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Gaelic Football Laochra is the first new GAA video game in nearly 20 years

Marty
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Gaelic Football Laochra is the first new GAA video game in nearly 20 years

After nearly two decades without a Gaelic football video game worth talking about, Belfast-based studio Buck Eejit Games is finally changing that. Their debut title, Gaelic Football Laochra, is heading to PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam, with a release expected in May 2026.

The game is being published by Tru Blu Games, and while the Steam page currently lists “coming soon” rather than a locked-in date, the studio has indicated a May 28th window. Given the history of this project, nobody would begrudge them a bit of caution on exact dates.

It’s a genuinely long time coming. The last Gaelic football games were produced by Australian studio Transmission Games, back in 2005 and 2007. They sold well enough in Ireland, but they weren’t exactly beloved. Peadar McMahon, founder of Buck Eejit Games, was one of the players who experienced both titles first-hand during his university years and came away thinking he could do better.

After a failed Kickstarter in 2018, he formally set up the studio in May 2022 with a team of seven developers and got to work.

What’s in the game

The modes on offer cover the obvious bases. There’s a Quick Match option for solo or two-player local games, a Tournament mode built around real competitions, and a Career Mode where you manage a county across multiple seasons. A Creator Suite lets you build custom players, teams, stadiums, colours, and crests, with plans for a sharing platform to let the community swap their creations.

One interesting design decision is the step count. The official four-step rule felt too restrictive in playtesting, so the developers allow around six steps before requiring a bounce or solo, depending on the situation. It’s a sensible call; making the game feel good to play matters more than strict simulation.

Animation was another major challenge. Buck Eejit Games initially explored motion capture using Queen’s University Belfast’s Innovation Lab during the Kickstarter phase, but found it expensive, restrictive, and not particularly effective. For Laochra, they invested in a full-body motion capture suit instead, giving them the freedom to record anywhere, at any time. With over 50 hours of capture time needed, it was one of their own team members, a current Gaelic football player, who ended up wearing the suit for most of it.

Online play and what to expect at launch

Online multiplayer won’t be available at launch. Local two-player is fully supported from day one, and online play is on the roadmap, but there’s no timeline confirmed for when that arrives. It’s worth knowing upfront if that’s a dealbreaker for you, though the lack of it at launch isn’t unusual for a small indie studio shipping their first game.

Why it matters

There’s something genuinely meaningful about a Belfast-based independent studio taking this on. The GAA has a massive audience in Ireland and among the diaspora, and the absence of a quality video game representation for this long has been a real gap. Titles like FIFA and the various rugby games have had decades of iteration and massive budgets behind them; Gaelic football has had almost nothing.

Laochra won’t be competing on those terms, but it doesn’t need to. If it plays well, captures the atmosphere of county football, and gives fans something they can actually enjoy, that’s more than enough of a starting point. The Gaelic Football Laochra Steam page is live now if you want to add it to your wishlist ahead of release.

Xbox Game Pass is cheaper now, but Irish gamers are still being stiffed

Marty
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0
Xbox Game Pass is cheaper now, but Irish gamers are still being stiffed

Microsoft has quietly reduced Xbox Game Pass Ultimate pricing in Ireland to €20.99 per month, down from the €26.99 that caused so much anger when it landed last October. PC Game Pass has also dropped, now sitting at €12.99 per month. Both tiers are currently badged as “LOWER PRICE” on the Irish Xbox store, which tells you everything you need to know about how Microsoft wants this to land.

The problem is the framing. This is being positioned as Microsoft doing subscribers a favour, when what actually happened is that the company hiked prices aggressively, watched a wave of cancellations follow, and has now partially retreated. If you read our piece on the Xbox Game Pass price hike that sparked serious backlash in Ireland, you know the full story. Ultimate went from €17.99 to €26.99 last October, a roughly 50% jump that pushed the annual cost from €216 to €324. That increase triggered cancellations on a scale that reportedly overwhelmed Microsoft’s own subscription management site.

So yes, €20.99 is better than €26.99. But it is still €3 a month more than the price that existed before any of this started. Annualised, Irish subscribers are now paying €251.88 per year for Ultimate, compared to €216 before the hike. That is still €35.88 more per year than it cost 18 months ago, and nobody at Microsoft is highlighting that particular number.

What you get for your money now

To be fair, it is worth laying out what the current tiers actually include, because the structure has changed since we last covered it in detail.

Essential comes in at €8.99 per month and covers 50+ games across Xbox console, PC and supported devices, online console multiplayer, and game streaming including select titles you already own. It is the entry-level option and the price increase here was comparatively modest.

Premium sits at €12.99 per month and gives you 200+ games, with new Xbox published games joining the library within 12 months of launch. That “within 12 months” wording is doing a lot of heavy lifting and is worth paying attention to, it is not day-one access.

Ultimate at €20.99 per month is the top tier, offering 400+ games, new games on day one including Xbox published titles and third-party games, Fortnite Crew, EA Play, Ubisoft+ Classics, and the best cloud streaming quality available. PC Game Pass is now €12.99 per month, covering hundreds of PC games, day-one access, EA Play, and third-party benefits.

The Call of Duty question

Here is where the “pay more for less” argument still has some teeth. Microsoft has confirmed that future Call of Duty titles will no longer launch day one into Game Pass. New releases will join the service roughly a year after launch instead, while existing titles already in the library stay put.

For anyone who subscribed primarily to play new Call of Duty games on launch day, the value calculation has fundamentally shifted. You are now on Ultimate, paying more than the pre-hike price, without the day-one access to the franchise that was arguably one of the service’s biggest selling points. Existing Call of Duty games remain, so it is not a total loss, but the direction of travel is not encouraging.

Why this backtrack matters more than the saving

The most telling part of this story is not the price change itself. It is what the change admits about the original decision.

New Xbox leadership has openly acknowledged that Game Pass had become too expensive and that a better value equation was needed. You do not make that kind of public statement unless the subscriber data is giving you a serious headache. The sudden 50% hike last October was the kind of shock that breaks habits rather than nudging them. As we noted when the Xbox Game Pass price hike hit Irish wallets, once people cancel and realise they are not missing the service as much as they expected, many simply do not come back. A more gradual increase would probably have retained far more subscribers. Instead, Microsoft handed people a reason to properly examine what they were spending and whether they were getting enough in return.

