The Death of the Mind

Public Policy Polling has taken a poll in New York state on whether the state should make it more difficult for parties to be ballot-qualified.  The results are that 64% are opposed; 25% are in favor; and 10% are undecided.  See this story. The proposal, pushed by some leaders of the Democratic Party, would increase the number of votes for a group to be a qualified party, from 50,000 votes for Governor, to 150,000.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ballot-access.org/2019/11/16/poll-shows-new-york-proposal-to-toughen-ballot-access-is-very-unpopular/

We spend a lot of time focusing on the epic side of free software and user freedom: joys come from providing encrypted communication options to journalists and political dissidents; losses are when IoT devices are used to victimize and abuse. I think a lot about the little ways technology interacts with our lives, the threats to or successes for user freedom we encounter in regular situations that anyone can find themselves able to understand: sexting…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://deblanc.net/blog/2019/11/16/rebellion/

US government told it must give a reason to snub policy A federal judge in the US state of Washington has struck down a settlement that would allow people to post blueprints and instructions to 3D-print guns, claiming it was unlawful.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.co.uk/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/13/3d_printer_gun_blueprints/

On Tuesday, October 15th, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) staff would like to meet you at a social event at Raleigh’s [Whiskey Kitchen][1]! Executive director John Sullivan, licensing and compliance manager Donald R. Robertson, III, copyright and licensing associate Craig Topham, and program manager ZoĂŤ Kooyman, will all be in Raleigh, NC on October 15th, in anticipation of this year’s licensing seminar on GPL Enforcement and Legal Ethics. We look forward to hosting this informal…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.fsf.org/events/meetup-2019-10-15-raleigh-fsfstaff

Ellen DeGeneres’s friendship with ex-President George W. Bush became controversial this week, in light of the progressive values she claims and the 600,000 corpses left by his occupation of Iraq. She delivered a monologue on her show in response, casting their friendship as an example of civility, overcoming political differences, and having “faith in America”. So Rafael Shimunov added a simple backdrop of Iraq war scenes to her monolog, in the hopes DeGeneres might better…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/09/ellens-issues-copyright-take.html

Law Professor Garrett Epps has this very interesting article about the electoral college in The Atlantic. Thanks to Howard Bashman for the link. … Continue reading →

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ballot-access.org/2019/09/08/law-professor-garrett-epps-says-electoral-college-was-flawed-from-the-beginning/

Extensions still free to use uber-powerful webRequest API to filter crap out of webpages On Tuesday, Mozilla said it is not planning to change the ad-and-content blocking capabilities of Firefox to match what Google is doing in Chrome.…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/03/mozilla_firefox_browser_extensions/

This story about Maine’s bill for ranked choice voting in presidential primaries says that if the bill becomes law, it won’t be easy to combine ranked choice voting with the national Democratic Party rules on apportioning votes. The national rules say any presidential candidate who gets at least 15% in a Democratic primary is entitled to a proportionate number of delegates to the national convention. Squaring that with ranked choice voting is a head-scratcher.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ballot-access.org/2019/09/01/if-maine-governor-signs-ranked-choice-voting-bill-democratic-presidential-primary-will-be-complicated/