Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open source calculator firmware DB48X forbids CA/CO use due to age verification

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 116 posts

Re: Open source calculator firmware DB48X forbids CA/CO use due to age verification

#31

Post by kmeisthax »

lokar wrote: post #2

Does it run applications? The point of the law is to collect (and device setup) the age of the (I guess primary?) user, and communicate that (as a range?) to any applications it runs. So, if you don't run applications, does this matter? Also, enforcement is by the CA attorney general, so random people can't go after you.

The California bill basically says any OS with an app store needs to collect an age signal and provide age bucketing to an app store (presumably even third-party ones, but notably NOT extension stores) so it can forward that information onto developers in that store.

There's no further elaboration on what age signals are preferred, so my assumption is that a DoB field in the user profile and a system service to request the age bucket is good enough. It's absolutely silly, but DB48X could implement that.

There's a related question of who is actually liable under this law - it seems written to target just Apple, Google, and Microsoft; and it only makes sense in the context of consumer electronics. Like, how does this work with enterprise systems? Servers? Is IBM going to have to rush out a patch for z/VM to ask the system administrator what their date of birth is?

Re: Open source calculator firmware DB48X forbids CA/CO use due to age verification

#34

Post by thayne »

tliltocatl wrote: post #13
iamnothere wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, where does anything in the CA bill mandate age verification? It's saying the OS needs to prompt for age bracket info and allow the third party apps to query that. That is far different from verification. Regardless of the technical details of the law(s), the devs are sensibly refusing to prompt for age on a fricking calculator . Hopefully Linux distros get on board with this and announce non-CA/CO compliance…

For Linux it will be way more problematic because: - A lot of of corporate contributions comes from SV. - Linux Foundation is incorporated in CA. - Linus himself is CA's resident AFAIR. So there is zero chance of claiming no jurisdiction. The only hope is whoever is enforcing this batshit wouldn't go after what is essentially not an OS for the purpose of the bill, but rather an internal component (it would be like go…

It's more likely to be an issue for distributions like Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc.

Although, if I'm understanding this correctly, I think all they would have to do to comply is have something during installation that asks for the age category, and write a file that is world readable, but only writable by root that contains that category that applications can read.

Re: Open source calculator firmware DB48X forbids CA/CO use due to age verification

#35

Post by pkaye »

tliltocatl wrote: post #13
iamnothere wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, where does anything in the CA bill mandate age verification? It's saying the OS needs to prompt for age bracket info and allow the third party apps to query that. That is far different from verification. Regardless of the technical details of the law(s), the devs are sensibly refusing to prompt for age on a fricking calculator . Hopefully Linux distros get on board with this and announce non-CA/CO compliance…

For Linux it will be way more problematic because: - A lot of of corporate contributions comes from SV. - Linux Foundation is incorporated in CA. - Linus himself is CA's resident AFAIR. So there is zero chance of claiming no jurisdiction. The only hope is whoever is enforcing this batshit wouldn't go after what is essentially not an OS for the purpose of the bill, but rather an internal component (it would be like go…

I think Linus Torvalds lives in Oregon.

Re: Open source calculator firmware DB48X forbids CA/CO use due to age verification

#36

Post by conartist6 »

croes wrote: post #33

From the other post about this law. > That's likely no big deal for Windows, which already requires you to enter your date of birth during the Microsoft Account setup procedure This seems like an over reaction because of a simple date field

Why would I need a Microsoft account to use Windows.

Re: Open source calculator firmware DB48X forbids CA/CO use due to age verification

#38

Post by burnte »

ziml77 wrote: post #6

So DB48X provides a covered application store? (e) (1) “Covered application store” means a publicly available internet website, software application, online service, or platform that distributes and facilitates the download of applications from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing that can access a covered application store or can download an applicati…

It's also still bound only to companies in CA. I'm in GA, I don't have to comply, for example, if I were making operating systems. People REALLY need to push back when governments try to extend their reach beyond their borders, like EU regulations. The more we let them the more enshrined in law it will become. We have the right and duty to say no, that only applies in your jurisdiction.

Re: Open source calculator firmware DB48X forbids CA/CO use due to age verification

#40

Post by mijoharas »

Ignoring the calculator side of things (fair enough if they don't wanna implement it) is this just requiring an age value for the user of the operating system?

Because if so, that seems a lot more sensible than the online crap where you need to give ID or something. I remember someone suggesting requiring an `X-User-Age` header, and having adults responsible for having their children's account setup with their age, which this proposal seems to be more in line with.

From some of the other responses people seem against this proposal, am I missing something? (I only briefly skimmed the links) Is there some kind of attestation/ID required when the age is input?

Post reply on HN