August 22, 2019

‘Dutch Rail discriminates against travellers when it comes to privacy’

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 5:22 pm

Michiel Jonker of Arnhem is a big defender of privacy. He is going to court to fight for his right to use an anonymised public transport chip card used for trams, subways, buses, and trolleys if you’re in Arnhem—a card that can also be used for trains.

One of the many issues is that only people who agree to give up their personal details as well as all their travel information can use a Dutch Rail discount on their card, giving them, in one instance, a 40% discount a year for an annual fee that I also pay, that keeps going up and that I don’t remember what it is.

Jonker uses an anonymised card, but it’s also not at all anonymous. “When you top up your card, the top-up doesn’t go onto your card, it goes to a sort of bank account owned by TransLink Systems [the company that makes the cards—Orangemaster]. The moment you top up your card, the company registers where and when you’ve done that.”

Jonker claims that the Dutch Data Protection Authority is too easily convinced by the arguments of Dutch Rail for registering information such as sex, email address and other personal details. Dutch Rail says that registering such information is necessary to combat fraud and ensure security, and yes, if a company can prove that such details are necessary to function then Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will back them up. However, if that cannot be proven, then Jonker has a point and Dutch Rail will have a problem.

Regardless, only travellers with one of the many non-anonymous types of cards can get travel discounts. Jonker explains that for decades, train staff checked paper tickets and that worked just fine.

Watch the video below in Dutch:

(Link: Omroep Gelderland; video: YouTube / Omroep Gelderland)

Tags: , , ,

August 10, 2019

Dutch Bunq client attacked over rainbow card

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 9:00 am

Bunq, a relatively new Dutch bank based in Amsterdam, recently had one of their clients attacked in India while trying to pay with the bank’s rainbow coloured bank card. Founder and CEO of Bunq Ali Niknam said he was shocked about this incident on social media.

The client ended up in the hospital. Comments on social media included making the card ‘less gay’, but then beating a person over a bank card, not even for money, is a violent crime. The gay rainbow flag doesn’t even use the same colours: it has six colours (missing one to make it a rainbow), while Bunq uses a few more different colours on its cards and 12 on its logo. Other companies including Apple have used and still use rainbow colours and that’s still not a reason to beat someone up, neither is being homophobic, if that was the case.

Nikham wrote a nice ‘message of love’ about the incident, something I cannot picture any other bank doing these days, so hats off to him (nope, 24oranges HQ is with another bank). Our Twitter timeline was full of folks from India denouncing this behaviour or explaining it away in shame, as it is criminal, violent behaviour. Over a piece of plastic.

(Link and photo: joop.bnnvara.nl)

Tags: , , , , ,

July 19, 2019

Amsterdam and Utrecht to get legit LEGO shops

Filed under: Dutch first,General by Orangemaster @ 1:08 pm

Rietveld-lego

Utrecht and Amsterdam are poised to be the first Dutch cities to get official LEGO shops, which should be open later this year, and nope, we don’t know where yet, but I’m fairly confident we will hear about it. Although LEGO franchises have opened in the Netherlands before, this is the first time LEGO itself will be opening a shop. The Danish manufacturer has about 130 official stores worldwide, including in Germany and France as far as close to the Netherlands is concerned.

Yes, it’s true, in North American English we say ‘legos’ instead of LEGO, to make it a plural, referring to the blocks. Once that Twitter conversation got going recently, someone came in with ‘but we also have Legolas’, referring to the Lord of the Rings characters, and we all had a good laugh and moved on.

Here are some of our past cool LEGO stories:

(Link: nltimes.nl, photo by Nick Barrett on www.duic.nl)

Tags: , ,

July 17, 2019

KLM slammed for asking mother to cover up while breastfeeding

Filed under: Aviation,General by Orangemaster @ 7:45 pm

KLM is getting bashed on social media for having asked the mother of a newborn to cover up while breastfeeding on a flight from Amsterdam to San Francisco. The mother explained to the stewardess who had asked her to cover up that her daughter did not like having a blanket over her, but the stewardess said that it was important to consider other people’s feelings.

“Breastfeeding is permitted at KLM flights. However, to ensure that all our passengers of all backgrounds feel comfortable on board, we may request a mother to cover herself while breastfeeding, should other passengers be offended by this.”

Feeding your child is offensive because, well, boobs. Boobs’ primary use are to feed babies last time I heard.

Once the mother told everyone online that people should not fly with KLM, the airline receive thousands of reactions from outraged folks. Parool newspaper also explains that women showing a lot of cleavage apparently are also asked to cover up with a blanket because clients (who, and really?) complain about, well, boobs performing their secondary function: being boobs.

Funny replies include handing out eye masks for people bothered by human feeding humans.

(Link: parool.nl, Photo of KLM A330-200 by caribb, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,

June 8, 2019

Amsterdam to get a drugs museum

Filed under: Dutch first,General,Health by Orangemaster @ 8:46 pm

Poppi is slated to be the first-ever drugs museum of The Netherlands in Amsterdam.

According to the founders, the country does not have a public institution which offers low-threshold education on drug policy and addiction. Misconceptions about drugs are widespread, and the story of drugs is not black and white.

