It’s been on my mind for years, but never really put in the effort to export so many years worth of posts, media, etc to a better solution… It felt like a Herculean job and everytime I thought about it for more than 3 minutes, I dreaded the idea.

But since the future’s (finally) here, thanks to AI, I was able to export it all without fiddling with broken or paid addons and get everything in Hugo within a few hours worth of work. The site lives (for now) on Cloudflare, with the media in R2. The deploy via Gitlab-ci is (or should, let’s find out after this post 🥲) be fully automated and media should sync up in R2.

There’s not a single reason I was fed up with WordPress, it was a mix of drama, the potential security issues (althought it was all running in containers, but still), the fact WP felt slower and slower (with a lot of bloatware), but also really because I started to hate the editor. It was bulky and annoying and a real pain to deal with lately.

I’ve been running Hugo for 2-3 years now at FlatTurtle, and started to love the simplicity and speed. So that’s what I went with.

Nothing more to say about it … -.-)

It’s my firm conviction, now more than ever, that the degree to which we are able and willing to struggle for ownership of our attention is the degree to which we are free.

– James Williams

From Dense Discovery:

Here’s a familiar story we tell ourselves about our new inability to focus: screens bad, books good, civilisation circling the drain. It’s a seductive diagnosis – and also, probably, a lazy one.

Carlo Iacono is a librarian who spends his days watching how people actually engage with information, and in a recent Aeon piece he pushes back on that oversimplification. The issue isn’t screens, he argues. It’s habitat and design.

He first describes the kind of drowning many of us will recognise when trying to focus:

“Others are drowning, attempting sustained thought in environments engineered to prevent it. They sit with laptops open, seven tabs competing for attention, notifications sliding in from three different apps, phones vibrating every few minutes. They’re trying to read serious material while fighting a losing battle against behavioural psychology weaponised at scale. They believe their inability to focus is a personal failure rather than a design problem. They don’t realise they’re trying to think in a space optimised to prevent thinking.”

From here, Iacono makes a reframe I think deserves more credit than it usually gets:

“We haven’t become post-literate. We’ve become post-monomodal. Text hasn’t disappeared; it’s been joined by a symphony of other channels. Your brain now routinely performs feats that would have seemed impossible to your grandparents.”

“The real problem isn’t mode but habitat. We don’t struggle with video versus books. We struggle with feeds versus focus. One happens in an ecosystem designed for contemplation, the other in a casino designed for endless pull-to-refresh.”

The blame belongs somewhere specific, and Iacono is not shy about placing it:

“Expansion without architecture is chaos, and that’s where we’ve stumbled. The people who cannot sit through novels aren’t broken. They’re adapted to an environment we built. … We built a world that profits from distraction and then pathologise the distracted.”

What I appreciate most is that he refuses the fatalist’s exit ramp. The declinists often correctly identify the villains (you know who) – and then immediately surrender, treating the outcome as inevitable. Iacono is direct about what that surrender actually costs:

“To name the actors responsible and then treat the outcome as inevitable is to provide them cover. If the crisis is a force of nature, ‘screens’ destroying civilisation like some technological weather system, then there’s nothing to be done but write elegiac essays from a comfortable distance. But if the crisis is the product of specific design choices made by specific companies for specific economic reasons, then those choices can be challenged, regulated, reversed.”

The solution he proposes isn’t cultural or attitudinal. He’s not asking us to ‘try harder’:

“Reading worked so well for so long not because text is magic, but because books came with built-in boundaries. They end. Pages stay still. Libraries provide quiet. These weren’t features of literacy itself but of the habitats where literacy lived. We need to rebuild those habitats for a world where meaning travels through many channels at once.”

“The choice isn’t between books and screens. The choice is between intentional design and profitable chaos. Between habitats that cultivate human potential and platforms that extract human attention.”

I’d push back on a few of his points if we were at the pub, but these are quibbles around an otherwise solid argument. We didn’t drift into distraction – we were led there. The problem is architectural – which means the solution is likely too.

— Kai

This version has a mistake somewhere, but still worth seeing.

They remade the video:

We’ve heard much about the slide into oligarchy – and with good reason: the members of the US cabinet’s collective worth is reportedly close to half a trillion dollars, with the majority of them belonging to the top 0.0001%.

But journalist Ken Klippenstein offers a better term that captures our current moment with uncomfortable precision. He calls it the ‘appistocracy’ – a ruling class whose power extends far beyond mere wealth.

Amid the pomp of Trump’s inauguration, the tech tycoons watched from VIP seats “like an approving collective of Greek gods”. These aren’t your run-of-the-mill plutocrats amassing wealth from afar; they’ve engineered an unprecedented intimacy with our daily existence. Their digital empires don’t merely occupy our homes – they’ve colonised our attention, our social connections, and increasingly, our conception of reality.

Klippenstein on what makes these figures uniquely powerful: “Oligarchs are nothing new, but these men have a power over us that is more intimate than other billionaires. They collectively build, run, and control what can only be likened to an appendage of our own human bodies, a new organ that most can’t imagine losing or losing access to.”

How the appistocracy differs from previous industrial titans: “The robber barons of yesteryear, the Carnegies, the Fords and so on, at least employed a lot of people. At least they manufactured something tangible and of use to people’s lives. The appistocracy doesn’t do anything to improve health care, housing, or education. Their contribution to infrastructure amounts to building more energy facilities to power their data centers and fuel their artificial intelligence empires.”

“We are told we are saving time through the products of the appistocracy and yet we have no time. They’ve hollowed out the malls, stores and other public spaces – even ourselves, as we spend more time alone. Call it the hollowgarchy.”

We voluntarily carry the surveillance and influence tools of the ruling class in our pockets, checking them compulsively throughout the day. We’ve willingly adopted their products as extensions of our consciousness, even as they hollow out our physical world and social connections. Their apps have become phantom limbs – the loss of which feels like a genuine amputation.

The true power of the appistocracy isn’t measured in billions but in dependence. It’s a relationship that transforms us from citizens into users. Yet even as these digital dependencies deepen, so too does our capacity to question them – to carve out spaces of genuine presence in a world increasingly defined by algorithmic engagement.  – Kai

Source: Dense Discovery

Source: briefs.video

See all the previous editions here.

In How I became ‘collapse aware’, Rosie Spinks articulates something many of us sense but struggle to name – that persistent feeling that we’re approaching the end of a particular way of life.

“It’s a nagging sense that has hung over modern life since 2020, or 2016, or 2008, or 2001 – pick your start date – that things are not working anymore. And that waiting for them to get better after the next Most Important Election of Our Lives, or another war to end, or a new economic recovery cycle doesn’t seem to be having the desired effects.”

It’s this shared unease that leads Spinks to explore the notion of collapse and how to respond to it: “To be collapse aware is to live with the sense that something about the way we live is coming to end. And then to ask the next obvious question head on: If the incrementalist approach of our existing political and economic structures is not up to the task of improving things – climate, society, inequality, injustice – what comes next?”

At the heart of her essay lies a simple framework that captures the dual reality many of us inhabit: There and Here.

“There is where I earn a living, and it’s where I have a mortgage, and order groceries for pickup. It’s where growth is uniformly seen as good, and we’re told that social problems have to be ameliorated while still upholding shareholder value... It’s a place where most of us are very burned out, in a manner that mirrors the exhaustion of the earth.”

Meanwhile, “Here is where I’ve internally accepted that infinite progress and wealth are not inevitable... Where life is less concerned with status, and more with sustenance. It’s a place where the entire economy is not based on getting consumers exactly what they want, where cheap flights and next-day delivery are not available... Where we adjust our lives accordingly, and rely on one another by necessity, rather than forging ahead pretending that everything is fine.”

What makes her essay compelling to me is her subtle reframing of collapse not as an endpoint, but as a transition from There to Here. Spinks reminds us that collapse doesn’t mean the end to “sustenance, shelter, security, pleasure, identity, and meaning – just that it’s an end to our ‘normal modes’ of acquiring all those things.”

This distinction seems crucial, especially when she notes that “a lot of people are already living under collapse. Throughout history to today, people outside the countries we call ‘developed’ have seen their homes and land destroyed, and have experienced no shortage of violence under this paradigm. Those people still manage to have rich lives as they fight for survival and meaning. They still have children, celebrate festivals, write stories, and fall in love. We have a lot to learn from them.”

From this view, Spinks points to a possibility – that being forced to move beyond our obsession with material wealth might actually present a chance for healing and a renewed sense of presence:

“While I believe my son’s life may be materially worse off than my own, I think about how it could possibly be better too – psychologically, spiritually, and collectively. I think about how many of the social problems we lament – the mental health crisis among young people, especially young men; the cruel isolation of new motherhood; the normalization of depression and anxiety; the growing number of homeless and destitute people in the richest cities in the world – would be ameliorated by the kind of collective consciousness change I describe above.”

Rather than a catastrophe to fear, collapse awareness becomes an invitation to reassess our relationships with consumption, community and care. As we enter a season typically marked by excess, perhaps there’s wisdom in pausing to consider how we might begin moving from There to Here – not in fear or resignation, but in somewhat hopeful recognition that different ways of living and connecting await our discovery. – Kai

It'll affect everyone.

Via Kottke.

A few years ago, he read about imiquimod, a drug that, among other uses, is approved to fight one form of skin cancer and has shown promise against several more. Typically, imiquimod, which can help destroy tumors and usually comes in the form of a cream, is prescribed as a front-line drug as part of a broader cancer treatment plan, but Heman wondered if it could be made available more easily to people in the earliest stages of the disease. A bar of soap, he reckoned, might be just the delivery system for such a lifesaving drug, not just because it was simple, but because it would be a lot more affordable than the $40,000 it typically costs for skin-cancer treatment.

“What is one thing that is an internationally impactful idea, something that everyone can use, [regardless of] socioeconomic class?” Heman recalls thinking. “Almost everyone uses soap and water for cleaning. So soap would probably be the best option.”

Via: Kottke.

Q: Following the last few years I’m feeling empty and more cynical than ever. I’m losing faith in other people, and I’m scared to pass these feelings to my little son. Do you still believe in Us (human beings)?

A: [...] Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like, Valerio, such as reading to your little boy, or showing him a thing you love, or singing him a song, or putting on his shoes, keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so.

Via Kottke.

Source: Jom

Source: Kottke.

Via Kottke.

Say what you want, but this doesn't look like a great place to live as humans...

Sand and rocks. Not the first thing I want in my garden, or to see on a daily basis across the entire planet... ;)

While spectacular to have these pictures, and we undoubtedly need to explore space -- we can't ignore our own home planet, Earth, and must do everything possible to stop and reverse what we're currently doing to it.

Via Kottke.

The pinnacle of running Doom on things™ ;)

Via Kottke.

• All of computing is moving to the cloud at a rapid clip, 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. You can’t replicate IKEA without a LOT of upfront work
• Replicating a company like Airbus (or ASML) is similarly very hard: both companies (and their ecosystems) are one of the very few places where you can buy modern wide body jets and extreme UV wafer steppers. Their products are technically incredibly advanced.
• The ‘hyperscaler’ cloud providers (like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba) are both IKEA and Airbus/ASML hard to replicate. They offer a huge and complete range services that are also incredibly advanced and years ahead of commodity products
• Europe has precisely nothing that competes, and is 100% dependent on the ‘IKEA clouds’. We only have partial companies.
• Fixing that situation will not be possible through legislation, standardisation or concerted government action. You can’t procure a competitive mega cloud into existence. Europe did assemble Airbus from its component parts but it was very hard
• Although IKEA exists, you can still get (better) furniture from more specialised places. A European owned email, communication and collaboration cloud might be a feasible idea
• European procurement law makes it entirely doable for governments to order their services from such European communication clouds
• From that, a more viable European cloud ecosystem could perhaps evolve

We do have some (smaller) cloud (Scaleway) and datacenter players (Leaseweb, could use some innovation) and some inbetween (OVH, Hetzner)... But none are really a true cloud provider with serverless, all the storage stuff, etc.

Evroc is trying just that -- being a real competitor to GCP and AWS -- but that'll need a lot of funding, and it's been rather quiet from their end for a few months.

To be seen what'll come out of it ...

Then again, I've recently (year or two) seen a push from medium-sized companies to get away from the cloud (Basecamp/Hey for one, but they are not alone) -- at least the big players -- due to exaggerated vendor lock-in and pricing.

Previously: Tattoo & the immune system

Just... Wow!

And oh boy -- did Ila grow this past year.

As always, Tofu playing "bande apart" -- hanging out by herself, minding her own business, and definitely staying away from Mumu and Taro. Them two boys, on the other hand, lovers as always.

And then, of course, us, getting led by Ila to whatever and wherever Ila wants to go.

As we're out of Singapore, we've tasked Jan to send them for us, from Singapore (⇾ cheaper than from Europe, and one less thing to bring along). 😅

We definitely forgot to add FlatTurtle.com on the backside, now that I'm actively involved again. ;)

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost…

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…

Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will!

Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

Final speech from The Great Dictator Copyright © Roy Export S.A.S. All rights reserved

Previously: Animation vs Math

[...]

WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

[...]

But even if everyone at that table is a swell egg who wouldn't dream of enshittifying the product, the existence of a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature makes the product vulnerable to external actors who will demand that it be used. Back in 2022, Adobe informed its customers that it had lost its deal to include Pantone colors in Photoshop, Illustrator and other "software as a service" packages. As a result, users would now have to start paying a monthly fee to see their own, completed images. Fail to pay the fee and all the Pantone-coded pixels in your artwork would just show up as black.

[...]

These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Adobe chose to design its software so it would be vulnerable to this kind of demand, and then its customers paid for that choice. Sure, Pantone are dicks, but this is Adobe's fault. They stuck a KICK ME sign to your back, and Pantone obliged.

[...]

Meanwhile, the studios keep making the case for stealing movies rather than paying for them. As Tyler James Hill wrote: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"

One of the contentious points raised by Jom was regarding a statement in their publication. While conceding that this particular statement could have benefited from additional context from the full remarks of the politician involved, they stands firm in their stance on the other two statements. These, according to Jom, neither implied governmental corruption nor suggested that the government was responsible for blocking an Instagram post, contrary to the court's determination.

As Jom argues, the law, intended to correct factual inaccuracies, is being overextended to include interpretations and opinions, potentially diminishing its effectiveness and transforming it into a political instrument. The concern is that if journalism is reduced to merely echoing official government statements, verbatim, it could significantly reduce critical thinking (which is already at a low level in Singapore) and further diminish any public discourse.

Jom is right in advocating for a more democratic approach to establishing truth in journalism. This approach would involve moving away from granting politicians sole authority over determining facts, and instead fostering a more inclusive and critical environment.

Uphold the truth, but in a manner that respects diverse perspectives and maintains the integrity of journalism.

Social media brims with dubious solutions to health problems we didn’t even know we had. In her latest piece for The Guardian, writer and journalist Katherine Rowland asks why health and wellness have become a quasi-religion for so many and what possible underlying systemic issues this points to.

“The industry’s offerings run the gamut from the tried and true (walking) to the benignly absurd (crystal dildos) to the predatory and dangerous (castor oil for cancerous tumors). [Author of The Gospel of Wellness Rina Raphael] writes that being healthy once meant dutiful visits to the doctor, but now entails a never-ending quest to overcome sickness, sadness, stress and even death.”

Women, in particular, who, in addition to feeling the general pressures of modern life, are constantly reminded “to enhance the body, radiate poise, master impulses (hunger, rage) and perfect the contortions required of the double standard”, seek respite in the illusion of control and empowerment offered by the wellness cult.

But Rowland argues that health outcomes often have less to do with the remedies we use than with the structural circumstances in which we find ourselves:

“The social determinants of health – factors like air quality, domestic safety, community support and education access – account for as much as 80% of health outcomes. But these realities are neatly erased from most wellness marketing. … Joining a union would arguably deliver greater benefit than downloading another meditation app, but the wellness market presents the latter as a logical solution to work-related stress and deteriorating mental health.

“‘We’re sedating women with consumerist self-care’, Raphael says. ‘You’re not stressed because you’re not doing enough yoga or taking enough bubble baths. There are other, bigger reasons why you feel stressed out. Maybe it’s because you don’t have maternity benefits. Maybe it’s because your boss is emailing you after 6pm. Maybe it’s because your partner doesn’t help you with the workload at home. These are the things that get shoved under the rug and instead you’re told that you yourself, alone, have to take care of the issues.’”

