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Communications without Musk and Trump: Cloud Kootwijk - Bert Hubert's writings
a day ago
- Historically, the Netherlands built Radio Kootwijk to escape foreign dependency on British-controlled cables for communication with the Dutch East Indies.
- Today, Europe and the Netherlands are heavily reliant on American cloud services, risking government communication and data privacy.
- The author proposes creating a 'Cloud Kootwijk'—a European-owned cloud infrastructure for secure, independent government communications.
- Urgent action is needed to build and use such a system daily, as current reliance on American tech poses an intolerable risk.
Restzetels en voorkeursstemmen - Bert Hubert's writings
a day ago
- The Dutch House of Representatives has 150 seats, and the electoral quota (kiesdeler) is total votes divided by 150, with exact fractions used.
- Initial seat allocation gives each party whole seats based on their votes divided by the quota, leaving remainder seats (restzetels) to be distributed.
- Remainder seats are awarded one by one to the party that would have the highest average votes per seat if they received the seat (D'Hondt method), recalculating after each allocation.
- Preference votes: candidates with more than 25% of the quota are prioritized for seats, followed by list order; this can bring in candidates who would otherwise not be elected.
- Parties may submit different lists per electoral district, adding complexity to seat allocation and candidate selection.
- The official Kiesraad provides detailed documentation on seat calculation, districts, and allocation procedures.
Dashboard totale Amerikaanse afhankelijkheden - Bert Hubert's writings
a day ago
- A list of Dutch organizations totally dependent on US cloud services, where societal disruption would occur if they stopped working due to US sanctions (e.g., over Greenland).
- Government entities include the Dutch Parliament, RDW, IND, UWV, all municipalities and provinces, COA, tax office, KNMI, and the judiciary, all relying heavily on Microsoft Azure or M365.
- Media outlets like major newspapers (DPG, Telegraaf, NRC), radio/TV stations (NOS, RTL, BNR), and regional broadcasters depend on Google, Microsoft, or AWS.
- Banks and payment systems (all major banks, DNB, BKR) rely on US clouds; however, Geldmaat ATMs claim to function without AWS.
- Transport sectors: OVPay, GVB Amsterdam, Loodswezen (pilotage), ProRail, and NS are migrating critical systems to Azure or AWS.
- Healthcare heavily virtualized: hospitals, GP posts, patient records (Chipsoft HiX), VECOZO billing, NEDAP, Sanday, ZorgDomein run on US clouds; RIVM and Zivver also dependent.
- Energy grid operators show some resilience, but telecom and cyber security (Crowdstrike, Fortinet, etc.) pose risks due to US-based live updates.
- Other sectors: all notary offices, housing corporations, education, and 600,000 businesses using Exact Online (AWS) are fully dependent.
- A special note: 'sovereign clouds' would also stop working under sanctions, and the government has become 'analog incompetent' with no fallback.
- The list is incomplete; readers are invited to email additions to bert@hubertnet.nl.

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netherlands

Communications without Musk and Trump: Cloud Kootwijk - Bert Hubert's writings

Restzetels en voorkeursstemmen - Bert Hubert's writings

Dashboard totale Amerikaanse afhankelijkheden - Bert Hubert's writings