Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Fraud and mismanagement at University College Cork Thu Aug 28, 2025 18:30 | Calli Morganite
UCC has paid huge sums to a criminal professor
This story is not for republication. I bear responsibility for the things I write. I have read the guidelines and understand that I must not write anything untrue, and I won't.
This is a public interest story about a complete failure of governance and management at UCC.
Deliberate Design Flaw In ChatGPT-5 Sun Aug 17, 2025 08:04 | Mind Agent
Socratic Dialog Between ChatGPT-5 and Mind Agent Reveals Fatal and Deliberate 'Design by Construction' Flaw
This design flaw in ChatGPT-5's default epistemic mode subverts what the much touted ChatGPT-5 can do... so long as the flaw is not tickled, any usage should be fine---The epistemological question is: how would anyone in the public, includes you reading this (since no one is all knowing), in an unfamiliar domain know whether or not the flaw has been tickled when seeking information or understanding of a domain without prior knowledge of that domain???!
This analysis is a pretty unique and significant contribution to the space of empirical evaluation of LLMs that exist in AI public world... at least thus far, as far as I am aware! For what it's worth--as if anyone in the ChatGPT universe cares as they pile up on using the "PhD level scholar in your pocket".
According to GPT-5, and according to my tests, this flaw exists in all LLMs... What is revealing is the deduction GPT-5 made: Why ?design choice? starts looking like ?deliberate flaw?.
People are paying $200 a month to not just ChatGPT, but all major LLMs have similar Pro pricing! I bet they, like the normal user of free ChatGPT, stay in LLM's default mode where the flaw manifests itself. As it did in this evaluation.
AI Reach: Gemini Reasoning Question of God Sat Aug 02, 2025 20:00 | Mind Agent
Evaluating Semantic Reasoning Capability of AI Chatbot on Ontologically Deep Abstract (bias neutral) Thought
I have been evaluating AI Chatbot agents for their epistemic limits over the past two months, and have tested all major AI Agents, ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Perplexity, and DeepSeek, for their epistemic limits and their negative impact as information gate-keepers.... Today I decided to test for how AI could be the boon for humanity in other positive areas, such as in completely abstract realms, such as metaphysical thought. Meaning, I wanted to test the LLMs for Positives beyond what most researchers benchmark these for, or have expressed in the approx. 2500 Turing tests in Humanity?s Last Exam.. And I chose as my first candidate, Google DeepMind's Gemini as I had not evaluated it before on anything.
Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem finally Admits It is Genocide releasing Our Genocide report Fri Aug 01, 2025 23:54 | 1 of indy
We have all known it for over 2 years that it is a genocide in Gaza
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has finally admitted what everyone else outside Israel has known for two years is that the Israeli state is carrying out a genocide in Gaza
Western governments like the USA are complicit in it as they have been supplying the huge bombs and missiles used by Israel and dropped on innocent civilians in Gaza. One phone call from the USA regime could have ended it at any point. However many other countries are complicity with their tacit approval and neighboring Arab countries have been pretty spinless too in their support
With the release of this report titled: Our Genocide -there is a good chance this will make it okay for more people within Israel itself to speak out and do something about it despite the fact that many there are actually in support of the Gaza
China?s CITY WIDE CASH SEIZURES Begin ? ATMs Frozen, Digital Yuan FORCED Overnight Wed Jul 30, 2025 21:40 | 1 of indy
This story is unverified but it is very instructive of what will happen when cash is removed
THIS STORY IS UNVERIFIED BUT PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT AS IT GIVES AN VERY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT A CASHLESS SOCIETY WILL LOOK LIKE. And it ain't pretty
A single video report has come out of China claiming China's biggest cities are now cashless, not by choice, but by force. The report goes on to claim ATMs have gone dark, vaults are being emptied. And overnight (July 20 into 21), the digital yuan is the only currency allowed.
