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Volkskrant.nl biedt het laatste nieuws, opinie en achtergronden

Jopie Huisman Museum wil graag weten: hangt er bij jou een Jopie aan de muur?

Noorse fjorden, Schotse eilanden, zelfs Eemshaven; overal verrijzen die gigantische puisten van metaal

Wat de ‘mierenbioloog’ er niet bij vertelde, was dat bladluizen gevoelens hebben, verlangens

Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

Deze producten bewaar je waarschijnlijk verkeerd: wat hoor wel of niet in de koelkast?

Rode wijn in de koelkast? Chocolade juist niet? En waar laat je avocado's, eieren en ketchup? Over voedsel bewaren bestaan eindeloos veel meningen, maar experts zijn het over één ding eens: we bewaren verrassend veel producten verkeerd. Dit zijn de grootste koelkastmissers.

Niet in de koelkast

Brood

Leg brood liever in een broodtrommel of vries het in. In de koelkast wordt het sneller oud en droog.

Tomaten

Bewaar tomaten op kamertemperatuur totdat ze rijp zijn. De koelkast tast smaak en structuur aan.

Avocado's

Een harde avocado rijpt niet goed in de koelkast. Laat hem eerst rijpen en leg hem daarna eventueel koel om het proces te vertragen.

Olijfolie

Kou houdt olijfolie niet langer vers. Bewaar de fles liever donker en koel in een keukenkastje.

Koffie

Koffiebonen nemen geurtjes en vocht op. De koelkast is daarom een no-go. Een luchtdichte voorraadbus werkt beter.

Chocolade

In de koelkast kan chocolade een witte, korrelige laag krijgen en smaken van andere producten overnemen. Alleen bij extreme hitte is kort koelen een optie.

Uien en knoflook

Te veel vocht zorgt ervoor dat ze sneller zacht worden of gaan schimmelen. Een donkere, droge plek is ideaal.

Honing

In de koelkast kristalliseert honing sneller. Gewoon in de voorraadkast bewaren dus.

Wel in de koelkast

Eieren

Hoewel het niet strikt noodzakelijk is, blijven eieren in de koelkast langer vers en is de temperatuur stabieler.

Citrusfruit

Citroenen en limoenen blijven gekoeld langer goed en behouden hun voedingsstoffen beter.

Bladgroenten

Koelte vertraagt het verlies van vitamines en houdt sla en andere bladgroenten langer vers.

Jam en marmelade

Zeker na opening verlengt de koelkast de houdbaarheid en verkleint hij de kans op schimmel.

Natuurlijke pindakaas

Door de natuurlijke oliën kan pindakaas sneller ranzig worden. Koel bewaren helpt.

Gemalen zaden en zaadoliën

Lijnzaad, hennepzaad en vergelijkbare producten zijn gevoelig voor oxidatie en blijven langer goed in de koelkast.

Mag allebei

Boter

Bij normale temperaturen kan boter prima een paar dagen buiten de koelkast staan. Tijdens warme zomerdagen kun je hem beter koel bewaren.

Bananen

De koelkast maakt de schil donker, maar het fruit blijft meestal goed. Handig als je het rijpingsproces wilt vertragen.

Ketchup en sauzen

Door suiker en azijn blijven veel sauzen buiten de koelkast goed. Gebruik je ze niet vaak? Dan is koelen slimmer.

Appels

Voor een langere houdbaarheid kies je de koelkast. Vind je smaak belangrijker, dan kan een fruitschaal ook.

Aardappelen

Officieel mogen ze tegenwoordig in de koelkast om uitlopen tegen te gaan, maar een koele, donkere voorraadkast werkt ook prima.

Rode wijn

De nieuwste trend: lichte rode wijnen licht gekoeld drinken. Een kwartiertje in de koelkast maakt ze frisser en fruitiger.

Bron: The Guardian


Merz over EU-meerjarenbegroting: geen nieuwe Europese schulden

BRUSSEL (ANP) - De Duitse bondskanselier Friedrich Merz heeft donderdag gezegd dat er "geen nieuwe Europese schuld mag komen". Hij zei dat bij aankomst in Brussel, waar de EU-regeringsleiders donderdag en vrijdag hun top houden. De EU-meerjarenbegroting 2028-2034 is een van de belangrijke, en heikele, agendapunten.

