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Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

agelesslinux.org

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Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#231

Post by snowchaser »

kimixa wrote: post #189
ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications. This is absolutely not true. Here in the UK schools are swarming with ipads and shit like that. They're given to primary school children because they're "more engaging". Children are supposed to practice their reading and even handwriting[1] on ipads. Naturally they're on youtube instead. It's really bad. As far as…

There's no (state) school giving out tablets that aren't pretty much single-use locked down devices. That's the parents. The expectation that "Parenting" is now outsourced to Teachers, to the Government, to anyone else. People seem to expect they just have a kid, and somehow magically they'll grow up to be a perfect person without any work from themselves. So there's over-reach, there's pressure on making "unworkable…

“There's no (state) school giving out tablets that aren't pretty much single-use locked down devices.”

They try, but kids are smart and there are holes in the tools to lock things down. You would not believe the inventive workarounds that kids find to circumvent content filters. It’s a losing battle to lock everything.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#232

Post by crooked-v »

raincole wrote: post #216

The California law is actually the best form of age verification one can imagine. It only requires the OS to let the user to 'signal' their age. In other words, it's more like a checkbox asking if you're older than 18, instead of scanning your face or driving license. It doesn't require a cloud account either. Storing the ages the user inputted in /etc/ages besides /etc/passed and providing an API to read it is compl…

I think the bigger factor there is that it requires apps to use that, which preempts things like Discord sharing info with Peter Thiel in the name of age verification.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#233

Post by johncolanduoni »

themafia wrote: post #130
bigDinosaur wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All discussion of foreign affairs is the discussion of domestic affairs somewhere.

So it seems normal that a bunch of politicians, in the current climate, got together and decided that the weakest form of age verification imaginable absolutely had to get passed everywhere? That's incomprehensible to me.

I'm not saying there's definitely no coordination, but nobody had to get together to decide that 2026 was the year for 90s fashion to make a comeback. Human society is very prone to fads in all areas.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#234

Post by lavela »

matthewfcarlson wrote: post #19
kykat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The API seems like a funny joke anyway, `sudo setage 12987123`, done.

Oh nice! I’ve been wanting to ask someone of your age, how was the Middle Miocene Climate Optimum?

It being Linux those would obviously be seconds so they are roughly half a year old.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#236

Post by comboy »

nextos wrote: post #14

Something remarkable and unsettling is how the age verification debate has popped up almost simultaneously in the US, UK, and EU. With the same logical fallacies. Pretty telling about how transnational lobbies and their interests work. Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications.

Eshittification (by Cory Doctorov) is a shitty book but it does explain how that dynamic works.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#237

Post by fxtentacle »

kimixa wrote: post #189
ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications. This is absolutely not true. Here in the UK schools are swarming with ipads and shit like that. They're given to primary school children because they're "more engaging". Children are supposed to practice their reading and even handwriting[1] on ipads. Naturally they're on youtube instead. It's really bad. As far as…

There's no (state) school giving out tablets that aren't pretty much single-use locked down devices. That's the parents. The expectation that "Parenting" is now outsourced to Teachers, to the Government, to anyone else. People seem to expect they just have a kid, and somehow magically they'll grow up to be a perfect person without any work from themselves. So there's over-reach, there's pressure on making "unworkable…

In theory „There's no (state) school giving out tablets that aren't pretty much single-use locked down devices.“

In practice, most schools lack anyone with enough technical literacy to lock down the device. So they just hand out unlocked cheap android tablets with all the stock spyware and advertisement pre-installed.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#238

Post by lavela »

lambda wrote: post #95
kykat wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so sure, I think the ultimate goal is to link your network activity to your government id, just like the way it's done in China. So the only root left is the government basically.

The whole point of the California/Colorado laws is to provide an alternative to that. The whole point is that it provides a privacy preserving way to provide a signal about whether someone is in a particular age bracket, without requiring any kind of third party ID verification. I am so puzzled by everyone who objects so strongly to these operating system based opt in systems; all it does is provide for a way for a p…

This holds true until you pass to the next age bracket for the first time.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#239

Post by lambda »

macintux wrote: post #126
lambda wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of the California/Colorado laws is to provide an alternative to that. The whole point is that it provides a privacy preserving way to provide a signal about whether someone is in a particular age bracket, without requiring any kind of third party ID verification. I am so puzzled by everyone who objects so strongly to these operating system based opt in systems; all it does is provide for a way for a p…

> I am so puzzled by everyone who objects so strongly to these operating system based opt in systems The government legislating APIs is an uncomfortable precedent given the culture wars that are raging right now. There seems little reason to expect this will stop here.

They are not legislating specific APIs. They are legislating that an API has to be provided, just like other laws legislate that you have to provide accessibility APIs, but the details of the APIs are left up to the companies.

I work in aviation, a highly regulated field. And that's a good thing. It does take some work to regulate well; there has been a migration in aviation to more prescriptive regulation about how things need to be, to less prescriptive like what the ultimate performance needs to be. But yeah, the aviation regulations aren't that you have to implement something a specific way, but that you have to be able to show that your aircraft has no more than a certain probability of catastrophic failure (where the probability varies base on certain things like the size and type of aircraft).

For this age verification law, all that is required is that there is an API provided for this purpose, and there is a way for the owner of the machine to set up user accounts with age information indicated, and that the APIs need to provide several rough age ranges, not specific birthdays.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#240

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

LelouBil wrote: post #215
somat wrote: post #193

It is a stupid law but I feel people are overthinking this. For compliance the os has to provide an age category to an application and an interface for the user to enter this data. We already have an api to provide information to applications. it's called the filesystem. and an interface to enter the data, that's called the shell. so everything is already there. If the user lives in california and wants to be complia…

Yes people are overthinking. Actually having a cross-distro way to specify an age group for parental control purposes would be very useful. If the law starts to change and be about surveillance (which it isn't about _right now_) then distro maintainers will just not implement that.

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