Notices by bert hubert 🇺🇦🇪🇺🇺🇦 (bert_hubert@fosstodon.org)

In 15 minutes Europe will hopefully launch its next climate satellite. The launch can however only be watched via YouTube since we apparently can’t do that ourselves and have to put our government info next to the antivax promo. https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/ESA_Web_TV

“Going to the cloud” can mean renting services/servers that you could get from anywhere. There’s little lock-in. The same four words “going to the cloud” might also mean locking your operations to a specific cloud provider, forever. This difference is vital, yet often ignored: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/beware-cloud-is-part-of-the-software/

"Three of the four most exploited vulns were zero days, all were in cybersecurity products (Palo-Alto, Ivanti Connect Secure, Ivanti Policy Secure and Fortinet)." https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/114391474274944937

People, a Microsoft (re)seller is telling governments you can put your MS 365 email in a "Microsoft Lockbox", and that this will protect you from US government spying. Is there any truth to this? https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/windows-365-customer-lockbox-generally-available/4077641 (reposts appreciated - it is somewhat time critical).

If you use the KLM app today, the notifications it sends out about your flight are off by an hour. The fucking state of things.

So how does a solar panel or heat pump in summer help fill these sites for winter? We use LOADS of natural gas to create electricity & warm water, even in summer. The gas we burn for that is not available for storing for winter use. So: more efficiency in summer means more gas available for winter!

The good news is: we made it out of winter without depleting European gas storage sites! The bad news, we'll need to refill ~twice as much gas as past years to refill to healthy levels. Every new heat pump, solar panel and wind turbine will help us reach that goal more easily:

Me, being subtle.

As Heathrow airport is knocked out of service for 24 hours by a single fire, now is a good time to ponder how resilient our (cyber) infrastructure is. And if it is ready for war(like) conditions. Spoiler: no. https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/cyber-security-pre-war-reality-check/

Useful piece. Solar panels are largely cloud managed, and now in The Netherlands alone create the same power as 50 of our nuclear power plants. If you switch this 25GW on/off remotely, the consequences could be huge. And we do not regulate these cloud platforms at all: https://www.dw.com/en/how-hackers-capture-your-solar-panels-and-cause-grid-havoc/a-71593448

This is great news not in the least for our American friends where the weather service is being sabotaged. Weather models are oddly enough always global - you can't predict the weather in Berlin a week ahead without also predicting the weather in Austin, Texas. ECMWF has excellent hurricane forecasts also for the US for that reason, and these are also being used in the US already. Wonderful stuff: https://www.ecmwf.int/en/about/media-centre/news/2025/ecmwf-achieve-fully-open-data-status-2025

Lots of European hosters/cloud companies tell us to "just use their cloud!". But the cloud companies here can't be compared to Google/AWS/Azure. Our local places are selling wood. Yet cloud customers want furniture. And until we are honest about that gap, things won't improve:
https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/dear-hosting-providers-you-sell-lumber-and-not-furniture/

Massive result in Dutch parliament just now. They passed 10 separate motions to enhance digital resilience, run more of our own servers & reduce dependency on US cloud technology.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/dutch-parliament-calls-end-reliance-us-software-2025-03-18/

Europe and European governments can no longer rely on American clouds. A European alternative won’t emerge on its own. That’s why it’s time for industrial policy—but it won’t be easy.

In this post, I explore the challenges and immodestly propose a coherent strategy to develop European alternatives: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/now-how-to-get-that-european-cloud/

@GossiTheDog I see something similar but wonder if they maybe aren't passing referrer information anymore.

We talk a lot about our enormous dependence on American clouds, but what exactly are we talking about? And is Europe equally dependent on all types of cloud? This article is aimed at policy makers, but it may also provide some clarity about the broader landscape to actual cloud users. The six levels of cloud:
https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-european-cloud-ladder/

With a quote by me. Very happy to see this problem getting traction outside of tech circles: https://www.politico.eu/article/push-for-eurostack-as-eu-us-tech-tensions-grow/

"Consequently, this week brought unanimous support for REARM Europe, a EUR 800 billion package for defence. That is historic." Indeed it is. But will the European Commission be able to deal with what it is finding a bigger challenge: running its own email server under European control.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/STATEMENT_25_721

For the people speculating about "jailbreaking" the F35 so you could fly it without US support. The thing is so maintenance heavy it won't fly after a week if you stop supplying it proprietary parts and loving US vendor help. The software is only a tiny thing relatively speaking. This goes for a lot of high-end military kit.

@tfiebig @jospoortvliet @niels @Karlitschek this is pretty Windows 11 behaviour! Thanks for the sleuthing!