An essential part of being able to say ‘I told you so’ is in fact having told you so. Here goes. In April 2023, I wrote an article titled AI: Guaranteed to disrupt our economies. In this piece I also announced I was going to make a fool of myself by making some AI predictions. I have singularly failed to do so. In retrospect this was all spot on, except for perhaps missing the sheer magnitude of the madness that was about to ensue.| Bert Hubert's writings
On the 11th of October, Dutch parliament organized a hearing on the EU “Chatcontrol” proposal, with a focus on client side scanning. Dutch parliament had earlier passed two motions calling on the Dutch government not to support this proposal, but our government has declared it will ignore those motions. This hearing was timely because next week, or even this Friday, EU member states vote on how to proceed with this terrible proposal (Lawfare review from a US perspective).| Bert Hubert's writings
(Don’t) drop the hint: communicating with technical people This post is a subset of the presentation “Escaping the data center — tales from a recovering manager”. Video, slides. When we communicate at the office, we frequently do not directly say what we mean. A common conversation might go like this “Hey John, we did a survey and it turns out people can’t find what they are looking for on our website”.| Bert Hubert's writings
Na bijna een jaar werk publiceerde de overheid recent alsnog de Nederlandse Digitaliseringsstrategie (ik heb ook een klein beetje bij mogen dragen), met daarin gevleugelde woorden als “Nederland moet de kansen die digitalisering biedt pakken. Met de NDS moeten we vernieuwen en blijven investeren in ons digitaal fundament”. En ook, “We kunnen onze digitale ambities alleen waarmaken als we beschikken over voldoende digitaliseringskennis binnen de overheid.” Vorige week startte de wervin...| Bert Hubert's writings
The short version For decades, governments and organizations could run services based on servers we actually owned. These days, we’ve allowed the IT world to convince us no computing is possible outside of US-style clouds, for which we have no European equivalents. And because of this conviction, we are now moving our most precious data and most critical services to US controlled servers. Yet most of European government software still runs on locally owned systems.| Bert Hubert's writings
A brief addition to the 50000 words I wrote earlier on the cloud: what is the European situation? Software Initially, companies and governments would buy licenses to software. You’d typically have a piece of software in your office, on one of your computers, to calculate payroll with. Most other computers would have copies of WordPerfect installed. This software would function for years without updates or maintenance. If WordPerfect-the-company would disappear, you would not even notice.| Bert Hubert's writings
Our societies and governments now largely run on American proprietary big-tech platforms. Many of us want to decrease this dependency, or even end it altogether. This article is part of a series of posts on (European) cloud challenges. Everyone in the open tech scene is full of good intentions and we all want to improve things, but mostly we are not succeeding. By our nature, we would like to build fun, open, federated, and standards-based things.| Bert Hubert's writings
Over the past few years I’ve written a lot about the cloud, and what it means for Europe. Here I want to pull the various articles together into a coherent story. Note, nothing of what follows is in any way novel or original. While the facts presented in the articles are pretty inconvenient and in parts depressing, they are not controversial (or should not be). To get updates when I post something new, do subscribe to my mailing list.| Bert Hubert's writings
The very brief version: “going to the cloud” can mean renting services/servers that you could get from anywhere. There’s little lock-in. The same four words “going to the cloud” might also mean locking your operations to a specific cloud provider, whose proprietary services will now be part of your business processes “forever”. Be specific which variant of cloud you are signing off on! I’m mostly out of the office but this post was already in the pipeline and I thought it migh...| Bert Hubert's writings
In the earlier post ‘But how to get to that European cloud?’ I alluded to a coherent strategy that might get us to such a non-US cloud. In the present article I hope to clarify what this could mean, and why I think it could work. Here I focus especially on what should happen concretely, and who should do it. Note that this page is compatible/congruent with the latest EuroStack document.| Bert Hubert's writings
It is written that into each life some rain must fall, and currently a lot is falling on my family. We’re getting very good care and lots of support, so please don’t worry about us. I’m told we’ll get out of this. Consider this my ‘out of office reply’ on many of my projects and activities. I’m out of it for a bit. I know lots of people have seen me drop out of meetings and presentations, now you know why.| Bert Hubert's writings
Earlier, I wrote that there isn’t just one type of cloud; it ranges from renting out servers to fully managed office software as a service. One relevant type of cloud use is what’s informally called “cloud-native.” I wrote in that earlier page that a “cloud-native developer” does not work based on servers. If you rent out virtual servers and call yourself a cloud company, a cloud-native developer won’t understand you at all.| Bert Hubert's writings
Eerder schreef ik dat er niet één soort cloud is, het loopt van servers verhuren tot kant en klare kantoorsoftware as a service. Een relevant soort cloud is wat informeel wel ‘cloud native’ wordt genoemd. Ik schreef daarover dat een ‘cloud native programmeur’ niet werkt op basis van servers. Als je virtuele servers verhuurt en je noemt jezelf een cloudbedrijf, dan snapt die cloud native programmeur daar niets van. Die kan niet uit de voeten met computers, die heeft diensten nodig.| Bert Hubert's writings
