Paraic Hegarty
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paraichegarty.bsky.social
Paraic Hegarty
@paraichegarty.bsky.social
Humans. Computers.
Science. Fiction.
Art. Architecture.
Poetry. Prose.
Hope. History.
Myth. Legend

Dub in West Cork. Leftie. Doubtful Quaker

AI-free zone
Reposted by Paraic Hegarty
Oh hey, Discord is taking a survey on whether users want generative ai slop machines crowbared into every crevice. They obviously want to but this is an opportunity to hurt a shareholders feelings and that's rare enough these days.

discord.sjc1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management
The most powerful, simple and trusted way to gather experience data. Start your journey to experience management and try a free account today.
discord.sjc1.qualtrics.com
January 10, 2026 at 12:55 PM
These people are the current worst of humanity and they will keep doing more and worse. History will judge them for the lying, cruel, bigoted, corrupt, cowardly self-serving thieves they are. I cannot hold the Peace Testimony so I lay it down. Miserere mei
January 8, 2026 at 8:00 PM
If you can manage that, everything else will come; if you give in, nothing can help you.
Václav Havel
January 5, 2026 at 7:47 PM
Anyone who does so is lost, regardless of what good fortune may befall him. And so, from the bottom of my heart, my New Year's wish is that you not lose your hope, faith and ability to delight in the world—even if the world is the way it is.
January 5, 2026 at 7:47 PM
The more I think about it, the more I incline to the opinion that the most important thing of all is not to lose hope and faith in life itself.
Anyone who does so is lost, regardless of what good fortune may befall him.
January 5, 2026 at 7:46 PM
This is the solstice, the still point
of the sun, its cusp and midnight,
the year’s threshold
and unlocking, where the past
lets go of and becomes the future;
the place of caught breath, the door
of a vanished house left ajar.

from ‘Shapechangers in Winter’
By @margaretatwood.bsky.social
December 21, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Reposted by Paraic Hegarty
🚨 THE BATTLE BEGINS 🚨

Your favorite year-end contest is back. It’s time to choose who will be this year’s Worst Person In Tech for 2025!

Each day of this week new matchups will drop until we choose the winner on Friday.

🗳️ Cast your ballot: twsu.forms.app/worst-person...
December 15, 2025 at 4:09 PM
Just remembering now I had a dream during the week where I was explaining the concept of eventual consistency and CRDTs
November 20, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Having flown from Cork to London to Hong Kong to Brisbane, from Gold Coast to Sydney and now gone through security for my flight from Sydney to Melbourne, an eagle-eyed security person has finally spotted the nail scissors I didn’t know I had with me all that time 😳
November 18, 2025 at 4:42 AM
We know that the Sun is male and the Earth is female because the Sun gets all the credit for rising and setting but it’s the Earth doing all the work
November 18, 2025 at 1:49 AM
Congratulations, Dr Turner
November 17, 2025 at 10:26 PM
I know what Betteridge’s Law of Headlines suggests but in this case the correct answer might actually be “have you lost your minds?”
November 6, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Top 5 on shuffle 20/10/25:

Anyone Can Play Guitar, Radiohead
Wonderful Life, Black
Missed the Boat, Modest Mouse
Pulling Mussels (From the Shell), Squeeze
Like Water, Steve Mason
October 20, 2025 at 8:29 AM
Top 5 songs on shuffle 19/10/25:

Survive It, Ghostpoet
Mirror in the Bathroom, The (English) Beat
No Hard Feelings, Wolf Alice
I Love You, Fontaines DC
Houses in Motion, Talking Heads
October 19, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Top 5 songs on shuffle 18/10/25:

All My Days, Alexi Murdoch
Play for Today, The Cure
Ruin, Cat Power
Heartbeat City, The Cars
Duel, Propaganda
October 18, 2025 at 9:44 AM
You’re right, I *love* the muppets. These guys are a dose
October 17, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Muppets
October 17, 2025 at 7:22 PM
The ability to hide people’s comments for everyone and then block them is perfection
October 14, 2025 at 3:28 PM
No principles. Scared of their own shite. Do I mean Stripe, the government or RTÉ? Yes
October 10, 2025 at 7:54 AM
Reposted by Paraic Hegarty
if you’ve ever watched the apprentice, that’s the world without arts or humanities degrees
October 8, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Reposted by Paraic Hegarty
🧵 I think it would help if people stopped ‘feeling’ whether or not a person or party is/was extreme or far right.

There’s actually a fairly respected definition. Let me take you through it & then you can decide if someone meets the definition. This is aimed, in particular, at journos [1]
October 6, 2025 at 9:17 PM
Nobody has an obligation to nominate anyone for anything, ever. You have a right to ask, they have the right to decline
September 24, 2025 at 9:32 PM
Reposted by Paraic Hegarty
"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits."

www.computerworld.com/article/4059...
OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws
In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limi...
www.computerworld.com
September 21, 2025 at 12:50 PM
He seems to be a Social Democrat the way some people are social smokers
September 20, 2025 at 10:53 PM