For more information on Melanie Rieback, please visit our website www.tedxberlin.de. Dr. Melanie Rieback is the CEO/Co-founder of Radically Open Security, the world’s first non-profit computer security consultancy company. She is also a former Assistant Professor of Computer Science at VU who performed RFID security research (RFID Virus and RFID Guardian), that attracted worldwide press coverage, and won several awards (VU Mediakomeet, ISOC Award, NWO I/O award, IEEE Percom Best Paper, USENIX Lisa Best Paper). Melanie worked as a Senior Engineering Manager on XenClient at Citrix, where she led their Vancouver office. She was also the head researcher in the CSIRT at ING Bank, where she spearheaded their Analysis Lab and the ING Core Threat Intelligence Project. For fun, she co-founded the Dutch Girl Geek Dinner in 2008. Melanie was named 2010 ICT Professional of the Year (Finalist) by WomeninIT, one of the 400 most successful women in the Netherlands by Viva Magazine (Viva400) in 2010 and 2017, one of the fifty most inspiring women in tech (Inspiring Fifty Netherlands) in 2016 and 2017, and the Most Innovative IT Leader by CIO Magazine NL (TIM Award) in 2017. Her company, Radically Open Security was also named the 50th Most Innovative SME by the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (MKB Innovatie Top 100) in 2016.) Website: www.radicallyopensecurity.com This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
Musk Threatened the EU, Europe Built Its X Rival in 6 Months!
Melanie Hui
As CEO, Melanie leads Luminate's team to implement the organisation’s strategy. She brings over 20 years of leadership experience to the role, with a career focused on advancing the rights and well-being of people around the world.Melanie has been with Luminate for five years leading the organisation’s work in Asia and most recently implementing a global strategy review. She was previously Vice President of the Chandler Foundation, where she played a pivotal role in launching the organisation, designing its grant-making strategy, identifying high-impact development grantees, and leading strategic engagements with other funders and partners. Prior to this, Melanie was Vice President at the Clermont Group, managing corporate communications for the multibillion-dollar investment firm dedicated to building companies that harness the goodness of business to create a better world. Earlier in her career, she launched and led the CleanWater Foundation, a safe water micro-franchise serving rural communities in Bangladesh. She also worked in external affairs at the World Bank and served as the Special Assistant to the Vice Chancellor of the Asian University for Women.
Meet the AI OnlyFans: How one startup raised millions to build an ‘erotic companions’ platform | Kai Nicol-Schwarz
Meet the AI OnlyFans: How one startup raised millions to build an ‘erotic companions’ platform --- When AI erotic companion startup Oh raised a $4.5m funding round in January, it had something few in the shadowy new sector could boast. A roster of named investors, publicly backing the company. VCs are often bound by “vice clauses”, which prohibit firms from investing in controversial products like pornography or weapons. As a result, startups working on ethically contentious products often rely on angel investors and family offices to stay afloat. But Oh, which generates NSFW adult content and conversations with both fictional characters as well as bots based on real people, has tapped into a group of seemingly less squeamish investors: crypto VCs. It’s drawn backing from the likes of Tangent, Kosmos Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Bodhi Ventures and Tagus Capital. “Raising money for a business like this from non-crypto VCs is very difficult,” says Oh founder and CEO Nic Young, who positions the startup as a “decentralised platform” and offers payments via crypto. “A lot of crypto VCs don’t have vice clauses — it’s more liberal and free.” Oh wants to use those fresh funds to build the “AI OnlyFans”, with plans to roll out autonomous scantily clad bots that can market themselves on social media and direct message users with spicy conversation starters. The biggest challenge? Convincing enough users it’s not that weird turning to AI when you’re looking for romance. https://lnkd.in/eRF7a5Dn
Why AI Agents are either the best or worst thing we’ve ever built
Why AI Agents are either the best or worst thing we’ve ever built
A European path out of Big Tech lock-in: Eurosky + the "Everything Account" idea (AT Protocol)
If you care as much about privacy, decentralization, and independence from Big Tech than having a 100% EU-made software stack, Eurosky might be worth…
International Women’s Day 2026: 6 Top Tech Leaders On Investment Plans, AI, And The Keys To Success For Channel Partners
For International Women’s Day 2026, CRN gathered responses from the 2026 CEO Outlook report from some of the women leading the top tech companies today on how AI, platforms, and targeted infrastructure investments will shape this year.
