Week 29/2026

Trying to be careful

Seagulls in Illmitz

NSFW

This week's song is from Pyrit (or Thomas Kuratli) and its a beautiful soundscape that lets one think about the future

The video is nice too, with so much glitter.

It stems from an album "Control". "This wonderful album is ultimately a journey, without beginning nor end, where flesh and digital, concrete and abstract, anxiety and hope confront one another".

Retrospect

Hannover

I am back in Hannover for a few days of meeting old friends and colleagues. It's - trust me - one of the best places I know to spend time in summer.

I spent two working days at lexICT, the coolest IT (law) -consultancy I know - and that I co-founded many years ago.

Their office location (Hannover Docks) is cool too, this is the view from the window.

I did an #arsboni session there, with the former data protection commissioner for Lower Saxony, Barbara Thiel.

I spoke more than usual here and was quite skeptical in my over all assessment of the law's impact - and Barbara joined me remarkably much in my scepticism - with all her remarkable expirience and insight.

From a technical point of view this wasn't too easy to do and, unfortunately, the sound is rather bad due to technical interferences.

It was worth the trip and it was nice to speak in front of the nicest and smartest group of ICT-lawyers one can imagine - the people working for lexICT.

They have nice stickers and postcards too 😄

Privacy

The story of a father asking ChatGPT on how to kill his son was aired in OE1.

I searched a little more on how common it has become to talk to your LLM as if it were your best friend or your shrink.

Lawyering

Sarah Samer had me in her podcast Lawpreneur and published the episode now.

As you can see in Sammer's nice summary on LinkedIn, it was a welcome reunion with my very first podcast microphone- the - Rode NT-USB+ - that sounds quite good here (although my breathing can be heard very clearly too).

Prospect

International Data Law Forum (IDLF)

The third iteration of IDLF will tale place in Vienna from July 15th-17th.

A keynote will bei given by the former head of the Irish Data Protection Authority, Helen Dixon, followed by a panel debate I have the privilege to be part of:

Registration still open, no stream.

Look and Feel

Nvidia

Lex Friedman has a long interview with NVIDIA's CEO Jenson Huang. It's a stunning conversation as he shows a genuine mixture of guru-like behavior, limitless tech optimism, belief in growth, dedication and opportunism - hard to bear how much he flatters Trump. On the content side, it's quite interesting to hear how much importance he attributes to synthetic data for LLMs without mentioning the garbage in garbage out principle and how enthusiasticly he describes open claw as the iphone of the AI era.

Stroke

I am currently reading Renate Welsh' personal story "Ich ohne Worte" about her stroke that caught her during a vacation in Italy and left her speechless.

There's also a film about her and her story (that I haven't seen yet).

Der Standard and Falter have reviews, and here's the trailer.

Hitler on Drugs

Travelling to Hannover gave me enough time to listen to an audiobook in full length, read by the author, Norman Ohler.

I recommend this. It's a very well written discussion on how drug addicted Hitler was, how much influence this had on his personality and decision making and how important drug abuse in the German army and warfare was.

The book's also translated into English

and YouTube has an excerpt, read by the author (in German)

Not all the assumptions he makes and the facts he reports look historically valid to me - and there's some serious criticism out there -

some of the conclusions look exaggerated, but it's however a very unique perspective on an underrated topic with a lot of information on Hitler's personal doctor, Theo Morrell . German reviews are sometimes rather friendly (Deutschlandfunk; Welt, Das Parlament), sometimes rather negative (hsozkult).

National Park Neusiedlersee

The National Park - easily reachable via train/bus or car, approx. one hour from Vienna - is beautiful. While visiting, I heard a lot about the ecological specificities of the area and its soda-lakes that provide extreme lining conditions for highly adapted species. I also learned a lot about the stress caused by climate change and the drought coming with it and on different concepts how to keep (some) water in the Neusiedlerlake.

In summer, they have plenty of different guided tours and visits, almost every day and they run plenty of relevant research projects as well, including some on monitoring and rescuing the (disappearing) soda lakes.