Telorand

A brilliant, introspective summary of how single-issue voting got us here and how it won't save anyone.

The system sucks, but please, be pragmatic. Vote for Harris, hold the Dems accountable, and donate to STAR and Ranked Choice Voting initiatives in your area to avoid this dilemma in the future.

Twenty years ago, I made a choice that left the world a distorted echo of what it could be.

Twenty years from now, you too will reap what you sow.

The "Pro-Life" Party, everyone. SMH

Meanwhile...

At a campaign event over the weekend in Fort Worth, Texas, hundreds of Allred’s supporters broke out in raucous applause when he vowed to protect a woman’s right to an abortion. “When I’m in the Senate, we’re going to restore Roe v. Wade,” Allred said.

Please vote, y'all. There's more at stake than just a presidency.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/14010304

State constitutional rights to abortion are on the ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Nevada, and South Dakota.

Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin have initiatives on the ballot to ban noncitizens from voting. It's already illegal, but the initiatives will probably be used to harass and disenfranchise minorities and activists, if they pass.

Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, D.C., Alaska, and Missouri will vote to adopt or prohibit ranked choice voting.

Alaska, California, Massachusetts, and Missouri will vote to adopt a $15-18 minimum wage.

And so on. Ballotpedia has a complete list.

Go register to vote, or check your registration if you've already registered.

I'm saving up to get a 5700X3D around Christmas, upgrading from a 5600G, but I want to make sure I prepare properly before I do the swap.

The RAM I bought couldn't match the C18 @ 4000 M/Ts advertised and still remain stable, but I managed to manually overclock to C16 @ 3666. Should I drop to JDEC specs before I upgrade, or is it a non-issue?

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/13942074

In response to questions about why A&M discontinued the medical care, a university spokesperson said its growing student population and the resulting strain on the A.P. Beutel Health Center require officials to continuously review the services they offer and how they use the center’s resources. The spokesperson noted that the university has invested more in mental health care following a national rise in college students seeking it out.

Transgender and queer students are skeptical of that explanation and believe the university acted in response to pressure from conservative groups. They say the move shows the university is not willing to support them equally.

“It just seems that they don't take the same level of care to address concerns of the queer community as they would other communities,” Klatt said.

Students saw the move as part of a political environment that has become increasingly hostile against LGBTQ+ people in Texas. And it comes as the state’s public universities face top-down pressure to appease Republican leaders — or risk incurring their wrath during next year’s legislative session.

Don't you just love that "small government?" FFS, y'all. Please vote like people's futures depend upon it.

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/24214265

So, a couple years ago, somebody published the 2017 free desktop client of SketchUp on the chocolatey repos, and I managed to snag it before it got taken down. I use it primarily to make woodworking plans.

I'm wrapping up my transition plan to Linux, but I'm not really up to date on SketchUp alternatives. The only ones I know of are Blender (afaik more for animation and 3D printing) and FreeCAD (CAD seems like overkill, since I'm just doing simple cuts and joinery).

Are there good Linux/FOSS alternatives to SketchUp that have similar features, or is the web client the only reasonable option?

So, a couple years ago, somebody published the 2017 free desktop client of SketchUp on the chocolatey repos, and I managed to snag it before it got taken down. I use it primarily to make woodworking plans.

I'm wrapping up my transition plan to Linux, but I'm not really up to date on SketchUp alternatives. The only ones I know of are Blender (afaik more for animation and 3D printing) and FreeCAD (CAD seems like overkill, since I'm just doing simple cuts and joinery).

Are there good Linux/FOSS alternatives to SketchUp that have similar features, or is the web client the only reasonable option?

This isn't a joke, though it almost seems like one. It uses Llama 3.1, and supposedly the conversation data stays on the device and gets forgotten over time (through what the founder calls a rolling "context window").

The implementation is interesting, and you can see the founder talking about earlier prototypes and project goals in interviews from several months ago.

iOS only, for now.

Edit: Apparently, you can build your own for around $50 that runs on ChatGPT instead of Llama. I'm sure you could also figure out how to switch it to the LLM of your choice.

A US appeals court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission's Universal Service Fund is unconstitutional, finding Universal Service fees on phone bills to be a "misbegotten tax." If not overturned, the ruling would upend the $8 billion-a-year system that is used to expand telecom networks and make access more affordable through programs such as Lifeline discounts and deployment grants for Internet service providers.

But the FCC program could survive in the end as the case appears ripe for Supreme Court review, with yesterday's ruling creating a circuit split. The ruling against the FCC was issued by the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which is generally considered one of the most conservative appeals courts.

The FCC previously prevailed in the 6th and 11th circuit appeals courts, which both rejected claims that the Universal Service Fund is unconstitutional. All three cases against the FCC were filed by Consumers' Research, a nonprofit that fights "woke corporations," and a mobile virtual network operator called Cause Based Commerce, which offers wireless service to "values-based consumers who want alternatives to the many companies and providers that support causes and positions contrary to their beliefs."

Everyone's favorite, Texas-based, Conservative rubber stamp strikes again. This may be a federal court, but don't forget that these people represent Texas every time they issue a bad ruling.

I'm working on my transition plan away from Windows and testing out various things in VMs as I do so, and one big hurdle is making sure the VPN client my work requires can connect. Bazzite is my target distro (primarily gaming, work less frequently), though other more traditionally structured ones like Pop!_OS and Garuda are possibilities.

I'm currently trying and failing to get the VPN client working in a distrobox (throws an error during connection saying PPP isn't installed or supported by the kernel). However, I can successfully get the VPN connected if I overlay the client and its dependencies via rpm-ostree install, but I read somewhere that Bazzite's philosophy is to use rpm-ostree as sparingly as possible for installing software to preserve as much containerization as possible.

Since I can get it working outside of a container, am I overthinking it? Should I just accept that this might be one of the "sparing" cases? Is Bazzite perhaps a poor fit for my use case? I've been trying to make sense of this guide, but I'm having trouble understanding how to apply it to my situation, since I'm not that familiar with Docker or Podman.