The very short version: It has now become clear that European governments can no longer rely on American clouds, and that we lack good and comprehensive alternatives. Market forces have failed to deliver a truly European cloud, and businesses won’t naturally buy as yet unproven cloud services, even when adorned with a beautiful European 🇪🇺 flag, so for now nothing will happen. This article is part of a series of posts on (European) cloud challenges.| Bert Hubert's writings
De hele korte versie: inmiddels is duidelijk dat Europa/Europese overheden niet meer kunnen bouwen op Amerikaanse clouds, en dat we hier geen goede en dekkende alternatieven hebben. Marktwerking heeft ons geen echte Europese cloud opgeleverd, en het bedrijfsleven gaat niet vanzelf spullen inkopen die nog in aanbouw zijn, hoe mooi die Europese vlag 🇪🇺 erop ook is. Dus is het tijd voor industriepolitiek, en daarvoor moet je goed zijn met “industrie”.| Bert Hubert's writings
We have extensive discussions about our enormous dependence on American clouds, but what exactly are we talking about? And is Europe equally dependent on all types of cloud? This article is aimed at policy makers, but it may also provide some clarity about the broader landscape to actual cloud users. There is also a Dutch version of this page. Cloud in Shapes and Sizes Public cloud, private cloud, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, IaC, CaaS – what do all these terms mean?| Bert Hubert's writings
Onze samenleving en overheid draaien inmiddels grotendeels op Amerikaanse big-tech platformen. Velen van ons willen dat dit minder wordt, of zelfs ophoudt. Iedereen in de tech scene hier in Europa is vol van goede wil er wat aan te doen, maar het gaat toch vaak mis. Van nature willen we leuke open en federated en standaardgebaseerde dingen bouwen. Maar dat is niet genoeg, dat is niet waar de wereld (direct) op zit te wachten.| Bert Hubert's writings
We hebben hele discussies over onze enorme afhankelijkheid van Amerikaanse clouds, maar waar hebben we het precies over? En zijn we voor alle soorten clouds even afhankelijk? De cloud in soorten en maten Public cloud, private cloud, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, IaC, CaaS, waar hebben we het allemaal over. Om te beginnen, de verwarring ligt niet aan jou. Al deze zaken lopen inderdaad door elkaar heen, en veel belangrijke spelers gebruiken deze termen echt op verwarrende manieren.| Bert Hubert's writings
De hele korte versie: het is waanzin om onze maatschappij en overheid over te zetten op Amerikaanse clouds. Niet alleen is het een dom idee gezien wat de “Koning van Amerika” allemaal roept, de juridische fijnslijperij waarmee men dit rechtpraat, zoals bijvoorbeeld te vinden in deze onzinbrief van het kabinet gisteren, is inmiddels door Trump zelf ongeldig gemaakt. En waarom doen we dit? Gebruiksgemak. Maar het is heel eng om met dit argument je samenleving 24/7 afhankelijk te maken van d...| Bert Hubert's writings
The very short version: it is madness to continue transferring the running of European societies and governments to American clouds. Not only is it a terrible idea given the kind of things the “King of America” keeps saying, the legal sophistry used to justify such transfers, like the nonsense letter the Dutch cabinet sent last week, has now been invalidated by Trump himself. And why are we doing this? Convenience.| Bert Hubert's writings
In the beautiful Dutch booklet Over en Uit: Driekwart Eeuw Radiocommunicatie 1900 - 1975 (‘Over and out: 75 years of radio communications’), we read: 1916: As a result of British cable censorship, free communication between the Dutch government and the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies was no longer feasible. (Dutch version of this post is here) The Netherlands was dependent on foreign countries for communication, which had already caused problems earlier:| Bert Hubert's writings
In het mooie boekje Over en Uit: driekwart eeuw radiocommunicatie 1900 - 1975 lezen we: 1916: Als gevolg van de Engelse kabelcensuur is een vrije berichtenwisseling tussen de Nederlandse regering en de Gouverneur-Generaal van N.O.-Indië niet goed meer mogelijk. Nederland was afhankelijk van het buitenland voor communicatie, wat ook al eerder voor problemen had gezorgd: 1899: Tijdens de Tweede Boerenoorlog van 1899-1902 tussen Engeland en de Zuid-Afrikaanse republieken Oranje Vrijstaat en Tra...| Bert Hubert's writings
So I’m a huge SQLite fanboy and I use it for almost everything these days. Recently, the project added sqlite3_rsync which allows you to swiftly replicate your database to other servers (or to the same server if you want), and this really was the cherry on top for me. Last week however, I ran into one of my projects unexpectedly getting SQLITE_BUSY errors. And then someone urged me to run ‘a real database’ (PostgreSQL), and that hurt.| Bert Hubert's writings
By bert hubert bert@hubertnet.nl / @bert_hu_bert / https://galmon.eu/ Late July 2019, Galileo, “the European GPS” suffered from a week long outage. I’m a proud European, and I think we should have our own well-functioning navigation system, so I tried to figure out what was going on. Surely someone was monitoring this stuff in public? I come from the internet where we monitor all the things, if someone asked for it or not.| Bert Hubert's writings
Around a million years ago (it feels like) but actually 9 months ago I delivered a brief talk on end to end encryption for the European Internet Forum at the European Parliament. Update: in February 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in rather strong words that forcing providers to break end to end encryption violates human rights. Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos. If you can spare 9 minutes, I recommend watching the video.| Bert Hubert's writings