That is the real cost of the decision. Not just the subscribers who left, but the ones who left, found they were fine, and now have no particular reason to return even at €20.99.

Should you come back to Game Pass?

If you cancelled during the hike and have been managing without it, €20.99 for Ultimate is worth a fresh look depending on how you game. If you regularly play across a broad catalogue and want day-one access to Xbox-published titles and EA Play, there is genuine value there. The library is still substantial.

If you are primarily a PC gamer, €12.99 for PC Game Pass is a reasonable proposition, particularly given it includes EA Play and day-one third-party releases.

Where it gets harder to justify is if you are a casual subscriber who dips in and out, or if you were specifically there for blockbuster franchise launches. At €251.88 a year, you could buy three full-price games and own them outright. As we said last October, the maths only really works if you are actively hammering the catalogue every single month.

Don’t forget – you can also by GamePass keys elsewhere on the web. Just saying.

Microsoft has moved in the right direction. Irish subscribers are paying less than they were six months ago, and that is worth acknowledging. But the “LOWER PRICE” badge on the Xbox store is measuring from a high point that should never have been reached, and it is worth remembering that when you decide whether or not to re-subscribe.

Škoda’s DuoBell is a bike bell designed to cut through noise-cancelling headphones

Marty
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0
Škoda’s DuoBell is a bike bell designed to cut through noise-cancelling headphones

If you’ve ever cycled through a busy city and watched someone step out in front of you, headphones firmly in place, you’ll understand the problem Škoda is trying to solve. The DuoBell is a redesigned mechanical bicycle bell developed in partnership with researchers at the University of Salford, and it’s built specifically to be heard by people wearing active noise-cancelling headphones.

It sounds almost absurdly niche until you consider how many people now wear ANC headphones while walking, running, or just zoning out on a commute. In cities like London, the mix of rising urban cycling numbers and increasingly effective noise-cancelling technology has created a genuine road safety gap. A standard bike bell simply doesn’t register for someone whose headphones are actively filtering out the world around them.

How the DuoBell actually works

The engineering behind it is more interesting than you might expect. Researchers identified what they’re calling a “safety gap” in ANC performance, a narrow frequency band sitting between 750 and 780 Hz where most noise-cancelling algorithms consistently struggle to suppress sound. The DuoBell rings within exactly that range, essentially slipping through the filter rather than fighting it.

That’s just the first part. The bell also features a second resonator tuned to a higher frequency, which keeps it sounding like a recognisable bike bell to the human ear rather than something clinical or unfamiliar. Then there’s the striking mechanism, which produces rapid, irregular bursts rather than the steady single ring of a traditional bell. ANC processors work by predicting and cancelling incoming sound patterns, and those irregular strikes are too fast and too unpredictable for the algorithm to catch up with in time.

Three things working together, then: the right frequency range, a dual resonator to preserve the familiar sound character, and an unpredictable strike pattern that ANC can’t get ahead of.

What the testing showed

Real-world trials were run with Deliveroo couriers in London, putting the bell into daily use rather than just a controlled lab environment. The results were significant enough that riders reportedly wanted to keep using it on their own bikes after the trial ended, which is probably the most honest endorsement you can get.

In those tests, pedestrians wearing ANC headphones were able to detect the DuoBell from up to 22 metres further away than they could hear a standard bell. That extra distance translates directly into reaction time, giving both the cyclist and the pedestrian more space to respond before a potential collision.

Analogue solution to a digital problem

Škoda is positioning the DuoBell as an analogue fix to a digital problem, and there’s something genuinely clever about that framing. Rather than adding electronics or connectivity to a bicycle bell, they’ve gone the other direction, using acoustic engineering to update a century-old safety device so it works within the constraints of modern listening habits.

The prototype follows Škoda’s Modern Solid design language and carries the company’s current branding. Škoda has a long history in cycling that often gets overlooked alongside the cars, and the DuoBell fits neatly into that side of the brand.

Perhaps most notably, Škoda has made all of the research and findings publicly available at no cost, meaning any manufacturer can use the findings to build their own version. That open approach suggests the goal here is genuinely about pushing the safety idea forward rather than locking it down as a product.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 on PSVR2: is it worth it?

Marty
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0
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 on PSVR2: is it worth it?

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 finally has full PSVR2 support, and if you own the headset, you’ve probably been wondering whether this is the moment to dust it off. The short answer is yes, with some important caveats depending on which PS5 you’re running.

I’ve given Flight Sim a go on PC with my PSVR2 when Sony released the PC PSVR adapter and have to say it’s quite the experience. Now, PSVR2 support arrived on console as a free update via Sim Update 5 in April 2026, covering 125 aircraft and available at no extra cost to existing PS5 owners of the game.

Developed by Asobo Studio in collaboration with Microsoft, the mode was reportedly inspired by how Gran Turismo 7 brought VR to PlayStation, which remains one of the most polished VR implementations on any console. It’s a high bar, and MSFS gets closer to it than you might expect.

What flying actually feels like in PSVR2

The cockpit is where this experience lives or dies, and it absolutely delivers. Sitting inside a virtual aircraft in full VR is a genuinely different thing to watching it on a flat screen. You can read the gauges, reach for the switches, and feel the scale of the world outside the windscreen in a way that flatscreen simply cannot replicate. Real pilots who’ve tried it have noted that the spatial awareness and instrument positioning feel legitimately close to the real thing.

The sense of scale is the standout. Flying low over a mountain range, banking over a coastal city, or descending through cloud cover towards a runway carries real physical presence. Flying the Cessna over familiar geography, your own city or coastline, gives it an almost eerie quality. People have described it as a childhood dream made real, which sounds hyperbolic until you actually try it.

Helicopters deserve a special mention. The Guimbal Cabri G2 in VR creates a genuine sensation of being suspended in mid-air, which is exactly what it should feel like. The Red Bull Air Race content, pulling through low-altitude gates at speed, is jaw-dropping in the headset.

Visuals and performance: the honest picture

This is where things get more nuanced, and where your expectations need calibrating.

