markvdb

29 ms·

361.
by markvdb 5y ago
Incredibly, in my native Belgium, there's an old lady turning 100 (!) come September. She helped save almost 1000 jewish children by moving them to safe places. Many were hidden amongst other children in catholic boarding schools. [0]
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by markvdb 5y ago
This reminds me of Alexey Stachanov[0], Hero of Socialist Labour, and the movement that sprung up around his efforts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Stakhanov
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by markvdb 5y ago
Hello Dan! Nice to see you here! Rereading my previous comment, I realise that part of it could be misinterpreted. The diybookscanner project was wonderful to be part of, to contribute to. One thing I realise was particularly impressive abo
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by markvdb 5y ago
Automated page turning is an incredibly complex problem to tackle. It won't gain you as much as you'd think either. "Book" and "page" are a surprisingly difficult to define categories. If my experience helping
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by markvdb 5y ago
Display should be visible indeed. Your capture triggering suggestion is not as great though. The systems that I shipped with http://diybookscanner.eu actually used a USB foot pedal for triggering the cameras. That's by far
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by markvdb 5y ago
Spreads[0] is probably what you are referring to. Some backstory: I saw the diybookscanner community - which at that point mostly had Daniel Reetz [1] as its active contributor- struggle with mechanical contraptions for triggering cameras a
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by markvdb 5y ago
Who is entitled to a say on Wikimedia's business organisation? Not me. The Wikimedia foundation can organise itself as it sees fit. If anything, they've proven to be rather good at it, with lots and lots of value added to the comm
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by markvdb 5y ago
A similar feudal tax was still levied in part of the Netherlands until 2014. [0] [0] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dertiende_penning
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by markvdb 5y ago
It's very hard to avoid artificial self dealing between related entities. The OECD transfer pricing arm's length principle [0] is supposed to somewhat solve that. The problem regarding transfer pricing is that the US, the Netherla
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by markvdb 5y ago
The pilot must have had a range of options. Some of them might have risked the shooting of the plane. Others might have stalled, embarassed and/or documented this attack by Belarusian forces. I had a formative experience regarding the
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by markvdb 5y ago
The Weill/Brecht opera featuring the Mac the Knife song was a heavily modified adaptation of an 18th century opera itself [0]! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beggar%27s_Opera
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by markvdb 5y ago
Ireland at least until recently didn't even require Irish companies to be administered from Ireland. It was also super laissez-fair on arm's length principles for valuing services provided between connected entities. [0] https:&#
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by markvdb 5y ago
You may want to look at this from a wider angle. Obviously the driving logic should handle this properly. But... it also has the potential of production testing road infrastructure automatically. Once it's good enough obviously. P.S. I
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by markvdb 5y ago
A simple tax like that on its own is also socially regressive. Implemented on its own, people would go hungry, causing social unrest. What would you suggest as a simple social stabiliser on top? A negative personal income tax up to a certai
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by markvdb 5y ago
Your reasoning may hold true in many cases. Just please don't follow this "resources are allocated according to wealth, full stop" line to the absurd as you did. You'll get revolts by the have-nots. They will go get what
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by markvdb 5y ago
A significant part of the world - all of the EU, but also a lot outside it- uses the IBAN standard [0]. The checksum algorithm is mod97, two digits indeed. Very often, there are two checksums though! Also, in my native Belgium, bank payment
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by markvdb 5y ago
> the clerk who set up the automatic payments accidentally typed in my account number, which was one off from the car loan holder’s. Were you just extremely unlucky, or doesn't your bank account number have a proper checksum builtin
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by markvdb 5y ago
The original article spoke of piano. I should have mentioned that the advice I gave is more tailored to polyphonic instruments like the guitar, the piano and the accordion. Even on these instruments, the best advice in most cases usually is
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by markvdb 5y ago
In some cases, practicing some things slowly is more exhausting and less efficient than starting at at least medium speed from the very beginning. The slow tempo loses you mental oversight of what you are trying to play. You'll learn w
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by markvdb 5y ago
"Poepen" is nl_nl for "to defecate", and nl_be for "to have sexual intercourse".
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by markvdb 5y ago
I initially started writing half an encyclopedia here, but I scrapped that. Some random bits: - There's rather limited contact between the linguistic communities of Belgium. - Knowledge of nl is generally extremely limited in Wallonia.
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by markvdb 5y ago
Put-down. Thank you for the adjectives "novel" and "biting". I'm flattered :-)
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by markvdb 5y ago
> Why is nuclear energy so bad though? 99 percent of the plants dont blow. It's a better than 99%, but only slightly. Over 440 active reactors[1], we're at ~0.68% at INES [1] level 6. That is in a period of exceptional social s
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by markvdb 5y ago
This kind of absurd copyright trouble is all over the place in the world of music education. I advised my boss to choose a video hosting platform between: - a paid video upload account in a place where we're not the product (vimeo) - s
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by markvdb 5y ago
This is exactly what government does in Belgium for specific types of jobs, like home cleaning aids for example. Before the (significant) wage subsidy, they used to almost always be paid under the table. Now they earn a proper salary with a
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by markvdb 5y ago
You are lucky. Over here, it's rather over 2.5k€ because of the accountants, notaries and state taking good care of themselves...
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by markvdb 5y ago
Lots of reasons to expect accelerated lignite shutdown and solar/wind buildup indeed. And quite impressive to see that 50.5% of Germany's electricity production was wind, sun and water already!
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by markvdb 5y ago
Unfortunately, you seem to have misread the report you quoted. Germany's not-so-secret is lignite, a dirtier kind of coal supplying 16.8% of its electricity. Lignite together with traditional coal at 7.3% supplied 24.1% of Germany&#x27
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by markvdb 5y ago
In rural Latvia, people will shoot them and eat the meat.
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by markvdb 5y ago
Spec in SI units: - 518 km/h cruise speed - 593 km/h max speed - 946 km max range - 10.67 km max altitude

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