Von der Leyen’s State of the Union speech today was full of references to tech sovereignty. You probably read on X, WhatsApp or Substack. Or maybe on Facebook, Instagram, or perhaps even watched on TikTok. You might even have read
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All the wrong people
A couple of weeks ago, an old friend in Brussels I know from EU politics messaged me on Signal asking me how I was. “I can’t reply fully now” I told him, “I am in rural Romania on #CrossBorderRail.” “Oh
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Tech ethics, January 2025
I’m writing on that fateful day, 20th January 2025. I stopped using Twitter more than two years ago, judging then it would only get worse under Musk – and I was sadly proven right. Today I am ending all association
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A social network not having administrative responsibility for account verification has upsides
One of the interesting aspects of all the “officialising” the Ursula von der Leyen Bluesky account stuff is how it has created a discussion about verification of identity on social networks and – although seldom expressed as such – posed
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Ursula von der Leyen – now officially on Bluesky (and some lessons so you can trust what you read on that network)
Back in October 2023, when Bluesky was a fledgling invite-only network, I set up the account @vonderleyen.bsky.social for a few reasons (and I wrote about the experiment then). First, it seemed like a reasonable bet that Bluesky would grow into
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Bluesky, we don’t get fooled again, the sequel
Just over a year ago I wrote this post, drawing on lyrics from The Who and the Rolling Stones to explain my lingering scepticism about Bluesky. After being fooled by Elon Musk, should we trust Bluesky? I wasn’t fully convinced
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European Commission, why should anyone be led by you? You’re not really leaders if you’re still on Twitter/X
In some management training course years ago I was given the book Why Should Anyone Be Led by You? by Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones. You can find a summary of it from Harvard Business Review here. Leaders, Goffee and Jones
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Germany’s complete disregard of Schengen – ethically wrong, and practically unworkable
Back in the autumn of last year, in a train in Freilassing, a German police officer came through the carriage and asked for everyone’s passport. “Why are you checking all the passengers on this train?” I asked him, in German.
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Repairing a Gaggia Classic switch – using generic parts, and a 3D-printed mount
A Gaggia Classic coffee machine – the second I have owned – has sat in my kitchen since 2013, reliably making espresso coffee every day since. It is however one of the original pre-2009 Classics (see the different generations in
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So you really want to quit Twitter/X now? Your super quick guide to get started on Mastodon or Bluesky
OK, so you’re really, really sick of Musk’s antics now and finally want to make the leap to something else. Here’s your super quick guide how to do so. Do you need to close your Twitter account? Your choice, but
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Where do we do digital EU politics now?
When Donald Tusk, then President of the European Council, wanted to send a public message to set the tone of the Brexit negotiations in 2018 – he took to Twitter, and quoted Freddie Mercury. It was clever, it was culturally
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Building an efficient and low cost photo workflow with Photos for Mac
I have long struggled to design a smooth and efficient workflow for the photos and videos I take on an everyday basis. I had combinations of photos stored in the cloud and stored locally, was spending too much on cloud
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