Hi everyone, I have often told the history of PowerDNS, or at least how I recall it, during talks and presentations. As I am about to truly leave DNS and PowerDNS, I thought it was high time to document my recollections. Since this is a 20+ year old story right now, it is very possible I have forgotten or misremembered important things. Do let me know if you miss important things, or if you recall things differently!| Bert Hubert's writings
tl;dr: Microsoft and other email security scanners will visit the links in email you transmit, and run the JavaScript in those links, including calls that lead to POSTs going out. This used to be unacceptable, since POSTs have side effects. Yet here we are. This breaks even somewhat sophisticated single-use sign-on / email confirmation messages. Read on for how to deal with this, and some thoughts on how we should treat gatekeepers like Microsoft that can randomly break things & get away with...| Bert Hubert's writings
Naar aanleiding van veel misverstanden hier een kort stukje over: Helpt het als Microsoft/Google/Amazon beloven dat mijn gegevens op servers in de EU worden opgeslagen? Kan ik met “eigen sleutels” / bring your own key / double key encryption / aparte opslag, mijn data in praktische zin beschermen tegen Amerikaanse spionage? Kan ik me zo beschermen tegen Amerikaanse sancties / dreigementen / Trumpiaanse woedeuitbarstingen? Het antwoord op alledrie de vragen is helaas “nee”.| Bert Hubert's writings
English: Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech Nu we ons meer en meer zorgen maken over de dominantie van ‘big tech’ wordt Open Source vaak genoemd als alternatief, zeker nu het erop lijkt dat onze overheden een Totale Migratie naar Microsoft aan het uitvoeren zijn. Nou zegt men dat je appels en peren niet kunt vergelijken, maar dat kan prima. Beide zijn namelijk zogeheten handfruit, de ene wat harder, de andere wat zachter.| Bert Hubert's writings
A quick update - The European Commission and EU member states have been pondering, for years now, if they should force WhatsApp/Apple/Signal/Telegram to scan all our private messages for suspected child sexual abuse material (CSAM). For various reasons it is a horrendous idea to break end to end encryption in this likely highly ineffective way. Variations of the proposal have also included a mandate to perform such scanning of images using AI, and even to also read our text messages to see if...| Bert Hubert's writings
“Be even more suspicious […] of all those who employ the term ‘we’ or ‘us’ without your permission. This is another form of surreptitious conscription, designed to suggest that ‘we’ are all agreed on ‘our’ interests and identity. […] Always ask who this ‘we’ is” – Christopher Hitchens in Letters to a Young Contrarian. It is so easy to write “Europe must invest more in AI”, but it is a red flag that reveals sloppy thinking on two levels.| Bert Hubert's writings
Er is recent veel discussie over digitale autonomie, en Europa’s “positie in de cloud”. Also available in English. Maandag 8 juli vanaf 14:00 is er een event “Digitale soevereiniteit: zin of onzin” bij Instituut Clingendael. Dit is (na inschrijving) ook online bij te wonen. Corinne Cath (TU Delft), Martijn Lucassen (Ministerie van Economische Zaken en Klimaat), Paul Brand (Stratix), Diana Krieger (Soverin) en ik zitten daar in een panel onder leiding van Ruben Brave (Internet Societ...| Bert Hubert's writings
We leven in rare tijden. Cookies en tracking zijn overal op internet. We worden overal gevolgd, iedere klik wordt bijgehouden. Tools als Google Analytics zijn hierbij een Faustiaanse deal: De analytics vertellen jou dingen over je gebruikers, en in ruil vertel jij Google wat diezelfde gebruikers op jouw site doen. Vreemd genoeg hebben bergen non-profit en (overheids)organisaties met goede bedoelingen ook al die cookies en trackers aanstaan op hun sites. Zo doen ze vrolijk mee aan “surveilla...| Bert Hubert's writings
Over the past eight years I’ve held a trilogy (in four parts) of presentations over at NLNOG covering the working life and career of technical people. This is around two hours of video and slides (with notes), but I’ve heard from people who binge-watched all of it in one go. The presentations have been online for ages, but you had to know where to look for them. On this page I bring them all together, with some context.| Bert Hubert's writings
This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. Hi everyone, This is a transcript of my presentation over at the European Microwave Week 2020, actually held in 2021. You can find the video here and the slides here. I’d like to thank Frank van Vliet, general chair of the EMW, for inviting me to do this talk. The words have only been edited lightly - it is still presentation style, so here and there the sentences are not written like how they’d be in a more forma...| Bert Hubert's writings
Recently a Dutch hacker was able to take control of 4 million solar panel installations (FTM (Dutch), Euractiv, Victor Gevers). And this wasn’t the first time something like this has happened either (PV Magazine). As usual, huge thanks are due to the many beta readers and experts who helped improve this article with their feedback, valuable insights and knowledge! This post was machine translated (not too well) from the original Dutch version, which was also more focused on The Netherlands.| Bert Hubert's writings
This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. In a break from the usual GPS/Galileo, DNA and C++ posts, here is a bit on 5G and national security. It turns out that through PowerDNS and its parent company Open-Xchange, we know a lot about how large scale European communication service providers work - most of whom are our customers in some way. In addition, in a previous life I worked in national security and because of that I have relevant knowledge of how gover...| Bert Hubert's writings
