gattsuru
2d ago
Officially, normal Win10 support ends October 2025, and Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC support ends in January 2027. There’s a one time offer of Extended Support, but it’s thirty bucks per station and gonna be pretty limited. I would expect some limited security updates after that despite Microsoft’s best promises and it’s certainly possible Microsoft does a last-second extension, but it’s not a lot of time for migration prep if you’re worried about 11.
gattsuru
2d ago
Linux-in-ChromeOS is not awful, though it's very limited and you typically find the limits of the ChromeBook hard disk just in built-in-minimal-software.
For fully ripping out ChromeOS and replacing it on actual ChromeBooks, support problems can be as deep as the bootloader, firmware, and even CPU. Some are supported well-enough, but if your device is not on the mrchromebox or chrultrabook lists, getting out of ChromeOS can range from 'research project' to 'science project' to 'not gonna happen'.
If you're willing to buy a new ChromeBook specifically to convert to Linux, your options are better, but they're still going to have to be selective and do your research. In general, ARM is a ton of work to end up with a machine that may not be able to run a lot of apps (or require compiling them from source... for days), and AMD processors can have weird gaps in support or require very specific kernel versions. But I've mostly avoided it outside of a couple science projects; you're probably better off asking someone more focused, there.
I guess maybe the Venn diagram of the people who want super low end hardware and the people who are techy enough to dive in with Linux is extremely small?
A lot of it's that it's a fairly small field, and that people in it tend to be very focused and not very price sensitive. You can find a lot of not-powerful Linux-focused computers, but they're often that way because they're prioritizing an open-source-down-to-the-instruction-set ideology (not ready for primetime) or because they want it so small it fits in a cargo pants pocket (GPD Pocket), or they have other ideological attachments (eg Framework). Where Linux is focused on a mobile device that's gotten mainstream attention, it's usually for a specialized use that requires more expensive hardware (eg, SteamDecks and most competitors use a locked-down Arch variant).
The other side is that the used (and renewed, and just-trying-to-clear-old-shit) Windows market is extremely hard to compete with, and almost anyone who's interested in using Linux can install their preferred setup easily. Even mainstream clearing houses like Amazon or NewEgg have a ton of conventional Windows options under 250 USD for the 11"-14" market (caveat: specific sellers not endorsed), and if you're willing to trawl eBay or govdeals you can find stuff at half that price... at the cost of buying used.
Alternatively, anything in particular I should look for/avoid if I'm considering buying new low-end hardware, for the purposes of flipping it over to Linux?
Almost all x86-64 Windows laptops will handle common Linux distros fine. I'd avoid touchscreens unless you're actually going to use them, because disabling them in-Linux can be a little obnoxious, but that's a pretty uncommon issue. If you start looking at gaming the nVidia vs AMD (vs Intel) problem gets more complicated, but at this price range it's just not a choice.
I do recommend getting more RAM than you think you need.
gattsuru
2d ago
What I don’t understand is why there’s no pushback on increasing the need for certification of the dogs.
It's part of a more-than-thirty-year-old regulation, and the necessary parts of the Department of Justice and Department of Transportation that make up the relevant rulemaking processes are never going to want to get involved in the necessary levels of oversight, nevermind do so with enough clarity and consistency that normal businesses will be willing to take the risk of allowing employees to make a decision. Because a lot of actual enforcement tends to involve veterans, it's a political third rail even for otherwise regulation-skeptical conservatives.
There's some Reason-style pushback, but because there's such a mess for any implementation -- who does the certifications? how do you verify that they aren't just some web template? -- there's no clear better local maxima with a path to reach it short of full prohibition, and there's no political will to do that.
gattsuru
2d ago
Lutris has good_ish_ GOG support built-in now. There's still some jank, especially for handling multiplayer (thanks, GOG Galaxy!), but if you don't mind checking things out and some slightly longer install times, you may find a lot more of your library has a much better level of support than you'd expect.