The cockpit interior looks sharp and detailed. The PSVR2’s OLED display gives you vivid colours and deep blacks, which works particularly well for instrument panels and night flying. Scenic locations with good photogrammetry data, the Grand Canyon at dawn being the frequently cited example, look genuinely stunning.

Outside the cockpit, however, the picture is more complicated. Distant environments can appear blurry, terrain in less-photographed areas lacks detail, and dense urban environments like Tokyo or New York can look cartoony at low altitude. The game uses Flexible Scaled Rasterization (foveated rendering via the PSVR2’s eye tracking) and frame duplication rather than native 90fps rendering, which helps maintain playable frame rates but means you’re not getting a crystal-clear image everywhere you look.

One underappreciated factor is your internet connection. MSFS streams the entire world in real time. If you’re on Wi-Fi with a mediocre connection, texture quality and pop-in will be noticeably worse. Switching to ethernet (wired internet) can make all the difference.

PS5 vs PS5 Pro: which do you actually need?

This is probably the biggest single question for most buyers, and the community consensus is fairly clear. The PS5 Pro provides a noticeably smoother and sharper experience, particularly outside the cockpit. On the base PS5, visual quality takes a hit in complex environments, and frame drops in dense city flyovers can be significant enough to cause issues.

That said, it’s not black and white. The Pro can still stutter over somewhere like Manhattan at low altitude with settings maxed out. And neither machine matches what you’d get from a high-end gaming PC running something like an RTX 4090. However, the total cost comparison shifts things significantly. A PS5 Pro, PSVR2 headset, and a copy of MSFS 2024 puts you somewhere in the region of €1,200 to €1,500 in the Irish market. A comparable PC VR setup would cost considerably more.

If you’re on a base PS5 and primarily buying a headset for this game, either upgrade to the Pro or wait to see how future patches improve performance. If you already own the headset and a standard PS5, it’s still worth trying, just manage your expectations for city environments.

Controls: Sense controllers, DualSense or HOTAS?

The PSVR2 Sense controllers allow you to physically interact with cockpit instruments, flicking switches, turning knobs, and pressing buttons in 3D space. It’s genuinely immersive and works well for lighter aircraft like the Cessna, where every button including the cabin lights is functional and reachable. If you stick at it and really give these the time they need to feel natural, it can be a very immersive way of taking the controls of a plane.

For more demanding flying, particularly if you want to use the simulation seriously, the DualSense is a solid alternative that many players prefer for its precision on throttle and flight controls, but it simply will not be as immersive as the PSVR2 controllers or a HOTAS setup. HOTAS (joystick and throttle) requires plenty of manual rebinding and isn’t plug-and-play. Welcome to the world of PC-gaming/simulation. A mouse can be used alongside the headset for instrument interactions, which some players find more reliable for clicking small controls accurately.

None of this is a dealbreaker, but it’s worth knowing before you commit to a control setup.

Tips for getting the best experience

A wired ethernet connection is the single biggest quality-of-life improvement you can make. Wi-Fi will degrade your world texture quality noticeably, especially in areas with dense photogrammetry data.

Start with smaller, simpler aircraft like the Cessna 172. They’re less hardware-demanding, every instrument works properly, and they’re forgiving for first-time VR fliers.

Fly over less complex terrain first, islands, canyons, and mountain ranges look significantly better than major cities at low altitude. Gaining altitude above 10,000 feet also smooths things out considerably in populated areas.

If you’re on the Pro and chasing visual clarity, setting exposure compensation to around -0.3 in the display settings can sharpen perceived edge detail. Disabling live weather and live traffic reduces the streaming load if you’re struggling for performance.

Motion sickness is worth flagging. Even with smooth playback, some players experience discomfort during aggressive manoeuvres or turbulence. Starting with slow, stable aircraft and shorter sessions gives you time to adjust.

PSVR2 vs PC VR for MSFS 2024

For those weighing up options, here’s a straightforward breakdown of the key differences.

Setup with PSVR2 is significantly easier. There are no base stations, no driver conflicts, and no PC configuration required. You plug the headset into your PS5 and you’re flying within minutes. PC VR, whether through a Quest 3, Valve Index, or even the PSVR2 itself, involves more complexity both in setup and ongoing maintenance.

Visual quality on a high-end PC with a 4070 or 4090 is noticeably better, particularly for distant terrain and resolution. I’ve used my AMD 7900 XTX and really enjoyed the visuals, but with great instability.

The PSVR2’s OLED display has strengths of its own, particularly in colour depth and contrast, and its strong stereoscopic overlap reportedly helps mask photogrammetry imperfections that are more visible in other headsets.

Cost is where PSVR2 wins clearly. If you don’t already have a capable gaming PC, the console route is far more affordable for a comparable level of cockpit immersion.

Is PSVR2 worth buying for Microsoft Flight Simulator?

If you own a PS5 Pro and have any interest in aviation, geography, or just want one of the most transportive VR experiences available on console, this is absolutely worth your time. The cockpit immersion is remarkable, the world feels genuinely vast, and the setup is straightforward enough that you’ll be airborne in minutes.

If you’re on a base PS5, the experience is still worthwhile but you’ll need to be selective about where and how you fly. Dense cities at low altitude are not your friend. Stick to scenic routes, higher altitudes, and less photogrammetry-heavy terrain, and it holds up well.

If you’re comparing it to PC VR, you already know PC VR is technically superior at the high end. The question is whether you want to spend several times as much to access that ceiling. For most people, PSVR2 on PS5 Pro offers an extraordinary experience at a fraction of the cost.

It’s not perfect, and it will get better with future updates. But as a landmark moment for console VR flight simulation, it’s hard to argue with what Asobo have managed to pull off on PS5 hardware.

Should you invest heavily to get up and running if this is all you want to try? My gut says no, believe it or not. Typically, you’ll get some hours out of this, scratch the itch, and then it all gathers dust. You’re better off deciding if your setup will offer plenty more satisfaction in other areas before commiting.

Frequently asked questions

Does PSVR2 work with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024?

Yes, full PSVR2 support launched as a free update via Sim Update 5 in April 2026, covering 125 aircraft.

Is the PSVR2 experience better on PS5 Pro?

