Favorited Bunkering Down by Matt Webb After 26 years Matt Webb quits hosting his stuff on his own hardware. Because he feels an extreme asymmetry is coming between automated exploits, such as the one in PHP this week (and others that got less attention) and time needed to counter it when you run your own […]

The other week I was in Oslo and visited the Munch museum, taking a break from a marathon meeting schedule. Munch‘s museum holds the largest collection of his work (a long time ago in London E and I visited another large exhibit in the Tate Modern gallery). One temporary exhibition had colourful works by Katharina […]

The Arc Browser will go away by December, as the company behind it will pursue their AI-first browser. I like the Chromium based Arc browser, as it moves its UI out of my sight when I don’t interact with it, and has its tabs to the side. I’ve been using Arc for some years since […]

This site, and my other ones, and my business ones (including our NextCloud), were offline as precaution since yesterday afternoon. I was at LegoWorld in Utrecht with E and Y, when I realised what was going on, and left for home to take my stuff down. Now that PHP patches, after becoming available late yesterday […]

To me the variety of languages in Europe is highly valuable, something to cherish. Even if in practice it also provides many hurdles, in order to bridge languages and be able to scale things across Europe. Maintaining the cultural differences is important as a source of creativity and variety of ideas, while at the same […]

In reply to Laptop Stickers Yay Or Nay? by Wouter Groeneveld Wouter asks the question below. I never place stickers on my laptop. Not because fear of glue marks or loss of gloss though. Because of context. I would enjoy stickers on my laptop, but don’t add them. My laptop ends up in various different […]

I mentioned wanting to automatically add related blogposts based on comparing embeddings. When Dries Buytaert blogged about it, I wanted to follow his example. However I want to use those embeddings not just on this site, but also in my notes that include a local blog archive. That way I can quickly find related postings […]

Y is currently learning European countries and their capitals for school. Of the 45 country/capital combinations to be learned on a blind map, 24 will be tested next week, and the remaining 21 two weeks later. Self study, or with our help, can mean that less well remembered combinations don’t get the attention they need. […]

Discussies over verantwoorde toepassing van AI zijn vaak moeizaam omdat verschillende argumenten op heel verschillende beelden van wat AI is zijn gebaseerd, en dus wat geschikte interventies zijn. Het lijkt voor mij op hoe je het gedrag van licht als deeltjes en als golf kunt beschrijven. Die twee perspectieven komen niet bij elkaar. Ze zijn […]

Het is weer Doeidag! Elke eerste zondag van de maand aandacht voor hoe je jezelf weer een stapje van BigTech verwijdert. Nou heb ik de afgelopen jaren al heel wat BigTech uit mijn leven en uit mijn bedrijf gebannen, met name als het gaat om social media platformen, applicaties en media. In een eerdere Doei […]

Das Biblionetz ist eine einzigartige Website, die mehr Aufmerksamkeit verdient. Es beschreibt viele tausende Bücher, Artikel, Texte und Ausschnitte, und deren Verbindungen und Zusammenhänge auf Grund von Begriffe, Erwähnungen, Fragen und Aussagen. Ein Beispiel wie Texte im Biblionetz untereinander verknüpft sind, und diese Vernetzung navigierbar macht Bereits 1996 hat Beat Döbeli (blog) das Biblionetz angefangen. […]

Last March I made an export from my blog, so that I have all my blogposts since 2002 (some 3800 posts) in my notes locally. This makes it easier to find and link to my own blogposts while I am working, thinking, or writing in my notes. What I did not do in March was […]

The past days I was in London to visit the Big Data LDN event and meet with my friend Paolo and his company’s team at Activate Intelligence. It made for interesting contrasts, and those contrasts made the trip worthwhile where the event on its own would not have. Big Data LDN is a yearly event. […]

During lunch in Holland Park, London this week, the water bottle had the text ‘ethical glass’.