Poppi plans to engage visitors and inform them from different perspectives. They want people to form an opinion about drugs based on knowledge and facts, and not just on emotions as is often the case.

For anyone in Amsterdam this month, you can find out more Poppi and donate all while having drinks at www.denieuweanita.nl on June 16 where Poppi will be presenting its project.

Find out more about Poppi in this video:

(Link: poppi.amsterdam, Photo: DEA)

Tags: , ,

June 2, 2019

Guinness record for tall people in Utrecht

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:58 pm

A few days ago, some 850 tall people in Utrecht broke the world record for the most tall people in one place, a record previously set by Australia, with 136 tall people. The Guinness Book of Records still needs to approve the Dutch attempt – they had three observers going around measuring people’s height.

Tall is meant to be about 1,80 metres for women and 1,90 metres for men. Knowing that the Dutch are the tallest people in the world, I guess it was just a case of getting them a lot of them together in one place. People came from all over Europe and even the United States and Canada to participate.

The record attempt was organised by the Klub Lange Mensen (the Long People Club) who have 3,500 members, and who recently made sure the minimum height of entrances to building in the Netherlands was increased. The club also works with Dutch Railways to make sure tall peole can sit comfortably in their trains.

(Link: nos.nl, Photo of Dom Tower, Utrecht by Massimo Catarinella, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,

May 27, 2019

Dutch UFO spotters freak out over satellites

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 8:58 pm

IMG_5901

Dutch UFO reporting website www.ufomeldpunt.nl was swamped with more than 150 sightings, with fervent UFO spotters describing a “bizarre train of stars or lights moving across the skies at constant speed”.

Instead of anything alien, it was a string of some 60 satellites launched by businessman Elon Musk’s SpaceX hours earlier as part of its ‘Starlink’ constellation. A lot of Dutch folks staring at the sky had no clue this was going to happen, so you can imagine the commotion it caused.

One of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida last Friday, and an hour later began releasing the satellites at an altitude of 450 kilometres. The satellites then had to separate and use their thrusters to take up their positions in a relatively low orbit of 550 kilometres. Starlink will become operational once 800 satellites have been activated, which will require a dozen more launches.

Dutch astronomer Marco Langbroek noted on his blog that he calculated where the satellites would be orbiting, and waited with his camera. The result is a spectacular one: a string of bright dots flying across the sky, prompting people to report UFOs.

Here is Langbroek video of the event:

(Link: phys.org)

Tags: , , ,

May 2, 2019

Rotterdam bills festival after confetti throwing attempt

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 1:49 pm

During King’s Day at the Kingsland Festival in Rotterdam, people attempted to break a confetti throwing record, but failed. What also failed was the attempt at cleaning up the mess, since the organisers are being billed with extra clean-up costs.

Festival organisers had until 30 April (3 days) to clean up their mess, but there was still a lot of confetti to be found in the grass and the woods.

The city of Rotterdam is now cleaning the rest of the confetti up and will be sending the bill to the organisation. The city was completely OK with the record attempt as long as the confetti was picked up. It will take cleaners two more days to fully clean the area, to the tune of a few extra thousand euro.

Two local political parties were sceptical of the confetti attempt and now it turns out they were right. The city is also considering fining the organisation as well.

Everyone should feel like a King on King’s Day, but some people have ended up looking more like fools.

(Link: rijnmond.nl)

Tags: , ,

April 28, 2019

Rainiest King’s Day since 1955 goes by without incident

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 5:15 pm

Yesterday King’s Day was the wettest in over 60 years.

With 8.9 millimeters of precipitation, only 1955 was rainier (9.6 millimetres), Parool reports.

Perhaps as a result King’s Day was otherwise uneventful, the papers say. Last year’s ‘disaster’, when beer ran out in the country’s capital, Amsterdam, was averted this year by readying more kegs.

The royal family visited Amersfoort, which joined in the uneventful trend by giving an undistinguished presentation, NRC writes. The organiser of the city’s festivities, Yordi Grutters, told the paper: “we are an average city with an average population.”

The paper adds that this was crown-princess Amalia’s day. For the first time ever, she gave interviews without her sisters to national broadcasters RTL and SBS. “It feels sometimes unreal that this is my life,” the princess said. I wonder how she knows.

Since the king’s inauguration in 2013, we haven’t had a King’s Day that wasn’t either cold or wet.

Tags: , ,

April 23, 2019

The Happy Hour, 24 Oranges goes on the air

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 2:28 pm

About two years ago, we promised we would put out a video, and we really tried to do something, but besides great conversation, we didn’t get around to doing it the way we would have wanted to and we shelved it until something better came along, and it did.

After much hemming and hawing about how to go to the next level after 11 years of blogging, me and my co-blogger Branko want to invite you to tune into The Happy Hour, every Wednesday from 17:00 to 19:00 Amsterdam time on broadcastamsterdam.nl.

Think of it as a extension of 24oranges, but then aimed more at Amsterdam, with lots of Dutch music in English (and other languages), great guests, banter, puns, and lots of fun. We enjoy talking about hot topics such as housing, politics, food, drinks, cycling and articles we’ve written about.

Tags: , ,