Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts

Sunday, April 19, 2026

The Netherlands Vehicle Authority has become the first European regulator to approve Tesla’s supervised self-driving software

Good news! Dutch cyclists are not afraid of autonomous vehicles! 😊

"The Netherlands Vehicle Authority has become the first European regulator to approve Tesla’s supervised self-driving software, commenting that “Proper use of this driver assistance system makes a positive contribution to road safety.” Seems especially notable coming from the world’s foremost cycling nation."

"... RDW [Dutch vehicle authority] said in a statement on Friday, adding that it would also submit an application for the technology to be used throughout the EU.”"

Doomslayer: Progress Roundup

Tesla Supervised Self-Driving Software Gets Dutch Okay


Friday, April 17, 2026

Unearthed mega-structure hints at communal rule in Romania 6,000 years ago

Amazing stuff!

"Archaeologists working at the ancient settlement of Stăuceni-"Holm" in northeastern Romania have uncovered a mega-structure measuring 350 square meters dating back about 6,000 years. This is one of the few examples of a massive building that has been physically excavated in the region. It is hoped that it will reveal more about the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture (ca. 5000–3500 BC) of Eastern Europe, which is known for its large, well-planned settlements.

A civilization without rulers?

Researchers have studied this culture extensively, yet many mysteries remain about their settlements. There are no palaces, no obvious signs of rich elite burials and precious metals are extremely rare. Even though thousands of people lived together in these early cities, most houses look the same. ..."

From the abstract:
"2021 to 2024, the Cucuteni A3 settlement of Stăuceni-‘Holm’, Botoşani County in north-east Romania was surveyed geophysically and by systematic field collections.
According to the geomagnetic results, on the plateau a settlement with about 45 houses was delimited by several ditch- and palisade systems.
A comparatively large building (350 m2) was located in the area between the ditches, which is meant to be a mega-structure, mainly due to its size and the clearly visible position next to the probable entrance of the settlement.
The mega-structure was partially excavated in 2023–2024. The observations, regarding the architecture and the dating of the feature in particular, provide valuable information for the discussion about the function of these special structures, of which only five others have been investigated in detail by excavation to date."

Unearthed mega-structure hints at communal rule in Romania 6,000 years ago


Thursday, April 16, 2026

European police agency Europol sends emails and letters to 75,000 people asking them to stop DDoS attacks

What took so long! For the past several decades there should have been more aggressive law enforcement action against cyber crime like DDOS attacks!

"A coalition of global law enforcement agencies have sent emails to more than 75,000 alleged cybercriminals who paid for a service to launch cyberattacks that can knock websites offline.

On Thursday, Europol announced the coordinated operation against several distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) for-hire services, which allow criminals to launch cyberattacks without needing to have any hacking skills, nor the need to run their own infrastructure. 

Part of the law enforcement action — dubbed Operation PowerOFF — included Europol sending warning emails and letters to more than 75,000 people who are suspected of using these DDoS-for-hire services. 

Europol said it obtained information about the alleged cybercriminals by raiding and seizing servers associated with these services, allowing the police to identify their registered users.

The action also resulted in four arrests, the takedown of 53 domains, and police executing 24 search warrants. ..."

European police email 75,000 people asking them to stop DDoS attacks | TechCrunch

Tuesday, April 14, 2026

European countries are putting together a plan to help free up shipping through the Strait of Hormuz—without the U.S.

What took so long!!!

"French President Emmanuel Macron said the plan is for an international defensive mission that doesn’t include the “belligerent” parties, meaning the U.S., Israel and Iran. European diplomats familiar with the plan say European ships wouldn’t be under American command.

The goal of the European plan is to give shipping companies confidence to use the strait after the fighting has ended, which officials say could be some time away. Separately, no ships out of Iranian ports have gone through the U.S. blockade within its first 24 hours, U.S. Central Command said.  ..."

Wall Street Journal What's news

Monday, April 13, 2026

Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán Ousted by election after 16 Years in office

Good news! Maybe 16 years in office were enough! 

