Be nice to hear Linus' take on it.
Depends on how much he wants to anger his employer, which supports the bill.
Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting
71–80 of 227 posts
Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sobriety check requirement for cars is so optimistic: “Once data prove the tech cuts drunk-driving crashes, insurers may trim rates.” Why would any insurance company want to cut into their profits by reducing rates?
Because it's a competitive market and offering a lower price than your competitors helps you earn more business. If your competitors lower their prices and you don't lower yours then you'll lose business.
It's optimistic to think it will even do anything to stop drunks. It's a $5 wrench problem. They think all this tech will stop drunks, when in reality some guy gorded out his mind on vodka is paying his 12 year old his weekly $20 allowance to blow into the machine.
Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's funny that they want to do these checks in a country where even the checks for voting are very iffy.
Voting is far more important. If someone is falsely denied access to some web site, it doesn't matter. But everyone with the right to vote must be allowed to vote, no exceptions. In any case, voting is substantially more intrusive. You must register with your full name and address, which is made public record. Each time you vote, that is also made public record (not who you voted for, but the fact that you voted). In…
I disagree there. I think that this is far more intrusive, because it impacts your everyday life rather than just a small slice of it, and thus more important.
Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting
#74I guess going forward if you are under 18 and want to learn programming and not be harassed by the government you have to go back to having and offline only computer and stack of o'reilly books?
Soon programming will itself require a license. Only government approved individuals will be able to write code. CPUs will only boot software signed by the government.
"Software engineering" is one of the few large practices with 'engineering' in its name that has no mechanism for license granting and revocation for violation of professional standard.
That's not what is happening here, but we might see that happen in our lifetimes. Hopefully before someone writes the software that kills enough people to necessitate licensing, not after (since generally, such outcomes are how licensing comes into being).
Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who is paying FOSS devs who will be implementing this? Who is providing them with legal indemnification since they are now apparently subject to fines for a fucking hobby if they do it wrong? Who is making CA the only jurisdiction instead of the myriad contradictory laws all over the place? Who is stepping in to make sure no additional legislation comes across regulating how FOSS has to include backdoors or weaken en…
Work on a standardised solution has already been done and proposals are already being discussed. Things aren't moving as fast as they could be because every time something like this hits a front page somewhere a bunch of people have to come in and comment that they dislike the law, but the people behind open source projects don't seem to be bothered by the time they need to put into this. Their employer is probably j…
A number of distros (even some large and well known ones) have signaled noncompliance or do not believe they are impacted due to technical reasons (Gentoo) or jurisdiction (OpenBSD, NixOS). Other US distros are not yet signaling agreement because of uncertainty regarding different laws in different states/countries and potential legal challenges. This is not set in stone and it’s still possible to present a united front of noncompliance.
Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you heard of the slippery slope? A cornerstone of American political philosophy? Arguments like this one are why the authoritarian ratchet continues to turn unimpeded over time.
What "arguments like this one"? It isn't an argument at all, it's just pointing out some actual facts. If your slippery slope argument can't withstand a simple statement that something is at the top of the slope, it's not much good.
Authoritarianism rarely happens overnight, it happens one step at a time and at every step the useful idiots [0] exclaim "It's just one step! What's the big deal? Stop overreacting!".
Next thing you know you've walked 100 miles and it's too late to turn back.
Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
So once my application is running I can just keep querying an age bracket until it flips and then I've successfully determined a date of birth.
This is a neat attack (in that it is obvious and a big flaw but also it makes sense that the lawmakers wouldn’t have thought of it), but it would only affect users who have an age-bucket transition while your application is running, right? Edit: as folks have pointed out, the attacking application doesn’t actually have to be running while the age-transition takes place. The attacker just has to have logs from before…
Then you store the user age every time it's run and check for changes on start. Maybe that only gives you a 7 day range for birthdays, but you can narrow that over time and it's still good enough for targeting.
Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand this position. Cryptocurrency exchanges are the primary legal touch point (fiat offramp) for a lot of criminal activity. Of course they will get attention for AML.
I can understand the regulation of fiat/crypto exchanges, but the verification extends to centralized exchanges that merely facilitate exchanges one kind of purely virtual currency for another, neither of which have to be recognized as legal tender.
... which is a step in the money laundering process, so of course it would.
Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
So once my application is running I can just keep querying an age bracket until it flips and then I've successfully determined a date of birth.
This is a neat attack (in that it is obvious and a big flaw but also it makes sense that the lawmakers wouldn’t have thought of it), but it would only affect users who have an age-bucket transition while your application is running, right? Edit: as folks have pointed out, the attacking application doesn’t actually have to be running while the age-transition takes place. The attacker just has to have logs from before…
is there any mention of granularity? so if the user sets their age bracket, then there's no DoB stored. if the user is old enough to fall into some other age bracket they can set that if they want. (and then somehow making this a bit more data driven - ie "verifying" - is a different matter altogether.)
Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting
#80Be nice to hear Linus' take on it.
If you want interesting takes ask RMS.