Noticeably, yes. The PS5 Pro delivers a sharper, more stable experience particularly in complex environments. The base PS5 works but is more prone to frame drops in dense cities.

Can you use DualSense with MSFS 2024 on PSVR2?

Yes. The DualSense, PSVR2 Sense controllers, and HOTAS setups are all compatible, though HOTAS requires manual control rebinding.

Why does MSFS look blurry on PSVR2?

Blurriness outside the cockpit is a combination of the game’s reprojection technique, limited PS5 hardware headroom, and, significantly, internet connection quality. MSFS streams world data in real time, so a faster wired connection produces noticeably better texture quality.

Does internet speed affect MSFS PSVR2 quality?

Yes, substantially. Using ethernet rather than Wi-Fi is one of the most effective ways to improve visual quality and reduce pop-in.

Why Ireland’s 1926 census going online is such a big deal

Marty
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Why Ireland’s 1926 census going online is such a big deal

I started writing about tech after working in a Carphone Warehouse shop. It was a college job I had while completing my MA in History in Limerick. And here we are, all these years later, finally marrying the two things together as the 1926 Irish census is released online.

I still remember the first time I opened up the 1911 Irish census records online and typed in my family name. Seeing relatives I’d only ever heard about in stories, listed in their own handwriting on an official document, was one of those small moments that stays with you. I started wondering why we only had access as far as 1911. That’s when I learned about the 100-year rule, and about the 1922 fire at the Public Record Office in the Four Courts that cost us centuries of Irish history stretching back well before the famine.

So naturally, I, and plenty of others, are genuinely excited that today marks the going live of the 1926 census data, which you can access right now, completely free, online.

What has actually happened with the 1926 census

From this morning, the National Archives of Ireland has made the full 1926 census freely available and fully searchable online. It covers over 700,000 individual household returns, digitised from the original paper records that have been sitting in the archives for a century. The 100-year closure rule that keeps census data under wraps has expired, and the whole thing is live on the National Archives website.

This isn’t a paywalled resource or a pay-per-view situation. It’s free to search, free to browse, and released under a Creative Commons licence that allows genuine public access.

Why this particular census matters so much

The 1926 census is the first census ever conducted by the Irish Free State. That alone makes it historically significant. It sits in a really interesting gap in our records, after the 1901 and 1911 censuses taken under British administration, and before the Ireland most of us recognise today.

There was no 1921 census in Ireland because of the War of Independence, so this 1926 release fills an enormous hole in the historical and family record. For a lot of us, it’s the first time we’ll see our grandparents or great-grandparents appear on an official document as children or young adults. That makes it feel immediate rather than distant.

The country captured in these returns had just come through a decade of revolution, civil war, and upheaval. It recorded a population of just under three million, which was actually a drop of more than 5% from the 1911 figures, and tells its own story about emigration and conflict.

What you can actually learn about your family

The 1926 returns contain 13 categories of information per person, and they’re genuinely rich. You’ll find names as recorded on the night, ages, marital status, birthplace, occupation, religion, literacy, and crucially, proficiency in the Irish language.

Beyond the individuals, you get a real sense of how people lived. How many rooms a family had. How many people shared them. Who was visiting on the night. Whether there were domestic servants, lodgers, or extended family under one roof. These mundane details tell you more about life in 1920s Ireland than most history books manage in a chapter.

What you can learn about your local area

You don’t need a full family tree or a burning interest in genealogy to get value out of this. You can search your own townland, a street you grew up on, or somewhere your family has always talked about. You’ll see who lived there, what jobs they did, how common certain surnames were, and how families were structured.

It’s genuinely a time machine for social history. Housing conditions, working life, language use, and family structures in 1926 Ireland all come alive through the sort of ordinary details that don’t make it into textbooks.

How to get started and what to watch out for

Start simple. Try searching a surname you know well, or look up a specific townland. If you’re hitting dead ends, keep in mind that spellings were often inconsistent, ages were sometimes approximate, and given names were occasionally recorded incorrectly. Search creatively, try variations, and cross-check against other records where you can. You might need some maiden names too!

The census works best as a starting point rather than a final answer. Pair it with free birth, marriage, and death records on Irish Genealogy if you want to push further back or track down maiden names. The two resources complement each other really well.

One thing worth flagging. Because this is the first census of the independent Irish State, it doesn’t include the six counties of Northern Ireland. If your family roots are in Belfast, Derry, or elsewhere in the North, you won’t find those ancestors here. Partition had already happened by 1926.

Why today matters

Ireland’s paper trail is famously patchy. The 1922 fire at the Four Courts destroyed centuries of records that we will never get back, which makes what survives feel precious in a way that isn’t true for most countries. Getting a brand new census released, fully digitised, and free to search is a rare event. The last time it happened was the 1911 census being digitised in 2009.

For anyone even slightly curious about where they come from, or what Ireland actually looked like in 1926, today is worth your time. Go and have a look. I promise you’ll find something that surprises you.

When will the next Irish census be released online?

If you get the bug for this sort of research today, the bad news is you’ve a decent wait ahead of you for the next big drop.

The 1936 census was taken on 26 April 1936, which means under the 100-year rule, we should expect it to be released online in April 2036. Roughly ten years from now. That one will capture Ireland during a very different era. The 1937 constitution was being drafted, through the economic war with Britain, and just before the Second World War reshaped everything again.

After that, the pace picks up a bit. The 1946 census was taken in May of that year, so we’d be looking at a 2046 release for that one. Then the 1951 census follows in 2051, and so on. From the 1950s onwards, Ireland started running censuses roughly every five years, which means once we get past the 2036 release, new data should start arriving more regularly.

It’s worth remembering that the 1926 census release is genuinely a one-off moment.

How to take back control of your social media algorithm

Marty
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0
How to take back control of your social media algorithm

There’s a moment most of us have experienced. You pause on a video, maybe something unsettling from a conflict zone, just long enough for curiosity to take hold. A few minutes later you’re four videos deep into war footage you never went looking for. The algorithm noticed that pause. It remembered. And now it thinks this is what you want.

That’s the thing about social media algorithms. They are watching everything, not just what you like or follow, but where you slow down, what you rewatch, and what you almost scroll past. Understanding that is the first step to actually doing something about it.

