Technology, outdoors, sports, philosophy.
Big Tech's extreme investments in generative AI has led to a tremendeous acceleration in the carbon footprint of data centers and digital services, but the environmental impact of computing has been under scrutiny for many years before AI took the center stage as ICT's main polluter. Several research fields exist for exploring more environmentally responsible ways forward, such as Green…
Wooden skis, created from scratch. Watch a video of some off-piste skiing further down. I have a great passion for skiing, particularly in backcountry and alpine terrain. My collection of different types of skis has grown over time, including different types of cross-country skis, roller skis, and backcountry skis (this is not uncommon in Norway – we are unfortunately one of the «best» nations in…
Agentic AI is having its moment (or its decade, as some have put it ). I have been researching LLM-powered agents for the last two years, but research (involving publicly funded projects and academic peer review) is slow, and cannot keep up with the breakneck speed of the development and deployment going on in the tech industry as a whole. Especially not when AI tools are used to assist in…
First, a note to the reader: This blog post is longer than usual, as I decided to address multiple connected issues in the same post, without being too restrictive on length. With modern browsing habits and the amount of available online media, I suspect this post will be quickly passed over in favor of more interesting reading material. Before you immediately close this tab, I invite you to…
Less : When I'm writing, I write. When I'm cooking, I cook. When I'm talking to someone, I put my phone away. The constant mental juggling that felt necessary before now feels exhausting. There's something meditative about giving your full attention to a single task. [...] Less really is more. It usually takes a while to figure that out. The allure of multitasking is, in my…
Human society is facing multiple crises. Our main method for dealing with them is technology, and we do so ignoring that similar use of technology is what brought about the crises in the first place. We use technology in attempt to remove all boundaries that stop us from getting what we want, when we want it. We are no longer able to adapt ourselves; we only know how to adapt the environment…
Recently I read an article about how the average sentence length in Norwegian fiction books has gone down by 20% since the 1980’s. The results were based on over 7000 fiction books from 1980 to 2020. The study itself did not conclude on the cause of this, but I immediately thought of our decreasing attention spans, excessive smartphone use, and the decline of long-form reading. An author who was…
Earlier this year I had the chance to realise a project I’ve thought about for several years: Skiing the couloir called Storskæra on Allmannberget, a mountain in Oppdal, Norway. The couloir is very visible from the highway going through Oppdal, and I’ve thought about it virtually every time we’ve been passing through. I remember when I first heard about people skiing down Allmannberget, about 15…
Digital social media is hard. There is so much information, creative output, advertisement, and attention-seeking. The «algorithm» is there to help us figure it all out, by sorting, filtering, and prioritising the content in the feed of your chosen social media. Algorithmic curation gets a lot of critique, and most of it is well-deserved. It’s a tool which on the surface tries to help you find…
Black Lake Race is a quite new addition to the race calendar in Norway. I had planned to participate in its first edition last year, but I couldn’t go because of more pressing matters at home. The route, with its steep terrain and long off-trail sections, is a good match for me, and there are not many races in Norway with this kind of terrain. That’s why the race was on my priority list for 2025.…
A few interesting articles I've read around the web: Choose optimism . The life of a pessimist is easy but dreary. The life of an optimist is hard but exciting. Pessimism is easy because it costs nothing. Optimism is hard because it must be constantly reaffirmed. In the face of a hostile, cynical world, it takes effort to show that positivity has merit. Foggy feeds: the decline in my feed…
The progress of AI is interesting and important to follow, but current discussions around it are too focused on the increasing benchmark performances and if machines can ever get smarter than humans ( superintelligence ). Counter-arguments to the promise of achieving so-called «superintelligent» computer programs can typically take the form of «humans are still better than AI at this », or «AI can…
I recently came across a review of Sky , an upcoming AI automation app for macOS. The technical aspects piqued my interest and made me click the link, because I work with AI engineering research. It was the societal implications, however, that made me read the whole thing from start to finish. In short, Sky is an AI-assistant that integrates deeply into macOS, and can interact with any app,…
When considering to buy a digital device, service or tool (or any type of technology for that matter), it is worth thinking about the following: What problem does it actually solve for me? What will I lose by using it? When deciding on a specific product, particularly for physial devices, there are another set of questions to consider: Does the device have an easily replaceable battery? This…
On personal websites and social web . On the other you have the people who are realising that maybe the solution is not to recreate social media but rather to abandon it and go back to a more deliberate way to be social online, using personal sites, small forums, emails, and other “traditional” tools. I’m obviously part of this second group. This is an acute observation, and it is related to what…
Forrige uke var jeg så heldig å få fortelle om vår forskning innen mer bærekraftig kunstig intelligens på en av Norges største populærvitenskapelige radioprogram, nemlig Abels Tårn på NRK! Først og fremst var det veldig gøy å få være med, og det var en flott sjanse til å fortelle om hva jeg holder på med til daglig. Ikke mange er klar over at det jobbes aktivt i Norge med forskning for å adressere…
As AI is discussed in all kinds of media, futuristic images abound in news papers, presentation slides, blog posts, and social media. The problem with many of these images is that they muddle the impression of what we are actually talking about when we discuss AI, which in many cases are simply a huge number of additions and multiplications being performed on a computer (yes, that's what the…