RTX depends pretty heavily on the game and card, but games that support it internally are more often workable than not, usually without other jank. DLSS 2.0 is available and pretty well-supported. DLSS 3.0 is more mixed; you're pretty much dependent on proton experimental, but I have seen some games (eg Satisfactory) with it working. I haven't tried or found good answers (either yay or nay) for other people trying RTX Remix for older games.
gattsuru
3d ago
I took the plunge for The Year Of Linux On The Desktop, starting with a few tiptoes in 2016 and moving my personal computer default boot in 2021. I had long experience with server Linux, and that used to be important, but it's gotten a lot better today. For use cases:
- ChromeBook replacements / web browser machines: 110%. You can just run Chrome/FireFox/Brave on a local machine, and be happy, or you can install LibreOffice/various calendars/whatever and also have good local offline functionality, if sometimes with a dated UI. The only real downside here is that new laptops running on their Linux compatibility will usually start at four or five times the price. If you're comfortable buying used equipment and swapping out batteries, you can get <150 USD pricing on three-year-old mid-range hardware, but this is extra work and has limited availability.
- Desktop futzing around: 99.9%. Since 2021, I've had maybe three document files I couldn't open fine with LibreOffice, and about a dozen websites that didn't just accept FireFox-on-Linux-with-working-uBlock as equivalent to Chrome-on-Windows. Video streaming is fine, audio streaming is fine, Discord's updates are a little more annoying but mostly work out of the box.
- Gaming: 90%, but highly variable. If you're playing mainstream games from Steam that don't use an anti-cheat, and run on an Xorg-based desktop, 99% of games will run with little more than checking a 'run in proton' box. GOG-based games can be a little more annoying (install Lutris to install GOG Galaxy to install No Man's Sky with online support), and I have run into games that didn't work without a lot of extra work, but it's a lot better than I expected. Other games can range from 'one extra step over Windows that's well-documented' (Vintage Story) to a lot of annoyances (Star Citizen, tbf not a Linux-specific thing) to "you have my sympathy" to 'will work, but Bungie will ban you for it' (Destiny 2). Anti-cheat updates can break perfectly-functioning games, and most anti-cheat-focused games simply won't work in Linux. Mods can sometimes break a perfectly-functioning game (which raises some very serious questions about ARK: Survival Evolved's sandboxing). There's been times where I've gone literally years without having to boot to Windows to game (FFXIV, Factorio, and Vintage Story have been pretty great out of the box), and other times where it was once a week.
- Laptop Use: 95%. I have had some laptops where driver support, especially for things like lid-close hibernate/sleep, either didn't work or wasn't reliable. Fingerprint readers tend to be flaky as well. Battery life can range from better-than-Windows to much-worse as a result. But the core functionality has almost always been there.
- Server functionality: 99%. Hosting your own file share and calendar setup is pretty trivial with NextCloud, collaborative document editing is a little more tedious but absolutely doable (I used to recommend Collabora, they still work but are a little naggy), Jellyfin is great for local video or media streaming, LLDAP for authentication for serious home server users, so on. My only big complaints are that Calendar sync protocols are a clusterfuck, where each calendar works fine individually but syncing to something like an iPhone's CalDAV support is basically playing Russian roulette, and that setting up your own VPN is still little too hard for nontechnical users.
- Software- or Hardware-specific use cases: 50% coin flip. Sometimes the Linux-friendly version of a software merely has a learning curve, like compared Blender to Z-Brush; sometimes it's a cliff, like trying to go from Fusion360 to FreeCAD. Some hardware will work out of the gate, some like VR headsets might be a couple hours of fucking with text files and the command line, some is 'just build your own driver' level bad. Software built specifically to interface with hardware can be especially frustrating: Carbide Create works surprisingly well, LycheeSlicer was a crashomatic for the better part of a year, and sometimes even stuff that should work sometimes breaks in weird ways (how did Prussia fuck up their slicer?). Audio decks are notoriously hit or miss; drawing tablets (especially w/ pressure sensitivity) can be annoying.