Merz noemde die nieuwe meerjarenbegroting "een zeer lastige kwestie". Het is de eerste keer dat de EU-regeringsleiders over de meerjarenbegroting in debat gaan.

Duitsland en ook onder meer Nederland en Zweden vinden het huidige voorstel van ongeveer 1900 miljard euro veel te hoog. Andere landen vinden het voorstel daarentegen veel te laag.

Merz benadrukte dat de begroting sluitend moet zijn. "We zullen in de tweede helft van het jaar aanzienlijke bezuinigingen moeten doorvoeren om de begroting voor de jaren vanaf 2028 goed te keuren", zei hij. Voorzitter van de EU-leiders AntĂłnio Costa hoopt dat er voor het einde van het jaar een akkoord ligt.


Zeeman-topman wordt voorzitter van belangenclub supermarkten

LEIDSCHENDAM (ANP) - De topman van textielwinkelketen Zeeman, Erik-Jan Mares, gaat de belangen behartigen van supermarkten. Vanaf september is hij voorzitter van branchevereniging Centraal Bureau Levensmiddelenhandel (CBL).

Mares vertrekt aan het einde van juni als hoogste baas bij Zeeman, waar hij negen jaar leiding aan gaf. Bij het CBL wordt hij de opvolger van Bert Roetert. Die twee kennen elkaar al bij Zeeman, want Roetert is daar sinds 2018 voorzitter van de raad van commissarissen.


The Moscow Times - Independent News From Russia

The Moscow Times offers everything you need to know about Russia: Breaking news, top stories, business, analysis, opinion, multimedia

Russian Orthodox Church to Seek Leniency for Woman Jailed Over Easter Cake Hookah

A judge sentenced Ksenia Belousova to three years and 25 days in prison last month after finding her guilty of offending the feelings of religious believers.

The Register

Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis

NASA payload to ride commercial Mars orbiter from rocket biz yet to reach orbit

It might not yet have reached Earth orbit, but Relativity Space has announced plans for a mission to Mars carrying a NASA payload. The mission, dubbed Aeolus and scheduled for 2028, will launch a Mars orbiter carrying four NASA-built instruments. Relativity Space will supply the rocket, spacecraft, and cruise operations, while NASA will deal with the payload. The four instruments comprise a Doppler wind and temperature-sounder, a thermal limb sounder, a surface radiometric sensor package, and a wide-field context camera. NASA will support instrument operations for at least one Martian year, while Relativity Space will maintain the spacecraft. NASA's Ames Research Center will be responsible for designing, building, and integrating the payload. Data collected by Aeolus will be used to improve models of dust, winds, temperature, and seasonal atmospheric behavior. It will also, according to NASA, "generate the detailed environmental knowledge required to reduce risk for future crewed and uncrewed landings. These measurements will directly inform entry, descent, and landing systems and support safer, more predictable mission planning for astronauts." NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter already have spent decades orbiting Mars. Its MAVEN spacecraft was declared unrecoverable after controllers lost touch with the vehicle at the end of 2025. The Mars Sample Return mission, slated to recover samples deposited by NASA's Perseverance rover, is unlikely to reach the red planet any time soon. NASA boss Jared Isaacman said: "Public-private partnerships like this are a force multiplier for science," extolling the virtues of "pairing NASA's world‑class instruments with commercial innovation and investment," but the mission is a risky endeavor. Relativity Space has yet to get into Earth orbit, let alone beyond. Its first rocket, the mostly 3D-printed Terran 1, experienced a problem during its second stage burn, although it did manage to pass the 100 km Kármán line and reach space. The company has been working on Terran R since 2023, a medium-to-heavy-lift reusable rocket. The first launch of the vehicle might take place this year. NASA has increased commercial involvement in its missions in recent years. The agency's lunar ambitions lean heavily on vendors such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, and the upcoming Swift rescue mission, a high-risk, high-reward attempt to boost the orbit of an observatory, is being undertaken by Katalyst Space. The approach has, however, attracted criticism from some NASA veterans, one of whom expressed concern to The Register that the thoroughness that defined the missions of the 1970s might not be such a priority in the future. That said, the agency's budget is also not what it was. Increasing risk by doing more with less evokes the ghosts of the '90s and the "faster, better, cheaper" management philosophy at NASA that did not work so well. Although NASA did not say so in its post, the Aeolus mission requires unproven rocket and spacecraft technology, and a commercial vendor who hasn't even reached orbit yet. The potential rewards are considerable, but a failure could prove unpalatable. ¼

