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"The European Commission is developing a harmonized, EU-wide approach to age verification, accompanied by a comprehensive age verification blueprint that is intended to facilitate practical adoption across all Member States and can be customised to the national context. Built upon the robust European Digital Identity Wallet framework, this user-friendly and privacy-preserving age verification solution enables individuals to demonstrate their eligibility for age-restricted online services, such as those restricted to adults, without disclosing more personal information than absolutely necessary"

So basically, the intention is to provide a solution where users do not need an account or to provide their passports to BigBootyXXX.com. The site just asks if this session or user is of legal age and the age verification system will respond with a TRUE/FALSE

Lasokkion The Mining of Minerals and the Limits to Growth (2021) [pdf]

A small correction: GTK, or Geological Survey of Finland, is a public research agency operating under the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment.

https://www.gtk.fi/en/this-is-gtk/

Lasokkion Protecting your capital during a war

Except that Finland was not taken over by Soviet Union and the Helsinki Stock Exchange was kept open after the war. Though apparently 1940-1960 was quite a slow period for the exchange, as Finland was in the process of recovering from the war.

Interestingly, around half of late 40's trade in the exchange was from obligations, which were distributed to population relocated from areas of Finland that were lost to the Soviet Union[1]

[1] https://www.taloustieteellinenyhdistys.fi/wp-content/uploads..., page 315, in Finnish

Lasokkion I Miss Rails

I've been satisfied with Knex.js. It handles query building, transactions, connection pooling and migrations

https://knexjs.org/

Lasokkion Why Bother with What Three Words?

How about creating an app for emergency calls, which will automatically send your location?

Finland has done it, see https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fi.digia.suomi...

Lasokkion Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

At least here in Finland high school (or more precisely, upper secondary school) is regarded to provide students with "general knowledge" and a least exposure to various different fields of study. How are you supposed to know what you want to do in life, if you do not know what possibilities there are?

Lasokkion Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

Having experience in learning a language helps you to learn more languages. In this particular example, understanding that nouns have grammatical gender in French is a helpful bit of linguistics to know that softens the blow when the JavaScript developer decides to learn German.

Lasokkion Finnish breaks natural language processors

Ural-Altaic language family is today considered an obsolete concept [1] and the families are considered unrelated

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural%E2%80%93Altaic_languages

Lasokkion Linux Inside – How the Linux Kernel Works

Torvald's thesis on portability of Linux is also a quite interesting article

https://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/kutvonen/index_files/linus.pdf

Lasokkion The Great Stirrup Controversy

Do note that this idea of technological determinism[0] is referenced directly in the parent article.

As for me, I'd like to think that a bit more nuanced approach is better. Yes, stirrups might enable men to use horses in new ways and to brace themselves on horseback. But this sort of expensive heavily armoured cavalry cannot exists in a vacuum. It needs a class of wealthy people who can buy armour and horses. The wealthy need some sort of motivation to train themselves as warriors and so on. If you are interested in the subject, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350 by Robert Bartlett [1] is an excellent book on the subject.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_determinism

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Making-Europe-Conquest-Colonization-C...

Lasokkion Supercell founders were among the biggest Finnish earners of 2015

Some background: Tax and earnings data of every Finn are public information. They cannot be accessed online, but anyone can call the tax office and ask for information about someone. Journalists can also order the data on USB stick. Each year around this time the information is released and naturally news are full of scoops and comparisons.

Lasokkion Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

http://translate.google.fi/translate?hl=en&sl=fi&tl=...

"The employment rate of employed persons between 15 and 64-year-olds in April was 68.7 per cent, which was 0.2 percentage points higher than a year earlier. Employment rate for men fell from the previous year to April by 0.1 percentage points to 68.6 per cent. The female employment rate increased by 0.6 percentage points to 68.8 per cent. For seasonal and random variation, the trend was 68.7 percent."

Source: Statistics / Labour Force Survey