Algorithms learn from behaviour, not settings

Most people’s first instinct when their feed goes wrong is to dig into settings. And yes, platforms give you toggles and controls. But your behaviour is a far stronger signal than anything in a settings menu.

I’ve seen this play out across different platforms. My Instagram has essentially become a couples account, full of funny content I share with my partner because she’s on Instagram but not TikTok. The result is that my Instagram and TikTok feeds are completely different. Same person, same general interests, but two entirely distinct algorithms trained by two entirely different patterns of use. Neither feed is wrong, they just reflect who I am on each platform.

My other half had the unfortunate mistake of dwelling on a video of a toenail injury one day. Weeks of feet she had to endure before realising scrolling faster past these videos meant they slowly disappeared.

Bluesky is an interesting contrast. It runs with very little algorithmic curation by default, which sounds liberating until you realise how much quiet work a good algorithm does on your behalf. I use it regularly and I enjoy the rawness of it, but there are moments where you notice what’s missing. The serendipity that a well-trained feed provides is real, even if the way it gets there feels uncomfortable.

This brings to mind the time I switched from Google to DuckDuckGo years ago. The privacy case was compelling, and I stuck with it for a while. But the gap in search quality was hard to ignore. Google’s results were sharper because Google knew me. Creepy, absolutely. But also genuinely useful in a way that was difficult to replicate elsewhere.

The two levers you actually have

When it comes to reshaping your algorithm, everything broadly falls into one of two approaches: starving it of bad signals, or feeding it better ones. Both matter, and the most effective approach combines them.

Starving the algorithm

The algorithm learns from engagement, and engagement includes more than likes and comments. Hovering on a post, watching a video past the halfway point, even opening something and closing it quickly all send data. Negative engagement, such as leaving an angry comment, can still reinforce a topic rather than suppress it. The recent fuel protests showed many of us this.

To actually starve an unwanted signal, you need to move past content quickly and without interaction. Most platforms also give you an explicit “not interested” option, usually accessible through a three-dot menu on a post or video. Use it and use it aggressively. On platforms like X, muting keywords and topics can effectively remove entire categories of content from your feed without having to unfollow anyone. If you don’t see it, you can’t feed the algorithm engagement on it.

The logic here is simple. If the algorithm has nothing to learn from, it cannot reinforce what it already knows about you.

Feeding it something better

The flip side is actively building new signal. Follow accounts that reflect where you want your feed to go. Watch videos in that space to the end. Save posts. Share things. These are all strong positive signals that tell the algorithm what you actually want more of.

The people who build these apps and algorithms think the world is perfect and that everyone is sitting at home making curated save lists of their favourite content. I know that us Irish are not very likely to make the most of these kinds of features.

But this means you can take algorithm signals to a deliberate extreme, spending a week or two engaging only with content from a specific niche to force a pivot. If you want to move from one type of content to another, the combination of muting and unfollowing the old while actively engaging with the new is far more effective than either approach alone.

The nuclear options

Sometimes you want a clean break rather than a gradual adjustment. A few approaches can get you there faster, though each comes with trade-offs.

Deleting and recreating an account gives you a completely blank slate. You lose your history, your follows, and any personalisation that was working in your favour, but if your feed has become genuinely unpleasant, it can be worth it. Some platforms also have a built-in reset option for recommendations, which is worth checking before going the full deletion route.

Just know that a clean start can be as risky as a long re-point. Platforms will feed you expansive content to see what you’re interested in early doors, and you could be back at the start in a few days.

Switching platforms entirely is an option too, though it is more of an escape than a reset. It does not solve the underlying issue of how to manage an algorithm; it just gives you a fresh start on different terms.

Turning off recommendations entirely, something YouTube allows, is a middle ground. You keep your account and subscriptions but remove the algorithmic feed. What you lose is discovery. What you gain is control.

Secondary accounts and compartmentalisation

One underused approach is running separate accounts for different contexts. I ended up with a couples algorithm on Instagram almost by accident, but there is a logic to doing it deliberately. If part of your usage is for work research and part is for personal interests, mixing those signals trains the algorithm in contradictory directions.

A secondary or anonymous account lets you consume content in a specific niche without it bleeding into your main feed. It is not a perfect solution, and maintaining multiple accounts adds friction, but for people whose professional and personal interests are genuinely distinct, it is worth considering.

Patience is part of the process

None of this happens overnight. Algorithms have memory, and that memory does not clear instantly. Consistent behaviour over days and weeks is what actually shifts recommendations, not a single afternoon of furious unfollowing.

The platforms are also not passive in this. Creators and the platforms themselves actively optimise for engagement, which means the system is always nudging you back towards content that keeps you scrolling. Taking control of your algorithm is an ongoing practice rather than a one-time fix.

The good news is that once you understand what these systems are actually measuring, you stop feeling like a passive recipient of whatever they decide to show you. You are always training the algorithm, whether you intend to or not. You may as well do it deliberately.

Has Starfield Improved Two Years On?

Marty
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0
Has Starfield Improved Two Years On?

I recently booted up Starfield for the first time in a long while. Not out of renewed excitement exactly, more out of curiosity. Bethesda has been busy since launch, and I wanted to see whether all that post-release activity had genuinely moved the needle or just papered over the same cracks I remembered. The honest answer is somewhere in the middle, and that middle ground is worth unpacking.

My History With Starfield and What Launch Actually Felt Like

I came into Starfield with genuine excitement. This was Bethesda’s first new IP in decades, built by the same studio that gave us Fallout 3 and Skyrim, and the promise of a vast space RPG felt like exactly the kind of ambitious swing I wanted from them. The reality, for me at least, was about a dozen hours before I quietly accepted I was not hooked, nor would be getting hooked, and moved on. That is not a dramatic falling out, more a slow realisation that nothing was pulling me forward the way those older games did.

The broader launch reception told a similar story, just spread across a wider spectrum. Starfield arrived looking polished and performed well enough on capable hardware, and a meaningful chunk of players happily sank dozens of hours into the ship building, the gun play, and the general “live another life in space” fantasy it offered.