Die deutsprachigen Blogwochen sind wieder gestartet. Eine Initiative von Robert Lender, Benedikt Müller und Dirk Deimeke, deren Blogs sich schon lange in meinem Feedreader befinden. Die Idee ist: Blogger schreiben während 3 Monate über eine kleine Liste von Themen, und werden so gegenseitig sichtbarer. So verknüpfen sich die Blogger, entstehen neue Gespräche, und bereichert man […]

Am 28. Oktober findet in Lausanne in der Schweiz die jährliche Konferenz der Swiss Data Alliance (SDA) statt. Die Swiss Data Alliance ist ein unabhängiger Think-Tank, der den Dialog über Daten und Digitalisierung zwischen Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Verwaltung fördern will. Die Konferenz findet statt unter dem Titel Swiss Data Space Forum 2026: Unlocking Data for […]

I will be in Lausanne from Monday October 26th late afternoon until Thursday October 29th early morning. I will be in Lausanne for an event by the Swiss Data Alliance. If you care to meet-up let me know. I will fly in and out of Geneva, so on the day of arrival a meet-up in […]

I will be in Oslo from Tuesday October 13th early afternoon until Friday October 16th early evening. I will be in Oslo for a CEN/CENELEC JTC25 plenary meeting (European data space standardisation work). I may have time on at least one half day, and two of the evenings if you want to meet up.

Earlier this week I read We Will Rise Again, a selection of short sf hopepunk stories and accompanying essays centered on civil disobedience, resistance, and protest. It was edited by Annalee Newitz, Malka Older, both authors whose work I have very much enjoyed, and Karen Lord, a name I didn’t remember coming across before. Based […]

I will be in London from Tuesday Sept 22nd late afternoon until Friday Sept 25th morning. I will be in London ao for Big Data LDN.

Walking in the city center of ‘s-Hertogenbosch this afternoon, I saw this person fixing their bike. In the midst of shoppers, tools were spread out and focused but unhurried a little chore was taken care of.

Een literaire memoire van Connie Palmen‘s wording. N.a.v. wat Palmen er in een interview in de Volkskrant over zei had ik heel veel zin in dit boek. Wellicht omdat ik op zoek was naar wat haar werk 30 jaren geleden voor me deed maar geen enkel boek van haar daarna (al kocht en las ik […]

Service announcement: I have updated my NOW page. A Now page contains the general activities I’m spending time on these days. It contains the things I’d mention if you would ask me in a conversation what I’m doing currently, after we haven’t spoken for a while. (I am announcing the update of my NOW page, […]

This week it’s been a year since my long time friend and business partner Frank died. And it’s been two years and three months since I realised I was very burned out. And it’s been four years since that process of taking on too much and not resting started, only realising much later that it […]

Today school started again, and Y is now going to the final year of primary school, group 8. For each of the school years we took a photo of her leaving for school on the first day. This is thus the final one. Last year she skipped a year mid-way through, so the photo for […]

A year ago I read Libraries of the Mind by William Marx, and some of it is still very much on my mind ever since. Particularly what William Marx called ‘dark matter’ literature, which exists but you don’t have access to. E.g. because it’s in a language you can’t read, or material you don’t know […]

Favorited Deconstructing A 17th Century Letter by Wouter Groeneveld (Brainbaking) This type of thing is always highly fascinating to me. Using artefacts, here 17th century letters that survived to present day by happenstance and thus not having been delivered, to say something about life in those times, habits, language, and rituals. Now try and imagine […]

Looking at the websites of some AI events and their programmes. Hundreds of sessions over several days. You’d think that they’d expect you to have your AI tools grab the program and e.g. match it to a local list of interests or people, given the amount of info they dump on you on the site. […]

I today replaced the last handful of embedded Flickr images with self hosted copies, that merely link back to the source at Flickr. This way I am certain that no tracking by Flickr is possible when you visit this site. Five years ago, I stopped embedding Flickr images for new posts. I also started to […]

Gespot in Maastricht afgelopen weekend. Is zoervleisj een soort rendang? Enquiring minds want to know. Wel zoervleisj gegeten vrijdagavond, maar geheel niet aan rendang gedacht tijdens de maaltijd. Misschien vandaag dan maar rendang?