"Hungary's Orbán Ousted after 16 Years

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán conceded defeat on Sunday after 16 years in power, calling the result clear and painful as opposition leader Péter Magyar's Tisza party surged toward a supermajority in parliament.

Magyar, a 45-year-old former Orbán ally who broke with the ruling party two years ago, built a cross-ideological coalition fueled by voter frustration over economic stagnation, corruption, and crumbling public services.

Turnout hit a record 79%, the highest in Hungary's post-Communist history, as thousands of Magyar supporters flooded the banks of the Danube in Budapest to celebrate.

The result marks a shift for Hungary's foreign policy, as Orbán had cultivated close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and positioned himself as a key ally of President Trump in Europe." (Source)

Tuesday, March 24, 2026

The Hungarian Tocqueville

Recommendable! Hungary is a special European country even during the communist era.

I have to admit, Sándor Bölöni Farkas was not familiar to me.

"In September 1831, inside the brick walls of the Massachusetts state prison at Charlestown, two European visitors—unknown to one another—paced the corridors, taking notes on the newest American experiments in penal reform. One was the young French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville; the other, a Transylvanian Unitarian nobleman named Sándor Bölöni Farkas. Both had crossed the Atlantic to study the democratic republic that fascinated—and unsettled—Europe’s old order. For a brief afternoon, their paths converged as they observed the silent prisoners and the curious system of American discipline. Neither could have known that each would soon write a book that would shape their nation’s understanding of liberty and influence generations to come. Tocqueville returned to France to compose Democracy in America. Farkas returned to Kolozsvár (Transylvania) to write Journey in North America—published a full year earlier, in 1834. ..."

The Hungarian Tocqueville – Anna Smith Lacey

Sunday, March 08, 2026

Croatia is officially free of landmines

Good news! Unexploded landmines and ordnance are horrible reminders long after a war has ended. How many children have been maimed in the past? 

"Croatia is officially free of landmines set during its 1990s war of independence."

Doomslayer: Progress Roundup

Thursday, February 12, 2026

Munich Startup Tests Hypersonic Missile: Aims to Deliver European Hypersonic Strike by 2029

Good news!

(262) Munich Startup Tests Hypersonic Missile: Aims to Deliver European Hypersonic Strike by 2029 | WION - YouTube

“I think of you, I love you”: 1,000-year-old Viking love messages hidden in Swedish stones

Who knew the fearsome Viking warriors were romantic! What a Valentines  Day story!

"... Rune grey stones with sharp carved lines might look plain at first. Nothing emotional on the surface. As reported by BBC, one famous Viking-era message, found on a textile tool near Gothenburg, reportedly reads: “Do you think of me, I think of you, do you love me, I love you.” It sounds almost like a modern text message between partners.Runes were carved on wood, bone, tools, and cloth. But stone lasted the longest. Many were memorial stones, placed near roads or meeting places so travellers would see them.  ..."

“I think of you, I love you”: 1,000-year-old Viking love messages hidden in Swedish stones | World News - Soch Times

Credits: The Flyover



Sunday, February 01, 2026

Sweden wants to send inmates to empty Estonian prisons

Amazing stuff! However, language as an issue was not even mentioned in the entire video! Swedish and Estonian are not exactly the same language!

Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Trump used Greenland as a distraction for European leaders

Sounds plausible!

"... Trump’s threats of taking over Greenland by force or coercion were part of an effort “to wind up Europe’s elite” as well as that of Canada; and that the president never “seriously meant to annex Greenland or to impose new tariffs on the Europeans.” “On this occasion,” Ferguson writes, “Trump was bluffing,” but the historian also sees something else at play. “The reason Trump forced Greenland to be the No. 1 topic at Davos . . . was to keep European leaders from meddling in America’s Middle Eastern and Eastern European policy,” ..."

The Future of Tech in a Free Society | Hoover Daily Report

Friday, January 23, 2026

Ice age Europeans imported tools from distant lands, perhaps as souvenirs

Amazing stuff!

