• 232 Posts
  • 6.08K Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: October 4th, 2023

help-circle
  • I’ve spent some time reading legal material, and I’d say that most of the legal jargon exists because common English terms aren’t fully-defined. That’s fine for everyday speech, but not when one is talking about whether-or-not something is legal.

    So, for example, take mens rea. That’s Latin for “guilty mind”. Could you come up with some kind of common-language equivalent? Yeah, probably. You could maybe say “intent to act wrongly” or something like that. But there is a lot of precisely-defined legal doctrine around mens rea, and using the term makes it immediately clear that you’re talking about that, and not a more-casual meaning.



  • The same judge established the freeze – which was intended to be temporary – and then later dissolved it.

    This sort of thing is done when an action might have serious consequences and more time is needed to examine the arguments and their legal basis.

    It’s not different judges fighting with each other. It’s just how the legal system normally works.

    EDIT: I’d add that this is just over an offer to people to voluntarily resign. If the Trump administration does intend to do major layoffs – which would cause people who don’t want to leave to go – my guess is that there are likely to be more legal actions over it.









  • I have played with Pure Data before – and was actually trying to remember the name, when I was writing a comment yesterday in response to someone wanting to visualize some audio they were producing, if you’re just asking whether anyone here has touched it. I haven’t done so in some time – I don’t do much audio stuff, and it was more from interest in software synthesizers than in live-performance enabling stuff. I don’t know how much I could contribute to a discussion on Pure Data, but I’d probably read it.

    I can’t imagine that people would object to more vaguely-on-topic content on pretty much any community on the Threadiverse – I mean, I’m pretty sure that almost all communities are presently constrained by content. Few are seeing so much that they have to specialize further. This one is getting a couple posts a week.


  • tal@lemmy.todaytoComic Strips@lemmy.worldPrecious seconds wasted
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    6 hours ago

    every single os

    I use sway on Linux. I don’t have shutdown or reboot menus. When I shut down the computer via software, it looks like this:

    # shutdown -h now
    

    Rebooting is pretty different, looks like this:

    # reboot
    

    I guess that my case has a physical reset and power button that are – while different sizes on mine – near each other. You could put a button wherever you want to, though – those things just short two pins. Go to Mouser Electronics or Digikey or something and get one of those big fancy E-Stop buttons with a protective shield that you have to flip up and run the leads to the reset or power pins, put them on opposite sides of the case, and you can use that. I think I remember reading about someone who used a key switch (like, you have to physically insert a metal key to twist the thing and flip the switch) to power on his computer, just for the aesthetic.

    EDIT: Apparently that shield is called a molly-guard and the term was actually originally from computer power switches, prior to making its way to other industrial hardware:

    molly-guard

    Originally a Plexiglas cover improvised for the Big Red Switch on an IBM 4341 mainframe after a programmer’s toddler daughter (named Molly) tripped it twice in one day. Later generalised to covers over stop/reset switches on disk drives and networking equipment.


  • tal@lemmy.todaytoComic Strips@lemmy.worldPrecious seconds wasted
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    7 hours ago

    but the power usage could easily be 250W+

    I mean, a beefy GPU could be ~400W, and a beefy CPU another ~200W. But that’s peak draw from those components, which are designed to drastically reduce power consumption if they aren’t actually under load. You don’t have to power down the components in sleep/hibernation to achieve that – they can already reduce runtime power themselves. One shouldn’t normally have software significantly loading those (especially after a reboot). If you’ve got something that is doing crunching in idle time to that degree, like, I don’t know, SETI@Home or something, then you probably don’t want it shut off.

    The reason fans can “spin up” on the CPU and the GPU when they’re under load is because they’re dissipating much more heat, which is because they’re drawing much more power.


  • tal@lemmy.todaytoComic Strips@lemmy.worldPrecious seconds wasted
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    7 hours ago
    • The reason for a clean shutdown is to permit flushing data to the disk. By the time that the OS has gone down, that’s happened. One can just shut off the power once that shutdown has completed.

    • The largest issue with unclean shutdowns was that at one point in time, the filesystems used (FAT on Windows, HFS on MacOS, ext2 on Linux) could become corrupt if power was cut at arbitrary times. This has been addressed with later filesystems. Only FAT still sees much use, principally on USB flash drives and SD cards, due to the ability of many operating systems and devices to understand it. While some userspace software can deal poorly with having power cut – I particularly wouldn’t do it while updating an OS – generally shutting down a computer uncleanly isn’t nearly as problematic any more.

    • What’s the cost of leaving a computer on, some small amount of power usage? A reboot will log a user out, so there’s no risk of leaving an unattended, logged-in computer. I have my monitor power off, but I don’t normally shut down my desktop when leaving it unattended.


  • I don’t know about them in particular, but at one point in time, it was common for a lot of the bureaucracy to change with the President. That is, there was functionally a patronage system in place, and the President could reward supporters with government jobs. We had major reforms to end that, IIRC at some point in the 1800s, and I’m pretty sure that that placed some level of restrictions on at least hiring, if not firing, that the President could do in the bureaucracy. Today, the President only appoints a limited number of people at the top.

    kagis

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system

    In politics and government, a spoils system (also known as a patronage system) is a practice in which a political party, after winning an election, gives government jobs to its supporters, friends (cronyism), and relatives (nepotism) as a reward for working toward victory, and as an incentive to keep working for the party. It contrasts with a merit system, where offices are awarded or promoted on the basis of some measure of merit, independent of political activity.