- Phone replacement: 1%. The ZeroPhone project hasn't updated since 2019, and a variety of competitors have simply crashed and burned. The PinePhone and Librem are probably the best options out there, but they're still pretty awful as phones. You can technically throw something together with a pocket computer and some VOIP software, and I've done it, so it's technically possible, but even as a pretty high-use techie I can't really make the argument for doing so no matter how much I want to.
However, there are some caveats, sometimes serious ones:
- The Linux file management system is difficult for normal users to adjust around, especially for desktop environments where data horders might have three or four drives. There's ways to make it more understandable, but virtually no distro will do so by default, and a lot of tools will actively get in your way -- even the otherwise excellent Lutris and Steam launchers are prone to spreading config files across a million weird directories.
- Trying to convert existing Chromebooks to Linux can be doable, but is seldom worth it, and it's not always even possible.
- Xorg (most linux distros) is still more reliable than Wayland (hypr, COSMIC, Enlightenment), especially on nVidia hardware. I'd expect that this changes in the next 6 months to two years, but if you have extremely low tolerance for rare (two-three times per hour) flicker in some games, this can be a serious thing to consider early. I have no idea why or how Minecraft is one of the games most prone to it, though. When this does get better, most Xorg-based distros will probably just switch over for you or at the next distro-upgrade.
- You will generally have to opt-in for 'proprietary drivers', both for dedicated graphic cards and for certain web browser codecs. The open-source ones are actually getting a lot better (uh, more so for AMD than nVidia), but at best expect performance loss, and sometimes stuff won't work. The web browser ones will give you a header notification and handle the install on their own when you actually need it, but the gpu drivers can require you to touch the driver manager tool -- Linux Mints is very easy, but Arch and OpenSUSE can involve some command line work.
- Prepare an automated backup option, ideally more than one. Windows and Chrome do a lot to protect naive users, at the cost of OneDrive breaking a ton of shit, but most Linux distros at best will do some on-system backups or version rollbacks. You're very unlikely to need them -- I've had only one break across three machines in four years, and that was because of a Microsoft fuckup I was able to work around without absolutely needing the backup -- but when you need them it's often too late to hope. Windows users should do this too, but it's more essential for Linux.
- Some normal users have zero tolerance for change or frustration, especially on their main desktop computer. I would strongly recommend starting with Chromebook replacements and your own machine well before giving a non-technical user the same thing on their main system.
- I like tiling window managers, and hyprland looks really nice, but if you're not the sorta techie that likes learning new conventions it's a big lift. Would definitely not recommend for normal users.
- If you dual boot (which I recommend!) or have nvidia graphics, the default Windows EFI partition at 100 MB is wayyyyyyy too small, and will result in weird and hard-to-diagnose bugs. Resizing (or even modifying it) from within Windows is an absolute nightmare, so look for guides on how to do it in your linux distro, and do it early. 600 MB is overkill, but will save you a lot of frustration down the road. This matters a lot less for machines without dual boot, and with just integrated graphics cards.
- Most distros will be 'regular release', meaning that while they provide reliable normal updates, certain big changes in feature or function set will only occur with once-a-year-or-less version updates. Upgrading from one version to another (usually called a distro upgrade) can range from 'a single command and five minutes' to 'cross your fingers and hope' to 'nope', and most fall in the middle. Old distro versions can sometimes keep getting security updates for years, but even the long-term support versions will eventually run dry. The alternative is called rolling release, where you just get whatever package version is newest and passed whatever stability checks your distro's maintainers run. This keeps you closer to the power curve, but means you can get a lot of often-pointless upgrades (no, VSCode, I don't need a twice-weekly version update for a glorified json linter) and can rarely find problems because of weird cross-library or cross-program compatibility issues.
