Dutch internet providers told to make speed estimates more realistic

DutchNews, November 27, 2017

Photo: Depositphotos.com

Internet providers in the Netherlands have been told they must be more accurate about the speed of internet connections they are selling from January 1 next year. 

In addition, providers may no longer advertise maximum speeds which are not actually achievable in practice, the Dutch competition and markets regulator ACM said on Monday. 

The maximum and minimum upload and download times for fixed internet must be included in contracts and providers will also have to commit to a ‘normally available’ speed, which must be reached in eight of 10 times over a week. Estimated speeds will be acceptable for mobile internet. 

The rule will first be applied to new contracts but from March will have to be included in all contracts for both the domestic and consumer market. The new rules stem from European legislation on net neutrality.  

Staffing agency Randstad goes digital, moves offices to industrial estates

DutchNews, November 22, 2017

Staffing agency giant Randstad is relocating dozens of smaller branches in the Netherlands from prime locations to industrial estates, in a push to go largely digital. 

From 2018, the Randstad branches in city centres will be limited to a number of ‘flagship stores’ in around 10 big cities. None of the other branches will close. Instead they will move to a new address, a Randstad spokesperson told the Volkskrant. 

The move will result in annual savings for the company of around €90 to €100m. 

In an interview with the Financieele Dagblad, Reiant Mulder, the director in charge of Dutch operations, said business was no longer reliant on people walking in from the street. ‘99% of searches for a new job start online. That includes people over the age of 50. The tempo in which people have switched to digital has taken us by surprise,’ he told the paper. 

Randstad is directing most of the freed up budget towards new technologies which will increase the chance of finding the right person for job. ‘Algorithms are telling us: this request for a worker matches this candidate,’ Mulder is quoted as saying.  The method is already used for low-skilled jobs but will now also be employed to place the highly skilled. 

The move does not mean any of the intermediaries who mediate between candidate and company, will be fired. They will be given a role in coaching and their number will be reduced as people leave the company, the paper writes. 

According to the Volkskrant, Randstad is anxious not to lose face-to-face contact with its clients. It quotes the company’s last annual report as saying that ‘57% of candidates thinks the hiring process is too automated, impersonal and only focused on transactions. We want to keep the personal connection where this is needed.’ 

But clients will have to travel further for an interview. ‘We are choosing sites which are easily reached by public transport,’ the spokesperson told the Volkskrant.

Dutch YouTube vloggers have new advertising code

DutchNews, November 17, 2017

A group of Dutch YouTube vloggers will now report clearly when content is advertised, as part of a voluntary code they launched on Friday. 

De Social Code – developed ‘for and by YouTubers’ – has four simple guidelines on making it clear when videos are sponsored, involve product placement or free samples, or are entirely independent content.

Last year the Dutch Media Authority announced that it wanted to ban illicit advertising in vlogs, especially when aimed at children, reported RTL broadcaster at the time. 

Laws regulating online content in the same way as television and radio are being developed, according to the vloggers who developed the new code in coordination with the Dutch Media Authority. 

People who have signed up already include Teske de Schepper (Teske), Dylan Haegens, Djamila (Meisje Djamila), Rutger Vink (Furtjuh) and Christiaan Heinen (Prankster), according to ANP. 

‘These YouTubers are demonstrating through this form of self-regulation that they feel a sense of responsibility to their viewers’, Dutch Media Authority chairman Madeleine de Cock Buning told ANP. 

Bill Gates is investing $50 million in the Dementia Discovery Fund, a private-public venture that supports innovative research into dementia

Bill Gates is investing $50 million in the Dementia Discovery Fund, a private-public venture that supports innovative research into dementia https://t.co/535wFZ43Az

— AFP news agency (@AFP) November 13, 2017

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"The Biggest Filter" - July 18-19, 2015 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“..  The Biggest Filter that Hinders Truth is Your Biased Knowledge

The biggest filter of humanity, the one that keeps Humans from actual truth, believe it or not, is called knowledge. We speak of that which humanity perceives currently as knowledge. That which you do not know is, therefore, future knowledge. Now, every single scientist understands the difference - every single one - for they know what is coming is going to teach them what they don't know yet. This is part of the scientific process. Even so, they take what they know, or think they know, and completely let it temper the experiments for what they don't know. They base the future on what they know or believe, even though they know better!