Some called it one of the best games they had ever played. But even many who finished it and broadly enjoyed it described a nagging sense of unfulfilled potential. It was an enormous universe that felt oddly low-stakes, planets that blurred into each other, choices that rarely carried consequences, and mechanics like outpost building and the Starborn loop that the game introduced and then seemed to forget mattered.

Compared with what Baldur’s Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077’s post-launch revival had shown the genre could do around the same period, Starfield felt safe in a way that was hard to square with the scale of its ambition.

The split between players who shrugged and had fun and those who felt genuinely let down never really resolved, and returning to the game now, I understand both camps better than I did at the time.

What Has Actually Improved Since Launch

On a purely technical level, the game is noticeably more stable than it was when I first played it. Those early sessions had a habit of throwing up audio dropouts, quest states that refused to progress, and the occasional hard crash that cost me real time in between autosaves.

Most of that was nowhere to be seen on my return, and that alone makes the experience less stressful.

Image: Bethesda

The quality-of-life changes are real too. Surface maps are far more useful now, which sounds minor until you remember how disorienting planetary exploration felt without them. The addition of a ground vehicle changes the rhythm of getting around considerably, and the expanded difficulty options let me dial back some of the bullet-sponge enemy encounters that wore me down in the mid-game. These are meaningful refinements.

There is also simply more to do. New quests, additional systems to visit, and the integration of official mod support through the creation framework give the game more depth than it shipped with. If you bounced off Starfield early because the performance was rough or certain features felt half-baked, it is a meaningfully better product today on those specific fronts.

What Bethesda Has Not Fixed

The structural problems that bothered me most are still entirely intact, and no patch is really designed to address them.

The exploration loop remains the game’s biggest liability. Starfield generates points of interest procedurally, and after your first 40 or 50 hours, that seam becomes impossible to ignore. I landed on what the game presented as an uncharted planet and worked my way through a research facility I had already cleared on three other worlds. Same corridor layout, same enemy placement, same containers in the same spots. The backdrop was different. Everything else was identical.

This is the fundamental tension at the heart of Starfield. The scale is enormous, but scale without variety creates a different kind of fatigue. Older Bethesda games like Morrowind, Oblivion, and even Skyrim had a density of hand-crafted discovery that made exploration feel worthwhile over hundreds of hours. You stumbled across things. Starfield, for all its scope, rarely surprises you after the early game. The procedural generation that was meant to give you a galaxy to explore instead gives you a gallery of reused templates.

Recent updates have added content and made sensible adjustments, but they have not touched the systems responsible for this. Encounter design, planetary variety, and the underlying exploration mechanics are essentially what they were at launch.

Bugs at Launch Versus Where Things Stand Now

It is worth being fair about the launch state. Opinions varied at the time about how serious the issues were, and some of the criticism was probably overstated. But there were genuine problems: quests that soft-locked and refused to complete, audio that cut out mid-conversation, save files that occasionally corrupted, and enough crash frequency to make longer sessions feel precarious.

Bethesda addressed the worst of it through a steady rhythm of patches in the months after release. By now, those technical concerns are largely historical. Bugs are not the story anymore when I play Starfield today. Design is the story, and that is a harder thing to patch.

Why Mods Are Doing the Heavy Lifting

The most significant improvements to my enjoyment have not come from official updates. They have come from the modding community, and that distinction matters.

With a solid mod list in place, Starfield starts to feel closer to the game I was hoping it would be. Better inventory management, reworked exploration hooks, visual overhauls, new content that integrates more thoughtfully than some of the official additions. The Starfield modding community on Nexus Mods has produced some genuinely impressive work, and Bethesda’s official Creation Kit integration has made the process more accessible than it might otherwise be.

But this is where a reasonable comparison becomes uncomfortable. When I modded Skyrim or Fallout 4, I was enhancing games that were already compelling in their base form. Mods added flavour, depth, and longevity. With Starfield, mods feel more load-bearing. They are compensating for absences rather than building on a solid foundation. That is a meaningful difference, even if the end result can be enjoyable.

The Question of Ongoing Support

I want to be fair here, because Bethesda has clearly invested time in the game post-launch. But there is a pattern worth noting. The updates that have arrived tend to prioritise content additions and Creation economy features over structural reworks. Shattered Space, the paid expansion, added a new location and story, but it did not revisit how the base game explores or generates its world.

There have been hints at improvements to space travel and other systems, and I genuinely hope those materialise in a meaningful way. But I find it hard to be fully optimistic. Fixing the repetition problem would require rethinking core generation systems, and that is an enormous undertaking for a live game. It is easier, commercially and technically, to add new things than to redo existing ones.

That hesitancy affects how I think about investing more time. If I am not confident the fundamental experience will improve, going deeper with a heavily modded setup feels like a better return on my attention than waiting for official changes.

My Verdict on Starfield in 2025

Starfield today is technically smoother, better supported, and more fully featured than it was at launch. If you were put off by early instability or missing quality-of-life features, the game has addressed those complaints in a real way, and it is worth another look.

If you left because the exploration felt hollow, the worlds felt thin, or the scale started to feel like an illusion, I have to be honest: not much has changed at that level. The same labs, the same outposts, the same procedural sameness awaits. Mods can push against this considerably, and if you are willing to invest time in building a thoughtful mod list, the experience can be genuinely better.

The harder question is what post-launch support can realistically achieve when the game’s core identity was baked in from the start. Patches can fix bugs, add content, and smooth rough edges. They cannot easily undo design decisions that were made years before release. Starfield’s ambitions were clear, and so were its limitations. Two years on, both remain exactly where they were.

The Lidl Plus App Has Actually Gotten Good

Marty
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0
The Lidl Plus App Has Actually Gotten Good

There’s a particular kind of pleasant surprise when something you expected to be rubbish turns out to be genuinely useful. The Lidl Plus app falls into that category for me. Retailer loyalty apps have a reputation, and it isn’t a flattering one. They exist to harvest your shopping data, and everyone knows it. But Lidl Plus has quietly evolved into something that offers a fair enough exchange to make it worth your while.

The Re-turn Integration is Clever

The standout feature for me recently has been the Re-turn deposit scheme integration. Now, I we all know that recycling is good, but the deposit return scheme is a little annoying.

