August 3, 2019

American tech site retracts claims about VanMoof ebikes

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 2:54 pm

When we wrote about VanMoof launching a bike with an anti-theft system, we ended our post with “Let’s see how the anti-theft system will pan out then.”

The answer is so far so good, as long as you use the bike properly.

Recently, American site Digital Trends ran a story about the VanMoof S2 ebike entitled “This ebike is allegedly impossible to steal. We stole it in 60 seconds.” and now they’ve humbly issued a long retraction. Apparently, Digital Trends forgot one crucial step: the bike that they ‘stole’ wasn’t locked. That means the alarm won’t go off, the bike won’t lock itself and the electric motor cannot be blocked either.

VanMoof produced a blog post and a video showing the bike functioning correctly and clearing up the air. Both Digital Trends and VanMoof worked together to fix any damage done by the badly written tech piece, which is refreshing in this day and age.

(Links: digitaltrends.com, bright.nl, photo: dezeen.com)

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May 27, 2019

Dutch UFO spotters freak out over satellites

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 8:58 pm

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Dutch UFO reporting website www.ufomeldpunt.nl was swamped with more than 150 sightings, with fervent UFO spotters describing a “bizarre train of stars or lights moving across the skies at constant speed”.

Instead of anything alien, it was a string of some 60 satellites launched by businessman Elon Musk’s SpaceX hours earlier as part of its ‘Starlink’ constellation. A lot of Dutch folks staring at the sky had no clue this was going to happen, so you can imagine the commotion it caused.

One of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida last Friday, and an hour later began releasing the satellites at an altitude of 450 kilometres. The satellites then had to separate and use their thrusters to take up their positions in a relatively low orbit of 550 kilometres. Starlink will become operational once 800 satellites have been activated, which will require a dozen more launches.

Dutch astronomer Marco Langbroek noted on his blog that he calculated where the satellites would be orbiting, and waited with his camera. The result is a spectacular one: a string of bright dots flying across the sky, prompting people to report UFOs.

Here is Langbroek video of the event:

(Link: phys.org)

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May 1, 2019

Dutch designed play area at Singapore airport

Filed under: Architecture,Aviation by Orangemaster @ 9:18 pm

At Jewel Changi International Airport in Singapore at Terminal 1, Canopy Park, you’ll find a play area for all ages, with four very big slides, designed by Dutch engineers and street furniture designers Carve from Amsterdam. The official opening is on 10 June, and everyone will be able to see how the first children and parents will enjoy the play area.

Carve’s Discovery slides look very much like jewellery you can play on. “The rubber patterns on the floor are designed in such a way that they create spiral-shaped dynamic reflections on the surface of the slides, which will surely end up all over instagram.” They are installed at the highest point of the airport and provide a spectacular view. There are four slides: a family wide slide, a free fall slide and two spiral-shaped tunnel slides.

For anyone in The Netherlands and not in Singapore, you can climb onto Carve installations in Amsterdam’s Oosterpark, the Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen, the Ark Park pavilion in Utrecht, the Strijp S grounds in Eindhoven and the red fence square in The Hague.

(Links: bright.nl, Photo: businesstraveller)

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March 22, 2019

Free housing in exchange for all your data in Helmond

Filed under: Dutch first,Science by Orangemaster @ 11:09 am

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In Helmond, Noord Brabant, there are plans to build a neighbourhood, called Living Lab, where people will be able to live for free, but there’s a catch: they’ll have to give up all their data.

Part of the Brainport Smart District, Living Lab will be the ‘smartest neighbourhood in the Netherlands’ with 1500 homes where 4000 people are expected to live. Their behaviour will generate a huge flow of data and that’s the goal. Basically, you’d be a guinea pig with free housing. Sensors will measure what you do, how you sleep, what you do online and whatever else companies will pay to find out.

Free living for only a year is not very practical, but considering how difficult it is to find a place in this country, I’m sure they will find 4000 people ready to give up their privacy, which is a bit sad in a way.

Toronto, Canada was the location of a similar project called Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. The difference is that this project hit a brick wall when it came to privacy and proprietary rights of the data.

Living Lab is on the edge of what is actually acceptable, which means it’s not out of the woods yet. But again, in a country where corruption is common in the housing market, having a free space to live that’s nice will have people willing to give up quite a bit of their lives. Let us not forget that social media seems free, but many of us are giving away our data there as well.

(Link: Bright)

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January 24, 2019

Viktor & Rolf show ‘instagrammable’ meme dresses

Filed under: Design,Fashion by Orangemaster @ 5:59 pm

Dutch design duo Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren (aka Viktor & Rolf) have recently presented their spring-summer couture collection at Paris Fashion Week, featuring highly ‘instagrammable’ dresses.

The bright coloured tule dresses boast texts that read ‘I’m not shy I just don’t like you’, ‘Go to hell’ and ‘Go fuck yourself’, the later with each word on a colourful candy hart.The ‘weed’ dress shown above matches the colours of many of the tourist shops in downtown Amsterdam.

Fun fact: eight kilometres of tule were used to make the dresses.

(Link and photo: parool.nl)

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December 4, 2018

Christian party wants rating system on YouTube

Filed under: General,Online by Orangemaster @ 12:33 pm

Similar to what is done with film and television, Dutch national Christian party CDA says it would like to help parents protect their children against images containing violence, sex and swearing on YouTube. The Dutch system, called Kijkwijzer, is a Dutch film and television rating system that is slightly more liberal than the one many people know from the United States or Canada. However, applying it to YouTube any time soon is said to be next to impossible.