A medical doctor will look in the past and he'll remember being taught about a time when humans would report to the barbershop for healing. That's when they would actually bleed people for healing. By the way, that's the reason for the barber pole having the red stripe on it - it's the tradition of barbers doing the bleeding. So back then, you went to get healed in the barbershop by being bled! This, of course, led to many deaths because there was no understanding of germs, sterilization or today's common sense. Doctors know this, and they laugh at how far you all have come from this. So doctors absolutely know that what is coming will someday be actually laughable, yet they are also absolutely and completely closed to what it might be. They just think it will be an advancement of what they currently know.  ….”

“..  Medicine - Where It's Going

I want to show you some other areas to consider. There are several categories that we'd like to talk about, but they're not in a specific order except for the last one. So let's talk about medicine. What is future medicine going to look like?

The most elegant predictions of medicine fall short of what's really coming. What you have today is a high-tech approach to designer chemistry. Now, since the body is made up of chemistry, it makes sense to look at this chemistry and work with it. It makes total sense to discover how it reacts to disease and then design cures with more chemistry. It's absolutely normal what you have done, but it's going to reach an end very soon. Because the future of medicine is physics, dear ones, not chemistry.

You're going to start understanding and developing new medical physics. You will discover that medi-physics is going to literally speak to cellular structure and give it instructions, without one chemical involved. There's always a reaction to chemistry, isn't there? There's always a side effect. When you push one thing, something else reacts, doesn't it? How do you like it so far? Your most elegant chemical designs, the ones that are helping with the worst diseases on the planet, all have side effects - and some of those side effects are death! I say to you, how do you like it so far?

Does it really seem elegant to you? Or perhaps it's just a more sophisticated way of bleeding in the barbershop? Dear ones, that's how you're going to look at it someday! You're going to slap your heads and say, "Remember the day when we did everything with chemistry and drugs?"

Right now, these kinds of changes have already started in several areas. There are discoveries being made that are healing some of the most heart-breaking diseases you have. I reveal one, because it's not a secret. I will always give you information that is either being worked on or has been postulated through free choice on this planet. That is the guideline of channelling. We can't give it to you. You've got to develop it yourself. However, we can put you in an energy that has a faster discovery potential - that is to say, discoveries become more obvious.

Alzheimer's is heart breaking. There are millions on this planet who develop this condition, more all the time. You're living longer and a plaque-like material that literally obfuscates your memory within the brain is becoming more common. It clings to certain parts of your brain, encrusting and restricting it, imprisoning the Human's ability to remember and eventually process information at all. The result is death, slow death. It's caused by your environment, a fact which will be discovered eventually. Your long-lived Ancients didn't have it.

It's going to be cured with physics. Your science is starting to find out that the plaque-like substance has a resonance that allows it to be weakened with sound. High-frequency sound, tuned to a certain frequency and amplitude, will cause the sheaths to weaken, dissolve, and come off. There's a lot of research to do yet, but it's a Eureka! moment - realizing that physics alone, without chemistry, can change the structure of biology. This is with no side effects whatsoever. It's coming, it's coming.

There are those working with fresh umbilical cord stem cells right now who are using pure physics to guide the stem cells to a specific destination in the body in order to repair failing systems. Dear ones, the future of health and healing is not through better chemistry, yet medicine is still waiting for better pills! Did you connect the dots and realize that all biology is physics based? There is magnetics, leverage, the energy of consciousness, electricity and much more within cellular structure. With physics alone, you can "tune in" to disease and destroy it! You can fine-tune your system with cooperative resonances and extend life with benevolent, physical assistance. Sixteen years ago, I told you this when I spoke of the Temple of Rejuvenation. I described the super-cooling needed to do it and the temperatures needed to work with it (-55C). This is physics!

Now, the false expectation of greater chemistry for the future is totally caused from the filter of knowledge. What you have and know then gives you your expectation of what is going to take place. It literally blocks you from seeing some of the potentials that you may have.  ….”

Kryon Q&A

Question (2004): Dearest Kryon: I've read the question and answer on people with diseases of the mind - for example, Alzheimers and dementia. But I have more questions. You say that people have chosen this path and that the lessons are for us. As I work with these people, I'm wondering if there is any stage where there could be a reversal of the condition, and if so, with what methods? The people in the hostel are so drugged up, and there's a mind-set with the authorities that no "alternate" therapies work - although they're using colored lights. (Sadly, the diversional therapist told me she doesn't know what color therapy is.)

