Letting my election candidates know where I think they should stand
I'm gutted by the news that Donald Trump has been re-elected.
There will be an election in Ireland in a few weeks' time, and many of the candidates have declared already. As soon as I get a postal address for them, I'll be sending the following to each:
A chara,
I understand from the RTÉ website that you have declared your intention to run for election to Dáil Éireann in the next few weeks.
I am writing this on the 6th
… [more >>]
A voter's election flyer, 2024 edition
At the last general election in 2020, I decided that if I was going to get a flyer from each candidate, and if I was going to have to deal with it responsibly, I might as well give the same treatment to these candidates themselves.
I prepared one in 2020, though I didn't make reference to it on this blog. You can review it here.
I've just finished my edition for 2024, and I … [more >>]
A new form of copyright, where only you will ever be in control
I have seen over the years, and during the last few months in particular, lots of authors and artists expressing concern or rage at how large language models ("LLMs") and the Internet Archive are abusing creators by engaging in unauthorised copying, often described as "stealing my content".
Of course, these organisations claim that the copying they're doing is legal. A number of law suits are going through the courts right now to test both sides of this disagreement, which means there's a chance that … [more >>]
A recent talk on the architecture of Bluesky
I gave a talk recently to all the IT architects in my workplace on the architecture of Bluesky. The slides I used are embedded below, but they're best viewed directly here. As we're introducing Structurizr in the company for the preparation of architecture diagrams, I also used this talk as a showcase of that technology, too.
If you see any errors, please let me know in the comments below, or at https://bsky.app/profile/eibhear.gibiris.org … [more >>]
Copyright is the problem, not the solution
I've just seen this comment on the fediverse:
I'm old enough to remember how @creativecommons was founded as a way for independent creators to safely share their work and build upon each other.
In 2024, their take is now "billion dollar companies plagiarizing your art is fair use".
…
Hats off to the author, you don't see that kind of, uh, skillful rhetoric chicanery every day. Like "generative AI doesn't compete with artists because artists
… [more >>]
Upgrading mautrix-signal to v0.5.x
The mautrix-signal matrix application recently announced an
update to v0.5.0, which involves a significant change to how it
works. Previously (e.g. in v0.4.3), the application depended on a
running instance of signald to integrate mautrix-signal with
the signal network. Starting with v0.5.0, this dependency is no
longer there, as the application can now integrate directly.
Unfortunately, the upgrade documentation … [more >>]
An interview with Colm O'Regan on The Function Room podcast
Yesterday, on the 13th December, the first of this year's two days of the earliest sunset, Colm O'Regan dropped episode 38 of his The Function Room podcast, with the title The Auld Sthretch with Éibhear Ó hAnluain.
It was a fun chat, recorded on the previous day. In the e-mail discussion plannign the session, Colm pointed out how I previously said the following regarding a 3-minute interview by Morning Ireland … [more >>]
Are you an average voter?
Way back in the mists of time, I was peripherally involved in the campaign to prevent the introduction of an electronic voting system in Ireland.
There was something that irritated me greatly about the conversations among those I campaigned with. It was the frequent use of the term average voter when referring to everyone else not involved one way or another in the campaign.
I still hear the term being used in similar or other contexts, and I believe it's condescending in its implications … [more >>]
Sunset times pages for The Grand Auld Sthretch
I maintain a set of pages on this site that give the sunrise, sunset, solar noon, daylight hours and length-of-stretch for each day of each "operational year" for The Grand Auld Sthretch.
Here are links to the pages, and the months of each year. I'll add to this page as I generate additional information each year.
2025
December 2024 … [more >>]
Views on the Fediverse regarding mandatory voting
The #Fediverse is fun. One of the more fun accounts is @RickiTarr@beige.party. Ricki has a practice of asking simple but probing questions for her followers to answer, which they do in great volume.
On the 4th November 2023, Ricki posed this question:
Do you think voting should be mandatory?
BE NICE!
It's a topic I've thought about a lot over the years, and I was interested in both responding … [more >>]