- "Stable is late, experimental is broken", at the risk of quoting someone I can't find quickly. Especially for web browsers, it's important to make sure that you're keeping up to date: while Linux desktop is much less of a target for various computer crud than Windows (or even Mac), stuff that attacks just your browser or just a single service can absolutely wreck that service if it gets months or years out of date. Worse, because of the above, regular release distros will eventually just stop providing any updates at all for nearly everything, and this can be in a much shorter timeframe than in Windows environments (eg, Linux Mint usually gives 5 years for all LTS versions, Ubuntu technically goes to ten if you subscribe, some distros will just shrug and say about three).
- While distros sell themselves based on UI and various concept specializations, for the most part they're really defined by their package manager, default package repositories, and (where present) app store. Even these things can eventually be swapped out, though it's usually painful enough that it's easier to do a reinstall instead.
For distros:
- Linux Mint (Cinnamon edition) is kinda the default option: debian-based, robust, very well-supported, lots of good functionality out of the box outside of the Ubuntu or Debian packages, obviously not-Windows enough that it doesn't feel like you're tricking people, but very similar in design assumptions.
- Ubuntu used to be a good choice, but they've increasingly thrown the mandate of heaven in the trash, and their app store and desktop environment has become a mess as a result, and the telemetry situation is, while nowhere near as bad as Windows, still rough. They still work, just wouldn't be my first selection anymore. If you're considering it, instead I'd point to kubuntu; it's avoided a lot of the worst bloatware, if only by accident. Just be careful with the app store.
- You can just install Debian. It's nowhere as difficult as Arch, and while it will not have a lot of the useful packages installed by default, most mainstream stuff is in their package repository without any serious problems.
- Gaming-focused distros exist, but they're mostly some nice UI on top of a normal distro, rather than some serious change in functionality or design. Batocera or RetroBat can be useful despite that, but I wouldn't recommend them for anything but a dedicated gaming machine, and usually only where you're basically making a console replacement -- for a normal desktop, you can just install EmulationStation on almost every mainstream distro. I've heard Nobara falls here, but I haven't tried it.
- I don't recommend Arch for your first linux install. It's a good exercise to understand how operating systems actually work, but you can (and your first time, probably will!) install the distro without a dhcp client, git client, or text editor. That said, while it's not the only rolling-release distro, it is one of the best-known and, imo, best-supported.
- Manjaro is in a similar boat to Arch, with the added downside that the easy installer will absolutely get too far up an Arch creek without a paddle. About the only benefit is that Manjaro vets updates a little bit more, but imo not really enough to make a big difference.
- Alpine/AntiX aren't really great for desktop usages because their distro upgrade situation is generally pretty bad, but they do work great for lightweight Chromebook replacements -- fast boot, good security updates, very lightweight.
- ElementaryOS is a great Mac-like environment, and Zorin as a very Windows-meets-Chromebook-like. I've got...mixed feelings about these: trying to trick someone into not knowing that they're on Linux is an awful idea, and Zorin has a bad purchase schema on top of that. But if you just really like the more traditional UIs, they're not bad options. Caveat: you can just install Elementary as a desktop environment on top of other distros.
- Gentoo is great for every usecase you don't need. If I had three hundred identical laptops that I wanted to set up exactly to a limited set of specifications, Gentoo is a great tool. If I just want to run a local machine and I don't know what I need, it's a lot of extra work for very little benefit. Wonderful toolset that I'll literally never recommend, because if you need it you know.
- Kali/Parrot/whatever security-focused linux, mostly these are just convenience options, usually just extra stuff strapped onto Debian. If you're not trying to do security research, you don't need these; if you are, you're mostly only going to use them so you don't have a thirty-page install list.