The fact that our perception of health and wellness is so easily shaped by scammers, snake oil peddlers and influencers points to underlying needs that are real and urgent. Let’s acknowledge that we live in a time of polycrisis that haunts many of us with an omnipresent sense of precariousness – hardly ideal conditions in which to ‘flourish’, to borrow some health influencer lingo.

Once we move beyond the consumerist mindset to wellness, we may realise that wellbeing does not require an extensive menu of goods and services. “It means social support, medical care that is accessible and empathetic, decent working conditions and ready sources of affordable and nutritious foods.”

“Perhaps wellness, if we are to embrace its full potential, should dispense with the fantasy that we should always be fit and chipper, or strive to be. Perhaps it is far healthier to agitate against the circumstances making us sick and miserable than it is to latch our hopes to another glossy promise.”

From The Guardian article:

• The wellness industry has grown enormously, promising cures and remedies for various health issues. However, it often overpromises and fails to address root causes of problems.
• Wellness has become a new form of faith or religion for many as organized religion declines. It provides community, identity and the promise of salvation from disease.
• The wellness industry disproportionately targets women, capitalizing on pressures they face to look perfect and balance many responsibilities.
• Despite increased healthcare spending, Americans have lower life expectancy and more preventable illnesses than other rich nations. Wellness focuses on individual solutions rather than systemic issues.
• Systemic factors like income inequality, pollution and work conditions have a much bigger impact on health than individual wellness practices.
• Wellness presents social problems as individual issues that can be solved through consumerism rather than collective action.
• The pursuit of wellness has become a never-ending quest, with the goalposts always moving further away. Real rest and acceptance of limitations is lacking.
• Questioning deeper assumptions about what constitutes a good life, rather than always seeking happiness and fulfilment, could promote wellness.
• Connecting with the community and questioning the systems that cause suffering, rather than relying on products, may better promote health and well-being.
• For the author, reducing wellness industry consumption and connecting with an empathetic medical team helped address health issues better than promises of the wellness industry alone.

Website & Report.

• Global greenhouse gas emissions increased by 1.0% in 2022 to reach their highest levels in human history, driven mainly by a rise in coal, oil, and gas use.
• The world is failing to cut emissions and remains far off track from limiting warming to 1.5°C as outlined in the Paris Agreement goals.
• Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) submitted since the Paris Agreement have strengthened ambition somewhat but are still insufficient to narrow the emissions gap by 2030.
• High-income and high-emitting countries like the G20 need to take more ambitious action to cut emissions and support developing nations in their transitions.
• Land-based carbon dioxide removal and novel removal technologies will need to play a stronger role later in the century to achieve net-negative emissions targets.
• Clean energy transitions present opportunities for countries but also challenges, including entrenched fossil fuel interests and the need for international finance.
• Low- and middle-income countries can develop roadmaps for ambitious low-carbon development and specify their finance and technology needs.
• Carbon dioxide removal technologies require strong policy support, priority-setting, and accelerated innovation to play meaningful roles in mitigation.
• Equity principles must guide responsibilities for deploying large-scale carbon dioxide removal between countries.
• The next Conference of the Parties (COP28) is an opportunity to strengthen climate action and support for developing nations.

PDF Summary via Kagi.

Via Kottke.

Source: Kottke

Grrr, I hate Shorts and videos in that aspect ratio.

Source: Daring Fireball

Software is typically sold on the promise of increased convenience or productivity, or both. If we were to believe all the clichéd marketing lingo about time-saving, our lives would now consist largely of uninterrupted leisure time. 

In a recent post, Brett Scott argues persuasively that, far from making our lives easier, technology is making them faster and more discombobulated. To understand how this shift happens, Scott tells us to look at the issue from a systemic perspective: 

“We don’t just live in any economy. We live in a mega-scale corporate capitalist economy, and in such a setting technology is never used to save time. It’s used to speed up production and consumption in order to expand the system. The basic rule is this: technology doesn’t make our lives easier. It makes them faster and more crammed with stuff.”

The invention of the car is a great example because it enabled us to move greater distances at much higher speeds, but didn’t fundamentally change our experience of work. The time ‘saved’ by driving versus walking was quickly taken up by more work. Fast travel by car (a high-value consumer good) quickly became the new default. 

“Los Angeles only exists in its current form because of cars, which means life will be difficult there if you don’t have one. In this scenario you’re essentially held hostage by the auto industry, whose products are the very thing that have catalysed our dependence on giant megacities. Rather than acknowledge that, we lapse into a type of Stockholm Syndrome where we choose to imagine the car as a saviour that grants us our independence in that context. In reality, the car is just a minimum requirement to scrape by in a car-catalysed environment. ...”

“Each technology not only unlocks a new state of expanded acceleration (that will be hardcoded into our lives as the new basis for our survival), but will also be used as the basis for new technologies to continue that process. The vast majority of people do not experience this technology as ‘liberating’ them. Rather, they experience it as something that propagates itself around them, and something they must race to keep up with in order to not be ‘left behind’.”

The irony is that as the world around us feels hectic and more unmanageable due to technology, we turn to the very same tools for help: 

“In reality, we’ll just be more burned out, which in turn will be weaponised to sell us more acceleration tech. Feeling burned out? Why not automate more? … We increasingly live a ‘just in time’ life because, at a systemic level, there’s pressure to pack in as much stuff as possible at both a consumption and production level. We’re just as dissatisfied, only busier.”

In Scott’s view, AI will have the same accelerating effect, raising employers’ productivity expectations and demanding that we all do more, faster. Because that is the gospel of innovation:

“In the mythology of Silicon Valley, and in corporate capitalism more generally, it’s believed that we expand alongside our system, and that new products are turning us into fuller expressions of ourselves. In reality, we’re biological beings with finite capacities ensnared within an economy with an acceleration drive, and its constant attempt to expand just crowds out other stuff in our lives.”

As with all systemic issues, individuals lack the agency to effectively counteract this dynamic. Still, Scott encourages us “to realise that all these things we’re told we need are just illusions generated by the numb logic of a system that cannot value anything except accumulation and profit. From that point we can strive to build balances of power to prevent the worst excesses of the situation coming out.” It’s the economy, stupid!

Picture this: you decide to get a custom meeting room table made. You scout around, and a small studio in East Vancouver catches your eye. You meet up, exchange ideas, and decide on a superelliptical rectangle design. They nail it.

Now, you might be wondering why this table-making venture was smooth sailing. Was it because the craftspeople were top-notch? Nope. Did they charge an arm and a leg? Nope. The secret sauce was they (apparently) gave a shit.

This isn't just a furniture saga. It holds true whether you're in a tiny carpentry workshop or a buzzing software studio. When someone's genuinely invests in the work, it's a different ball game. They aren’t just selling you a commodity; they’re offering you a piece of their passion, expertise, and genuine care.

Ever noticed how you’re drawn towards businesses or individuals that show they care? You ask for a quote from four software studios. Three shoot back with a quote, no questions asked. The fourth one, however, throws in some questions, shows concerns, wants to understand the nitty-gritty before talking money. Now, who would you trust more?

I'm 100% sure this is why people are working with FlatTurtle. We solve problems, we do it with the customer in mind (and I assume, we're cheaper than the rest).

Show you care about your work and craft, your customers, and what you do... And people will see the passion and want to work with you.

Feels a bit surreal. Boarding in SQ 332 in ~55 minutes.

First stop? Oh, Paris! And from there, it's off to Belgium, then back to France for a road trip. All that with Ila (no time to update her site)... Let's see how that goes. 🙈

We'll be back after 4 to 6 weeks and celebrating Christmas surrounded by loved ones and ringing in the New Year in the Ardennes.

Writing all down now, feels like this "holiday" will be quite busy.

And the plot twist? It's a one-way ticket. No return date stamped. We're just gonna go with the flow and see where the journey takes us. Though, if I were a betting person, I'd say we'll probably be back around Lunar New Year. After all, who can resist the allure of those lion dances and, honestly, cashing in Ila's ang pow?

But let's see how much time I'll have to run a remote business, take care of Ila, drive and holiday around, and deal with family. 🤣 Maybe we'll be back sooner.

Poor Mumu, Tofu and Taro will have an extended staycation at their grandmother. Some change in environment may do them good. Hopefully, they don't forget about us, though, while being spoilt to death...

It's secretly also a big test for Shan -- to see how Europe's lifestyle fits, and if we're finally ready to say goodbye to the Lion City and head somewhere more European... Copenhagen? Amsterdam? Lisbon? 🤷‍♂️ I know I'm in need of change and an adventure.

Here's a summary from Danny Mekić post:

• The European Commission wants to turn digital communication apps into mass surveillance tools by automatically scanning EU citizens' live conversations, photos and videos for criminal offenses, even if they are not suspected of a crime.
• Hundreds of academics, privacy regulators and EU legal experts have condemned the proposal, arguing it grossly violates privacy rights and the technology cannot accurately detect criminal activity.
• When the EU Council meeting showed insufficient support for the proposal, the Commissioner launched a paid advertising campaign on social media targeting specific countries to sway public opinion.
• The campaign used emotionally manipulative images and music to suggest opponents did not want to protect children, while also misleadingly claiming majority European support.
• The ads were microtargeted to exclude people interested in privacy, Euroscepticism, Christianity and other critical political/religious groups, creating an uncritical echo chamber.
• This microtargeting violates the social media platform's policies, the Digital Services Act, and GDPR.
• When a proposal lacks sufficient support, the proper response is to withdraw or amend it, not pressure doubting members through manipulative disinformation campaigns.
• By setting aside European values, the Commission is endangering the foundations of the European Union.
• The Commission should take down the ad campaigns and refrain from future attempts to bend public opinion through illegal targeted ads.
• The document was written by a jurist and technologist who is critical of the Commission's overreach and disregard for democratic processes and individual rights.

Via Kagi: Undermining Democracy: The European Commission's Controversial Push for Digital Surveillance

Via Kottke.

Via Kottke.

Via Briefs.Video.

Via Kottke.

Would totally recommend Ghost in the Wires if you want to learn more.

Cancers suck. Time we fix those.

Via Briefs.Video.

Via Kottke.

Via Dense Discovery.

When you sign up for digital service, sometimes they make it difficult to unsubscribe. You see these tricks every time you order a product online, use a search engine, sign up for a streaming service, or join a social media community. They’re so common in subscription and shopping websites that they have a name: Dark Patterns.

By Caroline Sinders, The Pudding

As consumers, it's time we demand better.

Maybe it's time we properly document the main abusers (or do we need to call the EU to enact protection laws again because they can't be trusted)?

Just insane 😅 -- but also so educational!

Via Kottke.

Via Kottke.

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power "under the guise of 'super-patriotism' and 'super-Americanism.'" And they would use three techniques:

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a "well-planned 'hate campaign' against minority races, religions, and other groups."

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. "In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations."

Third, fascists would insist that "the world has but two choices — either fascism or communism, and they label as 'communists' everyone who refuses to support them."

Well, well, look at that.

Exactly what's happening now (LGBTQ+, women/abortion, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, etc).

And exactly the same is happening in Europe.

As Jansen notes, this is not how a design process would work in the real world — there's no user testing or competing stakeholders to please — but from a purely aesthetic and functional standpoint, it's still an interesting challenge and puzzle to attempt to solve.

Source: Kottke

Via Kottke.

This is sobering: in an ad for the United Nations Global Compact, the words of Carl Sagan from nearly 40 years ago warn us of the necessity for urgent action on climate change, deforestation, and extinction.

Source: Kottke & Colosal.

I’m very fortunate to have a handful of new trees, some grass and public seating bookend the street I live in. One of my favourite times of the day to be out on my balcony is dusk, because when the sun starts setting and the hustle and bustle of the city subsides, a group of Indian myna birds, attracted by that greenery, playfully chirps and flies between the trees. The tweeting draws out neighbours, too, and creates a beautiful moment of connection through nature in an otherwise man-made environment.

An increasing body of research tells us that interaction with nature is associated with better body and brain health. Birds play a particular role in this, in part because they are some of the only animals able to venture into highly developed areas and give out calls audible to the human ear, providing a direct link to the natural world.

The pleasure we get from encountering nature can be explained through the biophilia hypothesis, the idea that humans have an innate affinity for life and living systems: “Human preferences toward things in nature, while refined through experience and culture, are hypothetically the product of biological evolution.”

This theory is guiding academic work but also urban and architectural design. For example, there is solid evidence that having a window looking out to living plants helps speed up the healing process of patients in hospitals. In educational settings, exposure to nature seems to help kids focus better, feel less anxious and improve memory.

It’s fair to conclude then that we need nature. But does nature need us? Probably not. Clive Thompson calls this the biophilia paradox: “Biophilia is asymmetric. We have biophilia, but nature doesn’t have ‘anthrophilia’. In fact, it’s the opposite: If humanity were to vanish tomorrow, the remaining plants and animals would set about rapidly reclaiming all the asphalted-over world we’ve created.”

There is a tragic irony here: our modern existence is largely incompatible with our biophilic need for nature. Our attempt to be closer to nature often comes at a cost to nature.

“We humans should be living a little more densely, to give nature more space away from us. Meanwhile, to satisfy our biophilia, we should be designing more nature into these denser human environments – using everything from an increased number of street-plants to town parks to ‘living walls’ on houses, and buildings that use more natural materials. … We need plants close to us – and far away from us. That’s the biophilia paradox.”

My local council recently bought a bunch of warehouses and turned them into a public park with a playground. What used to be a barren, semi-industrial area suddenly came alive with people and plants. Everyone visiting the park looked in surprise at the playground wondering the same thing: ‘Where have all of these kids been hiding?’

Today’s urban spaces are designed for cars and commerce, making them particularly hostile towards kids. With most streets being considered unsafe, there has been a huge drop in outdoor play. This study, for example, claims that today just 27% of children play outside their homes, compared to 71% of the baby boomer generation. Or look at this fascinating map showing how an eight year old’s ‘range of exploration’ has changed from ~10 km a few generations ago to a mere ~300 metres today.

This short piece makes some cogent points about how our society tends to divide children into two categories undeserving of autonomy – ‘angels’ and ‘demons’:

“On one hand children are considered too small, vulnerable and innocent to roam and play in urban spaces because of traffic, ‘stranger-danger’ and other hazards. On the other hand, teenagers are constructed as a public threat and should not be allowed to hang out on the streets with their bikes, skateboards and presumably bad intentions. … Children and young people are increasingly sequestered in homes, cars or institutional spaces for adult-controlled education and play.”

Research tells us that limiting children’s sense of safety and autonomy also hampers their mental and social wellbeing. And yet, we continue to design spaces that completely robs them of their right to participate in public life. “Children should not be reduced to mere ‘future investments’ or ‘adults of tomorrow’. They are also people with present-day rights to citizenship, participation and autonomy in their living environments.”

As a kid who grew up in the country, I spent my summers roaming the neighbourhood, local fields and woods. I was pretty shocked to hear about friends in Melbourne having spent much of their early teenage years inside shopping malls. They did so because we gradually made every public space unsafe or unwelcoming for them. The irony of now blaming them for being glued to screens all day!

Many of us (especially people like me who don’t have kids of their own) move about a city oblivious to the lack of infrastructure suitable for young people. Away from home, their ability to move freely is often constrained to fenced off spaces: playgrounds, daycare centres, school yards, sports grounds. They are often chauffeured between these spaces in the very thing that makes streets unsafe for them: cars.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We know that designing cities for children ends up benefitting everyone which is why all of us should be demanding child-friendly, slow streets and engage in community efforts to take back public space from cars. Just watch any video of a Bike Bus in action and witness the joy of reclaiming our streets.

Via Kottke.

Via Kottke

So, I would like to propose another metaphor for the risks of artificial intelligence. I suggest that we think about A.I. as a management-consulting firm, along the lines of McKinsey & Company. Firms like McKinsey are hired for a wide variety of reasons, and A.I. systems are used for many reasons, too. But the similarities between McKinsey — a consulting firm that works with ninety per cent of the Fortune 100 — and A.I. are also clear. Social-media companies use machine learning to keep users glued to their feeds. In a similar way, Purdue Pharma used McKinsey to figure out how to "turbocharge" sales of OxyContin during the opioid epidemic. Just as A.I. promises to offer managers a cheap replacement for human workers, so McKinsey and similar firms helped normalize the practice of mass layoffs as a way of increasing stock prices and executive compensation, contributing to the destruction of the middle class in America.

