@bert_hubert@fosstodon.org
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bert_hubert

@bert_hubert@fosstodon.org

Software developer, entrepreneur, former government regulator, current government advisor, amateur scientist. https://berthub.eu/

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bert_hubert, to random
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Two days ago I created a blog post which I did not promote in any way, but it did appear on my RSS feed. It now has over 6000 visitors. There are 15000 requests for the RSS feed every day, coming from the user agents listed below. RSS might not be dead yet.

markmccaughrean, to random
@markmccaughrean@mastodon.social avatar

“What was the best space film you ever saw?”

“Well, I’ll tell ya. I seen a lot of ‘em & most of ‘em are just pictures on a wall. But there was one film I once saw which I think truly did have the right …

… What was the best film I ever saw? Well, err, you’re looking at it 😄”

😉

bert_hubert,
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@markmccaughrean so which one is better? Please let us know ;-)

bert_hubert, to random
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This is quite rare - the C root-servers are out of sync with the rest of the world by 3 days. Since that time there have been no changes in the root zone, except for DNSSEC signature updates. It appears all C instances (operated by ) are serving an outdated zone. For now this has no operational impact, but that might change

bert_hubert, to random
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This is part of the ribosome, the machine in all living things that 3D prints proteins to order, based on digital instructions in our DNA. All of life consists of proteins or things built by proteins. In our labs we can barely imitate the ribosome somewhat using cumbersome pieces of fragile equipment that need lots of expert handling. The ribosome meanwhile can print copies of itself and is 20nm large. Bow before its glory. https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Ribosome

a 3d rotating animation of the ribosome, showing blue and brown squiggly parts.

bert_hubert,
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@helma it probably doesn't help if I tell you that trillions of these things are active in you.. RIGHT NOW! ;-)

vaurora, to random
@vaurora@wandering.shop avatar

Day 20: When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?

It's less that I want to be a writer and more that I get excited about writing specific things and then I write them. I am curious how many other writers have a similar mindset

bert_hubert,
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@vaurora I have just the link for you, on the off chance that you haven't read it yet. It lists 4 key reasons to write. All four work for me. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/

bert_hubert, to random
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Over 10,000 non-bot visitors for the transcript of my talk for NCSC / @SURF / @ACCSS on "Cyber Security: A Pre-War Reality Check"! - very happy to see that the story is reaching people. https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/cyber-security-pre-war-reality-check/

bert_hubert, to random
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Yesterday I presented at the NL-NCSC / @SURF / @ACCSS symposium "Cyber Security & Society". According to Donald Tusk we are entering a new pre-war era, and I fear that he is right. I also fear that we do not have anything near a "war-time resilient" level of control over the IT infrastructures that our societies depend on utterly. We are sitting ducks & it is getting worse. Transcribed presentation, with slides, is here:
https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/cyber-security-pre-war-reality-check/

bert_hubert, to random
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So I live in one of the most light polluted places on Earth, and still my phone managed to produce this. It must be a total sensation if you live in a dark place!

w7voa, to random
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People should have "radios, batteries and a generator" ready in the rare case of disruptions to the power grid, advises NOAA.

bert_hubert,
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@w7voa EGNOS, the European WAAS equivalent, is reporting severe degradation. Dashboard https://egnos.gsc-europa.eu/aviation-portal/aviation-dashboard

image/jpeg

gsuberland, (edited ) to random
@gsuberland@chaos.social avatar

[serious, no joke replies or guesses / autotranslation please]

do I know anyone native or otherwise very fluent in Chinese who can tell me the correct term for a plated edge connector, like you might find on a PCIe card? specifically the "gold fingers" style connector feature you would find on the PCB side, not the plastic connector it slots into.

I've had an absolute nightmare trying to communicate this feature to a Shenzhen-based PCB vendor and I would like it to be easier in future.

bert_hubert,
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@gsuberland @bunnie might know perhaps?

jpmens, to random German
@jpmens@mastodon.social avatar

FEIERABEND

bert_hubert,
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@jpmens it is a uniquely German concept though. Especially since you can apparently declare Feierabend in the early afternoon if your schedule allows it.

HalvarFlake, to random
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Waiting for a delayed flight, some idle thoughts on what Google needs to fix itself:

  1. Find a replacement for Sundar. This person needs to be both able if articulating a coherent vision for Google as a company, and inspire great engineers to want to work on great problems.
bert_hubert,
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@againsthimself @HalvarFlake I don't even know many examples of companies returning to being technical or technology led (at least here in Europe). Weirdly enough the corollary of this that apparently you can somehow stay around as a rebadging operation.

bert_hubert,
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@againsthimself @HalvarFlake good examples. I'm also pondering Siemens who appear to be much less a financial engineering construct these days. But this is a very superficial impression.

bert_hubert,
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@hikhvar @againsthimself @HalvarFlake https://www.siemens.com/global/en/company/about/businesses/financial-services/siemens-bank.html they actually became a bank even.

bert_hubert, to random
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I continue to wonder what makes people send emails where they clearly state they have no experience with X and then confidently go on to say that I'm wrong about X. Anyhow, do enjoy my page about Parsing Expression Grammars which has led to such an email: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/practical-peg-parsing/

bert_hubert, to random
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Some people here are trying to convince me we have serious full featured cloud native providers here in Europe. The Nile is not just a river it appears. Having said that, I'd love to hear first hand stories from people that actually made this work outside the big hyperscalers. https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/cloud-naive-europe-and-the-megascaler/

bert_hubert, to random
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Recently places like @SIDN (Dutch national operator of .NL) have been claiming that nobody in Europe can deliver their computer needs, and that they are therefore forced to outsource operations to American cloud providers. Meanwhile our own IT industry denies this. Here I delve into what's going on, and how Europe is being Cloud Naïve instead of Cloud Native.

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/cloud-naive-europe-and-the-megascaler/

bert_hubert,
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@jornfranke @SIDN nevertheless people I trust tell me managed kuberenetes works for their usecase. It is in any case not great to offer an unnecessarily poor kubernetes experience.

bert_hubert,
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@jornfranke @huitema @SIDN I wrote the piece very carefully and in consultation with users of such services. I note in the article the many limitations of these services.

bert_hubert,
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@jornfranke @huitema @SIDN ovh for example offers 99.9% availability.

bert_hubert,
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@huitema so this is indeed a thing, hence my suggestion that companies at least flesh out a minimal and reliable set of cloud native services. This would allow them to at least get government tenders and appreciable revenues. From that point on the weakness of 'big cloud' is currently their complexity and surprise billing, which is also something new entrants to the market could address. But it will be very hard work.

bert_hubert,
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@huitema meanwhile the incentives for European providers up to now have been rather simple it appears, cost cutting and delivering rock bottom pricing on simple server services. I can't blame them, there is money to be made there. But then don't complain if you don't get business for more advanced services which they've neglected.

bert_hubert,
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@huitema that part is relatively simple as far as I can see - customers aren't even migrating between GCP/AWS/Azure. It is a total lock-in once you are up and running. Switching costs are huge since people assemble services they barely understand let alone can migrate. Also customers quickly lose the competence required to do such things once locked in. It is a dream scenario.

bert_hubert, to random
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Embarrassingly for Europe, they had to turn to SpaceX to launch two new Galileo satellites (EU GPS). This happened yesterday but they gave this exactly 0 publicity. I had missed the launch entirely. https://www.gsc-europa.eu/notice-advisory-to-galileo-users-nagu-2024020 - eventually these two new satellites will appear on https://galmon.eu/ - but might be a while.

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