See you in a year or 2.
Play as old as times:
- Company announces garbage change
- People freak out
- Company says ok we will only do half of the garbage
- People calm down and forget
- Company later does the rest of the garbage
- Nobody cares because half of it is already there
Foot in the door technique is a timeless way to get what you want. People seem oblivious to it.
I hear frogs experience the same phenomenon with hot water.
Actually they only stay in the boiling water if their nervous system is impaired
Good thing humans dont have nervous systems
Hm? Did you say something? Sorry, I was distracted.
Also works the other way around.
I mean it makes total sense the minute you think about it at all.
- some middle managers year end goals include this unpalatable feature
- they release it
- public freaks out
- pr walks it back a bit
- that managers back at work the week after trying to get that feature in because they need to justify the work they just did on it for better compensation
It’s the same with laws.
It’s very hard to get the electorate united to oppose something but if they manage to unite and oppose a bill the lobbyists are back at work on Monday pushing it by a different name.
Laboyists are the scourge of democracy. Every last one of them has a rope and spear with their names written on them.
100% Microslop.
Are you implying that CA regulators do exactly what disgusting corporations do?!? I am shocked sir!
Technology makes everything cheaper, including changing minds.
At some points it was unfeasible to abuse consumers because they’d object. Now, if it’s on a large enough scale and valuable enough, you can just pay to convince the majority of them that it’s fine.
That reminds me. We are quickly approaching the date discord postponed age verification to.
also known as TESTING the waters, gauging public response. so they can adapt under a different scheme.
Plucking the goose with a minimum of hissing.
The principle that Bullshit, sprayed around often enough, becomes Air Freshener.
This isn’t exactly it.
First or isn’t a company or is the government. 2nd, that legislation is just plain dumb and open source systems like Linux, BSD can’t comply with it, even if they wanted to.
The whole law should be repealed though. They use children as excuse, bit it is about surveillance.
It’s called “parenting.” Yes, it’s harder these days with the internet and literally everything “right there.” But it’s still your job as a parent.
ANYTIME ANYONE imposes restrictions “for the children” - there’s something nefarious going on. If it’s a politician-they are looking to build a database for $. If it’s your priest-he’s banging the alter boy after ccd, or hates himself so much for being gay he’s lashing out at the lgbtq community. If it’s a company-they’ve either been threatened into doing it or more likely are on the take with a fat payday. If it’s a developer adding it into Linux, they should expect fierce skepticism and backlash from the community.
It’s NEVER about the children. It’s always an alternative motive. If they actually cared about kids, they’d make sure they were fed at school, they’d invest in their education, or they’d invest into social programs to help out those less fortunate.
The california law isn’t actually age verification. It is unchecked age assertion at the operating system level. He is also there specifically for the parents to fill out.When a new device is purchased. I have no doubts.It will be misused and lead to age verification in the OS with a third party verifying the age, but that isnt want the bill is now
Everything you said is correct, but at the same time: “We’re not driving off a cliff (yet), we’re just moving in for a closer look.”
That is true that we’re headed towards a cliff. The way the California bill is structured.It can only be used to filter algorithms, make content and cannot be used for content moderation or filtering. It does nothing to stop what other states or the national government will want to do with it once it’s in there. It also does nothing to stop companies from requiring actual age verification or having accounts. You know , someone like microsoft would love to tie an Id to the computer and make you have a microsoft account to use it.
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that this is occurring at the same time companies like Palantir are signing government contracts left and right and mega-sized data centers are sprouting up all over the country.
Just like it’s never really about FREEDOM™
The only way to “protect” or “target” any demographic is to first identify everyone to see if they’re in that demographic.
That’s almost always the only reason it’s done.
Thats not the case here.
Tbh, this is just a massive stack of misguidedness.
First, look at what the original law does:
- OS needs to know the age.
- OS itself doesn’t do anything with the age
- OS needs to provide the age to apps and services asking for it
- Apps and services need to block content based on the age provided with the OS
- If the OS doesn’t provide an age, apps and services have to block as if the user was a toddler
Removing the requirement for the OS to provide an age doesn’t change anything at all, because someone running an OS that doesn’t provide an age will just be blocked everywhere. That’s not a solution, that’s a joke to appease idiots who don’t know what the law does.
