I spent last weekend with a very nice group from my alpine club chapter on a glacier mountaineering course. We learned a lot about advanced mountaineering techniques and even got to climb the highest mountain of both Upper Austria and Styria, Dachstein! #alps

Großglockner, Austria's highest mountain at 3,798 m. This was a beautiful tour that offered some of everything and required varied skills - lots of fun! I experienced the thin air starting around 3,650m - uncomfortable, but it didn't affect my physical strength or coordination so I made it. #alps

I understand that other state-affiliated entities also relied on their issuance of securities to claim this exemption. This will now have to change.

The Constitutional Court rejected our argument that this exemption as a whole is unconstitutional. However, it also rejected the extremely broad interpretation of the Administrative Court Vorarlberg. State-affiliated entities cannot dodge their duty to provide information on thin reasoning.

Freedom of Information #FOI in Austria: A state-affiliated entity cannot refuse info under the exemption for publicly listed entities if the entity is not actually listed but merely issues tradable securities. Thank you for trusting me with this matter, @moserat.bsky.social!

Verfassungsgerichtshof@oevfgh.bsky.social · 3w ago

Zwei #VfGH Entscheidungen zur Informationsfreiheit: Hypo Vbg ist kein börsennotiertes Unternehmen, daher nicht ausgenommen. Ob bei NÖ Unternehmen Geheimhaltungsinteresse überwiegt, hat ggf. der VwGH, aber nicht der #Verfassungsgerichtshof zu entscheiden: t1p.de/lft7v

New #ecoevo paper @pnas.org: Evolution of species’ range and niche in changing environments. I show that feedback between evolutionary and population dynamics can create a tipping point where genetic variance erodes, and species’ ranges contract or fragment www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #popgen 🧬🧪 🌎

Jitka Polechová@polejit.bsky.social · 2y ago

Preprint finally out! I show that eco-evo feedback can drive a tipping point where genetic drift overwhelms adaptation. This can result in a contraction of a species' range border or range fragmentation. Fragmentation is abrupt and arises readily under rapid temporal change. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

It me. (Credit to Disney and Don Rosa, I believe this panel is out of the 1994 story "The Duck That Never Was", which is a retelling/homage to "It's a Wonderful Life".)

Das betrifft nicht zuletzt Themen wie den Informationsaustausch und die Akteneinsicht; EuGH-Urteil C-2/23 klärt bei weitem nicht alles. Hier könnten Überarbeitungen der Gesetze helfen, um den Wettbewerb zu stärken.

3) Der BWB setzen das Gesetz (gut!) und ihr relativ kleines Budget deutliche Grenzen, was zum nächsten Punkt führt: 4) Heutiges Urteil ist Ergebnis von StA-Ermittlungen. Die Schnittstelle zwischen Straf- und Kartellrecht ist mitunter schwierig zu navigieren und immer wieder ein Stolperstein.

Meine Analyse: 1) Die Höhe von Geldbußen steigt nach dem REWE-Urteil 2025 (€70 Mio) rasant. Dass STRABAG die Buße akzeptiert, ist vielleicht ein Zeichen, dass Unternehmen nun ein höheres Risiko in Rechtsmitteln (Rekurs an KOG (OGH)) sehen. 2) BWB demonstriert weiterhin Kompetenz und Hartnäckigkeit.

Damit wird eine Geldbuße gegen STRABAG aus 2021 um ca. €100 Mio (!) erhöht. Erst strafrechtliche Ermittlungen der WKStA deckten die zusätzlichen, der BWB nicht offengelegten Fälle auf.

Schon wieder eine Rekord-Geldbuße im österreichischen #Kartellrecht: Kartellgericht verurteilt STRABAG zu €146 Mio, nachdem die @bwboesterreich.bsky.social feststellte, dass STRABAG im Baukartell-Fall als Kronzeugin nicht alle Informationen offenlegte. STRABAG wird kein Rechtsmittel erheben.

