SJSque

Here's an article in English on DutchNews.nl:

https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/01/after-record-year-asml-is-t...

See also the statement from ASML (linked to in that article):

https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengtheni...

I've been 'designing' websites since about 1994, and I remember being very excited when the major browser(s) started supporting background images, so that my webpages didn't have to have the same flat-grey background that every other webpage in the world had at the time. I also made one of the first 'starfield' backgrounds, and was simultaneously thrilled and annoyed to see other people start using it on their webpages.

> not the awful hamburger junction solution that the local area is now saddled with...

Do you mean the Canford Bottom Roundabout [1] by any chance? :)

[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/rpTJ3aPhsejWcChV8

For what it's worth: you still write very well.

Ah, no. This appears to be the offending content: https://twitter.com/watmay1/status/1622518097067511811

10E6 = 10×10⁶ = 10⁷, so you can unpick that nit!

I can also highly recommend 3Blue1Brown's treatment of the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUNpyF58BY (...which I see now is cited in the video that you link to!)

> Think of a pregnant woman (the Earth) spinning on a seivel chair. The woman gives birth to her child (the Moon) and she takes the child in her arms and extends it at arm's length.

Just in case any of you were thinking of patenting this idea, I'm afraid that someone beat you to it: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3216423A/en

Just a comment on your second and third paragraphs: it's a bit odd that you invoke general relativity ("curved spacetime") for the Moon's basic orbit, and then discuss classical mechanics ("tidal forces are literal forces") for the second-order effects. Tidal forces are of course also gravitational effects, just differential (i.e., the result of the fact that we are not talking about point masses, but rather extended objects).

Well, technically ASML is based (as in, headquartered) in Veldhoven, but that's part of the same conurbation really.

Meanwhile, check out the 235 (at last count) technology companies located on the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven (where NXP is headquartered): https://hightechcampus.com/companies

The video appears to be taken from this spot, facing roughly due west:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/19%C2%B046'33.0%22N+96%C2%...

After the vehicles pass through the roadblock, they can be seen to turn left, heading towards the Presidential Palace.

For what it's worth: Al Sweigart's "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" is pretty nice, and it's a good one for lending out to colleagues who show interest in learning Python (especially those poor souls with tedious jobs...).

That appears to be a prerecorded video.

The live stream that I can see is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1u-jlf_Olo

It's nice to see that they (briefly) mention the half-jokingly proposed artificial mountain in the infamously flat Netherlands [1] towards the end of the article.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Berg_Komt_Er

Submitter here. I'm a British chap living in the Netherlands. You might want to read my comment [1] about what happens after you have a baby over here; it triggered quite a lot of discussion...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20884787

Two thumbs up, my friend. Best of luck with it.

Interesting name. :) I worked on developing compact models for the first few years of my employment at NXP Semiconductors, which is (for me, at least) the top result of a Google search for "compact models", defining them as "mathematical descriptions of semiconductor devices used in analog circuit simulators".

> ... I was introduced to the people who built computers at Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven. It was a type of people I did not know, I found them very strange and they did not inspire confidence at all. Later I learned that I had been introduced to electronic engineers.

Brilliant. I'll be sure to share this with my electronic-engineer colleagues on the High Tech Campus (the former Philips Research campus) here in Eindhoven. :)

If you insist! https://www.stevesque.com/

What's always struck me is how large the Dutch Wikipedia is (1,992,551 articles), given the relatively low number of people that speak that language. They would appear to be a pretty tech-savvy/well-connected nation.

It's certainly consistent with the number of comments that I see here on HN that start with some variation on "Here in the Netherlands...".

I've never tried crashing my car into the central pole, but as you can see here [1] there's quite a lot of clearance around it, and in my experience the lights are almost always red when approaching the junction anyway, so you rarely get the chance to crash at high speed.

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/Ke4NFcE2osEvCNTH6

Excellent question.

Friet, although I have to remember to ask for patat when visiting Oma en Opa.

I cycle over the Hovenring almost every workday, and I drive underneath it often too. Now you know roughly where I live. Ask Me Anything...

There's also the Wait Calculation to consider:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calcu...

Wallrunning in Doom is another nice one:

https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Wallrunning

Could be. I'm not an expert (I haven't even looked up the statistics), and I suspect that neither was the person who I heard crediting the kraamzorg system for the low infant mortality rate.

I certainly get the impression that giving birth at home is quite 'trendy' here, but my wife and I decided that there was no way that we were going to opt for that. My wife would much rather give birth in a building full of experts and specialised equipment than in the "relaxed, familiar atmosphere" of home.

True. In my haste, I neglected to mention that until recently the Netherlands has had one of stingiest paternity/partner leave policies in Europe. It used to be (roughly speaking) one or two days, as of this year it is one week, and next year it will become six weeks. Too late for me though! In my case, I saved up some of my holiday days to be able to take time off work (fortunately you tend to get a few months' warning before a baby appears in your life).

Here in the Netherlands, they tend to kick the mother out of hospital as soon as feasible after the birth (typically after one night, or even on the same day), but as soon as you get home, the home nurse (kraamzorg, or "cradle care") arrives. She (and, as far as I know, it's always a she) will be at your home for something like eight hours a day for the first week or so after the birth, and will teach you how to care for the baby (even if it's your second, third, fourth, ...) and will monitor its health and progress. Remarkably, in the 'downtime' (e.g., when the baby is sleeping), she'll do household chores for you (such as clothes washing, vacuuming, washing up, etc.) and maybe even entertain any older children or go grocery shopping for you. The system works really well, and I've heard it be credited for the Netherlands' low infant mortality rate.

My family back in the U.K. can hardly believe it (especially the household-chores part); there, as I understand it, the mother tends to stay in hospital a big longer (typically for a few days), but once you're home, you're on your own...

Well, a Roach Motel [0] is also something that is easy to get into but hard to get out of, but the name does imply that you are a roach for getting into it...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roach_Motel

An interesting development, and a useful contribution to the field.

For those of you still looking for perceptually uniform colour maps, including rainbows, check out the work of Peter Kovesi [1].

Personally, I'm still on the lookout for the 'perfect' colourmap that allows me to plot line graphs with a moderate number of curves (up to, say, nine) such that they are all distinct (i.e., nicely 'spaced' in colour) but have identical lightness -- which I'm assuming is the same thing as greyscale equivalent -- so as not to emphasize any one curve over another. Of course, the curves would then be indistinguishable when printed out in greyscale, but that's not important to me.

A colleague of mine directed me to the work of Maureen Stone [2], but I get the feeling that those colours are not perceptually identical (not that I've checked...).

[1] https://peterkovesi.com/projects/colourmaps/ [2] http://ksrowell.com/blog-visualizing-data/2012/02/02/optimal...