A former McKinsey employee has described the company as "capital's willing executioners": if you want something done but don't want to get your hands dirty, McKinsey will do it for you. That escape from accountability is one of the most valuable services that management consultancies provide. Bosses have certain goals, but don't want to be blamed for doing what's necessary to achieve those goals; by hiring consultants, management can say that they were just following independent, expert advice. Even in its current rudimentary form, A.I. has become a way for a company to evade responsibility by saying that it's just doing what "the algorithm" says, even though it was the company that commissioned the algorithm in the first place.

Normally, when foreign particles are introduced into the body, the immune system responds to destroy them. In the case of tattoos, though, the story is more interesting. As it turns out, our immune system does respond immediately when a tattoo is first inked. Cells swarm the damaged area of epidermis and dermis to try and deal with the invader. However, when these cells, called macrophages, interact with tattoo pigments, there’s a problem. The pigment particles cannot readily be broken down by the enzymes carried by the macrophage. Instead, the pigments remain stuck inside the macrophage until it eventually dies off and falls apart after a few days or weeks. Then, the pigment particle is ingested by another macrophage and the process begins again. Conveniently, just like skin, macrophages aren’t very opaque. This means we can still see the tattoo pigments even as they’re being swallowed and released over and over again.

Thankfully, macrophages don’t move around much at all, meaning that tattoos tend to stay where we put them. However, this process of death and reingestion is thought to be behind why tattoos tend to get a little fuzzy around the edges over time.

It’s also an important factor around how tattoo removal works. Laser tattoo removal treatments break down pigment particles into smaller pieces which can more readily be disposed of by macrophages. This process is why tattoo removal isn’t instant. Instead, the pigment particles are broken down into fragments, and macrophages in the skin then take a few weeks to remove the debris. This process is called phagocytosis, with the debris eventually making its way out of the dermis via the lymphatic system.

“We’re constantly being told that doing anything about the astronomical growth and the average size of motor vehicles would infringe on the freedoms of people to do whatever they want. But your freedom to swing your arm ends where my face begins, and SUVs are a giant punch in the face to everyone who doesn’t drive one. …

Over a ten-year period, over 500 American children were killed by being run over by SUVs – usually by their own parents, in their own driveways. This is insane! This is legitimately insane in any civilized society. This information alone would be enough to regulate the hood design of SUVs and light trucks, but instead the industry solution for this is proximity sensors and front-facing cameras, because car companies are happy for any regulations that means they can sell you more stuff. …

In the early days, most SUV buyers were arseholes. I’m not being flippant in suggesting that all SUV drivers were arsehole, but arseholes were literally the primary target market. When automakers wanted to make SUVs mainstream, auto industry research determined that the average light truck purchaser was obsessed with status, less likely to volunteer or feel a strong connection to their communities, less giving, less oriented toward others, more afraid of crime, more likely to text and drive, [and] more likely to take risks while driving. …

I really struggle to understand how a [European] DHL delivery driver can do his job with a [Renault] Kangoo van, but a middle-aged suburbanite thinks they need a Chevy Silverado [truck] to buy groceries. … One of these vehicles is designed to efficiently carry lots of useful stuff, while the other is designed to carry fragile egos.”

Yes, it’ll affect us, yes, it’s learning from us, but we’re still the creators. And we’ve been doing the exact same.

Source: Kottke

Three reasons prices are going up. But also most notably massive markups and lack of healthy competition.

Source: Kottke

U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc and the Singapore government said they were transforming old sneakers into playgrounds and running tracks. Reuters put that promise to the test by planting hidden trackers inside 11 pairs of donated shoes.

Most got exported instead.

[...]

t a rundown market on the Indonesian island of Batam, a small location tracker was beeping from the back of a crumbling second-hand shoe store. A Reuters reporter followed the high-pitched ping to a mound of old sneakers and began digging through the pile.

There they were: a pair of blue Nike running shoes with a tracking device hidden in one of the soles.

These familiar shoes had traveled by land, then sea and crossed an international border to end up in this heap. They weren’t supposed to be here.

Five months earlier, in July 2022, Reuters had given the shoes to a recycling program spearheaded by the Singapore government and U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc. In media releases and a promotional video posted online, that effort promised to harvest the rubberized soles and midsoles of donated shoes, then grind down the material for use in building new playgrounds and running tracks in Singapore.

Dow, a major producer of chemicals used to make plastics and other synthetic materials, in the past has launched recycling efforts that have fallen short of their stated aims. Reuters wanted to follow a donated shoe from start to finish to see if it did, in fact, end up in new athletic surfaces in Singapore, or at least made it as far as a local recycling facility for shredding.

[...]

4 parts.

Because it's been two years, and both the world and the US still has a lot of work ahead.

Source: Hackaday

[…]

But if there's one thing I remember about Sim by, it's his criticism of the Singaporean mindset.

The No U-Turn Syndrome, or NUTS, was how Sim viewed how Singaporeans always required a rule base to get anything done.

It's referring to how in Singapore, u-turns are not allowed unless there's a sign that allows you to do so, which is different from how other countries do it — you can u-turn unless there's a sign prohibiting you to do so. And to make things even more fun, there are sometimes no u-turn signs, too.

This also means that when you want to do something, you automatically seek the approval of an higher authority, and if there's no rule, the default is "no".

It's terrible, and forces you to just stay in your lane without making changes.

When I started working, I saw plenty of examples of how this worked, especially in larger organisations.

[…]

With the passing of Sim, it doesn't hurt to be reminded of what he said again, and the examples he gave of how inflexible our Singaporean mindset is.

If we're going to honour his legacy, we should honour his words, too. Because as nuts as it sounds, NUTS is still pretty relevant in our society today — if not more so than ever, with the challenges Singapore faces ahead.

Eventually, the mortician was not pleased with the other bodies sitting around on beds of ice, so a LN Dewar capsule was secured for the remaining three. Another man was already frozen and sealed inside the capsule, so it was opened, and he was removed. Nelson and the mortician then spent the entire night figuring out how to jam four people — who may or may not have suffered thaw damage — into the capsule. The arrangement of bodies in different orientations was described as a “puzzle.” After finding an arrangement that worked, the resealed capsule was lowered into an underground vault at the cemetery. Nelson claimed to have refilled it sporadically for about a year before he stopped receiving money from the relatives. After a while, he let the bodies thaw out inside the capsule and left the whole thing festering in his vault.

Another group of three, including an eight-year-old girl, was packed into a second capsule in the Chatsworth vault. The LN system of this capsule subsequently failed without Nelson noticing. Upon checking one day, he saw that everyone inside had long thawed out. The fate of these ruined bodies is unclear, but they might have been refrozen for several more years.

Nelson froze a six-year-old boy in 1974. The capsule itself was well maintained by the boy’s father, but when it was opened, the boy’s body was found to be cracked. The cracking could have occurred if the body was frozen too quickly by the LN. The boy was then thawed, embalmed, and buried. Now that there was a vacancy, a different man was placed into the leftover capsule, but ten months had elapsed between his death and freezing, so his body was in rotten shape — no pun intended — from the get-go and was eventually thawed.

[...]

The worst fates of all occurred at a similar underground vault that stored bodies at a cemetery in Butler, New Jersey. The storage Dewar was poorly designed, with uninsulated pipes. This led to a series of incidents, at least one of which was failure of the vacuum jacket insulating the inside. The bodies in the container partially thawed, moved, and then froze again — stuck to the capsule like a child’s tongue to a cold lamp post. Eventually the bodies had to be entirely thawed to unstick, then re-frozen and put back in. A year later, the Dewar failed again, and the bodies decomposed into “a plug of fluids” in the bottom of the capsule. The decision was finally made to thaw the entire contraption, scrape out the remains, and bury them. The men who performed this unfortunate task had to wear a breathing apparatus.

Again, sadly unable to embed it here -- but definitely worth looking in the investigational journalism and the war crimes committed.

Source: Hackaday

the fuck...

This year Ila joined us and, as if all stars aligned, it was the perfect set to create baby Jesus' birth. My grandma (bless her) would've been proud... ;)

The cats as the three kings, Joseph and Maria, and of course, the baby.

Every year we have a few cards getting lost (or at least we're not getting a confirmation they made it to their end destination -- many cards head to Europe, USA, Australia, Japan, Singapore, etc. I figure tons of mail must get lost all the time). And those that make it, tend to be damaged or dirty

This year we opted to put everything in an envelope... Also, less likely to offend a prude postman. ;)

While he was alive and well the year before -- we hadn't decided to adopt him yet -- so not officially part of the family just yet.

His mummy and 2 brothers got adopted shortly after Christmas, and we decided to keep him as a nice memory. And what's one more cat?

We figured, it would be him or a kid... We decided on a cat.

2021 was the year of (more) Google Meet meetings, and hardly heading into the office. So, evidently, this had to be the theme.

With all the lockdowns and travel restrictions, all our travel plans in 2020 (and most of 2021) were cancelled (yes, I book flights sometimes a year in advance). Trips to Paris, Portugal and Stockholm were cancelled, as well as the regular visits to Belgium.

This meant we had to celebrate Christmas in Singapore (and Christmas in Singapore isn't very... Fun -- the vibe is really missing, and it's way too hot). Everything here feels rather fake, and Christmas is truly just to buy shit you don't need. Nonetheless, we did our best with a small (and illegal) assembly, playing board games and enjoying some finger food.

In the card, still only Tofu, Taro, Shan and me -- although Mumu (our 3rd cat) was roughly 6 weeks old by that time. More about him in tomorrow's post.

To this day, Taro is the scared one, although he doesn't shy away from bullying Tofu.

After this, we figured two cats was enough.

Tofu was a 6-week-old kitten when we got her. She was likely abandoned by a breeder for her crooked tail. She lacks some social skills and has quite the temper. But nonetheless, she's our Tofu.

The idea is quite simple: bad photoshopping meets something relevant and/or funny.

I just realised we never posted these online, and so maybe it's time to create an archive.

In the coming days I'll be posting, one by one, our previous cards. Front and back. Hopefully this can inspire others to come up with good ideas.

Here goes -- our very first Christmas card from 2017.

Last week, an Australian climate protester, who blocked a lane of traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, was sentenced to up to 15 months in prison under a new anti-protest law. It was one of many recent disruptive climate protests that seem to do little else than annoy and inconvenience everyone.

Our knee-jerk reaction to seeing someone throw soup at art or glue themselves to trains is usually contempt and anger. But I think when teenagers, grannies and scientists participate in activism that puts them at risk of going to jail and becoming the target of public scorn, it’s worth digging a little deeper.

First, we should remember that civil disobedience has long been a major tactic of nonviolent action. Whether in colonised Africa and India, in the American civil rights movement, or in the many labour, anti-war, social and racial justice movements, civil disobedience was used to provoke the government of the day, set a moral example and prompt broader discourse. It was also often loathed by much of the public because of its disruptive, divisive nature.

Most environmental movements have been around for a while. After decades of protests and marches, emissions are still going up, biodiversity loss is accelerating and hundreds of millions of people face an unlivable future. When the United Nations can issue a ‘code red for humanity’ and it’s only the third most important headline of the day, how effective is another courteous sit-in? When most of us have become numb to the daily shock and outrage in the news, how can activism cut through? Well, through theatrical, controversial actions.

But attention is not the only point. Our reaction to this sort of ‘performance activism’ also highlights a pretty major dissonance. We seem to be much more outraged about a defaced piece of art than a system that continues to trash and destroy the natural world we all depend on. The inconvenience of a delayed rush-hour commute infuriates us in ways that the prospect of frequent catastrophic ‘natural disasters’ does not. In reaction to the sentencing of the Sydney Harbour Bridge protester, the state’s conservative political leader said: “If protesters want to put our way of life at risk, they should have the book thrown at them.” It begs the question: who is putting our way of life at risk?

[...]

History tells us that harsher punishments do not stop activists. Considering what’s at stake today, I doubt it will this time. In the meantime, we can prepare for more disruption, keep the controversy in perspective, and think about where to channel our outrage. Like many protesters point out: if this kind of activism seems overly disruptive, we’ll be shocked to find out what climate change has in store for us. – Kai

I admit I'm the first one getting annoyed at these protests when it impacts me -- because I already try to do my part, and am well aware of what's at stake. We should disrupt the industries and politicians over regular people.

But having it put in that way, and comparing it to previous protests, I agree we likely have little choice, and it has worked in the past, and will work again now.

At least, until everyone is aware and starts doing their part.

Makes me want to build something like this…

[...]

Could I cool down the Earth by capturing a comet and dropping it in the ocean, like an ice cube in a glass of water?

Daniel Becker

No. In fact, it's honestly sort of impressive to find a solution that would actively make the problem worse in so many different ways.

[...]

Outer space is a lot higher up than Niagara Falls,[citation needed] so the plunge down into the atmosphere at the bottom of Earth's gravity well adds a lot more than 0.1 degrees worth of heat. A chunk of ice from space that falls to Earth gains enough energy to warm the ice up, melt it, boil it into vapor, and then heat the vapor to thousands of degrees. If you built an icy waterfall from space, the water would arrive at the bottom as a river of superheated steam.

Source: What If?

The rest of that post, as always, is amazing. This is what I needed in school (but never had).

And all I wanted to add was: damn, I miss Futurama. One of the best shows.

Do you know the difference between ‘Best Before’ and ‘Sell By’? ‘Display Until’ and ‘Use By’?

Many of us don't, and it’s causing a whopping ten per cent of Europe’s food waste - 9,000,000 tonnes across Europe each year.

I guess that's one thing that I do miss in Singapore: informal places that are affordable (almost everything here costs money) and that are not shopping malls (exactly what he mentions in the video).

Sure, there are bars, but they are usually expensive and atas, and not the place people go for an informal chitchat (more for date nights). There are the places around the hawker centres (i.e.: the food courts) with a lot of "uncles" sitting down -- but that's hardly my crowd. ;)

But maybe I'm also just in a bad neighbourhood. Chinatown has more craft beer places (somewhat affordable) right inside the food courts (i.e.: no air-conditioning, but it's informal and easily accessible).

But I'll admit I miss the Belgian-style pub where we'd go for a drink before dinner, or later at night for a tea. Places like Fenikshof in Grimbergen.

[...]

Shoots from the base of the tree are pruned so that the trunk stays straight.

[...]

The technique results in a harvest of straight logs without having to cut down the entire tree. Although originally a forestry management technique, daisugi has also found its way into Japanese gardens.

Not the most exciting narrators, but… Quite cool!

Would this scale and can we use this elsewhere to avoid cutting down trees?

Source

I specifically disagree with his stance on free speech, because I think that it depends on your interpretation of what free speech means. If you allow the most intolerant voices to be as loud as they want to, you’re going to shut down voices of different opinions as well. So allowing free speech by just allowing all speech is not actually leading to free speech, it just leads to a cesspit of hate.

I think that is a very uniquely American idea of creating this marketplace of ideas where you can say anything you want completely without limits. It is very foreign to the German mindset where we, in our Constitution, our number one priority is maintaining human dignity. And so, hate speech is not part of the German concept of free speech, for example. So I think that when Elon Musk says that everything’s gonna be allowed, or whatever, I generally disagree with that.

Fitting for Global Warming (and likely plenty of other weird stuff humans got accustomed to), but apparently the story is about death.

[...]

The story illustrates the level of violence we accept amongst children in otherwise non-violent societies, but it gets even worse: differing speeds of development lead to huge differences in size and strength, meaning bullying is often like getting picked on by a Shaq-like giant.

[...]

Yes, in the developed world “corporal punishment” (literally “bodily punishment”, an eloquently Latinized euphemism for “beatings”) is on the decline, but if a 19th-century person told you that though wife-beating was still legal, it was on the decline, you’d look at them at least a little bit askance.

Corporal punishment, while permitted for children, is never allowed for adults, even for convicted murderers. It's legal to beat a child for talking out of turn, but not for adults who have repeatedly, viciously, murdered people (*).

Countries that do beat people for talking out of turn are universally regarded as brutal dictatorships, just so long as those beaten include grown-ups.

[...]

Children are expected to never resort to violence. If on the playground they’re hit, they should not hit back, but find an authority figure instead. Generally, this authority will do nothing meaningful, and the only result will be the status penalty of being labeled a tattle-tale, resulting in an even more vulnerable personal position.

[...]

Meanwhile, if a reasonable adult simply feels threatened, such as from having popcorn thrown at them (**), they can shoot someone to death.

[...]

The value of truth as a virtue and liars as dishonorable is universally held, except when speaking to children.

[...]

Very insightful article, and many of what they touch on is true in a western society.

(*) Singapore is an exception.