Dit is een licht verbeterde versie van mijn praatje op 7 juni op de Public Spaces conferentie in Amsterdam, en ik wil de organisatie graag bedanken voor hun uitnodiging, en het publiek voor de goede vragen & reacties zelfs al tijdens het praatje. Vind de oorspronkelijke slides met notities hier. Of, voor wie zin heeft, hier is de oorspronkelijke video. Nou, wat fijn dat jullie er allemaal zijn. Ik heb misschien een wat ander, minder technisch verhaal dan vele mensen die mij voorgingen hier.| Bert Hubert's writings
De hele korte versie: stilletjes maar in hoog tempo verhuizen cruciale ICT-diensten binnen de Nederlandse overheid naar met name Microsoft-servers onder Amerikaans recht. Dit neemt zulke enorme vormen aan dat de ICT-kennis binnen de Nederlandse overheid, maar ook binnen Nederland zelf, snel afkalft. Ook is deze beweging dodelijk voor onze eigen Europese industrie, waardoor we straks echt geheel hulpeloos zijn. De overheid mag volgens eigen beleid weloverwogen naar de cloud verhuizen.| Bert Hubert's writings
Lately there’s been some confusion: places like SIDN (Dutch national operator of all internet names that end on .NL) claim that nobody in Europe can deliver their computer needs, and that they therefore must outsource their operations to American cloud providers. Dutch version of this page here: Cloud Native, Europa, de ‘Bijenkorf’ Megascaler 🇳🇱 Meanwhile, we have large providers of servers and services in the Netherlands and in Europe who claim that they can (and do) provide thes...| Bert Hubert's writings
Recent is er verwarring: instellingen als SIDN claimen dat niemand in Europa nog in hun computerbehoeftes kan voorzien, en dat ze daarom wel moeten uitwijken naar Amerikaanse aanbieders. English version: Cloud Naïve: Europe and the ‘Bijenkorf’ Megascaler Tegelijkertijd hebben we in Nederland en Europa grote providers van servers en diensten die beweren dat zij dat soort diensten wel degelijk kunnen leveren. Wat is er aan de hand? IT diensten draaien op software en die draait weer op hard...| Bert Hubert's writings
Op 27 maart was er een mooi gesprek over de Nederlandse en Europese afhankelijkheid van “de cloud”. Het gesprek vond plaats op het ministerie van Economische Zaken en Klimaat, en deelnemers waren onder andere minister Micky Adriaansens en staatssecretaris van digitalisering Alexandra van Huffelen. Het onderwerp wordt dus (terecht) serieus genomen. Dit artikel is onderdeel van een grotendeels Engelstalige reeks over Europese innovatie en digitale afhankelijkheden. De bijeenkomst werd gehou...| Bert Hubert's writings
De hele korte versie: een minister voor Digitale Zaken heeft alleen zin als deze minstens evenveel doorzettingsmacht krijgt als de minister van Financiën. En het werkt ook alleen als die nieuwe minister een agenda heeft waarbij ICT veel meer is dan “iets wat je inkoopt”, maar echt een kernactiviteit wordt waar geïnnoveerd kan worden. En dat vergt een nieuwe erkenning van ICT-ambtenaren als daadwerkelijk belangrijke mensen, die aan de knoppen zitten en dingen mogen veranderen.| Bert Hubert's writings
The short version: organizations often hesitate for many years before outsourcing tasks, particularly in the field of ICT (Information and Communication Technology). During those years, valuable ICT employees leave because constantly justifying their own existence is frustrating. In the long run, something will eventually go wrong, making the decision to outsource much easier: “We can’t and don’t want to do this ourselves anymore.” However, by hesitating for so long, you have created ...| Bert Hubert's writings
There’s now also an English version of this post. De hele korte versie: organisaties twijfelen vaak vele jaren over het uitbesteden van dingen, met name ICT. Gedurende die jaren vertrekken de goede ICT-mensen, want steeds je eigen bestaan moeten rechtvaardigen is rot. Op termijn gaat er dan weleens iets goed mis, en is de keuze daarna makkelijk: we kunnen en willen dit niet meer zelf doen. Maar door jaren te twijfelen heb je het daar zelf naar gemaakt.| Bert Hubert's writings
Door Corinne CathDr. Corinne Cath is an anthropologist of technology who studies the politics of Internet infrastructure. She is a recent graduate of the Oxford Internet Institute’s PhD program (University of Oxford) and the Alan Turing Institute for data science. Previously, she worked on technology policy for human rights’ organization ARTICLE 19 and the US House of Representatives. & Bert Hubert De Stichting Internet Domeinregistratie Nederland (SIDN) beheert het digitale kadaster van ...| Bert Hubert's writings
Onderstaand een licht bewerkt transcript van aflevering 376 van BNR’s De Technoloog, Europa is (bijna) volledig afhankelijk van de VS en China en dat is een probleem, ook beschikbaar op YouTube. Redactie Daniël Mol. In deze aflevering bespreken we hoe het zo gekomen is met Europa’s bedroevende positie in de cloud, maar ook hoe onze overheden door zelf verstandiger in te kopen een grote rol zouden kunnen hebben in het (her)opwekken van onze cloudindustrie.| Bert Hubert's writings
Onze overheden en het internationale bedrijfsleven leggen steeds grotere databases over ons aan, op een schaal die we 20 jaar geleden nooit geaccepteerd zouden hebben. Eerder schreef ik in de Volkskrant hoe we dit vroeger automatisch verwerpelijk vonden, met name vanwege onze herinnering aan de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Update: We bespraken dit artikel in de BNR Nexus podcast van 29 september (vanaf minuut 24). Deze herinnering leeft minder en minder, en ook “Oost-Duitsland” en de Stasi zijn v...| Bert Hubert's writings
“Controversieelverklaard worden die wetsvoorstellen en onderwerpen waarvan redelijkerwijze verwacht mag worden dat behandeling met een ander kabinet tot een andere uitkomst zal leiden.” – website Eerste Kamer Al bijna drie jaar is er een spoedwet in de maak om de wetgeving voor de Nederlandse Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdiensten ingrijpend te veranderen. Ik schreef hier eerder uitgebreid over, en ik sprak er (samen met vele anderen) ook over in een rondetafel gesprek in de Tweede Kamer ...| Bert Hubert's writings
