February 21, 2018

Personal computer museum to open in Helmond

Filed under: Gaming,General by Orangemaster @ 11:44 pm

On 17 March, the Home Computer Museum in Helmond, Noord-Brabant will open its doors. At noon, visitors will be able to check out a collection of old personal computers, gaming computers and arcade games. There’s also an arcade café, 1980s films, a repairs corner, and more.

Thanks to crowdfunding, founder Bart van den Akker was able to raise the money needed to launch the museum. The city of Helmond also pitched in 7,000 euro for start-up costs and even an annual amount of 3000 euro for the next three years.

(Link: ed.nl)

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February 20, 2018

Detecting fake news by playing a game

Filed under: General,Online by Orangemaster @ 11:09 am

Dutch media collective DROG together with Cambridge researchers is launching an English version of the fake news game online today that teaches people how to immunise themselves against fake news.

“The game encourages players to stoke anger, mistrust and fear in the public by manipulating digital news and social media. Players build audiences for their fake news sites by publishing polarizing falsehoods, deploying Twitter bots, photoshopping evidence, and inciting conspiracy theories in the wake of public tragedy, all while maintaining a ‘credibility score’ to remain as persuasive as possible”.

Teenagers at a Dutch secondary school played the game use pen and paper, and demonstrated that the perceived ‘reliability’ of fake news diminished with those who played the game, as compared to a control group.

“If you know what it’s like to walk in the shoes of someone who is actively trying to deceive you, it should increase your ability to spot and resist the techniques of deceit”, explains says Dr. Sander van der Linden, Director of Cambridge University’s Social Decision-Making Lab.

The game will be rolled out in other languages and aimed at countries that have a high level of fake news like Ukraine.

(Link: phys.org)

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February 16, 2018

Supermarket opening stops tram dead in its tracks

Filed under: Food & Drink,General by Orangemaster @ 12:45 pm

This week, a Jumbo supermarket in Zoetermeer, South Holland had a grand opening at which a bunch of yellow streamers were fired off into the air. So far, so boring.

Then, the wind caught the streamers and they flew all the way up to the tram’s overhead line and that messed up people’s commute. Someone called the local non-police neighbourhood uniformed agents to organise a clean up.

Jumbo supermarkets come into the news in weird ways. They had the pink shopping basket for singles, let students bring back a huge lorry full of beer bottles and let customers test different kinds of toilet paper in their bathroom.

(Link and photo: nos.nl)

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February 10, 2018

Carnaval song parody is sleeper hit of 2018

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:08 am

Tired of over-the-top, in your face dirty carnaval songs? Bored with racist slurs and sexist bullshit? Can’t look at another badly dressed moron from ‘above the rivers’ singing about beer and getting drunk?

Then this parody of carnaval song taken at face value is the Dutch carnaval song for you this year: Max Verstand & De Speld with ‘Maak weloverwogen keuzes’ (roughly ‘Make informed choices’). De Speld is a Dutch news satire site and this was an excellent idea even if it is from Amsterdam, the city that still manages to stave off carnaval fever.

Maak weloverwogen keuzes has everything you need: a nice man with a colourful outfit, a funny artist name (Max Verstand = maximum common sense), sounds a tad old fashion with the accordion rather than banging techno, and has a pretty woman and some partying.

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January 24, 2018

Sexist carnival theme gets students’ funding cut

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 1:07 pm
carnaval

The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Eindhoven University of Technology, Jan Mengelers, ‘blew up’ at a student association for using a sexist and ‘rapey’ carnival themed party on campus entitled #nietoo intended as a play on words and a rhyme of #meetoo.

Translated into English, the theme is ‘What women want doesn’t count’ (‘De wil van de vrouw doet er #nietoo’), with a wonderful image of a young woman with tape over her mouth and #nietoo stamped on it. These are future engineers in the making; their parents must be proud.

Mengelers gave the representatives of this student association, which I have a feeling has little or no women in it, a stern talking to on the same day he found out and in true straight up Brabo style told them this conversation wasn’t going to be a long one and told them their annual funding has been cut off.

The student association plans to publicly apologise, cancel the party and investigate internally. In one month, these morons will have to talk to Mengelers again and see if they’re still the cavemen they’ve shown us they can be.

update: The poster in question (see link), which was a bit tough to read, also reads ‘for 18 years and up and 5 years and under’ which shocked a lot of people more than the sexist remarks.

(Link: omroepbrabant.nl)

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December 31, 2017

Branko’s favourite stories of 2017

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 7:24 pm

fireworks-branko-collinOn the dying hours of the year, I present you with my favourite postings of 2017. If you only read this in the next year, I hope you are washing away your last traditional oliebol with a mug of strong coffee.

In 2017, parents wanted their children to be born in the ‘right’ hospital, not because of the care they would receive, but because of the birth certificate; it had to list the proper city. As if the birth place of your child were some cool brand.

A bicycle bridge was 3D printed and installed in Gemert. Plastic tchotchkes resembling Delftware miniature houses managed to sell enough at 50 euro a piece to make an overpriced kickstarter succeed.

