Kinkkumyrkytys

At this time of year I'd like to make a serious public health announcement and make people aware of a strange, incurable, debilitating disease affecting the majority of people here in Finland at this time.

* * *

Kinkkumyrkytys (eng: hampoisoning)

A debilitating disease suffered around late December and sometimes early January by persons residing in Finland. Thought initially to be a genetic disease of the native Finnish population, it now appears to be some kind of virus that is transmitted to non-natives in that region.

The sufferer experiences symptoms of feeling too full, bloated and some nausea. It also causes the sufferer to lie or sit for extended periods of time; attempts to move or walk cause the above symptoms to become worse.

In a mechanism that is still unexplained the disease affects the vocal centres of the brain rendering the sufferer to emit grunts and be incapable of saying much more than simple sentences. Sufferers have been known to complain bitterly and say phrases such as "Ei ruokaa...", "Ei enää kinkkua taas...".

Curiously regardless of the nationality and language of the sufferer, these phrases are always in Finnish leading to speculation that this is some new class of neurological disorder. Because of the above utterances, it is believed that this is how the disease obtained its name.

In extreme cases the sufferer becomes a vegetable and can only blankly stare at contentless, bright, flashing pictures known as Finnish Christmas TV without comprehension for hours on end. In some serious cases people have been known to binge watch "Vain Elämä" - the prognosis in these cases is however extremely grave bordering on absolutely no hope at all.

Interestingly while sufferers have a complete aversion to roast ham at this time, other foods also cause the sufferers additional agony. These include: mätti (fish eggs), lipeäkala, joululimppu (Christmas bread), various kinds of "laatikko-" food including lanttu (swede), porkkana (carrot) and peruna (potato).

It has been suggested by some researchers that there may be a connection with excessive amounts of Christmas good consumed in Finland. However this research has been extensively denounced as being "pasta" - a Finnish term meaning "obviously not true you ignorant fool...pass me more ham and an extra helping of that lovely lanttulaatikko too!"

A secondary debate on whether lipeäkala is food or a chemical/biological weapon is tending towards the latter.

The symptoms of this disease continue for a number of days and the sufferer returns to full health quickly afterwards. However no immunity is gained and it is likely that the symptoms will reappear at the same time next year,

Some alternative therapists have suggested a treatment called "Tipaton tammikuu" involving consuming homoeopathic amounts of alcohol for a month. This rather dangerous and unethical therapy has been denounced as being "pasta".

Internet Marketing (Humour)

People often ask privacy professionals how they lock down their PCs to prevent loss of their data, tracking etc, or whether they use Facebook, Twitter etc...well the truth is, privacy professionals tend to be quite selective on what they post, and in some cases, leave one or two browsers or PCs deliberately open for various reasons. One is to game advertisers, or maybe to examine what advertisers and marketers are actually doing.

One thing I have noticed is that certain retailers, for example Gigantti of Finland comes to mind, obviously pass my purchase details on to some marketer/advertiser. I don't ever remember being asked to opt-out of this, but, I do now get adverts for the things I've just bought. They could redirect their advertising budget and remove a few middle managers and save a pile of cash instead...

Then there's things like this:

I must admit I love these; I never click on them, but without such crap as this, the Internet would be a lot less fun...so let's start.

Top left...doctors are annoyed at a 53 yo mother because she's found a miracle cure to wrinkles. I'm actually more surprised that it isn't cosmetic companies who are annoyed - surely they're the ones who'll be put out of business. I think doctors (even cosmetic surgeons!) have much more important things to worry about. Then you have to ask, "Who is this woman?"  Surely if she's upset so many doctors and discovered a miracle cure for wrinkles why isn't she on magazines, TV or even Oprah?!

Top middle...so women don't want other diets, just a pill that is exceptionally powerful. I guess this is some kind of diet pill and again I'm sure dieting companies would be more than interested in this, but...On the other hand I'm not sure that most women want to go from being normal and healthy to a misproportioned anorexic.