ZTE and China Telecom Guangdong advance cross‑vendor IP network simulation pilots, paving the way for intelligent network operations

ZTE announced that China Telecom Guangdong has officially released the E‑Surfing Simulation 2.0 – Cross‑Vendor IP Network Simulation Standard at the Talent & Expertise Development Forum (Peizhi Talent Empowerment Initiative) hosted by the company. Built on the joint simulation system co-developed by ZTE and China Telecom Guangdong, the standard applies digital twin technology to form a closed‑loop workflow from change submission through simulation verification to implementation authorization. This marks a pivotal shift of network O&M from experience‑reliant manual work to systematic pre‑verification. The solution has become a replicable benchmark for multi‑vendor collaborative simulation in the telecommunications industry, serving as a milestone to accelerate the rollout of intelligent network operations across the sector. Achieving High‑Precision Network Simulation to Strengthen Predictive O&M Capabilities The system adopts advanced network mirroring technology and proprietary protocol simulation algorithms, overcoming the traditional bottleneck of resource‑intensive dynamic modeling. It achieves over 95% digital twin fidelity for device status and routing protocols. O&M staff can accurately evaluate the impact of network adjustments in advance, enhancing the safety and precision of network operations. Breaking Multi‑Vendor Simulation Barriers to Build an Efficient O&M Model As communication networks keep expanding and evolving into more complex architectures, cross‑vendor O&M faces prominent challenges including low modeling efficiency, difficult collaboration and excessive resource consumption. ZTE and China Telecom Guangdong have innovated a distributed cross‑vendor simulation architecture following the principle of vendor‑specific simulation, unified collaboration. A global coordinator works seamlessly with dedicated simulation systems from different vendors to eliminate device simulation barriers, effectively reduce development and maintenance costs and enhance system scalability. Remarkable Pilot Results Enable Zero‑Error Network Changes Prior to the standard release, China Telecom Guangdong and ZTE completed phased pilot deployments from single-vendor to multi-vendor scenarios in Foshan and Yangjiang. The pilots covered all devices on the new metropolitan area networks of the two cities, targeting four core scenarios: protocol parameter modification, new home broadband service cutover, new device commissioning and network transformation. The solution covers more than 90% of mainstream network change scenarios. Field tests prove that pre‑simulation verification can substantially lower network change risks and realize zero‑error operations, laying a solid foundation for large‑scale nationwide promotion. Looking ahead, ZTE and China Telecom Guangdong will further upgrade system functions, expand application scenarios and iterate the standard to solidify the ecosystem of cross‑vendor intelligent O&M. Leveraging technological collaboration, ZTE will build the HI‑IPNet high-performance and high-intelligence IP network core platform, driving the IP network to evolve from manual O&M to intelligent scheduling and global cross‑network coordination. Committed to openness and continuous innovation, ZTE will partner with global industry players to advance the automation and intelligence of telecommunication networks, empowering the high‑quality development of the digital economy. Contributed by ZTE.

Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Pluralistic: AI digital sovereignty risk doesn't exist (18 Jun 2026)


Today's links



A 1989 black and white photo of the Berlin Wall; peering over the wall is Microsoft's 'Clippy' chatbot.

AI digital sovereignty risk doesn't exist (permalink)

Back at the height of the blockchain bubble, I made a hobby of pointing out that crypto weirdos were palming a card. I used this formulation:

if: problem + blockchain = problem – blockchain

then: blockchain = 0

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/30/the-inevitability-of-trusted-third-parties/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/18/their-trillions-our-billions/#eyes-on-the-prize

You see, blockchain weirdos kept insisting that they could solve problems related to trust and institutional design with "smart contracts." Rather than having to trust a board of directors to steer an organization, you could just have a self-executing institution, the "distributed autonomous organization" or DAO.

