On software, consulting and books. Usually with my own math, sometimes with my own mistake.
129articles, newest first.Five sentences that keep turning up in my writing. Each comes with three pieces of my own evidence, one sentence where I could be wrong, and my interest in it.
The CDU/CSU and SPD want to limit Germany's freedom of information law to people with a 'legitimate interest'. Not one ministry can name a security case that justifies it. The same law exposed the mask deals. An opinion piece with 13 charts, on a political class that keeps hammering nails into its own coffin while companies and skilled people pack their bags.
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Token volume is growing, the money barely is. A small group of companies carries most of the spend, and loyalty is scarce. Meanwhile the big providers now invest more than their operations bring in, and the buildout has to earn $3.7 trillion a year from 2032. An analysis of an IPO filing, SEC reports, a Brookings paper and spending data, with 16 charts, and what companies should do about it.
Consultancies write about what sells. That makes their texts a good measuring instrument for hype. I counted 41,594 of them: metaverse, ESG, ChatGPT, now AI agents. Every wave rises steeply and falls again. And I looked at what the industry itself is doing right now, in the middle of the biggest wave.
A study says AI gets 13 times cheaper every year. On LinkedIn that turns into a sure bet. I recomputed the data. For the bargain hunter, it holds. If you don't switch constantly, you see far less of it. If you turn every new model all the way up, you pay more. Try it yourself.
Where AI actually holds up in operations and where it just looks expensive. Automation with n8n, Odoo and custom models, explained on real processes.
A neural network, 70 years of draw data, hundreds of lines of code. And in the end the AI is exactly as accurate as a chicken pecking at numbers. With an interactive simulator to try it yourself.
The AI boom is burning capital and electricity at a historic scale. Meanwhile nearly half of corporate projects fail before they reach production. Why AI is a powerful tool but not a miracle, and how SMEs use it as an amplifier instead of a replacement.
A thought experiment: one US directive switches off two frontier AI models worldwide. A field guide to Europe's dependency, and the barriers we have to remove to build our own.
Longer thoughts that fit no category. Technology, work, and the patterns underneath.
Snake oil used to come in a brown bottle from a traveling salesman. Today it comes as a slide deck, with a day rate and a partner title. On an industry that claims expertise in everything, has rarely built anything itself, likes to leave responsibility for the result with the client and has lost track of itself. And on what works instead.
The paradox of tolerance is one of the most shared philosophy quotes online. It sits in a footnote, and right after it comes a sentence that is almost always missing. It turns a license to exclude into a test: can I still answer this with an argument?
They post redacted DMs and call the sender incompetent. The same people send the same soulless garbage. Hypocrisy would be the kind explanation. Thomas Bernhard wrote the book on this in 1984: contempt that leaves the critic out is not criticism. It is a pose.
Leading technical teams without losing sight of the technology. Decisions, conflict, and what organisations do to themselves.
One leadership style doesn't fit all. Learn the Situational Leadership Model and how to adapt your style to the person, task, and context.
The quality of your decisions determines the quality of your results. Learn frameworks like RAPID, 10/10/10, and OODA for better decisions in tech teams.
80% of project problems are people problems. Learn how to identify stakeholders, understand their interests, and create win-win situations.
Books read as instruments rather than retold as summaries: what holds up, what does not, and where it bites at work.
Wittgenstein's Tractatus ends by telling you to throw it away. Before that it takes apart the question everyone asks wrongly: not how much you know, but which side the answer could even be on. It is not the side made of facts. With three drawn scenes that run as you scroll.
An unread book is not a failed read. It is a purchased option on a question you do not have yet. Why a shelf does something no folder, no store account and no chat window can do. With two drawn scenes to scroll through.
Enron didn't die of fraud. It died of a company that had trained itself out of hearing the word no. A reading note on Jeff Skilling as Achilles. And on what that has to do with Nvidia's $42 billion and the memo nobody wants to write.
Build vs. buy, process cost, ROI. How to justify technical decisions when someone ends up paying for them.
For 130 years Mumbai's dabbawalas have delivered hundreds of thousands of hot lunches to the right desk, on time, every working day. No app, no control room, no literacy required. The famous error rate, however, was never measured. What the system actually does is something else. And it comes at a price.
BMW is playing film promos on the screens of cars that cost 100,000 euros. Two weeks earlier, its automotive margin fell to 2.3 percent. Both are the same story. With an interactive timeline from 2020 to today.
Add up your AI subscription and you get a high API-equivalent value. The number is real, but it means less than it promises.