Jacques Mattheij

The Problem There is a problem in the ‘infosphere’.

I’m impressed For the last couple of years, my colleagues and myself have been playing around with AI.

tldr: A small i386 32-bit protected mode multi-tasking operating system modeled after QNX – What is Unite?

tldr: limit your GPUs to about 2/3rd of maximum power draw for the least Joules consumed per token generated without speed penalty. – Why run an LLM yourself in the first place?

CNC Lasers for cutting and engraving Laser cutters can injure or blind you permanently if you do not follow safety procedures!

My children are hopelessly addicted to their gaming devices.

Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine the price of gas and electric power in the European Union has gone up enormously.

In 1989 I got a call from a friend to come along to visit a studio in Landsmeer, near Amsterdam, where something quite amazing was being constructed, a circus with nothing but eggs, both as the performers and as the audience.

Dit is een antwoord op de Tweet thread van @Inge_v, die een hele berg redenen aangaf waarom ze vond dat Kernenergie de enige optie is in plaats van zon, wind en andere renewables.

Electric cars are fantastic compared to ICE vehicles, but E-Bikes are even better.

More than a year ago already I posted a fictional COVID19 retrospective, reading it back today it is pretty eerie to see how many of the predictions made in it have come true or are about to become true.

First an apology.

I have friends from all walks of life.

I’m pretty sure that the hardest choice in my life to date has been the one between my two loves: music on the hand and computer programming on the other.

If you’ve been following the news you probably are aware that the number of people that test positive for COVID-19 is rapidly rising.

Letsencrypt is a pretty neat concept: free secure certificates for web servers, in order to increase the adoption of HTTPS across the web.

Software distribution has over the years gone through an enormous revolution in efficiency.

After seeing some of the weirdest stuff ever show up in my Twitter timeline I decided to dig in and see for myself what is going on in the underbelly of the beast.

A couple of months ago I received a present, a small book titled ‘Why we sleep’ by Matthew walker.

As much as I love digital instruments, synthesizers and other electronic gear I also really love the look and feel of instruments made from wood, brass, steel and felt.

The Netherlands is one of the wealthiest and most favored countries when it comes to dealing with nature.

It’s been a couple of years now, since the 2020 Coronavirus disaster.

There is a lot of material about the not-so-nice VCs who take advantage of young and inexperienced founders.

For the last three months I’ve been working on a project that combines my twin passions: music and computer programming.

I recently became aware of this article where a Google exec says - he’s serious - that ‘Nest owners should probably warn their guests that their conversations are being recorded’.

Have you ever wondered what causes large teams of search and rescue people including all their gear to magically spring into action within hours of a plane crash, no matter where in the world it has happened?

Long ago, in the mid 80’s I worked for a bank in the IT department on the Western side of Amsterdam.

According to Bloomberg Microsoft is said to have agreed to buy GitHub.

Apologies for the typo in the url… Some dumb lawyer figured it would be fun to give GDPR trolls a form letter to use to inflict maximum damage on unsuspecting companies.

Part I of this is here, if you haven’t read it yet please do so before reading this installment, it will help to establish context.

In another week the GDPR, or the General Data Protection Regulation will become enforceable and it appears that unlike any other law to date this particular one has the interesting side effect of causing mass hysteria in the otherwise rational tech sector.

I love cycling.

A dark pattern in the design world means something that is purposefully created to mislead users and to get them to perform actions against their own interest.

Computer code that I’m writing usually doens’t keep me up at night.

If you’re reading this page it means that you are accessing a ‘darknet’ web page.

For part 1, see here.

One of my favorite writers of all time, Douglas Adams has a neat little plot device in that wholly remarkable book ‘The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy’, called the Babel Fish.

If there is one thing that never ceases to amaze me it is that the hacker community tends to place itself outside and by their own perception above politics.

It happens at least once in the lifetime of every programmer, project manager or teamleader.

For part 1, see here.

One of my uncles cursed me with the LEGO bug, when I was 6 he gave me his collection because he was going to university.

I grew up in Amsterdam, which is a pretty rough town by Dutch Standards.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

About a week ago I bought a really nice solid wooden table for a song in a second hand store.

Ycombinator has decided to move forward on their ‘Basic Income’ experiment.

Electric Vehicles (EVs) are all the rage these days.

If there is one story of a persistant nature that seems to pervade the start-up world it is that VCs as a rule are evil, they’re out to get you, will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

For many years in the beginning of my career I’d been more than happy to work for free or even at a loss as long as the work was interesting.

Imagine a contest in which we are going to pit man against machine.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the local shopping centre looking for a thermometer.