"To survive Europe’s bitterly cold ice age some 25,000 years ago, people did what people do best: They networked. In a paper published today in Science Advances, archaeologists report finding stone tools in central Spain that came from almost 800 kilometers away, the farthest confirmed distance a stone tool has been found from its source in this time period, known as the European Paleolithic. ..."

From the abstract:
"Social networking is an essential feature of hunter-gatherer societies. It fosters the circulation of goods and information and enables kinship ties across different scales, including long-distance contacts. While such behaviors are known since at least the Upper Palaeolithic, evidence for geographically extensive social networks remains scarce. This evidence is limited to indirect inferences based on shared cultural traits, “art” styles, and symbolic items, while lithic raw material movements are mostly local and regional, with few cases exceeding 300 kilometers.
We provide geochemical evidence for the largest confirmed distance between the source and discard location of a knapped lithic object in Palaeolithic Europe. Solutrean artifacts discarded at Peña Capón, Central Iberia, were sourced in Southwest France, 600 to 700 kilometers away.
This demonstrates social networks of unprecedented geographic scale maintained during ∼1400 years during the Last Glacial Maximum. It also suggests that stone tools were exchanged as symbolic items to solidify social contacts and sustain far-reaching networks as risk-buffering mechanisms among widely dispersed hunter-gatherers."

Ice age Europeans imported tools from distant lands, perhaps as souvenirs | Science | AAAS



Fig. 1. Jasperoid chert artifacts.


Fig. 2. Location of studied geological units and outcrops.


Tuesday, January 20, 2026

Osteuropa auf der Überholspur in der Vermögensbildung der Haushalte in Europa


"... Eine Erhebung der Deutschen Bundesbank zu den Vermögensbeständen europäischer Haushalte zeigt, dass die Deutschen von allen Seiten, insbesondere aus dem Osten, zunehmend auf hintere Plätze verwiesen werden.

Die jüngste Bundesbankerhebung weist Zahlen aus, die etwa ein Jahr alt sind und sich seitdem in Deutschland angesichts von Rezession und anhaltender Inflation eher verschlechtert haben dürften. In den Referenzstaaten hingegen zeigen die Daten weiterhin eine positive Tendenz. Zu Beginn des Jahres 2024 lag der Medianvermögenswert eines typischen deutschen Haushalts bei rund 103.000 Euro. ...

Die Deutschen bilden ihr Vermögen mit einer im internationalen Vergleich niedrigen Quote an Wohneigentum und setzen zudem nur in sehr geringem Maße auf das zwar volatile, aber langfristig sehr dynamische Aktiensparen. Stattdessen wird Kapital vielfach bei Banken geparkt, die es in konservative und in den vergangenen Jahren real verlustreiche Anleiheportfolios und Tagesgeldkonten lenken. Die Folge ist eine gehemmte Kapitalbildung privater Haushalte. 

Diese steht zusätzlich im Kreuzfeuer der Politik. Die Selbstdeklaration der Bundesrepublik als großzügiges globales Sozialamt, maßgeblich geprägt seit der Migrationspolitik Angela Merkels, hat die ohnehin massiven Umverteilungstendenzen dramatisch beschleunigt. Gerade die Leistungsträger der mittleren und unteren Einkommensschichten geraten zunehmend unter Druck. Steigende Sozialabgaben, hohe Steuerlasten und die Erosionsmaschine der grünen Transformation mit explodierenden Energiepreisen wirken direkt vermögensvernichtend. ...

Politischer Realismus im Osten
In Osteuropa hingegen herrscht politischer Realismus. Dieser spiegelt die Grundstimmung in den tonangebenden Staaten Polen und Ungarn wider, die sich auch innerhalb der Visegrád-Gruppe in Brüssel zunehmend Gehör verschaffen. Dort blickt man aus einer woke-linken Globalistenperspektive mit Unverständnis auf die national-konservativen Einstellungen der Osteuropäer. Diese machen jedoch immer deutlicher, dass sie in der Zukunft ihren Einfluss verstärkt geltend machen werden.