Don't go too deep into the What Distro questions. There's a million one-offs or specialized distros that do a lot, or have a prebuilt user interface that's just that little bit better, or has a slightly nicer support forum, or comes with a lot of tools that exactly match your use case. These can often be great things! But finding support can be much harder, and they can be behind the power curve, and it ultimately isn't that big of a deal, and you don't need to get overwhelmed by your choices. For a shorter version of Just Your First Linux Distro:
- If you just want a Linux setup that Just Works, go with Mint (Cinnamon for a desktop or newer laptop, XCFE for an 5+year-old laptop). The UI will have a learning curve, but there's decent UI for nearly everything, the start search menu will redirect a lot of common windows tools to their linux counterpart, and it's just generally a good to a great experience.
- For very light-weight uses (such as reviving a 7+ year-old laptop), probably AntiX. For very old systems (>10 years), Puppy Linux.
- To minimize retraining, consider and try out on a non-critical machine Zorin (for Windows) or ElementaryOS (for Mac). These may still flunk the Wife Test, or may only pass it for some but not all use cases, and you should be crystal-clear that they are a new different thing and not just a Windows skin, but they'll have the least friction.
I strongly discourage Arch for your first desktop Linux install, unless you have an Arch-specific package or function you're looking for. It's a lot less painful than it was even five years ago, and it can be useful as a way to learn about fundamental parts of the modern boot process and distribution of functionality, but it's a lot of tedium to eventually end up with a machine that wants to update (literally) every time you boot it up, and often multiple times, and may be harder to find support for less common use cases.
If you want to get more familiar with RPM specifically, your main bets are gonna be limited to either Fedora or OpenSUSE as a desktop tool. They're not my first choice as a daily driver, but they are functional for most purposes. Mandriva/Oracle/Alma exist, but they're going to be harder to jump into, and to find support around. EDIT: if I had to pick, I'd go with OpenSUSE. /EDIT.
(Technically, you can just install most package managers on most linux distros. I wouldn't recommend it, though, and for RPM specifically you're likely to be stuck compiling from source.)
gattsuru
6d ago
The power to commute a sentence is unbound, so outside of an aide dragging Biden's unconcious hand to draw the signature (and maybe not even then), there's no way to put Kadamovas back on the firing line.
But there's a cruel and unusual punishment argument as fewer and fewer executions are being actually brought, under Furman v. Georgia-style logic. I don't think there's five (or even four) votes in favor of Furman's logic today, and there are some process reasons that these particular appellants might not even get to a court hearing... but a lot of reasons that they're still going to spam pro se and maybe even seriously-funded attempts to bring that lawsuit forward.
gattsuru
14d ago
That's fair, and definitely happens -- I think there's been a few Persona games that ask for Majong questions that are trivial for anyone familiar with the game, but nonsense to most Americans, myself included. For the Couple's Mask, there's a bit of that, but mostly the logic is fairly reasonable: it's just the timing being incredibly tight. There's a good number of critical points where you have to be in the right place in a 10-minute window, and if you screw up even one bit, you're back to stage one.
And if you aren't trying for a completionist run, it's a lot less bad. I think my first casual play got a little over half the masks without any real problems or GameFAQsing.
You see variants of the gimmick a bit in visual novels and related games, though usually with a different framing. Being able to continue on and learn from a failure before a reset is a really clever gimmick where it works, and I'll point to Ghost Trick as another game that's a great exploration of that concept. The flaw is less there, and more that the introduction of a strict timeline struggles where the time pressure is too high or too low. Where that pressure's right, you have a lot of strong incentive to keep playing and keep your tempo and focus together. But even with a casual run in Majora's Mask, there'll be a good couple times where you have to sit around for a few minutes just waiting for an event to pop, and there's other times where you'll be sprinting from one event to another because you underestimated how long a fight would take. And that's a problem common to games that did pull a bit from Majora's Mask's social graph side, like the increasing focus on timed behavior in Harvest Moons and other lifesim games.
gattsuru
17d ago
There's a stereotype of a small portion of programmers (and hardware hackers): generally interested in working in a variety of new and sometimes weird programming languages, or weird and very hard projects socially while very pointedly not matching expected presentations for those tasks, and with a pile of gendered behaviors that are neither normal nor fit traditional nerd stereotypes. It's a joke for rust programmers, but not just a joke. Most notably, they're nearly ESR-level obstinate and either self-taught or obsessively focused on new tasks after education, but with different focuses (and, uh, politics, though not always). One of those common focuses is an emphasis on things like color fidelity, image processing, and data control.