From a spiritual point of view, what is the best way to work with these people - talk to them as though they were normal, or go along with their imaginings? I've been told that they need to be kept quiet, especially toward evening. However, I've found that with one woman who mostly paces saying very little, the more childlike I am (dancing and singing makes her happy), the more she talks. I could go on and on - could you please enlighten me further?

Answer: I will answer the second part first. Love those who are in this condition. Find out what makes them smile... and then make them smile. The best you can do in a facilitation of this condition is to somehow create joy. Even in their confusion they can laugh at situations and be creative. They'll also remember you better as the one who creates this emotion. Each is very different, but in general, try to find their "happy" button and push it as often as you can. They will remember that.

Right now you're perched upon some important discoveries that will be able to reverse these conditions to a large degree. But just as the paraplegic who regains their nerve connections must than relearn how to walk, suffering much pain, there will be this attribute with a regeneration of the mind. Even if new cells are created, they won't necessarily have the old memories, but they can be trained to be healthy and be ready for new memories.

So someday these will have the ability to halt the progress of the degeneration of cells that are being taken, and instead grow new pathways around them. Some will be able to "reconnect" to certain kinds of memories (like recognition) but will have to relearn what the association of recognition actually means. So history and events might have to be studied and relearned... sometimes even things like reading, also. The pain will be that the individual will regain mental health and will realize exactly what has happened.

Your stem-cell research is very important, and you're reaching a point where you'll be able to use birth cells that aren't embryonic, but every bit as potent for research... thereby sidestepping all moral issues. Look for this in the next few years. 

'Bots battle for the ball, and the globe, in Robot Olympiad

Yahoo – AFP, Marc BURLEIGH, November 11, 2017

Robots play soccer as young participants look on at the World Robotics Olympiad
being held in Costa Rica (AFP Photo/Ezequiel BECERRA)

San José (AFP) - The World Robotics Olympiad, being held in Costa Rica this weekend, shows human athletes still have little to worry about: sweat and glory do not compute well when relegated to faceless automatons.

But the same may not be true for workers, especially those in menial or transport activities where robots are steadily taking over. Think factory assemblers and sorters, or even self-driving cars.

Some of the technology behind the robot revolution could be seen in the Olympiad, which gathered more than 2,500 people from more than 60 countries in a vast hall on the outskirts of Costa Rica's capital San Jose -- the first time the event, now in its 14th year, has been held in the Americas.

Pint-sized robots packed with sensors and rolling on plastic wheels showed their football skills by battling rivals on miniature soccer fields.

Others rolled across tables seeking out blocks of certain colors and sizes to grab and place within demarcated zones.

It was all more than child's play for the contestants representing their countries, aged from six to adult.

"It’s so difficult," said Hassan Abdelrahem Alqadi, 17, from the United Arab Emirates.

"We have to do it in the system and make the robot take the color and go to the pieces that we want. So it’s very difficult," he said.

The teen, who hopes to be a mechanical engineer in the oil industry, admitted he had picked up tips from watching other competitors' practice sessions. He and other tech-savvy youngsters crowded around dozens of tables -- computers or robots in their hands -- to observe.

Two participants prepare a miniature robot during the World Robot Olympiad under

 way in Costa Rica, the first time the event has been held in the Americas (AFP Photo/

Ezequiel BECERRA)

Environmental theme

At one table, a group of Australian teens fine-tuned their contraptions trying to win possession of a palm-sized transparent "soccer" ball containing a sensor. The robots were able to detect the ball, grab it while fending off rivals, and protect the goal area.

Being at the Olympiad, surrounded by equally bright peers from around the world, was eye-opening for the teens.

"We’ve never been to an international competition before, so it’s a new experience. I can really only compare it to the competitions we’ve had in Australia — in Australia we've done pretty well," said Tiernan Martin, 13.

The competition over the weekend was being judged in several age categories, as well as in the football, university and open tournaments.

This year, the environment was the overriding theme -- an area in which Costa Rica is at the forefront.

Thus, robots had to show their usefulness in sustainable tourism (identifying protected areas), carbon neutrality (planting trees), and clean energy (seeking out the best places to set up wind turbines).

Costa Rica's science and technology minister, Carolina Vasquez Soto, speaking 

with AFP during the World Robotics Olympiad being held in her country (AFP Photo/

Ezequiel BECERRA)

Robots 'help humanity'

Costa Rica's science and technology minister, Carolina Vasquez Soto, told AFP her country won the right to host the Olympiad -- hitherto held mostly in Asia -- "for the participation we've had in sustainability, because we are contributing to that with more and bigger resources."

