I remember this too. Somehow, despite all the laptops I installed it on I got VERY lucky and only had a couple of WiFi issues, one totally incompatible laptop, and one that would not boot until I got the boot parameters right. I heard plenty stories from other people though. All that said, it’s so much smoother and easier installing Linux nowadays that the Windows install where I worry the whole time that MS is trying to reverse psychology me into agreeing to sell my unborn children into slavery.

Simple but powerful. War only benefits the few and the common folk suffer on all sides.

Seems poorly thought through. Some chump with Photoshop and a text editor could replicate this but change the QR code to a malware site in minutes.

There’s a great bike trail between Glenwood and Aspen if you ever make it out that way. Highly recommended.

As an officer of the anti-clanker brigade I am preemptively ticketing them for bad vibes & bad faith in the court of common sense. If you can’t safely and legally operate a motor vehicle, you don’t belong behind the wheel of one. That holds true for humans, animals, robots, etc.

They need to stop testing unfinished tech like this in life/death environments. I haven’t seen it done, and I certainly don’t condone it except in minecraft, but when protesters were “coning” cars, I always thought it was a wasted billboard for cross-cultural economic solidarity. If they put some labor union phone numbers on there for the outsourced overseas operators tasked with getting the car unstuck to read, their situation might be improved as well.

I’m so against the Colorado bill, but a situation where Microsoft is handcuffed but FOSS isn’t sounds less terrible than the original plan. Of course they’re just pushing the idea to gain ground and when the federal version comes, it’ll apply to everything. Maybe Colorado will become the most Linux-friendly state in the meantime.

I’ve emailed and called my congress people and the cosponsors about the Colorado one. Not sure what to do next.

Colorado has the safety stop. If no one else has right of way, we can pass through stop signs at up to 10-15mph. In practice, visual blocks mean we have to slow down quite a bit, but where there is visibility, there are some 4-ways I can very easily blow through. We can also pass through a red light once we come to a complete stop provided nobody else has the right of way. In practice, very little changed except now I put 100% of my effort into scanning for traffic, rather than 50% watching traffic and 50% scanning for the police. Going through downtown is also faster now that I don’t have to dwell at the lights. Overall, this just legitimizes something that happens anyway. Cars roll through stops every day, it would be silly to ticket a cyclist for it.

It was my dream to throw one of these off the theater roof and watch it go splat. We never did that, but we did do syrup shots.

All over the garage where my car is supposed to be parked.

Agreed. To elaborate:

Sure, the developer is a bit of a Judas for complying in advance, but our anger should be aimed at the people with power and reach promoting these laws in the political sphere (the metaphorical Pharisees).

To those saying “it’s just a field”, please consider that the timing is a more significant statement than the addition of the field itself. Why now? If you don’t support fascism, don’t build the frameworks that support it and don’t let fascists use YOUR platforms or software to make THEIR point, make them fork it and let them fail. I don’t think many members of the senate or house would be capable of adding this themselves. I’d be surprised if they could code hello world in TI-83 BASIC. If they ask you to do it, stub your toe and call in sick. Make it really shitty. Leave in a bunch of bugs that crash the program then blame the age attestation feature to turn users against it. Use copywrited code that they’ll have to remove later due to license incompatibilities. Report your boss to HR for every indiscretion that you might have normally overlooked. Or do nothing; that’s still better than complying in advance.

We have to break the narrative that this is inevitable. There’s enough of us, with concentrated enough knowledge and influence (aka, you folks are a bunch if nerds and I love it!), that if we collectively stop, the whole train stops or derails.

I hear you 100%. This sort of shit comes back with a different name each year. I am SOOOO sick of voting down abortion bans every election cycle.