Top right...same again, except a selfie-obsessed, European looking blonde (so it isn't just asian women who know about this) receives a malformed, badly photoshopped lower body by using some secret Asian fat burning trick...

Bottom left...SIPOO?!?! If there are millionaires in Sipoo with that kind of yacht then they're probably getting its wreckage salvaged from the islands in the archipelago after they've run aground. Monaco would have been better idea with that size of yacht and the climate better for all those trees and the swimming pool. Nice use of IP geo-location to personalise that advert to me; almost had me fooled for a moment.

Bottom middle...I have those vegetables in my fridge: broccoli and coriander...sorry, kale and cilantro. Another interesting medical claim and I'm left wondering how those vegetables target those specific areas of your body and how this hasn't been discovered before given that we humans do eat quite a variety of vegetables. I wonder what would happen if you would dilute these vegetables in a big vat of water, shake it, dilute it again, shake it and so on until only a trace of the memory of the vegetables is left?

Bottom right...this is easy for a privacy professional, the EU have already come to your rescue with the Right to be Forgotten. Though I guess if getting out of your Ferrari while posting for the waiting paparazzi is your thing, then the right to be forgotten is probably way down on your list of things to worry about. Unless of course there's that picture in Hello magazine of your looking frumpy and overweight...in which cases I can recommend a miracle pill and two vegetables to help, and if there's any left over skin after the diet, there's a 53yo mother you can talk to; assuming you can get past the rioting throngs of doctors baying for her blood...

Marketing and advertising with a touch of personalisation, the Internet wouldn't be the same without it :-)

International Workshop on 5G Security - Programme

The 1st IEEE International Workshop on 5G Security held in conjunction with IEEE TrustCom-15

There is a fast on-going change in the technical architectures and topologies of the Internet: in the near future 5G and next generation 4G/LTE network architectures will be based on or migrated to Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). These create new virtual network elements each affecting the logic of the network operation, traffic management and introducing new and novel security challenges. Aspects such as security of orchestration, management functionality as well as surveillance and privacy are brought to the fore. At the same time they introduce new ways of dealing with attack prevention, management and recovery.

The one-day workshop will consist of papers, presentations and demonstrations on the subject of advanced network security. While primarily related to 5G networks, experiences from 4G/LTE, 3G and earlier, including case studies on practicalities of known attacks and novel attack vectors will be considered for acceptance. An invited keynote speech will be given setting out the overall area of security in network development and operations.

IW5GS Programme
TrustCom 2015 Helsinki, Finland
Friday 21, August 2015

10h05-11h50 – Session I

• Ian Oliver, Silke Holtmanns, Workshop Opening
• Günther Horn and Peter Schneider, Towards 5G Security
• Siddharth Prakash Rao, Silke Holtmanns, Ian Oliver and Tuomas Aura. Unblocking stolen mobile devices using SS7-MAP vulnerabilities
• Vikramajeet Khatri and Joerg Abendroth, Mobile Guard Demo - Network Based Malware Detection

13h10-14h55 – Session II

• Ian Oliver, Aspects of 5G Security
• Nicolae Paladi and Christian Gehrmann. Towards Secure SDN-based Multi-tenant Virtualized Networks
• Elena Dubrova, Mats Näslund and Göran Selander. CRC-Based Message Authentication for 5G Mobile Technology
• Prajwol Kumar Nakarmi, Oscar Ohlsson and Michael Liljenstam. An Air Interface Signaling Protection Function for Mobile Networks: GSM Experiments and Beyond

15h15-17h00 – Session III

• Bengt Shalin, keynote talk
• Mingjun Wang and Zheng Yan. Security in D2D Communications: A Review
• Karl Norrman, Mats Näslund, Bengt Sahlin and Jari Arkko. A USIM compatible 5G AKA protocol with perfect forward secrecy
• Silke Holtmanns,Ian Oliver, Workshop Closing

Finnish Literature

I got a request the other day for a or a few quintessential Finnish books, those that capture the Finnish psych or those that have stood the test of time and become the books of the nation. While you might consider the national epic The Kalevala, it would actually miss the point in that it needs to have author, style and content to qualify.

