After he was fired in 2024, a Dutchman consulted ChatGPT to figure out what he was owed. The crazy part? He did walk away with some extra compensation. 

The OpenAI chatbot apparently advised the man that he was entitled to both a transition payment and a whopping €50,000 on top of that. 

While he may not have been repaid the full amount he demanded, the court agreed that some compensation was due, and that the company was blameworthy. 

What happened? 

According to RTL Nieuws, the man was working as a buyer for a company that furnishes dental and veterinary practices. When the company was restructured in 2024, his role was altered. 

This did not go down well. Unhappy with the changes, the man attempted to argue with his employer. In the end, his objections led the company to fire him. 

READ MORE | Man who worked three jobs at the same time must return salary, Dutch court rules

Here’s where things got even stickier: the company took him to court after they were unable to agree on a severance payment amount. This is where the dismissal officially took place. 

ChatGPT to the rescue? 

But this wasn’t the end of things. The man protested the terms of his dismissal further and demanded more compensation. 

Apparently, his calculations were fairly easy to make: all he had to do was ask an AI chatbot. 

ChatGPT told the gentleman that based on his situation, he was owed an additional €50,000 on top of the transition payment compensation. 

READ MORE | Losing your job in the Netherlands: what you should know (and the next steps)

The Utrecht subdistrict court agreed, in part. They found that the employer’s conduct leading to the dismissal was seriously blameworthy, and that billijke vergoeding (fair compensation) was in order. 

It was also agreed that the man was entitled to the transitievergoeding (statutory transition payment), as required by Dutch law, where employers must pay when terminating a contract.

Not €50,000, but something

However, the €50,000 amount in fair compensation that ChatGPT was helping him claim was rejected. 

Because the ChatGPT calculations could not be explained, the judge argued, it’s unreasonable to use the chatbot’s arguments as evidence and justification. 

Instead, the man was rewarded €5,000 for the conduct of his old employer, and €6,400 in transition payment.

Lesson learned: AI does not make the best lawyer.

What do you think of this court case? Let us know in the comments! 

The Eindhoven municipal council has given its final approval for ASML to expand. The “ASML Campus” could be the biggest industrial growth plan the Netherlands has seen in years.

According to Omroep Brabant, Eindhoven’s municipal council cast their votes on Tuesday evening.

While 35 councillors voted in favour of changing Eindhoven’s zoning plan, a measly six voted against.

As the final bureaucratic hurdle for the chip equipment manufacturer’s expansion, the vote also approved plans to reroute nearby roads to accommodate the new campus.

For the handful of landowners who have refused to sell their plots to the municipality, the council has now authorised legal proceedings to force a sale.

All roads lead to ASML

ASML, the largest supplier of photolithography machines in the world, is currently headquartered in Veldhoven, the neighbouring municipality of Eindhoven.

The company now wants to establish a second major base on the Brainport Industries Campus (BIC), close to Eindhoven Airport, to build new cleanrooms and office space there.

The timeline is tight. ASML wants construction to begin as early as this month. The first building on the campus plans to welcome 5,000 employees by early 2028.

Eventually, around 20,000 ASML employees are expected to work from the Eindhoven campus. This would double the company’s current workforce in the region.

Growth comes at a cost

Expansion needs land ownership. That can be a problem.

Six of the nine landowners the municipality needs land from have already sold up.

One of them was the owner of the “lonely house,” a detached home sitting in the middle of the planned campus site, for which the municipality paid over €1 million.

The house will later be demolished.

A family member of the owner of the “lonely house” reached out to Omroep Brabant through LinkedIn.

“As a private owner, you quickly find yourself sidelined. The communication feels impersonal, bureaucratic, and under noticeable pressure,” they write. 

Other landowners in the area have also voiced similar frustrations. Yet, the council has now authorised the municipality to pursue forced expropriation through the courts.

Not everyone on the council is happy

Socialistische Partij (Socialist Party) councillor Jannie Visscher explained her opposing vote bluntly.

“A positive ASML decision will lead to unprecedented growth in our region. The SP doesn’t want this to be at the expense of current residents,” she tells Omroep Brabant.

The VVD (the centre-right party) was sceptical, but ultimately voted in favour of ASML’s expansion. Councillor Ceciel van Bergeijk cited the economic stakes as too important to vote otherwise.

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Do you have an Odido router in your home? There’s a reason it’s so affordable. The Dutch network operator has allegedly been sharing detailed information about your home network with a foreign AI firm.

While working on a project for MIT, an ethical hacker in the Netherlands made an accidental discovery.

Sipke Mellema learned that his Odido (formerly T-Mobile) router had been forwarding data about the devices in his home to Lifemote, an AI-based home Wi-Fi solution for Internet Service Providers.

