By Hendrik Erz
Windows 11 turns worse by the minute, and complaints about Microsoft products from Teams through Office 365 to VS Code are mounting. Nowadays, only few people actually like Windows. Switching to Mac is difficult as it involves buying an entirely new device, so more and more people are turning towards Linux as an alternative. And, in 2026, this is finally a viable option for a large group of…
Open source always had issues with entitled people. Many people don t make a distinction between paid software and free software, and as such it is common to see reports in open source projects by individuals who have encountered a problem and expect an immediate solution. But since the emergence of LLMs as capable coding tools, things have taken a wrong turn. Now, the same people who previously…
There is still a lot of confusion about what LLMs actually "are." A very helpful mental model to understand LLMs a bit better is to recognize the distinction between code and data, and when this distinction breaks down. In this article, I introduce you to what code and data formally are, and how LLMs completely defy this seemingly neat distinction. I also include some recommendations for any…
Taking "smart" notes is a business. Dozens of influencers on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and the likes, try to sell you the next best workflow, using fancy new apps with cool features, AI integration, and of course a graph view. But is this really helping us write papers? In a recent converssation with a good friend, we discussed many of these issues. I came to the conclusion: None of it…
Last week, the 2026 edition of the INAS conference convened at the birthplace of analytical sociology - Nuffield College at Oxford University. It was an inspiring meeting of many colleagues I hold dearly, but it was also a first in that it more explicitly than previous instances made scholars of political sociology visible. In this article, I provide some initial reflections on what this can mean…
Locally-running generative AI has made considerable jumps in quality in the past three years. I think it is finally time to evaluate such models in terms of how they can help researchers do their work. In this article, I review two use-cases for which I believe they are excellent: preparing a paper for submission and using LLMs as "friendly reviewers."
An important but overlooked dimension in the ongoing discussions of LLM-assisted app development is quantity versus quality. With the help of AI, more people will be able to produce more apps. But there are two crucial ingedients to good software that no AI tool can do: maintenance and UX design.
The "AI Bubble" will collapse. That is not a question of "if," but a question of "when." However, I have seen several people arguing that, once the AI bubble will burst, everything will go back to normal. But this is very unlikely to happen. In this article, I outline four uncomfortable truths which everyone – apologetics and critics – will have to come to terms with.
Recently, the German educational minister has publicly stated that German Student Assistance, known as BAföG, does not need to be increased to counter the current cost-of-living crises. This has raised vocal critique across the political spectrum. I take this incident as a chance to focus on a bigger trend: Educational Retrenchment across all of Europe is rising, not just in Germany. Higher…
Every once in a while I go on a trip with friends. And, while I can keep data brokers (mostly) off of my phone with a bit of research, this is less possible when a group needs to coordinate. Because someone must suggest how, e.g., budget splitting is being done. And typically, this ends with me having another single-use app on my phone. So today I will be yelling at the clouds about this app that…
A few weeks ago I received a free computer, and turned it into a NAS. I subsequently discovered my old music collection, and decided to turn my NAS into a streaming service. Now I am rediscovering the joy of having no perfect choice, and supporting artists I enjoy directly.
Whenever I visit online discussions and someone is about to buy a new computer, one of the first and most fiercely discussed questions is always: "How much memory do I need?" This is typically answered with "More" or "More than you think." But I think that this is silly, especially in times when memory is priced closer to gold than to consumer electronics. In this article, I want to provide some…
Security advisories are a mechanism by the open source community to distribute potential software vulnerabilities to their developers confidentially. It is a vital mechanism to ensure software remains safe to use. However, in recent years, there has been an increase in low to medium severity reports which tend to drown out critical reports that need much faster response times. A rant on cognitive…
Heuristics are everywhere. But every heuristic is always also just a good assumption. And assumptions can be violated. In this post, I share a story about when my data suddenly turned foul, and the cause of this was anything but obvious. The lesson? The road to hell is paved with good assumptions.
In the past months, the software I use daily has started to get less and less reliable. While mostly anecdotal evidence, I believe this to be a potential canary for deeper problems that plague software. For now, we may still be able to trust our software. But what about in ten years?
This is a (late) extension to both my PhD series and my “How I work” series. In this article, I explain the technical setup of my PhD thesis — how I integrated my data analysis pipeline into my writing, and how I enabled exports for the various journals I had to submit my work to.
In this last article in my series on WebGL, I re-implement antialiasing to make the rendered graphic look more crisp. This step concludes the full setup of the iris indicator that you can see on the demo page.
In the second-to-last installment of my series on WebGL, I explain how a Bloom filter works and how I added it into the processing-pipeline of the iris indicator.
In part six of this series on WebGL, I introduce the concepts behind post-processing a rendered image, and how to implement that in a WebGL program.
In this fifth article on WebGL, I explain how I procedurally generate colors and animate them to convey changes in the state of the iris indicator.
In this fourth article of my eight-part series on WebGL, I explain how I animated the rendering and ensure that it conveys a sense of motion.
In this third installment of my 8-part series on WebGL, I explain how I finally was able to draw triangles onto the screen, based on the previous two articles that were merely concerned with setting things up.
This is the second part of my eight-part series on WebGL. This article introduces the basic architectural design of the iris indicator and provides a primer on what WebGL is.
Over Christmas, I made another little side project. But this time around, it turned out to be a rabbit hole of galactic extend. So read this article on my journey, as I fell down the rabbit hole of OpenGL and graphics rendering.
A few days ago, I had to deal with the first "vibe coded" PR to my software. In this article, I reflect on this encounter, and analyze the social habitus of the "vibe coder." I conceptualize "vibe coding"—inexperienced users generating complex code via AI tools—as the final manifestation of hyper-individualism. Drawing on sociological frameworks, I argue that this practice disrupts open-source…
After five years, we know a little bit more about the lawmaking processes in U.S. Congress. At the same time, Congress is barely legislating anymore, because the government is currently under shutdown. What remains from U.S. democracy as we know it after nine months of Trump? An afterword to my PhD thesis.
Sometimes, we all get hung up on fringe phenomena that are largely inconsequential for the world s pressing issues, but still satisfy some urge to understand within us. One such thing for me were monads, a weird little concept from group theory that sits at the heart of many programming jokes. I have spent years trying to understand them, and now that I finally did, I had to realize that I will…
After five years of research and writing, I successfully defended my dissertation thesis on Monday. I am now officially PhDone. Time for a first reflection on the process of writing a dissertation. I also share a "Thank you" to my supervisors and all of my colleagues and peers for being part of this incredible journey.
This might be one of the hardest articles I have ever written. But it answers a seemingly simple question: What exactly is analytical sociology? The answer, it turns out, is surprisingly hard, and this article, too, is unable to unanimously answer it.
In this second reflection article on my dissertation, I talk about theory. I explore my theoretical origins, why I am no longer a theory guy, and how the PhD journey over the past five years have changed the way I approach and write theory. I reflect on the style of theory, and why it needs to differ between theoretically-heavy and methodologically-heavy papers, as both parts need to match each…
