The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Having cancer is not a fight or a battle, it is about having luck or misfortune

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/12/10

It has been a while after my last post about me having cancer. No, I am not giving up. But I am having the regular fear of the upcoming checks: did the metastases return, or do I have the luck to outlive some 30% of my peer group.

The last metastases surgery has been slightly more than a year ago. A year from now, that percentage hopefully will be 50% and slowly increase over time until about 90% in some 9 years from now.

At year’s end, I will know for sure.

Below are some links on, mostly Dutch but with English abstract, articles about the mental side of having cancer, or having survived it for now.

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Posted in About, Cancer, LifeHacker, Personal, Power User, Rectum cancer | Leave a Comment »

Hoogste spaarrente – Actuele rentestanden

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/29

Hou er rekening mee dat er ook actietarieven staan in het overzicht [Wayback/Archive] Hoogste spaarrente – Actuele rentestanden.

Bijvoorbeeld Nationale-Nederlanden:

Mocht je het ondanks onderstaande toch overwegen:

  • de actie internetsparen loopt tot en met 30 juni 2026
  • de actie betaalrekening loopt tot en met 15 juli 2026

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Posted in Banking, LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Quintessence Mastodon tool: quintsns.pianeta.uno

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/29

Quintessence @quintsns@mastodon.uno Hi @wiert, Quintessence is changing the way it operates. From now on you won't receive the 23:00UTC message containing your top links any more, but you can still get the same thing (with added link titles too!) by visiting https://quintsns.pianeta.uno . I wrote about this change here: https://mastodon.uno/@quintsns/109654658496951682 . I hope you'll enjoy the new Quintessence! Let me know how it goes. Cheers. Jan 09, 2023, 04:56 · · 0Quintessence shows you the top links that the people that you follow on Mastodon tooted or boosted in the last hours and the most notable toots that appeared in your timeline.

In order to work it just needs read permissions for your account.

You can allow this by specifying your instance in the text box below and clicking “Authorize”.

Quintessence is a static site, all its code runs on the device that you are using to read these lines. No data leaves your browser nor is being shared with anyone.

[Wayback/Archive] https://quintsns.pianeta.uno/ is on my list of tools to try and make Mastodon more manageable for me.

Related:

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Posted in LifeHacker, Mastodon, Power User, SocialMedia | Leave a Comment »

Bye bye WeTransfer, hello Wormhole – Simple, private file sharing

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/26

Luckily I do not have to transfer large files to others often, but now that WeTransfer has been out for a while, I think Wormhole is a good replacement:

[Wayback/Archive] Wormhole – Simple, private file sharing

Like KPN Filetransfer below, anyone can use it.

Links on KPN Filetransfer, especially because of the white paper, but also the WeTransfer Terms of Service change that made it unusable for many, and some other alternatives like Send (which you can self-host):

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Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

How to change default printing dpi – Apple Community

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/26

Somehow the default dpi setting on my ARM MacBook Pro was 300dpi.

This caused all the specific printer settings saves (mostly permutations of N-up and single/double-sided) to have become 300dpi. Fine for scalable output (vector graphics and fonts), but awful for bitmap images.

[Wayback/Archive] How to change default printing dpi – Apple Community explains how to set the default:

  1. Print something to bring up the print dialog box.
  2. Make sure the Presets menu shows “Standard”.
  3. Change the dpi.
  4. Now from the Presets menu, choose “Save”.
  5. That should change the “Standard” settings.

But it fails to explain that the default is not retroactively applied to saved settings.

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Posted in Apple, Apple Silicon, ARM Mac, LifeHacker, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, MacBook, MacBook-Pro, Power User | Leave a Comment »

For now QEMU refuses AI generated code because as legal implications of that code are unclear – via Security.NL

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/25

About a year later, I wonder about the status of this policy: [Wayback/Archive] docs: define policy forbidding use of AI code generators · qemu/qemu@3d40db0 · GitHub

Via [Wayback/Archive] QEMU weigert wegens juridische onduidelijkheid door AI gegenereerde code – Security.NL

--jeroen

Posted in AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Development, Generative AI, LLM, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

The CAN Bus Companion (+ FREE CAN Module) | Elektor

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/25

Interesting book [Wayback/Archive] The CAN Bus Companion (+ FREE CAN Module) | Elektor (or [Wayback/Archive] The CAN Bus Companion (E-book) | Elektor)

Via:

–jeroen

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Posted in Arduino, Arduino, Development, Hardware Development, Hardware Interfacing, Raspberry Pi | Leave a Comment »

Mumbly_Bum excellent comments on “AI is working great for my team, and y’all are making me feel crazy”

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/24

Planning and feedback loops in extreme programming

Planning and feedback loops in extreme programming

TL;DR:

Using LLM in the software development process is shifting the feedback cycle to the top of the development cycle in the graph on the right. This is a costly endeavour.

LLM deliver output that is statistically likely, decreasing the chance to incorporate outliers as they are statistically unlikely but form the burden of software development.

[Wayback/Archive] Mumbly_Bum comments on AI is working great for my team, and y’all are making me feel crazy

Most of our tickets are now (initially) generated using Claude + the Atlassian MCP, and that’s allowed us to capture missed requirements up-front.

I think this is the key disconnect (even taking into account the notes from meetings) in understanding our jobs and why we’re not going away and why LLMs create harm in delivery.

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Posted in AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, LLM, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

/Fay-lee-nuh/ on Twitter: “I know this sounds incredibly harsh, but a large part of CS researchers would not know an epistemic core if it hit them in the face. Which is not necessarily a personal failure, CS programs tend to not cover theory building or interpreting at all.” / Twitter

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/24

Food for thought:

  1. [Wayback/Archive] /Fay-lee-nuh/ on Twitter: “I know this sounds incredibly harsh, but a large part of CS researchers would not know an epistemic core if it hit them in the face. Which is not necessarily a personal failure, CS programs tend to not cover theory building or interpreting at all.”
  2. [Wayback/Archive] /Fay-lee-nuh/ on Twitter: “What CS students (esp in engineering schools) are generally taught is what I call “Bob the Builder” science. The research question is “Can we fix it?” and the method is: “Yes we can, it is right there”.”

–jeroen

Posted in Awareness, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Google AI: there are t’s in kilogram and kilogramme

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/23

Unlike SKYNET, actual Skynet is still far away: according to Google AI, there are t’s in both kilogram and kilogramme.

Screenshots mine as the Wayback Machine does not run the Google AI:

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Posted in AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Development, Google, LLM, Power User, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

[FRnOG] [TECH] cogent rennes: “Due to unprecedented and historically high temperatures in the region, it has become impossible to maintain the environmental conditions required for the safe operation of equipment hosted at the facility.”

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/23

It’s a short term weather side-effect for which data centers are under dimensioned because data centers don’t have long term planning, right?

Narrator: it’s the climate changing way faster than anyone designing data centers anticipated.

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Posted in Cloud, Hosting, Infrastructure | Leave a Comment »

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