This is just as misguided as the backlash against systemd who added an age field to the user account to allow people to be still able to access age-restricted content.
The actually relevant part that people should be combatting is the requirement for apps and services to do age verification using the OS-provided age. The OS age field doesn’t matter.
I wish people actually read the california law, it’s rather short, and covers a lot of the “gotchas” people are coming up with (e.g. No it doesn’t apply to servers).
I don’t like age verification laws (Especially since I live in a jurisdiction with one already in effect) but at least argue against the law itself rather than a strawman version people heard about via social media.
This is so common online.
Bad Thing happens.
People argue against Bad Thing incredibly fucking badly. Just abysmal. They don’t understand why or how the Bad Thing happened. They didn’t read the document containing Bad Thing. They don’t know who or what is involved with Bad Thing or where. Nonetheless, they vehemently argue against Bad Thing, using only their imagination as source material.
Someone with more experience fighting Bad Thing shows up in the comments, tries to argue against the misinformation, only to inevitably be accused of defending the Bad Thing.
How about the government focus on taking rights away from people who have actually harmed kids, like I don’t know, maybe a giant pedophile ring in plain sight? Instead the focus on taking rights from everyone because someone, sometime, in the future harm a child.
its not even about “protecting the innocent” is about snooping on potential dissidents/ threats to the status quo of the govt.
The whole digital footprint thing is really having me dawn a tinfoil hat. I was doing Uber a few days ago, and listening to Pandora. I spoke very limited, and brief, Spanish to two riders and I immediately started getting full on español ads on Pandora! Like I don’t speak fluent Spanish! Your ad budget is legit getting wasted.
But I am a little flattered thinking the algorithm thinks I do.
Dunno where I was going with this, but I’m excited to see Linux growing, and hope it gets mainstream enough that a year old unlocked phone has a fork.
Because it’s not about protecting children, obviously.
When someone with certain personality problems tells blatant lies, they are really only trying to convince themselves. You exist only as an introject inside their minds, you are not real to them, it does not matter if you don’t believe them because it doesn’t need to make sense to you.
The government was paid by Meta… They are just doing what they were told to do
I’m a DevOps engineer and my employer runs a lot of Linux instances in AWS. I’d love for these politicians to explain to me how age verification of Linux web servers should work for auto-scaling environments where instances are spun up and terminated automatically based on traffic volume. I’d also like to know if I should be using the age of our CEO, the age of our company (thanks to Citizens United), or something else.
I’d like to see them pair a bluetooth headset to a phone.
How old is that headset ?
If it’s over 18 years old, does it automatically pass age verification
only 18 years or younger headphones qualify for consideration.
13*
These are politicians, after all.
Obviously corporations just become exempt from the law. And any laws, why* not.
Also, is each docker container a “computer” of its own? After all, I could use different distro base images!
You are required to have age verification. We licence our age verification on an instance basis. An instance is defined as whatever makes us the most money, or alternatively causes you the most pain.
You know. A worst case scenario.
Obviously uhhhh uhhhhhhh put your ID in a GitHub secret and uhhhhhh social security number and uhhhhhh
Yeah, I don’t even know what you’re talking about, and that makes me extra certain that politicians definitely don’t know what you’re talking about. It is nice to see them perhaps taking into account expert opinions on this subject, but 1 for 100 doesn’t make for a good average.
They’ll listen to the lobbyists peddling them with hookers and blow (and promises of future non-executive board memberships and and millionaire speech circuit fees).
That’s all the expertise they care about.
I’d love for these politicians to explain to me how age verification of Linux web servers should work for auto-scaling environments where instances are spun up and terminated automatically based on traffic volume.
Come on, can’t be that tedious. What could it be 200-300 instances tops per day? My kid sister does that many selfies.
Honestly I wonder if this is why the amendment is being suggested. AI products in particular are likely to be interacting with a lot of websites that will be required to verify ages, and I’m sure California in particular is loath to make waves that might throw that revenue stream into doubt.
It’s the 20s version of “the internet is a series of tubes”. They couldn’t explain it if they wanted to, but all they care about is that the bribes are still spending.
politicians are far to stupid to know any of that. The only computer they know is their phone and maybe a laptop.
Good points, and well put!