A Telegraaf report later confirmed the pentester’s (penetration tester) findings, adding that Odido had failed to disclose its side gig to customers in its privacy policy.

What information is leaving your home

How bad is the damage, you ask?

Odido routers were reportedly transmitting the names and MAC addresses of every device on your home network. A MAC address is a unique code that every device carries, and you can think of it as a digital fingerprint.

In addition to the name of the device, the kind that reads “Kriti’s iPhone” or “Bedroom TV,” it paints a precise picture of what is in your home and where you are connected.

The router was also sending the names and identifiers of nearby wifi networks, including personal hotspots.

As if that’s not bad enough, it also forwarded general statistics about your data usage.

Mellema notes wryly in his post, “I’m glad the router’s security is so poor. At least then I can see what it’s doing.”

What Odido says

Odido has not publicly commented on Mellema’s findings or the Telegraaf’s exposé.

The internet provider for more than six million households in the Netherlands simply deferred journalists to its privacy policy.

Dating back to September 2025, Odido’s privacy statement explicitly mentions the collection of modem data.

The privacy statement further explains why Odido must process personal data. Aside from the purpose of delivering the internet, it vaguely cites “legitimate interest” and “legal obligation.”

However, there is no disclosure that this information is passed to third-party companies outside of the Netherlands, like Lifemote.

Not an isolated incident

This isn’t the first time Odido’s approach to customer information has drawn scrutiny.

The provider has previously been fined for sharing customer traffic records with Statistics Netherlands (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek) for algorithm development without obtaining proper consent.

Last month, the company was hacked, and when Odido refused to pay the ransom, the personal data of millions of customers was floating about on the dark web.

As of now, Odido’s software appears to have been updated, based on Mellema’s own observation that transmissions to Lifemote completely stopped after his post gained traction.

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It seems the rental horror stories from the Randstad just keep getting worse: an overview from !Woon reports that security deposits go as high as €8,600. 

In 2025, tenants reported unfair deposits, cameras in the home, exorbitant housing prices, rental scams, and rat problems unaddressed by landlords in Amsterdam. 

The !Woon foundation, which, according to their website, “informs, advises and supports residents”, found that a majority of reports filed with them concerned security deposits. 

Not only are many ridiculously high, but nightmare tales from renters show that refunds are seemingly no longer standard practice, according to Het Parool.

Ah, the magic of Amsterdam. 

Sky-high deposits and rents

It seems landlording in Randstad is only constrained by one’s audacity. 

For instance, 17 square meters? To some, that’s a shoebox. To an Amsterdam landlord with the power of imagination, though? That’s €1,850 in rent, reports !Woon. 

It’s certainly not news that prices have been steadily climbing for years (as reports from the Dutch Bureau of Statistics tell us). 

READ MORE | €16,000 per month: meet the most expensive rental house in Amsterdam

As more and more rental properties disappear from the market, however, landlords are throwing caution to the wind in the form of deposit requests as well. 

Even when deposits are high, refunds are not a given — withholding them seems to now be part of the “business model” of landlording, reports Het Parool.

The Good Landlordship Act

The Good Landlordship Act (Wet goed verhuurderschap) was introduced to keep landlords from engaging in indefensible rental practices in Amsterdam. 

In conjunction with the Affordable Rent Act (Wet betaalbare huur), which puts a ceiling on rental prices, these laws intend to contain the massively unfair rental practices running rampant through the Randstad. 

According to !Woon, however, many reports show that landlords are circumventing, or in some cases, flat-out ignoring the laws, particularly in Amsterdam. More than 90% of reports came from this area. 

READ MORE | Amsterdam landlord charges €1,950 in rent, rental committee reduces it to €95

In the case of the Affordable Rent Act, which functions on a points-based system to help landlords ethically set their rental prices, this is plainly visible. 

For example, in one instance, a landlord whose property was listed at a point-score of 163 (equivalent to a rent of  €1,032) was charging  €1,900 in rent, reports Het Parool. 

When the problem was flagged, the landlord promptly took the property off the rental market, citing personal reasons. 

What’s the solution?

The !Woon foundation suggests amending the existing Acts. 

The Good Landlordship Act, for instance, doesn’t specifically address failure to refund deposits as a punishable violation on the part of the landlord. Essentially, there is no incentive for the landlord to comply. 

A potential solution, therefore, could be to make this violation subject to fines from the Gemeente. Seems only fair, right?

READ MORE | Here’s how to check if you’re paying too much rent in the Netherlands (and how you can reduce it)

In general, though, the two acts are seen as recent wins for renters and generally good attempts to regulate the madness of this rental market. 

Unfortunately, Amsterdam landlords will try anything they can to get around them. The best bet is to make the legislation airtight. 

Have you experienced landlord troubles in Amsterdam? Let us know in the comments!