bert hubert 🇺🇦🇪🇺🇺🇦

Software developer, entrepreneur, former government regulator, current government advisor, amateur scientist.  https://berthub.eu/

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Last Notes

2025-05-14 07:21:32 UTC

The bot is making a lot of noise about Galileo, the EU GPS. This is because Galileo is being very weird and is clearly running on outdated orbital data. It might still be accurate enough though. This was announced very cryptically last week that there would be “deviations”. Galileo communications remains absolutely terrible.
From: @nprofile…cpfz
https://bot.country/@gnss_changes/statuses/01JV6RDHRHXPQ88WTNXJP4AXFM

2025-05-13 21:17:25 UTC

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@nprofile…5k2y Thanks, been at it for a bit! I also took a lot of inspiration from your talk in Rotterdam many moons ago on the whole spam ecosystem. Was an eye opener. The conference with the boat where I understand you had an interesting meeting afterwards!

2025-05-13 08:42:06 UTC

As I type away into the void, hoping to achieve something, I sometimes wonder if it is worth it. Do people read this stuff? There are now 222 articles on https://berthub.eu/articles/ and sometimes one of these gets read really well. But what about the "back catalog"? Turns out that a lot of traffic is in fact coming from the 200 older pieces: (UPDATE: this is a good thing)
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/499/615/087/350/437/original/ef2a27f9c669685a.png

2025-05-12 06:19:19 UTC

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I celebrate my 50th birthday today 🥳! I used to be quite dramatic about this prospect but thanks to some recent health setbacks in my family (from which we are now thankfully recovering well it appears) I’ve come to realize that my life, even at 50, is quite a feast!

2025-05-11 20:06:34 UTC

I too have an important announcement tomorrow! It is good news, so no worries.
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/490/995/238/878/605/original/045e694111b847b5.png

2025-05-09 08:32:21 UTC

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I have improved the cloud overview article with headlines that should make things somewhat clearer. Previously it was a bit of a wall of text. https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/cloud-overview/
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/476/942/371/682/117/original/eaa29dd000026560.png

2025-05-08 20:12:54 UTC

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@nprofile…5tjl would be nice if they knew even. Means they could reproduce.

2025-05-08 18:28:02 UTC

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@nprofile…nx92 yes. On every page.

2025-05-08 11:09:23 UTC

I've written an unhealthy amount of words on "the cloud" and specifically Europe's woes. In the post below I tie many articles together into a hopefully useful overview. It may be good to know that nothing what I write on the cloud is novel or original, I mostly hope to report things as they are. Which is scary enough already! https://berthub.eu/draft-klad-tijdelijk-draft/cloud-overview.html

2025-05-08 06:58:08 UTC

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@nprofile…uq5j @nprofile…gw7s we used https://cryptpad.fr/ in the preparation of this posed, it is also indeed almost there for simple needs.

2025-05-07 19:55:06 UTC

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@nprofile…cs47 could be weeks or months…

2025-05-07 18:32:47 UTC

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@nprofile…q8d2 the bandwidth cost often is only a tiny fraction of the rework cost to move to something else. Unless you are storing petabytes of course. But even 100s of thousands of euros/dollars is not a lot compared to the manual labour required..

2025-05-07 18:07:24 UTC

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@nprofile…cs47 I have an upcoming post on this too. I've radicalized on the topic of the techno-illiteracy. But I'm waiting for the Dutch cabinet to fall before I launch my rant on this ;-) For now I can only function on the outside by writing very plain blog posts...

2025-05-07 07:34:20 UTC

Everyone agrees something needs to be done about our total dependence on US clouds. But what? And who should do it? Ample words have been written on the 'why', and we also have a lot of text on our values and that *someone* should do *something*. Here I elaborate on an earlier suggestion with a coherent strategy that is concrete enough to disagree with. This reads well with the latest Euro-Stack letter also: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/a-coherent-non-us-cloud-strategy/

2025-05-05 12:47:34 UTC

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It really is worth it to read the whole 1939 article. https://www.lehman.edu/faculty/rcarey/BRSQ/06may.orwell.htm

2025-05-05 09:57:15 UTC

"Underlying this is the idea that common sense always wins in the end. And yet the peculiar horror of the present moment is that we cannot be sure that this is so. It is quite possible that we are descending into an age in which two and two will make five when the Leader says so." - George Orwell in https://www.lehman.edu/faculty/rcarey/BRSQ/06may.orwell.htm

2025-05-04 13:22:21 UTC

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@nprofile…agyq a giant meteor will be with you soon to compensate:-)

2025-05-03 08:28:59 UTC

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@nprofile…eljh I just die inside when that happens! That was the reason for writing this also.