Another collection of interesting reads from around the web: Leaving the phone at home . This is an interesting exercise. I'm surprised by how different I feel just by leaving that device at home. It's a bit worrying. 30 bits of advice for 30 years . Solitude and Leadership . Stephen Fry Reads Nick Cave’s Stirring Letter About ChatGPT and Human Creativity: “We Are Fighting for the Very…
I'm happy to see that there is an increasing focus on the challenge regarding AI and sustainability. Not only because I'm a researcher trying to make AI "greener", but because AI's booming resource consumption is starting to become a real problem. The last few months I have seen many articles bring up some of the issues, and I would like to highlight a few of them. Microsoft playing…
A couple of months ago I decided it was time for a digital deep clean of my laptop. It was close to three years since last time, and over that period a lot of unnecessary software and data has aggregated in the nooks and corners of the system. The easiest way to achieve a clean system is to reinstall the operating system, which also gave me a chance to upgrade Ubuntu from 22.04 to 24.04. When…
In my job I write a lot of technical text, whether it is for reports or scientific papers. As many others, I have been experimenting with how ChatGPT or other AI tools can be of use for so-called "knowledge workers". I have noticed two particular things with the text produced by ChatGPT that annoys me: The generated text often contains a lot of unnecessary, flowery adjectives and adverbs. In my…
Another collection of interesting reads from around the web. The Verge: Social media is doomed to die . Intriguing perspectives from someone who used to work for Snapchat. Baldur Bjarnason: The Elegiac Hindsight of Intelligent Machines . An interesting piece about modern software, AI and ChatGPT. The Fire: Are we ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’ in 2023? . When you read the book Amusing ourselves to…
I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity for a travel to Japan for a work-related conference earlier in November. Since I've never been to Japan, and most likely won't go there again, I wanted to stay a few extra days for a small vacation. My main goal was to see some of the Japanese nature, and ideally visit some mountains. I researched the mountain areas of Honshu (the largest…
I'm fascinated by the world of personal websites that exists on the Internet, often referred to as the Small Web. It's a stark contrast to the "commerical web" and social media platforms, with endless scroll, advertisements and surveillance. The Small Web let's you browse and discover at your own pace, with fewer distractions and less screaming for attention. Content can speak for…
The landscape of social media is changing. Twitter is in the middle of a considerable decline, and Meta's Facebook and Instagram are trying to adapt to new requirements and legislation . The decentralized social network Mastodon is gaining serious traction, giving some hope to the dream of social media platforms that are not built on surveillance capitalism. Now that we finally have viable…
A few interesting reads on the topic of generative AI and large language models: Op-ed by Naomi Klein: AI machines aren’t ‘hallucinating’. But their makers are (2023-05-08). I think Naomi Klein has some excellent points in this article, and "cuts the crap". According to [the logic of Google CEO Eric Schmidt], the failure to “solve” big problems like climate change is due to a deficit of smarts.…
A few weeks ago, a colleague and I wrote an op-ed in Teknisk Ukeblad where we played around with the idea of how to democratize generative artificial intelligence (AI) and avoid ending up with a monopoly on large generative AI models. The possible scenarios we envision may not all be realistic, but we want to highlight the possibilities we have to make the use and development of AI more…
One year ago I wrote a blog post about machine learning and carbon emissions . Since then, we have experienced some ground-breaking developments in the world of AI. With the release of image generators like DALL-E and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, we are talking about a whole new scale of computational load for using, let alone training such models. What's more, these are no…
One of my new year's resolutions: Always ski a new line through the forest when going back to the cabin. It surprised me how much fun I can have in my own backyard just by exploring a bit more. This is the year of glade skiing for me.
A fun afternoon skiing with my Border collie Gjert in our backyard. Your browser does not support the video tag.
I have a large collection of plain text files (mostly Markdown) that contain all my notes and writings, both for work and non-work, which I navigate and modify using Vim, fzf, shell scripts and command line utilities (on mobile I use the excellent app Working Copy ). Everything is of course synced and version-controlled using Git. I recently discovered that Obsidian has a range of interesting…
Sharing some links I find interesting about note-taking: Rank and File by Robert Minto. Paper notes by Tim Hårek. Paper notes by Tom MacWright. Why use paper notebooks The dilemma of digital versus analog tools, especially related to note-taking, is something I always return to. Even though digital tools typically are the first choice in many situations, we shouldn't forget the strengths of a…
I usually discover new books to read through references or quotes from previous books I have read, but sometimes I also get some useful recommendations from blogs or people I talk to. Maybe I can provide some tips on your next read? Here's a summary of some of the best books I read in 2022: The Age of Low Technologies by Philippe Bihouix This book gives a very important perspective on how we…
Strava is a popular tool for sharing sports and outdoors activities, and has become the de facto social medium for athletes, runners, cyclists etc. I'm not the kind of person who likes to share every detail about how I train or my daily activities, but sometimes I enjoy sharing a workout, race or a route I've done in the mountains. I also enjoy keeping control of my own data and how it…
I shot a short video of Gjert the border collie during one of his agility workouts. I am using the GoPro HERO7 Black, with no gimbal, and I must say I am impressed with the HyperSmooth video stabilisation. Take a look! Your browser does not support the video tag.
