Bilingual

Some animated Dutch COVID-19 Figures - Bert Hubert's writings
a day ago
- The author created an animation of Dutch COVID-19 figures using the 'date of onset' field to reduce the impact of testing delays.
- The data uses 7-day smoothed daily positive test numbers to effectively remove weekend effects.
- Week-on-week growth was 60% at the end of September, after which the daily growth rate dropped.
- Part of the decrease is attributed to the latency between symptom onset and positive test results, with the point shifting right over nine days of data.
- Another part of the decrease may be real, and the animation shows how the growth rate develops over time as more data arrives.
- When the three lines (current, one-day-old, two-day-old) are close together, the growth rate for that date is considered settled.
Dutch COVID-19 Data Sources & Their Interpretation - Bert Hubert's writings
a day ago
- The three main Dutch COVID-19 data sources are RIVM (national disease notifications), LCPS (hospital capacity), and NICE (hospitalizations), each with different reporting methods and timeframes.
- RIVM's daily OSIRIS data includes positive tests, hospitalizations, and deaths, but the 'Date_statistics' field is overloaded (representing symptom onset, lab result, or notification date), causing confusion in trends.
- LCPS tracks bed occupancy (absolute numbers) and new admissions separately, while NICE reports admissions only (not discharges), leading to discrepancies between sources.
- GGDs provide weekly test counts and positivity rates, but do not include commercial rapid-testing data, which is largely unreported due to legal ambiguities and variation in reporting requirements.
- Derived data includes a government dashboard (in English) and a weekly 60-page PDF (in Dutch) with additional metrics like R number and test positivity.
- RIVM data fields include age group, sex, province, hospital admission status (only for COVID-19-specific admissions), deceased status, and week of death, but recovery is not tracked.
- LCPS data provides ICU and general ward bed counts for COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients, plus new admissions since October 17.
- NICE data includes suspected COVID-19 cases that may later be disproven, making recent data less reliable; their raw data feed is unofficial and requires careful interpretation.
Het gaat om de kerncentrales - Bert Hubert's writings
a day ago
- The debate in the Netherlands focuses on whether to pursue nuclear energy as a green solution or dismiss it as unnecessary.
- Only a few suppliers dominate the European market: Russia's Rosatom, France's Framatome, and China's CGN.
- Framatome projects (Hinkley Point C, Olkiluoto 3, Flamanville III) have faced severe delays and cost overruns, with quality control issues.
- Geopolitical concerns arise with Rosatom (Russia) and CGN (China), making them unattractive options for Western Europe.
- Alternatives include newer, less proven companies like GE Hitachi, Rolls-Royce SMR, and NuScale, but none have delivered commercial reactors yet.
- KEPCO (South Korea) has built reactors abroad but faces high costs and long timelines, and has shown reluctance for new projects in the Netherlands.
- The decision for nuclear energy must involve choosing a supplier, and no option is without significant drawbacks.
De Tijdelijke Wet op Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdiensten 2022 - Bert Hubert's writings
a day ago
- The law shifts prior approval to ex-post control for many surveillance powers.
- Services can hack, intercept, and copy data without prior authorization, affecting innocent third parties.
- Technical risks, zero-days, and vulnerabilities no longer need to be described before hacking.
- Untargeted interception of all cables for up to a year is allowed for exploration, with data shared with foreign agencies.
- Restrictions on bulk domestic internet interception are removed.
- Algorithms can search bulk intercepted data without prior external review to find targets.
- Bulk data can be stored indefinitely without relevance checks, with limited binding ex-post oversight.
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.

Hasty Briefsbeta

netherlands

Some animated Dutch COVID-19 Figures - Bert Hubert's writings

Dutch COVID-19 Data Sources & Their Interpretation - Bert Hubert's writings

Het gaat om de kerncentrales - Bert Hubert's writings

De Tijdelijke Wet op Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdiensten 2022 - Bert Hubert's writings

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