2025-05-03 07:18:25 UTC

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@nprofile…tw7a great to hear that! That's why I do it :-)

2025-05-03 06:50:07 UTC

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@nprofile…p4de he’s very right. He could start his presentation like this because the audience was clearly already in awe of him. But he still needed a nuclear start to get everyone hooked!

2025-05-02 18:53:08 UTC

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@nprofile…u9mt always works great yes ;-)

2025-05-02 18:48:41 UTC

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@nprofile…evfm Thanks for spreading the word! And also please know I appreciate your thoughtful and often touching posts on your life experiences. I often fondly recall similar things from my life based on what you write. Sometimes brings a tear to my eyes even.

2025-05-02 18:27:42 UTC

Quick note on giving talks. It is not enough to have great content. Expectations are low. When you start off, quickly establish some kind of bond with your audience. Once that is in place, your listeners will give your presentation a decent chance: https://berthub.eu/draft-klad-tijdelijk-draft/but-first-connect-with-your-audience.html

2025-05-01 19:33:59 UTC

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@nprofile…2e9y @nprofile…pej0 in my world this is known as the screwdriver theory, that no computer is secure in the face of someone with time and a screwdriver. With very rare exceptions this is true.

2025-05-01 19:31:05 UTC

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@nprofile…2e9y that is just terrifying. I often wonder if we can keep it together when significant fractions of the population have just checked out of reality.

2025-05-01 09:27:08 UTC

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All these Microsoft assurances that it really won't be so bad with Trump remind me of this John Cleese sketch where the pilots tell the passengers that the wings are NOT on fire: https://youtu.be/XfLdFZ4my9g?t=35

2025-05-01 07:39:59 UTC

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@nprofile…3dna Thanks! There is a weird sentence in there "vaccine were legeoss protected". Otherwise great!

2025-05-01 05:43:57 UTC

«Die Cloud» ist nicht nur Server. «In die Cloud gehen» kann auch bedeuten, einen ewigen Dienstleistungsvertrag abzuschliessen, schreibt Bert Hubert.
https://dnip.ch/2025/05/01/die-cloud-der-unkuendbare-subunternehmer/

2025-05-01 05:38:47 UTC

I just read Microsoft's post on how much they love Europe & that they are not the same as Donald Trump. As far as I can tell there is nothing new in there, no new/useful protections, no guarantees. It rehashes already debunked things like the "Microsoft Lock Box". The story mostly serves as a reminder of how worried we should all be about basing our governments & societies in companies far away under questionable legal regimes: https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2025/04/30/european-digital-commitments/

2025-04-29 18:19:29 UTC

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@nprofile…jlcj the next exciting thing is unfurling the scary antenna...https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/c0jzy3g0zx2o

2025-04-26 09:51:36 UTC

deloitte.com. 3600 IN TXT "\226\128\156atlassian-domain-verification=TERygaFH40lyOd2hmJGtCA2w1aJwx6y7tFKDkgG/KbegUOj0NrRxiWP9wM6y3e4H\226\128\157"
#smartquotes

2025-04-25 12:17:09 UTC

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@nprofile…uhsg I am not the EU., perhaps ask them.

2025-04-25 08:27:07 UTC

In small scale research, it was previously found that immunotherapy *before* cancer surgery appeared to be wildly more successful than after. Below Derek Lowe (read everything he writes) reports on another exciting result in this direction. Surgery as an adjuvant is what tihs smells like. https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/new-glioblastoma-treatment

2025-04-24 08:46:25 UTC

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@nprofile…2geg google also typed in the their stupendously dangerous webp parser and Apple senselessly allowed their users to get compromised for ages by relying on that dangerous component outside a sandbox, exposing it to zero-click content. I'm not so convinced that Google and Apple know what they are doing.

2025-04-24 07:40:15 UTC

"Three of the four most exploited vulns were zero days, all were in cybersecurity products (Palo-Alto, Ivanti Connect Secure, Ivanti Policy Secure and Fortinet)." https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/114391474274944937

2025-04-23 14:03:59 UTC

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@nprofile…2e9y so my terrible theory is that we infantilize as long as there is no huge crisis, and focus on trivial short term things. Meanwhile the big things get no attention and drift into a worse and worse state. And just when things reach a breaking point, we have no skills left with decision makers to do anything about it. And perhaps then we get an extremely painful crisis or war and the cycle can start over. Probably at a startling human cost.