(**) Probably only in the US.

When these shows resurfaced, they were full of these weird jumps, signaling that scenes were removed during censorship because someone somewhere thought it would be inappropriate or illegal to stream such content.

[...]

77 of the first 100 episodes had at least one edit, amounting to 206 removed scenes.

[...]

I categorized these scenes, among which sex, LGBTQ+ (and atypical heterosexual relationships), as well as disrespect toward China or the country’s allies are the most common ones. The four other topics account for a rather small portion but are still worth mentioning: illegal actions, religion, unhealthy addictions, and miscellaneous.

[...]

This added up to over one hour of deleted scenes, or nearly three full episodes of purely censored content.

Source and analysis by The Pudding.

The author analysed all the censored cuts out of TBBT and categorised them in 7 different ways (explained at the end of the article).

Very nicely done, showing side by side comparison of the censored and original version.

[...]

Those pages are now gone, along with thousands of anonymous posts sharing gossip, seeking advice, and protesting against government policies. In August, police in Hong Kong arrested two administrators of the Facebook page Civil Servant Secrets on suspicion of sedition, without specifying what content they found problematic. Shortly after the arrests, many other popular pages each with tens of thousands of followers shut down, as people feared becoming the next targets of Hong Kong’s crackdown on dissent.

“We don’t know where the red line is,” the administrator of the CityU Secrets page told Rest of World. Requesting anonymity to avoid being targeted by the authorities.

[...]

As time changes... All the (stupid?) things we posted (when we were kids?) on the World Wide Web will come and bite us.

Long gone are the days of the free "underworld-y" internet that existed when I grew up, I know, but few of us realise that all the things we posted on the internet are there, forever, and eventually... It'll come and haunt us.

When Kevin lost his job at a tech startup during a round of mass layoffs two months ago, he suddenly felt way less stressed. He had spent countless hours as a customer service agent for a health app that rarely worked, fielding angry call after angry call. Now that he was unemployed, the stress disappeared, which, for him, was a problem. He desperately missed the high of the anxiety he experienced from work. “I thought I was depressed, but I think I was just relaxed for the first time and didn’t like it,” the 29-year-old tells me. “All that stress sucked, but it honestly kept me going.”

Wish this was an option in Singapore -- sadly, driving a bike here is needlessly dangerous. But likely a viable mode of transportation when we move back to Europe.

“Due to short life-spans and faulty memories, humans have a poor conception of how much of the natural world has been degraded by our actions, because our ‘baseline’ shifts with every generation, and sometimes even in an individual. In essence, what we see as pristine nature would be seen by our ancestors as hopelessly degraded, and what we see as degraded, our children will view as ‘natural’.”

In the US, since the first European settlers arrived, 90% of virgin or ‘old growth’ forest has been destroyed. Today’s forests could be better described as ‘tree farms’ as they do not resemble the richly biodiverse forests that once were.

Another example are whale populations: in just one century we managed to reduce whale numbers by a whopping 99%. The impact of this is hugely complex: apparently the lack of whale poop reduced the fertilising effect on ocean algae levels, permanently crashing the productivity of ocean food webs and even altering global climate.

The Twitter thread has a lot of examples.

A more current and more widely understood example is the recent, dramatic decline of the insect population. Thanks to SBS, our children will most likely never know how many bugs ended up splattered on windshields during a road trip taken just a few decades ago.

The Windscreen phenomenon.

Using Van Der Waals force, geckoes are able to stick to pretty much any surface, including slippery windows. Their feet have millions of tiny hairs.

Pretty damn cool -- never thought about it (*) until Nerdland talked about it.

(*) Singapore has a lot of geckoes. They are considered to be pests here... But I love them... :)

- A new Chatham House report highlights that the global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss. 

- Biodiversity loss will continue to accelerate, unless we change the way we produce food. Further destruction of ecosystems and habitats will threaten our ability to sustain human populations. 

- The new report calls for an urgent reform of food systems, suggesting three interdependent actions: changing global dietary patterns, protecting and setting aside land for nature, and farming in a more nature-friendly and biodiversity-supporting way. 

- Policy makers are urged to take a system-wide approach to account for the impacts of food systems, develop global guidance for change, and translate this to national targets. 

We definitely need to rethink how we produce and consume food.

But also, while mostly interesting for space travel, scientist find a way to grow plants in total darkness (i.e.: without photosynthesis). This could help with vertical farming inside buildings. It's also ~18x more efficient this way.

While we should not take that as an excuse to get rid of trees and greenery, this could maybe be used to grow in larger scale with less land usage.

Source: Nerdland

First off, starting to use the smokeping.eu¹ domain that Bianco got 10 or so years ago instead of using weird URLs under superuser.one domain.

It's running on four nodes as we speak:

• a virtual machine on a colocation server in Leaseweb, Amsterdam, NL -> leaseweb.nl.smokeping.eu
• a RPi3 (+SD card, slowest of all), Telenet, Belgium -> telenet.be.smokeping.eu
• a RPi4, EDPnet, Belgium -> edpnet.be.smokeping.eu
• a RPi4, Starhub, Singapore -> starhub.sg.smokeping.eu

This is achieved using Smokeping in a docker container, Cloudflare tunnel and Cloudflare CDN/DNS.

1 Doesn't point at anything at the moment. To do later.

When we're travelling (read: holiday) she's carrying an old Lenovo ThinkPad 13 (great device!) just "in case" she needs to open AutoCAD and edit something minor or read the drawings/dimensions. But honestly, most of the time that device is turned off and dead weight.

But all the above is just an excuse to "I was bored, and I wanted to test something": can I use an old Raspberry Pi (zero W) to remotely wake her Intel NUC, and then use Tailscale to use RD on her iPad? Well, yes I can.

I completed this using:

• Tailscale to remote desktop from anywhere to home
• Cloudflare Tunnels, Access and DNS to have a web interface to wake the desktop
• A Linux device that's always on and in the same LAN, and that'll run a PHP script.

Prep work: enable WOL

First off: enable Wake-on-LAN (WOL) in the BIOS and in your Windows settings. This article explains it for Intel NUCs, but would be similar enough for most devices. The Device Manager pane looked different on our i5 NUC, but was close enough.

On Mac, you just need to enable it in the Energy preference pane, for Linux I have no clue. 🤷‍♂️

Second step: have a working Raspberry Pi (or any Linux device) in the same LAN. This device needs to be turned on 24/7, so use something that uses very little power.

I do have a more powerful RPi4 I wish I could've reused (running Docker and some other "serious" stuff; however it's currently in a different VLAN, and it's quite crucial the Linux device is in the same LAN as the device(s) you want to wake up), so I went with an old Raspberry Pi Zero W that was collecting dust (it used to run pwnagotchi).

On the Linux device, install etherwake. The command to run is quite simply etherwake aa:bb:cc:11:22:33 (= the ethernet MAC address of your device).

If this doesn't wake your desktop, something is wrong and there's no point continuing. Go and troubleshoot.

Install Tailscale and RD

On the (Windows) desktop and your iPad, install Tailscale. Login, and make sure it works by pinging from one to the other.

Then set up Remote Desktop on both (Windows, iPad). You should test and make sure you can properly connect using the LAN IP address and then the Tailscale IP address.

Fun fact: I create a DNS record for all my devices using Cloudflare DNS with the syntax of device-name.ts.yeri.be, so I don't need to ever remember IPs, and can easily ssh or ping devices without having to look up IPs. 

Fun fact side track: I actually have a dynamic script that runs (on Linux) and creates hostname.ts.yeri.be for the Tailscale IP, hostname.wg.yeri.be based on the Wireguard IP, hostname.lan.yeri.be based on the LAN IP. This dyndns script runs every so often and updates IPs if needed. All this is running using Cloudflare DNS and their API. Super convenient.

Nginx, php and etherwake

I'm a 80s kid, so I'll use dirty PHP to run this script. I'm sure I'll go straight to hell for this, but yolo.

Install nginx and PHP (no need for MySQL and other stuff).

etherwake requires root to run (because it needs root access to create a weird magic ethernet packet). Create a file in /etc/sudoers.d/etherwake and add this line:

www-data ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/etherwake

This will allow www-data (nginx/php) to run /usr/sbin/etherwake using sudo, without password.

In /var/www/html/ create an index.php file with:

<html>
<head><title>Wake on Lan</title></head>
<body>
<p>Wake up <a href="mycooldesktop.php">My Cool Desktop</a>
</body>
</html>

And a mycooldesktop.php (or whatever) file with:

<?php
$output = shell_exec('sudo /usr/sbin/etherwake aa:bb:cc:11:22:33 2>&1');
echo "<pre>$output</pre>";
?>
<p><a href="..">Back</a></p>

It ain't pretty -- but it gets the job done. 

And be sure to edit the MAC address to match your desktop's ethernet MAC address.

Cloudflare tunnels

Install Cloudflare Tunnel (via Zero Trust dashboard).

When creating a new tunnel, the dashboard will give you all needed commands to install the tunnel on your RPi -- but be sure to select the right OS/architecture (arm64? arm? armhf?).

And then point the tunnel to http://localhost. No need to mess around with SSL certs.

Lastly, set up Cloudflare Access (via the same Zero Trust dashboard): create a new application, and make sure only approved users can sign in (i.e.: using a pin code emailed to only approved emails).

You can try it yourself via wol.superuser.one. You won't get in. :)

Optionally, but recommended: lock down Nginx to only allow connections from localhost (127.0.0.0/8 and ::1) if using Cloudflare Tunnels, or Cloudflare IPs if using port forwarding with Cloudflare Access in front. 

To recap

• We used Tailscale to create a VPN network between the desktop and the iPad. The big benefit is that Tailscale works effortlessly across NAT networks without having to open ports,
• We used Cloudflare DNS so we don't need to remember hostnames :),
• We used Cloudflare Tunnels to make sure the RPi web interface is accessible across NAT (without port forwarding) and from anywhere,
• We used Cloudflare Acces and locked down access to the right people using ACLs,
• We used etherwake running on a RPi to wake up devices that are hibernating or turned off.

And that's it really.

PS: technically WoL works with WiFi, but when I enabled WoL on the WiFi adapter, the NUC refused to hibernate/sleep for more than a minute, and kept waking itself up. So, there seems to be some kind of trigger in my network that keeps waking it up. Also, not sure if WoL via WiFi would work if the device is turned off (as opposed to sleep or hibernate). I just ended up using ethernet. 

PPS: both Cloudflare Tunnels and Tailscale use Wireguard tech in the background, so that's really cool. 

It doesn’t serve Singaporeans to have the government acting as our nanny, covering our eyes while clutching her pearls. When it seizes the power to decide whether the people are “reading the right thing,” it is depriving Singaporeans of opportunities to develop media literacy, exercise critical thinking, and become savvier navigators of online spaces. This benefits the government because it fosters among the people a culture of dependency on those in power to exercise control over all aspects of people’s lives. But it hurts Singaporeans by curbing our agency and freedom, trapping us mentally within authoritarian frames and environments.

[...]

Carrying an extra passport

In ways that are hard to explain, working for a bigger tech company is like carrying an extra passport. Everyone else has to commute to work. You get driven in an air-conditioned private bus with dedicated wifi. Work visa failed to renew? No worries, do an intra-company transfer to one of several global hubs.

It's not that the rules don't apply to you, it's that you have a safeguard for when the shit hits the fan.

And this week, that's exactly what happened. The Supreme Court of the US overturned Roe v Wade and a bunch of tech companies rushed in to reassure their employees. Yes, the law of the land just changed. But, don't worry. We will fly you out of state, we will approve relocation if you wish, we will take care of you. You will be insulated against the worst of anti-choice laws, regardless of where you live. This is a massive change in reproductive freedom for Americans, but not for you.

We're not opposed to employers taking care of their employees. We're not even upset that companies got gold stars for their employer brand in an otherwise hot talent market. But the extra passport is tricky. It has two profound impacts and whether those things are intended or not is hard to say.

An extra passport can make you feel like you have a perpetual plan B. Like whatever is going on in the world is someone else's problem to solve. That untethered, unmoored thing means you pay less attention to the fucked-up-ed-ness of San Francisco. You can always move to Miami. Or Austin. Taxes are lower there anyway. Pulled all the way through, tech people resemble locusts. We come, we eat, we leave at the first signs of blight. Even when it's blight we caused.

The other reason it's tricky is that it reduces scrutiny on the issuing body. The company paying for the air conditioned, wifi-enabled shuttle or the round trip airfare to a blue state. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. They are doing all of this to take care of you. And it'd help out a whole awful lot if you didn't ask what the public policy team has been up to for the past few years.

[...]

Incoherent answers

So here we are. Faced with this disastrous ruling. And it makes us wonder: how coherent are your organization's actions on this one? We heard about the relocation policy, what other actions are they taking? Do they line up? Or are they shielding their employees from a political reality with one hand, while they help bankroll that reality with the other? The twitterverse has been quick to call out the companies whose statements don't match their political spending. But that critique, lobbed at a brand's social account, often stops at the social media manager.

It's harder for organizations to ignore the questions that come from their own people. It's harder to ignore questions from you.

What are our company's policy/lobbying priorities right now?
Which candidates have we donated to that helped make this mess, and have we cut off that support?
How are we making our position clear, and what concrete steps are we taking to advance that position?

Those questions may produce some awkward shifting in seats. If this were about product strategy, the conversation would be all coherent actions and strong point of view. But when it comes to their role as political actors, many executives have shown that they don't have the range. So, when you ask these questions, you may get a patronizing smile, and some version of, "we can't do that. Donating across the board is how you play the game. If we want influence on the things we care about, we need to be in the room."

You deserve better answers than that. You deserve better than to have your employer tell you that criminalizing abortion is "playing the game." Some of you, when you push, will find out that your labour has been supporting an organization that helped fund what's unfolding right now. And when you discover that, you deserve better than, "we don't claim to get everything right." You deserve better than, "we're not all going to agree on everything anyway."

We don't need you to agree on everything. But, if you are one of those lucky humans who found yourself with an extra passport you didn't know you had, we're invoking Spiderman rules.

That company-issued passport affords you a set of privileges. Like the ability to flit between jurisdictions when the need arises. It also comes with an extra set of responsibilities. We need you engaged, informed, and asking tough questions at this week's all hands. Even if you're not American, or married to an American, now is a good time to get clear on how your organization is using its influence in the world. Particularly when your company's public stance and their actions don't line up.

I'm pro-Becky who found out at her 20-week anatomy scan that the infant she had been so excited to bring into this world had developed without life sustaining organs.

I'm pro-Susan who was sexually assaulted on her way home from work, only to come to the horrific realization that her assailant planted his seed in her when she got a positive pregnancy test result a month later.

I'm pro-Theresa who hemorrhaged due to a placental abruption, causing her parents, spouse, and children to have to make the impossible decision on whether to save her or her unborn child.

I'm pro-little Cathy who had her innocence ripped away from her by someone she should have been able to trust and her 11-year-old body isn't mature enough to bear the consequence of that betrayal.

I'm pro-Melissa who's working two jobs just to make ends meet and has to choose between bringing another child into poverty or feeding the children she already has because her spouse walked out on her.

I'm pro-Brittany who realizes that she is in no way financially, emotionally, or physically able to raise a child.

I'm pro-Emily who went through IVF, ending up with SIX viable implanted eggs requiring selective reduction to ensure the safety of her and a SAFE number of fetuses.

I'm pro-Jessica who is FINALLY getting the strength to get away from her physically abusive spouse only to find out that she is carrying the monster's child.

I'm pro-Vanessa who went into her confirmation appointment after YEARS of trying to conceive only to hear silence where there should be a heartbeat.

I'm pro-Lindsay who lost her virginity in her sophomore year with a broken condom and now has to choose whether to be a teenage mom or just a teenager.

I'm pro-Courtney who just found out she's already 13 weeks along, but the egg never made it out of her fallopian tube, so either she terminates the pregnancy or risks dying from internal bleeding.

You can argue and say that I'm pro-choice all you want, but the truth is:
I'm pro-life.
Their lives.
Women's lives.

You don't get to pick and choose which scenarios should be accepted. It's not about which stories you don't agree with. It's about fighting for the women in the stories that you do agree with and the CHOICE that was made.

Women's rights are meant to protect ALL women, regardless of their situation!

Overturning Roe does not stop abortions, it stops SAFE abortions! 

Abortion is healthcare.

I've not been in Paris since 2015, I believe. Feel like I should probably pop-by again and see if it really changed that much. I remember it to be mostly one big traffic jam with all the 2 and 3 wheeled motorcyclists racing in between.

