This is a refreshed & expanded copy of a very old page I hosted outside of this blog. I recently ran into “silent NaNs” again, and thought it might be a good idea to republish this advice here. A small post that documents something that almost no one appears to know. And if you do anything with floating point, you...

Dit artikel verscheen in iets andere vorm in de Volkskrant. Hier een versie met klikbare links ter onderbouwing: Recent presenteerde het kabinet een nieuwe wet die volgens de Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens inhoudt dat alle banktransacties van alle Nederlandse rekeninghouders gemonitord zullen worden in één...

This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. Feedback is very welcome on bert@hubertnet.nl. I’d also like to thank the many proofreaders, but all mistakes remain mine! In the world of (high) technology, Europe is exceptionally weak at innovating. There are many ways to explain how this...

UPDATE: Nu ik niet meer werk voor de TIB kan deze uitleg van de nieuwe wet weer online. Via dit artikel zijn interviews en podcasts te vinden met meer context. UPDATE: Het rondetafelgesprek op 5 april 2023 in de Tweede Kamer is hier te bekijken en hier te lezen. En hier mijn spreektekst met voetnoten. Het kabinet...

A brief review of Stefan Zweig’s 1942 book “Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen eines Europäers”, which I read in the earlier English translation by Benjamin W. Huebsch and Helmut Ripperger (public domain copy). There is also a more recent translation by Anthea Bell, The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European. It...

So in these wild times, the “ten year interest rate” is suddenly in the news again. But what does this mean? There is no committee that sets these rates, but it is also not something you can just measure. While you’ll find various other explanations of how to calculate the 10 year interest rate online, this may be...

This is a page about some of the mechanics of ‘big data’, specifically how to store, transfer and process perhaps 100s of millions or billions of rows/events. Although some people think big data starts at 65k rows, at which point Excel used to lose it, I’m talking about gigabytes of data here. Infrastructure for...

I’ve seen some mediocre automated translations of my Dutch language resignation statement go round. To prevent any confusion, please find the story here in English: Until today I was one of the three members of the board that checks warrants for the Dutch intelligence and security services. This board is called...

Vandaag was mijn laatste dag als lid van de Toetsingscommissie Inzet Bevoegdheden Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdiensten (TIB), de commissie die vooraf bindend toetst of de voorgenomen inzet van de zwaarste bevoegdheden van de AIVD en MIVD rechtmatig is. Update: Onderaan dit artikel staat een uitgebreid media...

Recent is er een nieuw wetsvoorstel gepresenteerd bedoeld om de AIVD en de militaire MIVD meer ruimte te geven om onderzoek te doen naar landen met een offensief cyberprogramma. Op deze pagina bespreek ik de zwaarste bevoegdheden die de diensten hebben om hun werk te doen. De Wet op de Inlichtingen- en...

In the world of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), change tends to happen very slowly and cautiously. It is therefore quite exciting how many new features Galileo, the “European GPS” has been rolling out lately. Earlier I wrote a little bit about the High Accuracy Service (HAS), whereby the Galileo...

A week ago, I finally got round to implementing an idea I’d been toying with for years: what if your computer made a little bit of noise every time it sent data to Google? From studying logs, I’d long known just how many sites send all your visits and clicks to (at least) Google, but a log that you have to manually...