2025-04-23 13:13:04 UTC

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@nprofile…xlrq indeed
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/387/450/552/002/442/original/4d89493cf30470e5.jpeg

2025-04-23 10:26:56 UTC

With some luck, I'll be presenting tomorrow. And I'll again be talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures "So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had"
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/386/791/205/456/433/original/fec14fa1265d9554.png

2025-04-23 09:49:59 UTC

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@nprofile…uhsg it does nothing for them to care. Means more work. To protect you from some abstract problem you never notice..

2025-04-23 09:09:02 UTC

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@nprofile…k6s0 it is the incessant crawlers and scanners you are seeing. Quite fun to analyze even for a dormant domain. "What is happening".

2025-04-23 08:38:08 UTC

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@nprofile…javl I said nothing like that.

2025-04-23 08:14:51 UTC

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Thank you everyone. The answer to 'does the Microsoft Customer Lockbox protect your data against the US government' is a resounding NO. According to Microsoft that is. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/customer-lockbox-requests#does-customer-lockbox-protect-against-data-requests-from-law-enforcement-agencies-or-other-third-parties
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/386/275/480/267/391/original/ca3acda8f5793a03.png

2025-04-22 16:36:45 UTC

People, a Microsoft (re)seller is telling governments you can put your MS 365 email in a "Microsoft Lockbox", and that this will protect you form US government spying. Is there any truth to this? https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/windows-365-customer-lockbox-generally-available/4077641 (reposts appreciated - it is somewhat time critical).

2025-04-21 07:41:05 UTC

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@nprofile…u9mt Danke!

2025-04-20 20:29:42 UTC

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@nprofile…zezu YEAH! Dank je!

2025-04-20 20:01:41 UTC

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@nprofile…y0c6 DANK U!!

2025-04-20 18:50:23 UTC

If you've seen me drop out of presentations or obligations over the past few weeks, here's a little bit on why. Plus I try to share some experiences on how the little things in life are the big things: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/out-of-office-in-every-life-some-rain-must-fall/

2025-04-20 07:48:08 UTC

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For example, telling someone a specific paragraph confused you & suggesting how to improve it. That is helpful not helpy. Or if you know of previous articles making the point better, do supply links which could be added to the post! Only suggesting these articles exist is '#helpy'. I deeply appreciate people being helpful. But 'helpy' is pure frustration. 2/2

2025-04-20 07:45:23 UTC

"Learn the difference between 'helping' and being 'helpy'"
~ @wendynather at #BSidesSEA - this is very useful. Just pointing out that an article does not make a specific point you'd like to see is "helpy". Pointing out that many people already knew what an article states also does little for the world. Being actually helpful looks different & is more work. 1/2

2025-04-18 15:53:54 UTC

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@nprofile…qejh it is a big problem. I try to remind myself that I have limited expertise and that anyone from the field will always know more. I recall last time I failed at that though. So I try not to repeat that ;-)

2025-04-18 12:59:21 UTC

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Relevant for parent post.
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/359/083/413/965/438/original/e23b4e877c1aae72.png

2025-04-18 08:55:05 UTC

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@nprofile…suhy @nprofile…m4el Amerikanen noemen me ook heel vaak "Burt". Ze hebben er niet zoveel op met namen die ze niet kennen gemiddeld.

2025-04-16 09:42:42 UTC

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@nprofile…h77u I haven't tried though!

2025-04-15 18:07:45 UTC

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@nprofile…u9mt @nprofile…vuu7 or cowards.

2025-04-15 16:49:21 UTC

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"Are you going to the cloud? Or is the cloud going into you?" - the difference between renting compute/standardized services, OR, building your future on bundles of powerful but proprietary services, effectively making a specific cloud your eternal subcontractor.

2025-04-15 06:48:44 UTC

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@nprofile…2t3j bit too tricky I think. But good inspiration!

2025-04-14 21:13:38 UTC

A fascinating read: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/apr/10/deep-cover-kgb-spy-recruited-son-peter-herrmann-illegals

2025-04-13 06:35:07 UTC

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@nprofile…7ew4 this helps somewhat but the somewhat crazy definitions used by Google and AWS for PAAS are confusing things too much for this to be a useful term. But definitely something that should be mentioned in my upcoming blog post.

