Though geographically and demographically small, the Netherlands is positioning itself as a European technology leader, making a name for itself in fields like quantum computing, AI, tech start-up innovation and sustainable cities.
This is good news for IT pros looking to advance their careers and enterprises interested in emerging tech, but the country's hot technology market presents some challanges — first and foremost, it can be hard for businesses to find the tech talent they need.
Read more at:
How the Netherlands is leading the EU toward its tech future | Computerworld
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Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
August 19, 2021
May 6, 2020
Netherlands lands in crossfire in US-China trade war
A Dutch semiconductor company has become the focus of international attention after the United States put pressure on The Hague to halt exports of machines to China. Like many European countries, the…
Read more at:
http://www.rfi.fr/en/science-and-technology/20200504-the-netherlands-lands-in-crossfire-in-us-china-trade-war-coronavirus-asml-superconductor
Read more at:
http://www.rfi.fr/en/science-and-technology/20200504-the-netherlands-lands-in-crossfire-in-us-china-trade-war-coronavirus-asml-superconductor
July 17, 2017
Technology:Europe struggles to attract tech talent even as US closes doors – by J.Plucinska and S.Saeed
U.S. President Donald Trump’s moves on immigration are bad news for
ambitious tech workers. That should be good news for Europe’s
talent-hungry digital hubs.
That sets the stage for Amsterdam, Berlin or Paris to become the next global magnet for engineers, coders and entrepreneurs.
Yet Europe is struggling to surmount multiple barriers. It’s considered one of the least-tolerant continents toward migrants as populist movements continue to sway public opinion, said Eugenio Ambrosi, the regional director of the EU, Norway and Switzerland office of the International Organization for Migration.
Meanwhile, the Continent’s reputation for tech investment remains weak, and its inability to grow the next European Google or Facebook makes it a less desirable place for ambitious workers, politicians, civil society and the industry agree.
On top of that, EU lawmakers and members of the tech community say the Continent hasn’t embraced a 2009 Blue Card directive, intended to establish an easy-to-use, universal visa program for highly skilled workers. A revamp proposed by the European Commission last year is stuck in interinstitutional infighting.
Note EU-Digest: The EU is getting a great opportunity here to benefit from the "Trump Administration immigrant fear" to move this highly qualified stream of tech experts which is now being blocked by the US, into the EU's rapidly expanding technology market, which has a lack of skilled experts. Come on EU Parliament and Commission, don't keep sitting on your hands, put your money where your mouth is. Get the 2009 Blue Card directive fully activated and functional. It is beneficial to the EU economy.and even to you as politicians.
Read more: Europe struggles to attract tech talent even as US closes doors – POLITICO
That sets the stage for Amsterdam, Berlin or Paris to become the next global magnet for engineers, coders and entrepreneurs.
Yet Europe is struggling to surmount multiple barriers. It’s considered one of the least-tolerant continents toward migrants as populist movements continue to sway public opinion, said Eugenio Ambrosi, the regional director of the EU, Norway and Switzerland office of the International Organization for Migration.
Meanwhile, the Continent’s reputation for tech investment remains weak, and its inability to grow the next European Google or Facebook makes it a less desirable place for ambitious workers, politicians, civil society and the industry agree.
On top of that, EU lawmakers and members of the tech community say the Continent hasn’t embraced a 2009 Blue Card directive, intended to establish an easy-to-use, universal visa program for highly skilled workers. A revamp proposed by the European Commission last year is stuck in interinstitutional infighting.
Note EU-Digest: The EU is getting a great opportunity here to benefit from the "Trump Administration immigrant fear" to move this highly qualified stream of tech experts which is now being blocked by the US, into the EU's rapidly expanding technology market, which has a lack of skilled experts. Come on EU Parliament and Commission, don't keep sitting on your hands, put your money where your mouth is. Get the 2009 Blue Card directive fully activated and functional. It is beneficial to the EU economy.and even to you as politicians.
Read more: Europe struggles to attract tech talent even as US closes doors – POLITICO
February 25, 2016
Netherlands: Solar powered bike unveiled in Eindhoven
The world's first solar 'Bike 4 all' was presented today in the Technical University of Eindhoven by the inventor Marc Peters and several of the project's collaborators, Tuesday. Dutch professional racing cyclist Tim Kerkhof assisted in the presentation of the bicycle.
