My condolences. Unfortunately, people are sometimes designated the in-house expert on a thing just because they seem slightly less ignorant of it than anyone else in the organization. That leaves more than a few people making decisions that impact security and privacy without good understanding or sound judgment in those areas.

Maybe you should train up and become your state’s new security expert?

This is one of the more important reasons to minimize dependencies and be very picky about the ones we adopt.

Yes.

Example from 2018 in North Carolina:
(Note that the article also mentions another example in that state from 1975.)

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/north-carolina-is-getting-a-do-over-election/

Example from 2023 in Connecticut:
(I don’t know if this one was considered a general election.)

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/election-redo-rare-connecticut-mayor-rcna129735

<3

Recounts do not include submitting new votes.

If you read my comment more carefully, you’ll find that I mentioned those two things separately, as example responses to a problem. I did not say or imply that one included the other.

You are gambling on the hope that the problem gets fixed later.

No. I am saying that election interference reports must go to the election authorities. Directing people to a political organization instead undermines the process, and is not sufficient. (Reporting to both is fine, though.)

And local election offices - often under partisan control - have no obligation to assist individuals in getting their ballot cast.

If that is a problem where you live, then I suggest also reporting to the federal authorities. There’s a whole list of contacts on the .gov page I provided.

And maybe making a special post aimed specifically at people in that situation. Not telling everyone, everywhere that a partisan political org is the place to report election interference, as was done in the problematic post.

(Again, reporting to the authorities and also reporting to a non-government org is fine; what’s bad is leading people away from reporting to the officials. The officials need to know when this stuff is happening. We need to get it on the record.)

The misinformation is directing people to report election interference using phone numbers belonging to a political organization, rather than the election authorities. A call to those numbers is not a call to the authorities. The post directs people away from the appropriate channels. It is therefore misleading.

[Edit: I acknowledge that it might have been well-intended. It is still misleading.]

the image clearly states who is behind it.

The presence of a domain name printed at the bottom of the list of phone numbers, which most people will not carefully consider (or in many cases even notice), doesn’t make it okay.

you came at it as “lies”

I said no such thing. Please don’t put words in my mouth.

Of course, if there is immediate danger, calling someone who can show up and help right away is always a good idea. (I wouldn’t think this needs stating, but yes, I agree on this point.)

None of the resources detailed in this post provide any form of immediate assistance to resolve an ongoing threat to your ability to cast your vote.

The local election offices are not substitutes for police departments, but I think they are likely to respond quickly. They have phone numbers.

If your ballot is never cast, it can’t be fixed later. The best the folks in the OP can do is punish the people who committed the crime. They can’t get your vote counted.

This is untrue. It is better to get your vote recorded the first time, of course, but fixing things later is also possible. If regional authorities are made aware of election interference, they can initiate a re-count, refuse to certify the results until a new vote is taken, etc. That’s part of their job.

I agree, but every avenue at our disposal are forms.

This is untrue. A phone number is prominently shown on the very first official link I tried: the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division. There are more phone numbers at the various state election offices.

You assuming that because they are a political org, they will play partisan politics,

No. I have assumed no such thing. I am pointing out that they are not the authorities, and since they are not, a report to them is not a report to the authorities. They might play partisan politics, or they might not. They might remember to pass your report on to the authorities at some point in the future, or they might forget. There’s no way to know, and it doesn’t matter.

Report directly to the authorities. It’s fine to also report to someone else, but they are no substitute. Definitely report to the authorities.

You called a political organization, and reached someone who is trained to tell you the sort of thing you wanted to hear.

The election authorities need to know about vote interference immediately. If you witness it, call the authorities directly.

It’s possible that the political org you called might be helpful as an extra measure, if you have additional free time to contact them as well. It’s also possible that they will reassure you and promptly drop your report in the proverbial trash if the interference you reported aligns with their interests. It’s impossible to know, no matter what they say. Either way, they are no substitute for calling the authorities.

I would report that other post (and it’s source, since it’s a re-post) to the Lemmy mods for spreading misinformation.

I don’t think the phone number image in it is technically fraud, since it identifies its sponsoring organization and doesn’t claim to be from an official government office.