2025-04-12 21:45:29 UTC

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@nprofile…2geg AWS also does not follow or use this definition. https://aws.amazon.com/types-of-cloud-computing/

2025-04-12 21:40:57 UTC

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@nprofile…2geg not so sure if this is a widely used definition. I've been reading what Google and Microsoft describe as PaaS it is not so clear cut. PaaS is described as being some kind of development environment. https://cloud.google.com/learn/paas-vs-iaas-vs-saas https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/cloud-computing-dictionary/what-is-paas

2025-04-12 19:59:17 UTC

"Going to the cloud' can mean anything from renting a VM, deploying containers, or building on top of advanced (hyperscaler) cloud services (queues, buckets, customer IAM etc). Is there a good term to describe the latter development style, going all in on cloud services? I've used 'cloud native' before but the meaning of that is not clear or useful. Better suggestions very welcome!

2025-04-12 16:20:30 UTC

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@nprofile…anfc have you actually tried this since these options do not appear on iPhone signal.

2025-04-12 14:41:38 UTC

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@nprofile…gu7x same. And I don’t know what to do about this. Seems this is by design. I have to first uninstall all kinds of other things now and then update.

2025-04-12 11:15:01 UTC

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@nprofile…ysfz the problem is that many developers are not building on containers. They are building on larger services like Cognito, SQS, RDS, SNS, Dynamo DB etc. And these you can't just migrate.

2025-04-08 13:14:40 UTC

Maintenant aussi en français!
https://www.levif.be/belgique/pouvons-nous-encore-faire-confiance-aux-services-cloud-americains-nous-avons-collectivement-pose-notre-tete-sur-le-billot/

2025-04-07 06:32:30 UTC

Despite everything science still marches on. Here a report on a possible “universal Paxlovid” that might work even on as yet unknown corona viruses: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/new-pan-coronovirus-protease-inhibitor-possibility (also everything written by Derek Lowe is worth reading).

2025-04-07 05:31:57 UTC

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@nprofile…s6c8 so impressive and a joy to see!

2025-04-06 21:05:07 UTC

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@nprofile…uv00 so I know a lot about this and sadly bacteriophages continue to remain 'promising', for somewhat fundamental reasons. One key thing is that they are extremely species specific. Also, you have to get them to the right place, they aren't made to be medicines. But maybe one day.

2025-04-06 20:40:30 UTC

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@nprofile…h2px aardige aan deze is dat hij actief is op gram positieve en gram negatieve bacteriën, en ondertussen de meeste van onze darmflora met rust laat. Uiteindelijk gaan we het groots winnen van de bacterie, maar we zijn er nog niet, maar dit is weer een mooie stap.

2025-04-06 20:18:42 UTC

I have read the paper behind the enthusiastic press release below. The discovery appears legit, and it actually cures laboratory mice that would otherwise have died. Some aspects of this discovery are extra interesting, like that it targets a relatively untargeted part of bacteria. All in all good news: https://phys.org/news/2025-03-breakthrough-moment-class-antibiotics.html?ref=fixthenews.com

2025-04-06 16:05:29 UTC

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@nprofile…vrtw in a terrible way it is a ingenious strategy for making tons of money. Yet customers are incredibly enthusiastic to take part in this....

2025-04-06 15:19:34 UTC

From an upcoming blog post, in which I argue that cloud providers are actually more like proprietary software providers: "These days under the guise of ‘cloud as a commodity’ we are gluing ourselves to specific suppliers, without realizing that they are not in fact supplying commodity services."
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/291/683/857/796/128/original/8d6fcc7a4354a6a7.png

2025-04-06 13:10:18 UTC

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@nprofile…f40h In the Netherlands in the 1960s people got charged for chanting "Johnson Murderer". They then substituted a new slogan, "Johnson Molenaar" which sounds almost the same in Dutch, but merely says that Johnson is a miller. Except that everyone knew what was meant.

2025-04-05 10:37:43 UTC

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@nprofile…2t3j it is right on the wikipedia page, although I think people try to delete it all the time. He groped lots of women & was a pest at conferences that way.

2025-04-05 09:41:17 UTC

It is time to repost this (and I know Asimov was a terrible person).
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/284/694/753/516/265/original/8fd4c1a690ddf97f.png

2025-04-05 08:25:46 UTC

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@nprofile…u9mt @nprofile…8d0u 🦆

2025-04-05 07:25:53 UTC

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@nprofile…0jay mikrotik makes lots of interesting things!

2025-04-02 15:55:17 UTC

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@nprofile…c6xe no I'm not but following the announcements...