Peters explained how, even on a rainy day in the Netherlands, the bike could still be powered without access to much sun,
"It actually harvests a lot of ambient light, like what we have in this room. So with a rainy day it'sactually still possible to gain some energy." The team behind the "Bike 4all" intends to market both the bike itself and also smart lighy harvesting technology they used to power it.
According to Peters, this technology can be applied to many other products.
Read more: VIDEOS: Netherlands: Solar powered bike unveiled in Eindhoven | The Indian Express
Peters explained how, even on a rainy day in the Netherlands, the bike could still be powered without access to much sun,
"It actually harvests a lot of ambient light, like what we have in this room. So with a rainy day it'sactually still possible to gain some energy." The team behind the "Bike 4all" intends to market both the bike itself and also smart lighy harvesting technology they used to power it.
According to Peters, this technology can be applied to many other products.
Read more: VIDEOS: Netherlands: Solar powered bike unveiled in Eindhoven | The Indian Express
March 2, 2015
Global Economy: Globalisation And Technology Drive Insecurity - by Paul Sweeney
People are insecure. Young people worry
about getting a decent job, finding a secure home and having to pay off
the vast debts run up in the decade of uber-liberal economic policies of
European governments to 2007.
Elderly people worry about their security in old age, access to decent health care, about their children getting jobs or being forced to emigrate.
Read more: How Globalisation And Technology Drive Insecurity
Elderly people worry about their security in old age, access to decent health care, about their children getting jobs or being forced to emigrate.
A recent Eurofound study concluded that
14% of jobs in Europe are high-paid good jobs; 37% are well-balanced
good jobs; 29% are poorly balanced jobs; and 20% are poor quality jobs.
Thus almost half of all those at work are not in good jobs.
Yet we have never had such high incomes
or wealth. This is in spite of the six years of the Great Recession.
Total national income is substantially higher than what it was a
generation ago. Yet only a generation ago too, jobs and pensions were
more secure, homes were easier to find and health care was not such a
big worry.
What has led to today’s insecurity? The
big drivers of insecurity are globalisation and technology. They have
shifted low skilled jobs and now even middle income jobs offshore,
created intense competition, change and uncertainty. They give great
power to large corporations, while undermining the power of states and
of organised labour. Crucially, they have also changed the nature of
politics.
Globalisation and technology have been
key drivers in the three-decade-long (a generation) decline in the share
of national income of workers and the self-employed and its
corresponding shift to wealthy people and corporations A few countries
like Ireland witnessed the boom of catching up with the rest of Europe
for 20 years, when overall earnings rose so the seismic shift in income
was not so evident, but thanks to the Great Recession, it now is.
Both globalisation and technology have
reduced labour’s bargaining power through offshoring, through sectoral
shifts in employment from manufacturing to services, from large units to
smaller ones and to autonomous, self-employed working. It has
facilitated the massive decline in corporate governance – in the way
firms are run and what their objectives are. It boosted the pay of the
elite to extraordinary levels that have nothing to do with performance.
Both have also facilitated financialisation – where finance rules the
real economy.
Globalisation has also reduced financial
disclosure, blurring our knowledge of the real ownership and control of
business. It has led to the privatisation of swathes of public
services, and these privatised public services are increasingly run by
big, non-competing oligopolies. It has facilitated increased tax evasion
and tax avoidance on unprecedented scales by the wealthy and by large
companies. The Luxleaks and HSBC exposures are only the tip of this
iceberg of tax cheating on an industrial scale in some countries.
Read more: How Globalisation And Technology Drive Insecurity
March 10, 2014
Technology: The mystery of flight MH370: How on earth, with all our technology, do we lose a giant plane? - by Sebastian Anthony
Three days ago, Malaysia
Airlines flight MH370 vanished from radar off the south coast of Vietnam
in the South China Sea. 239 people were on board — and at this point,
it is presumed that they have all perished in some kind of disaster. A
massive search and rescue effort involving 40 ships and 34 aircraft from
nine different nations has yet to discover any sign of the missing
aircraft. For me, this is almost incomprehensible:
Despite all of the awesome technology that mankind has developed, it’s still possible for a Boeing 777-200 with 239 people on board to vanish. For me, it’s mind blowing that all we have to go on is the plane’s radar signature — and even then, that last radar reading was so poor that the search area is thousands of square miles of open water. Surely, given the fact that we can track a damn smartphone anywhere on Earth down to a few meters, there’s a better way of keeping track of missing aircraft?
