THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Stopping anthropogenic climate change is terraforming on "easy" mode. Until we can sort out global warming we have no business considering terraforming Mars.

Hi everybody - this account will soon migrate to @bert_hubert@eupolicy.social - with many thanks to the fosstodon.org maintainers for many years of great service.

Happy bats in the margin Bodl. Library MS. Ashmole 304; 13th century; England, St. Albans; f.47v @bodleianlibraries.bsky.social

The bot is making a lot of noise about Galileo, the EU GPS. This is because Galileo is being very weird and is clearly running on outdated orbital data. It might still be accurate enough though. This was announced very cryptically last week that there would be “deviations”. Galileo […]

Do the things that are meaningful while you can, because gosh it makes a difference

As I type away into the void, hoping to achieve something, I sometimes wonder if it is worth it. Do people read this stuff? There are now 222 articles on https://berthub.eu/articles/ and sometimes one of these gets read really well. But what about the "back […] [Original post on fosstodon.org]

OK, I'm going to hammer on this one. Five days might not seem like much to get 700,000 signature, but I've seen petitions get to 1 million in a day to save baby seals, so why not this one. We have 4 countries above the threshold, but even if you're in those, your signature can make a different […]

I too have an important announcement tomorrow! It is good news, so no worries.

Students not merely cheating with, but utterly relying on AI in "a society that treats schooling as [nothing more than] a means to a high-paying job" is deeply concerning as AI may actually make you dumber: "research shows that when students off-load cognitive duties onto chatbots, their […]

Most Americans have never seen a tea cosy in the wild, and that’s a tragedy I can no longer abide. 😤🫖 Behold: the humble yet fabulous knitted tea cosy. Not just a warm hug for your teapot, but a whole vibe. British ingenuity at its most delightful. Why just […] [Original post on mastodon.africa]

I've written an unhealthy amount of words on "the cloud" and specifically Europe's woes. In the post below I tie many articles together into a hopefully useful overview. It may be good to know that nothing what I write on the cloud is novel or original, I mostly hope to report things as they are […]

In hindsight they were right. This is exactly what Republicans are now.

ESA reports K482SA reentered between 0604 UITC (seen by radar on pass over Europe) and 0732 UTC (not seen by European radars on the next orbit). Roskosmos reports that reentry was at 0624 UTC over the Indian Ocean, but with no details on how they conclude that.

LEO sat disposal is a new environmental disaster brewing, mostly because of the actions of a single private company, but really, it's everyone's operating procedure in LEO. Just burn those sats up in Earth's atmosphere when they're done! They just disappear! And if they don't, they probably […]

uh, yeah https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/05/ai-use-damages-professional-reputation-study-suggests/

During my time in the European Parliament, I attended a crucial final negotiation between Portuguese, Danish, German, Romanian and French MEPs, only to discover there had been a mixup and we would have no interpretation (translators) for the meeting. ⬇️

Happy Europe Day from Brussels! Today marks 75 years since Europe's Nations chose peaceful cooperation over war. On Europe Day I wanted to share a personal anecdote about that cooperation. ⬇️🧵

This clip must be shown in schools and shopping centres in all regions of eastern Germany. The hapless German reporter asks whether it would have been possible to commemorate the end of the war alongside the Russians, "not necessarily hand in hand", but […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

"Make war not just unthinkable, but materially impossible." Today marks 75 years since the Schuman Declaration. A bit of European history to be proud of. Let's cherish it.

I've written an unhealthy amount of words on "the cloud" and specifically Europe's woes. In the post below I tie many articles together into a hopefully useful overview. It may be good to know that nothing what I write on the cloud is novel or original, I mostly hope to report things as they are […]

sneak level 💯

Long but cheering+ practical from @bert_hubert https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/a-coherent-non-us-cloud-strategy/ "Europe has ample compute capacity and skills.... the carrot won’t be enough to make Europe sovereign again. We must have our own technology under our own control, but we must […]

Everyone agrees something needs to be done about our total dependence on US clouds. But what? And who should do it? Ample words have been written on the 'why', and we also have a lot of text on our values and that *someone* should do *something*. Here I elaborate on an earlier suggestion with a […]

"«In der Schweiz wird es keine private, digitale und datenschutz­freundliche Kommunikation mehr geben», so Alexis Roussel." Die @republik_magazin -Recherche von @adfichter rüttelt auf. #VÜPF #BÜPF #Überwachung […]

Spaceweather's website has some rather ominous notes about the giant sunspot that's now pointed directly towards us... https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=05&month=05&year=2025

"All eyes on Los Angeles with tariff impact looming: Intermodal demand remains strong despite concern over imports" www.freightwaves.com/news/all-eye...

"Underlying this is the idea that common sense always wins in the end. And yet the peculiar horror of the present moment is that we cannot be sure that this is so. It is quite possible that we are descending into an age in which two and two will make five when the Leader says so." - George […]

Y’all know my take on the world, but in case you’re up for reading an interview: I recently sat down with journalist Maurits Martijn of De Correspondent, and the result was just published. It’s in Dutch, but it’s likely quite readable still through your favorite translation service.

Our #savevoa Twitter/X social media account, run by a team of VOA News staffers silenced by USAGM since mid-March, was suspended this afternoon.

US Port Update - May 4, 2025 | Trade Wars: Port of Los Angeles Says Imports are Dropping ▶️ Executive Director of Port of LA talks China trade ▶️ Impact on US Ports? ▶️ What are the options if you ship cargo from China? ▶️ Impact to the #supplychain? youtu.be/43VMteILGOI

Quick note on giving talks. It is not enough to have great content. Expectations are low. When you start off, quickly establish some kind of bond with your audience. Once that is in place, your listeners will give your presentation a decent chance […]

This is obvious, but if people broadly rely on a black box to give them answers that help them understand the world, whoever controls the black box controls those answers and therefore the understanding that comes from them. Openness is safety.

Quick note on giving talks. It is not enough to have great content. Expectations are low. When you start off, quickly establish some kind of bond with your audience. Once that is in place, your listeners will give your presentation a decent chance […]

Higher education in the US is as good as dead. NO university is going to accept NSF grants under these terms, as this means "Lose money on each grant". Combined with the de-facto embargo from foreign students (who's going to put up with ICE?), higher ed is dead.

Someone fixed this #dailytelegraph poster - via #trudialumni

On this May Day morning, walking my beloved Chiltern hills on a European public holiday and British election day, enjoying our precious freedoms, I came across a memorial to these antifa heroes. I honour their memory and wish their descendants courage and strength in their renewed fight. 🇺🇸🇬🇧🇪🇺

Following up on @marcolangbroek.bsky.social 's post on the upcoming Venera capsule reentry, I've done a writeup describing my own analysis of this object, which I first got interested in a quarter century ago! planet4589.org/space/debris...

Cloud ist auch heute wieder ein Thema. So hat @adfichter die schwierigen Schweizer Beziehungen zwischen Bund und (US-)Hyperscalern aufgezeigt. Und natürlich sind da auch Lock-in und Exitstrategien (endlich!) ein Thema. Genau das richtige für einen Tag ohne geschäftliche Termine 😎 […]

«Die Cloud» ist nicht nur Server. «In die Cloud gehen» kann auch bedeuten, einen ewigen Dienstleistungsvertrag abzuschliessen, schreibt Bert Hubert. https://dnip.ch/2025/05/01/die-cloud-der-unkuendbare-subunternehmer/