The Saker >>
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005
RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail?supporter? Anthony
Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony
Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony
RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony
Waiting for SIPO Anthony
Public Inquiry >>
Parse failure for http://humanrights.ie/feed/.
Last Retry Wednesday October 08, 2025 18:16
The Fightback Against Politicised Art Has Begun Wed Oct 08, 2025 15:27 | Ferro
The public's indifference to art has never been greater. No wonder, says Ferro: it's all just tired Left-progressive politics by another means. But the fightback for real art that moves the human soul has begun.
The post The Fightback Against Politicised Art Has Begun appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Upon This Ice I Will Build My Church, Says Leo XIV Wed Oct 08, 2025 13:00 | James Alexander
Not until Leo XIV did we have a picture of a holy man staring at an ice cube with his hand on it, respectfully gazing as if imagining the whisky that could go with such a rock, says Prof James Alexander.
The post Upon This Ice I Will Build My Church, Says Leo XIV appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Sir Lenny Henry Wants ?18 Trillion of Slavery Reparations Wed Oct 08, 2025 11:17 | Sallust
Sir Lenny Henry has called for Britain to pay ?18 trillion in reparations to black people, arguing in a new book that high rates of black crime and unemployment are "all because of the slave trade".
The post Sir Lenny Henry Wants ?18 Trillion of Slavery Reparations appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
How Representative is X of UK Public Opinion? Wed Oct 08, 2025 09:00 | Noah Carl
Britain's political class is addicted to X, but how representative Is the platform? According to recent YouGov polls, only 1 in 6 people uses X daily, and most people view it unfavourably.
The post How Representative is X of UK Public Opinion? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Hugh Grant Teams Up With Climate Activists Wed Oct 08, 2025 07:00 | Charlotte Gill
Last week Hugh Grant, one of several celebrities behind press censorship campaign group Hacked Off, announced a joint campaign with 38 Degrees, a radical climate activist group. Charlotte Gill investigates what's going on.
The post Hugh Grant Teams Up With Climate Activists appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Lockdown Skeptics >>
national |
indymedia ireland |
opinion/analysis
Monday October 04, 2004 00:33
by pc - Indymedia Ireland
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Comments (24 of 24)
Jump To Comment: 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1Not only was it uninteresting, it was not news. If you disagree, disagree on the editorial lists, not here.
So who is the judge?
It was not interesting. It was a pile of crap
Why has the debate about punk been removed? That was quite interesting.
With the ability to post to hidden articles but without the ability to edit time of comment.
yeah just fixing the time posting thing as mentioned above it'll back in a day or two... :)
Hopefully the denial of access is just temporary?
As we can all now see, there is a lot of deeply offensive stuff posted, most of which is hidden fairly quickly. Stuff like straighforward abuse, racist insults and so on, to which there is no point in replying to as the people who post those comments are not interested in genuine debate.
If that junk was not hidden the site would be almost unreadable, and people would not bother to come here.
My question is: Why do posts have to be hidden? I do not think it is right to apply censorship. Indymedia.euskalerria doesn't do censorship, so, yeah, you get a lot of crap from Spanish cops and the like, but at least you won't have possible valuable posts censored, plus, as per what they go by in that Indymedia, we have enough wits and answers to reply back to them, or don't we?
glad to see a positive response to this... it came from seeing lots of people questioning editorial on the site rather then through the mailing list... to be honest i never knew /admin.php existed until c + v knocked up the uncover login..., it again shows up the cleverness of this code , i reckon there will be alot more questioning of editorial decisions but hopefully we'll get more editors out of that aswell .... editors edit whenever they happen to be on the site and see something that needs fixing....
a faq and clear links to this feature is on its way, its pretty much done but not solidified...
just to be clear again the mailing list http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-ireland-newswire
has the who and why which you can either subscribe to and have coming into your own mailbox (bewarned its lots of mail everyday) or simple click through the links to the archive via your brower... if your that concerned by something you'll take the few extra clicks... btw if you ever wondering about editorial guidelines just stick dalek in the search engine and they'll be the first story, thats what I always do when im trying to find that page.