    The term was used particularly in politics of the United States, where the federal government operated on a spoils system until the Pendleton Act was passed in 1883 due to a civil service reform movement. Thereafter the spoils system was largely replaced by nonpartisan merit at the federal level of the United States.

    Hmm. Jackson was apparently known for it – Jackson, like Trump, ran a populist campaign, interestingly.

    In 1828, moderation was expected to prevail in the transfer of political power from one U.S. president to another. This had less to do with the ethics of politicians than it did with the fact the presidency had not transferred from one party to another since the election of 1800—known historically for the extraordinary steps the outgoing Federalist Party took to try and maintain as much influence as possible by exploiting their control over federal appointments up until their final hours in office (see: Marbury v. Madison and Midnight Judges Act). By 1816, the Federalists were no longer nationally viable, and the U.S. became effectively a one-party polity under the Democratic-Republican Party. The Jacksonian split after the 1824 election restored the two-party system. Jackson’s first inauguration, on March 4, 1829, marked the first time since 1801 where one party yielded the presidency to another. A group of office seekers attended the event, explaining it as democratic enthusiasm. Jackson supporters had been lavished with promises of positions in return for political support. These promises were honored by a large number of removals after Jackson assumed power. At the beginning of Jackson’s administration, fully 919 officials were removed from government positions, amounting to nearly 10 percent of all government postings.: 328–33  In 1913 a history of Tennessee commented, “It is said that in early life Jackson had made it a principle never to stand between a friend and a benefit. The converse seemed also to have been a principle: never to benefit an enemy. And those who were excluded from his friendship were excluded from preferment.”

    The Jackson administration aimed at creating a more efficient system where the chain of command of public employees all obeyed the higher entities of government. The most-changed organization within the federal government proved to be the Post Office. The Post Office was the largest department in the federal government, and had even more personnel than the War Department. In one year, 423 postmasters were deprived of their positions, most with extensive records of good service.: 334  Jackson did not differ much from other Presidents in the number of officials he replaced by his own partisans. There was, however, an increase in outright criminality , with a measurable if not marked increase in corruption in the Land Office, Post Office, and Indian affairs departments.

    Reform

    By the late 1860s, citizens began demanding civil service reform, but it was only after the 1881 assassination of James A. Garfield by Charles J. Guiteau as revenge for the latter being denied a consulship that the calls for civil service reform intensified. Moderation of the spoils system at the federal level with the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883, which created a bipartisan Civil Service Commission to evaluate job candidates on a nonpartisan merit basis. While few jobs were covered under the law initially, the law allowed the President to transfer jobs and their current holders into the system, thus giving the holder a permanent job.[citation needed] The Pendleton Act’s reach was expanded as the two main political parties alternated control of the White House every election between 1884 and 1896. Following each election, the outgoing President applied the Pendleton Act to some of the positions for which he had appointed political supporters. By 1900, most federal jobs were handled through civil service, and the spoils system was limited to fewer and fewer positions.

    Although state patronage systems and numerous federal positions were unaffected by the law, Karabell argues that the Pendleton Act was instrumental in the creation of a professional civil service and the rise of the modern bureaucratic state. The law also caused major changes in campaign finance, as the parties were forced to look for new sources of campaign funds, such as wealthy donors.

    The separation between political activity and the civil service was made stronger with the Hatch Act of 1939 which prohibited federal employees from engaging in many political activities.

    Hmm. So the Pendleton Act was the major factor. Does it block firing or just hiring?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Reform_Act

    By the late 1820s, American politics operated on the spoils system, a political patronage practice in which officeholders awarded their allies with government jobs in return for financial and political support. Proponents of the spoils system were successful at blocking meaningful civil service reform until the assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881. The 47th Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act during its lame duck session and President Chester A. Arthur, himself a former spoilsman, signed the bill into law.

    The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act provided for the selection of some government employees by competitive exams, rather than ties to politicians or political affiliation. It also made it illegal to fire or demote these government officials for political reasons and created the United States Civil Service Commission to enforce the merit system. The act initially only applied to about ten percent of federal employees, but it now covers most federal employees. As a result of the court case Luévano v. Campbell, most federal government employees are no longer hired by means of competitive examinations.

    Hmm. Well, it does restrict political firings. No idea whether this runs afoul of it. It sounds like the prior Trump administration ran into it, so they’re probably familiar with restrictions:

    In October, 2020, then-President Donald Trump, by Executive Order 13957 created a Schedule F classification in the excepted service of the United States federal civil service for policy-making positions, which was criticized by Professor Donald Kettl as violating the spirit of the Pendleton Act.

    Shortly after taking office in January 2021, President Joe Biden rescinded Executive Order 13957 by issuing Executive Order 14003.

    On January 20, 2025, then-newly reelected President Trump issued his Executive Order titled “Restoring Accountability To Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce” to restore the effects of his own prior Executive Order 13957.