How about they spend their time revamping parental controls instead? The age gate stuff is clear about user data collection and nothing else.
Because they don’t give a single fuck about the kids, unless they’re pedos fucking kids, then they give all the fucks.
The Epstein class wants to know who the minors are on the internet.
Exactly. Age control is obviously needed I am so glad I’m not a kid that has to navigate the social algorithms of our time.
That said this is obviously a law being pushed by the technofascist companies like meta and their goal is always more power, in this case more data. It’s crazy how many law makers just do what they are told. they are doing the same with trying to lock down 3Dprinters.
More local control in operating systems as well as parental controls in platforms like YouTube where they could have full control to turn off the algorithm, maybe even a browser api where you need admin to enable adult mode. But based on everything I’ve seem from companies like google and meta they don’t care in the slightest about the children as long as they make their bag
Easing local control is what that law was about (and it did think far enough to only include user facing). If there wasn’t a global tendency to move towards surveillance and identity verification I’d be all for it. As it is I have some reservations about slippery slope.
The law doesn’t require identity verification. It requires the OS to provide the age group of the user (set at install) to programs running on the OS. Something that, if adopted widely, would immensely help with allowing parents to control access (i.e. if they decide their kid should be able to see everything, just put them in ths age group for that, similarly they could also do that and manage it the same way as they would now. Or if they’re lazy as many parents sadly are, there is at least some enforcement of age control that someone thought about, without giving up any identifying info beyond an age group). Yes it could be circumvented somewhat easily, but as far as I see it that’s always a feature. A child being exposed to something accidentally has very different implications than actively trying to access it.
It’s being exempt because the Government can’t enforce this requirement on FOSS. Linux isn’t managed by a corporation and I don’t think people realize this yet.
I would pay money to hear Linus on the phone with these self-important assholes.
we want you to force user verification in all Linux.
yeah, fuck you.
…
Give homie some credit, I think he would at least ask “why?” first. Then also wish them “good luck!” on enforcing it.
I mean they could force big corpo to not allow anyone who can’t verify age to use their services.
Red Hat is the biggest power on Linux.
You can’t force it on any Linux distro, but on everybody who has to give a shit about compliance.
The most pedophilic government in history desperately needs to know if your children are on the computer
… For reasons
California’s government is not synonymous with the federal government.
American states are not at all like provinces.
Wild they still play the “think of the children” card while ignoring the Epstein files.
Oh they’re still thinking about them.
While masturbating furiously.
This will make finding children much easier for Palantir and its pedo owners. They could even identify more susceptible children more easily.
For a moment I freaked out that they were only gonna exclude Linux and not open source in general but it seems they exclude based on the license based on this article which is a good thing. The dozens of OpenBSD and FreeBSD users may rest safely now
Doesn’t matter. The thin edge of the wedge is going to get in. In 5 years Linux will be forced to comply.
This is like winning a small fight and continuing to march on to Moscow on the winter.
They’ll keep whittling rights down until everything you do is logged with your ID and is whitelisted for your consumption (and I mean whitelisted by rich white list of folks who have the power).
Anything LGBTQ will be blocked as controversial. And teaching they don’t like will be hidden. Was slavery bad? “Well, that’s controversial. The Europeans did nothing but civilize those savages don’t you know! And our wealth justifies the whole thing!”
So they’re basically admitting that they don’t need this for any computer since if you don’t need it for open source why would you need it for closed source? You think kids don’t know how to download and install linux? If I could do it with floppies and a book in the 90s then kids today can do it with a USB image and LLM assistance.
But in reality they’ll probably just wait for a few years and try and push it through again like how they do with most shitty legislation.
You think kids don’t know how to download and install linux?
Yes. I think most kids don’t know how to download linux. Just the same as I think most adults don’t know how to do it. It doesn’t matter if it’s actually easy. That’s not the question. The question is if people know how to do it.
Just the same I don’t think they know how to download a non-google based browser.
It’s not about difficulty. It’s about desire to do so. I’ve heard pancakes are very easy to make. I have no desire to make pancakes. I’m 42 and have never made pancakes. I know there’s eggs and flour, and a bowl. I’d have to learn. And to learn, I have to want to learn. And that all goes back to having desire to learn.
