Dave Lane @lightweight@mastodon.oeru.org

Lately I've been reacquainting myself again with #FreeCAD after 20 months of barely using it. I was a little surprised to see that 0.19 still hasn't been released yet (its development had started when I left the community). I use the development builds. When using it just for a few minutes, I didn't notice many changes. But I've been using my 3D printer again, and I needed to design a few things I wanted to print.

There are huge improvements across the board.

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My Fellow Americans is Yuvraj Sing's open licensed (CC0) /name your price book tracing the histories of US presidential inaugural addresses; it reproduces each address along with a scholarly essay exploring its context.

https://gumroad.com/l/myfellowamericans

The book has a companion podcast in which various people read each address aloud:

https://anchor.fm/myfellowamericans

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I was VERY pleased to get the chance to read FDR's first address:

https://anchor.fm/myfellowamericans/episodes/FDRs-1st-Inaugural-Address---03041933---Read-by-Cory-Doctorow-emvtge

That's the "nothing to fear but fear itself" address. It's a barn-burner.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4938/4938-h/4938-h.htm#link2H_4_0037

eof/

Over the 15+ years I've been using GNU/Linux, there are many programs that have become second nature to me. As a hacker, I enjoy tinkering with my system---why use a desktop environment when I could do the same thing with 100s of programs and hand-written scripts...!?

Each day I feel up to it, I'll give thanks to a free/libre program that has made a positive impact on my life, from every corner of my operating system, with the hope that others will find them interesting too.

#thanksfreesw

I just setup a new computer that comes with Windows 10. I was *shocked* at how in-your-face all the privacy violations are.

For starters, before it would even install you MUST login to a Microsoft account (and create a new one if you don't already have one). I saw no way to skip that step, AFAICT it wasn't possible at all.

Then it loads up and I try to install Chrome, but it won't let me. Why? Because it has something called "S-mode" which basically means...

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