This is a page about some of the mechanics of ‘big data’, specifically how to store, transfer and process perhaps 100s of millions or billions of rows/events.Although some people think big data starts at 65k rows, at which point Excel used to lose it, I’m talking about gigabytes … | Continue reading
As presented on the 24th of May 2022 at the European Energy Law Seminar 2022 organized by the Dutch Energy Law Association (NeVER), in cooperation with the University of Groningen’s Centre of Energy Law and Sustainability and the University of Oslo’s Scandinavian Institute of Mar … | Continue reading
As part of my coping mechanisms, I like to make graphs of important things I worry about.Recently with the Russia-inflicted horrors in Ukraine, I’ve been looking at the torrent of Russian gas being bought by Europe. This turned into a live plot that shows just how much money we a … | Continue reading
So I love academia, and I also built two businesses. When I dropped out of studying physics to focus on my company, I assumed I knew everything, since I had studied physics!Turned out that if you enter the world of commerce, it is very bad if you are visibly confused about the di … | Continue reading
In previous articles, I’ve waxed rhapsodic about how great C++ is. I also noted there however that every language, C++ included, has its dark sides. Some languages have an unavoidable pervasive dark side, like being slow or hard to multithread, for C++ that dark side is mostly it … | Continue reading
This is a lightly edited transcript of my keynote over at NANOG 83, so please accept my apologies if some of the wording is not (yet) as clear as it should be! Hello, and welcome to this presentation on who controls the internet, and if they actually should. As you can see, I cov … | Continue reading
Over the past few years I’ve been writing a lot about innovation, and specifically, the lack thereof in Europe. I also touch on how we’ve outsourced a ton of operational capabilities, leaving us relatively helpless.By now this is such a huge amount of words, audio and video that … | Continue reading
By bert hubert bert@hubertnet.nl / @PowerDNS_Bert / https://galmon.eu/Late July 2019, Galileo, “the European GPS” suffered from a week long outage. I’m a proud European, and I think we should have our own well-functioning navigation system, so I tried to figure out what was going … | Continue reading
Leap seconds are controversial things. Since the Earth does not rotate at a steady rate, over time the Earth could get ahead or behind “atomic time”. Whatever solution you propose for this, someone is going to be unhappy.I take no position on what the best thing to do is here, ex … | Continue reading
A meandering walk through innovation that also reviews a bookI care deeply about innovation. It is literally where the future comes from, but it is a curious thing. Innovation and its more powerful partner, invention proceed at a snail’s pace. “In a world where change is the only … | Continue reading
As regular readers of this blog will know, I am no friend of the surveillance capitalism that currently powers the web. It is becoming well-neigh impossible to develop any software or host any content without some component tracking your users & sending data to third parties.Even … | Continue reading
Europe’s communication needs are currently almost exclusively delivered by Chinese hardware that connects us to US-based platforms. For a variety of reasons, this is not a good idea.As stated recently by Charles Michel, President of the European Council, “Interdependence is natur … | Continue reading
Recently I was doing some work decoding the new Galileo High Accuracy Service data. In short, this new service will allow Galileo (“European GPS”) users to achieve decimeter-level accuracy, which is nice. This “HAS” data is transmitted highly redundantly by making good use of Ree … | Continue reading
I love Europe, and I want to see the European Union succeed. I also love the Internet, and I want to see it thrive as well. And it therefore pains me that it now appears that the European Union might inadvertently be picking an ugly fight with “The Internet”.What is going on? A n … | Continue reading
This part of the history of PowerDNS is mostly about our business adventures & merger with Open-Xchange. The technical history of this period is described in part 3a.BusinessIn 2013, PowerDNS was in a crucial phase. Existing business was going well, but we were receiving pointed … | Continue reading
There are lots of calls to invest in improving cybersecurity.But it struck me that it doesn’t work like that. Not getting hacked is not so much a question of buying the right stuff. It is a question of doing the right things and understanding what you are doing.It is easy to dema … | Continue reading
Reading a good book is a great joy. And recommending a good book is almost as enjoyable.I’ve long been fascinated by books on espionage, and this contributed in no small part to me eventually joining the Dutch intelligence world, and lately, rejoining it in some fashion. If you h … | Continue reading
Brief post, in response to the many many many technical people that propose to print their own mRNA vaccines “now that the source is out there”.I’ve spent a lot of time individually explaining why this is unlikely to happen any time soon, and I thought it a good idea to explain i … | Continue reading
In previous posts I described how the two currently approved mRNA vaccines both use ‘modified nucleosides’ to enhance their efficiency.Meanwhile, a company called CureVac has created an mRNA vaccine that uses regular, unmodified, RNA. It is currently being tested in large scale t … | Continue reading
Periodically I read about governments or institutions wanting to stimulate innovation, often to achieve a certain (worthy) goal. Frequently, the far larger amounts of money that other countries or continents are spending on innovation are then bandied about as justification.And I … | Continue reading
Welcome to part 3 of my series on OSNMA, the proposed Galileo Navigation Message Authentication protocol. This part can be read independently from part 1 and part 2, but it might be useful to read the introduction to part 1.This post attempts to explain GPS (GNSS) jamming and spo … | Continue reading
Hi everyone,With apologies for flooding the airwaves and timelines with way too many posts and tweets, here’s one more post, the last COVID-19 related one for a while.I’ve been trying to provide high quality answers to the many questions I receive via email and various social med … | Continue reading
Hi everyone,This is a transcript of my presentation over at the European Microwave Week 2020, actually held in 2021. You can find the video here and the slides here.Below you can find a lightly edited transcript - it is still presentation style, so here and there the sentences ar … | Continue reading
