September 2, 2012

Dutch Rail abused privacy ‘anonymous’ transport card users, and more

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 2:27 pm

Dutch Rail is on a roll. Last Tuesday Webwereld reported that the state-owned monopolist has been sending spam to the users of the ‘anonymous’ version of the OV-chipkaart, the troubled Dutch transport card.

According to the tech news site, users of the anonymous card, with which you can pay for travel across modes and providers, had to give Dutch Rail their e-mail address in order to be able to travel with the company—presumably so that Dutch rail could differentiate between first and second class. Dutch Rail would then, however, abuse those addresses by inundating them with spam.

Earlier Dutch Rail was fined 125,000 euro by the Dutch privacy authority CBP for storing sensitive data about student travellers for too long.

It has not been a good week for Dutch Rail. Yesterday De Volkskrant reported that the company has been evading taxes by buying trains using a subsidiary in Ireland. The subsidiary would then leases those trains to the Dutch parent company. Train companies pay 9% in taxes in Ireland, but 25% in the Netherlands.

Par for the course for big business, you say? That may be true, but Dutch Rail is owned by the government. Basically, this is the example the Dutch state is setting to all tax payers. To make matters worse, Dutch Rail has a monopoly on all the juicy routes in the country. Other transport companies are allowed to run trains in the country, but only in areas that are not as profitable.

Suffice it to say that politicians were not happy, with for example PvdA (Labour) leader Diederik Samson calling Dutch Rails’ tactics ‘wrong’ and an example of ‘a lack of morals’. It is unclear to me whether politicians are upset because of Dutch Rails’ behaviour, or because their baby got caught red-handed.

(Photo by Flickr user UggBoy hearts UggGirl, some rights reserved)

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September 1, 2012

Money bra wins HEMA design award

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 11:17 am

A student at the Delft University of Technology has won the audience award of a design competition held every year by Dutch department chain store HEMA.

Hiske Elferink designed a brassiere that contains a small wallet which can hold some change, a bank card and perhaps a key. She told Radio Netherlands (see the interview below) that she got the idea because when she goes clubbing, she puts her bank notes in her bra. The problem arises when you get change, because coins will slide down and jangle.

A quick Google taught me that this is not the first money bra.

The professional jury did not award a first prize this year. The winners and runners-up will be on display at the public library of Amsterdam (OBA) until October 31.

HEMA organises a yearly design competition for students. In the past, several of the winners and runners-up have made it into the store’s inventory, such as the 103% Vase, a vase that had a little side vase for the inevitable broken flower.

See also:

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August 31, 2012

Dutch nail world record longest hearse procession

Filed under: Automobiles,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 11:28 am

The Dutch city of Baarn, Utrecht has bumped off Hell, Michigan (what’s in a name) as record holder of the longest hearse parade on Thursday, 30 August 2012. The American Just Hearse’N Around group had 51 hearses on 17 September 2011, while the Dutch managed to rally 107 hearses and easily set a Guinness World Record.

Nuvema, the group who held the attempt yesterday, was enthusiastic about the turnout and also the media attention paid to hearses, which is good for business. Check out the pictures of all the hearses that participated).

(Link: perssupport.nl, Photo of Hearse by Jason L. Parks, some rights reserved).

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August 30, 2012

Mural in Amsterdam honours Dutch paralympians

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 7:32 pm

This mural by the brothers Stein and Wessel Koning honours the Dutch athletes currently participating in the Paralympic Games in London.

It depicts archer Johan Wildeboer, runner and long jumper Suzan Verduijn, runner Marlou van Rhijn, football player Dennis Straatman and tennis player Jiske Griffioen. The mural is an initiative of Marc de Hond, himself a disabled basketball player who failed to qualify for the games.

Originally this wall, just off the Amsterdamse Bos, contained a mural by the De Koning brothers depicting athletes from the regular Olympics, but it was defaced by vandals.

(Link: dichtbij.nl)

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August 29, 2012

Passing off Thai coins for euro coins

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 4:02 pm

Canadian quarters in washers and dryers at the laundromat in the US and in Canada, old 20 French frank coins, if I remember correctly, for the parking meters, which probably works in the US as well: every country has their slugs (see definition No. 3).

Since the introduction of the euro, it has been easy to pass off certain lesser coins for euro, at the least the one and two euro coins. Pictured here is a 1 bolívar fuerte from Venezuela that was passed off to me as a 1 euro coin.

According to Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool, people who have been to Thailand are freely using Thai 10 bath coins, which are worth about 24 euro cents. Although there’s a king and a temple on the 10 bath, the similar colour scheme confuse folks who don’t check these things, especially in a bar or taxi. Well, that’s how I landed the fuerte.

“We estimate that lately at least 10,000 of these coins are circulating in the Netherlands, says Sander van Golberdinge, Deputy Director for Detailhandel Nederland — the umbrella organisation for all retail trade in the Netherlands.”