It would be interesting to see if other major cities in Europe follow suit.

I'm actually quite looking forward to the biking future: riding (e-)bikes, a proper last-mile method (i.e. combing rental bikes or e-scooters with public high-speed railway).

Brussels definitely had a change of heart (for the better), but it'll take 10+ years to properly realise all these projects. Is it too little, too late?

Bike Highways are becoming a thing in a few cities in Belgium (but not in Wallonia; and sadly, the one in Vilvoorde will take 4+ years to build). But I'm excited to see what this will become once all this is finalised.

Would love to see Singapore work on something similar.

For a very brief moment, we had rental bikes in Singapore that were hugely popular. That is, until the gahmen decided to regulate rental bikes because of stupid wild parkers; a lot of these companies either pulled out of Singapore or went bankrupt.

And we had e-scooters, that were banned pretty much overnight (or well, "only allowed on biking lances" -- however, Singapore probably only has 5, or some absurd low number, biking lanes across the entire island; so it was an effective ban).

Since then, the desire of car ownership only went up (there is technically a cap -- which is good, but leaves little alternative for families that need a car for things that are impractical with ride hailing). Speaking of, ride hailing companies are doing tremendously (prices nearly doubled in the past 2-3 years with the lack of competition).

I see an increase in (amateur) bikers, but it's insanely dangerous as there's no dedicated lanes except for a couple of PCN.

So dear Singapore, please please please build a city that does not revolve around cars (the plans are there, but all new development seem to still have all roads on top, with little to no cycling lanes).

Make it easier to use (e-)bikes, (e-)skateboards, unicycles and what not!

[...]

Last year she found out her 65-year-old mother had 1,100 micrograms of PFOS per liter of blood—a concentration more typically found in industrial wastewater. Her 68-year-old father had about 800. Her 19-year-old daughter tested at 300. D’Hollander’s own level had come down to about 100, which she attributes to not eating eggs and to breastfeeding, a theory backed up by studies showing mothers pass on high amounts of the chemical through their milk. She and her mother both have malfunctioning thyroids, a condition now associated with PFOS, and doctors have told them that at some point the drugs they take for the condition will stop working. Other health problems associated with high PFOS levels include high cholesterol, diabetes, hormone and immune disorders, and even diminished vaccine efficacy.

[...]

One sample showed 257,000 micrograms per liter, according to a 3M-commissioned study submitted to the Flemish waste management agency. For context, Minnesota’s current safe limit is 0.015 micrograms per liter.

[...]

After more than a decade of fighting, Flemish officials were eager to go ahead with the Oosterweel. They needed 3M’s help. In November 2018, Lantis and 3M signed their secret pact allowing the most dangerous of the toxic dirt (with 70 to 1,000 micrograms of PFOS per kilo) to be dumped on 3M’s site. Lantis argued Flemish regulations allowed it to move the soil without treating it as toxic waste as long as it served a function, in this case a security wall. Lantis estimated it would cost €63 million to move all that soil. 3M’s cost would be €75,000.

[...]

The Province of Antwerp planned to move roughly 4 million cubic meters of soil from the tunnel-highway project to a nature reserve far south.

[...]

Alongside health anxieties, farmers in the area have lost business. Koen Doggen grows organic vegetables that he sells to consumers through a subscription service. He says tests last summer showed his soil had more than twice the level of PFOS at which the government says sanitization is required. “I considered quitting,” he says. “I didn’t know if I wanted to work on contaminated soil. I breathe it in daily in the summer and wash it off my skin every evening. I wondered how I could ever sell this product again now that Zwijndrecht has become PFOS land, like it’s Chernobyl.”

[...]

High concentrations of PFBSA had made it into fish in the estuary of the western side of the Scheldt leading into the North Sea, according to a study paid for by residents of Zwijndrecht late last year. Flounder in the estuary had 24 micrograms of PFOS, seven times above safe limits for people who eat fish once a week.

[...]

Last autumn, 3M’s chief medical officer, Oyebode Taiwo, flew to Antwerp from the US to defend the company in Parliament. He argued that blood tests showing high PFOS levels weren’t proof the chemical caused the health problems that individuals were experiencing. “It could be due to reverse causation, meaning that it’s not the exposure that is causing the health outcome, but it is the health outcome that is causing the exposure to build up,” he said.

In other words, he argued certain people with specific health conditions are more prone to build up PFAS chemicals in their blood. Scientifically, the idea is dubious. Legally, it’s absurd, says Berezofsky. She points to the “eggshell skull” rule accepted in US law. “If I walk down the street and I hit somebody over the head, a normal person with a normal skull may just feel a bump. Somebody who has a skull made of an eggshell might die,” she says. “I’m still responsible. The fact that they have an eggshell skull does not relieve me of the liability of what I did.”

[...]

Source: Bloomberg

With Ila on the way, both as a parent and if I were a kid still -- where would I want to grow up?

Growing up wasn't a fan of Grimbergen because it was quite dull (but then again, it was very close to Brussels, and easily connected to Antwerp): I wanted a city, and that's why I moved to Antwerp (and later Singapore).

Yet, now that I also value quality of life, Singapore is not very high on that list either. There's an insane pressure on kids to be top of class and to perform, limited to no safe outdoor activities unless you live in a place with a pool/tennis court (everything else feels fake, you can't get dirty as a kid), the lack of ownself transport methods (bike, skateboard, etc) to go to school/friends (public transport rocks, but that's never as convenient as a bike for short distances).

I'm currently having mixed feelings between the big house in a quiet neighbourhood (not Suburbia, but something more like Finland/Norway outside of cities, with a forest, next to your home) vs. being in a city like Copenhagen.

While I would love to being closer to nature, I'd probably miss the benefits of the city life (like being close to an airport -- we need to visit Belgium and Singapore after all, take-away food, quick and easy shopping, more friends/school options, a cinema, etc).

By the way, Johan has a good blog about living off-grid -- which is a bit too extreme for me.

A city like Amsterdam or Copenhagen is probably a safer choice: less green, but easy and safe to get around as a pedestrian/biker, while still being in relative distance of nature or an escape out of the city.

And no, I won't head back to Brussels; it's a terrible for kids. It's the wild west, where cars rule and the police won't act.

Ghent and Antwerp are investing in car-free zones and making it pedestrian friendly, but I hate Antwerp's lack of greenery (many beautiful trees are cut, everything is stone and concrete and feels like death. Moreover, it's one big traffic jam due to lack of a sustainable solution to keep the cars out).

Oh, and I got myself a Halfbike. So I'll definitely be looking at places with biking lanes. ;)

If we cast a wider net and examine violence more broadly, evidence suggests mental illness does not cause violence. Large epidemiological studies have shown that rates of violence among people with mild-to-moderate mental illnesses range from 2%-4%, compared to 1%-3% in the general population. One of the strongest longitudinal studies, called the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study, found that only 1% of patients discharged from psychiatric facilities committed an act of violence against a stranger with a gun.

[...]

So not all mass shooters have mental illnesses. And the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness will not commit mass murder (or violence in general). This suggests that other factors are more important in predicting mass violence. Experts believe the following factors, especially in combination, are more predictive:

a/ Particular motivations, such as revenge or envy. A type of mass murderer identified by some experts is the “pseudocommando,” who “kills in public during the daytime, plans [the] offense well in advance, . . . comes prepared with a powerful arsenal of weapons,” expects to die during the massacre, and is driven by intense anger, resentment, and revenge.

b/ Adoption of extremist beliefs that promote the use of violence to attain one’s goals. There is a growing concern in the U.S. about the rise of extremist groups and influences and their relationship to mass killings.

c/ Social isolation. When people with these and other characteristics that put them at risk for violence become socially isolated, the combination can place them at even greater risk.

Whether one terms these characteristics dysfunction or evil, such behaviors do not constitute a diagnosable and treatable health condition.

A research group studying mass shootings for decades (called The Violence Project) concluded that mass shootings are largely the results of a constellation of behaviors involving a buildup of childhood trauma, an identifiable crisis point (separate from psychosis), the need to blame someone, and the opportunity to conduct a mass shooting (i.e. access to firearms).

Blaming mental illness entirely “conceals it more than it reveals it.”

Antytila went viral earlier this year after they posted a video offering to perform via live link at a concert for Ukraine in Birmingham. 

Organisers of the concert, which featured Ed Sheeran, turned down the offer because of the group's association with the military.

Topolya said that because of this, Sheeran's team then proposed a collaboration with the band. The video has since had over one million views on Youtube.

Source: BBC

They go into more details for each part of the equation:

Will be missed.

Because under the 1954 convention, “damage to cultural property means damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind”. So attacks on cultural heritage are a considered war crime. But treaties can only do so much. In the years since, conflicts around the world have rendered immeasurable damage to cultural heritage. A lot of it intentional. Like the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan buddhas. And Isis’ attacks on ancient sites all over Syria.

“That cultural heritage is not only impacted, but in many ways it’s implicated and central to armed conflict. These are things that people point to that are unifying factors for their society. They are tangible reflections of their identity.”

And Putin has made it clear that identity is at the ideological center of Russia’s invasion: “I would like to emphasize again that Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.”

“He thinks that we don’t really exist and they want to destroy all the signs of our identity.”

(Source)

When is a cargo of Russian diesel not a cargo of Russian diesel? The answer is when Shell Plc, the largest European oil company, turns it into what traders refer to as a Latvian blend. The point is to market a barrel in which only 49.99% comes from Russia; in Shell’s eyes, as long as the other 50.01 percent is sourced elsewhere, the oil cargo isn’t technically of Russian origin.

Source: Bloomberg

Scum.

Nuclear. These numbers appear to be correct, and come from our single operational nuclear power plant in Borselle.

Fossil gas. I think this includes only our ‘regular’ natural gas power plants. However, other sources authoritatively say we also burn a steady 458 MW of ‘biogas’.

Coal. Probably complete.

Waste. The Netherlands incinerates a lot of waste, and this leads to the production of electrical power. Not a lot though.

Wind onshore. Turns out this number only includes wind farms directly connected to TenneT. In other words, there is a lot more onshore wind power than reported in this number.

Wind offshore. Most people consider this number to be good & to include all the offshore wind farms.

Other. No one knows what this is (!!), except it sometimes peaks to 5 GW. But not recently. Goes up and down between 50 and 600 MW more or less.

Dutch Electrical Power Numbers part 2

If Europe is serious about becoming energy independent (from Russia today, from someone else tomorrow), it's time to publish transparent data on energy sources.

Hello, open data, anyone?

Via Kottke, via barrywebbimages.

Images copyrighted by Barry Webb. Check out the Instagram account. <3

Via NY Times.

Via NY Times.

Sadly can't embed it here due to the horrific nature, but worth to see it directly on Youtube.

[...]

Europe has a shared past that dates back 2,000 years. Its influences have been the same, from Greek culture to Roman culture, the Church, the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, the emergence of Nation-States, the colonial period, the world wars… Despite recent immigration, its countries are racially and culturally similar, as Europeans quickly discover in their Erasmus student exchanges. It isn’t united in diversity6. It’s united in values.

As long as it focuses on its differences, each country’s sovereignty will prevail. And the more sovereignty stands at the country level, the less power the Union has. Until European citizens realize that their nationalism weakens the European Union, the region will be weak.

So Europeans must put Europe first. For that, though, you need a common project that everybody is excited about. But what is that project?

[...]

Equality of religion is the reason why Turkey should be a candidate to the EU, and why the European knee-jerk reaction against it isn’t right. But this goes both ways. All of the above are questionable in Erdogan’s Turkey, who has been in power for over 20 years, and who has led the country down the path of more authoritarianism, less freedom, and less equality. These are the issues that don’t make Turkey an imminent candidate to join the EU. Not the fact that it’s a Muslim-majority country.

Europeans’ inability to explain this is a calamity, rooted in the fact that Europe doesn’t talk about its common values, focused as it is on diversity and trade. The European Union doesn’t fight for anything. It doesn’t stand for anything. Until Russian tanks invade Ukraine.

[...]

European nations have been so obsessed with their own glorious past, avoiding war, and pushing economic growth, that most of them—especially the big ones—haven’t realized they are small nations yet. Once they realize it, they will be ready to shed their baggage: their national identities. Only when they build a European identity stronger than the regional ones will Europe be ready to unite. Will they become a true nation.

[...]

The first rule of a nation is that you need to decide what you stand for. The EU stands for human rights, but you never hear that. It’s not central to the discourse. Human Rights are not encapsulated into a catchy little sentence that everybody can recite. Until they become central to everything the EU does, Europe won’t unite around its values.

[...]

So here are five necessary ingredients to make the EU into a global superpower:

- Focus more on what Europeans have in common than on their differences.
- Put universal human rights at the center of European discourse.
- Make English co-official across the EU.
- Unify the military.
- Unify the foreign policy.

Without that, the EU will remain a backwater.

Europe should get better marketing and rethink the way it promotes its values. Too much right-wing politicians have abused this.

Once again incredibly relevant...

"When NATO announced in 2002 its plan for a major wave of expansion that would include three former Soviet republics—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—Putin barely reacted. He certainly did not threaten to invade any of the countries to keep them out of NATO. Asked specifically in late 2001 whether he opposed the Baltic states’ membership in NATO, he stated, “We, of course, are not in a position to tell people what to do. We cannot forbid people to make certain choices if they want to increase the security of their nations in a particular way."

"NATO is a defensive alliance. It has never attacked the Soviet Union or Russia, and it never will. Putin knows that. But Putin is threatened by a successful democracy in Ukraine. He cannot tolerate a successful, flourishing, and democratic Ukraine on his borders, especially if the Ukrainian people also begin to prosper economically. That undermines the Kremlin’s own regime stability and proposed rationale for autocratic state leadership."

Very powerful speech.

May peace be returned swiftly.

Enter “immune amnesia”, a mysterious phenomenon that’s been with us for millennia, though it was only discovered in 2012. Essentially, when you’re infected with measles, your immune system abruptly forgets every pathogen it’s ever encountered before — every cold, every bout of flu, every exposure to bacteria or viruses in the environment, every vaccination. The loss is near-total and permanent. Once the measles infection is over, current evidence suggests that your body has to re-learn what’s good and what’s bad almost from scratch.

“In a way, infection of the measles virus basically sets the immune system to default mode,” says Mansour Haeryfar, a professor of immunology at Western University, Canada, “as if it has never encountered any microbes in the past”.

I only got halfway in the book "Immune: a Journey into the Mysterious System that Keeps You Alive" by Kurzgesagt and then got distracted and stopped reading (I tend to do that -- I'll pick it up in a few weeks/months when my distractions are gone :) ) -- but I highly recommend everyone to read that book. It's fascinating!

Source: Boredpanda via Kottke.

Stupid solution for a stupid problem.

Edit: picked up by some media.

(Source)

The market for table saws is $200-400 million but they cause almost $4 billion in damage annually. Power tools companies aren’t liable for the damage, which is borne by individual users, workers comp, and the health system.

Phytoplankton (small plant-like cells) are producing half of all oxygen on earth by photosynthesis, like plants and trees do on land. Zooplankton are forming the base of the food chain of aquatic life. Plankton are also playing an important part in the global carbon cycle. The plankton are threatened by climate change, global warming and acidification of the oceans.

(Source)

Spoken language was in existence before written language. Many numerals existing today were created long before reading was practised, so if there is any direction in a language at all, German does not "read" "backwards", it speaks "backwards".

But then, very likely numerals are not named with regard to direction at all, but for the logic behind counting. In Breton, the number eighteen has the name tri-ouch "three (times) six" – I cannot discern any direction in this numeral. In Finnish, eighteen is called kah-deksan-toista "two (from) ten (in the) second (ten)". The logic seems to be to view the decades and then say how far into which decade we are. Again, there is no reading direction implied in the number name. Similar to this Finnish logic, Old Norse used a counting system not based on tens, but on dozens and multiples of the divisors of twelve (e.g. 60 = "Schock" in German). "364 days" in Old Norse is fiora dagar ens fiortha hundraths "four days into the fourth hundred (= 120)". (Please note that "hundred" once meant 120.) I don't claim to understand the logic behind "einundzwanzig", but the question might be to understand the thinking behind numerals and find out about historic counting systems, not about reading direction.

In Old English, a language descended from Germanic dialects, numerals where "backwards", too: fēowertīene "four-teen", ān and twentiġ "one and twenty" etc., and you can still find remnants of an old vigesimal (base 20) counting system, e.g. "score" for 20.