4) This result is based on criminal investigations by public prosecution into criminal bid rigging. Interplay of Austrian criminal and competition law can be tricky, in particular re: sharing of info and access to file (recently partially adjudicated by ECJ C-2/23).

3) BWB (FCA) is constrained by law (good) and its comparatively small budget, leading into next point:

My analysis: 1) Austria continues path of higher #antitrust / #competition law fines. Acceptance by STRABAG may show that risk appetite for appeals re: fines is severely reduced following last year's €70 mil REWE fine. 2) @bwboesterreich.bsky.social demonstrates resolution and skill in prosecution.

This follows, and increases, a 2021 fine of ~€45 million on STRABAG in relation to a long-running, long-investigated construction cartel in Austria. After that, criminal investigations into the cartel apparently revealed STRABAG involvement not disclosed to Austrian Federal Competition Authority.

Highest cartel/#antitrust fine ever imposed in 🇦🇹: Construction firm STRABAG today ordered to pay €146 million after competition authority @bwboesterreich.bsky.social found STRABAG to have withheld information in immunity/leniency proceedings. STRABAG has accepted the fine.

As I watch footage of explosions in Beirut and dust clouds towering above apartment blocks in Tehran, I keep coming back to something that I witnessed back in the summer of '04, during my first tour in Iraq. But first, let's start with a question: Have you ever heard someone wail? 1/

Who has the enriched uranium?

Brandon Bishop@brandontbishop.bsky.social · 5mo ago

So, uh, who's in charge of Iran right now?

@georgrenner.istdaswichtig.at Ich vermute, dass die IFG-Anfrage fragdenstaat.at/anfrage/stel... von Ihnen stammt - bitte um Freischaltung des Anhangs in der Nachricht des BKA vom 30.10.2025. Danke! :)

Today, political horse trading is often treated as more important than following policy goals and values, even as virtuous. This makes the fierce independence of #competition authorities who follow the (rule of) law even more important. Interesting proposal from Yon-Courtin, worth discussing!

Euractiv@euractiv.com · 5mo ago

Lead competition legislator pitches ‘independent’ authority

oh this one is even better

love me some Cold War graphs taken out of context

I've heard a lot about it and am curious to try - how do I install this on my system? #openclaw #lobstersupremacy #carcinize

I’ve been wanting to write about William Gibson’s “Jackpot” books, and the concept of "slow disasters" in general, for a while… and now I have, for DOOMSDAY MACHINES: doomsdaymachines.net/p/hitting-th...

Hitting the jackpot

William Gibson's disturbingly plausible 21st-century slow disaster

doomsdaymachines.net

Awesome thread explaining how stellar streams are connected to the search for dark matter, the main motivation for applying our anomaly detection algorithm CATHODE to Gaia data to look for more streams in arxiv.org/abs/2509.08064

Via Machinae 3.0: A search for stellar streams in Gaia with the CATHODE algorithm

We apply the model-agnostic anomaly detection method Cathode - originally developed for particle physics - to search for stellar streams in Gaia data. We combine Cathode with Via Machinae 3.0: a re-op...

arxiv.org

Cara Giovanetti@idontevencara.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Stars in our galaxy aren’t distributed evenly. Collisions with smaller galaxies or clusters make “stellar streams,” which are long, thin trails of stars. They form as the smaller object stretches while it falls into the Milky Way. So… why does this stream have a MASSIVE hole in it?? 1/7 ⚛️🧪

Wer soll sich da noch auskennen? Lasst uns einfach eine Volksbestimmung durchführen, das geht ganz ohne Fragen, ist billiger und schneller.

🇦🇹 Bundeskanzler Stocker schlägt vor, zum #Wehrpflicht Reformvorschlag eine "Volksbefragung, deren Ergebnis bindend sein soll" abzuhalten. DANN MACHT EINE VOLKSABSTIMMUNG! Wozu haben wir denn ein B-VG, wenns offenbar niemand liest? Was soll das? 😡🙄😵‍💫

@standplaatskrk.pl