Lidl has connected the in-store machines directly to the app, so when you do a drop-off, you scan a QR code and then the credit lands in your Lidl Plus balance. Then, when you pay with Lidl Pay at the till, it comes straight off your total.

That’s a genuinely elegant bit of joined-up thinking. Instead of getting a paper voucher you’ll inevitably lose at the bottom of a bag, the credit sits in your app and applies automatically. It’s one of those features where you wonder why it took this long, and then feel quietly impressed that someone finally did it.

Yes, They Want Your Data. Here’s What You Get Back.

Let’s not be naive about what’s happening here. Every coupon you activate, every item you scan, every receipt stored in the app is building a detailed picture of your shopping habits. Lidl knows what you buy, when you buy it, and how price-sensitive you are to various products. That’s the trade.

The question is whether what you get in return justifies it. For most regular Lidl shoppers, I’d argue it does, for a few reasons.

The weekly coupons and Super Savers are the bread and butter. You activate them in the app, scan at the till, and the discount applies instantly. No clipping, no paper, no fumbling. The member-only prices on certain lines mean you’re quietly paying less than someone standing next to you at the shelf who didn’t bother downloading the app.

The “Just for You” personalised offers are hit and miss early on, but they do improve over time. If you buy a lot of a particular category, you’ll start seeing relevant discounts rather than coupons for things you’d never touch.

The Points System: Temper Your Expectations

The Lidl Points system is worth having but worth being realistic about. You earn points on normal shopping, and they can be exchanged for free products or money-off vouchers. A litre of milk? Absolutely achievable in a reasonable timeframe. A premium cut of steak? You’ll be waiting a while.

That said, it’s still something for nothing, which is more than you’re getting without the app. The scratch card you get after a qualifying spend of €10 or more adds a small bit of fun to the routine. Free pastries, snacks, or a few euro off come up often enough that people notice. It’s not life-changing, but it’s consistently pleasant in a low-key way.

One Genuine Frustration

The coupon activation process has one real flaw, and it’s worth flagging. You can absolutely walk into Lidl, buy something that has a coupon attached to it, and pay full price because you didn’t activate the offer beforehand. The system doesn’t automatically apply discounts you’re eligible for. You have to go in, find the coupon, activate it, and then scan.

It’s a mild annoyance rather than a dealbreaker, and to be fair, logging in after the fact to see what deals you could have used does sometimes surface an offer worth going back for. But a smarter system would flag relevant activated coupons as you approach the till. That might be asking a lot, or it might be a deliberate friction point. Either way, it’s the one area where the experience feels slightly unfinished.

Also one of the stores I regularly visit has poor signal, and no Lidl has a Wi-Fi connection.

Is It Worth It?

If you shop at Lidl regularly anyway, yes, without much hesitation. The app is free, the savings are real if modest, and the Re-turn integration alone is worth setting it up for. You’re handing over your shopping data, and you should go in clear-eyed about that. But the discounts, the digital receipts for budgeting, and the occasional freebie make the exchange feel reasonably fair.

It won’t transform your finances, but it’ll take a few euro off your weekly shop with very little effort on your part. For a free app you open once a week, that’s a decent return. It may even open a portal to a world of Lidl Mobile discounts in the coming years.

Is the Leopardstown DroneArt Show Legit?

Marty
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0
Is the Leopardstown DroneArt Show Legit?

Fever’s Instagram ads are hard to miss right now. Sweeping aerial footage, swirling lights set to strings, the kind of visual that makes you reach for your wallet before you’ve even finished watching. The DroneArt Show is returning to Leopardstown Racecourse on 1 and 2 May, and tickets are already selling fast, or at least that’s what the page tells you.

Before you commit, it’s worth knowing what you’re actually buying.

What is the DroneArt show?

The DroneArt Show is an outdoor classical music and drone light display held at Leopardstown Racecourse. A live string quartet performs works including Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake while a fleet of drones, around 1,000 according to the organisers, perform a synchronised aerial display overhead. The whole thing lasts about 65 minutes. Doors open two hours before showtime, food and drink are available on site, and the event is billed as family friendly.

The show is a real touring production. It has played in more than 40 cities around the world, and this Dublin run is technically a return visit rather than a debut. That “back by popular demand” framing does a lot of heavy lifting. Popular with whom, exactly, is a fair question.

The show has accessible friendly seating, but worth noting this is being charged at a higher rate.

Who’s behind the DroneArt show?

The show is presented by Fever in partnership with Nova Sky Stories, described as a global pioneer in drone technology. Nova Sky Stories has a connection to Kimbal Musk, which adds a layer of Silicon Valley gloss to proceedings and, depending on your appetite for billionaire-adjacent ventures, either reassures you about the technical ambition or makes you slightly more suspicious of the marketing.

Fever itself is a global events platform with a particular talent for making things look unmissable. If you’ve been to a Fever event before, you’ll already have a sense of the gap that can exist between the Instagram version of a night and the night itself. Their Candlelight concert series is a useful comparison point: intimate, candlelit classical performances that genuinely deliver on their promise most of the time. The drone show is a different beast, and the stakes are higher.

I’ve been to Fever events before. There’s a definite gap between the high fidelity Instagram ads and the event itself. They can be enjoyable, but expectations are rarely managed.

The pricing situation

Ticket prices for the May dates break down like this: Grandstand Standing at €20.90, Grandstand Seating at €40.90, Premium Seating at €56.90, and Accessible Seating at €36.90. Ground Level Seating at €26.90 is already sold out.

That accessible seating pricing really doesn’t sit well with me. Wheelchair users and attendees with mobility needs are paying €36.90, which is €16 more than the cheapest standing option and sits comfortably above the mid-range. Whatever the logistical reasoning, charging more for accessibility is poor form. It functions, in effect, as a disability tax, and it shouldn’t be something you simply scroll past in the pricing table.

At the top end, getting on for €57 for 65 minutes of outdoor classical music and a drone display is a significant ask, particularly when Dublin has no shortage of cultural nights out at comparable or lower prices.

The quality gap

Here’s where things get complicated. Reviews from previous showings, including the Dublin run last year, are genuinely mixed in a way that suggests the experience varies considerably depending on expectations going in.

