Hi! I'm bert hubert, and I am an entrepreneur & software developer. I sometimes contribute to science , I care a lot about Europe 🇪🇺, innovation, climate, biology & health. I'm a former shareholder of Open-Xchange , the parent company of PowerDNS which I founded in 1999. In 2020, I joined a government oversight board…
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This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. 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. I’d like to thank Frank van Vliet, general chair of the EMW, for inviting me…
This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. 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…
Recently the Dutch Electoral Board (where I am also a very part time advisor) invited me to do a talk reflecting on their open source Abacus vote tabulation software. Much software is now provided as a service, and is typically deployed continuously (CD, continuous deployment), surrounded by enough automated testing…
Now that we’re increasingly concerned about the dominance of ‘big tech’, Open Source is often mentioned as an alternative, especially since our governments are carrying out a Total Migration to Microsoft. This is the English version of this Dutch piece. In Dutch we say you can’t compare apples and pears, but that’s…
tl;dr: Microsoft and other email security scanners will visit the links in email you transmit, and run the JavaScript in those links, including calls that lead to POSTs going out. This used to be unacceptable, since POSTs have side effects. Yet here we are. This breaks even somewhat sophisticated single-use sign-on /…
This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. Feedback is very welcome on bert@hubertnet.nl. I’d also like to thank the many proofreaders, but all mistakes remain mine! In the world of (high) technology, Europe is exceptionally weak at innovating. There are many ways to explain how this…
This post is dedicated to the memory of Niklaus Wirth, a computing pioneer who passed away January 1st. In 1995 he wrote an influential article called “A Plea for Lean Software”, and in what follows, I try to make the same case nearly 30 years later, updated for today’s computing horrors. The really short version: the…
The very short version: It has now become clear that European governments can no longer rely on American clouds, and that we lack good and comprehensive alternatives. Market forces have failed to deliver a truly European cloud, and businesses won’t naturally buy as yet unproven cloud services, even when adorned with a…