In the words of Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, the fate of MH370 is “a mystery.” The Boeing 777 took off from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia en route to Beijing, was cruising normally at 35,000 feet… and then disappeared. There was no distress call. The weather was fine. The plane’s last known position, via radar, was just south of Vietnam in the South China Sea — which is where search efforts have been focused so far — but one theory suggests that the plane turned back just after the last radar ping, meaning the plane could be hundreds of miles away in the Strait of Malacca. In the absence of any other information, there is speculation that the plane was target of a terrorist attack.
For me, the most shocking aspect of the MH370 disaster is that we won’t know what fate befell those 239 souls until we find MH370′s Flight Data Recorder (FDR), aka the black box. Except for that last radar reading, we have absolutely no knowledge of the flight at all until we find that FDR. We have no clue what was said in the cockpit by the captain and first officer — though, seemingly, if something did go wrong, they didn’t even have time to send a mayday message. We have no clue if the plane hit a patch of bad weather, or whether it was hijacked. It really will be one huge mystery until the FDR is recovered — and there’s a good chance, if MH370 did crash into the ocean, that the FDR will never be recovered. In the case of Air France flight AF447, which disappeared off the coast of Brazil, it took two months to locate the wreckage, more than a year to find the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), and the FDR was never found.
So, think about this for a moment. We live in a day and age where GPS (and other radio triangulation methods) can track your smartphone to within a few meters, almost anywhere on Earth. With dedicated, land-based tracking networks, vehicles and devices can be tracked to within a few centimeters. Even in the absence of GPS or radio tracking, inertial guidance (dead reckoning) has been accurate enough since the ’60s to accurately land a nuclear ICBM on the other side of the planet, or put the Apollo mission into space. (Read: Think GPS is cool? IPS will blow your mind.)
And then there’s connectivity. On land, there are networks (both commercial and governmental) that provide data connectivity almost everywhere. Over water is definitely harder, but satellites do provide pretty good coverage — and yes, that particular region of Asia is very well covered by communications satellites. Finally, even if an aircraft is out of satellite/radio coverage, there is absolutely nothing preventing the airplane from transmitting a really juicy low-frequency radio signal that could be picked up thousands of miles away. This is how they communicate with air traffic control, after all.
Why, then, does a plane like the MH370 keep all of its secrets locked up in a black box? Why don’t planes constantly transmit all of their black box data, so that we know their exact location, bearing, altitude, and other important factors, at all times?
The short answer is, there’s no good reason.
Read more: The mystery of flight MH370: How on earth, with all our technology, do we lose a giant plane? | ExtremeTech
Despite all of the awesome technology that mankind has developed, it’s still possible for a Boeing 777-200 with 239 people on board to vanish. For me, it’s mind blowing that all we have to go on is the plane’s radar signature — and even then, that last radar reading was so poor that the search area is thousands of square miles of open water. Surely, given the fact that we can track a damn smartphone anywhere on Earth down to a few meters, there’s a better way of keeping track of missing aircraft?
In the words of Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, the fate of MH370 is “a mystery.” The Boeing 777 took off from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia en route to Beijing, was cruising normally at 35,000 feet… and then disappeared. There was no distress call. The weather was fine. The plane’s last known position, via radar, was just south of Vietnam in the South China Sea — which is where search efforts have been focused so far — but one theory suggests that the plane turned back just after the last radar ping, meaning the plane could be hundreds of miles away in the Strait of Malacca. In the absence of any other information, there is speculation that the plane was target of a terrorist attack.
For me, the most shocking aspect of the MH370 disaster is that we won’t know what fate befell those 239 souls until we find MH370′s Flight Data Recorder (FDR), aka the black box. Except for that last radar reading, we have absolutely no knowledge of the flight at all until we find that FDR. We have no clue what was said in the cockpit by the captain and first officer — though, seemingly, if something did go wrong, they didn’t even have time to send a mayday message. We have no clue if the plane hit a patch of bad weather, or whether it was hijacked. It really will be one huge mystery until the FDR is recovered — and there’s a good chance, if MH370 did crash into the ocean, that the FDR will never be recovered. In the case of Air France flight AF447, which disappeared off the coast of Brazil, it took two months to locate the wreckage, more than a year to find the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), and the FDR was never found.
