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Topic: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland? (Read 133288 times)

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #450 –
Possible security risk affects 750,000 Estonian ID-cards
Quote from: http://estonianworld.com/technology/possible-security-risk-affects-750000-estonian-id-cards/
On 30 August, an international team of researchers informed the Estonian Information System Authority (RIA) of a vulnerability potentially affecting the digital use of Estonian ID cards. The possible vulnerability affects a total of almost 750,000 ID-cards issued starting from October 2014 [...] The ID-cards issued before 16 October 2014 use a different chip and are not affected.
750,000 ID-cards affected? This is practically everybody. Except me. My card was issued a few months before that date and will expire in a bit more than a year.

(In the country's official news outlet too.)

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #451 –
Norway's sovereign wealth fund passed a milestone.

The World’s Biggest Wealth Fund Hits $1 Trillion

Though not really because it has done so well lately, rather that the US dollar is worth less.

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #452 –
79% of Swedish 2 years olds have used the internet. 

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #453 –
Quote from: jax on
79% of Swedish 2 years olds have used the internet.
No surprise there. I'm sure that I "used" TV and radio when I was 2.

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #454 –
Okay, video tag does not work with this one. Anyway, it's Tallinn almost a century ago. Germans still preferred to call it Reval back then.

https://www.filmothek.bundesarchiv.de/video/248828

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #455 –
Nice bridge at 2:20. :P

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #456 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
Nice bridge at 2:20. :P
Too many obscure harbours in this short film, relevant and visible only for those who enter by cargo ship. (Yes, Tallinn is like Rotterdam with a long series of various harbours and docks.) Tourists mostly see the streetscape and skyline, but the skyline is missing in this film.

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #457 –
The movie does advertise to show you the harbor city, so I don't think it's unexpected to see some of the harbor. :P

But yes, except for some shaky footage at 3:10 I don't think there was much of what I'd presumably think of as the city.

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #458 –
Norway’s pricey F-35s caught sending ‘sensitive data’ to US

“Due to national considerations, there is a need for a filter where the user nations can exclude sensitive data from the data stream that is shared by the system with the manufacturer Lockheed Martin,” said Defense Ministry senior consultant Lars Gjemble, as cited by Norway’s ABC Nyheter.

A flying Win10 with Intel chips, so to speak. :)

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #459 –
ICAN's Nobel Peace Price ceremony at Oslo City Hall today has a few fewer dignitaries than usual.


US, UK, France won’t send ambassadors to Nobel ceremony
Ambassadors of Western nuclear powers to snub Nobel ceremony

Quote
OSLO (AFP) - Breaking with tradition, nearly all ambassadors of the world's nuclear powers will not attend this year's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony which honours efforts to ban atomic weapons, the Nobel Institute said Thursday.

Russia and Israel will be the only exceptions, with their ambassadors due to attend.

"They clearly received instructions to express their reservations towards ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) and the global treaty" to ban weapons of mass destruction, the head of the Nobel Institute, Olav Njolstad, told AFP.

The Peace Prize was awarded on October 6 to ICAN, a coalition of non-governmental organisations lobbying for a historic treaty banning atomic weapons, which was signed in July by 122 countries.
Then again, Norway's foreign minister won't attend either. 

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #460 –
Norway's ministers are always gays.
A matter of attitude.

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #462 –
Foreign-born people have very strange ideas about their ideal destination.
Considering higher suicide rate countries as paradise, it's one of those ideas.
A matter of attitude.

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #463 –
In a hurry I did not grab the right chart in the previous post, but let it stand. This year's happiness report had special focus on migrants.

Suicide rates are the same in Finland and the Baltic countries, so according to this measure we should all be the same paradise. Apparently the report considered some other parametres.

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #464 –
It looks like Estonia is lower primarily in the "residual" category.

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #466 –
The article itself (click the link under the video) seems to have been fixed. Video title is still the same though. :)

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #467 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
The article itself (click the link under the video) seems to have been fixed. Video title is still the same though. :)
That's how you know they think Baltic and Balkan are interchangeable synonyms.