On the larger question of what robots, and the associated field of artificial intelligence, now represent for human workers, the national organizer for the World Robotics Olympiad, Alejandra Sanchez, was upbeat.

While some see robots as a threat to jobs, she said she saw them as an opportunity.

"I think it's really good. It's good they replace human beings in some tasks. But we are not being discarded -- we're changing the functions for human beings," she said.

"Before, a human being was the one painting cars, for example. Now we have a robot painting vehicles and a human being controlling the robot.... So, it's a personal opinion, but I believe robots are here to stay, and here to help humanity."

Twitter steps up security after Trump account cut off

Yahoo – AFP, Rob Lever, November 3, 2017

President Donald Trump has 41.7 million followers on his personal Twitter account,
 from which he blasts his most controversial and attention-grabbing comments (AFP
Photo/SAUL LOEB)

Washington (AFP) - Twitter said it had boosted security measures Friday in response to a rogue employee's move cutting off Donald Trump's account, an 11-minute outage which drew mocking praise from the president's critics but also warnings of a dangerous precedent.

The US social network initially said the account had been "inadvertently deactivated due to human error" after the outage late Thursday but subsequently indicated it was done intentionally by a departing worker on his or her final day.

Hours later Friday, Twitter said it implemented "safeguards to prevent this from happening again."

"We won't be able to share all details about our internal investigation or updates to our security measures, but we take this seriously and our teams are on it," a tweet from Twitter government said.

Trump reacted on Twitter nearly 12 hours after the shutdown.

"My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee. I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact," he tweeted.

The social media platform lit up with reaction to the deactivation -- with some calling the employee a "hero" and others expressing concern.

Democratic Representative Ted Lieu, another prolific tweeter, wrote: "Dear Twitter employee who shut down Trump's Twitter: You made America feel better for 11 minutes. DM me & I will buy you a Pizza Hut pizza."

David Jolly, a former member of Congress, tweeted that the employee "could become a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize."

But the temporary disappearance of the account -- and the glee this prompted among the president's detractors -- drew fire from others.

"Liberals were celebrating for the 15 minutes that Trump's Twitter disappeared, proving once again they love censorship and hate free speech," tweeted Makada Duncanson, a conservative writer.

Security concerns

Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University professor who studies social media, said the deactivation is worrisome.

"This is no laughing matter," she said. "This is a serious issue and one of national security."

Grygiel wrote an essay earlier this year calling for "pre-moderation" of Trump's account "to prevent an accidental war" which could be sparked by spoofing or disruption of the presidential account.

"We need to make sure that an intern cannot easily compromise that account," she said.

Twitter says it is investigating how a departing employee deactivated President
Donald Trump's account for 11 minutes (AFP Photo/Leon NEAL)

Grygiel has said some accounts which could have "systemic" importance for national security or financial markets should be subject to human review with a delay of a few seconds.

If something false or incendiary is tweeted, there is no way to take it back, and this could lead to war or a shock to financial markets, Grygiel noted.

"It is shocking that some random Twitter employee could shut down the president's account," Blake Hounshell, the editor-in-chief of Politico Magazine, wrote on Twitter.

He added: "Seriously, what if this person had tweeted about a fictional nuclear strike on North Korea?"

Jeff Jarvis, a City University of New York journalism professor and longtime Trump critic, said the shutdown "is a serious matter but I count this as an act of protest that made a strong statement, a statement I endorse."

The president has 41.8 million followers on his personal Twitter account, which he uses to fire off controversial and attention-grabbing comments.

Trump has used the social media site to announce policy. He surprised Pentagon chiefs in July by tweeting that transgender people would be barred from serving "in any capacity" in the US military, a ban that has since been blocked by a US court.

Trump's official White House account, @POTUS, which has 20.9 million followers, was apparently not affected by the outage.

Twitter's rules and regs

Trump's critics have on several occasions called for Twitter to shut down his account, arguing that his tweets may violate Twitter's terms on hate speech or abuse.

Some said Trump's tweeting about North Korea -- including a comment where he said its leader "won't be around much longer" violated Twitter's terms of service banning threats of violence.

Twitter responded with a pledge to review its policy while noting that "newsworthiness" and public interest must be considered in deciding whether to take down a tweet.

Grygiel said it is problematic that the president is using a private entity to issue important statements on policy.

"There are communications risks with the president's reliance on a public communications company," she said, noting that Twitter has a right to ban Trump at any time.

"I would want to know that President Trump has a fallback way to issue a message if the tweets stop flowing."