(Link: www.dutchamsterdam.nl)

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August 28, 2012

Verstappen gets away with running down his ex

Filed under: Automobiles,Sports by Orangemaster @ 5:01 pm

Back in January, former F1 driver Jos Verstappen pulled a pit stop and ran down his ex, and got arrested. Lucky him, he got away with yet another act of violence on a technicality.

A judge in Roermond, Limburg said that he should have been given a fine of 132 euro for destruction of property, namely two cell phones, jewelry and a handbag of the ex he tried to run down. Since that didn’t happen, his 40 day detention was enough ‘punishment’ and he’s free to fly off the handle again soon because he has anger issues that aren’t going anywhere.

(Link: www.limburger.nl, Photo of Jos Verstappen by Mike Philippens, some rights reserved)

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August 27, 2012

Rijksmuseum purposely misspells name in new logo

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 11:32 am

The new logo and the old logo.

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the home of many a Dutch master, has presented its new logo.

Oddly enough, the name is spelled “Rijks museum”, which is not correct according to the official Dutch spelling. As one commenter at Bright asked, who is Rijk and why does he have his own museum?

The designer, Irma Boom, explains that the space is on purpose: “Everybody is already using Rijks as a pet name for the museum”—her spelling merely codifies and pays homage to that practice.

Bright also links to a profile about Boom which is a must-watch for its opening sentence alone, “I hate hand-made books”, which runs completely counter to today’s idolization of all things artisanal.

Meldpunt Spatiegebruik, which collects examples of the misuse of spaces in compound words, writes: “Never have I received so many reports about a single space within half a day. But the Rijksmuseum belongs to all of us, so you can’t touch it.”

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August 26, 2012

Japanese fan mail for Florentijn Hofman

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 9:50 am

Rotterdam-based artist Florentijn Hofman, him of the huge rubber duckies and city square hugging plush toys, received a letter the other day:

Hello! I’m Zozi, your fan in Japan. When the Rubber Ducks appeared at Onomichi, I was so amazed at them. I like the Rubber Duck that you’ve designed, so I made this movie.

It is a nice video. Please watch it past the first minute and a half, to see the videographer bend reality.

(Illustration: screenshot of the video. Video: Youtube / zozi009.)

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August 25, 2012

The least safe PIN is 2580

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 1:04 pm

Two students of the Eindhoven University of Technology have discovered that the least safe code for your bank card (PIN) is 2580.

They did this by estimating which hand movements are easiest to observe, then calculating the amount of fits for each series of movements. The PIN 2580 on a grid that consists of the rows 123, 456, 789 and x0x requires a continuous downward motion of the hand, and is the only code possible for that series of movements. A bad actor should be able to guess that PIN 100% of the time.

Eindhoven Dichtbij reports that 292 codes can be guessed in three goes after observing hand movements. This also produces a 100% success rate, assuming the bad actors get three attempts before access is blocked. Codes that are relatively safe require lots of back and forth movements. The code 1959 belongs to the same set of hand movements as 105 other PINs.

I wonder if making fake movements would help against PIN thieves?

The students, Anne Eggels and Aukje Boef, also considered other ways of hacking PINs:

  • Dabbing the keys in salts, and measuring which salts were gone after use of the keypad—especially useful for PINs in which the same key is used more than once.*
  • Camera surveillance.
  • Observing wear and tear of keys—useful in locations where the same PIN is shared my most users, such as nursing home wards.

Aukje Boef has a telling name by the way, as her last name means ‘crook’ in Dutch.

Update: found an article from last year that claims 2580 is the third most used PIN.

*) This is an old trick that I was aware of. To this day paranoid me wipes all keys with his fingers after entering a code.

(Photo by Flickr user Redspotted, some rights reserved. Link: Bright.)

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August 24, 2012

Ombudsman investigates children forced to sail to get an education

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:56 am

We reported several times about Laura Dekker, the sailor girl who was allowed to circumnavigate the globe for a year, and more recently we told you about two teenage brothers, Enrique and Hugo who are being denied an education because of their special needs as dyslexics and decided to sail off to get one the same way Dekker did.

The national ombudsman finally got wind of the situation and wants to find out why these kids can’t or don’t attend classes, as there are thousands of them. The brothers set sail today although Child Protection Services recently took their parents to court, but the court is delaying their verdict until December. I bet they are doing this because they know the parents aren’t at fault, and with general elections coming up on September 12, a lot could change in the meantime.

Child Protection Services can’t prosecute the parents for not trying to put their children in a school, as all schools within a large radius have refused the brothers. I don’t understand why the government doesn’t force a school to take them or at least try and resolve this situation. This imbroglio is far from over, and it is quite embarrassing.

Since Dekker got special schooling from the World School once she set sail, the same should apply to these kids or else someone will call out ‘discrimination’. Of course, the problem is that children of school-going age are being kept out of school by the educational system. What’s more, the parents aren’t legally allowed to home school their children, but I really do hope they are, I know I would.

(Link: www.eenvandaag.nl, Photo of a sailboat by the US Navy)

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