Actually qualifying the criteria is almost impossible so it is a lot easier to specify the books by example and the quality properties be extracted or inferred from those.

There are three books:

• Aleksis Kivi, Seitsemän Veljestä (Seven Brothers)
• Mikä Waltari, Sinuhe, Egyptiläinen (The Egyptian)
• Väinö Linna, Tuntamaton Sotilas (The Unknown Soldier)

Translations in other languages are available.

Whiskeygate

No one is really sure who said what and the air is full of denials and the Nuremberg Defense, but it seems like Finland is trying to suppress the word "wisky", or more specifically the Finnish "viski" just in case it corrupt, well, everyone....just think of the children...or maybe it is for my safety and security...but even if it saves just one person...

Yes, this is true:

News 12.10.2014 10:36 | updated 13.10.2014 10:42 

HS: Finnish officials ban the word "whisky" on private blog 

Organisers of a beer and whisky fair in Helsinki have been granted a license on condition that search engines do not link to the event’s website when users search for “whisky”, according to a report in Helsingin Sanomat. The officials have also asked the beer and whisky fair to remove the word “whisky” from their logo and the event’s official name.

Anyway Finnish taxes being put to work by our elected and unelected officials...good thing there's nothing else to worry about such as the economy, jobs, overly high taxation, food prices, energy prices, energy dependence, flying squirrels, child benefit reductions hirvikarpaset and a government that wants to avoid all hard decisions at all costs.

After all, banning words, moving kunta boundaries and pay rises of 6000 euros per month are far more important than the people of Finland.

Can anyone say Streisand Effect?

Whisky, Whiskey, Viski, Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski,Whisky, Whiskey, Viski ....

Finland's Privacy Niche

From last month, but now it is safe to post this more publicly: an article I was interviewed for by the Helsinki Times:

Finland finds niche in privacy and information security
21 Aug 2014
By David Cord

"FACEBOOK can send SMS messages on your phone, record your photos and track your location. The National Security Agency is reading your emails. Cyber criminals are trying to snatch your credit card details. In an era where we are rapidly losing all privacy online there is a demand by consumers to protect and control their personal information. As this demand grows, Finland has an opportunity to become the global leader in privacy and information security..."

Learning Languages

I spent part of this morning watching childrens' TV with my son, in particular we watched Unna Junna - a children's programme broadcast on the Finnish YLE network in the Sami language which was conveniently subtitled in Finnish.

Aside from the discussion about what the presenter was saying and its translation into Finnish, at least for the words I recognised or could guess, this ended up for me as an early morning exercise in comparitive linguistics.

For almost as long as I can remember linguistics and language excited me and this morning was just one of those exciting lingustic experiences so belolved of polyglots. After studying Finnish for many years I find myself getting excited about reading road signs in Estonian, children's TV in Sami, etc and mapping these to my knowledge of Finnish. I find this pretty cool.

I also came across today a video of a presentation by Anthony Lauder on "PolyNots" given at a Polyglot conference in Budapest in 2013. This video is worth watching for just for Anthony's presentation skills alone. From this video (if the YouTube Dieties are smiling on you) you'll get links to a host of other videos on multilingualism and language.

Something I've noted is that many polyglots and people who are generally interested in languages all seem to admit that they were never any good in school. Now, for me, I certainly remember been rote schooled in French and German much to my disappointment and also to much detriment of the learning process; enjoyment was quite literally a foreign concept. To this day I recall German lessons in one school as being a pedagogical nightmare: crammed into a small room with over 40 other teenagers all hell bent on not learning with a teacher whose attiude to teaching was less than exemplary.

