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

Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

agelesslinux.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 671 posts

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#461

Post by kloop »

charcircuit wrote: post #113
akersten wrote: post #5

Now this is what open source development should look like. I cannot believe a few days ago I was thumbing through an email thread on freedesktop.org about how they could implement the mandatory government API in dbus. Can they not read their own domain name?

Associating open source with projects that brazenly violate the law is not what open source should look like.

You have made a claim with zero rationale to back it up.

Why shouldn't it look like that? Especially with a law this dumb

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#462

Post by fc417fc802 »

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…

> I am so puzzled by ...

Because it's inverted. If it's opt in on the parent's part anyway then there's no reason to send additional information along with the request. The service should rather send additional information about content categorization alongside the response.

So what reasons can you imagine for it to be designed in such an obviously unnecessary way?

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#463

Post by sph »

saturnite wrote: post #400
prohobo wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm completely baffled why anyone still engages with the "official" framing around this. Obviously, it's not for protecting children. Obviously, it's a technocratic trojan horse for increasing surveillance capabilities on digital systems. This is so cynically anti-democratic that they obfuscate the real purpose, don't even bother to make it plausible, and everyone is left talking about how "awful it is" that it's alr…

If this goes through, I wouldn't be surprised if facial recognition ends up being the "solution" to the problems this creates. I walked to get a sandwich today and I counted no less than ten cameras along the way. On an unrelated note, I'm thinking of taking up a laser hobby.

> If this goes through, I wouldn't be surprised if facial recognition ends up being the "solution" to the problems this creates.

The end goal is for every IP address to be associated with a physical person and an ID card number. Which is where we'll end up after they'll unsuccessfully try to ban VPNs that are used to bypass age-verification checks.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#464

Post by enoint »

stephbook wrote: post #406
kybernetikos wrote: post #157

I don't want to give the impression that I don't find the whole direction of travel concerning, because I do, but as I understand it, the requirement is that the system administrator assigns ages to the users on their system. That seems pretty reasonable to me, and maybe even like a good idea in some scenarios. As far as I know, we aren't talking about software that fights against the interests of the system owner -…

Imagine your kid not being able to click "Im over 18" on a porn site, because Chrome read /etc/age and ratted the children's account out. Imagine your kid not being able to buy cigarettes easily because it can't pass an ID check at the convenience store. For most parents, this is actually nice-to-have. For the HN crowd, it's a doomsday scenario full of dictatorial government control.

You shouldn’t dismiss all libertarian points simply because some of them support libertarian agendas. Most HN commenters are fine with your two scenarios, but remember:

1. If kids could download cigarettes by circumventing age checks, would they?

2. If watching porn required obtaining an in-person ID check, other threads have indicated HN accepts it.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#465

Post by bdangubic »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #241
bdangubic wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does social media need the same restrictions as pornography? this one is easy, as a parent I would rather have my daughter watch 10,000 hours of pornography than spent 1 hour on social media

Well, now I've seen everything.

social media is the root of most evil in the society at present, pornography is just a bunch of people fucking around. while neither is healthy, if you had to choose you are better off watching people fucking

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#466

Post by sph »

balamatom wrote: post #410
prohobo wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm completely baffled why anyone still engages with the "official" framing around this. Obviously, it's not for protecting children. Obviously, it's a technocratic trojan horse for increasing surveillance capabilities on digital systems. This is so cynically anti-democratic that they obfuscate the real purpose, don't even bother to make it plausible, and everyone is left talking about how "awful it is" that it's alr…

>I'm completely baffled why anyone still engages with the "official" framing around this. We all know how these laws are not meant to protect children. Then we decry the hypocrisy of it. And then we stop at that. So nobody is saying what needs to be said. These laws are explicitly designed to hurt children.

These laws have nothing to do with children. Neither protection nor malice.

It's mass surveillance. Let's not get distracted.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#467

Post by fc417fc802 »

dataflow wrote: post #313
bee_rider wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems pretty annoying for people who sell computing appliances like smart toasters, routers, and televisions, and videogame consoles—do they preemptively start implementing in case a judge decides they are covered? Why not write an easy-to-interpret law in the first place?

Exactly which part of AB 1043 makes you think a "smart toaster" could reasonably fall under it?

I assume you're aware that many "smart" devices these days have a full blown OS, a web browser, and an app store. But then some are missing or have only partial functionality here or there. If the law doesn't unambiguously specify what it applies to it puts anyone in the grey area in a difficult position.

While we're at it, does fdroid count as the sort of app store that this law cares about? Because an end user can install that for themselves.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#468

Post by matheusmoreira »

tstrimple wrote: post #360
matheusmoreira wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do it regardless. If you're right other people will realize that. If not, they won't.

Sounds like you're the type to lead a lynch mob. Do it regardless after all.

Nobody said anything about lynching anyone. I simply don't recognize idiotic laws bought and paid for by corporations as legitimate. Lobbying is just legalized corruption.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#469

Post by sph »

Telemakhos wrote: post #97
nico wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And LATAM probably soon to follow, specially Argentina with Milei and now Chile with their new right wing president

I don't think this is a left- or right-wing issue: Australia was one of the first to ban kids from social media, and Australia is not right-wing by any measure. Canada is hardly right-wing, but age verification is bill S-210 in their parliament. What you're seeing is a coordinated push by transnational interests; Meta's name has come up in discussions of the funding behind this push. At the very lest, verifying age a…

In Europe Chat Control was pushed by the left-wing Danish government (Social Democrats). And I am still pissed that Trump went with his Greenland nonsense so everyone rallied around the Danes, when in reality the important news is that Mette Frederiksen and her party seem to have vested interest in establishing mass surveillance across the EU bloc.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#470

Post by enoint »

slopinthebag wrote: post #295
kybernetikos wrote: post #157

I don't want to give the impression that I don't find the whole direction of travel concerning, because I do, but as I understand it, the requirement is that the system administrator assigns ages to the users on their system. That seems pretty reasonable to me, and maybe even like a good idea in some scenarios. As far as I know, we aren't talking about software that fights against the interests of the system owner -…

> but as I understand it, the requirement is that the system administrator assigns ages to the users on their system. That seems pretty reasonable to me Why would it be reasonable for a government to use the power of law to enforce the design of an open source operating system developed by an international consortium of developers? The very fact they are even considering this is extremely suspicious.

I’m leaning that way, too. Achieving this ought to require a few conference calls between App Store principals. Flatpak and Snap? Sure. The protest and compliance disobedience would be unreasonable over a boring standards body, not a law which must be analyzed as a “framework”.
Post reply on HN