“Welcome to the dark side of cozy.”

Who is Vote Save America? How are they funded? How can I verify that these phone numbers aren’t controlled by a political interest or foreign adversary?

[Edit: I looked up some of the phone numbers. They route to a politically-aligned organization.]

More importantly, why would I follow the advice of some random web site regarding something this important, rather than looking for an official source?

I wouldn’t. Here’s what I found with a quick search:

https://www.usa.gov/voter-fraud

How to report voter fraud, intimidation, or suppression

If you suspect voter fraud, report it to your state or territorial election office. You can also report it to:

• A local FBI office
• A local U.S. attorney’s office
• The Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division

If you witness or suspect voter intimidation or suppression, there are three ways you can report it:

• Contact your state or territorial election office
• Contact the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice
• Use the Election Complaint Report online form

LAST UPDATED: September 18, 2024

Hooray!

Have fun on the Sword Coast!

That symlink approach is one way to run the game executable directly, but it’s a little heavy handed, and likely to be reverted whenever the game gets updates or you verify the game files.

Sometimes you can put something like /path/to/game/executable.exe %command% in the Steam launch options to accomplish the same thing without symlinks. I suggest reading more of those comments to see if anyone had success with this approach.

It might still be a good idea to replace exFAT, though. Symlinks are often useful. :)

I don’t know if --skip-launcher is a valid command line option. If it is, I expect it just tells the launcher to immediately launch the game without showing a launcher screen. Of course, if the launcher requires a version of .Net that isn’t set up correctly, then it can’t run at all, and therefore can’t even get as far as noticing the command line option (let alone run the game). So I wouldn’t expect this to work.

Instead, read through the bug report that I linked earlier. Look for the comments that explain how to make Steam run bg3_dx11.exe or bg3.exe instead of running the launcher at all. (I don’t remember the exact paths, so I can’t just write the correct command line here.)

(Note: GitHub often hides some comments until you click the link to reveal more of them, so just using Control+F in your browser might not find these comments until you’ve clicked it several times.)

wine doesn’t emulate hardware,

FTFY

Wine’s very purpose is to emulate the Windows runtime environment. Translating API calls is only part of that.

So kindly leave people alone when they refer to it emulating, or as an emulator, or something that emulates. They’re not wrong.

Have you tried (in Steam’s properties for the game) switching the compatibility setting to force Proton Experimental? You might also need other workarounds, like configuring Steam to skip the game’s launcher.

The best place to find and discuss options is here:

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/4243

Also, you might want to join this community:

!linux_gaming@lemmy.world

Cloudflare has a long track record of not abusing that position, though.

Well, Cloudflare is not all that old, and we can’t see what they do with our data, so I would say it has a medium-length record of not getting caught abusing that position. But that’s not the point.

The point is that most Lemmy users’ actual browsing is in fact not private between them and their server. Many instances have a big network service corporation like Cloudflare watching everything read or written by every user, so that info is available to anyone with sufficient access or influence there, like employees and governments.

That applies to most of the internet,

Not exactly, but it does apply to a great many of the biggest web sites, so we could say it applies to much of the internet’s traffic.

And that’s part of the problem. Cloudflare is in a position to watch much of what people do on the web, across many unrelated sites and services (often including domain name lookups), and trivially identify them. This includes whatever political, religious, or NSFW posts they’re reading on Lemmy, and who they are when they log in to their bank accounts.

In any case, I replied not to be pedantic, but just to let our community know that they shouldn’t assume their reading habits on Lemmy are safely anonymized behind a made-up username, or confidential between them and their instance admins. If your instance uses a provider of DDOS protection or HTTPS acceleration, as many big instances do, then the walls have ears.

Your actual browsing of lemmy is moderately private, provided you trust your server.

Not exactly. Many of the big instances have Cloudflare (or similar) sitting between you and the server, providing the HTTPS layer while watching everything you read and write on Lemmy. In cryptography circles, we call this a man-in-the-middle.

Your instance (sh.itjust.works) is one such instance, by the way, as is lemmy.world.

It’s important to post these things every so often. There will never be a day when everyone already knows. :)

https://xkcd.com/1053/