Catgirl thighhigh is kinda the output from that group making things for their own internal use, and it has a very distinct appearance and perspective. As an aesthetic and for works emphasizing on aesthetics, big emphasis on cool pastels or dark grays, rounded corners, greeble-heavy detailing, and blobby characters. As an ethos, it's aggressively non-professional without being edgy, or cute rather than traditionally attractive, sometimes to the point of surrealism (hyprdots includes by default a terminal script that pops up a random pokemon) or furry levels of oversharing.
This sometimes rounds to trans-(or-nonbinary)-as-an-aesthetic, from both transwomen (cw: some links on that page nsfw) and (more rarely) transmen sides, but that's neither necessary nor sufficient. Vazkii from the modded Minecraft sphere is very nearly a central example to such an extent that people are surprised to find he isn't trans; Audrey Tang is a great programmer but not in this category.
gattsuru
17d ago
About what you'd expect, I guess.
Vaxry's largely moved away from keeping parity with wlroots main, and instead rewritten and built into hypr the necessary parts of the library -- breaks a bit from the Linux ethos, and likely to make keeping up with bugfixes and such either direction impossible, but may have some advantages for hypr. The community has had a few We're Doing Moderation Better posts, but they're mostly working on actually improving moderation rather than just throwing in a CoC for someone to abuse.
The hypr-based software that was previously being considered by a mainstream distro, hyprcursor, got dropped out of the running for Weird And Not Good Reasons, and there's probably some other related software components that would be good candidates otherwise but are being ignored because of The Drama. There are already projects that have disavowed any hyprland compatibility, and distros that have rejected hypr for social-not-political reasons. There have been broken things on specific equipment or distros where the FDO ban has been a problem, though to my knowledge a surmountable one so far.
FreeDesktop.Org's main website is broken in a bunch of ways that it always has been, but some of these problems (spam issues) make it difficult to tell the downstream results there. Could be that the lack of hypr-related posts in recent days are just no one wanting to do it, could be that accounts doing anything related to the topic aren't getting approved, could be that no one wants to do it because they don't want their account getting blown up.
That said, there's been less impact than I expected: hyprdots has remained active, maintained, and uncancelled/unbrigaded, and while hackernews stories do get the inevitable "worst community ever" comments, it's not the only thing that happens.
There's been some efforts to cancel DeVault over past reddit comments and moderation, as well as an alleged danbooru account, that I'm not going to link publicly. There's some interesting human-watching in it all coming out after his role in the Vaxry stuff, while the page itself points instead to the Stallman cancellation DeVault also championed, but a) that might just be because DeVault's hit on Stallman focused on related topics, b) only got him out of a few social media accounts, rather than any clear impact in code spaces, and c) does have a bit of Pepe Silvia vibes going on.
Vaxry has not come out as trans or nonbinary, to my knowledge.
gattsuru
19d ago
To some extent, if you're not that obsessive you just don't do that level of completionist run: the games have increasingly made the more annoying collectibles useless or mocking.
That said, there's a lot of the earlier 3d games that were really bad about it. Not fucking about with Korrok Seeds in recent 3d zeldas is the healthy option, where Majora's Mask and the Couple's Mask was legendarily difficult to figure out and time-consuming once you have, and it was something closer to 'major side quest' than 'random golden crap'.
gattsuru
22d ago
gattsuru
26d ago
Nope. Sorry, correct link should be this. In case it's not visible for those not logged in:
I think there's a steelman that there's a bunch of widely distributed risks when prosecution of close family of presidents starts being a common thing, in the same way that prosecutions of Presidents would. If we broke down the fence over malum in se conduct, it'd be one thing. But as illegal as many of Hunter and Trump's behaviors may have been, afaict we're looking at malum prohibitum.
