The Death of the Mind

Last June, Louisiana became the third state to decide the US Constitution was subservient to cops’ wishes that they not be filmed while performing their public duties.
Arizona had already tried this twice, starting at 25 feet before trimming the “halo” to an 8-foot diameter. It didn’t matter. A federal court permanently blocked the law due to its obvious unconstitutional nature. Florida has tried the same thing — a 25-foot “no go” zone around “first responders” — utilizing the dubious theory that too many people filming cops are somehow “interfering” with their ability to do their jobs. At this point, the law remains in place, but it’s only a matter of time before it’s kicked to…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/07/federal-court-shuts-down-louisianas-unconstitutional-police-buffer-zone-law/

It has long been clear that the GOP, as it is today, has a death wish for our Constitutional order, but that’s a subject for another post. What’s more relevant is that, at this point, one could easily construe that Democrats would like our Constitution to die too. In part because of how enfeebled they have so far been in resisting the lawlessness exhibited by the Article II branch of our government—although that, too, is a subject for another post.  (Standing against the Vought OMB nomination, and slowing his appointment process, is good. But it’s not enough, and even though it’s a good start, it doesn’t forgive all the missed opportunities to slow the damage everyone…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/05/democrats-should-be-stopping-a-lawless-president-not-helping-censor-the-internet-honestly-wtf-are-they-thinking/

Tennessee bills to make it a felony for a local government official to cast a vote in favor of creating a sanctuary passed the legislature on January 30. The identical bills are SB 6002 and HB 6001. … Continue reading →

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2025/02/01/tennessee-bill-passes-legislature-making-it-a-felony-for-a-city-councilmember-to-vote-in-favor-of-creating-a-sanctuary/

Apparently somebody managed to resell Seagate hard disks that have 2-5 years of operations on them as brand new. They did this by using some new shrink wrap bags and resetting the used hard disk SMART attributes to factory-new values. Luckily Seagate has a proprietary extension “Seagate FARM (Field Access Reliability Metrics)” implemented in their disks that … the crooks did not reset. Luckily … because other manufacturers do not have that extension. And you think the crooks only re-sell used Seagate disks? Lol. The get access to the Seagate FARM extension, you need smartctl from smartmontools v7.4 or later. For Debian 12 (Bookworm) you can add the backports archive and then install with
apt…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://daniel-lange.com/archives/191-Seagate-old-hard-disks-sold-as-new%2C-smartmontools-v7.4-for-Debian-Bullseye-and-Bookworm.html

On January 29, the Wyoming House passed HB 173 on second reading. It makes ballot access much worse for independent candidates. Currently they need a petition of 2% of the last U.S. House vote, which in 2026 would be 3,879 signatures. The bill would increase that to 9,697 signatures. Already Wyoming has the nation’s highest percentage for petitions for presidential candidates, if the easier method in each state is used. Wyoming has the nation’s smallest population.
The bill also moves the petition deadline for independent candidates to 81 days before the primary. The 2026 primary is August 18, so that would mean a deadline of May 29, 2026. Existing law says the independent petition is due 70…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2025/01/30/wyoming-house-passes-bill-making-ballot-access-much-more-difficult/

About five years ago X.Org / FreeDesktop.org was experiencing a cloud hosting crisis with their cloud costs running out of control after losing free credits for Google Cloud and the continuous integration (CI) testing driving up expenses. They ended up switching public cloud providers over to Equinix. Equinix ended up sponsoring the X.Org Foundation / FreeDesktop.org with their cloud/hosting needs but now on short notice that is coming to an end…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.phoronix.com/news/2025-XOrg-FreeDesktop-Cloud

This year’s edition of the Free and Open
Source Software Developers’ European Meeting (FOSDEM) begins on
February 1 in Brussels. The event is widely regarded as one of
the most important open-source conferences. One of the reasons that
FOSDEM is held in high esteem by the community is its non-commercial
nature. It does accept sponsors, but
sponsorships come with few perks and no “pay-for-play” speaking
slots. Thus, the scheduling of a keynote by Jack
Dorsey⁠—⁠primarily known for his role in co-founding Twitter, and
currently CEO and chairman of FOSDEM sponsor Block, Inc.⁠—⁠raised eyebrows and led to plans for a protest. The
keynote has since been removed from the schedule, but there are still
a number of lingering questions.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/1006351/

For three decades, hundreds of thousands of hikers, bikers, dog walkers, and other outdoor enthusiasts have enjoyed the hilly, densely wooded, nine-mile network of trails at Lake Crabtree County Park that sits on 330 acres between Interstate 40 and Lake Crabtree, in Morrisville. Local governments, including Wake County, formed partnerships and poured millions of dollars over the years into building the artificial lake and the park, as well as its trails, picnic shelters, roads, trailhead facility, and municipal greenways that link to it. Local recreational leagues hold races and mountain biking and trail running events. Youth sports and college groups use the trails to train. The planned-for Triangle Bikeway will run right alongside the park.“It’s decades of public…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://indyweek.com/news/weigh-in-on-rdu-airport-authoritys-plans-to-develop-lake-crabtree-county-park-this-wednesday/

On January 16, New York State Senator James Skoufis gave up on trying to be elected Chair of the Democratic National Committee. See this story. He had said on December 27, 2024, that he wanted to dismantle the Green Party. … Continue reading →

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2025/01/21/new-york-state-senator-james-skoufis-gives-up-his-campaign-to-be-democratic-national-committee-chair/