2025-04-02 13:00:13 UTC

As @nprofile…pej0 likes to say, CO₂ PPM still speeding up in the wrong direction:
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/268/478/236/599/245/original/b02e6fb836734144.png
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/268/481/484/614/580/original/d4d1b439a05130bd.png

2025-04-02 09:43:51 UTC

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@nprofile…qejh IPCEI-CIS is a bit more difficult, I am in talks with some of their activities in hopes of making them more practical. But it is not easy under that funding structure. I did voice my worries here and there: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/now-how-to-get-that-european-cloud/

2025-04-02 09:42:23 UTC

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@nprofile…qejh well I did gaia-x already: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/gaia-x-is-an-expensive-distraction/

2025-04-02 09:35:11 UTC

With great fanfare the #NeoNephos foundation was announced just now over at #Kubecon. It is not that easy to figure out that this means, but it appears to be about Kubernetes-like infrastructure, which I rank as 'step 3' on the cloud scale, where AWS/Google/Azure are at 5.
https://neonephos.org/2025/03/31/the-linux-foundation-announces-the-launch-of-neonephos-to-advance-digital-autonomy-in-europe/ - and some projects are here https://neonephos.org/projects/ - further reading on the kinds of clouds: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-european-cloud-ladder/

2025-04-01 19:01:28 UTC

Very sad to learn that Dave Täht has passed away. Dave was one of the driving forces fighting bufferbloat. His work is likely saving whole years of latency every hour around the world. Some loving words can be found here: https://libreqos.io/2025/04/01/in-loving-memory-of-dave/ - his good fight will not be forgotten!

2025-04-01 04:41:00 UTC

#Berlin looking pretty this morning!
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/260/865/983/317/367/original/5352d4a0622888ee.jpeg

2025-03-31 19:15:00 UTC

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@nprofile…9w8f thank you :-)

2025-03-30 11:32:33 UTC

If you use the KLM app today, the notifications it sends out about your flight are off by an hour. The fucking state of things.

2025-03-30 09:43:50 UTC

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@nprofile…le5p Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) sourced from US, Russia and many other questionable places. Plus "normal natural gas" from Norway.

2025-03-30 09:41:58 UTC

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So how does a solar panel or heat pump in summer help fill these sites for winter? We use LOADS of natural gas to create electricity & warm water, even in summer. The gas we burn for that is not available for storing for winter use. So: more efficiency in summer means more gas available for winter!

2025-03-30 09:27:12 UTC

The good news is: we made it out of winter without depleting European gas storage sites! The bad news, we'll need to refill ~twice as much gas as past years to refill to healthy levels. Every new heat pump, solar panel and wind turbine will help us reach that goal more easily:
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/250/662/467/075/085/original/e0647141ceb710c5.png

2025-03-30 09:08:47 UTC

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@nprofile…dnaw 😊 Thanks!

2025-03-29 17:42:49 UTC

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@nprofile…e520 our eyesight is highly logarithmic. Even a 50% reduction in lighting is barely noticeable.

2025-03-29 17:05:32 UTC

Even the pretty partial solar eclipse caused a (fully expected and planned for) **2GW** decrease in electricity exports from The Netherlands today. Data via ENTSO-E, TenneT, processing by me. Graphs: https://berthub.eu/nlelec/
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/246/802/804/007/773/original/7b6cdb18eaa694c4.png

2025-03-29 13:32:27 UTC

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@nprofile…4z58 could you open a ticket about this on https://codeberg.org/berthubert/simplomon/issues ? that helps me not forget

2025-03-29 13:12:23 UTC

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@nprofile…4z58 hmm I thought that would be working but I’ll check.

2025-03-29 12:27:20 UTC

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Added some reassurance beyond the cheery 🥳 telling you there are no alerts:
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/245/711/162/750/429/original/8afe3f477e2e5b13.png

2025-03-29 10:50:33 UTC

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@nprofile…588r start one instead of bothering people their stuff should be even purer?

2025-03-29 09:19:54 UTC

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@nprofile…h77u testing codeberg for a bit before making the move official. Since simplomon is an unreleased unannounced project even it is a good place to test.

2025-03-29 09:11:32 UTC

Doing some work on my unreleased yet widely used availability & performance monitoring thing Simplomon. https://codeberg.org/berthubert/simplomon
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/244/934/989/987/945/original/b2c76f83b569d030.png
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/244/938/948/710/817/original/abef079bf6c6a7e8.png

2025-03-27 19:05:50 UTC

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@nprofile…srea well yes, except that I then usually discover the voices in my head weren't too precise ;-)

2025-03-25 07:39:30 UTC

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This presentation is going to be *lit*
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/114/221/927/628/014/587/original/99abe71bfee147e4.png