26 US states, including mine, have initiative or referendum processes allowing citizens to place an issue on the ballot. In some states, that’s how the anti-abortion laws are ending up on the ballot, but we an use their own tools against them. In many states, these initiatives failed so we know we have a minimum of 51% support if it’s a law, and at least 33% support if it’s an amendment (depending on that state and their rules). Polling shows, an even larger percentage, most Americans, do not support these laws. The numbers are on our side.

https://ballotpedia.org/States_with_initiative_or_referendum

If we can collect enough signatures, the voters can put an end to this. If we add it to the state constitution, where the process allows this, we can completely prevent laws doing this from being considered because the only thing that can overrule a constitutional amendment is another constitutional amendment.

I’m gauging interest to do this in Colorado to foil age attestation laws, but we could potentially end the back and forth bullshit in multiple states.

The unit I was referencing has a built in antenna, but thanks for the reminder. A lot of people don’t know this.

I reread my comment and I was vague. I meant the first of the power bank units, not the replacement. The Heltec board works great.

There are worse hobbies. There’s also no shortage of items to try.

Ideas:

• eyeglasses
• braces
• bra underwire
• Freddy’s hand
• Edward Scissorhand’s hand
• fake flowers with a wire core
• bread bag ties
• beer cans
• tire tread reinforcement
• a knight in chainmail
• Christmas tree tinsel
• photoframe
• tie clip
• tooth fillings
• a bicycle
• a tricycle
• chain link fence
• chastity belt
• hammer
• aluminum wrapped baked potato

I got started recently also. I bought a Heltec V3 kit which was tolerably easy but not dead simple. Hardest part was the initial connection via webserial connection in a Chromium based browser. I also bought a Elecrow Thinknode v4 power bank. It has a power bank, wireless charger, flashlight, and radio, and looks super dank. Sadly the radio in the first unit didn’t work for me. I’m expecting to give it another go when the replacement arrives. The unit felt solid, so I think I got unlucky or I made a user error. We’ll see.

I am glad that I didnt get some prebuilt sealed unit for the heltec so I could unplug the battery. I was out of town for a few days and unplugged the battery so it could just run off USB power in my office. It worked the whole time. I accessed it through Wireguard using the app and I could see a couple hundred nodes and the occasional public chat, even when I wasn’t home.

Now when I lose my keys I just shine bright spotlight into the room and look for the flash of alu foil.

I am a Coloradan; I have already called all 4 cosponsors of the bill here. What can I do now? Does anyone know which orgs are fighting against this? We have a petition process to get constitutional amendments on the ballot. My dream would be to collect enough signatures to get this constitutional amendment on the next ballot but I think the deadline for submitting the text (prior to collecting sigs) is late this month:

“No form of AI or ID-based age verification shall be used as a condition for granting Colorado residents access to a website, internet service, or operating system. Age gates that rely exclusively on user-reported age may continue to be used in their current form to inform users that a website may not be appropriate for all users. Colorado recognizes that parents are the responsible party for what their children access online and that requiring ID verification for access to computing resources or digital resources is a violation of free speech and freedom of inquiry.”

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve tried minetest, but I’ll have to take a crack at she others. If it was just a game I played by myself, I would absolutely use those alternatives. I’ve played on a string of “civilization” servers for a decade or two now. Hundreds of people forming nations and interacting with real economies, diplomacy, and wars. A few key mods create the conditions of scarcity and balance destroyability/defensibility of the buildings. All of it is perched on a stack of custom mods. I’m not sure how hard porting them to Minetest would be. Some of these relationships are longer than my IRL friendships at this point.

When I started, we were using FOSS tools like Mumble to communicate, then they used Reddit and Team Speak, then eventually most nations moved to Discord for voice and text. I HATE discord. Maybe it’s because I’m too old, but I can’t follow a conversation for shit on there. At least everything is Linux compatible.

If I could find some interested devs to make the mods compatible, I’d gladly pitch in to help run a fully FOSS mineman civ server.

While the players can span all ages (a few grandparents on there), most are Gen Z and for some reason, Gen Z seems to care less about FOSS and open software. They’ve been propagandized fully by the proprietary web 2/3.0.

The only reason I still have a Microslop account is Minecraft. I have to assume that’s one of the reasons they bought it.

They haven’t fessed up yet that that’s part of their plan. I expect to hear from them after they’ve passed the first half.