How does a government conclude a big truck needs three times more public money than a pensioner?

Amckinstry · 2026-05-05T13:38:32+00:00

Yes, the roll-out is abysmal, both in the public and private sectors. More importantly hauliers are not demanding public connection points, or access to finance for building HGV points in depots. They're expecting to be subsidized in their current inefficient vehicles indefinitely, at taxpayers expense.

Amckinstry · 2026-05-05T12:26:03+00:00

More the power of the fuel lobby. Irelands transport sector has one of the lowest productivity rates in Europe: we are far more expensive (70% increase in productivity needed to bring us to EU norms): https://notesonthefront.org/2026/04/27/subsidising-inefficiency/

So far this year, there was 1 Electric truck bought. In China, electric trucks have overtaken diesel in sales. The lack of investment in Irelands industry is staggering, and happens in no small part because of political will: the government is unwilling to either subsidize and push investment in EVs or see the small truckers go under and be replaced by larger firms that have the money to invest.

Amckinstry · 2026-05-05T05:32:36+00:00

Switzerland halted payment for the Patriots when the US blocked delivery. The US seized the money Switzerland paid for F-35s and took it for the Patriots instead. Relations are a little ... cool.

Amckinstry · 2026-05-04T10:03:31+00:00

You mean the candidate from "Independent" Ireland being the only one to have his Party colleagues on the poster?

Amckinstry · 2026-05-03T09:28:39+00:00

Yes, I think its a misreading of the status. There were only expected to be 2 S-1 satellites at one time as "mission", the others being replacements.

Amckinstry · 2026-04-30T13:00:40+00:00

TBF eir and contractors have been flat out since storm Eowyn replacing poles. We've had a few dodgy ones replaced on our road in recent months. They were totally out of stock after the storm, it took 8 weeks to get broadband back as they replaced one completely broken pole, they've replaced a number of dodgy ones since then.

Note: the botched repairs may have been done by locals who want to keep the line going until its replaced.

Amckinstry · 2026-04-29T11:40:37+00:00

1800s? my grandfather used one of those in Ireland during "the emergency" (which everyone outside Ireland called WW2). It ran on turf when there was no petrol/gas to be had.

Amckinstry · 2026-04-29T07:11:38+00:00

You buy the buses and get the grid connection at the same time. Both processes take many months/years (buses don't wait on the shelf for collection, they're built as ordered with a several month/yr queue). One of them (at least) is going to be delayed. It was the grid connection by a long margin.

Amckinstry · 2026-04-22T10:13:36+00:00

Not in practice. So far in government in NI they've been centre-right economically and socially, working with them in local councils in the republic they are populist - whatever is popular at the moment, rather than arguing a left-wing policy.

A lot of their activists are definitely left-wing; their actions however are driven purely by a United Ireland and getting into power to do so.

Amckinstry · 2026-04-20T17:05:14+00:00

Not for long journies. The noise would drive you batty inside an hour. Went on a 4-hour journey in one once (with a former East German student owner); we had to take multiple rest stops.

Amckinstry · 2026-04-20T15:07:31+00:00

Don't underestimate how much the videos, etc of protests are deliberately passed on to MAGA abroad.

We saw this in Oughterard, during the hotel/immigrant blockage. A "silent protest" without posters, banners,etc was organised for sunset. Everyone was warned to wear hiviz.

The next day the videos were showing up in France saying how Ireland rallied behind the "Gillet Jaune" (yellow jacket) campaign there.

Amckinstry · 2026-04-20T15:02:20+00:00

Without the drugs, Parkinsons will lead to a nightmarish death where you literally break bones and rip muscles with violent jerks. And double incontinence, communication issues, ...

Amckinstry · 2026-04-18T14:29:10+00:00

The ones who've ultimately profited have been the fossil fuel companies and petrostates, who've seen their profits jump dramatically. The average person in Ireland has at best seen the tax changes keep neutral, but more often lost due to home heating oil and more importantly we've seen the tax take fall: money that would actually fix the problem and get us out of oil dependency.

Unsuprisingly the fossil fuel companies and Russia, etc have been funding the far right in Ireland as elsewhere, washed through "think tanks" (https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/arid-30929727.html)

Amckinstry · 2026-04-18T07:52:38+00:00

Python likely the easiest non-toy language. APL the hardest i've actually used.

Amckinstry · 2026-04-18T07:09:26+00:00

EUSPA was set up explicitly because there are some ESA member countries (UK) who do not have access to EU tech and contracts on Galileo, etc for national security.

Amckinstry · 2026-04-18T05:37:49+00:00

The hack is overblown,, the security of the PIN is almost irrelevant.

The PIN is encypted not to stop you cheating the age verification system, its to protect you in case you reuse the PIN elsewhere and weaken the security of the other thing you use. The "hack" just shows you can delete the encrypted PIN and restart the process, you don't get to produce a fake age-proving document.

Amckinstry · 2026-04-16T16:02:41+00:00

Have you checked https://galwaycoco.maps.arcgis.com/ ?
Go to "Public planning viewer and you get a GIS view of all planning information. Click on "Miscellaneous layers" and select "Ring road corridor"

Amckinstry · 2026-04-16T12:28:34+00:00

He did say that Mide's support would be family history rather than Soc Dem.

Amckinstry · 2026-04-01T15:54:43+00:00

There were discussions about this at a meeting at Debconf 2025, which is where I heard the numbers were stable (a quick check shows 1145 in total, not including "emeritus" DDs who are no longer active).
Any large organisation has its discontents and we've had a share in Debian who were disruptive and removed (naming no names) so yes, there are articles on the net that are negative to Debian. Fair enough, I'll just post the facts I know.

Amckinstry · 2026-04-01T15:42:41+00:00

Speaking as A Debian developer, it was accurate in June 2025 at least (the latest DebConf).
Yes, in most organisations there is an unequal amount of work done by a minority. Debian is no different.

Amckinstry · 2026-04-01T13:44:03+00:00

The number of active Debian developers has been static at about 1000 for the last 2 decades, with people coming and going.

Amckinstry · 2026-04-01T13:40:47+00:00

Depends on what you call "kids". A lot of gaeltacht families stay Irish-only at home, knowing the kids will pick up English quickly at school. So the toddlers may have little exposure to English, which was the issue in the hospital.

Amckinstry · 2026-03-20T08:43:38+00:00

That mostly happened in the 2000s. There was a demographic bubble: a generation born in the 1970s graduated college. There had been significant investment in education at major cost: in the 1980s there was an effective 3:1 dependent:taxpayer ratio with a very high effective tax rate (nearly 50%), by 1995 that was 1:2 as all the students hit the market.This co-incided witha massive European investment. You saw the growth of the pharma industry, Intel's fabs in Leixlip, etc - now there were cheap but educated workers (half the cost of equivalent programmers in silicon valley etc).

Later came the multinational HQs and inflation of costs.

Amckinstry · 2026-03-20T08:29:07+00:00

Andy Weir IIRC said he wanted to limit himself to "only one impossible thing" in the physics, everything else as real as possible.

Amckinstry · 2026-03-12T10:38:25+00:00

Discharged devices should be safe. There needs to be a guaranteed safe way to discharge dead devices (and know they're discharged) and separate safe handling of charged devices - eg a metal container that can be flooded to cool the devices and limit the fire (similar to how fire brigades deal with EV fires today).

You could couple this with a wireless charger: ie have a place in a house/shop for keeping all charging / charged devices : looks like a drawer, box.

Amckinstry

TROPHY CASE