Daragh Ó Briain

Everybody’s talking about the destruction of consumer electronics and that’s bad, but basically everything in modern life has a computer in it. Hospitals, airports, transportation, shipping, medical devices, farm equipment, and point of sale terminals had a good run

AI is becoming the black hole of resources. Money, energy, water, processors, and now RAM. Sucking us into the void. Next thing you know, it’ll be distorting time.

a cartoon of a crab with the words look i 'm peggy the pirate Alt: a cartoon of a crab with the words look i 'm peggy the pirate

Oh well…

Fossil fuels must be phased out as early as by 2029, with "limited to no opportunity for new investments in fossil fuel systems"

Our tax system "supports use of fossil fuels through environmentally harmful subsidies ... This is inconsistent with Ireland’s climate objectives"

On the DPC taking action by starting an investigation they’ve been pressed for for nearly a month.

EU countries will discuss tomorrow adding two new bans to the AI Act via the omnibus. Draft proposals would prohibit AI systems used to generate non-consensual sexual deepfakes and child sexual abuse material. Support is growing, but questions remain.
www.mlex.com/mlex/article...

So.. we’re at the Punch Card Machine stage of things but the character playing IBM has pushed back a bit.

Also: what are the other lot doing?

I did like the one for the velocipede palace in Wexford. Which they have catalogued as being from Dublin

Meta Is Wrong to Try to Sneak Into Privacy Intrusion Meta Platforms Inc. thinks we’re too distracted for a proper debate on facial recognition in a civilized society. It’s imperative we prove the company wrong.

Meta is counting on political chaos to distract from the introduction of facial recognition in its smart glasses. Don't let it

I understand framing the AI bubble RAM supply crisis in terms of stuff like video game consoles because nerds can conceptualize that but the framing does really undersell the sheer magnitude of how it's going to fuck up everything that even touches a computer.

Sometimes you wonder. Bloomberg this morning saying that you can't both believe that AI is a big deal and that we're in a bubble. But you absolutely can! That's exactly the story of the tech bubble of the 90s, major economic impact but not big profits. Sigh.

In any case, increasing demand for flights in the short term, without reflecting the cost of decarbonisation in the ticket price, makes scaling all of these solutions far more challenging.

Our piece shows that any solution is either enormously land-hungry (plant Co. Cork with Rapeseed? afforest 30% of agricultural land area?), or would come with huge power demands and costly solutions, like Direct Air Capture (DAC).

Funny how there's a pretty consistent editorial campaign aimed at getting Ireland to "pull our weight" in Europe's defence, but there isn't one asking us to pull our weight in addressing our fair share of climate emissions #spéirgorm

ICC judge sanctioned by US urges EU to fight back Nicolas Guillou said the Trump administration’s use of sanctions undermines European democracy and called for Europe to curb reliance on American tech.

In an exclusive interview with POLITICO, an ICC judge sanctioned by the U.S. says the measures are meant to intimidate other European judges — and is urging the EU to push back.

Ars Technica Pulls Article With AI Fabricated Quotes About AI Generated Article A story about an AI-generated article contained fabricated, AI-generated quotes.

Feel like this is a good lesson to keep generative AI far from your editorial process as a matter of policy. Ars is a great website. If it can happen there it can happen to anyone that allows these tools in

Furby on Steroids?

Part of me says, well, duh!

Another part says even this is missing the point, which is that this is simply an intrinsic property of a language model.

The maths talk is all “it’s not our fault”, when it definitely is their fault. They knew this all along. They just didn’t care.

This was one of the thickest acts in a veritable forest of them in the recent U.K. governance history.

What does “Dow 50,000” actually tell you—anything about the economy, or just that a number got bigger? Dow 50,000 is a milestone, not a measurement. The level of the Dow is basically arbitrary: it’s… "Dow 50,000" Sound Nice. Until Justin Wolfers Shows You That U.S. Markets Are Coming 21st Out of 23.

The Dow was at 43,488 when Trump took office. It just hit 50,000.

So if you had invested $43,488 in the US, you would now have $50,000. But if you had invested the same amount in the rest of the world, you would now be worth $60,000.

Lemme do a expla-youtube-nation
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYL5...

I want one of those sandwiches, the special kind, with the bread on the outside.

She’s just describing marriage? You can absolutely enter a marriage where you don’t get divorced, just… don’t get divorced?

Again and again, guardrails are a scam

Does your university use ChatGPT Edu? Please send me a DM if you do. I have identified a potential data breach affecting students' data that has not yet been fixed and I'm trying to compile further examples from other universities.

Reposts appreciated!

And that’s just the *white folks*. But I suspect they’re the only ones that count in Elon’s brain.

Oh boy. Apart from the whole Irish Question, the French Acadians who settled around New Orleans and Louisiana have risen from the grave and they would like a word.

Maria Steen on RTE radio and Hillary "Andrew Wakefield" Cass* on RTE website is a reminder that forces of hate and oppression need to be constantly defeated...

*Cass report has been so massively shredded by actual science only the ignorant or the malevolent refer to it with any credence