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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 Saturday September 27, 2025 10:15
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Co-ordinated university attack on staff conditions
national |
education |
news report
Thursday January 06, 2011 13:05 by gramsci fan

in the dying days of the regime...
NUIG academic staff are the first to be hit by a coordinated attack across the universities on staff conditions, notably academic freedom, tenure, flexible work and holiday entitlements. This attack is being spearheaded during the exam season when most staff are too busy to respond - and in the last days of the FF / GP government, no doubt on the calculation that they may not have political cover for this kind of attack post-election. Paddy Healy's blog carries details of a management strategy from the Irish Universities Association geared at forcing through massive changes in the working conditions of academic staff. An initial taste of this strategy is being tested on staff in NUIG.
Under attack are academic freedom (to be restricted), flexible work (staff are to be at their desks five days a week, despite the fact that most academics work far more than 40-hour weeks, often from home or from wherever their research, involvement in policy-making and contribution to the community takes them), holidays (all entitlements are to be removed beyond statutory holidays, which staff will have to apply for with no security, despite the fact that neither students nor international colleagues are around during the standard university holidays), the right to work in your own university or your own area of expertise (management are to have a free hand in disposing of staff as and when they will) and tenure (which is to be ended, meaning that staff can be sacked at any point management deem that a particular subject - be it democracy, study of the classics or drama - is surplus to requirements.
There are two particularly odd aspects of this. One is that these demands are being made "under Croke Park", despite the fact that the unions representing most academic staff - IFUT and TUI - voted against Croke Park. In other words, management are unilaterally demanding the right to rewrite contracts which they have notionally entered into as binding agreements with their employees. It is not clear what threats they have available to force staff to sign away tenure, academic freedom, holidays or the right to flexible work.
The other is that this process is being rushed through while most staff are in the throes of exams and in a "lame-duck" government which has nothing to lose by supporting this process of "putting the boot in". It is to be hoped that effective resistance can stall this until at least after the election - and garner political support for reversing these demands.
University staff of course have often done themselves no favours by treating these issues as special privileges rather than features which should characterise everyone's work - the right to security of employment, the right to work in your own workplace and in an area you are skilled in, the right to speak your mind, the right to decent holidays and the right to be focussed on the work rather than on your physical presence under the thumb of management - but this is what they are. University working conditions should characterise everyone rather than being a strange privilege.
Certainly most working people will be familiar with the problem of managers who know little or nothing of the work insisting on controlling it down to the smallest detail, with no sense of the actual demands involved (e.g. the demand "to work an extra hour", when most academic staff work 50 - 60 hour weeks without counting the minutes shows how little management know of what we actually do).
Losing this battle, of course, will mean losing many of the features which enable academics to contribute to progressive campaigns of various kinds, and this is no doubt part of the purpose. It may also be in part revenge for academic support for student protests.
We'll see if university managements can get away with it.
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