So for example, if you want to buy a copy of the US Constitution at a Sotheby's auction, you could set up a DAO to raise and pool the funds, eliminating the need to find trustworthy people to receive, hold and deploy these funds:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConstitutionDAO

However – and here's where the palmed card comes in – the DAO can't go to Sotheby's and place a bid on the Constitution. Instead, the members of the DAO have to elect a guy to receive all that cash, walk into Sotheby's, get one of those little ping-pong paddles last seen at the State of the Union in Chuck Schumer's withered claw (emblazoned with the brave slogan "You're hurting my fee-fees") and raise the paddle during the bidding.

That guy doesn't have to go to Sotheby's. That guy can simply walk away with all the money. Members of the DAO are trusting this guy with their entire collective treasury. Indeed, since the DAO has no corresponding legal entity, it might even be that members of the DAO can't sue this guy if he steals all their money – and even worse, without a limited liability structure, it might mean that everyone in the DAO can be sued for anything bad this guy does with the money.

Which raises the question: what's the point of building this insanely complex hairball of blockchain-based smart contracts to raise and hold the money if you're just going to hand it to this guy and trust him without limit? Why not just have that guy set up a Zelle account and a Whatsapp group? In other words: the problem that the DAO is trying to solve is the difficulty of trusting people with the keys to the kingdom, but no matter how much blockchain you sprinkle on this DAO, it ends with this one guy walking around with all your money, which he can steal with impunity if he so chooses.

Or, put more succinctly:

if: problem + blockchain = problem – blockchain

then: blockchain = 0

This turns out to be a really good way of assessing policy prescriptions for their soundness and foundation in reality, because – as the blockchain swindle shows us – it's possible to come up with entirely fictitious solutions to entirely real problems. The problem of designing a trustworthy institution that can't be betrayed by its leaders and whose operations don't consume all its resources is a real problem – it's quite possibly the real problem – but adding a DAO does nothing to solve the core problems of institutional design, and actually makes some of those problems worse.

There's another real problem with a fictitious solution that is – surprise! – tied to another tech bubble: digital sovereignty.

It's a genuine problem that everyone in the world (outside of China's sphere of influence) is glued to America's tech platforms. These platforms steal everyone's money and data, and every country has signed a trade deal with the USA promising not to let its own technologists and entrepreneurs go into business making add-ons and complementary goods that remediate the defects in America's tech exports:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/29/post-american-canada/#ottawa

What's more, Trump's response to finding himself in this poker game that's rigged entirely in his favor is to flip over the table because he resents having to pretend to play at all (as November Kelly so aptly put it). His incontinent belligerence on the world stage sees him making bids to steal whole countries and he's recruited American tech giants to help him in this chaotic program of lunatic imperialism. When other countries' public officials make decisions that Trump dislikes, he gets companies like Microsoft to disconnect whole institutions from the internet, deleting their files, email archives, calendars and address books, and depriving them of the ability to connect to any service tied to their Outlook accounts:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/20/praxis/#acceleration

Which means that if Trump wants to steal Greenland, he doesn't have to roll tanks into Nuuk – he can just brick the country of Denmark. He can shut down all their ministries, every large firm, every household. He can shut down their iPhones and Android devices. He can kill their smart-speakers. He can hormuz the world's supply of Ozempic, Lego and ferociously strong licorice:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/04/digital-subjugation/#greenlands-next

It doesn't stop there! Trump can also shut down every tractor!

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

This is the digital sovereignty risk. It's also the digital sovereignty opportunity. If countries repeal the laws that the US bullied them into accepting, laws that protect US tech giants from local competitors who block their plunder of data and money, they can turn America's tech trillions into their own tech billions. As Jeff Bezos likes to say, "your margin is my opportunity":

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/30/zucksauce/#gandersauce

Meanwhile, repealing these US-protecting laws would enable countries to extract their data from US platforms so they can move it into domestic alternatives, and bypass the software locks that block them from updating phones, cars, tractors and ventilators to protect them from remote killswitches:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition

The digital sovereignty risk is having your country's government, businesses and industries terminated by Trump. The digital sovereignty opportunity is making billions of dollars by producing and exporting products that defend people from Big Tech plunder and Trumpian killswitches. That is the real world.