During these times I took solice in buying dictionaries and book on languages. I still have a dogeared copy of Russian Made Simple [1] which I studied intently.

Though having no support in terms of another Russian speaker and nor as it turned out any help with certain linguistic concepts made things `difficult' to say the least. I remember one incident with a school teacher when I asked what the dative case was - sadly the answer wasn't an explanation of how indirect objects and transitive verbs work but rather a full scale dressing down of my poor performance in French and German lessons - I wonder why?

So if I were to learn another language again it obviously couldn't be on the terms of the UK secondary education system. University was quite a different matter but I spend most of my time studying computer science and mathematics. These however provided me with an interesting set of tools for natural language learning.

Aside: I wrote my bachelor's degree dissertation on machine translation - coincidence?

The first tool is that all languages follow some general patterns. At least most Indo-European and Finno-Ugric languages do. There will be numbers, there will be pronouns, there will be nouns of various kinds, there will be verbs and tenses, possibly even adjectives and adverbs too. All sentences have a mix of subject, verb and object in various orders. So at that level there isn't too much difference eh?

Actually for the most part you can make a one-to-one mapping from your mother tongue to any other langauge and get by. For example:

English:  I, He, She, We, You, Red, Blue, House, Dog,...
Welsh: Fi, Fe, Hi, Ni, Chi, Coch, Glas, Ty, Ci,...
Finnish: Minä, Hän, Hän, Me, Te, Punainen, Sininen, Talo, Koira,...
Russian:  Я, он, она, мы, вы, красный, синий, дом, собака, ...
Estonian: Mina, Ta, Ta, Me, Sa, Punane, Sinine, Maja, Koer, ...

Note the similarities between Estonian and Finnish, learn one and you almost get the other for free! The only thing that makes Russian a little more difficult is the script.

Once you get by, then you can build vocabulary, attune yourself to the subtlies in expressing yourself in the new language and most importantly gain confidence.

Actually let's emphasise the latter: GAIN CONFIDENCE. The difference between a child learning a language and an adult is that children have infinite confidence and don't care about not understanding, making mistakes and playing with the language.

Learn a small core set of words: I, you, he, she, it, we, they, red, blue, green, one, two three, come, go, buy, want, please, thankyou, hello, big small, "help! I'm trying to learn!" etc etc etc

Learn words that you find interesting: if you like Formula 1 then learn the words relevant there: race, win, crash, speed, overtake etc (acutally these could be very useful in any conversation with motorsport obsessed Finns).

Don't worry about perfect or sometimes even vaguely correct grammar.

The more you use a langauge and the more you TRY to use a language the better you will become and the more accepting of your mistakes. The better you will become in terms of grammar and style.

You WILL MAKE MISTAKES ... if you analyse to two native speakers against what the books tell you then you will notice immediately that they are making huge amounts of "mistakes" with the grammar, phrasing etc. Remember what we said about how children learn languages.

Read stuff that you find interesting: many learners books and I remember one newspaper for Finnish learners are so simplified and grammatically correct they were totally uninteresting and demoralising to read. If you're trying to learn Finnish go read Mika Valtari's books from the Komisario Palmu books to his literary classics such as Sinuhe. Palmu is Finland's answer to James Bond.

Here you will learn three things:

1. there's huge amount you don't understand
2. the bits that you do understand greatly compensate for the bits you don't understand and you'll learn to guess and work around the bits you don't understand.
3. you'll have fun and gain confidence

If you don't understand something GUESS! This works really well in speech as well in comprehension and reading.

In Anthony's talk he described the two step process for learning 10 languages (based on Peano's Axioms apparently!!)

• Step 1: Learn 9
• Step 2: Add 1

Of course, the first new language is the hardest, but once you've learnt the patterns, a core vocabulary and found out what you like reading and discussing the next one is much easier; just like applying the successor function in Peano's axioms.

