NSFW (Nikolaus' Song For the Week)

This week's song is from Lorraine Ellison (didn't find too much info about her, unfortunately).

It's also on YouTube.

It's a beautiful song and deserves all attention you have.

But the main reason why I am putting it here is, despite its beauty, that, this week, for the very first time I learned to understand the song, thanks to this - just perfect - Instagram reel.

Every, every detail is just great here. The Austrian Audio mic ( I assume it's an Austrian Audio OC818 under the popfilter) producing perfect sound, the nicest possible british accent, the camera frame, but, before all, the marvelous enthousiasm he makes his point with. Dear "owencutts", whoever you are, may I thank you - from human to human - so much for making me truly appreciating this song.

Retrospect

College Digital Humanism

This Vienna-based inititive had its (sesonal) kick-off on Friday.

It was nice to meet so many nice colleagues from different universities as a brilliant faculty and a vibrant and promising group of students. Lots of the collaboration will happen in a nice co-working space: the Education Lab. The College is on LinkedIn as well and posted a picture from the opening there:

The College has more information (and more pictures) on their website as well.

Security and Freedom

I joined an interesting conference, diligently organised by Dr. Ingeborg Zeller, and a panel debate on the interplay between security and freedom at Donau Universität Krems. Martin Haidinger chaired the debate very diligently.

The discussion circled a lot around drones and the balance of powers between the military and the police in times of hybrid warfare. One of my learnings was that the Austrian military is reflecting defence against drones quite intensely but capacities are still limited.

My personal contribution was mainly to report on the ongoing German debate whether it should be, from a legal perspective, the federal police or the military to shoot drones down, all the unfortunate disagreement about this and that a fix would (probably) need a constitutional reform that can potentially be blocked by AfD and/or Die Linke. The Podcast Gerechtigkeit und Loseblatt has a lot on this in episode 69.

AI and Ursula von der Leyen

When doing my research for some of the current presentations I make, I stumbled across this really noteworthy YouTube-video, published on the European Commission's "official" YouTube channel - with many remarkably bad comments under the clip.:

Isn't it astonishing how positive the term "revolution" is seen by public officials nowadays? Von der Leyen introduces, inter alia, an "AI first stragey" (at 9' 45'') - and almost nobody applauds. Her AI-enthousiasm is remarkable, as well as her example - self driving cars (!). She also makes very interesting remarks on the commission's new legislative approaches (at 6' 20") that will guarantee that I (and people like my) will stay busy.

#arsboni

We had two sessions. In the first I discuss with Peter Jeitschko the difficulties European SMEs in AI struggle with and where their opportunities are. Main learning: their most important strength is their ability and willingness to negotiate things with their clients, SMEs as well, who are not taken seriously enough by the big players.

The second was with Katharina Bisset, one of the geekiest lawyers (I mean this as a compliment) I know.

It's about the impact of AI on the legal profession, in particular lawyering.

Prospect

Regulatory Sandbox Advisory Board

I have a news (side-)job - unfortunately (;-) ) unpaid, again.

This advisory board, based on § 23a FMABG I am now a member of has to write opinions on whether a given service product should participate in the sandbox. A sandbox is a protected (and intensely controled) environment that allows to legally test innovative business ideas in the banking sector.

For me, this is an interesting use case to understand how sandboxes work (or don't work, we will see). The idea was (quite prominently) introduced in art. 57 AI-act as well.

#arsboni

While the last weeks were relatively calm, the upcoming week will be superbusy.

We will start on Monday, October 27, at 16.00 with a discussion of the impact of AI on Wikipedia and vice versa.

Also on Monday, at 19.00, we will broadcast a new LLP podcast episode. This is an interview with an Austrian public prosecutor, Bernd Ziska, on his profession and career track.

On Tuesday, October 28, at 14.00, the LLP will host an interview with the Austrian minister of justice, Dr. Anna Sporrer.

On Friday 31st, at 8.30 in the morning I will do a "Coding Law/Rechtschreibung" session with Dr. Alexander Grenzner. He finished his PHD-studies recently by very successfully defending his thesis on the softwar copyright directive.

I will also do a laundry-session with former ELGA-CEO Dr. Franz Leisch on the Austrian E-Health law and its status that will be published later.

Look and Feel

Messenger Surveillance

If you are into true crime podcasts and/or information security, may I recommend this podcast:

It's about 16 tons of Cocaine that were sent to Hamburg and about the hacking and shutdown of the encrypted chat service Sky ECC by police authorities that was used (also) by these criminals. One of the many remarkable details in this case is the fact that the state attorney leading (!) the case (from Hannover, again) is currently under arrest for alleged corruption and breach of confidentiality in this very case. Another aspect that I will cover in one of the upcoming ars boni sessions is the discussion whether the police hacked Sky ECC legally or not and what consequences this should have in the criminal cases in which the prosecuition relies on data coming from this hack.

Moonlight Sonata and Bass (Second Movement)

So much happened here since last week's Look and Feel.

Davie504 uploaded another copyright heavy video:

If you are into IP-law, watch this. First, he reports that his own copyright strike from last week has disappeared without reasoning. Then he analyses quite in some detail how his own music was stolen for AI music production and how ridicilously little is done against this (so far?). Scary.

I also attended some more YouTube-University lectures on Beethoven's moonlight sonata (see Weekly 43/2025 for context) - and here are some musicology treasures found:

This is a nice introduction with remarkably bad sound quality (for a music channel, at least), but with plenty of interesting background, a really, really cute dog and the piece's "original" sound on a fortepiano. I learned here that Beethoven copied Mozart and that it's the fault of his father.

I fell across a piano technic lesson using the sonata,

I saw an interpretation in Vienna's Palais Kinsky (where I don't like the sound either)

and one of a half naked young man with 3 million followers but very bad body posture, playing in a beach ressort

and one playing to an old elephant

and what a talented professional can achieve within one hour of practicing the peace (unbelievable).

I learned a lot about the importance of tempo

and, as a side note to tempo, I saw this analysis of Yuya Wang's heartbeat rates when playing the piano (not Beethoven, though, but data is beautiful and datafication is everywhere).

I also found a very special guitar version (is this metal?), played by a 17 years old then

and a sung (or: spoken) variant, performed by a 60-ies girl band called The Shangri-Las with sad lyrics that are very open to interpretation.

Hard to believe how talented (and how different) real people and real musicians can be.

Daisy

is excellent in smelling mice - but fortunately not so good in catching them.

Have a wonderful week!

Kind regards

Nikolaus (Forgó)