QUOTE: Take as an example the use of "_underscore_" as a textual way of expressing "in inverted commas".
No. Completely wrong. When people want to use inverted commas in written text all they have to do is type a set of inverted commas.
When they wish to emphasise a word, not to question its validity. This originate from Usenet usage where the ASCII character set did not provide underscored letters, hence the underscores had to pre- and postfix the word being emphasised.
If I write about your "text" you should assume I am being snarky or questioning, but if I write about your _text_ in a long screed then you should direct your attention away from some other concept that is also being discussed and focus on the text again.
The underscore is also commonly used (according to the _Chicago Manual of Style_ and other standard reference works to delineate proper titles of works.
punctuation, syntax, the normal rules of written english (or whatever language) assist others understand what you think, or feel, but in this interactive media, a lot of the time, users just type.
and that includes typing mistakes.
and that excludes, parsed phrases.
It would be shameful if a feature article which is more often than not the fruit of collective labour, was filled with spelling errors and didn't have a comma.
But the language many people use in the comment fields is not formal, it is closer to the spoken word. Over on ours, we see a lot of comments made in SMS txt abreviations, and because it's a multilingual site, a lot of comments and a few articles which are themselves written in hybrid languages or phonetically.
Deletions happen as well for "spoiling the aesthetics of the page". An example of which is when someone just hits the cut and paste and repeats a taunt a hundred times, or if they leave big huge gaps, (it's probable those gaps are meant to communicate something, but it's not clear, therefore the "page effect" is lost. We're interested in how textual communication alters in this new media. So far not a single indymedia site has developed which uses illustrations to support text in a "normal print format". That's un-surprising, because reading text on a screen is not the same as on a page. Nuances, humour, all the rest have to be communicated in other ways.
Take as an example the use of "_underscore_" as a textual way of expressing "in inverted commas". One can almost imagine the user at their little interactive "add your comment box" or "publish your article now" waving their fingers in the air, like some terrible schoolteacher. Or thinking _how_ do I make that word more important or more ironic than the last?
I believe most write here as they speak. complete with comic voices, and hence the variety of character names. Which is why three thousand word articles get no readers.
You love punctuation and parsing and stuff don't you? It doesn't occur in spoken language.
we were editing this out of his stuff for the last while - but he hasn't taken the hint - and we agreed straight deletions until he does -
While the overall impact of viewing the hidden stuff leaves one feeling a little dirty I can see why 99% of it is hidden. There are some rather odd decisions in there though, not least the hiding of 'Toms' last comment in the thread I was replying to him on. I think it does show a need for a 'why' and maybe 'who' box as unless you guys know something I don't I'm not clear why its been hidden.
I will never read indymedia with out uncover/please, ever again. Much better. Loads better. Brilliant.
Just a clarification - both these are submitted as part of the deletion and are in the email - so you can see them but its more work. (have to look at lists).
Mike, I notice the dada ratings system isn't really used in the wmass site except to generate features - is this the case? Do other users promote stories? We got a request for ratings in Oscailt and are still thinking.
re .:. - what is your opinion on the use of punctuation? Does the site really function with no editorial - sites like nigeria have died from this.
on my collective's site (where I'm bone idle and haven't translated for weeks) we edit nothing. its the 4th busiest indymedia site.
the only thing that gets moved to hidden list is duplicate postings (comments or articles) and sustained porn / pop-up links and naturally there are trolls and organised systematic disruption happens, and ISPs get blocked but a defence of such a system is that you see a "full picture", fascists and racists dont post every day no more than disident bolsheviks or mouthpieces for arabic militancy post every day. Open publishing is a media of internal communication within a wider community as well as all those other things they tell you about on the "who we are what we do" page.
