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At Kassa: Live Nation’s Ticketmaster monopoly, and millions of cars failing inspection because of the 2G shutdown
In this week’s Kassa I walked through two stories that follow the same pattern: regulators stepping in late or not at all, and lawmakers barely thinking a decade ahead. A US jury just found Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation to be a monopoly, yet the Dutch competition authority ACM saw no reason to investigate back…
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Viral penguin video: why the internet embraced a disoriented animal
A scene from Werner Herzog’s documentary Encounters at the End of the World went viral on TikTok: a penguin turning its back on the colony and marching alone into the mountains. Brands like FC Barcelona and even the White House turned it into memes. Danny Mekić explained on RTL Nieuws why this particular image struck…
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Wero (the new iDEAL) is coming, and the scammers are already waiting
iDEAL, the Dutch payment standard, is getting a European successor called Wero. On TV-show Kassa, Danny Mekić explains why that’s largely good news — shoppers will soon get proper buyer protection when ordering from Germany or Belgium — but flags the uncomfortable flipside. Phishing gangs are already lining up to impersonate a brand almost no…
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Privacy: protect it or you’ll lose it
Serial entrepreneur and technology innovation expert Danny Mekić has outspoken views about data protection and privacy. ‘Privacy and security are not each other’s enemies. They go together hand in hand. And without privacy there is no security anyway.’ Danny Mekić was 12 years old when he started working as a volunteer for the newly launched…
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“Facebook is taking the Pavlov approach to a whole new level”
Insulting a foreign head of state will soon no longer be an offence in the Netherlands. But on Facebook, it still is. Erdogan cartoons by Ruben L. Oppenheimer aren’t welcome on the online platform, and a satirical poem about Erdogan written by journalist Annabel Nanninga was sent to the digital waste bin too. Technology expert…
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Beware of viruses, despite good numbers
The Dutch have less trouble with computer viruses than the people of any other European country, according to the numbers of statistical institution Eurostat. But that doesn’t mean we should sit back and relax. The Netherlands are a popular target for cybercriminals, security researcher Jornt van der Wiel warns us. “Excellent news”, says internet expert…