Actually at the end of the day you'll be surprised what a little vocabulary and a heap of confidence will do. I'm in no way fluent or even reasonably competent in French, but a knowledge of menus, how to order beer and food gets me remarkably far in France and seems to be very appreciated by the natives. In other words a level of fluency my school language teachers could only have hoped for.

One final word, when speaking with a native in that person's language, resist as much as you can any attempts by that native to speak your language: Finns will almost invariably speak English to a foreigner because "no foreigner learns Finnish" and that "they need the practice in English anyway" (despite most Finns speak English better than most native English speakers). Don't worry about code switching, that is, mixing languages if you don't know a word, keep the flow of conversation going rather than worry about correct grammar, pronunciation etc...indeed that is the very essence of fluency.


References:

[1] Eugene Jackson, Elizabeth Gordon, Geoffrey Braithwaite, Albina Tarasova (1977) Russian Made Simple. W.H.Allen, London. 0-491-01582-B

Sipoonlahti Bridge

An hour of long exposure, high contrast, night photography fun on a cold night, resulting in a good dozen or so pictures...overall, quite pleased with some of the results:

Fame

Even listed in a local newspaper :-)

Omakaupunki.fi

Helsinki Starliners, Rockblast, Moment of Inertia, Satans Rörmokare

28.10.2011 klo 19.00

A Walk in the Park

A couple from a small photographic expedition in Helsinki...

Weather forecast

Snow, snow, snow, snow, snow, no snow, snow, snow, snow

Two days without snowing, but .....

Long range weather forecast from Foreca for Sipoo, Finland at 13h00, Dec 30 2010...

Receipt - Kuluttajavirasto

Good information about receipts and their validity for customers in Finland

Receipt - Kuluttajavirasto

Train timetables

A useful and interesting service from Finland's Ratahalintokeskus (RHK)...the ability to generate graphical timetables for any stretch of track and date in Finland (regular traffic only):

Säännöllisen liikenteen aikataulujen haku (Regular Traffic Timetable Search)

Finnish Post Offce

According to this news report the Finnish Post Office intent to save money by opening peoples' mail, scanning then and then transmitting the contents by email...

Itella avaa postia asiakkaiden puolesta
julkaistu tänään klo 07:22, päivitetty tänään klo 09:39

Itella kokeilee postin jakamista sähköpostin välityksellä. Postityöntekijä avaa kirjeen, skannaa sen ja lähettää sähköpostilla vastaanottajalle. Tavoitteena on helpottaa haja-asutusalueiden postinjakelua.

Some of the comments suggest this might be an April fool's joke...in March...

What could go wrong? Discuss...

Finland's Internet for all

A rare moment of infrastructure provision sanity from the Finnish Government as reported by the BBC:
Delivering Finland's web 'human right'
NB: Emsalö is actually in Porvoo not Helsinki

Swine Flu...

Interesting article from the New England Journal of Medicine regarding Swine Flu (link via the ever thought provoking Schneier on Security blog) about Swine Influenza. A short quote from the article reads:

This is the story line for most headline-grabbing illnesses — HIV, Ebola virus, SARS, typhoid. These diseases capture our imagination and ignite our fears in ways that more prosaic illnesses do not. These dramatic stakes lend themselves quite naturally to thriller books and movies; Dustin Hoffman hasn't starred in any blockbusters about emphysema or dysentery.

Published at www.nejm.org November 25, 2009 (10.1056/NEJMp0911047)
The Emotional Epidemiology of H1N1 Influenza Vaccination
Danielle Ofri, M.D., Ph.D.

Now while no-one is doubting the seriousness of a new type of flu strain - they happen evey year, many times - the hysteria generated about Swine Flu has dwarfed other issues in the media. The rush for the vaccine here in Finland has been interesting to watch. One can sympathise with the officials to a point but when only hysterical, scare mongering information is being released - I guess balanced reporting doesn't make headines - then one must be more skeptical than usual, though if I recall corrected this NPR episode had a very good report on the issue.