So, think about this for a moment. We live in a day and age where GPS (and other radio triangulation methods) can track your smartphone to within a few meters, almost anywhere on Earth. With dedicated, land-based tracking networks, vehicles and devices can be tracked to within a few centimeters. Even in the absence of GPS or radio tracking, inertial guidance (dead reckoning) has been accurate enough since the ’60s to accurately land a nuclear ICBM on the other side of the planet, or put the Apollo mission into space. (Read: Think GPS is cool? IPS will blow your mind.)
And then there’s connectivity. On land, there are networks (both commercial and governmental) that provide data connectivity almost everywhere. Over water is definitely harder, but satellites do provide pretty good coverage — and yes, that particular region of Asia is very well covered by communications satellites. Finally, even if an aircraft is out of satellite/radio coverage, there is absolutely nothing preventing the airplane from transmitting a really juicy low-frequency radio signal that could be picked up thousands of miles away. This is how they communicate with air traffic control, after all.
Why, then, does a plane like the MH370 keep all of its secrets locked up in a black box? Why don’t planes constantly transmit all of their black box data, so that we know their exact location, bearing, altitude, and other important factors, at all times?
The short answer is, there’s no good reason.
Read more: The mystery of flight MH370: How on earth, with all our technology, do we lose a giant plane? | ExtremeTech
March 3, 2014
European Space Agency: Space inventions free for ESA and Canadian Member Corporations
Space companies and organizations from ESA Member States and Canada are
invited to submit their interest in using ESA’s inventions.
As a research organisation, ESA encourages, protects and licenses
innovations or inventions resulting from its own activities in order to
fulfil its mission of cooperation among Member States in space research
and technologies and their applications, and supports the worldwide
competitiveness of European industry.
ESA patents up to 20 inventions a year and has a portfolio of about 450
patent applications and patents, which cover subjects such as
radio-frequency payloads and systems, structures and pyrotechnics,
electromagnetic technologies and techniques, material and processes,
robotics, optics, electrical power and propulsion.
ESA makes its inventions available free of charge via its Technology
Transfer Programme Office on a non-exclusive basis to space industry
within its 20 Member States. For use by companies outside of ESA’s
Member States or for non-space applications, a different licensing model
is in place, allowing the Agency to request royalties.
Licensing templates can be downloaded via the link below as well as more information about ESA’s Intellectual Property policy.
The goal of this call for interest is to make ESA’s portfolio and
licensing conditions more openly visible to European space industry and
to encourage its use and licensing. The deadline for the call is 5 March 2014. Further information click here
Read more: Space inventions for free / Highlights / TTP2 / Technology / Our Activities / ESA
February 13, 2014
European Technology: A €63 billion EU app boom. Nearly 5 million jobs in European app sector by 2018, says EU report
 |
| Apps=Skills=Jobs |
The study, carried out by GIGAOM and NUI Galway for the European Commission, shows that Europe's app developers are up to the challenge of taking the global lead.
Currently, EU and North American developers generate the same levels (42% each) of app revenues in crucial EU and US markets. Although the future is bright, developers have raised concerns about the skills gap, connectivity and fragmentation which could put the app boom at risk
Today the app economy employs 1
million developers, and 800,000 people in marketing & support posts.
This could rise to 2.7 million developers + 2.1 million support staff
by 2018. EU buyers and advertisers spent €6.1 billion on apps in 2013,
30% of total global app spending, growing to €18.7 billion in 2018.
Consumer spending combined with advertising and contract work could lead
to €63 billion annual revenue for the app sector within five years.
Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission, said "In the face of increasing youth unemployment, these figures give me new hope. The app sector is one area of the digital economy where Europe can really lead. But we have to address concerns about connectivity and fragmentation – yet another reason to complete the telecom single market!"
28 EU leading companies created 40% of the top 100 grossing apps in the EU and US. Three of the top-five companies are Nordic games developers (1st King.com, 2nd, Supercell, 5th Rovio)with German, French, Spanish and UK app developers also finding success outside their native markets.
Growing market, growing jobs:
In 2013, developers earned €11.5 billion making apps for consumer
goods, banking, media, retail and other clients. They can expect to earn
up to €46 billion through contracts of this nature in 2018. The app
boom is creating jobs, for example contract developers Golden Gekko (London/Barcelona) plans to grow its staff 40-50% next year and London-based Grapple Mobile was a 3-person firm three years ago, employs 120 now, and intends to double next year.
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