This is a machine-aided translation of this Dutch post. Und jetzt auch auf Deutsch verfügbar! Everyone is tumbling over themselves making predictions about AI. It’s going to free us from menial work, it’s going to dismantle our education, we all won’t have to learn things anymore because the AI will do it for us, criminals will trick us with it, crooks will create endless amounts of disinformation with language models, and the AI will escape and become dangerous in the real world.| Bert Hubert's writings
“The history of human thought would make it seem that there is difficulty in thinking of an idea even when all the facts are on the table” – Isaac Asimov In 2014, MIT’s Technology Review wrote a very interesting article about an attempt to have Isaac Asimov be part of a group of scientists attempting to think outside of the box. In this article they included a 1959 essay that Asimov wrote instead of continuing to taking part in this (classified) government work.| Bert Hubert's writings
This is a lightly edited transcript of my presentation today at the ACCSS/NCSC/Surf seminar ‘Cyber Security and Society’. I want to thank the organizers for inviting me to their conference & giving me a great opportunity to talk about something I worry about a lot. Here are the original slides with notes, which may be useful to view together with the text below. In the notes there are also additional URLs that back up the claims I make in what follows.| Bert Hubert's writings
Translations: ελληνικά / عربى / 中文 (Weixin video, Youtube video) / 粵文 / bahasa Indonesia / český / Català / český / Deutsch / Español / 2فارسی / فارسی / Français / עִברִית / Hrvatski / Italiano / Magyar / Nederlands / 日本語 / 日本語 2 / नेपाली / Polskie / русский / Português / Română / Slovensky / Slovenščina / Srpski / Türk / український / Markdown for translating / Fun video by LlamaExplains / Video versi...| Bert Hubert's writings
This post is dedicated to the memory of Niklaus Wirth, a computing pioneer who passed away January 1st. In 1995 he wrote an influential article called “A Plea for Lean Software”, and in what follows, I try to make the same case nearly 30 years later, updated for today’s computing horrors. The really short version: the way we build/ship software these days is mostly ridiculous, leading to 350MB packages that draw graphs, and simple products importing 1600 dependencies of unknown provenance.| Bert Hubert's writings
This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. The very short version: All of computing is moving to the cloud at a rapid pace, including (government) parts you might want to keep under your own control Europe has no relevant ‘hyperscaler’ cloud providers at all, and there is a desire to change this by policy means Competing with the IKEA-concept is nearly impossible. Offering IKEA-like products but then with a smaller range is not an attractive proposition.| Bert Hubert's writings
The final compromise text of the EU Cyber Resilience Act is now officially available, and various open source voices are currently opining on it. This is a complex act and other parts of the open source world (like the Eclipse Foundation and NLNet Labs) have been hard at work to advocate with the EU and member states to get a CRA that is good for open source. I’ve also been highly critical.| Bert Hubert's writings
A bit of an “emergency blog post”. The final compromise text of the EU Cyber Resilience Act is now available, and various open source voices are now opining on it. This is a complex act and other parts of the open source world (like the Eclipse Foundation and NLNet Labs) have been hard at work to advocate with the EU and member states to get a CRA that is good for open source.| Bert Hubert's writings
This is a companion page to my blog post on global warming (which is currently not yet ready). I put up this post already as a teaser for my upcoming global warming post, which desperately needs expert review before I dare put it online. If you are an experienced climate/atmospheric scientist, would you please consider helping me out? Please email me on bert@hubertnet.nl if you can spare the time to skim my work for gross errors.| Bert Hubert's writings
Update: This article is now also available in English. Und jetzt auch auf Deutsch! Iedereen buitelt over zichzelf heen om voorspellingen te doen over AI. Het gaat ons bevrijden van dom werk, het gaat ons onderwijs ontmantelen, we hoeven allemaal dingen niet meer te leren want de AI gaat het voor ons doen, criminelen zullen ons er mee bedonderen, boeven gaan er eindeloze hoeveelheden desinformatie mee maken, en de AI zal ontsnappen en in de echte wereld gevaarlijk worden.| Bert Hubert's writings
This is a living document - I’d normally spend a few days polishing everything, but since CRA talks are ongoing right now, there’s simply no time for that. Check back frequently for updates! Also please let me know urgently on bert@hubertnet.nl if you think I’m reading things incorrectly! As a follow-up to my earlier post on the EU Cyber Resilience Act, here I’d like to address some practicalities: how would it actually work.| Bert Hubert's writings
UPDATE: Nu ik niet meer werk voor de TIB kan deze uitleg van de nieuwe wet weer online. Via dit artikel zijn interviews en podcasts te vinden met meer context. UPDATE: Het rondetafelgesprek op 5 april 2023 in de Tweede Kamer is hier te bekijken en hier te lezen. En hier mijn spreektekst met voetnoten. Het kabinet heeft een wetsvoorstel gepubliceerd wat het toezicht en de bevoegdheden van de inlichtingen- en veiligheidsdiensten ingrijpend verandert.| Bert Hubert's writings
