Andrew Gallagher

Geek, thespian, activist, crackpot. A Galwegian Ulsterman at large. DPO by day, politico by night.  0xFB73E21AF1163937

Public Key

npub1wcde5gqcg37hmaw069l54hs307gw3u3nt40cqy4duj9468gvzjqqcd3wpj

NIP-05 Address

andrewg_at_mastodon.ie@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs8vxu6yqvyglta7h8azl62mcghly8g7ge46huqz2k7fz6ar5xpfqqnaqu6p

Author Public Key

npub1wcde5gqcg37hmaw069l54hs307gw3u3nt40cqy4duj9468gvzjqqcd3wpj

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Last Notes

2024-09-16 12:21:37

The vast majority of the benefits of HTML email could be achieved with #Markdown email, and in addition a) users could have a toggle to switch freely between plaintext and rendered mode, and b) most of the security and privacy issues with HTML email would become irrelevant.

2024-09-16 10:42:49

“In a world where ad revenue is all that matters, the first realisation was that journalists were optional. This was followed by the understanding that the news site didn’t need to be real in any meaningful way either; anyone can create something that looks newsy enough to hook people in. There was only one obvious next step: if neither the content nor the site has to be real, why does the audience need to be?”
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/technology/internet/67864/dead-internet-theory-ai

2024-09-14 11:13:32

“Tech has become all Jobs and no Woz. As Dave Karpf rightly identifies, the hacker has vanished from the scene, to be replaced by an endless array of know-nothing hero founders whose main superpower is the ability to bully subordinates (and half of Twitter) into believing they are always right.”
https://ianbetteridge.com/2024/09/14/founder-mode-hackers-and-being-bored-by-tech/

2024-09-08 11:20:26

“The reason why [the Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Meta oligopoly] and all its little digirati minions on social media are pushing things like crypto, then the blockchain, and now virtual reality and artificial intelligence is because those technologies require a metric fuckton of computing power to operate. That fact may be devastating for the earth, indeed it is for our mental health, but it’s wonderful news for the four storefronts selling all the juice.”
https://fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/

2024-09-04 16:49:53

Hardware companies should be forbidden from making proprietary software. If you sell a physical object, and software is required to make that object usable, then it must be free software. Proprietary software is fine, but it should never touch bare metal.

2024-09-04 12:52:20

We need a regulation that every device with a microphone must have a physical isolation switch, and every device with a camera must have a shutter.
https://mstdn.social/@kevinrns/113075290408581074

2024-08-31 06:41:22

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@npub1xwc…ze8u 2015 was some year. Did a huge wind farm come online?

2024-08-20 13:11:15

The world isn’t fundamentally broken. It’s broken because people are broken. Fixing the world means fixing eight billion uniquely broken people, each of which is a whole life’s work or more just in themselves. The task is utterly hopeless. And yet we must try, and we must fail, because what other option do we have?

2024-08-08 16:50:20

It’s almost as if bottomless pit VC funded tech startups rely on dumping to drive established businesses out of the market, without adding any value. 🫠
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodonie/media_attachments/files/112/927/428/513/423/709/original/d98d13947b3d3a11.jpeg

2024-08-05 12:45:26

If you divide people into categories, the end result is always persecution.
Man, woman, Protestant, Catholic, gay, straight, citizen, immigrant.
Always.

2024-08-02 14:20:56

What’s this that just arrived today? (Thanks @npub1upk…tcwy!)
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodonie/media_attachments/files/112/892/867/496/586/954/original/798349038671ed94.jpeg

2024-07-30 14:58:00

No I don't want to set up a #passkey, or use a passkey that I didn't set up. Leave me alone.

2024-07-29 22:06:10

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Does anyone else remember the good old days when companies were terrified that their products might be infected by the dreaded GPL? Let’s make them terrified again.

2024-07-29 22:04:20

Since LLMs were trained on the entire Internet, and the Internet contains AGPL content, we must assume that all LLM generated content is AGPL licensed.

2024-07-24 13:52:34

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@npub18et…m5kt and the FIFA world cup. 😈

2024-07-24 13:03:25

If the same horrific things keep happening for years, they become normal. When horrific things become normal, our way of thinking about them changes. Our anger burns out, our sense of purpose washes away, and we treat them as natural disasters to be endured, rather than moral outrages to be fought.
Crime, poverty, murder. War. Rape. Genocide.