Some attendees describe a magical evening, something genuinely unlike other nights out. Others tell a very different story, with not enough drones in the sky at once, long stretches where nothing is happening overhead, and a show that feels more like a conventional classical concert with occasional drone effects rather than the full-scale aerial spectacle the ads suggest.

A recurring theme in critical reviews is that the drones spend a surprising amount of time on the ground, presumably charging, rather than performing.

For many the drone show is overselling, overpromising and underdelivering.

The weather problem

This is an outdoor show in Ireland in May. That single sentence should be doing enough work on its own, but it’s worth spelling out. Wind is a genuine operational constraint for drone shows. Previous dates have seen drones appear for only a few minutes before conditions grounded them, with large portions of audiences leaving feeling short-changed.

The organisers are upfront that the event can be cancelled due to weather, with notification sent by email. What that means in practice is that you could travel out to Leopardstown, which is not a short trip for anyone relying on public transport, and find the drone element has been stripped back significantly or abandoned entirely. You’d be left with a string quartet in a racecourse, which isn’t nothing, but it isn’t what you paid for.

I’m not saying you’re on route to the Willy’s Chocolate Experience in Scotland. This is a much more professional operation that has genuine risks that organisers cannot be held accountable for. But it’s important to manage expectations, and I don’t feel the organisers do that. Which makes terms and conditions important.

Refunds and the fine print

Fever’s approach to refunds has been a point of contention across various events. The pattern that emerges from previous DroneArt Show disruptions is this that initial responses tend to offer vouchers or credit rather than cash refunds. Attendees who pushed back were eventually offered full refunds to their original payment method, but it required persistence. Know that going in.

It’s also not uncommon for people to resort to chargebacks through their banks.

What a great drone show looks like

It’s worth noting that drone shows, done well, genuinely are extraordinary. The Titanic Belfast drone show is a useful benchmark: a large-scale display that used the location and subject matter to create something that felt emotionally coherent and visually breathtaking. The technology is capable of genuine spectacle when it’s deployed with ambition and precision.

The DroneArt Show is not without merit. On a clear night, with conditions cooperating, it can clearly deliver moments that stick with you. The problem is the gap between the probability of that night and the certainty the advertising implies.

Before you book

If you’re set on going, a few practical things to remember.

Book parking in advance if you’re driving, check the weather forecast obsessively in the days before, and make sure you understand what the cancellation and refund process looks like before you hand over your card details.

If you’re on the fence, weigh it honestly. The ads are selling a dream. The reviews suggest a show that, on its best nights, gets close to it, and on its worst nights, doesn’t come close at all. For €40 and a trek to Leopardstown in Irish spring weather, that’s a gamble worth being clear-eyed about before you take it.

Will Lidl Mobile Come to Ireland?

Marty
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0
Will Lidl Mobile Come to Ireland?

Lidl has confirmed it is expanding its MVNO business beyond Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with ambitions to roll out a mobile service across up to 30 countries where Lidl operates, including the UK, US, France and Spain. Rather than building costly infrastructure, Lidl will operate as a mobile virtual network operator, using existing telecoms infrastructure rather than building its own network.

The commercial logic is clear enough. The plans will be delivered through the Lidl Plus app, which already has more than 100 million users globally, meaning Lidl does not need to build an audience from scratch. It already has one, and it already has those people’s trust as a value brand. Bolt on a SIM card, and you have a fairly compelling product for a certain type of customer.

For anyone who has spotted Lidl Connect while shopping in Germany or Austria, the idea of seeing it land in Ireland probably feels intuitive. Lidl is already here, it is already trusted, and Irish consumers have shown a clear appetite for budget telecoms. On the surface, it looks like a natural fit.

The reality of the Irish market, though, is a bit more complicated.

Ireland Does Not Really Need More Competition

When Gomo launched in Ireland, it effectively started a race to the bottom on mobile pricing, and that race has not stopped. Before Gomo arrived, €20 for prepay and around €30 per month for bill pay SIM-only was pretty standard. Today you can pick up a plan from 48 and Clear Mobile for €12.99 any day of the week, with prices rarely creeping above €14.99. By European standards, that is genuinely competitive, and it happened without a supermarket MVNO in sight.

For Lidl to make a meaningful entrance here, it would need to come in at something like €7.99 to cause a stir. It would almost certainly hoover up customers, particularly among existing Lidl shoppers who already use the Lidl Plus app. But at that price point, the question of profitability becomes a real one. MVNOs are not especially high-margin businesses at the best of times, and Ireland is a small market with a population of just over five million. The numbers would need to stack up, and it is not obvious they would, at least not in the short term.

The Consolidation Picture Complicates Things Further

Alongside Lidl’s expansion news, there is also significant consolidation happening in the Irish mobile market that is worth understanding. There are strong rumours that Three Ireland and Virgin Media will either merge or announce plans to do so before the end of this year. Liberty Global is said to be in talks to acquire Three Ireland for up to €1.5 billion, which would mark a significant reshaping of the Irish telecoms landscape.

This echoes what happened in the UK, where Three and Vodafone merged under CK Hutchison, a move that saw the conglomerate pull back from mobile to focus on its ports business. When O2 and Three merged in Ireland previously, competition regulators insisted on conditions that brought new operators to the table; iD Mobile through Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media through its broadband base. Both iD Mobile and Carphone Warehouse are now gone, and Virgin Media is the entity now seeking to consolidate further rather than expand.

The broader point is that the Irish market is currently consolidating, not opening up. Analysts have noted that Lidl’s entry into additional markets could intensify competition for established telecoms providers, particularly as new entrants focus on lower-cost, app-based services, but that analysis applies most cleanly to larger, less consolidated markets. Regulators looking at a further Three and Virgin merger may well require remedies that reshape the competitive landscape again, but Lidl entering as a small MVNO would not obviously solve whatever structural concerns emerge from that process.

So Will It Happen?

Lidl already operates in Ireland, so the country sits within the theoretical scope of Schwarz Group’s global MVNO ambitions. If the rollout goes well in larger priority markets, it will probably arrive here eventually. You’ll likely activate through the ever improving Lidl Plus app.

But Ireland is a small market, prices are already low, and the competitive dynamics are shifting in ways that do not obviously roll out a welcome mat. For now, it feels like a case of watch this space rather than brace for impact.

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