Nothing on this page is factually controversial. However, many things in this post make for uncomfortable reading. And, climate discourse is now so politicized that many factual statements are taken as dog whistles. For example, in what follows I will state that climate has always been changing, and has in fact never been stable for very long. This is 100% true, but people interpret this as if the writer means that our current climate change is not caused by human beings, or is nothing to wor...| Bert Hubert's writings
I wrote this piece after an early-career friend of mine asked some very good questions on how to be useful. Since this is a thing I struggle a bit with myself, I thought it worthwhile to write up my thoughts. Note that I fully understand that not everyone has the luxury to think about their career like this – you first have to take care of yourself and family before you can start fretting about if your working life is saving the world!| Bert Hubert's writings
Welcome to the Galmon project! Our goals are to monitor the major Global Navigation Satellite Systems, including GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou, but also Space Base Augmentation Systems like WAAS, EGNOS and GAGAN. Galmon is an open source & open data project with a community of over 30 station operators running more than 50 receivers. Some history of the project may be found in the second part of this blog post, and on this page on the big Galileo 2019 outage.| Bert Hubert's writings
First a round of thanks for the many people in industry and government who provided valuable links, background and insights! I could not have done this without your help! If you spot any mistakes, or have suggestions, please do contact me on bert@hubertnet.nl The EU’s new Cyber Resilience Act is admirable in its goal. And the EU is not alone in thinking something needs to be done about the dreadful state of security online – the Biden administration has just released its National Cybersec...| Bert Hubert's writings
This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. Feedback is very welcome on bert@hubertnet.nl. I’d also like to thank the many proofreaders, but all mistakes remain mine! In the world of (high) technology, Europe is exceptionally weak at innovating. There are many ways to explain how this came to be, and a lot of the discussion focuses on unfair business conditions and regulation. In this post however I want to talk about important cultural and social reasons tha...| Bert Hubert's writings
Dit artikel verscheen in iets andere vorm in de Volkskrant. Hier een versie met klikbare links ter onderbouwing: Recent presenteerde het kabinet een nieuwe wet die volgens de Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens inhoudt dat alle banktransacties van alle Nederlandse rekeninghouders gemonitord zullen worden in één gecentraliseerde database, met gebruik van algoritmes. De uitvoering zal in handen komen van een commerciële derde partij. Dit alles ter voorkoming van witwassen en terrorismefinanciering. ...| Bert Hubert's writings
This is a page about some of the mechanics of ‘big data’, specifically how to store, transfer and process perhaps 100s of millions or billions of rows/events. Although some people think big data starts at 65k rows, at which point Excel used to lose it, I’m talking about gigabytes of data here. Infrastructure for this kind of thing abounds. Data can however come from lots of sources, and go to lots of different places.| Bert Hubert's writings
Vandaag was mijn laatste dag als lid van de Toetsingscommissie Inzet Bevoegdheden Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdiensten (TIB), de commissie die vooraf bindend toetst of de voorgenomen inzet van de zwaarste bevoegdheden van de AIVD en MIVD rechtmatig is. Update: Onderaan dit artikel staat een uitgebreid media overzicht De reden voor dit vertrek is mijn zorg over de “Tijdelijke wet onderzoeken AIVD en MIVD naar landen met een offensief cyberprogramma” (samenvatting), die tot doel heeft het t...| Bert Hubert's writings
In an earlier post I presented a naive model for estimating Dutch electrical solar power generation numbers. It turns out that the Dutch electrical power generation numbers are an even bigger mess than I appreciated. It appears that “everyone knows” that the numbers are confusing, incomplete and perhaps even wrong. But somehow this state of confusion isn’t written down anywhere. So I’ll give it a shot. A round of thanks to a small number of anonymous industry insiders that provided in...| Bert Hubert's writings
As part of my coping mechanisms, I like to make graphs of important things I worry about. Recently with the Russia-inflicted horrors in Ukraine, I’ve been looking at the torrent of Russian gas being bought by Europe. This turned into a live plot that shows just how much money we are sending to Russia. In that post, I also dwell on how we are using that gas to heat our houses and generate electricity.| Bert Hubert's writings
The horrors of the Russian war on Ukraine continue unabated. Every eurocent we send to Russia is an intolerable assault on the senses. The world buys lots of things from Russia. For some of these, if Europe does not buy them, someone else will. But there is one major exception: natural gas. Over the past few weeks I’ve been automating graphs that show, on an hourly basis, just how much gas we buy from Russia:| Bert Hubert's writings
So I love academia, and I also built two businesses. When I dropped out of studying physics to focus on my company, I assumed I knew everything, since I had studied physics! Turned out that if you enter the world of commerce, it is very bad if you are visibly confused about the difference between business development and sales. It does nothing for your credibility. People in enterprise will likely and correctly conclude that you know nothing about running companies if you are hazy on concepts...| Bert Hubert's writings
The European Global Navigation Satellite System Galileo has recently been suffering from frequent "almost disruptions", most likely partially due to Corona, and possibly also due to Brexit, but in any case due to some historical stinginess. Before I explain what is going on, I should hasten to say that most days of the week, Galileo is working well for most users. But for example, Monday the 28th of September, one satellite was off by a stunning 5 meters.| Bert Hubert's writings
