Talk show host Arjan Lubach has devised a Tinder-style voting app made for fun to help undecided voters for the upcoming States-provincial elections. The States-provincial or ‘Provinciale Staten’ in Dutch are the provincial parliament and legislative assembly in each of the 12 Dutch provinces.
With ‘StemTinder’ (‘Tinder Voting’) you can swipe left or right and find the political party match for you. It’s not the national elections, so why not vote on looks? And there’s nothing wrong with candidates trying to look trustworthy to win votes.
Gemalto, an Amsterdam-based multinational that produces 2 billion SIM cards a year, was hacked by US and UK secret services in 2010 according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. Following the recent news, Gemalto’s stock price took a $470m hit. The company’s CEO Anne Jellema has called for an investigation into both countries’ secret services, including “a full and frank disclosure as to why they hacked a private company, and one headquartered in an ally country.”
“With these stolen encryption keys, intelligence agencies can monitor mobile communications without seeking or receiving approval from telecom companies and foreign governments,” writes The Intercept. Basically, the breach has given US and UK surveillance agencies the ability to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s mobile communications, who will now themselves be targeted by others for the same information.
Dutch Euro-parliamentarian Sophie in ’t Veld, who chaired the European Parliament’s recently inquiry into mass surveillance exposed by Snowden said, “governments are massively engaging in illegal activities. If you’re a student doing this, you will end up in jail for 30 years. Secret services are behaving like cowboys. Governments are behaving like cowboys and nobody is holding them to account.”
Filed under: Music,Shows by Orangemaster @ 11:27 am
Last week on British television show Room 101 Dr Christian Janssen Jessen claimed to hate German pop music, which he can get away with because his father is German. “It’s sung by what mainly look like, sort of middle aged men having a massive mid-life crisis,” he explained. Host Frank Skinner managed to sing the praises of this happy and silly music, calling it ‘Europop’, as if the UK wasn’t part of Europe, adding that maybe Brits take music “too seriously”.
However, of all the German music they could have played to illustrate his point, ignorant researchers used Dutch music, which was easy to recognise by the language and the Dutch television logo when they played the clip. Janssen and the other guests didn’t even bat an eyelid when hearing something that was not German, although Janssen later claimed on Twitter that he hadn’t chosen the music. He did, whoever, keep quiet, entertaining the idea that it was German. Connect Four host Victoria Coren, who should have known better as well, also stayed very quiet.
The Dutch carnival song ‘Bam Bam (Bam)’ by Snollebollekes, which read out in English sounds like ‘Snol Bollocks’ and could be a reason for having chosen it is for adults only on YouTube. The part they played on telly is basically about ass shaking and shagging.
British television show Room 101, season 4 episode 6 aired on 13 February. The German pop music rant about Dutch music starts at 26:26, while the music kicks in at 28:03.
Filed under: Design,Science by Orangemaster @ 11:20 am
The Vigour cardigan is a collaboration between Pauline van Dongen, the TextielMuseum in Tillburg, and fellow PhD candidate at Eindhoven University of Technology, Martijn ten Bhömer. Van Dongen is also known for her long-lasting bioluminescent lamp.
Vigour has integrated stretch sensors that monitor upper body movement. The garment enables geriatric patients, physiotherapists and family to gain more insight into the exercises and progress of a patient’s rehabilitation. The sensors collect data that is then sent to an application installed on a tablet, so it can be analysed to help provide feedback from professionals.
A joint Dutch-Belgian study of the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) has shown that there are bacteria in the North Sea that send signals to each other, much like using a telephone, over long distances. The bacteria are able to do so by using electrical signals with alternating current. Earlier researchers discovered that micro-oganisms could talk to each other, but their calls were usually local.
“We already knew that long-winding cable bacteria were living in the seafloor of the North Sea, which are capable of establishing an electrical current across centimeter distances,” explains team leader Professor Filip Meysman. “The really exciting discovery is that these bacteria are capable of adapting their electrical current generation, which enables signal transmission in the seafloor. This way the electricity-generating cable bacteria are essentially functioning as telephone cables.”
The discovery could mean all kinds of useful future applications. “Maybe within some years, solar panels or smartphones will harbor minuscule conducting wires of bacterial origin,” adds Meysman.
On a Dutch porn site Belgian journalists spotted a Dutch porno filmed at the University of Antwerpen with a Flemish girl in the lead as a student called Cloe who meets up with a cameraman and then gets down to business. The journalists passed on the tip to the university who says they are going to try and sue the people who made the film for hurting their reputation. The university campus of Groenenborger is clearly shown in the film as is the institution’s logo.
The site apparently indicates that Dutch porn queen Kim Holland could be involved, but that remains to be seen.
Dutch artist Rob Voerman has set up a silver space module artwork called ‘Into the Grid’ in the oldest shopping mall of the Netherlands and Europe, Presikhaaf in Arnhem, which is 50 years old this year. Presikhaaf was once a prize-winning bit of architecture, but is now semi-vacant.
Last week saw the big opening of Into the Grid with Bas Bron, member of Dutch electro group De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig and a whole bunch of children with silver coloured cardboard boxes as robot outfits.
The interactive artwork was commissioned by curator and founder Claudia Schouten of Motel Spatie A.I.R., which holds lectures about ‘engaged autonomy’ and urbanism.
The University Medical Center Groningen has developed a special machine to repair organs such as lungs and livers that have been deemed unsuitable for transplant, which could significantly shorten donor waiting lists. These machines imitate blood circulation through the organs, ‘reanimating’ damaged organs. As well, organs could be conserved for 24 hours instead of the usual seven hours.
Professor of experimental surgical transplants Henri Leuvenink estimates the machines would increase organ transplants by 30%. According to the UMCG, they are the first hospital in the world with such technology.
The Popcorn Monsoon by Dutch designer Jolene Carlier consists of a pair of small yellow bowls placed on a wooden base: one heats to pop the corn while the other collects it, a design inspired by the 1971 film ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’. A curving glass tube fixed to the larger of the two receptacles delivers the popped corn into the small serving bowl.
Popcorn is a blast to listen to when it’s being made, or maybe that’s just because I still make it on the oven and the sound is the only thing to guide you. I had a twentysomething person over once who had never seen popcorn made on the oven before, as he thought it could only be made in a microwave.
I like this design a lot, with the exception of the popcorn flying out of the bowl.
Birdwatchers are thrilled to have spotted a flock of five flamingos in Amsterdam, which is a rare sight. They’re not from a zoo, as they’ve not been tagged. They’ve probably come from southern Europe and are staying as they can find food easily. The birds should stay about three years. German flamingos are often seen in the Netherlands, but are tagged and usually go back home.