There are many more languages that speak or read (some of) their numbers "backwards", among them Greek, Latin (both directions possible), Celtic languages etc., and of course languages that actually read right to left like Arabic, where our written numbers come from. The question could be rephrased as: Why does English read their numbers in the wrong direction? Because obviously the "backwards" way is older and may even be more widespread (there are thousands of languages and we don't know how they count; why should English be the norm from which to judge numerals?).

[...]

user1914

Source via Stackexchange.

[...]

Even if you did succeed, what then? How long are you going to keep your borders closed? A restriction to a few countries might help the first week, but within a month it won’t even much matter, because there’s too much spread elsewhere. It’s not like a variant worse than Delta is going to go away any time soon, so you’re stuck in a permanent state that in most places both can’t be created and can’t be sustained if you did create it.

For those places that showed they can sustain it, would you even want to, and for how long? When would it end? What’s your plan?

The other issue with travel restrictions is they continue long, long past the time when they still make any sense. Once containment has generally been lost, the restrictions don’t do anything. At a minimum, they do nothing unless you’re in a much much better place than the region you’re cutting off, whereas there were many cases of longstanding mutual restrictions where the same variant was dominant in both places, which is pure folly.

[...]

It’s worth noting that if a new variant is about to displace the old one, then lockdowns designed to stop the spread of the old variant are much less worthwhile. Once there’s a displacement event, the previous infection level no longer matters at all. If anything, previous infections could be an advantage, if the new variant is more dangerous, and/or it means the spread can be slowed down due to natural immunity. The flip side is if somehow natural immunity was going to stop working entirely against the new variant, then every case prevented in the meantime is a pure extra case, which based on history seems unlikely but is possible.

[...]

I think this final graph is a bit confused here, unless ‘the original strain’ here means Delta. Delta had about a 120% advantage over 'the original strain’ or 70% over Alpha. I’m going to take this to mean 500% as compared to that 120%, so 600% of original versus 220% of original, or about a 170% additional increase. Which is… better, but still quite a lot.

[...]

This is a super scary graph, assuming it is accurate.

thezvi

This is gonna be a "fun" Christmas period.

Around 1895, whilst investigating the case of a group of musicians who had died after eating cooked ham, a Belgian scientist called Emile van Ermengem identified the bacteria at the heart of Kerber’s sausage poisonings, a disease that had been coined Botulism, after bolutus, the Latin for sausage. Later work showed that these bacteria, which Van Ermengem named Clostridium Botulinum, would only grow under certain conditions. The inside of a piece of badly stored, processed meat was ideal, but when conditions changed, the bacteria would shut down, forming highly resistant spores and remaining in that form until conditions were right again for growth.

A few years later, scientists discovered something even more remarkable. The spores that produce these deadly bacteria were almost everywhere. They were found in the soil, on the surface of vegetables, in animal faeces and within riverbeds. They could survive being boiled, being frozen, and cope with highly acidic environments. Thankfully, these spores were also harmless, passing through humans unchanged if ingested. But under the correct conditions, they would turn back into bacteria, producing a deadly neurotoxin. If this toxin was ingested, even in the tiniest quantities imaginable, it would produce a slow paralysis moving down the body, eventually shutting down vital processes like breathing. For anyone unlucky enough to consume it, the survival rate was around 60%.

[...]

It is perhaps strange that such a rare poisoning event shapes our modern food system so profoundly, but this is perhaps because the toxin produced is one of, if not the, deadliest on earth. It has been estimated that in its pure crystalline form, six grams of botulism toxin, about one teaspoon full, would be enough to kill 200 million people. The lethal dose when consumed orally is around 30 billionths of a gram, which if you want a relatable comparison, is about the same as if you cut a single poppy seed into ten thousand equal pieces and ate one of them. It is an amount so tiny, it really doesn’t make sense.

[...]

The rapid, long-lasting and highly noticeable cosmetic effects made Botox a near instant success. In small doses, the same nerve damage that causes fatal paralysis in poisoning cases, helps to remove forehead creases and crow’s feet, with the only side effects being an inability to express emotion using your face, and an occasional case of drooping eyelids. A distinctive wrinkle-free and slightly startled look became fashionable among the Hollywood A-List, and eventually across the world. It is of course deeply ironic that many celebrities who publicly advocated a clean living, chemical-free lifestyle, were also early adopters of a treatment that involves injecting the deadliest substance on earth into your face (looking at you, Paltrow). If any of them were surprised at this seeming paradox, they certainly didn’t show it.

[...]

[I]t is likely that the pure crystalline form of Botulinum toxin is now also the most valuable, with an estimated street value of $100 trillion per kilogram. The entire global face paralysing industry is supported by an annual production of just a few milligrams.

Never linked Botulinum and Botox to one another. Wow.

Octopuses, crabs and lobsters will receive greater welfare protection in UK law following an LSE report which demonstrates that there is strong scientific evidence that these animals have the capacity to experience pain, distress or harm.

The UK government has today confirmed that the scope of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill will be extended to all decapod crustaceans and cephalopod molluscs.

More like this, please.

I believe the EU (or some members of) already had similar laws. I am not sure if they go as far, though.

We have to rethink the food industry. And these laws help go into the right direction.

[...]

[migrant workers] labor and their identities are clearly commodified, something which is, at times, heartbreakingly visible. In a country that’s notoriously obsessed with safety, where jaywalking and failing to wear a seatbelt can be punished with jail time, migrant workers can be transported on the expressways in the back of goods vehicles. Calls for change after a series of fatal accidents this year were rejected, on the grounds it would be too expensive for their employers.

[...]

The sprawl of TraceTogether and SGWorkPass combined is a common pattern, said Alex Au, vice president of advocacy group Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) — that laws, systems and technology grow beyond their roots. “The nature of these multiple purpose apps is that one part of it may be legitimate or justifiable. But because [of that], you don’t question the other parts that come bundled together.”

In August 2020, the police added a new tool to help them physically monitor the dorms. They deployed another robot, M.A.T.A.R, as well as drones, to patrol the dormitories and enforce “safe distancing” rules.

[...]

But there is clearly discontent, on social media and in private conversations, about the pandemic rules, which have flipped from permissive to restrictive and back again as the country figures out how willing it is to “live with Covid.” Few experts expect that the additional surveillance measures put in place for contact tracing will ever end, even when the risk of transmission subsides. There’s a general acceptance that these are now permanent, political tools.

[...]

Several times, Wham has been caught up in the tightening space for dissent. In 2020, he was jailed for 10 days for hosting a live discussion via Skype with the Hong Kong pro-democracy figurehead Joshua Wong. A Facebook post saying that Singapore’s judges were less impartial than their Malaysian counterparts led to a charge of “scandalizing the judiciary.” Other online critics and independent media have been targeted with an array of legal tools, being forced to register as political organizations and being targeted by criminal defamation proceedings.

That's but a small part of the whole article.

Shan and I recorded this a few months ago for PropertyGuru. Didn't know it was also on YouTube (they were mostly using it in ads and on facebook/Instagram). Keeping it here as archive. :)

My poor parents sent me to a school outside the system, where people like me are put by worried parents to get any sort of degree. And there I had one teacher, an older lady, probably in her 60s, and my God I was afraid of her. I was 17 and ready to be a disturbance to everybody, and her method of teaching was basically to scream at you. She was teaching history, but she made stuff so interesting! And I distinctly remember sitting in her class being screamed at by her, and it hitting me: “Wow, this is so cool!”

It was like: “Hey, if you present stuff differently, it becomes fascinating!” And I hope with Kurzgesagt that I can create these moments for as many people as possible, this spark moment.

[...]

You had cancer at 32. How did that inform your interest in immunology?

It definitely strengthened it, because cancer is an immune-system failure, in a sense. It’s weird to say, but it was genuinely one of the most interesting experiences of my life. So, for example, the chemotherapy was working too well at some point and I basically didn’t have an immune system at all. Then I got some special drugs and my immune system bounced back so hard that I could have got cancer again. It was genuinely super-interesting.

A weird way of thinking about cancer, but love the curiosity. ;)

Do read the entire interview by The Guardian, and be sure to buy the book (getting it as a Christmas gift for myself).

Some damn scary shit right there.

The jumpers blocked the airflow and shifted the gravity balance:

The stall and subsequent spin happened when we allowed too many jumpers on the outside step, causing an aft center of gravity and excessive blocking of the airflow to the left horizontal stabilizer. The nose then pitched up beyond the controllability of the elevator

Xei, pilot, King Air

More details can be read here.

Definitely time for humanity to act, ban one-use anything, stop dumping trash left and right, or exporting it to poor countries.

There's some hope with ongoing projects that attempt to catch (bigger) plastic before they reach the oceans, or fish it out when floating in patches -- but it does feel a bit like "too little, too late". And that won't help with the microplastics and beads that are generally too small to catch.

A million (!) animals die very year, just because of plastic. Let alone the effects on the surviving animals, and us, humans.

I'll be donating to The Ocean Cleanup Foundation, through my employer, that'll match my offer.

Been on repeat for a few days now. <3

I guess that was not unexpected. This could level the playing fields a bit for other big capitals like Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt and maybe even Brussels.

[...]
a report by several City organizations said that Brexit was making it harder and more expensive to hire foreign staff. International workers, mostly from the European Union, make up about a fifth of the 1.1 million people in U.K. financial services.
[...]

Can't help but see similarities with Singapore, where new visa requirements and strict rules meant countless expats could not renew their visas and were forced to leave Singapore. The atmosphere is generally more hostile than pre-Covid, and coming in is exponentially harder.

Companies are actively moving headcount, relocating entire teams. There's a clear brain drain happening, and that may be hard to fix in the short term.

I can only be hopeful this is the golden age for Europe, as a lot of talent returns home. Hopefully, Europe can tap in all that talent, and use it wisely.

To the point, there's now Covid bingo.

I quote, in case they one day decide to delete it all:

• AA: Approved absence. As a precautionary measure, students and staff will be placed on approved absence in certain scenarios. This includes if they or their household members have to undergo mandatory COVID-19 testing due to a cluster, or if their household members have flu-like symptoms.
• ARI: Acute respiratory infection. Symptoms of ARIs are similar to those of COVID-19 – such as fever, cough, runny nose, sore throat, loss of taste or smell.
• ART: Antigen rapid test. A type of COVID-19 test you can do on your own. They work by detecting viral proteins in nasal swab samples, and are faster and less intrusive than PCR tests. See “PCR” for more.
• CB: Circuit breaker. A nationwide partial lockdown implemented from Apr 21 to Jun 1, 2020, to put the brakes on escalating COVID-19 infections.
• CCF: Community care facility. These cater to COVID-19-positive people who are clinically well, have mild symptoms and do not require much medical care. Examples of CCFs include Connect @ Changi at the Singapore Expo and D'Resort NTUC.
  • Stepped Up CCFs, introduced in September 2021, cater to elderly patients who are stable, mildly symptomatic, clinically well but with some underlying conditions that could make them more susceptible to a potential worsening of illness.
• DORSCON: Disease Outbreak Response System Condition. A colour-coded framework that shows the current disease situation, providing general guidelines on how to prevent and reduce the impact of infections. Singapore has been at Orange, the second-highest level, since February 2020.
• eQO: Electronic quarantine order. The version of a quarantine order that one receives via SMS. See “QO” for more.
• FET: Fast and Easy Test. Refers to antigen rapid tests. The phrase is used in conjunction with rostered routine testing – see “RRT” for more.
• FLW: Frontline workers. These are workers in roles and industries that are of critical importance to the functioning of Singapore. Examples include healthcare workers, transport workers, hawkers, cleaners, teachers and supermarket staff.
• GQF: Government quarantine facility. These house individuals who need to be isolated as they have come into close contact with COVID-19 cases. Examples include some chalets at Changi and Loyang.
• HA: Heightened Alert. The phrase has been used to differentiate between initial planned phases of reopening and subsequent stages that have more precautionary measures in place, such as Phase 2 vs Phase 2 (HA).
• HBL: Home-based learning. When lessons and materials are made accessible online, allowing students to attend school from home.
• HQO: Home quarantine order. Those under an HQO have to isolate at home.
• HRA: Health risk alert. These are issued to people who have possibly been exposed to COVID-19. They should monitor their health, conduct self-testing and seek medical attention if they are unwell.
• HRW: Health risk warning. These are issued to those identified as close contacts of COVID-19 cases, based on TraceTogether and SafeEntry data. Those who receive HRWs must comply with testing and isolation requirements by law.
• ICU: Intensive care unit. The department in hospitals that house those who are critically ill.
• LOA: Leave of absence. Students and school staff are placed on LOA in several situations, such as when they have been in close contact with confirmed cases, but are not placed on a quarantine order; if household members are serving a quarantine order or a stay-home notice at the same residence.
• mRNA: Messenger ribonucleic acid. The technology behind certain COVID-19 vaccines, including the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. These types of vaccines teach cells how to make a protein that triggers an immune response. The immune response produces antibodies to protect the vaccinated person.
• MTF: COVID-19 multi-ministry task force. The MTF is meant to coordinate a whole-of-government response to the pandemic. Its co-chairs are Health Minister Ong Ye Kung, Trade and Industry Minister Gan Kim Yong and Finance Minister Lawrence Wong.
• NCID: National Centre for Infectious Diseases. A national public health institute designed to strengthen Singapore’s capabilities in infectious disease management and prevention.
• PCA: Periodic Commuting Arrangement. A travel lane agreement between Singapore and Malaysia to facilitate the movement of workers between both countries.
• PCR: Polymerase chain reaction. A type of COVID-19 test that amplifies genetic material so any trace of COVID-19 can be detected. They are more accurate than antigen rapid tests but take longer to produce results.
• PET: Pre-event test. A COVID-19 test taken by individuals who want to enter certain venues or participate in certain events or activities. These include cinemas, congregational services, live performances, conferences and weddings. Some individuals, such as those who are fully vaccinated, may be exempted.
• PHPC: Public Health Preparedness Clinic. These provide subsidised treatment and medication during public health outbreaks. PHPCs were previously activated to deal with haze and the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic.
• PUQ: Person under quarantine. An individual who has been served a quarantine order.
• QO: Quarantine order. A legal order requiring suspected COVID-19 cases, or close contacts of confirmed cases, to be quarantined at a designated place.
• QOA: Quarantine order allowance. The QOA scheme allows self-employed people and Singapore-registered companies that have employees under a quarantine order to claim S$100 a day. Approved caregivers of a person under quarantine can also apply for the allowance.
• RRT: Rostered routine testing. Under this surveillance testing programme, certain groups that work in higher-risk settings or live in high-density environments are tested routinely, such as every 14 days.
• RSC: Regional screening centre. These centres carry out COVID-19 swab tests for "target groups from the general community" or those who have been diagnosed with acute respiratory infection, said the Health Ministry.
• SASH: Swab and Send Home Clinic. These are PHPCs that can perform swab tests for patients. Your doctor will assess and swab or refer you to a facility, such as a regional screening centre, for a swab test if needed.
• SDA: Safe-distancing ambassador. An ambassador’s task is to remind businesses and people of safe-distancing measures, such as wearing a mask and leaving sufficient space when queuing.
• SDEO: Safe-distancing enforcement officer. These officers have the power to take enforcement action against people for flouting rules, such as issuing fines.
• SDF: SHN-dedicated facilities. These refer to accommodation for incoming travellers who are issued stay-home notices. See “SHN” for more.
• SHN: Stay-home notice. A legal notice issued under the Infectious Diseases Act that requires travellers to remain in their place of residence or SHN-dedicated facility for a stipulated period. Failure to comply can amount to an imprisonment term and/or fine.
• SMM: Safe management measures. Regulations in place to minimise the risks of COVID-19 transmission. Examples include safe distancing and caps on group sizes.
• TT: TraceTogether. A mobile phone application and/or physical token used for contact tracing efforts.
• TToSE: TraceTogether-only SafeEntry. Refers to a location where SafeEntry – a check-in gateway – has been implemented, and all individuals need to use their TT app or token to check-in.
• VoRT: Vaccinate or Regular Test regime. Under this regime, certain groups of frontline workers will need to be vaccinated against COVID-19, or undergo more regular testing.
• VTL: Vaccinated Travel Lane. Under this arrangement, fully vaccinated people can travel for leisure without serving a stay-home notice in Singapore upon returning. They will have to take up to four PCR tests. 
• WFH: Work from home. This is when an employee works from their place of residence, instead of the office.
• WHO EUL: World Health Organization's Emergency Use Listing. A procedure by the WHO that assesses the suitability of novel health products during public health emergencies. Approved vaccines under this include Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Sinopharm and Sinovac.