One thing that amazed me was the queues at health centres in Helsinki and the capital region of Finland for the vaccine. At the time only risk groups were being vaccinated (babies, small children, those with respiratory illnesses) and this resulted in long queues both inside and outside (the weather at the time was -5C I remember in one news report) health centres. Now, think for a moment, if you have a highly contagious, respiratory illness then the worst thing you can do is to gather large crowds of people together for long periods of time (some who might already be incubating the illness too)....?   As the vaccine takes two weeks to become active within the body then there's a very good chance that you've accidentally created the conditions to spread the virus much more. Anyway, swine flu has dropped from the Finnish media almost totally with the occasional report on the still-yet-to-come-but-really-it-is-and-please-be-as-scared-as-possible second wave; which we've been told has already hit many countries, but not Finland...

As for the spread of the disease, the wikiedpia article on the 2009 H1N1 outbreak has an interesting quote backed up by data from the CDC:

With respect to the current swine flu pandemic, influenza surveillance information is available but almost no studies have attempted to estimate the total number of deaths attributable to swine flu. Two studies have been performed by the CDC, however; the most recent estimates that there were 9,820 deaths (range 7,070-13,930) attributable to swine flu from April to November the 14th.^[16] During the same period, 1642 deaths were officially confirmed as caused by swine flu.

For comparison here's a link about the 1918 outbreak and from the 2009 pandemic wikipedia article a comparison of the various major outbreaks against "seasonal" flu (with all the linked left in for reference):

Pandemic	Year	Influenza virus type	People infected (approximate)	Estimated deaths worldwide	Case fatality rate
Spanish flu	1918–1919	A/H1N1[154]	33% (500 million)[155]	20–100 million[156][157][158]	>2.5%[159]
Asian flu	1956–1958	A/H2N2[154]	?	2 million[158]	<0.1%[159]
Hong Kong flu	1968–1969	A/H3N2[154]	?	1 million[158]	<0.1%[159]
Seasonal flu	Every year	mainly A/H3N2, A/H1N1, and B	5–15% (340 million – 1 billion)[160]	250,000–500,000 per year[147]	<0.1%[161]
Swine flu	2009	Pandemic H1N1/09	> 622,482 (lab-confirmed)[162]	11,033 (lab-confirmed; ECDC)[2] ≥8,768 (lab-confirmed; WHO)[163]	0.026%[164]

Finally, the definition for Pandemic with some extremely interesting figures between various diseases and background information on exactly what Influenza is and what the family of influenza viruses (Orthmyxoviridae) are.

Aurora Borealis / Revontulia

Useful pictures of the current aurora borealis can be found here thanks to Finland's Meteological Institute.

RHK:n Vakinaisen likenteen kulkupäivät

Säännöllisen liikenteen kulkupäivät ja -välit aikataulukaudella 2009

Ja VR:n aikataulut.

Helsinki Metro - Disaster or Advertisment?

A major break in a water pipe flooded part of the Helsinki Metro at the Rautatientori metro station last night.

A wonderful photograph has appeared on the MTV3 Uutiset website of the situation at the platform level, it possibly describes what has actually happened.

(C)MTV3 Finland

The picture shows the escalators leading to the main railway station from the metro station platforms. On the floor is an advertisment for the film 2012 - one of the post 9/11, Global-Warming, Flu-panic genre modern disaster films...the text reads:     "KOE LOPUN ALKU"    - "experience the beginning of the end". The picture in the advertisment shows a statue being overwhelmed by a great flood....

...the irony!!

Now YLE Uutiset is running a story Helsingin aseman Kompassitorin halkeamista sortumavaara - Helsinki Station's Kompassitori Collapse Danger.

So...given a couple of days we're going to have the metro station and part of central Helsinki disappearing into a big hole (there'll be much celebration on the streets of Nikkilä, Östersundom and Södekulla !) and Helsinki finally will get two metro lines...