Toby Sterling

Lost remains of French musketeer d'Artagnan may have been found in Dutch church - reuters.com/world/lost-rem…

@gavinandresen Is saying “epistemic humility” better than saying “looks like somebody has a case of the Mondays”?

I’m extremely skeptical of anybody who uses the phrase ‘epistemic humility’. They’re saying “I’m really quite humble, I’m not a know-it-all”… but also “look at these big-ass fancy words I know!!!”

@Dr_Gingerballs I’ll bite . Why will it lower productivity?

AI must be inflationary because it must lower productivity. This statement is built on fundamentals of statistics. People thought I was crazy for saying it two years ago, but I knew it must be so.

Apple can be sued in a Dutch court for antitrust damages, EU's top court says reuters.com/sustainability… @AlexanderNL

@NickSzabo4 Damn it’s good to have you back on Twitter

Corporatism vs. socialism: an awful dichotomy, like Odysseus having to choose between having his ships destroyed by rocks if he steered them a bit too far north, and being sucked in by a whirlpool if they went a bit too far south. Innovations at large social scales -- and I daresay I helped a bit with that myself -- have often been a great economic boon for mankind. Innovations in contract law, property law, financial markets, and related areas have, after maturation, often turned out to be quite beneficial, with a net benefit when non-beneficial innovations are discarded. Currently, more trust-minimized institutions at global scale, taking advantages of blockchains, smart contracts, AI, and many other innovations, will continue to improve global economies. But in some ways the focus on large scales in politics and economics alike has gone too far, especially in the form of remote trust-based institutions, especially remote governments and global corporations. The 20th century emphasis on steering peoples' lives into the maws of corporations and remote governments alike has caused most of the cultural ills for which we now seek solutions. Besides innovations that, for certain important functions, substitute verification and nonviolent security for trust in strangers at arge social scales, we also need to reduce trust in strangers by refocusing our political attentions, and cultural attentions more generally, on smaller social scales. The main way to avoid the hazards of corporatism and large-scale socialism alike, is instead of obsessing so much over useful but narrow desiderata of the large social scales, such as GDP, economic productivity, and the like, let's pay more attention, politically and otherwise, to the many other important aspects of our lives and cultures -- particularly the ones that are closer to ourselves, the ones we can observe directly and have more immediate and legible influences over -- life at smaller social scales. Life at home, life in our extended families, life with our friends, life in our churches et. al. Let's obsess less about economics as an abstract goal. Let's do more to ensure that our economic institutions protect our more important smaller scale institutions. Let's have less of *both* big remote corporations and big remote governments, and more families, more local communities (including online communities) . Let's slowly grow -- it necessarily has to be slow -- the kinds of communities that have a great deal of long-standing shared understandings, i.e. of traditions, and thus of fullsome abilities to *communicate*. Let's protect such communities as we still have after the devastations both corporatism and large-scale socialism inficted in the 20th century. The damages inflicted by strangers, businessmen and politicians alike, pretending to be your friends. Let's have more time and resources devoted to the smaller, more intimate, more legible, more controllable, smaller social scales. Let's put political priority on forming, growing, and protecting families, and protecting actual, communicating, via long-hared understandings, *communities*. Protect long-standing religions, both the ancient beliefs and practices, and protect our other long-standing non-commercial traditions. Protect them from the massive disruptions caused by corporations and remote governments alike. especially protect them from the various manifestations of globalization such as immigration and more general disruptions of communities, cultures, and careers.

ASML CEO says Dutch-China tension has not hit chip-gear maker reut.rs/4r2ULQJ reut.rs/4r2ULQJ

Dutch election tests appetite for far-right government under Wilders reuters.com/world/europe/d…

@marcelvandenber @ReutersTech Thx, don't know how that crept in there. Maybe something like the capital is Amsterdam but seat of gov't DH. Will fix.

@ReutersTech @lbsterling Toby. Our government is in The Hague not Amsterdam

In rare move, Dutch government takes control of China-owned chipmaker Nexperia reut.rs/474KXwG reut.rs/474KXwG

@jitsegroen Is this for real ? Move fast and break things not exactly the European way ….

Our robot dog getting arrested is probably part of the innovation problem in Europe 😂

@bencoates1 Them accident data look unrealistically high.

Despite amazing bike lanes, Dutch bike injuries continues to rise. Government has set ambitious goal to have 25% of cyclists wear a helmet in 10 years’ time, up from 4% now. But cyclists aren’t happy. Telling Dutch to wear a helmet is like telling Brits to wear gloves in the pub

@ASFleischman Thank you, I laughed so hard 😅

my favorite joke of all time

@irbezek Inflation

Looks like that was us gathering 200+ folks for the European Defense Tech Hackathon last weekend, hosted by @DeltaQuadUAV 🫡 "A weekend hackathon in Amsterdam aimed at finding fast-and-cheap battlefield solutions for Ukraine drew more than 100 young programmers and engineers, with many saying Europe's rearmament plans were prompting them to consider careers in defence." Huge thanks to Toby Sterling @lbsterling from @Reuters for covering the event! And huge thanks to our partners @BRAVE1ua, NUNC Capital, BSS Holland, @DeltaQuadUAV, @NADindustries, @KeenVP, the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine @DefenceU, @Ultimaker, Pilotix, and our co-organizers Avalor AI, DroneAid Collective, and @inflectionxyz

Europe's defence challenge energises young techies at hackathon reuters.com/business/aeros…

Exclusive: Apple, Meta likely to face modest fines over DMA breaches, sources say ( Reuters, always first with the news that matters) reuters.com/technology/eu-… @Reuters @EUReuters @ReutersBiz @ReutersTech @ReutersLegal @thomsonreuters

If Europe builds the gigafactories, will an AI industry come? reut.rs/41x5zKY

dutchnews.nl//2025/03/first… Pretty sure I saw this dude hanging out at Cafe Nol

@gunsnrosesgirl3 Objective reality

@AlexanderNL It is incredibly valuable to have someone delivering this message, the big picture, to the Dutch public.

Terwijl Silicon Valley miljarden investeert in autonome defensiesystemen, blijft Europa achter. We hebben het talent en de middelen, maar missen visie.