When you start opening up potential where the laws and moral get unclear, or enforcement hard, you don't just (or primarily) Get The Bad People. The alternative isn't just these two going to jail; it's opening up a repeat of Ted Stevens every four years, for the highest office in the land.((And, as Trump has demonstrated, sometimes with the opposite effect.))
I think there's some weaknesses even to this steelman: the obvious 'is no one above the law' question, differing feels on inherently immoral, why some offices fall under it and others don't, whether it delays or even discourages the reform that still hasn't happened post-Stevens. But from a 'maybe we don't want to break all these really important institutions' position (albeit as someone who maybe does), there's a not-crazy arg that this cordons off a really bad path.
Of course, even if that covers the breadth, it leaves the 'why pardon instead of commute' problem, especially since Hunter specifically would likely benefit from some time in a halfway house or mandatory detox.
I dunno man, are there people here willing to argue that? Maybe a couple.
I've not been able to post much here the last month or so, but I've made the argument as a steelman in other venues, and while I'd prefer some more enlightened form of deescalation on these matters combined with a moderately-embarrassing airing-of-deeds, there's reason that many of those options are either not available (eg, commuting sentences not finalized gets complicated) or not trusted to be available (eg, Biden absolutely wouldn't and probably shouldn't trust Trump to do a pardon exchange).
EDIT : hopefully fixed link.
gattsuru
1mo ago
Fun part 1:
Another student draws a swastika on the back of one of B.W.’s friends. He then states to B.W. that “I’m going to beat the s— out of you.” He then punches B.W. repeatedly. The student tells others that he beat B.W. because he “was white.”
There's some !!fun!! questions about how accurate the claims were, but because this was at the motion to dismiss phase, the court is supposed to accept even remotely plausible claims from the non-moving party.
Fun part 2: This wasn't 2020. That example was February 2019, aka pre-Floyd.
gattsuru
1mo ago
Noel Canning's punt will come back to haunt us: Congress must be in a recess of 'sufficient length' to be a real delay, not just the three-day break of Noel Canning... but while booting the conservative-lead requirement that such appointments be to fill a space that became vacant during the recess. So Congress has since gotten into the habit of pro-forma 'sessions' that did nothing but reset the clock, hence why October and August look like this.
In theory, the President has some powers to force Congress to adjourn, in Article II, Section 3:
"... he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper;... "
But afaik this has never been used, a strict read of the text would only allow it to apply where Congress was actively unable to agree on a date of end of session, and because there are no requirements for how Congress can choose to assemble (being having to meet on the first Monday in December) I don't think it would actually work otherwise.
In practice, if Trump tries for force recess appointments, it's extremely likely that the Senate fight further on everything else, so it's a costly decision to make to even try.
gattsuru
1mo ago
Most coverage focuses on his alleged sex scandal. Which is lurid, but has the dual problems of being having run too long while, when described in detail (some ludicrous), just isn't damning enough. About the best that can be said there is that Gaetz lacks Kavanaugh's charisma: even if someone tries something really stupid like trying to bring a Mann Act prosecution against him, everyone's just not gonna care.
The other side is that he's actively uncharismatic enough that I could see him having a tougher time getting confirmed than RFK. Gaetz is hated, and he's an easy man to hate.
More critically, my impression's that he hasn't shown the competence or leadership skills necessary to do much more than take a few retirements out at the belt. My opinion of the DoJ is low enough that 'wrecking ball' might well be an improvement over BATNA, but I'm skeptical that it's the only or best option available. We know what happens when Gaetz demands someone do something and they refuse, and it didn't work out great for Gaetz last time, and it's gonna be every single day at the DoJ. Maybe he wakes up once shoved into the role -- if the conspiracy theory is right and that sex scandal above was being assisted by the DoJ, he'd have a lot of reason! -- but my bet is no. He might be vengeful enough to do a Nunes, but it takes more than a grudge.
gattsuru
1mo ago
The current HHS head is a HerbaLife fan.