So this is likely the last time you see me blog about my new (part time) job. (Nederlandse versie hier). Starting December 1st, I am one of the three members of the board that checks warrants for the Dutch intelligence and security services. This board is called “Toetsingscommissie Inzet Bevoegdheden” or TIB. If either of the civil or the military intelligence and security services of The Netherlands want to use their lawful intercept, SIGINT or hacking (& some other) legal powers, they h...| Bert Hubert's writings
This is part two of the PowerDNS history as I recall it. As noted in part one, some of this stuff is rather old, and it is entirely possible I am misremembering things. Please do let me know if you find any important omissions or mistakes! At the end of 2002, beginning of 2003, PowerDNS as a going concern was gone. There were no more employees, there were no paying customers.| Bert Hubert's writings
In this page I want to offer some guidance how you can be useful in spreading good Corona information, specifically about vaccines. Importantly, many readers of my blog are the technology help desk for their families - the people that help fixing the wifi, install new computers and generally are useful for solving complex problems. That makes you, the reader very imporant. Your family and friends see you as someone who knows what they are talking about.| Bert Hubert's writings
UPDATE: Deze post was ooit geschreven voor de toenmalige Corona(vaccin) situatie. Maar, hij is inzetbaar voor ieder ontspoord of ontsporend familielid of contact. De grote lijn blijft hetzelfde - iemand roept allemaal rare dingen en beïnvloedt zo de rest. Onderstaand verhaal gaat over hoe je dit nuttig om kan draaien. We hebben Coronamaatregelen, en men houdt zich er niet aan. Er zijn prachtige Coronavaccins, en mensen melden luidruchtig deze nooit te gaan nemen.| Bert Hubert's writings
There are lots of calls to invest in improving cybersecurity. But it struck me that it doesn’t work like that. Not getting hacked is not so much a question of buying the right stuff. It is a question of doing the right things and understanding what you are doing. It is easy to demand that people ‘invest’ in something. You can even supply them with the money to do so.| Bert Hubert's writings
This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. Periodically I read about governments or institutions wanting to stimulate innovation, often to achieve a certain (worthy) goal. Frequently, the far larger amounts of money that other countries or continents are spending on innovation are then bandied about as justification. And I die a little inside every time that happens. Money and innovation have a very intricate relation.| Bert Hubert's writings
In previous posts I described how the two currently approved mRNA vaccines both use ‘modified nucleosides’ to enhance their efficiency. Meanwhile, a company called CureVac has created an mRNA vaccine that uses regular, unmodified, RNA. It is currently being tested in large scale trials. In this post I explain what the challenges are with this plain RNA approach, and we reverse engineer quite closely what CureVac has done with regular RNA to (hopefully) deliver an effective vaccine.| Bert Hubert's writings
In short, if you need engaging in-depth articles on your scientific project, your research breakthrough or the grand new technical/space/molecular/medical thing you are building, you can hire me! (Semi-)Popular science writing I do a lot of what I call “(Semi-)popular science writing”. My recent article dissecting the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 vaccine has racked up over 1.5 million views (so far), and it has done the rounds of the pharmaceutical world where it got favourable reviews.| Bert Hubert's writings
Er is in Nederland een levendige discussie gaande of we in moeten zetten op kernenergie of niet. Afhankelijk van wie je spreekt is kernenergie een groene en noodzakelijke manier om onze CO₂-doelen te halen, of is het overbodige onzin. Ik ben een groot gelover in het idee van kernenergie. Maar onze auto’s en huizen kunnen we niet aandrijven met ideeën. Die drijf je aan met kerncentrales. En daar hebben we het nooit over, de kernindustrie.| Bert Hubert's writings
Reading a good book is a great joy. And recommending a good book is almost as enjoyable. I've long been fascinated by books on espionage, and this contributed in no small part to me eventually joining the Dutch intelligence world. On this page you'll find a collection of 'Useful Spy Books' that can help understand the world of intelligence and security agencies| Bert Hubert's writings
This part of the history of PowerDNS is mostly about our business adventures & merger with Open-Xchange. The technical history of this period is described in part 3a. Business In 2013, PowerDNS was in a crucial phase. Existing business was going well, but we were receiving pointed signals there was trouble on the horizon. Some existing customers were close to deserting us, because we could not provide them with the top-down attention other vendors were lavishing on them.| Bert Hubert's writings
Wir haben Coronamaßnahmen, aber Menschen weigern sich, mitzuhelfen. Es gibt effektive Impfungen, aber Menschen verkünden laut, diese niemals nehmen zu wollen. In diesem Text bringe ich einige Vorschläge, wie du einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Aufklärung der Menschen leisten kannst. Ja, genau du. Viele Leser meines Blogs sind die “Haustechniker” in der Verwandtschaft, die das WLAN einrichten, den Fernseher aufbauen oder schwierige Dinge erklären. Gute Aussichten, als jemand gesehen zu wer...| Bert Hubert's writings
