Week 46/2025

Where the sun don't ever shine

Nikolaus Forgó

07 Nov 2025 — 6 min read

Thanks to the switch back to winter time, Daisy and I see the early morning sun again at our morning tours - for the moment.

Computer says No

I made a rather awkward experience early morning last Friday when waiting for my own newsletter to be delivered. It didn't arrive. It simply didn't arrive. After some research and some falsified hypotheses (Did I push the wrong button? Did I chose the wrong date? Is Ghost down? Did I really write it or only in my phantasy? etc.) I had to find out that it failed to pass an UNIVIE-spamtest so that the mail was blocked for all UNIVIE-recipients (including me). Here are the (only) reasons given to me:

Well ...

My apologies if you were affected by this, last week's weekly is - as always - also available on the website

I do hope that I (and my weekly) will manage to pass the threshold this week and I will abstain from using Wikipedia images here (although that's rather absurd - but when Computer says No ...).

NSFW (Nikolaus' Song For the Week)

This week's song is from Wanda Davis and matches well with the light being more and more a scarce resource in autumn. It's one of the nicer versions (in my view) of "In the Pines".

YouTube:

A (probably) better known version is from Nirvana, showing me that I am too old for Nirvana.

Retrospect

Cable Days

It was very rewarding to participate at the cable days.

In preparing my presentation I took the time to dig a little deeper into the most recent Commission positions on "Simplifying" the current regulatory framework.

I must confess that I didn't like what I read - neither in the Commission's view nore in the 512 (!) responses provided. Markus Past in the audience was so kind to post in a very friendly manner about my presentation. I also gave an interview on the matter for Horizont (that is behind a paywall, ironically).

I appreciated, in particular, the intervention of Philipp König - who is an alumnus of our LLM-programme, former media policy advisor to the chancelor and currently CEO of Kronehit. He coined two statements in his thrilling contribution that I will copy: "Meine Aufgabe ist es, den Menschen beizubringen, dass Sie 'Alexa, spiele KroneHit' sagen können." (My job is that people learn to say 'Alexa, play KroneHit'") and "KI is meant to kill the Trottelhacken." ("AI is meant to eliminate stupid work (only)").

I was quite impressed - once again - how outstandingly bad the general mood in Austria's media sector is and how much platforms are seen as the main problem.

My personal view is more that the competitor is not TikTok or Meta but the millions of ordinary people showing something there wich is possibly not journalism in media professionals' view but anyhow seen as useful enough to be consumed instead.

Wiener Zeitung Advisory Panel

I have a new (unpaid) side job:

It' to advise "Wiener Zeitung". I assume that this will be rather challenging in the light of this - formerly world's oldest - daily newspaper. More om her fate was, inter alia, discussed in this #arsboni episode:

Arbeiterzeitung

The online archive of Arbeiterzeitung is online again, thanks to the personal initiative of a few. What a wonderful source this is and what a nice party we had when celebrating the relaunch!

Dr. Andy Kaltenbrunner and Andreas Scharf spoke about their project followed by three laudationes from 3rd president of Austria's national chamber Doris Bures, legendary film director Dr. Harald Sicheritz - and me, all of us using the archive as reference point.

Bures spoke about the beginnings of Austria's peace movement

Sicheritz about the political beginnings of Bruo Kreisky,

and I reflected about the history of computing, shown by four editions from 1953, 1955, 1972 and 1973

I was in particular stunned about the fact that the very first text on computers, written in 1953, already dealt with their military potential.

This is such a useful and fascinating project, one gets so easily lost for hours in the archive that now allows a full text search over all editions from 1945 to 1989.

Horizont has an article (paywall) on the relaunch.

#arsboni

The European Health Data Space is a very ambitious European project to improve accessability to health data for treatment and research. I spoke with Dr. Franz Leisch about the most recent Austrian legal activities in the field.

Long story short: It's complicated. It's somehow astonishing how disconnected the political debate and PR are from technical and legal realities.

Prospect

Thursday, November 13th, will be very dense with three highly interesting events happening almost in parallel:

DEMGES Workshop

The Commission "Democracy in Digital Societies" (DEMGES) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences hosts a meeting and a public lecture on Thursday this week:

Free entry, registration required.

Parlament.fyi

Exactly at the same time, Thursday, November 13th, 17.30 CET, another very interesting event takes place:

Parlament.fyi is an initiative trying to make parliamentary work more accessible and transparent. The event discusses the state of play after one year of existence. I am on the panel there, some of my students will be there as well.

Free entry, registration required.

Walther Rode Award

Last not least, also this year's award ceremony of the Walther Rode award is taking place on Thursday evening:

Free entry, registration required.

But also the rest of the week is quite busy.

WRG

On Tuesday, November 11th, at 19.00 CET, in Juridium's top floor, the Legal History Society Vienna (WRG) hosts a keynote of Dr. Michael Kunze on his new book Rudolf von Jhering - Das unsichtbare Recht. (More on WRG and Kunze already in Weekly 43/2025).

Free entry, no stream.

Legal Tech Conference

Sophie Martinetz organises - again - a huge legal tech conference in Park Hyatt Hotel in Vienna on Wednesday, November 12th. I am not on a panel or so, but the department and the postgraduate course on information and media law have a booth so that I will drop by for some time.

The opening debate, for example, looks promising:

Austrian Surgeons' Day (Österreichischer Chirurgentag)

AI is everywhere, also in surgerey. This is why I have the honour to deliver a speech on Friday afternoon at the yearly conference of Austria's Surgery Association.

The programme is very AI-heavy, so possibly of general interest too. Paid event (I believe), registration required.

Look and Feel

Holzfällen

One should read more Thoms Bernhard, in particular Holzfällen and in particular in Vienna in autumn. An excellent opportunity to learn more about and from him is Holzfällen as it is currently shown in Burgtheater.

It's a very impressive adaption of the novel in a collaboration between Franui Musicbanda and Nicholas Ofcarek and teaches a lot - possibly more than you want to know - about Viennese and Austrian habits, spleens and "culture".