tromsà is also considered a relatively big city here - population is 80.000 .

Comment Re:Makes sense (Score 2) 79

> Pick a random European nation and tell me the longest drive a citizen would have to make to get to their nation's capital city.

Norway.

Driving from Hammerfest to Oslo will take you 23 hours if you drive via Finland and Sweden.

If you keep within Norway, approximately 32 hours.

Comment Re:Epstein files (Score 1) 176

Thing is, coal is expensive. Solar is cheap. If the US goes all in on coal, oil, gas, etc. - she'll lose.

China has built out massive amount of solar and wind, and hunkering down on batteries. That means they get massive amounts of essentially free electricity.

If the US hunkers down on labour intensive, expensive, polluting stuff - then all the worse for her.

Comment I'm quite certain we've already solved this. (Score 4, Interesting) 176

First off: I'm not a climate change denier. Secondly: I do worry about the current US administration that seems to be entirely unhinged.

However, I think climate change is a solved problem, it's just the implementation that takes a bit of time. Thing is, solar panels have gotten dirt cheap. Battery prices are also plummeting. The cheapest electricity you can get at the moment is .. solar. It pays itself back within a relatively short time period. It's an upfront investment - but the return on investment is so massive that it just makes sense to build it out.

Which is why China has been doing exactly that for some years now. Which is why India is investing massively. Which is why Chile is building out in the Atacama desert. Which is why southern europe has built out quite a bit. Which is why Australia has built out massively. .. and which is why we're now seeing Africa importing quite massive amount of solar panels.

Of course, the objections about "what to do when the sun don't shine?" is entierly valid. The answer to that question, however, is batteries. Those prices are also plummeting. I expect to replace the batteries I bought in 2020 in about 2030 - and pay the same price for twice the capacity. They'll be cheaper in reality - due to inflation.

China is currently generating about 20% of their needs from wind+solar. We only need to go 5 years back for that to be less than 5%. In another 5 years, I'll be very surprised if they haven't reached 35-40%.

There's of course the problem of grid inertia. Grid-following is nowhere near as good as grid forming. We do, however, have the technology to fix that too. From flywheels to grid-forming inverters.

Give it 2-3 more years and "everyone" will see that it's solved. Give it 5-6 years and we'll be "on schedule". Give it 10 years and we'll all be surprised that we're ahead of schedule.

And we won't even need government incentives. It'll just be everyone doing what makes economic sense. Unless actively sabotaged through tariffs.

Comment Re:Uhh (Score 1) 152

Oh gods no. Drip coffee beats americano any day of the week. Yech. I avoid americano like the plague.

We finally got a drip coffee machine in addition to the espresso machine at work. If I want espresso - I'll have that. If I want a nice "regular black coffee" - drip coffee any day.

Comment Re:Don't quit just yet. (Score 2) 131

> If EVs were the end-all-be-all that every EV pimp on the planet says they are, then there shouldnâ(TM)t be any risk. I mean, the Marketing department would never lie, right?

Hi there; Norwegian here. Not an EV pimp, but rather a guy that bought a used Tesla Model S 2014 back in 2018.

In my "price range", I've never had a nicer car to drive. It's fast, it's fun. Charging has never been a problem for me, but I can imagine it being troublesome for folks who drive long distances often. I charge during the night. If I go on a lengthy trip, I just stop for a bit at superchargers. They're "everywhere" in Norway, so whenever I need a break - I just pop by the closest supercharger and go to the loo, walk around a bit, and 20 minutes later I keep driving.

Of course, a 20 minute break every time you want to refuel might sound extremely annoying to folks that drive long distances often enough that this causes several long breaks a day for them. For me, it means I have to take a break to recharge maybe 5 times a year. I don't drive long distances often enough to need anything but home charging.

That adds another advantage (for me) compared to gasoline cars. The number of times needed to refuel. I don't need to stop at the gas station to refill very often, as the regular 'refueling' (or recharging in my case) is simply done at home, during the night.

Comment Re:Solar is the future. (Score 1) 131

I think I see what happened here; With "people" I didn't think of individuals adding it as rooftop solar, although that's nice too. I meant people who make financial decisions for power plant buildouts. People who make financial decisions for where their business is going to get power, etc.

I'm mostly thinking of grid scale projects. Which are already happening in both Texas and Arizona in the US from what I gather from articles in The Economist.

I'm also thinking of places like the Atacama desert between Chile and Peru. Various areas of Mexico. South East Asia. The middle east. Northern Africa. Southern Africa (Namibia, South Africa, etc).

Comment Solar is the future. (Score 2) 131

The Economist (www.economist.com) convinced me with their June 22nd 2024 issue ( https://www.economist.com/week... ). Specifically, see the article: https://www.economist.com/inte... among others in that issue.

Solar is cheap, abundant, and will come out on top due to economic reasons alone. No subidies required.

Batteries are also needed, of course, but they're also dropping in price as China ramps up production.

The entire thing will be a slam dunk. It'll be entirely obvious 5 years from now, but we're still in the phase where a lot of people haven't caught on and realized that this is the cheapest option.

Comment Re: Python is scripting, not a programming languag (Score 4, Insightful) 85

I'm not OP, but I can give you my answer to what you're asking:

A script mainly executes *external commands*.

Most languages can be used to write scripts. They can also be used as a "real" language. Some with more difficulty than others. Bash being an extreme example. You can do a heck of a lot in "pure bash" w/o relying on unix commands. Most people don't bother though. Thus, they write scripts.

When I started using perl some ~27 years ago, a lot of my initial stuff was scripts. I used backticks throughout my code, executing unix commands to get what I needed. Thus, I created perl scripts. More and more, I replaced my `ls` with readdir(), and so forth. They became programs.

Same for python. If you rely on python internals (which most folks do) - it's programs. If you shell out for most of your logic, it's scripts.

At least that's my take.

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