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #468 –
Changing URLs is inconvenient in many or most publishing systems, as links to old URLs should be redirected to new. For that reason they are good indicators of original headline, and when there is a discrepancy between the URL and the headline that tells a story about how this story has developed (all intermediate versions will be gone, so it is poor version control).

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #469 –
In this case, the URL is in the right, so whoever did the headline in the main text had to be thinking he was saying the same thing as the URL. And since it's a headline in the main text, it could be easily fixed, but nobody is doing it, so they must be thinking there's nothing to fix... Baltic or Balkan, same thing.

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #470 –
You generally have to deal, Spotify: Swiss or Swedish? Whatevs, says New York, flies the wrong flag

Quote
Spotify was founded by Swedes Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon in 2006.
Their home country and Switzerland do share common points: They both have a history of neutrality, have great skiing stations and stunning nature. But they also have plenty of differences, including different languages, and that one of the two countries is located in Scandinavia, while the other is, well, not.
READ ALSO: Ten things you should never say to a Swede
But confusing the two is not an uncommon mistake, and it does not only happen in anglophone countries. In Spain, 'Suecia' and 'Suiza' are rather too close for comfort, as are China's 'Ruidian' and 'Ruishi'.
In fact, ask any Swede or Swiss person if they have ever been subject to people confusing their country with "that other European country", and you will get a lot of nodding heads.
Last year, a Swiss airline even launched a competition aimed at ending the never-ending mix-up by offering to take 24 winners on a tour through the non-existing 'Swederland'.
There are other pairs, like Slovenia-Slovakia (to add to the confusion, the Slovak name for Slovakia is Slovensko), or all the Guineas and Guyanas, to be found in America, Africa, and Asia: 

  • Republic of Equatorial Guinea
  • Republic of Guinea
  • Republic of Guinea-Bissau
  • Independent State of Papua New Guinea
  • Co-operative Republic of Guyana
  • French Guiana

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #471 –
Quote from: ersi on
Congrats Finland. And Estonia is behind all its neighbours. Luckily I have already managed to visit the happy Finland this year for a few days so I am not too unhappy http://estonianworld.com/life/estonians-arent-particularly-happy-scoring-63rd-world/

Happiness is fleeting. Just came across this Deutche Welle video explaining why Norwegians are so happy (last year they dethroned the Danes who had monopolised the chart for years, thus exporting hygge into the English vocabulary). Now I guess DW will have to replace this one with a video explaining that sauna is the key to happiness. 

https://youtu.be/DWcPZxd4VVs

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #472 –
Quote from: jax on
Norwegians are so happy (last year they dethroned the Danes who had monopolised the chart for years
I don't understand so much happiness from the northerners that were always at the top of suicide rates.
Happiness, those who needs to rent a cruise boat in order to get in alcoholic coma every weekend.
A matter of attitude.

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #473 –
Your jibe is out of date. The international ferries, Norway to Denmark, once Norway to Britain, and Sweden to Finland/Estonia, and once Germany/Poland, used to be places of binge drinking from port to port. The ferries were dirt cheap, it cost half as much to take the ferry from Norway to Newcastle than it cost to take the ferry from France to Britain across the channel, because the companies got their income from the food, drink and gambling. It was practically a rite of passage as soon as you were 18 and allowed to buy drinks aboard. Then you had drunken sex of course before or after you puked all over the floor (it's a boat after all, the waves can be heady).

That was 50 years ago, maybe even 30 years ago. But every year since the average age got about a year higher. Apart from those who actually use them to drive from one country to another (and can't drink), like truck drivers, the typical age by now is like the typical age at the opera. It's mostly retired people who take the trip now. They still drink, but can't drink as much as they used to. Then there are those who for one reason or another are bored of flying, but they generally don't drink so much. EU also happened, so the boats must pass through a tax-free haven to be tax exempt. That is, they either have to travel between Norway and an EU country, or stop at the Åland islands between Sweden and Finland.

Re: What's going on in Scandinavia, North Atlantic, Baltic States and Scotland?

Reply #474 –
You say my "jibe is out of date" and after that you answered nothing against.
Never saw such a factious person in my entire life. I suspect very much against you.

Time and time again is always the same thing.

Maybe you think that you fool people here, I assure you that you don't fool me.
A matter of attitude.