Cool teacher Matthijs Jansen has been busy inventing gym class games to keep his students happy. The kids seem to appreciate the effort, with one girl saying he is the coolest ‘meester’ (male teacher) of the school. “To be fair”, she added, “he is the only meester we have.”

The world-famous bike path underneath the even more famous Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has been making the Dutch capital a lot of money. The city has fined 27,000 moped owners 90 euro each for illegally using the path. If you need to go from the city center to the South of Amsterdam or vice versa, that bike path is often the fastest route.

Other stories from 2017 that drew my eye were:

Finally a ton of casual sexism portrayed the Netherlands in a bad light (here, here, here and here), and to top this off, the top 15 richest Dutch artists are all men.

See also: Branko’s favourite postings of 2016.

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December 23, 2017

Christmas break time at 24oranges HQ

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:58 am

Xmas-tree-2017

24oranges is going to take a breather for a few days to catch up on some much needed sleep, finally make that video we promised in March (it’s bad juju if we don’t get it done in 2017), eat, drink and watch comedy on the telly.

Branko will again have a Top 10 list of this year’s favourite stories before the end of the year.

Happy Holidays to all you and thanks for your continued support!

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December 11, 2017

Cheesiest slogans of 2017 up for vote

Filed under: Animals,General by Orangemaster @ 11:52 am
Kdag2010-2

Yes, 2016 had a real winner with ‘Zit je haircut’. Pronounce ‘hair’ in English and ‘cut’ (‘kut’) in Dutch, the latter being the word for what the Brits call the ‘c-bomb’, but in this case means ‘shitty’.

Here are some contenders for the ‘Worst Business Slogans of 2017’: ‘Voor iedere gleuf een doos’ (Moniss packing materials, Lelystad), which is ‘For every slit (possibly, tab), there’s a box’. The problem is that ‘gleuf’ is slang for female genitalia and so is ‘box’. For the advance students, it might remind you a bit of this song by Herman Brood. On the other side of the spectrum, there’s ‘Wees geen domme gans, steun de Dierenambulance!’ (Animal ambulance, Amsterdam), which translates as ‘Don’t be a silly goose, support the animal ambulance!’. It rhymes in Dutch and has a cheesy, family-friendly animal pun.

And there’s always the aural squinting, where you have to read one word in Dutch and one word in English to make the joke work that in fact doesn’t work at all. In that category, there’s ‘Haring is caring’, from the herring monger at camping Bakkum near Amsterdam. ‘Haring’ (herring) is then pronounced in Dutch ‘HA-ring’, which doesn’t rhyme with ‘caring’ in English. In fact, ‘Herring is caring’ would have been less fishy.

The winners will be announced later this week.

(Link: trouw.nl)

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November 14, 2017

Kids’ gym class in Utrecht is the coolest

Filed under: General,Health,Sports by Orangemaster @ 7:07 pm

Children in the Netherlands

A physical education teacher in Utrecht has made gym class cool again by using games to keep all the kids busy instead of activities like dodgeball where kids have to sit out when they are hit while stronger kids play, and it’s going viral.

It’s going viral because he films the kids classes and puts them online.

On the Facebook page De Spelles (the ‘play lesson’) as well as on the website despelles.nl, you can see Dutch kids play relay races, dominos, Twister, and a whole bunch of games that keeps them busy, involved and happy.

Teacher Matthijs Jansen has been teaching PE since 2011 and strongly believes all the kids should participate and get exercise. One of the girls says she think Mr Jansen is the best meester (male teacher) of the school, but then he’s the only one (the only male teacher), she says, laughing.

(Link: rtvutrecht.nl, photo of random children: Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

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November 13, 2017

Rijksmuseum scanner to be used to solve crimes

Filed under: Art,General,Technology by Orangemaster @ 1:08 pm
The mobile macro-XRF scanner (Bruker M6 Jetstream) developed by the University of Antwerp and Delft University of Technology

The mobile macro-XRF scanner (Bruker M6 Jetstream) developed by the University of Antwerp and Delft University of Technology

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam uses a Macro-X-ray Fluorescence scanner (MA-XRF, similar to this one) to analyse the different chemical elements found in the paint of artworks, making it possible to identify the pigments used and providing more specific information about the stages of the working process. This also helps museums identify whether a painting is really from a certain painter, not something left to the naked eye anymore, thanks to technology.

The Nederlands Forensisch Instituut (NFI – Dutch Forensics Institute) will be collaborating with the Rijksmuseum to use the scanner in order to find evidence material with a view to solve crimes. Besides identifying pigments, the scanner can identify blood, sweat, saliva, urine and sperm on things such as clothing, and can even analyse bullets.

Scientists from the NFI, the University of Amsterdam and the Delft University of Technology published results about using the scanner for solving crimes last week. The NFI doesn’t have its own scanner simply because it’s very expensive. And until the NFI can get their hands on one, they’ll be coming round to the museum when they need to use the scanner. And yes, it does sounds like many a television series’ plot.

A little finch just told me that the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague will be borrowing a scanner just like this to analyse Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in the new future, but then just to find out more about the painting, not to solve any crime.

(Link: , Photo and a good read: lookingthroughartblog.wordpress.com)

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