2024-07-20 21:15:03

Seriously, if I go on holiday for just two weeks without opening my work laptop, #signal will automatically desync it from my account? I understand the motivation but the time limit is puritanical.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodonie/media_attachments/files/112/820/885/888/358/775/original/d8ccc3f5e5fb8a10.png

2024-07-18 11:25:18

“normal people don’t use social media to communicate anymore. They use it to watch videos. And those videos don’t mean anything because the apps that want us to watch them want us to watch them constantly. But those videos did replace television. Which is a problem because now there’s no way to elevate the insane chatter that some users are still putting online. We’re left with an internet that is constantly screeching at us, but none of it can break through into culture”
https://www.garbageday.email/p/now-babydog

2024-06-21 17:05:42

You've never experienced white-hot rage until you've used #git with multiple remotes. When I fetch from "upstream/main" why on earth would I want to overwrite the remote-tracking branch for "origin/main"? Why is this so fscking difficult?

2024-06-18 12:15:18

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@npub16u7…uend if I go outside and the bird feeder is empty, the great tits sit on the wall and shout at me

2024-05-26 21:48:43

‘it’s imperative that we recognize mass surveillance – and ultimately the surveillance business model – as the root of the large-scale tech we’re currently calling “AI”.’
https://www.helmut-schmidt.de/aktuelles/detail/die-rede-der-zukunftspreistraegerin

2024-05-10 23:14:25

Bit washed out due to the city glow, but not bad. #aurora
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodonie/media_attachments/files/112/419/331/198/487/214/original/0d6177632043551b.jpeg

2024-04-28 11:53:33

There is no such thing as exponential growth in the real world. If you think you’ve discovered exponential growth, you just haven’t looked far enough ahead to see the limit approaching. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function

2024-04-18 08:19:36

I screen *one* phone call from an unknown number, and my parcel goes straight back to Germany. This is the brave future that phone scammers, cold callers, and lazy ass delivery drivers have wrought.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodonie/media_attachments/files/112/291/241/759/252/514/original/b10a93afe8b462c4.jpeg

2024-04-11 08:43:13

LLMs are the result of training, and they were trained to generate statistically likely sequences of words, not to be logically correct. *Never forget this*

2024-03-29 10:04:46

SAP Concur sent me an email last week thanking me for signing up to their mailing list (which I DID NOT do). Today I clicked the unsubscribe link, had to deny all cookies, then had to unsubscribe from all emails (separately!) and then got an email thanking me for updating my preferences, and then immediately after another email telling me that I had unsubscribed.
They're just trying to exhaust us into submission, aren't they?

2024-03-19 08:45:39

There is no EU cookie banner law
https://www.bitecode.dev/p/there-is-no-eu-cookie-banner-law

2024-03-09 11:44:59

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@npub16u7…uend it is less oversharp and more oversharpened?

2024-02-10 15:32:31

Oh god, somebody please tell them?
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodonie/media_attachments/files/111/907/906/944/341/178/original/ed6f96b6506a7c53.png

2023-08-22 08:47:41

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@npub1d40…u7lw that was also true of Hitler!

2023-08-21 22:54:54

#Putin does not share Hitler’s naked antisemitism, but in all other important respects he is effectively the new Hitler. A junior officer at the time of imperial collapse and democratic experimentation, he has risen to the top and is now obsessed with rewinding history. Item 1: abolish democracy. Item 2: impose social conformity. Item 3: redefine the state in terms of its enemies. Item 4: restore the empire. Total war is the logical end of this process.

2023-08-11 08:49:03

"It is hard to say openly that you don’t care about the long-term future of the planet because you won’t be alive to see it, or because your short-term profits are more important. So respectable-sounding arguments about the affordability of climate policies are made instead.
But the pushback against these policies should be seen for what it is: a highly political attempt to spare the rich and other heavy carbon emitters from making sacrifices."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/11/super-rich-pollution-earth-climate-crisis

2023-07-18 23:12:34

“NATO is not a threat to Russian security; NATO is a threat to Russian foreign policy because it prevents Russia from bullying its neighbors. In other words, NATO enlargement is no more or less provocative than a burglar alarm is to a thief.” https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russias-invasion-of-ukraine-was-never-about-nato/

2023-06-10 08:59:53

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@npub16rs…dfz9 “cake’s”. T’sk.

2023-06-10 08:51:45

If youre going to u’se greengrocer’s apo’strophe’s at lea’st be con’si’stent about it. 🤪😖🤬
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodonie/media_attachments/files/110/519/062/391/424/067/original/467b6e875a113536.jpeg