I've been 'designing' websites since about 1994, and I remember being very excited when the major browser(s) started supporting background images, so that my webpages didn't have to have the same flat-grey background that every other webpage in the world had at the time. I also made one of the first 'starfield' backgrounds, and was simultaneously thrilled and annoyed to see other people start using it on their webpages.
> Think of a pregnant woman (the Earth) spinning on a seivel chair. The woman gives birth to her child (the Moon) and she takes the child in her arms and extends it at arm's length.
Just a comment on your second and third paragraphs: it's a bit odd that you invoke general relativity ("curved spacetime") for the Moon's basic orbit, and then discuss classical mechanics ("tidal forces are literal forces") for the second-order effects. Tidal forces are of course also gravitational effects, just differential (i.e., the result of the fact that we are not talking about point masses, but rather extended objects).
Well, technically ASML is based (as in, headquartered) in Veldhoven, but that's part of the same conurbation really.
Meanwhile, check out the 235 (at last count) technology companies located on the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven (where NXP is headquartered): https://hightechcampus.com/companies
For what it's worth: Al Sweigart's "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" is pretty nice, and it's a good one for lending out to colleagues who show interest in learning Python (especially those poor souls with tedious jobs...).
It's nice to see that they (briefly) mention the half-jokingly proposed artificial mountain in the infamously flat Netherlands [1] towards the end of the article.
Submitter here. I'm a British chap living in the Netherlands. You might want to read my comment [1] about what happens after you have a baby over here; it triggered quite a lot of discussion...
Interesting name. :) I worked on developing compact models for the first few years of my employment at NXP Semiconductors, which is (for me, at least) the top result of a Google search for "compact models", defining them as "mathematical descriptions of semiconductor devices used in analog circuit simulators".
> ... I was introduced to the people who built computers at Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven. It was a type of people I did not know, I found them very strange and they did not inspire confidence at all. Later I learned that I had been introduced to electronic engineers.
Brilliant. I'll be sure to share this with my electronic-engineer colleagues on the High Tech Campus (the former Philips Research campus) here in Eindhoven. :)
What's always struck me is how large the Dutch Wikipedia is (1,992,551 articles), given the relatively low number of people that speak that language. They would appear to be a pretty tech-savvy/well-connected nation.
It's certainly consistent with the number of comments that I see here on HN that start with some variation on "Here in the Netherlands...".
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/01/after-record-year-asml-is-t...
See also the statement from ASML (linked to in that article):
https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengtheni...