Reading a good book is a great joy. And recommending a good book is almost as enjoyable. I’ve long been fascinated by books on espionage, and this contributed in no small part to me eventually joining the Dutch intelligence world, and later, rejoining it in some fashion. If you have favorite books that should be on...

Er is in Nederland een levendige discussie gaande of we in moeten zetten op kernenergie of niet. Afhankelijk van wie je spreekt is kernenergie een groene en noodzakelijke manier om onze CO₂-doelen te halen, of is het overbodige onzin. Ik ben een groot gelover in het idee van kernenergie. Maar onze auto’s en huizen...

Brief post, in response to the many many many technical people that propose to print their own mRNA vaccines “now that the source is out there”. I’ve spent a lot of time individually explaining why this is unlikely to happen any time soon, and I thought it a good idea to explain it here as well. Mountains of details...

UPDATE: Back in December 2020 when this article was first posted, I noted that some receivers might not be able to deal with the advent of production signals from the eccentric satellites. This has indeed proved to be a problem for U-blox F9 series receivers in a specific configuration. The application note links to...

En toen was het toch weer tijd voor een Corona Update, de eerste sinds november 2020. Doordat er zoveel nieuws is geweest over varianten en vaccins is het zicht een beetje kwijt op waar we nu zijn. En dat is des te vervelender nu de cijfers weer omhoog lijken te gaan. Daarom een samenvatting die eigenlijk heel...

In short, if you need engaging in-depth articles on your scientific project, your research breakthrough or the grand new technical/space/molecular/medical thing you are building, you can hire me! (Semi-)Popular science writing I do a lot of what I call “(Semi-)popular science writing”. My recent article dissecting...

In previous posts I described how the two currently approved mRNA vaccines both use ‘modified nucleosides’ to enhance their efficiency. Meanwhile, a company called CureVac has created an mRNA vaccine that uses regular, unmodified, RNA. It is currently being tested in large scale trials. In this post I explain what...

This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. Periodically I read about governments or institutions wanting to stimulate innovation, often to achieve a certain (worthy) goal. Frequently, the far larger amounts of money that other countries or continents are spending on innovation are...

There are lots of calls to invest in improving cybersecurity. But it struck me that it doesn’t work like that. Not getting hacked is not so much a question of buying the right stuff. It is a question of doing the right things and understanding what you are doing. It is easy to demand that people ‘invest’ in...

Hi everyone, With apologies for flooding the airwaves and timelines with way too many posts and tweets, here’s one more post, the last COVID-19 related one for a while. I’ve been trying to provide high quality answers to the many questions I receive via email and various social media. I’ve also been trying to help...

This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. Hi everyone, This is a transcript of my presentation over at the European Microwave Week 2020, actually held in 2021. You can find the video here and the slides here. I’d like to thank Frank van Vliet, general chair of the EMW, for inviting...

Translations: 中文, 日本語 As a followup to Reverse Engineering the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine, here is a look at the genetic code behind some of the other vaccines. I recommend at least skimming the earlier post before delving into this one, unless you are already fluent in modified mRNA bases...