Necessity is the mother of innovation. And right now, 90% of the population do not give a damn about which os they use. They just call it “the facebook machine”, and it’s their cell phone.
Desktop across all platforms is dying. Windows 11 sucks. The ram costs are making everything unobtainable. The vast majority don’t even know there is a different way. They just pull out their cell phone, check their tiktok and whatever else, and they go about their day.
At this point three people have desktops. Gamers, hobbyists, and people who need them for work.
So yeah. I DO think most people have zero clue that you can install linux from a usb. I also think most people have never heard of linux.
I wish I still knew where this comic was. It was two geologists, and they’re discussing how the common man must surely know of the starter rocks that everybody knows. Then they start listing a bunch of crystals and rocks nobody has ever heard of before. And they say “oh, and obviously everybodys heard of (insert rock you’ve never heard of)” and his coworker says “well obviously”.
Completely unaware that what seems common to them is completely unknown to everyone else. I really feel like about 30-50% of linux users have that mentality about PCs. They have a PC. They find Linux easy. Therefore it IS easy, and everybody on earth can use linux.
For some of you, you don’t see the failure of that logic, while the rest of you are cringing right now.
I wish I still knew where this comic was.
You’re probably thinking of an xkcd comic:
I wish I still knew where this comic was. It was two geologists, and they’re discussing how the common man must surely know of the starter rocks that everybody knows.
You’re thinking of XKCD 2501: Average Familiarity:
Necessity is the mother of invention. If you put enough roadblocks in the way these kids will learn same as we did. The only difference is they’ll have an LLM and youtube videos to learn what they need instead of BBS, IRC, and books like we used. Kids know how to search the web. They might not know what they don’t know but as soon as they search “how do i browse the web without my computer telling on me” and linux comes up then they’ll fall down the rabbit hole. It’s like you think these kids exist in bubbles.
You’re placing a lot of "if"s in there, and treating them as if they’re already true.
If you put enough roadblocks in the way these kids will learn same as we did.
Roadblocks to what? To using a pc? What makes you think kids WANT to use a PC at all? Is the roadblock getting to access the internet? Because there’s no roadblocks for that. They have cell phones. Thats what they know the internet as, and they’re accessing it just fine. Is the roadblock privacy? You think kids who take out their cell phones in public, and record them and their friends, and anyone walking by in the background, as they dance the newest trendy dance, to upload to tiktok, are worried about privacy?
And yes, I do think everyone lives in a bubble. Some people live in the same bubble. Most people live in multiple bubbles.
Did you know the Cleveland Cavaliers have lost the first 3 games in a 7 game series against the NY Knicks? Probably not. I live in Cleveland. It’s all anybody in this bubble is talking about. I don’t even like basketball, but right now everyone in the Cleveland sports bubble is losing their shit. I imagine outside of Cleveland nobody gives a shit.
Your bubble seems to be linux. You think linux is more prominant than it is. Right now desktop linux is at a 5% highest ever user base. It has nothing to do with people ditching windows. It has nothing to do with privacy concerns. It has everything to do with Valve making huge progress towards gaming on linux. People are taking their old “not good enough for windows” pcs, and suddenly their gaming lifespan covers more.
Because again. Nobody is saying linux is bad. What it does, it does well if you know what you’re doing. What I’m saying is nobody cares about any of that until they have a desire to use a pc, that isn’t windows. Most people are just ditching pcs completely because for watching youtube, and browsing facebook, and recording tiktoks, why do you need anything more than a low end cell phone? Why buy a pc during a time when prices are sky high, when they get what they need from the thing already in their pocket?
You’re placing a lot of "if"s in there, and treating them as if they’re already true.
I want your energy. I’m going to use this one in the future, thanks.
Comments like these are very healing for me.
On your last point: I think that’s why Colorado should do a referendum. If we collect enough signatures the passed law goes to the ballot and the citizens can reject it. We can also collect signatures to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot to ban some of the most invasive age/identity verification going forward.
To be fair, there are important differences between open source and closed source software.
I guess, California is killing Windows without knowing.
The proposed amendment specifically states: “Operating system provider” does not mean a person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software.
That’s one way to encourage people to move to open source software
Imagine if that made MicroSlop and Apple open-source Windows and Mac OS. That would be a wild world.