I’d love to have better options, and I’m disappointed that the Trump one is this, but I think people badly underestimate how bad our institutions are.
gattsuru
1mo ago
At least post-WPATH SOCv8, the standards of care no longer require an age of 18 or majority at any point, and have largely reframed talk therapy into a very strict division between required 'gender-affirming care' and prohibited 'conversion therapy'. At the risk of self-citation, I think the summary of distinctions from v6 to v7 to v8 here is pretty decent, and if you've grounded your expectations around personal experiences interacting with the system before 2020 or summaries from before 2018 you may be surprised.
There are a number of good (and pro-trans) doctors that are skeptical about surgical or hormonal interventions within the earlier limits of the new SOC, especially before puberty (and, from the other direction, I'm not convinced that 16-18 is that big of a deal), and there are a number of (sometimes unintuitive) serious flaws with the v6-era rules, but it's a lot harder to just point to the SOC and motion around them being uncontroversial.
gattsuru
1mo ago
Even before that, any serious changes to the FDA's approval process would either trigger the APA, or be close enough that courts would have easy opportunity to be pulled in. And attempting to slowboat things by just crawling up vaccine production facility tailpipes with thick rubber gloves trying to find the slightest mistake runs into the problem where that's already the FDA's normal procedure.
gattsuru
1mo ago
The US situation is kinda a clusterfuck.
Most vaccines fall under the NCVIA, so any claims of injury go to the NVICP, where the standard of proof is hilariously low. It's a little more strict than a 'damn that's an ugly baby' fund, but not by much, and the willingness of the program to accept sometimes implausible alleged links has been used as support for no small number of implausible further links. Funds are drawn from a vaccine excise tax, which in theory, and in practice is a mix of Medi*, insurance and private dollars.
COVID vaccines were specifically exempted by the PREP Act in a different way, falling under the CICP. Where NCVIA is extremely fail-positive, CICP is the reverse: requiring "compelling, reliable, valid, medical and scientific evidence", and very happy to can claims over minor paperwork faults. As a result, the lack of any successful claims even into mid-2022 drove a lot of skepticism, and while they've since recognized some, the numbers remain implausibly low.
((There are some similar exceptions for smallpox vaccines and I think the military anthrax vaccine.))
I think it's more incompetence than malice, but the inability to find the Goldilocks zone badly undermines institutional trust.
gattsuru
1mo ago
Might not be China, specifically, but yeah. International liability basically doesn’t exist even in the face of ruinously and maliciously bad behavior, local liability is absolutely crushing even in face of well-intentioned and innocent mistake, and the old solution of importers being responsible has collapsed in the face of big names outsourcing that to tiny and judgement proof third parties in the Amazon Marketplacificiation of internet sales.
gattsuru
1mo ago
I enjoyed the original pretty happily during initial release (and played and enjoyed with caveats Clear Sky), though I never got too heavily into the modded sphere. There was always a bit of tension between the different gameplay components -- the full Roadside Picnic where impatience was your worst enemy, the horror bits of a bloodsucker popping up out of nowhere, and the 'puzzle' of 'use sniper on guy' outdoor warfare always ground a bit at the edges -- but it was pretty enjoyable for what it was.
Not sure if I'll get the sequel any time soon, but good to keep in mind.
In addition to the matters SteveKirk brings up, I'd check what resolution YouTube is streaming at. There's been some changes in the last few months resetting default resolution values, and it'll quite often favor resolution values that you neither need nor want on many systems. 480p or even 360p is a lot easier on your processor and bandwidth if you're not reading text or looking at fine details of the video.
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