Every minute, YouTube puts up 400 hours of video. The CDA says it’s up to YouTube themselves to protect children, which seems like, as they say in Dutch, ‘yelling into the desert’. If multinationals can’t even sort out all the copyright infringements that appear on YouTube, then they won’t care about some Christians giving their opinion about it in such a small country. This discussion had already been brought up in Parliament in 2015, but now that YouTube (and in this case, Google as the owner) may have to abide by the same rules as television (I don’t know about film), then getting YouTube to comply is a step closer, but still very close to impossible.

As a parent, a member of the CDA said that his seven-year-old son looks at YouTube films and it is tough to determine if a film is suitable for him or not, which is completely understandable. Sadly for him and I bet also his spouse, they have to look over their child’s shoulder to make sure they can control what their kid watches. As well, a representative of Google Netherlands said that imposing the Dutch system is impossible and that YouTube would then come with its own system, and the entire world would have to follow whatever they come up with.

(Links: bnr.nl, bright.nl)

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November 12, 2018

PostNL delivers in bins and gardens

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:14 pm

Receiving packages from PostNL, the Dutch postal service, can either be a breeze or a tragedy. Sadly, it can also be a lot of shades of frustration in between, and now there’s a Facebook group entitled ‘We hebben u gemist’ (roughly, ‘Since you weren’t home’) that collects notes left in mailboxes by delivery personnel, and a lot of them are hilarious.

“Package left in the orange bin”: yes, they leave stuff in actual bins. In this case, there was a brown bin and a grey bin, but no orange bin. Another one says ‘PAKITINTAON’ (In Dutch, it should be written as ‘Pakket in tuin’, which means ‘package in garden’, but someone just wrote it phonetically.

One of the reasons they leave a lot of notes is because people are not home during business hours (duh) or because the delivery folks want to ‘drop’ that package as fast as possible, as they are more often than not paid per delivery. For example, since my office is at home, I tend to sign for other people’s packages. You could also be a shit neighbour and steal stuff, which happens, but PostNL just wants to drop those packages wherever they can, including unguarded bins and gardens.

There’s a lot of hilarity to enjoy, especially if you can read Dutch, but I’ll share a note left by someone that sums up PostNL’s passive-aggressive work ethic: “Don’t order if you’re not going to be home. Your neighbours are also fed up of it. So are we.” PostNL pays not much and attracts people who don’t have too many options. As well, many people do this job on the side, such as students, pensioners, and so on, to give you a bit of context.

(Link: bright.nl, Photo: wehebbenugemist)

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October 11, 2018

Google Home Minis understand some Dutch, but not enough

Filed under: General,Technology by Orangemaster @ 1:12 pm

According to someone who works for Bright.nl, yesterday all of a sudden their Google Home Minis, a type of wireless speaker and voice command device with an integrated AI-based virtual assistant started to understand his commands in Dutch. Before then, his entire family had to ask for everything in their best American English.

After choosing Dutch as a default language, all devices stopped working except the Hue lamps, a line of colour changing LED lamps with wireless control, and the Honeywell thermostat. Sending images from the front door to the television with the Dutch command ‘Hey Google, show me the front door on TV40’ produced a YouTube video about front doors on the telly.

A day later, Hue dropped out, with an error that the lighting was no longer available. Bright hopes that Dutch language support will be working properly on 24 October when Google Home speakers will officially be available in Dutch shops. I’d hate to be working in a shop that is going to get a wave of complaints with no fix in site or be told to use it in English or German. And I wonder if it will understand those of us who speak Dutch with accents.

For the advanced class, here’s the discussion about Dutch accents within the country, such as is it Leiden, Leide or Leye? It depends where you’re from, but that’s still not good enough.

(Link: bright.nl, Photo: consumentenbond.nl)

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September 3, 2018

Connected Wi-Fi birdhouses attract singing birds

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 3:50 pm

Berlin-based Dutch artist Albert Raven has created a smart birdhouse that is connected to the entire world by Wi-Fi. An Internet Of Things (IoT) artwork, the Birdhouse needs to be installed indoors, and an algorithm determines which house the bird will visit. You’ll never see the bird, but you will hear it.

Raven (fitting name) believes IoT is an “Internet without people, an experimental playing field where time and space come together as never before”. There are currently 26 of his birdhouses in locations around the world, and surely more to come. The Birdhouse is perfect for a house without house pets or for anyone who thinks the idea behind the artwork is cool. A birdhouse costs 395 euro or you can support the project by buying bird seed or a T-shirt from the artist.

Find out more about the Birdhouse here:

(Link: bright.nl, Photo of Iago Sparrow by Hans Zwitzer, some rights reserved)

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July 15, 2018

Game console museum gets 200 new items

Filed under: Gaming,History,IT by Orangemaster @ 2:07 pm

According to Bright.nl, the Bonami game console museum in Zwolle has received 200 items in one go for its collection, the biggest extension in the museum’s history. The items are said to be from the 1980s or earlier. All I can think about now is my very first Atari Super Pong for the mid 1970s.

The museum, started by Naomi and John Groenewold, also showcases many Philips products, such as the mini-cassette and the Philips ADM-3A, one of the first video display terminals used to operate a computer without a display.

There are many Dutch games, computers that use punch cards and newer items with VR, which means there’s something for everyone. And yes, you can apparently try out all kinds of games.

(Link: bright.nl)

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