Sequels

Our math and science columnist Eef has published a series of articles on AI and Math. These articles are best read in the correct sequence for easy understanding. There are also a few articles on AI from my hand. Check out this page to get it right. Continue reading →

The best of both worlds – Hybrid cars

In response to an article on electric vehicles I published recently on this site, my co-columnist Eef wrote a reaction – an editorial comment if you like. As it was more voluminous than your regular ‘Editorial comment’, and was also in itself a very interesting read, I decided to publish it as a separate article – which you can read below. Enjoy!

I agree with Paul that EV’s have their advantages.
There is no doubt in my mind that the modern electric motor is far superior to the internal combustion engine ICE, no matter how advanced the latter may be.
I picked a few of the superior qualities from the internet:

Much greater efficiency (90% vs 30%), half the size and weight, hardly any service maintenance, no CO2 exhaust, no gears, near-instant torque, silent operation, long life span.

These characteristics are so outstanding that the discussion is closed, you should say.
However, there is a major setback: the energy supply by batteries. Continue reading →

De laatste etappe van de Tour-de-France 2026

Bij de 2025-editie van de Tour had de organisatie een wijziging aangebracht in het parcours in Parijs. Waar jarenlang de strijd om de etappeoverwinning bestond uit een aantal ronden op de Champs-Élysées, eindigend in een massasprint, was het parcours nu verfraaid met een steile klim naar Montmartre, een lus die drie keer moest worden genomen.

Aanvankelijk bestond er veel weerstand tegen deze wijziging, de sprintersploegen zouden te veel risico nemen bij de laatste afdaling om op de twee vlakke kilometers naar de finish goed gepositioneerd te zitten. Continue reading →

Car electrical systems – Audi A2 AC sensor replacement

As you may be aware, I value the process of diagnosing car faults to make an educated decision on what part to repair or replace. I do not appreciate a vague problem being commented by many as to replace this and that part. More often than not, these guesstimates lead to the replacement of parts that are perfectly good and do not lead to fixing the problem, while spending a lot of money. Worst case, the bad new part may introduce a new problem! Continue reading →

EV’s – Practical or affordable?

Electric vehicles, or EV’s for short, seem to be what we all need to drive in the future. At least if you believe the government and science. Our combustion-engined cars have done what they can; now we need to step up with better alternatives to limit polluting our atmosphere even more.

While I’m not a great admirer of EV cars, I do see their merits, foremost on the exhaust pollution aspect. That said, there are major downsides, partly with the cars and technology itself, partly with legislation. And of course, the elephant in the room: the way they are charged. Continue reading →

Cantor’s Continuum Hypothesis – V2

One of the most important mathematical objects is the set, with its many useful properties.
We can look at the size of the set by wondering how many members it contains. The answer obviously can be found by counting them.
Then we can take another set and compare its size with the first one, again by counting the members. We call this size the cardinality of the set.

One can wonder, do I have as many fingers on my left hand as on my right hand?
Well, by counting first left and then right, we find that our hands have an equal number of fingers. But there are or have been primitive cultures that couldn’t count beyond three. Now what? Continue reading →

Unfinished business

What’s in an AI?

In our kitchen stands a trash can that I consider to be a primitive AI.
When my knee bends towards this bin, the lid opens, and after a fixed time it closes.
When within this time interval a new open command is given, the timer resets.
This is an intelligence upgrade over the previous model that closed the lid no matter what when it felt like it.
I have a short wish list for further improvements (an adjustable timer, voice interface), but I’m stuck with the present AI that patiently awaits my – and others’ – command and acts the best it can.

Some years ago, I encountered Siri for the first time, but after some attempts to have a conversation, I gave up. I found that she used a list with ’smart’ answers to questions she didn’t understand, and that she had no sense of coherence whatsoever.

Continue reading →

What defines a book?

Catchy title this time. What collection of paper leaves, containing printed text, glued together, counts as a book? Any notebook will easily fill these requirements, as does a handwritten pre-Gutenberg Bible, a brand new handwritten copy of the Tora, and any analog copy of ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance‘ (Robert M. Pirsig). The obvious point of discussion is the notebook. Yes, it does match the requirements as the other books I mentioned, but is it therefore considered a book?

What does Wikipedia have to say about what a book is: Continue reading →

The myriad faces of Artificial Intelligence

As loyal visitors of this site, you are likely aware that a regular recurring subject of investigation published here is the psyche or the inner workings of Arty. Arty, being writer Eef’s favorite AI persona, is perhaps better known as ChatGPT. With ‘inner workings’ we do not refer to the nuts and bolts, the transistors, chips, and circuit boards, but to Arti’s mind – if indeed an AI is presumed to have a mind.

By now, Eef’s series of articles involving AI, and indeed Arty, spans over a number of years. Each article investigates – every new one deeper than the previous – what makes Arty tick. How does he work? Has he, over time, become more than the sum of the trainers that ‘educated’ him? If this progress were extended, I’d hazard a guess that even Turing himself would be impressed by today’s Arty. With the obvious exception of the ‘pass me the salt‘ test… Continue reading →

Advanced parasitic draw diagnosis

We have a new article in our series Car Electrical Systems, which reviews a controversy in the diagnosis of parasitic draws. Depending on the vehicle and the problem that particular vehicle faces, the method of how to tackle the problem differs. Choosing the correct method is crucial for a successful diagnosis – pick the wrong method, and you’ll be replacing perfectly good parts while not solving the issue at hand. Here are some clues:

Just pull fuses?
Parasitic Battery Draws
Classic vs Modern Approach Continue reading →

Factoring RSA numbers

Earlier, my essay on the mathematical problem P vs NP was published on Paul’s blog.
A short memory refresher:

The P versus NP problem is a major unsolved problem in theoretical computer science. In informal terms, it asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly verified can also be quickly solved.

In that essay, some samples of this question were mentioned, like The Traveling Salesman problem and also the subset sum problem. Continue reading →

Graham’s number – v2

In the 2nd or 3rd grade of my catholic primary school, our teacher spoke of stuff like ‘God’ and ‘Heaven’. “People live in Heaven after their death,” she told us. “All eternity.”
Nobody knew what eternity was, so she had to explain.
“Eternity,” she said, “never ends. “The years go on forever.”
Apparently, she saw her pupils struggling with this concept, and that made her tell us a story. Continue reading →