There are several very exciting projects that are aiming to make more sustainable consumer electronics: Fairphone : A phone that is extremely easy to repair and has parts that can be easily replaced, by you. Framework : A laptop that is modular, upgradeable and designed to be easy to repair by anyone. MNT Reform : A laptop that is designed to be tinkered with, and that makes it easy to swap out…
I prefer having control of my own data, and therefore try to avoid using cloud services if I absolutely don't have to (e. g., at work I'm pretty much forced to use the cloud services of my employer, which is Microsoft of course). Earlier I have been self-hosting some services, including file storage (Nextcloud), music server (Subsonic), git (gitea) and social media (Hubzilla). Then I…
Some links I find worth sharing: On digital footprints from Weekly Musings. Better search results by Brad Taunt. You're attention didn't collapse. It was stolen from The Guardian.
In this post I want to share some of my best reads in 2021 (I know we are almost halfway into 2022, but I wrote this post 5 months ago and just now realized I forgot to publish it): The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff A very well written and thoroughly researched book on surveillance capitalism. Zuboff very succinctly articulates the problems that arise from the (mis)use of…
The last years I have been moving towards plain text files for almost any use case where I need to store information digitally, and after reading about Calendar.txt I have started to use a plain text file as my calendar. I use (almost) the same template as described in the link, but I wrote my own script for generating the calendar template so I can easily make adjustments if needed. Example of…
Jeg fikk for et halvt år siden en turtleneck fra Northern Playground , et veldig spennende norsk klesmerke. Kvaliteten og bruksverdien til dette plagget var overraskende gode, og hvis du ikke gidder lese hele testen så kan jeg oppsummere den allerede her: Om jeg bare skulle hatt én trøye resten av livet så er det definitivt denne; den fungerer til alt fra trening og tur til jobb og selskap.…
Last year I inherited an analouge camera from my grandfather. Usually I prefer digital tools, because they are space-efficient, easy to carry around, and the data they produce can is easy to store and backup. However, there are also some disadvantages. My photo library has been steadily growing each year, which recently resulted in me having to buy another external hard drive in order to have…
Recently I have been looking into the environmental impact of machine learning in relation to ongoing research projects at work. Carbon emissions are high on the agenda for everyone, especially if one works at a research group with the term "Green" in it's name. Lots is already written on the topic, but I wanted to share a few of the most interesting articles and research papers I found, with…
Here's some articles I found interesting enough to share this week: The goal behind using technology from Scott Nesbitt. His thoughts resonates well with what I think of the subject. Modern technology and digital tools have a tendency of influencing our behaviour far more than it should. In 2030, You Won't Own Any Gadgets by Victoria Song at Gizmodo. Many things might be said about…
When you're crafting your own website without any website builder or tools like Wordpress, it can be a bit challenging to know how to optimize images. JPG-files from a digital camera is usually a few MBs in size. For example, an image from my Gopro, with a resolution of 4032x3024, generally amounts to at least 2 MB. If you're uploading such files, you're wasting bandwith, since most…
Yesterday I presented and defended my master thesis in "Computational Science: Physics" at the Physics Department at the University of Oslo. The title of my thesis is Deep learning to estimate power output from breathing . The main goal of the project was to use recordings of breathing patterns to estimate how much power (measured in watts) a person generates during cycling. The motivation was to…
For litt siden fikk jeg muligheten til å være med å teste The North Face Flight Vectiv , som er en ny løpesko fra The North Face med en innebygd karbonfiberplate (siden det funka så bra for Nike og for gateløping, så må det jo prøves i terrenget også). Jeg har testa disse skoene noen uker på skogsstier, snø, grusvei, i myr og i lyng rundt om i nærområdet, både i vått og tørt vær. Førsteinntrykket…
Bestemte meg plutselig en dag for å lage meg et hjemmelaga snøbrett. Forutsetningene for dette prosjektet var at det skulle være billig og lett å lage. Når jeg sier "lett å lage", så mener jeg ikke sånn som noen youtubere framstiller det: "Dette er ekstremt lett å lage, du bare går inn i ditt spesialbygde verksted med alle disse spesialverktøyene, og så tar du dette kjempedyre materialet som er…
De første randoneeskia jeg kjøpte var et par brukte Völkl Snowwolf. Jeg hadde lenge stusset på hvorfor så mange tråkka oppover fjellsidene med sånt tungt randoutstyr, når jeg jogga forbi med lærstøvler på lette fjellski, men jeg tenkte at det var på tide å prøve ut sånt utstyr selv. Det ble noen flotte toppturer den våren, men etter at jeg for første gang deltok i en randoneekonkurranse…
A project I have wanted to for a long time is setting up an "offline Internet", or "Internet-in-a-box" , which is an offline "library" and a wireless access point that nearby devices can connect to. To do this I used a Raspberry Pi 4 with the official Raspberry Pi OS installed. The main steps in creating this "Internet-in-a-box" is: Download the desired content Install software for serving content…