Dass sich der Medianvermögenswert der Haushalte in Teilen Südeuropas, wie im Falle Italiens, teilweise deutlich über dem der Deutschen befindet – mit rund 161.000 Euro –, ist eine ernüchternde Bestandsaufnahme. In Polen liegt der Medianwert inzwischen bei über 70.000 Euro, mit stark steigender Tendenz. Auch Ungarn holt rasch auf. Deutschland hingegen stagniert. ..."

Osteuropa auf der Überholspur "Osteuropa schließt bei der Vermögensbildung schrittweise zu Deutschland auf. Das Bekenntnis zu konservativen Werten, Marktwirtschaft und einer positiven Arbeitsethik zahlt sich aus."

Friday, January 09, 2026

CARTA: The Genetic History of Europe with Johannes Krause

Very recommendable! Europeans are white skinned, because of lack of Vitamin D. I am a little skeptical.


How the depiction of the famous Ötzi changed within a few years


About 600 CE







Friday, December 26, 2025

France, Spain reassert faith in Europe's next-gen future fighter jet, but Germany stays mum

Will the Europeans ever be able and ready to develop modern fighter jets together?

Sweden and their Gripen fighter jet or the British BAE were not even mentioned in the article.

"Coming out of the latest meeting on the troubled Future Combat Air System (FCAS), France and Spain signaled their renewed commitment to the next-gen program, though key stakeholder Germany declined to join them with a public comment. ...

But the German Ministry of Defence refused to share any details about the outcome of the meeting, telling Breaking Defense, “Please understand that the content of yesterday’s [trilateral] discussions will be treated as confidential.” ..."

France, Spain reassert faith in Europe's next-gen future fighter, but Germany stays mum - Breaking Defense ""Please understand that the content of yesterday's [trilateral] discussions will be treated as confidential," the German Ministry of Defense told Breaking Defense."

Thursday, December 18, 2025

What Will the Latest U.S-Belarusian Concessions Change? Maybe a lot!

They say old men are often habitually and easily stuck in their ways! Or what about the old dog you can not teach new tricks anymore! 😊

Well, at least Lukashenko (age 71, in office since 1994) recently released a total of more than 150 political prisoners in recent months (see here and here) thanks to President Trump! That is a great success!

If President Trump can persuade Belarus to change allegiance away from Putin the Terrible and more towards Europe that would be phenomenal!

What Will the Latest U.S-Belarusian Concessions Change? | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace "Lukashenko is using the same approach in his dealings with Trump that has long proven successful with Putin."




Wednesday, December 17, 2025

Putin the Terrible warned that Russia would achieve its goals in Ukraine either through diplomacy or on the battlefield.

I have blogged here yesterday about how to end the Russo-Ukraine War!

When will the lethargic, apathetic Russian Slav(e)s/Serfs finally get rid of their last tsar, the megalomaniac, warmonger and war criminal Putin the Terrible! He is an ugly remnant of the Cold War and former KGB agent. He is a wannabe Stalin. Please Russian people make the world a better, more peaceful place again! How many more young Russian men will be killed or maimed before you act!


"Speaking to Defense Ministry officials, the Russian president called pro-Ukraine European leaders “piglets” who wanted to feast on his country’s collapse. U.S. and European officials met with Ukraine’s leadership days ago to work on a peace plan. Moscow’s war aims include permanently blocking Ukraine’s path to NATO and capping its military. For Kyiv’s European allies, a bad deal with Russia is worse than no deal."

The Wall Street Journal What's news

Saturday, December 13, 2025

Switzerland reduces F-35 fighter jet buy after $610 million price hike

What are the Swiss people doing with F-35 supersonic stealth strike fighters? They have come a long way since the famous Wilhelm Tell crossbow! 😊

What language do the Swiss air force pilots speak to avoid any confusion or dangerous misunderstanding among the four official languages of Switzerland? English? 😊

The Swiss people are known for being penny pinchers (but in a good way)!

Switzerland is such a tiny land locked country! Once the F-35 is in the air it is almost an air space violation to another country!

Caution: irony!

Switzerland reduces F-35 buy after $610 million price hike - Breaking Defense ""Due to foreseeable additional costs, it is not financially viable to maintain the originally planned number" of aircraft, said a Swiss statement."