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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • This person knows just enough to sound credible and still get it wrong. He says that the electoral college requires states to allocate all delegates to the popular vote winner in each state, which is not true. States can allocate delegates however they want, and at least two states allocate proportionally to how how their populace voted.

    This is a critical difference, because eliminating a mismatch between the electoral college and national popular vote doesn’t require eliminating the college. Eliminating the college requires a constitutional amendment, which is difficult to achieve. The National Popular Vote Compact requires nearly as much effort, and it’s incredibly fragile, because as soon as a few states allocate all of their electors to a candidate who lost in that state, they’ll pull out and the whole thing will crumble.

    The solution is for states to allocate delegates proportionally. That is in the best interest of each state, so it’s not fragile. It can be accomplished one state at a time, so it’s logistically easier. It doesn’t require huge buy in to work, just a handful of states, so it’s easier to achieve and more stable. Every mismatch better the electoral college and national popular vote in US history would not have occurred if states allocated delegates proportionally, so it solves the problem. People should start recognizing the real problem, so that we can work on a real solution.





  • Kethal@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    5 months ago

    It seemed odd to me that a Web site could write to or read from the clipboard without the user approving it. That would be a pretty obvious security and privacy issue. From what I gather, on Chrome sites can write to the clipboard without approval, but they need approval to read. On Firefox and others any access requires permission. Thus this exploit seems limited to Chrome users.

    @SkaveRat pointed out that it doesn’t require permission, only interaction. So likely there’s a button that’s clicked that writes to the clipboard, and most browsers are susceptible to this.


  • I had an old computer and Linux is all that I installed. Not everyone is going to have an extra computer to do that with. However, this computer is more than 10 years old. It was quite good at the time, but it’s junk compared to modern ones. Yet, it is more responsive than my very nice modern laptop that’s running Windows 10. It’s not going to beat a new computer in a race to solve a computational model, but for streaming, browsing, and day-to-day stuff, the lack of bloat means things open quickly and UI elements respond immediately. There is probably a fair number of people with computers they think are useless that would actually work very well with Linux.



  • There’s always some post in here saying for people to use Linux. I find an admonishment to be pretty hollow, so I’ll share my recent experience installing a Linux distribution rather than simply saying it’s something people should do.

    I installed one of the many Debian variants. Getting the installation media is certainly going to be a challenge for casual users. Otherwise, it was easy. It walked through the steps. It was different from installing windows, but I felt it was no more difficult. I am well versed in this stuff, but I feel like nothing in the installation process would be a problem for a casual computer user.

    It offered several desktops programs at the login screen. This could likely throw off a lot of people. However, if you just logged in and ignored that you might never even know there were different options. The default was KDE. Everything worked. Nothing needed to be tweaked. This is in starck contrast to Windows, where once you get past installation, you need to get rid of a ton of crap it throws at you. The Windows 10 start menu is an unbelievable collection of weird boxes and shit and the task bar is similarly full of junk. The KDE start menu is just a menu. The task bar has your tasks. There’s nothing to do.

    I did try Cinnamon too. I prefer the simplicity. I don’t think casual users are going to care.

    Overall, I think for casual users, it’s actually easier to set up and use than Windows. Getting installation media prepared is not something most people are going to readily do, but I think it’s the same with Windows. They have the advantage there of having manufacturors install it. Otherwise, whatever issues there have been installing Linux distributions in the past aren’t there now. Conversely, installing and especially the configuration after installation is much harder on Windows than it used to be. If you’re slightly tech savvy, give Linux a try.