Posts by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
(DIR) Post #Ayvi2ZQaejsoSCTgUy by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2025-10-06T10:12:55Z
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"To many observers, both in the US and abroad, Donald Trump has been behaving strangely recently. Especially online." —The Guardian.Do they mean more than usual?See Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success
(DIR) Post #Azdblg90Tfm2ipCqgq by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2025-10-27T14:57:43Z
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@futurebird It's not really important.It's rubbish for reliable news and information. Decent web sites/strongly moderated specialist forums are better.The world & democracy & mental health would be much better if X, Facebook, Goodreads, Tictok, Linkdin, WhatsApp, Bluesky, 4chan, reddit didn't exist.Pintrest is a parasite.
(DIR) Post #AzkSix8pHsAF5VSzr6 by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2025-10-30T22:19:24Z
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@futurebird In UK and Ireland the Smarties are small chocolate disks covered with bright candy colours sold in a cardboard tube a lot bigger than those. Since 1937. Also sold in Canada.Those look Swizzel's Fizzers sold in Ireland & UK. Though they might just look the same.
(DIR) Post #AzlR7VzDNefTMDW0g4 by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2025-10-31T09:01:01Z
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@isotopp I'd been telling people since 1995 to disable Autorun.It only worked due to Autorun?
(DIR) Post #AzoPKIPjXJNYatlXGa by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2025-11-01T20:00:09Z
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@futurebird Also nearly half of AI summaries are wrong and without reading the entire source you'd not know which half.
(DIR) Post #AzsYNFzueZhUBj0yZc by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2025-11-03T19:50:41Z
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@internetarchive @arstechnica Do it with real PD texts, or on the SAME basis as all the legal libraries.Or stick to archiving web pages.You can't make up your own copyright rules.
(DIR) Post #B0KY71gPgo1L1OuNHc by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2025-11-17T08:09:24Z
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@ricci On linux Mint they added a stupid autodiscovery service that needs removed. Madness in somewhere large.
(DIR) Post #B0TaQX3br5GVO3gaie by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2025-11-18T17:33:20Z
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@thunderbird I was setting up TB with Exchange up 20 years ago, if I couldn't migrate them to a saner mail server. Nice it's now built in. The big problem with Thunderbird is that Mozilla has progressively wrecked the UI; now it completely ignores the OS style/theme.Plugins killed offAccount Interface much worse than it used to be.More awkward to migrate content to a new install, with the annoying 1st time Wizard.It's much harder to use a Gmail account, but that's Google's fault.
(DIR) Post #B0VMFmzVGONqZqfUlE by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2025-11-22T13:18:22Z
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@futurebird For years people bought Roland and HP plotters & converted them to cut vinyl, or added a UV lamp to expose film for stencils, or make a PCB, or even added a laser for cutting.I have an A3 Roland in the attic. It doesn't go well on parallel, but works on serial port with CAD. You can use an ethernet Serial server or USB Serial.Even 15 years ago drawing offices were switching to big inkjet printers using a roll feed that simulate a plotter. They convert the HPGL to raster.
(DIR) Post #B1RnAj4BwvV7RpyoXA by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2025-12-20T17:53:15Z
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@grickle My idea of a summer holiday too.Travel is ghastly.Being somewhere else is OK if you are rich, never take raw food or tap water or ice* and have a few weeks to settle in and know the language.Also don't have to go through airport security or USA Immigration. And a real democracy. None of this getting a hand chopped off, lashed or executed because someone slipped stuff into your bags, or exposes themselves in your room. [*There are places with safe tap water, raw food etc]
(DIR) Post #B1eDdKCqO7o9RoqN16 by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2025-12-26T17:46:17Z
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@grickle Recent research suggests they (AKA Trash Pandas) may be "domesticating" themselves in North America and Germany (someone in the 1930s thought it was a good idea to import racoons).
(DIR) Post #B1haYMiOVtsiCW5Kkq by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2025-12-28T08:47:10Z
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@futurebird There are a number birds that might be made up.Angela Thirkell would be amused.https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mturtle/The_Birds_of_America
(DIR) Post #B22lUZpPfsiWa4Eqn2 by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2026-01-07T13:58:43Z
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@futurebird A very expensive privacy and environment destroying version of 1960s Eliza. When it does return something useful and accurate, it's copied from a book or the web, usually without permission.It's a plagiarism machine that also mixes in plausible junk, by design. So-called "hallucination" is marketing spin. The plausible junk is by design & is not really like hallucinations.
(DIR) Post #B2BAdN1kgoyHbVylyC by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2026-01-11T15:18:07Z
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@futurebird @david_chisnall Except only Marketing believes that LLM / Generative AI can write code or write essays.It's either plausible junk or plagiarism.
(DIR) Post #B2DvI0MYqPk7ONwjOS by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2026-01-12T09:24:06Z
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@osnews They broke File Explorer by having Internet Explorer integrated.Then people with Win9x/Me had to roll back to IE5.5 because actual file deletion via Explorer (rather than recycle bin) would "hang" the desktop for a while.This will go badly. Explorer on Win10 is worse than Win7, worse than NT 4.0, 2K, XP, 2003. My NT 4.0 server had the NT 3.x style file manager. Worked better.Soon Windows will be totally broken.Linux allows install of multiple GUIs & only a logoff/on to swap.
(DIR) Post #B2vNjGObvuPmVI43Hs by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2026-02-02T17:41:37Z
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@firefoxwebdevs And WHY were these "True" by default?Why once even re-enabled?Mozilla isn't trustworthy.The so-called ML is an invasion of privacy and a waste of computing resource.Go back to a Classic Firefox that's ONLY a browser and repects OS GUI look & feel instead of copying Google.
(DIR) Post #B2vNjISaG6mUuBwFl2 by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2026-02-02T17:48:48Z
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@firefoxwebdevs You are missing the point!The features should not exist! So then no need for a master switch in the main settings.Firefox has got so broken it needs loads of settings changed in About.config and even then is LESS USEABLE than 10 or 15 years ago.I've been using Websites since 1994. Mosaic, Netscape, Firefox.Of course I've used most of the others.
(DIR) Post #B2vNjKJnLkwIfVqGKu by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2026-02-02T19:02:04Z
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@plwt @firefoxwebdevs The word "happily" is out of context.I have used Chrome (Android/ChromeOS)_, Edge (windows), IE (various cursed versions on Windows) and Safari (Apple Things) to "browse the web" and get a different browser such as Firefox, seamonkey, Vivaldi, Waterfox, Chromium and others.I'd be on Vivaldi if about:config didn't exist. The only reason I'm not is more flexible script blocking on Firefox to suit TheGuardian web news.
(DIR) Post #B2vNjPZvnBokz0QigK by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2026-02-02T19:21:29Z
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@firefoxwebdevs @plwt I've not used Vivaldi since last year:https://www.qwant.com/?q=Vivaldi+AI&client=plgn-firefox-sb&t=webThey claim to not have AI.I use copy / paste to https://libretranslate.com/ if I need translation.There is no Cloud. Only other people's servers!
(DIR) Post #B2vNmIbYB4TIDrZ2Ya by raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
2026-02-02T19:31:03Z
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@firefoxwebdevs @plwt What Vivaldi says or does is irrelevant.Mozilla did a stupid survey that didn't actually ask if people wanted AI or ML at all.Most people just want a browser. No need for an AI off switch as there is no reason to have ANY ML or AI of ANY kind in the first place.Mozilla by any sane metric has been making Thunderbird and Firefox worse for years. I used them practically from release on XP till 2016.I used Waterfox with Classic Theme restorer for a while after GUI bork.