Turlough Downes

Gosh. OpenAI wants to be public sector.

Probably unoriginal thought for the morning: there is no such thing as the ethical use of llms in education. Since llms were trained using plagiarism, it is a breach of ethics to use them at all.

Institutional policies that encourage ethical use of llms are not appropriately engaged with reality.

Ah yeah, everyone gets it alright - I think I'm the odd one out here!

Important to get rhat right!!!

For me I never liked the notion of turning something circular right or left!

Ah I use "clock off" :)

There's considerable controversy over that 20bn - depending on how one calculates it it is anywhere between 2bn and 20bn: the 20, for example, includes what should be the NI contribution to maintaining the UK armed forces whoch is obviously not a cost Ireland takes on. 2bn is easy. 20 bn less so.

And the irony is that house prices going up makes our families *poorer* (unless we're a family with less than two children).

Or, I guess, unless we own at least as many homes as children!

We certainly agree on that 🙂

I have started to think, actually, that is one reason Mícheál Martin is avoiding starting that conversation: it looks like, for whatever reason, he doesn't want a united Ireland?

It'd be great to see changes in Health and Education though, and that kind of thing would be important to all parties in this.

Oh, sorry, that's what I mean: Ireland itself will likely remain largely unchanged and NI will likely be governed from Dublin. Of the options put forward so far that's the one that makes most sense. The other options don't seem to appeal to, eg, unionists any more than this one.

Even NI folks now generally recognise Stormont doesn't work. It's very unlikely anything other than NI joining Ireland would happen. There are some influential anglophiles in Ireland who would prefer something else, but they are in a very small minority.

This seems like a good thing: maybe developers will actually build the ones they have planning for?

Brilliant illustration of why LLMs should generally not be used in education: even apart from their errors (called "hallucinations" for marketing), there is also the issue of the tight control corporations have over what LLMs return as answers.

We have the solutions for this. We have solved the scientific problems, we have solved the engineering problems. The remaining tricky bit is the social science/humanities problems.

Yep, agrees. And also ... this arson attack is surely terrorism

I can't see how it isn't terrorism.

Following this neo-liberal approach, which is a fantastic approach for gaming certain economic metrics, is precisely what is giving us the far right.

Across the western world it is starting to look like neoliberalism breeds fascism.

2/2

Pat Leahy: John Collison has mapped a way out of the Government’s lethargy Our electoral system and political culture has taught politicians that above all, they should annoy nobody. The housing crisis is changing that

I feel Pat Leahy misses the main point: a billionaire points out some ways in which the Irish system is failing (and is partially right). The billionaire then suggest "improvements" which make it easier to make money, while not necessarily fixing the malaise. 1/2

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

Samhain already? Wow. Winter is here.

Apropos of recent comments by the Taoiseach and Tánaiste:

In September (the most recent data available), 44% of asylum decisions resulted in the applicant being considered eligible for international protection.

It is presently taking the State around 17 months to process a standard application.

But then what would those on middle-class dole do to justify themselves? ;)

By any reasonable definition these folks attacking IPAS centres are terrorists. I generally don't like using that term because it carries with it historical baggage of hypocrisy. But what else are they?

Episode #136 ... Hannah Arendt - The Banality of Evil

The enlightenment naturally leads to totalitarianism - the nazis, MAGA, Rassemblement National (National Rally), Geert Wilders, Boris Johnson, ...

Re-listened to this episode of the excellent Philosophize This. Hannah Arendt's work provides such useful insight these days.

spotify.link/uk8mWlHbWXb

The Commission may well do deals, but Nature doesn't

www.rte.ie/news/analysi...

bsky.app/profile/carl...

🧵
One of the most interesting things about the election of Catherine Connolly is how it has spurred "liberals" (especially in media) to seek to play down her landslide victory. In their efforts to cope with being wrong, they are focusing instead on what they believe to be a flawed selection process.

A stacked area chart of the electricity generation mix on the island of Ireland. There are eight fuel types: pumped storage, biomass, waste-to-energy, hydro, solar, wind, oil, and gas. There is also a black line showing electricity demand. Footnote reads: All-island figures. Excludes domestic solar. Source: EirGrid, SEMO

Renewable generation and pumped storage equalled 64% of yesterday's electricity demand, with a peak of 97% at 23:00. Fossil fuel generation (mostly gas) equalled 33% of demand. 6% of generation was exported, 9% of demand was met by imports.

Now *this* sounds like something I need to investigate!

The context has all changed: the attractions are now obvious to all, including the Orange Order. This is precisely why the discussion has come alive in recent years.

Fwiw, not in a million years would I want to live in the Ireland of 1948. Nor in the Northern Ireland of 1948.

There are fair points, but he wants to focus on regulation: regulation is simply not the problem - we don't have too much regulation. It is true that stuff like offshore wind is ridiculous due to lack of coordination. But that's not because of too much regulation.

I had forgotten about it: I use @ecosiasearch.bsky.social on my work devices ...