Back in Austria, the colour palette is already autumn-like with lots of grey, brown and yellow.

NSFW (Nikolaus’ Song For the Week)

This week’s autumn-mood song is from Lily Hayes.

It’s on YouTube in a studio version

and live

I know almost nothing about her, the little I know is mostly from an interview on the internet.

Retrospect

Telegram

Pavel Durov, founder and head of Telegram, was arrested in France.

The tribunal’s press communication sounds somehow like from 1995, but the interplay with DSA and current debates on crypto regulation will be highly interesting.

An English translation is on Twitter.

I listened to a long interview with Durov by Tucker Carlson, some months ago.

(Needless to say that Carlson is a problematic interviewer, but the talk is still very interesting).

Lex Fridman’s take of the story is perhaps typical of some US-views on the issue, as well as the comments below the tweet (1.3 mio views and counting).

Reddit has lots on it as well and Ben Thompson’s take on Stratechery is also relevant.

Even French president Macron has expressed his opinion

which brought attention to Macron’s personal use of the service

as well as on some military/strategic implications from Russian sources.

The issue has lots to do with end-to-end encryption and IT-security, as this quote might tell: "Telegram is widely used in the military and in politics to communicate; and it is obvious that many Russian officials must fear that France will try to put pressure on the Telegram boss to gain access to their communications," says Mariëlle Wijermars. It is therefore strategic for Moscow that the Telegram boss remains in the hands of the French justice system for as little time as possible.”.

The last thre alleged offences Durov is accused of explicitly deal with cryptography.

The topic touches therefore both ars boni sessions this week and was explicitly discussed in both:

Andreas Proschofsky covers the issue quite extensively on Der Standard (here, here and here).

Martin Selmayr Leaving

Prof. Dr. Martin Selmayr has been with our department as a guest professor for the last 7 months. He has been nominated as the EU Ambassador to the Holy See, Order of Malta & UN Organisations in Rome and to the Republic of San Marino and is therefore moving to Rome now.

It was an outstanding and oustandingly positive experience to work with him - both professionally and personally.

One of the many contributions he generously shared with us was an international conference on the 6th birthday of GDPR that one can watch online in full length.

Shorts

I am experimenting, again, with some video content to promote other video content: shorts on upcoming #arsboni interviews.

The videos get more views on Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook than similar written content, but I am not sure yet why. Personally, I prefer written inormation on such matters, as it’s less redundant and faster to process, but I am not sure (yet) whether this is just an age-indicator for me and or whether it’s the algorithms preferring moving images (or both).

I am doing this with my DJI Pocket 2. Funnily the app needed for this is not in the App-Store, due to - surprise, surprise - regulatory and security issues (DJI is Chinese, as you might recall).

Prospect

Democracies in Digital Societies

The Austrian Academy of Sciences established a new Commission “Democracies in Digital Societies” under the leadership of Barbara Prainsack and Astrid Mager. The group of members is very promising (and I am hppy to be invited to the party). The opening session will take place in Vienna on October 10th with a public lecture given by Sophie in 't Veld, former Member of the European Parliament.

Free entry, but registration required.

#arsboni

I will have tow ars boni sessions next week. One will recorded in the laundry with Florian Schweitzer on IT-security related matters of messenger surveillance. The other one is rescheduled now live with Shirin Gazanfari on data seizure on Wednesday evening.

Autonomous Driving

I finished the proofreading of my chapter in the third edition of Oppermann/Buck-Heeb, Autonomes Fahren. It will be out soon.

LLM

If you want to join us in a one-year intensive programme - the best in the field I know - you need to register until August 31. I would love to see you there.

Rote Nasen Lauf

If you can, #joinus on September 8th at this very nice charity run.

You don’t really need to be into running to particpate and have fun there - as this pic from last year’s event might prove.

Daisy

is back home as well and tries the perfect camouflage look on the parquet floor.

Have a wonderful week!

Kind regards

Nikolaus (Forgó)