But many "digital sovereignty" advocates are living in an imaginary world, in which the digital sovereignty risk is that Trump will shut off their country's access to AI.

This is where the "if problem + blockchain" formulation comes in handy. If Trump shut off Canada's access to Chatgpt, Claude and Grok tomorrow, nothing would happen. No significant business, no federal or provincial ministry, no municipal government depends on these products for anything essential. And if Canada were to build their own local AI to sub in for Chatgpt, Claude and Grok, it would loose tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars. Worst of all, a national AI strategy does nothing – not one solitary thing – to protect Canada from Trump shutting down our ministries, our companies, or our tractors.

In other words:

If: digital sovereignty + AI = digital sovereignty – AI

Then: AI = 0

If you think AI tools are nifty and want Canada to invest in AI, then first, please stop pretending that this has anything to do with "digital sovereignty." Not only is this a transparent bit of nonsense, it's a dangerous one, because digital sovereignty is a real problem, and AI does nothing to solve it.

If you want a good "national AI strategy," try this: save your money until the bubble bursts, and then buy your GPUs and hire your talent at 10 cents on the dollar and put them to work refining open source models:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/#u-washington

Buying AI at the top of the market is nuts. That would be like shopping for Aeron chairs and foosball tables in March 2000. If you just sit tight for a couple months, you'll be able to find bankrupt dotcom entrepreneurs selling these at knock-down prices out front of their formerly overpriced office space in the Mission, in the time-honored tradition of former Wall Street millionaires selling apples out of their Rolls Royces:

https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/323794

(Literally: I bought a "dining room set" of six $1500 Steelcase Leap chairs in the summer of 2000 from a failed dotcom CEO on Van Ness for $25 a piece – still in the original plastic!)

And in the meantime, please let's stop pretending that digital sovereignty has anything to do with "national AI." If Trump takes away your AI, everything is fine. If Trump takes away your iPhones, Office 365 and tractors, your country grinds to a halt. This is just not that complicated:

If: digital sovereignty + AI = digital sovereignty – AI

Then: AI = 0

(Image: Armin KĂŒbelbeck, CC BY-SA 4.0, modified)


Hey look at this (permalink)



A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Napster boss's American Library Association keynote https://web.archive.org/web/20010623201456/https://www.salon.com/tech/wire/2001/06/17/napster/index.html

#20yrsago Flickr: we’ll give full access to competitors – if they reciprocate https://www.flickr.com/groups/central/discuss/72157594165399644/#comment72157594167782546

#20yrsago Report from a concert by a Serbian war-criminal https://web.archive.org/web/20060613081324/http://blog.b92.net/blog/22

#20yrsago European podcasters to WIPO: Stay away from us! https://web.archive.org/web/20060619224538/https://www.bloggernews.net/2006/06/european-podcasters-team-up-to-lobby.html

#15yrsago KFC: support diabetes research by buying an 800 calorie, 56 spoonful of sugar “Mega Jug” https://web.archive.org/web/20110619031415/https://theweek.com/article/index/216462/irony-alert-buy-kfcs-800-calorie-soda-to-support-diabetes-research

#10yrsago Terrorist who murdered Jo Cox shouts: “Death to traitors” in court https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0618/Accused-killer-of-MP-Jo-Cox-makes-defiant-court-statement

#10yrsago Judge orders release of man convicted while his public defender was handcuffed https://web.archive.org/web/20160617172242/http://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/judge-releases-man-who-received-jail-sentence-while-lawyer-was-handcuffs-video

#10yrsago Hambone virtuoso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMJeaZtgwng

#10yrsago Google Fiber now forces subscribers into binding arbitration; days left to opt out https://web.archive.org/web/20160617141759/https://consumerist.com/2016/06/16/google-fiber-copies-comcast-att-forces-users-to-give-up-their-legal-right-to-sue/

#1yrago The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/18/anarcho-cryptid/#decameron-and-on


Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.



A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)



A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)



A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/)

  • "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

  • "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

  • "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

  • "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027



Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.

  • "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

  • "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING


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