February 22, 2018

Multi-purpose robot boats to float on canals

Filed under: Technology by Orangemaster @ 3:37 pm

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Amsterdam will get the world’s first fleet of autonomous boats, ushering in a new chapter in the international push for autonomous vehicles thanks to ROBOAT, the world’s first large-scale research that explores and tests the possibilities of autonomous systems on water. A collaboration between America’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS), the ROBOAT project will have a round of testing in Amsterdam’s canals in September 2018.

“This project imagines a fleet of autonomous boats for transporting goods and people that can also work together to produce temporary floating infrastructure, such as pontoons or stages that can be assembled or disassembled in a matter of hours,” explains Carlo Ratti, Professor of the Practice of Urban Technologies in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

ROBOAT will also deploy environmental sensing to monitor water quality and offer data for assessing and predicting issues on public health, pollution, and the environment.

Here’s a smaller version zipping around Amsterdam’s canals:

(Links: designboom.com, ams-institute.org)

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February 21, 2018

Personal computer museum to open in Helmond

Filed under: Gaming,General by Orangemaster @ 11:44 pm

On 17 March, the Home Computer Museum in Helmond, Noord-Brabant will open its doors. At noon, visitors will be able to check out a collection of old personal computers, gaming computers and arcade games. There’s also an arcade café, 1980s films, a repairs corner, and more.

Thanks to crowdfunding, founder Bart van den Akker was able to raise the money needed to launch the museum. The city of Helmond also pitched in 7,000 euro for start-up costs and even an annual amount of 3000 euro for the next three years.

(Link: ed.nl)

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February 20, 2018

Detecting fake news by playing a game

Filed under: General,Online by Orangemaster @ 11:09 am

Dutch media collective DROG together with Cambridge researchers is launching an English version of the fake news game online today that teaches people how to immunise themselves against fake news.

“The game encourages players to stoke anger, mistrust and fear in the public by manipulating digital news and social media. Players build audiences for their fake news sites by publishing polarizing falsehoods, deploying Twitter bots, photoshopping evidence, and inciting conspiracy theories in the wake of public tragedy, all while maintaining a ‘credibility score’ to remain as persuasive as possible”.

Teenagers at a Dutch secondary school played the game use pen and paper, and demonstrated that the perceived ‘reliability’ of fake news diminished with those who played the game, as compared to a control group.

“If you know what it’s like to walk in the shoes of someone who is actively trying to deceive you, it should increase your ability to spot and resist the techniques of deceit”, explains says Dr. Sander van der Linden, Director of Cambridge University’s Social Decision-Making Lab.

The game will be rolled out in other languages and aimed at countries that have a high level of fake news like Ukraine.

(Link: phys.org)

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February 19, 2018

Bunker Day to feature two ‘unopened’ bunkers

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 6:54 pm
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On 9 June, two unique WWII bunkers in the small town of Driehuis, North Holland will be open to the public for one day only. According to Ruud Pols of the Bunkermuseum in IJmuiden, North Holland, this will be the first time these bunkers will actually be opened since the end of the war. Both bunkers are part of the Festung IJmuiden, one of the most important strategic defenses of the German Atlantic Wall. In fact, they’ll be open on National Bunker Day (Bunkerdag).

Pols also has no clue what they’ll find. Will it have been frozen in time or did someone already visit it that they don’t know about? No less than 2300 bunkers have been built in and around IJmuiden, a Dutch port city, and when taking a train and looking out the window in that area, you see cows grazing around the bunkers like it’s a normal sight.

(Link: nhnieuws.nl, Photo: cyberbunker in Zeeland)

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February 18, 2018

So why are the Dutch good at speed skating?

Filed under: History,Sports by Orangemaster @ 8:45 pm

After the ridiculous comments made by American commentator Katie Couric about the Dutch dominance in speed skating being the result of skating everywhere in the winter as a mode of transport and after apologising, but only after she received, as the Dutch would say, ‘buckets of shit poured over her’, it’s probably a good idea to find out how this dominance began.

Another rookie mistake made by Couric was equating Amsterdam with the Netherlands, something that grates more than a cheese grater at a Dutch breakfast table. Most Dutch skaters, if not all of them, come from villages nowhere near Amsterdam, often in the province of Friesland where people speak Frisian as well as Dutch.

