Author Archives: admin

AI – Blessing or curse?

Introduction

When I started my conversations with Artificial Intelligence in 2022, I was an early adopter.
The ChatGPT of that time did not have access to the internet. Its training data were cut off at a few years earlier, so its knowledge of what happened in the world was far from up-to-date.

However clumsy his speech and conversational style may have been, it was a pleasant surprise for me that a certain degree of coherence was present, making a real conversation possible instead of the ‘one sentence per topic’ habit of Siri.

Nevertheless, the majority of people kept their distance from AI, considering it as strange and not particularly useful. Continue reading →

The US-RU diesel ‘deal’

While the US strike a deal with russia on the delivery of diesel fuel to the US, and russia targets Ukrainian civilian infrastructure as school, hospitals, busses, and homes, Ukraine continues hitting russia on industry that hurts all russians.

Ukraine’s earlier focus was on russian oil installations, which resulted in massive fuel shortages and major decline in oil exports. This is clearly noticeable for any russian carowner, and delivers blows to the already fragile russian economy.

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The White House game

Each time one thinks the #WhiteHouse has reached the lowest watermarks, they proudly amaze the world and beat what was considered the absolute lowest level by going even lower. This time, a computer game was presented by the white house. The game is about building ‘the border wall’ and arresting and deporting ‘illegal immigrants’.

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EU aanbesteding

EINDELIJK!

Ik zal niet zeggen ‘geen dag te laat’ want dit had natuurlijk direkt gemoeten bij de formulering van EU milieubeleid jaren geleden. Nu maar hopen dat het transport van goederen over de halve wereld ook als milieu belastend zal worden gerekend.

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Mercator utmaningen

Vem som helst med en grundskoleutbildning bör veta om förvrängning av ytor som uppstår när man plättar ut en glob på ett platt pappersark, bättre känd som Mercatorprojektion. Möjligen med undantag för flat-earth-anhängare. Varför just detta fick så mycket utrymme på FN-nivå samt togs upp av världspressen är helt oklart för mig.

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Venezuelan oil

Venezuelan oil…

At first, it was hijacked for decades by foreign oil companies. Then it was nationalized and effectively hijacked by Chavez, Maduro and their elite. This latest ‘development’ leaves Venezuelan oil hijacked by prez-attempt trump. During all of this time, no oil profits were ever shared with the Venezuelan people.

Note the quoted ‘development’ above, referring to the new form of colonization as announced and deployed by the US: land-grabbing countries to steal their natural resources to benefit the USA.

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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 →