Writing
2026
Think of the children!
Austria's under-14 social media ban, read as a computer scientist: what the draft actually says, what Australia, Britain and South Korea measured and where the ID documents end up.
I Still Believe in a United Europe
In every classroom of my primary school years, there was a poster on the wall. A globe in the middle, and around it children with different skin colours reaching their hands across the planet. I have no idea which publisher or NGO produced it, UNICEF maybe, some standard piece of classroom décor, but it was everywhere. In the craft room, in the gym, above the blackboard in maths.
Nobody Wants to Burn Out Anymore
You've probably heard it countless times: "Nobody wants to work anymore." It shows up everywhere, from casual conversations to headlines and social media posts.
2025
Democracy, But Make It a Pop Quiz
One late night a colleague and I were tossing ideas around. Most of them vanished with the beer. This one stuck. It started as a dumb joke, then it got oddly sharp, then I realized it was sharp in the wrong direction.
Playing with Kids All Day (And Other Lies About Kindergarten Teachers)
Ask people what kindergarten teachers actually do all day and the answer is usually some version of "play with kids." Not "real" work in the way an office job or trades are real work. Glorified babysitting with arts and crafts. Pleasant if you like kids, easy if you don't, paid accordingly either way. But spend a few months actually inside one and that picture falls apart pretty fast.
Surviving Modern Life with a Flip Phone (Barely)
Mama was right: Smartphones are frying our brains. App locks, screentime reminders, digital detoxes: we've tried them all. Nothing sticks because honestly? We're just too good at tricking ourselves. (Even if it means pretending chess.com counts as "productive screen time.")
Austria Plans to Become Europe's Favourite Playground for Hackers
Austria is discussing the idea of requiring messenger services to install backdoors to "improve security" and help fight crime. On the surface, it might sound reasonable. Who doesn't want to catch bad guys, after all? But let's stop and think about it for a second.
Rethinking Open Source Responsibility
For a while now, I’ve been playing with a thought experiment: what happens when your code is used for something you completely disagree with?
2024
2023
The first digital nomad
Digital nomadism feels like a 2020s thing. Coffee shops, laptop stickers, the inevitable Instagram of the laptop in front of a beach. Most of the people doing it now think they're living something new. They aren't. Someone was already doing it forty years ago, on a bicycle.
The internet has become soulless and i hate it
The modern web is the most efficient version of itself that has ever existed. Pages load fast. Sites are accessible. Everything looks consistent across devices. Every interaction is optimized. By every measurable metric, the web in 2023 is the best the web has ever been. And most of it is unbearable.
Should it really be Telegram?
Telegram has done a remarkable job convincing people that it is the privacy-friendly alternative to WhatsApp. Open source. Encrypted. Founded by people with a story about defying state surveillance. The branding writes itself. But take it apart for a minute and most of it doesn't really hold up.
Data about data
I am a huge fan of gathering, analyzing and graphing data. Numbers and colorful charts just have something to them. But the actually interesting part is rarely the data itself, it's the data about the data. How often something happens, when it happens, between whom. Patterns sit in the metadata, not the content, and most of what makes a conversation a conversation can be reconstructed from the outside without ever reading a single message.