Trigger warning: people used to skate on frozen canals back in the day, but due to milder winters, canals freeze less often, so people skate indoors. And yes, this woman is trying her best to pronounce Dutch names, but ‘Koen’ is ‘Koon’, not ‘Ko-en’ and I don’t understand how we got ‘Irene Worst’ out of ‘Ireen Wüst’ (more like ‘E-rain Woost’) or Netherlands (‘lands’ should be ‘lunds’).

(Photo by Remko van Dokkum, some rights reserved)

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February 16, 2018

Supermarket opening stops tram dead in its tracks

Filed under: Food & Drink,General by Orangemaster @ 12:45 pm

This week, a Jumbo supermarket in Zoetermeer, South Holland had a grand opening at which a bunch of yellow streamers were fired off into the air. So far, so boring.

Then, the wind caught the streamers and they flew all the way up to the tram’s overhead line and that messed up people’s commute. Someone called the local non-police neighbourhood uniformed agents to organise a clean up.

Jumbo supermarkets come into the news in weird ways. They had the pink shopping basket for singles, let students bring back a huge lorry full of beer bottles and let customers test different kinds of toilet paper in their bathroom.

(Link and photo: nos.nl)

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February 14, 2018

Amsterdam’s Homomonument gets protected status

Filed under: Architecture,Art by Orangemaster @ 6:19 pm

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Amsterdam’s Homomonument has officially received ‘municipal monument status’, which means it now has a protected status going into the future.

According to the city, the Homomonument has a high cultural value as the first memorial commemorating all gays and lesbians who have been subjected to persecution because of their homosexuality. The city would also like to believe that it is also a symbol for Amsterdam, where everybody can be themselves.

The Homomonument at the Westermarkt fits into the surrounding streets and canals, and is the site for many outdoor activities from the Gay Olympics to all kinds of demonstrations.

(Link: at5.nl, Photo of Homomonument by BoBink, some rights reserved)

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February 12, 2018

‘Stop feeding ducks bread, it’s bad for everyone’

Filed under: Animals by Orangemaster @ 11:41 am

Feeding bread to ducks and other birds is part of the scenery in this country, but many of us don’t realise how bad it is for the birds and our water.

The Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) is asking residents of the Netherlands to report (not rat out!) instances of feeding ducks (Google form) to get an idea of where and how often this happens. According to the NIOO-KNAW, there’s a discrepancy between what we say that we do and what we think the effect is, and they are trying to get a handle on it by asking people to help out.

Bread in water produces algae that is bad for the quality of the water and therefore for the birds. Bread is also bad food for ducks because besides not being a natural food source for them, it lack many nutrients ducks need and it’s full of salt.

Not feeding ducks is extremely easy to do as well.

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February 11, 2018

Dutch baker wins World Master Baker award

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 11:13 am

Peter Bienefelt, owner of the bakery Atelier du Pain in Barendrecht, recently won the World Master Baker award at the Bakery Masters tournament in Paris, the highest possible award in the world of baking.

Not unlike a top athlete, Bienefelt even hired a coach, Hans Som, who said that Bienefelt is different than other bakers, something that could have gone either way. Baking for eight hours straight is also not unlike training like an athlete, according to them both.

Bread that Bienefelt planned to present needed to have characteristics such as crunchy crust and good flavour. He also went for the ‘wow factor’ by baking bread using pure water from the Eastern Scheldt estuary, sea algae, squid ink, currants and olives, as well as little salt, which is quite trendy these days, he adds.

(Link: deondernemer.nl, Photo: bakkerswereld.nl)

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February 10, 2018

Carnaval song parody is sleeper hit of 2018

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:08 am

Tired of over-the-top, in your face dirty carnaval songs? Bored with racist slurs and sexist bullshit? Can’t look at another badly dressed moron from ‘above the rivers’ singing about beer and getting drunk?

Then this parody of carnaval song taken at face value is the Dutch carnaval song for you this year: Max Verstand & De Speld with ‘Maak weloverwogen keuzes’ (roughly ‘Make informed choices’). De Speld is a Dutch news satire site and this was an excellent idea even if it is from Amsterdam, the city that still manages to stave off carnaval fever.

Maak weloverwogen keuzes has everything you need: a nice man with a colourful outfit, a funny artist name (Max Verstand = maximum common sense), sounds a tad old fashion with the accordion rather than banging techno, and has a pretty woman and some partying.

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