So the main fare is the feature articles. thats where it happens. right hand column or newswire reflects the "background noise" which accompany anything which interests or provokes a section of the wider community. Somedays its depressing to see what gets written, some days it seems like a failure of the project, then later it seems like one of the truest records and archives yet, with all those in-jokes and behind the scenes bitching out in the open and less cryptic with time. Somedays nothing gets published, and those boring days the collective itself airs its prejudices.
things that seem to work to keep the environment useful for everyone-
mutual respect.
fairly consistent names.
critical reading ability.
and a sense of humour / irony.
On Westerm Mass IMC where I am an editor we have both "why" and "by whom" (which editor).
Having a "why" field can be very useful in defusing arguments since the editor doing the hiding won't hide something without a reason and anybody questioning the matter can see what the violation of rules was.
In our experience, being prompt hding material in violation of the rules and being clear about why has meant that we end up having to hide very little.
yeah my only worry is that rascists, fascists etc could post stories happily knowing that even if they're hidden that they'll still be able to get their message accross. I wonder could we have another way of hiding these posts?
Ethics didn't allow me to try it out but it looks as if posting as uncover allows you to set the time your comment was posted. So for instance you could set the time as just before an existing comment and post 'Here comes an asshole'. But maybe its just me who thinks like that.
Otherwise its probably not an issue (and maybe this is disabled). If anything the continuation of pointless rants in the hidden section might be otherwise useful as it would keep them off the visible site!
I see what you mean though about the reasons thing it could leave the heroic volunteers with even more work in needing to answer mail. But from that point of you Eoins suggestion of a pull down tab might be useful if it just had 'point 6 of guidelines, point 7 of guidelines etc'.
Great work pc on getting this together - as per usual the functionality has been available for a while and nobody bothered telling anyone.
Comments on the comments:
Eoin, I have no idea what your ps is about and think the drop down box is completely unworkable and a bad idea. If someone hides they should type their reason and the guidelines are too fluid for a dropdown.
Joe - yeah the 'reason why' field might be worthwhile, and is probably feasible since an editor fills this in when doing a delete. However I would be nervous that it would result in a lot of comments on the same issue to the list - which is not necessarily a bad thing but they are unlikely to be replied to more than once (that whole volunteer thing). Maybe put a link to ed guidelines instead which should contain instructions on how to get the reason and how to comment. People contesting a decision should have to work too, as well as the volunteer editors.
On the posting, if i recall correctly, you can post the same as anybody else but cannot use html the way editors normally can - i haven't tried posting to a hidden article and am not sure whether this is a good or bad thing (i.e. should debates continue after a thread is hidden and would the hidden area become a new, shadow site, with a large number of users staying logged in by default?). What were your reasons for saying posting should be disabled?
So all we need to do to comment on hiden articles is sign in and go ... excellant.
Also with the advent of Jpeg virus's will you be scanning all the photos and the like that get uploaded to this site?
Pretty impressive, I even found myself outraged when I spotted articles I liked that had been hidden! Could probably do with a 'why' field as I think I worked it out in most cases but would be useful to have this confirmed. Also might be a good idea to have a 'comment on the hiding of this article' button so that outraged of Tunbridge- Wells could send angry mails to the editoral list.
BTW tried to post this while logged in as uncover, lets see if that works, if it does it may need to be fixed.
This is a great initiative, well done!! People wondering how much stuff is hidden, and what exactly, can go through the entire database of newswire articles and comments.
Suggestion: If there were a little field where editors would say what the problem was (a select drop-down box of editorial guidelines perhaps?) then we could also tell quickly *why* things are being hidden. Someone could then run queries against the database to show things like: "Number of hidden *discriminatory or hateful posts* filed under *EU*" or something similar.
Again, great work!
(P.S. If this text is italics or this text is bold then fine... but make sure to filter out html tags like *table* -- or worse -- which could mess up the layout of the website.)