All BNT162b2 vaccine data on this page is sourced from this World Health Organization document. This is a living page, shared already so people can get going! But check back frequently for updates. In short: the vaccine mRNA has been optimized by the manufacturer by changing bits … | Continue reading
In this part of the history of PowerDNS, I talk about the technical developments from 2013 to 2020. Over these years many fascinating business & hiring developments also happened, but these will get described in a separate post, part 3B of the PowerDNS History. Here are the earli … | Continue reading
ελληνικά / Deutsch / PortuguêsWelcome! In this post, we’ll be taking a character-by-character look at the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine. I want to thank the large cast of people who spent time previewing this article for legibility and correctness. Al … | Continue reading
Welcome! In this post, we’ll be taking a character-by-character look at the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine. I want to thank the large cast of people who spent time previewing this article for legibility and correctness. All mistakes remain mine though, … | Continue reading
As COVID-19 drags on, I’ve tried to stay optimistic about scientific and medical developments. By highlighting research, I have hoped to explain (in Dutch and English) how various things will work to defeat COVID-19, and how to look out for your health.But all this time I’ve been … | Continue reading
Last week, Galileo unexpectedly started transmitting production signals from two eccentric satellites. In this post I explain the background of the situation and the unique orbit of these satellites. I also cover why these new production signals may be good news, but that the com … | Continue reading
So this is likely the last time you see me blog about my new (part time) job.(Nederlandse versie hier).Starting December 1st, I am one of the three members of the board that checks warrants for the Dutch intelligence and security services. This board is called “Toetsingscommissie … | Continue reading
(On this page in Dutch I post daily bits of realistic but hopeful Corona news. Here is a somehat rough translation of an article on our immune system I posted there, because I think it might also be useful for people that don’t speak Dutch).Wednesday, April 1st COVID-19 can only … | Continue reading
Around a million years ago (it feels like) but actually 9 months ago I delivered a brief talk on end to end encryption for the European Internet Forum at the European Parliament.Because of my new job, I will soon no longer be able to opine on these things as easily. Given the uph … | Continue reading
The European Global Navigation Satellite System Galileo has recently been suffering from frequent “almost disruptions”, most likely partially due to Corona, and possibly also due to Brexit, but in any case due to some historical stinginess.Before I explain what is going on, I sho … | Continue reading
Position, velocity and time (PVT) information can be a ‘nice to have’, but in other circumstances knowing place and time has legal or military importance as well. Heavy vehicles for example are typically outfitted with tachographs that track driver speed and/or location. This has … | Continue reading
GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou (Global Navigational Satellite Systems, GNSS) are miracles of engineering. And within any complex system hide surprises and unsuspected complications.In this post I go over how we resolved an odd observation: that everyone (including major institutio … | Continue reading
I have a longer story brewing, but in this post I want to briefly announce the “Galmon.eu unofficial Weekly Performance Report”. This is a blog post version of an earlier Twitter thread.I’m very proud to present the first full Galmon.eu Weekly Galileo Report! And the good news is … | Continue reading
What is life? This question keeps many people awake at night and has led to rafts of definitions, some involving features (procreation, metabolism and so forth), some involving chemistry, entropy or energy flux and some are of a more philosophical bent. A BBC article noted there … | Continue reading
When COVID-19 burst on to the scene, tests quickly showed that the everyone was susceptible - no pre-existing antibodies were found that bound to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This led to dire predictions that over 80% of the population might eventually fall ill.Now more than six months … | Continue reading
Welcome to this post, in which we’ll be taking a trip through the wild and bumpy ride that has been Vitamin D & sunlight research over the past few decades, and what it might mean for COVID-19.As with my previous post, before any non-specialist attempts to write something on COVI … | Continue reading
bert@hubertnet.nl / @PowerDNS_Bert / LinkedInVery quick post. The Dutch government just launched a tender for “digital technologies that can help with Corona”. The tender includes words on privacy sensitive contact tracing, it explicitly refers to PEPP-PT, the Pan-European Privac … | Continue reading
NOTE: If you like this stuff, come work with me over at PowerDNS - aspiring C++ programmers welcome!Welcome to part 1 of Modern C++ for C Programmers, please see the introduction for the goals and context of this series.In this part we start with C++ features that you can use to … | Continue reading
In a break from the usual GPS/Galileo, DNA and C++ posts, here is a bit on 5G and national security. It turns out that through PowerDNS and its parent company Open-Xchange, we know a lot about how large scale European communication service providers work - most of whom are our cu … | Continue reading
Dear anonymous internet user, dear corporate employee hiding behind a gmail.com address, dear “GitHub account with a single issue”,Thank you for your interest in my free software, my project or the documentation I wrote for you. I am happy to hear you want to ask a question, have … | Continue reading
This page collects links to raw and live sources on how well the planet, including its vital infrastructure, is doing right now, potentially visualised attractively. But the key thing is, we want Real Data, from the most direct sources.Sources are expected to be realtime or at le … | Continue reading
By bert hubert / bert@hubertnet.nlIn this post I want to document some mostly non-technical aspects of the EU’s Galileo Satellite Navigation Network. I will also share some observations on how things are going, and perhaps how they could be improved. NOTE: A shorter version of th … | Continue reading