Recently I was doing some work decoding the new Galileo High Accuracy Service data. In short, this new service will allow Galileo (“European GPS”) users to achieve decimeter-level accuracy, which is nice. This “HAS” data is transmitted highly redundantly by making good use of Reed-Solomon encoding. To work with this data, I attempted to learn more about Reed-Solomon and I found almost all explanations were useless to me - oodles of advanced math, but no guidance of how to use R-S in p...| Bert Hubert's writings
This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. Europe’s communication needs are currently almost exclusively delivered by Chinese hardware that connects us to US-based platforms. For a variety of reasons, this is not a good idea. As stated recently by Charles Michel, President of the European Council, “Interdependence is natural, even desirable. Over-dependence, however, is not”. Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash At the core, the problem is that almost no co...| Bert Hubert's writings
Afer 8 years, I have updated this this post for 2021-era Linux (and also to fix bitrotted links). I am extremely joyful to report that the (hard) problem from 2013 appears to have been solved! There is a small addendum at the end to reflect this happy news. Back in 2013, I started writing code to do a simulation of biological system, and I got stuck after 20 lines. My test code tried to go through a million time steps doing basically nothing, and it was taking a minute to do it.| Bert Hubert's writings
In de vorige Corona update eind mei schreef ik over “delta”, toen nog bekend als de Indiase variant: Het is helaas te vroeg om nu een eindoordeel te vellen over deze variant. Wat we wel weten is dat in de UK de vaccins prima standhouden - de overgrote meerderheid van de mensen in het ziekenhuis is ongevaccineerd. Dit is nog steeds waar. Toch weten we nu een stuk meer.| Bert Hubert's writings
As regular readers of this blog will know, I am no friend of the surveillance capitalism that currently powers the web. It is becoming well-neigh impossible to develop any software or host any content without some component tracking your users & sending data to third parties. Even though I try very hard not to fall for this, periodically I discover that my sites also embed things that embed things that potentially leak your details to third parties.| Bert Hubert's writings
UPDATE: Zoals gezegd had ik Eneco om een reactie gevraagd en die is gekomen. In het kort, Eneco vertelt me dat de website een onjuiste weergave van zaken gaf. De teksten zullen aangepast worden. Het niet instemmen met ieder kwartier meten & analyse van gebruik zal geen effect hebben op het automatisch doorgeven van meterstanden voor de rekening en het online overzicht. Wel is het dan zo dat de Eneco App minder inzicht kan verschaffen zonder ieder kwartier verse data, maar dat is natuurlijk ni...| Bert Hubert's writings
This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. Recently I participated in a very useful panel that aimed to demystify European digital sovereignty. Even though we spoke for more than an hour (video), we obviously were not able to fix all of Europe’s sovereignty problems! The event was organized by Scaleway (previously Online SAS or Online.net), a 100% subsidiary of what I think is Europe’s most innovative telecommunications company, Iliad.| Bert Hubert's writings
This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. Earlier this year I was very happy to be interviewed by Thomas Ramge for Germany’s Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation (SPRIND). Many podcasts are just two guys talking to each other, but here Thomas brought along a lot of expertise & spent serious time preparing, which contributed hugely to having a productive conversation. Even if it is still two guys!| Bert Hubert's writings
Over the past few years I’ve been writing a lot about innovation, and specifically, the lack thereof in Europe. I also touch on how we’ve outsourced a ton of operational capabilities, leaving us relatively helpless. By now this is such a huge amount of words, audio and video that it is in dire need of a summary, if only to see if it makes any kind of sense taken together.| Bert Hubert's writings
Ik ben een heel tevreden klant van KPN Internet. Om diverse redenen gebruik ik de Experia Box niet, maar ik wil wel graag TV kunnen kijken met de KPN Interactieve TV Set Top Box. Vroeger ging dat “vanzelf goed”, tegenwoordig is daar wat werk voor nodig. In augustus 2021 werkten deze instructies goed, maar er kunnen dingen veranderen bij KPN natuurlijk! UPDATE mei 2024! Als je van KPN bericht hebt gekregen dat je je TV ontvanger moet vervangen, en je krijgt op kpn.| Bert Hubert's writings
So, I think I may have discovered something interesting in biology! Professional scientists know this feeling all too well. Exhilarated that it looks like you might be the first person ever to know something, but worried sick that it might not be real. Also, you might be fooling yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. And even if it is real, does it even mean something? Or did you effectively discover that hot things are not cold?| Bert Hubert's writings
And we’re back! As noted in part 1, there is the possibility I’ve discovered something interesting in biology. Lacking an academic peer group, I’m using a series of blog posts to gather feedback and to keep myself honest. Because chances continue to be high that as an outsider I am deluding myself. The full backstory can be found in part 1 without which this installment will not make much sense.| Bert Hubert's writings
Het heeft even geduurd, maar er is weer een Coronaupdate. Wederom dank aan iedereen die met vragen kwam. Hoe gaat het nu? Ik durf het niet te zeggen. In veel landen gaan de cijfers omhoog. In de UK zijn ze al tijden en tijden torenhoog. De vaccins houden goed stand tegen ernstige ziekte (zie verderop). Maar of de cijfers nog veel verder omhoog zullen gaan, ik durf het niet te zeggen.| Bert Hubert's writings