Insanity.

Having just come back from Belgium, Amsterdam and Copenhagen it's great seeing a video pointing out the differences and how it all works.

Also, very excited that Belgium is investing in massive "biking highways" (as a result of many cities going car-free in a few years): big investments in clear, wide cycling lanes and making. We'll hopefully be more like the Netherlands (which, with the massive amount of e-bikes is really needed).

(Source)

(Source.)

Hate the way it's animated though :)

(Source).

(Source)

[...]
Op zich een behulpzaam aanbod, maar ik zit er niet op te wachten. Men vraagt hier toestemming om per kwartier het stroomverbruik uit te lezen, en te delen met derde partijen, iets wat een serieuze inbreuk maakt op mijn privacy. Ik meet mijn eigen stroomverbruik en ik kan precies zien of er iemand in huis is, hoe laat we gaan slapen, hoe laat we opstaan etc. Dat hoeft niemand anders te weten.
[...]

(Source).

Source.

I was playing around with the idea to up the marketing and social media stuff for Shan (WFH is taking its toll -- I was bored, always doing the same, saw Shan struggle to do both creative and marketing work, and I had plenty of brainjuice left -- and in all fairness I was probably getting a bit frustrated and going "why don't you just ...". So yeah, decided to actually help out and experiment some).

Since medio April I have been running most of the social media accounts, having content scheduled using Hootsuite, increasing followers, etc.

I did some of this before, but it was mostly some random paid advertisement without a real strategy that didn't lead to anything very substantial. The ROI wasn't really there and was mostly just a gamble -- so far we've had more leads from organic growth than from paid ads on Google or Facebook/Instagram. Soooooo something must be wrong there...?!

Another thing that was missing to make her more prominent as SME (subject matter expert) was to have all the knowledge and experience she has more publicly available; ie give some away for free (and help those that wouldn't hire the services anyway), and then provide enough of a teaser to reel in customers that want more and have budget. The blog will also hold some reviews, plug some contractors and suppliers (create a bit of a win-win situation and platform), etc.

So yeah -- I suddenly had this epiphany to set up a blog (using Medium -- and I may have been late to the party, but I've been watching and wanted to get to know more about the platform -- and so far Medium actually has quite some interesting articles).

Got some interviews going with clients, show casing some projects (the portfolio is nice, but doesn't have a lot of written content) have some posts about what's going on in Shan's mind (those are the ones that take time as Shan needs to sit down and actually give me content) and even wrote about our house. :)

So let's see how that works out -- but so far it's been worth it.

They promised us all our cat pictures (they took more pictures of the cats than us)... Still waiting. :(

For the past few weeks, several times a day her screen would black out for half a second or so and then everything should go back to normal. Sometimes it would happen several times in a row, sometimes it wouldn't for hours on end.

I tried several things, including getting a 8k 120hz HDMI cable, using a usb-c to DP cable, changing the GPU vRAM minimum from 128Mb to 2048Mb (quite the hack, as it can't be set in the bios -- requires messing around in the registry. Wow.), updating all the drivers, updating the bios, making sure the NUC was properly ventilated and keeping cool (every full moon the NUC shuts down due to overheating in Singapore if I set the fan to 'balanced' instead of 'cool'), and probably more. And because it happened so sporadically it was quite hard to debug (to the point I sometimes didn't want to believe her as I couldn't see it blacken out).

Shan was getting frustrated (which in turn means I get frustrated)... and I started looking at getting either an eGPU (I can get a free Nividia M6000, just need the enclosure, but the enclosure would be $$), an AMD Ryzen 5 or 7 NUC (no more Intel in this house, but also $$$), or some other refurb (massive) desktop some friend had lying around (HP z240 or something, zero $, but Shan would kill me for having this massive thing on her desk).

Turns out, the quick fix, was to simply disable hardware acceleration.

Run GRAPHICSCONFIG and uncheck hardware acceleration.

This is probably not ideal in the long run (hopefully it's an issue with AutoCAD 2022 that is getting fixed, as opposed to the onboard Intel GPU getting messed up with AutoCAD).

When in doubt… Turn off hardware acceleration.

When migrating over from High Sierra to Big Sur, using Migration Assistant (my Synology TimeMachine kept on failing -- but besides that, migration went smoothly) two issues came up that required calling Apple.

But first off I noticed that when migrating, for some reason FileVault was turned off (more on that later). I, obviously, turned it on.

Problem A: when rebooting the Mac, I noticed the keyboard layout changed from Belgian (Azerty) to ABC (which is US English?) and it didn't accept the password to unlock the Mac. You can manually select another keyboard layout which accepts the password, but at every reboot that resets and requires going back through the layout picker.

Solution A: M1 no longer supports the usual SMC or NVRAM reset. But this problem could be solved by turning off the mac, closing the lid (?!) and waiting 30+ seconds before turning it back on. According to the person on the phone, that's the M1 SMC reset.

Problem B: I disabled guest mode in System Preferences > Users & Groups -- but it was still showing alongside the regular/admin user. I don't want guest mode.

Note that the guest mode only showed at the disk unlock (i.e.: after a reboot) and not when logged out (i.e.: Apple logo > Log Out from the regular user).

Solution B: Tried several things with Apple support:

• Turning off screen sharing and print sharing (sure -- didn't care too much about these)
• Turn guest mode on/off and reboot/force quite System preferences
• Turn off Find My in iCloud settings (not acceptable)
• Turn off FileVault (not acceptable)
• Manually running:
  • sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.AppleFileServer guestAccess -bool NO\n
  • sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.smb.server AllowGuestAccess -bool NO\n
• and a few other things I now forgot

This is what actually did help:

• Turning off FileVault actually turns off Guest mode; so when the Mac was not encrypted, it only showered one user (instead of the user + Guest) at the login prompt.
  • Obviously, that's not acceptable and I turned it back on
• Supposedly turning off Find My in iCloud settings is needed (according to Apple this requires Guest mode)
  • I later turned it back on and Guest mode did not reappear. So, what Apple was saying was incorrect, and it does not make the Guest user show up.
• Running sudo fdesetup list in Terminal shows the list of users. This may be helpful for debugging.
• Running dscl . list /Users shows many users and included Guest in my mom's case. Not entirely sure what I am looking at here.
• Running sudo dscl . delete /Users/Guest solved the problem. This deletes the Guest user (?).

Logo by Christa.

As we're trying to eat less meat in general, we've (Shan and I) been experimenting with vegetarian dishes.

This lasagna has been eaten by a few people now and every time the reviews are pretty damn good. :) It comes rather close to the original taste while being entirely vegetarian.

First off -- we're mostly just swapping out the regular minced pork/beef mix with Beyond Meat. There are other brands out there (i.e.: Omnimeat), each with their own taste -- try to see what works for you.

The Beyond Beef is also slightly sweeter in taste -- keep this in mind as I know some people (i.e.: my dad) wouldn't like it that sweet.

This dish feeds 3 to 4 people.

Ingredients

• Good olive oil
• Lasagna pasta sheets (whatever suits you, we often use the wholewheat ones)
• Tomato sauce (1 to 1.5 can). Can use fresh tomato of course
• 80g of butter
• 0.5L milk
• 80g plain flour
• Fresh basil leaves
• 1 (red) onion
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• Beyond Beef
• You'll need a pinch of (sea) salt, some pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper, nutmeg and whatever else you'll want to spice it up with
• I add some extra veggies: I use (1-2) fresh carrots, but these can easily be swapped out or mixed with peas, mushrooms, aubergine (eggplant), corn, etc.
• Cheese! I usually use grated mozzarella cheese, but Emmental and sorts works as well

Prep work

• Dice/chop up an onion
• Slice the carrots (or whatever vegetable you're adding)
• slice up the garlic
• Wash and chop up the basil
• Prepare 2 pots and an oven dish
• You can let the Beyond Beef defrost, or add it as a frozen block and just let it simmer a bit longer (until entirely melted and broken down into small bits)

Pot 1: the sauce

• Add olive oil to a big pot and heat up
• Once hot, add in the onion and carrots and let it stir-fry for a moment. I like my carrots a bit crunchy but you could technically boil or steam them until entirely soft. Whatever you do, don't burn the onion

• Once the onion gets translucent add the garlic, Beyond Beef, tomato sauce and basil
• I usually add a tiny bit of milk (especially in case the tomato is a bit sour)
• Stir and let it simmer on low heat. Make sure the "meat" breaks down in small bits
• Spice it up (paprika, cayenne pepper, pinch of salt, (black) ground pepper)
• Take a spoon and taste it. It should already be damn good. :)

Pot 2: béchamel sauce

This one is easy to mess up so pay attention. Clumps are bad!

• Add the butter in a pot on a low heat and let melt. Do not burn the butter.
• Slowly add the flour while whisking
• Once the butter and flour is nicely mixed up, slowly add the milk while whisking. I usually turn off the heat at this point
• Whisk, whisk and whisk
• Finish it off with a bit of white pepper and nutmeg

Don't worry if you have no nutmeg -- it tastes perfect without as well.

In case it's too watery, just add a bit of flour -- but do that extremely slowly, as adding it at this stage will easily clump up.

Dish it up!

Now we'll create the actual lasagna. You can also pre-heat the oven now (200°).

Your dish and the lasagna will definitely not be the same size... And we don't want to have two lasagna sheets on top of each other... So gently break them off into smaller pieces, and nicely fit them together. It's puzzle time.

• Add a thin layer of olive oil at the bottom of the pot. This prevents the lasagna sheet from sticking.
• Add the lasagna sheets (see puzzle note above)
• Add a layer of tomato/Beyond sauce
• Add a layer of béchamel sauce
• Layer up with lasagna sheets again
• Rince and repeat

Most dishes fit about three layers. End with the béchamel layer. So [lasagna, tomato, béchamel] x 3.

And the last, top layer, would be the grated cheese. Don't over do it, create a nice thin layer.

Oven

The oven should be hot (200°) at this point. The total cooking time is roughly 25 minutes.

If your oven allows to choose the baking mode, use the top and bottom heat (without fan).

• Put the lasagna on top of a grill/wire mesh tray.
• Set timer for ~15 minutes
• Once timer is over, use a fork or skewer/satay stick to feel the pasta sheets: you want them to be soft.
  At this stage they should still be a bit hard, so set timer again for 5 minutes and check again.
  Take this opportunity to make sure the top layer of cheese is not burning.
• Optionally: you can use the grill mode at the end of brown up the cheese, but this shouldn't be needed.

After roughly 25 minutes, the lasagna should be done.

Let it cool down a bit, cut it up and serve.

Yesterday I finalised the sale of 0x04.com.

My company in Singapore was called 0x04 pte. ltd. and to avoid any confusion I've renamed to su1 pte. ltd. su1 standing for Superuser.one. 🤷‍♂️

Anyhow I got myself a Novita air purifier ~2 years ago, and I stole received a Xiaomi purifier from Liyun.

The Novita is pretty dumb (the PM sensor goes randomly nuts and it needs to be quite polluted before it really kicks in. It also needs to be turned off/on again every so often for it to keep on standby — if not it goes into some sleep mode).

The manual says you should consider cleaning (aka remove dust and cat hair) every 3 or so months, and replace the filter every 6 months. It'll show a warning when the timer hits zero.

Selling new filters is how they make money I guess.

Buy a new filter (or don’t and use the same filter), reset the timer and things are back to normal.

For the Xiaomi it’s a bit harder. The “smart filter” is really just a HEPA filter with an NFC tag. It’ll calculate how often the purifier runs and calculate a % based on that. I’ve now hit 0% left on my filter after a haze season (September 2019) and ~8 months of normal usage (as it’s in the bedroom, it starts filtering around 21h00, and then runs in the quiet night mode until 9am next morning and then shuts off).

While the purifier still runs at 0%, it gives a big red warning both in the app and on the device itself and urges you to replace the filter.

You can tape off the NFC tag with some tinfoil, but that’ll just change the big red warning from “used and old filter, please replace” to “fake filter, please replace”.

Now I am not against replacing HEPA filters when they are used and are not actually filtering the air anymore. But I am also against uselessly replacing things for the sake of handing money to $BigCorp and ruining the planet with it.

Running a few tests with a relatively precise PM sensor (use this assembled kit if you are not into DIY) shows that for both my purifiers, the exhuast air is 0 PM1.0, 0 PM2.5 and 0 PM10. So that shows me that both are still working and cleaning the air just fine (further away in the room, the PM heads up to 10-20 on haze-free days).

Am I missing something here? Why throw away something that still works?

I've dealt with quite a few (bad) banks over the course of my life across countries and businesses.

And I think HSBC is one of the worst.

For various reasons. But mostly for being stuck in another century.

And you'd expect a tiny (Belgian) bank to be horrible. Not one of the biggest banks in the world with branches in almost every country of the world.

But no. HSBC pretty much tops it.

I have tons of other examples how and why HSBC failed me, and by the end of the year I think it's time to part ways.

Shan.sg - IG

More photos on Google Photos.

More pictures can be found on Google Photos.

Forget Childish Gambino.

Meet Wildish Bambino and his hilarious parody, This is the TV, with@LennyHenry. pic.twitter.com/vY7JZUcitN

— BBC One (@BBCOne) August 27, 2018

This payment card works on all transport modes. Bus. MRT (metro). No matter who operates it.

Sadly it doesn’t work on taxis though.

Nonetheless. With a bunch of different players (SMRT, SBS, any other? But the same is true for London – and they have more players on the market) they have one simple unified payment system (and prices are the same no matter who is operating).

Why is this not possible in Belgium? Don’t get me started on MOBIB.  “In order to travel validly on the networks of the various operators, you will need to store a valid transport tickets on your MOBIB card for each of the mobility operators you intend to travel with.” That’s a joke.

I haven’t posted much since arriving here… That’s because life here is pretty straightforward and nothing is complicated.

The post office.

In Belgium buying stamps is usually ??????*** and, like in Singapore, I end up going to the post office and asking them to weigh it and stamp it.

However, unlike Belgium* (and most of Europe?) they have these handy machines.

You pick the country you're mailing, it weighs the damn thing, you pay, and it prints the stamp. Doesn't get any easier.

I'm not sure if there's just an iPad running in there (UI reminds me of iOS somewhat)... But... It just works, it's simple, it only took me 30 seconds (if I didn't take all those pictures at least). <3

In terms of payment I don't remember if they accepted cash. But card-wise is was NETS only (so foreigners are out of luck).

**) One of the few things in Seoul that was available in English too. And accepted credit cards.

***) Only in Dutch or French. Expat? Fuck you.

Stats here – click on top users: Yeri (#13 atm).

1. DBS: wanted utility bill < 3 months old of my residence in Belgium (which I didn't have -- most of the stuff is on my company's name). Payslips and other bank documents didn't count. Also 2hrs queue. -- (at this point I signed a tenancy agreement and had my own address/place/crib in Singapore) --
2. UOB: Required a physical Singpass (which you only get after you started working and your employer submitted your IPA).
3. Citi: IPA was enough, but tenancy agreement wasn't enough; they need the "stamp duty" proof. Also doesn't provide NETS. Getting a online banking token has to be "requested", and getting cards (and thus access) takes ~2 weeks
4. Went back to DBS with my tenancy agreement and IPA: opened bank account, got access to online banking, everything up and running in about 30 minutes. Downside of DBS Android app: seems to drain battery (requesting GPS high accuracy all the time for some reason; uninstalled for now as I'm not in Singapore until end of this month). Bank cards (did I mention I received them directly?) comes with Visa payWave. It's a Platinum (not sure why I received this -- seems standard as they didn't ask -- don't think they noticed my other credit cards were Platinum too) Visa debet card.

With FlatTurtle we have people working for us via a Singaporean company, outsourcing. So I already transfer money every month to Singapore with BNP Paribas Fortis (~€40 fee), but for my rent deposit I wanted to try something new: enter TranserWise. Works really well and fast, and needless to say, the fees are much lower (more than half).

While I’m at it, I’m also using a Revolut credit card when abroad and not dealing with euro’s. I use this card all the time when travelling (now that I have a local card in SG I won’t need it in SG anymore, obviously).