Sovereign Tech Fund | Sovereign Tech Agency
With the Sovereign Tech Fund, we invest globally in the open software components that underpin Germany's and Europe's competitiveness and ability to innovate. By targeting core digital infrastructure, our investments scale across many sectors and benefit a broad range of users. Improving the security, stability, and reusability of open software components directly enhances the productivity, competitive edge, and capacity for innovation of startups and small and medium-sized businesses.
» Apple, Carmen Sandiego, and the Rise of Edutainment The Digital Antiquarian
If there was any one application that was the favorite amongst early boosters of personal computing, it was education. Indeed, it could sometimes be difficult to find one of those digital utopianists who was willing to prioritize anything else — unsurprisingly, given that so much early PC culture grew out of places like The People’s Computer Company, who made “knowledge is power” their de facto mantra and talked of teaching people about computers and using computers to teach with equal countercultural fervor. Creative Computing, the first monthly magazine dedicated to personal computing, grew out of that idealistic milieu, founded by an educational consultant who filled a big chunk of its pages with plans, schemes, and dreams for computers as tools for democratizing, improving, and just making schooling more fun. A few years later, when Apple started selling the II, they pushed it hard as the learning computer, making deals with the influential likes of the Minnesota Educational Consortium (MECC) of Oregon Trail fame that gave the machine a luster none of its competitors could touch. For much of the adult public, who may have had their first exposure to a PC when they visited a child’s classroom, the Apple II became synonymous with the PC, which was in turn almost synonymous with education in the days before IBM turned it into a business machine. We can still see the effect today: when journalists and advertisers look for an easy story of innovation to which to compare some new gadget, it’s always the Apple II they choose, not the TRS-80 or Commodore PET. And the iconic image of an Apple II in the public’s imagination remains a group of children gathered around it in a classroom.
Bleeding edge
New York City, 2001. Fraud investigator Maxine Tarnow starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm and its billionaire geek CEO and discovers there's no shortage of swindlers looking to grab a piece of what's left of the tech bubble
Women, technology and AI: Five key takeaways for today’s world
To commemorate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on 11 February, we spoke with Tamuna Kvintradze, Chief of Staff at Women in Tech Global. Ms. Kvintradze offered valuable insights into the barriers that women and girls encounter in STEM, highlighted the critical importance of their participation, and underscored the need to amplify their perspectives within mainstream and social media.
Trans Prostitute Programmer Turns Down Sponsorship From Framework Affiliated Company
Has technological innovation lost the plot? An interview with AI ethicist Dr. Shannon Vallor | Chicago Policy Review
Shannon Vallor is the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) at the University of Edinburgh, where she is also appointed in Philosophy. Professor Vallor’s research explores how new technologies, especially AI, robotics, and data science, reshape human moral character, habits, and practices. She is […]
W Social – Public Beta Launch
An open letter to office suite users, just before the Euro-Office announcement - TDF Community Blog
Dear office suite users, In recent days you will have read various articles announcing the arrival of Euro-Office, which is being “marketed” as the first open-source office suite developed in Europe. We feel compelled — reluctantly, since open source should rest on transparency, not deception — to correct this claim. The first open-source office suite developed in Europe was OpenOffice.org in 2001, based on StarOffice’s source code, followed by LibreOffice from 2010. These are two genuine open-source office suites, built from source code that originated in Europe. They are not a freeware clone of MS Office whose code provenance is undisclosed, nor a product that has rebranded itself out of pure opportunism to ride today’s wave of Digital Sovereignty. It is worth remembering that many of those who champion Digital Sovereignty today were silent back in 2006, when the open ISO/IEC ODF standard — the pillar of Digital Sovereignty — was announced: not only did they not listen to us during all these years, but in some cases they greeted us with a condescending smile. If we can speak of Digital Sovereignty in Europe today, it is thanks to The Document Foundation and LibreOffice community members at large, who kept