Nexus 9

• Details
• White edition
• 16Gb
• No 3/4G
• bought via Amazon UK, comes with UK charger, in May 2015
• Comes with latest Android (6)
• Pretty much as new. Barely used to be honest.
• Selling because I don't see the point of owning a tablet (I've tried, a Nexus 7, and now this, but nah)
• Available: yesterday :)
• Price: offer

Nexus 6

• Details
• New device from end of September (just over a month old; I've owned a N6 for a longer time, but due to a battery problem, Google swapped it for a brand new device)
• Midnight Blue edition
• 64Gb
• 4G and stuff (side note: reception & signal is a million times better than a Nexus 5)
• You do of course receive the Moto TurboPower charger with it
• Bought via Google Play store (comes with warranty, support, etc), original phone bought July 2015, so plenty of warranty left
• No scratches or anything
• Comes with Android 6
• Selling because I want a Nexus 6P
• Available: when I receive my Nexus 6P (2? more weeks?)
• Price: offer

Mail me at: yeri+nexus @ tiete.be

[caption id=“attachment_7201” align=“alignnone” width=“780”] <3[/caption]

✝ 11 July 2015 at the age of 16.

[caption id=“attachment_7203” align=“alignnone” width=“780”] Farewell…[/caption]

(Source).

Amazon retails this D-Link for around €120 (including tax). So it’s worth noting it’s almost the same price as a metal, semi outdoor, cloud based camera.

The first things I noticed unpacking:

• Plastic. And it feels very plastic.
• Indoor only.
• The base is a bit light if you just want to set it on a table without screwing it or using glue. The utp and power cable can make it trip easily.
• No PoE (power-over-ethernet).
• Infrared (you can clearly hear the filter 'clicking' when booting up the camera)

This thing comes with ethernet, and, surprisingly, with WiFi. That’ll make it easier to use in small shops. There’s also an option to add a micro SD card as local storage.

While setting up WiFi, I managed to already bug it and lose access by setting up both WiFi and having an ethernet cable connected; and updating the firmware didn’t seem to solve that issue. So it’s basically one or the other. Want to use WiFi? Don’t plug in a cable!

There is a live view (using Java) from the interface: FPS wise it seems quite low, around two-three frames per second, and there is some lag on the interface (setting is set to “max 25 fps” – which apparently is only used when recording).

Quality in a close to dark room is okay-ish – infrared enabled (+ time still wrong on most of the pictures).

Outdoor picture of Antwerp without IR. Not so detailed and CMOS sensor quality is fairly crap.

Indoor pictures during the day (it’s always quite dark in my room – no direct sun).

Close up & view of my kitchen: a bit blurry.

On the other hand – for a D-Link I was surprised with the options from the interface though. You can set up motion (+ select an area to detect motion – not necessarily the whole area) & sound detection, WiFi “just works”, you can generate new self signed or upload your own SSL certificates, access list, QoS, uPnP, DDNS, PPPoE, NTP, IPv6, privacy masking (cover an area), etc.

UX & design isn’t their thing though.

The whole interface, unlike UVC which streams content to a cloud server (and everything is recorded/stored there), is ran from the onboard web interface. There is some separate Windows software you can download – but I have a Mac and it didn’t seem to add much value.

It's still made and translated by Taiwanese people... ;)

All in all, this is a decent camera for small businesses or personal surveillance. It's a bit too expensive, but it does the job and has a decent amount of options.

PS: the default username is admin with no password. Remember to change it, or you’ll have voyeurs looking at you (in case it has a public IP and/or if it automatically opens ports using uPnP) – like I am looking at this man using simple Google queries (I needed examples about for a panel talk at Stibbe about internet security).

2nd left. The dragon. My arm featured as Olivia's work.

(Source).

A peak of 12k views on Monday 16/02, with a small buildup on Sunday (15/02).

The top pages were Part 3, Part 1, Part 4 and Part 2 respectively.

De Redactie is the highest referrer, surpassing De Morgen (first to publish in printed media, front page) & Datanews (first to publish online):

Second highest, after Twitter (t.co), was Tweakers (Dutch website, oddly enough).

OS wise, about 60% is Windows, 12% of OSX and 10% of iOS; 79% desktop, 15% phones, 6% tablets. Way more mobile than I expected to be honest.

This was easily handled on a Debian virtual machine: running a dual core Xeon vCPU (3.2Ghz) with 2Gb of RAM. Nginx as webserver. No slowdown was noticed. Google Analytics reported peaks of ~100 concurrent users (but not sure what timeframe they consider "concurrent").

There was, what looks like, a DoS on Monday around 12h00 for about 30 minutes causing a 100% load (2.00 linux load, on 2 vCPUs), however there was no out of the ordinary traffic data peak -- but I didn't have time to look into it, and by the time I had notice it was already long over.

Interesting networks:

• Usually Telenet & Belgacom consumer networks are high above anything else (they were still #1 and #2 respectively, this time), but closely following up where a lot of corporate networks, as as these:
• Bank van Breda (177 pageviews)
• ING (167)
• Fortis (125)
• KBC (114)
• AXA (104)
• And others (< 50 pageviews) Ogone, HP, Crelan, Argenta, Infrabel, Deutsche Bank, Microsoft, Vlaamse Overheid, AGFA, Getronics, De Post, etc.

Interesting referrers:

• a bunch of intranets (fedict, kbc, ing),
• a bunch of bank website & mailings: updated list on part 4.

Interesting reads:

• Frank,
• And a few comments on part 3 and part 4.

Ripple effect:

• Same tests in Norway.

I’ll do my usual slashdot-effect post in a couple of days (it’s already at 10k views today).

Banks that changed rank since last post (all for the better):

• 16/02/2015:
  • Keytrade: B to A
  • Hello Bank!: C to A
  • ING: F to A-
  • Record Bank: F to A-
• 17/02/2015:
  • ABK: F to B
  • Bank Van Breda: C to B
• 18/02/2015:
  • MeDirect: F to A
  • Added 6 new (small) banks
• 27/02/2015
  • Ogone: C to A-
• 02/03/2015
  • Fortuneo: C to B
• 03/03/2015
  • Crelan: B to A

I cannot test Europabank using SSL Labs. I can only speculate they requested SSL Labs to not scan them. I have also added a couple new banks (Delta Lloyd, Deutsche Bank, Moneyou, Fortuneo, BKCP, Binck, and Isabel as bank tool).

I would like to apologise for every IT’er that had a crappy Monday morning, and thank you for fixing SSL so fast. :)

The entire list updated (last partial update 18/02/2015 around 20h00):

I’ve updated the sites to now correctly test the login page and not the main homepage. If that’s not the case somewhere, please tell me.

Grade A

• Rabobank (A+): no known issues. Support for HTTP Strict Transport Security and prevented downgrade attacks.
• Triodos (A+): no known issues. Support for HTTP Strict Transport Security and prevented downgrade attacks.
• Evi (A+): no known issues.
• Crelan (A): weak signature (SHA1).
• Delta Lloyd Bank (A): no known issues. [news post]
• Deutsche Bank (A): weak signature (SHA1).
• Hello bank! (A): no known issues.
• Keytrade Bank (A): weak signature (SHA1, intermediate, very very minor issue).
• MeDirect Bank (A): no known issues. [newsletter: 1, 2]
• Monte Paschi (A): no known issues.
• Belfius (A-): weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.
• BNP Paribas Fortis (A-): weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.
• bpost bank (A-): weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.
• Binck (A-): weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.
• Fintro (A-): weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.
• ING (A-): no Forward Secrecy. [press release via Standaard]
• Moneyou (A-): weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.
• Record Bank (A-): no Forward Secrecy. [news post]
• Isabel (banking tool for big corps - A-): weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.
• Ogone (payment facilitator): no Forward Secrecy. [newsletter via twitter]

Grade B

• Argenta: SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• ABK: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy, no support for secure renegotiation. [update]
• AXA: weak signature (SHA1), SSL3 (insecure), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• Bank Van Breda: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy, no support for secure renegotiation. [update]
• beobank: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• BKCP: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy. [newsletter]
• CPH: no TLS 1.2, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• DHB Bank: weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure).
• Fortuneo: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy.
• KBC: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy.
• NIBC Direct: weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• VDK: SSL3 (insecure),no TLS 1.2, weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy

Grade C

• PSA Bank: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.

Grade D

• n/a

Grade E

• n/a

Grade F

• Optima Bank: vulnerable to POODLE attack in SSL3 and TLS format, weak signature (SHA1), RC4, no Forward Secrecy.

Information about SSL Labs grading can be found here. Grade A (+) being the best possible ranking, and F the worst.

Respect to those that send a mailing list to their customers with more detailed information. Communication++

Respect to Rabobank to be the only bank that directly contacted me (officially, not hiding behind a Gmail or Hotmail address) and thanked me for the work I did, asking for more details, etc.

And thank you for an anonymous person, working for one of the big banks, to give me more details about why they are slow at patching this, how legacy works, etc. I wish he could take this discussion public, but alas.

Part three, or how I single-handedly “fixed” SSL at the Belgian banks. ;)

Part one and two are available here. Not related but useful nonetheless NY Times article about bank hackers.

Argenta promised to fix their SSL, so it’s the time to check everything again.

TL;DR: Only Argenta’s status changed for the better.

Those that did not change:

• Rabobank: A+
• Triodos: A+
• Belfius: A-
• BNP Paribas Fortis: A-
• bpost bank: A-
• AXA: B
• beobank: B
• CPH: B
• KBC: B
• Keytrade Bank: B
• Crelan (internet banking): B
• Hello bank!: C
• Bank Van Breda (internet banking): C
  • BvB no longer supports secure renegotiation (which, afaik, it did before). However, it's still rated as C, as this isn't a real issue.
• ING: F
• Record Bank (internet banking): F

Those that did change:

• Argenta (internet banking): F to B
  • No longer vulnerable to POODLE,
  • Support for protocol downgrade attacks prevention,
  • Still using SSL3 (obsolete and insecure),
  • Weak signature (SHA1),
  • RC4 cipher is supported (insecure),
  • No Forward Secrecy.

Still a little way to go for Argenta, but it’s on the right path.

Those that I hadn’t tested before:

• VDK: B
• ABK: F
• MeDirect Bank: F
• Ogone: C (technically not a bank, and promised a fix, but it got delayed).

The entire list updated:

Grade A

• Rabobank (A+): no known issues. Support for HTTP Strict Transport Security and prevented downgrade attacks.
• Triodos (A+): no known issues. Support for HTTP Strict Transport Security and prevented downgrade attacks.
• Belfius (A-): weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.
• BNP Paribas Fortis: (A-) weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.
• bpost bank: (A-) weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.

Grade B

• Argenta: no SSL on main page.
  • internet banking: SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• AXA: weak signature (SHA1), SSL3 (insecure), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• beobank: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• CPH: no TLS 1.2, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• KBC: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy.
• Keytrade Bank: weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure).
• VDK: SSL3 (insecure),no TLS 1.2, weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy
• Crelan: no SSL on main page.
  • internet banking: weak signature (SHA1), SSL3 (insecure), no TLS 1.2, RC4, no Forward Secrecy.

Grade C

• Hello bank!: vulnerable to POODLE attack, weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure).
• Bank Van Breda: no SSL on main page.
  • internet banking: vulnerable to POODLE attack, weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy, no support for secure renegotiation.
• Ogone: payment facilitator
  • weak signature (SHA1), RC4, vulnerable to POODLE, no Forward Secrecy

Grade D

• n/a

Grade E

• n/a

Grade F

• ABK: SSL2 (insecure), vulnerable to POODLE attack, weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy, no TLS 1.2.
• ING: vulnerable to POODLE attack, SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• MeDirect Bank: vulnerable to POODLE attack, OpenSSL CCS vulnerability (quite bad),
• Record Bank: no SSL on main page.
  • internet banking: vulnerable to POODLE attack, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.

Information about SSL Labs grading can be found here. Grade A (+) being the best possible ranking, and F the worst.

Also, shame on you ING. More than any other bank.

Going through my Google Analytics I noticed some noteworthy network domains, which Google discribes as “The fully qualified domain names of your visitors’ Internet service providers (ISPs)”.

There are a few more (Belgian) government institutions and universities, and the top in the list are “(not set)” and “unknown”.

Clearly some people at the banks read the post during their work time. So it’s only fair to recheck the websites… Here goes:

Those that I hadn’t tested before:

• CPH: B
• Record Bank (internet banking): F

Those that did not change:

• Rabobank: A+
• Belfius: A-
• AXA: B
• beobank: B
• KBC: B
• Keytrade Bank: B
• Crelan (internet banking): B
• Hello bank!: C
• Bank Van Breda (internet banking): C
• ING: F
• Argenta (internet banking): F

Those that did change:

• Triodos: A to A+
  • downgrade prevention correctly applied.
• BNP Paribas Fortis: F to A-
  • No longer vulnerable to POODLE,
  • Disabled SSL3 (insecure),
  • Disabled RC4 (insecure),
  • Still using a weak signature (SHA1),
  • No Forward Secrecy.
• bpost bank: F to A-
  • No longer vulnerable to POODLE,
  • Disabled SSL3 (insecure),
  • Disabled RC4 (insecure),
  • Still using a weak signature (SHA1),
  • No Forward Secrecy.

Huge thumbs up for these last three banks! Well done, especially BNP & bpost! :)

Keep on shaming the others.

The entire list updated:

Grade A

• Rabobank (A+): no known issues. Support for HTTP Strict Transport Security and prevented downgrade attacks.
• Triodos (A+): no known issues. Support for HTTP Strict Transport Security and prevented downgrade attacks.
• Belfius (A-): weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.
• BNP Paribas Fortis: (A-) weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.
• bpost bank: (A-) weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.

Grade B

• AXA: weak signature (SHA1), SSL3 (insecure), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• beobank: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• CPH: no TLS 1.2, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• KBC: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy.
• Keytrade Bank: weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure).
• Crelan: no SSL on main page.
  • internet banking: weak signature (SHA1), SSL3 (insecure), no TLS 1.2, RC4, no Forward Secrecy.

Grade C

• Hello bank!: vulnerable to POODLE attack, weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure).
• Bank Van Breda: no SSL on main page.
  • internet banking: vulnerable to POODLE attack, weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy.

Grade D

• n/a

Grade E

• n/a

Grade F

• ING: vulnerable to POODLE attack, SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• Argenta: no SSL on main page.
  • internet banking: vulnerable to POODLE attack, SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• Record Bank: no SSL on main page.
  • internet banking: vulnerable to POODLE attack, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.

Information about SSL Labs grading can be found here. Grade A (+) being the best possible ranking, and F the worst.

Only providing the weak points. Once there is one SHA1 key in the chain, I will report everything as weak.

Check SSL Labs for a full report, including what they actually did good (if anything).

Grade A

• Rabobank (A+): no known issues. Support for HTTP Strict Transport Security and prevented downgrade attacks.
• Triodos (A): no downgrade attack prevention.
• Belfius (A-): weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.

Grade B

• AXA: weak signature (SHA1), SSL3 (insecure), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• beobank: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• KBC: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy.
• Keytrade Bank: weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure).
• Crelan: no SSL on main page.
  • internet banking: weak signature (SHA1), SSL3 (insecure), no TLS 1.2, RC4, no Forward Secrecy.

Grade C

• Hello bank!: vulnerable to POODLE attack, weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure).
• Bank Van Breda: no SSL on main page.
  • internet banking: vulnerable to POODLE attack, weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy.

Grade D

• n/a

Grade E

• n/a

Grade F

• BNP Paribas Fortis: vulnerable to POODLE attack, SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• bpost bank: vulnerable to POODLE attack, SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• ING: vulnerable to POODLE attack, SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
• Argenta: no SSL on main page.
  • internet banking: vulnerable to POODLE attack, SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.

Information about SSL Labs grading can be found here. Grade A (+) being the best possible ranking, and F the worst.

PS: none of the domains support IPv6 (while expected, it would have been nice – Belgium has the highest IPv6 adoption rate for end users, but almost no IPv6 websites or businesses).

Also… Off to New York !

And this.

This is the video in question (NSFW, graphic, and well, everything you don't want to see): Hamas Members Execute Fatah Members in Gaza.

This is stuff for Liveleak, not for a social media platform with tons of kids.

Oh, by the way, these are the Community Standards: [...] share their experiences and raise awareness about issues important to them. Sometimes, those experiences and issues involve graphic content that is of public interest or concern, such as human rights abuses or acts of terrorism. In many instances, when people share this type of content, it is to condemn it. [...]

Hokay...

I'm the first one that's against censoring, but there's a place for everything, no?

However, nudity (not talking about porn) isn't tolerated: [...] We also impose limitations on the display of nudity. [...]