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Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

agelesslinux.org

531–540 of 671 posts

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#531
post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The learned helplessness of modern citizens of so called democracies is something to behold. No wonder we have people like Trump in power.

This. People seem to have forgotten their government works for them and exists only with their consent. They are not subservient to the government.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#532
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a parental controls / software problem. It’s a parents showing self control / parenting and monitoring their children in person thing.

How many kids do you have? What software do you use for this continuous monitoring? How do you balance spending 18 hours a day continuously monitoring your children, with also working full-time and being a human yourself? Please elaborate on your personal system because I think you could help out a lot of people. I am strongly against this age verification, I think this is an absolutely, catastrophically terrible ide…

having children is a choice. Therefore, the difficulty of that choice is not really a factor in our lawmaking nor should it be.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#533
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a parental controls / software problem. It’s a parents showing self control / parenting and monitoring their children in person thing.

So you want all parents to be helicopter parents?

Don't buy your kid a cell phone/tablet and tell them to go play outside. simple as.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#534
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.

Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications. Spoken as someone who probably hasn't used iOS/Mac parental controls. It is a hot buggy mess that randomly blocks whitelisted applications as well. We use it, but it is a constant pain. Also a lot of applications only work half, e.g., TV apps blocking off all content rather than only content that is not age-appropria…

no need to use parental controls if you simply don't get the child the device.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you giving your children access to any devices, online services, video games, social media? Seriously. There are mountains of evidence all of this is harmful to developing brains.

Access to educational material, communicating with friends and family, fun. There huge benefits to being able to look things up, download books, talk to friends and family even if they live on another continent, playing chess or D & D online. I think social media is net harmful (to adults too) but devices, games etc. are not bad per se.

Then you also take on the risk that brings for your childrens health and well-being. Its not a problem for the government to solve for you.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#536
post #359
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.

To be clear, I don't agree with these laws and think they are very much the wrong way to try to solve the problem. But it is not a solved problem. From what I've seen parental control software is generally pretty terrible. But this age verification stuff isn't really helpful.

there is an exceptionally simple solve to the problem: Do not give your kids access to a cell phone or tablet.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#537
post #95
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…

[deleted]

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#538
post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same reaction as you this entire time until half an hour ago when I saw the second link in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382650 Meta being behind all of these efforts makes it incredibly suspicious, especially given the New York law is ridiculously more invasive than the California one. It sure makes it seem like there's likely a larger plan here that this is merely facilitating. So I…

Just because Facebook supports it doesn't mean it's bad. They may not support it for the same reasons, they probably just don't want the cost and liability of doing identify verification themselves and so want to make sure all of the cost and liability is on the OS vendor. Yes, the New York proposed law is far worse, and we absolutely should be pushing back against that. And Facebook doesn't care, because they only c…

It doesn't make sense to move this function to the OS because so long as the OS remains under the user's control, any signal from the OS has no value because the OS reports whatever the user wants it to report.

At any rate, why legislate operating systems when all of the harm comes not from computers themselves but rather from certain websites? And there are already mature solutions for controlling access to specific websites. Client-side parental controls for internet access have existed for decades, dating back to Surfwatch from the Win95 era. A credit card requirement would also effectively impose an age filter.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#539
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.

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…

Because it's not at all obvious. The vast majority of people posting on Hacker News in 2026 probably had extreme exposure to the internet early in life and turned out alright. So they're probably not as concerned about children being exposed to adult content.

But clearly people in other cultures have a huge problem with it. Don't fall victim to survivorship bias + echo chamber.

There's not another obvious solution to the problem, it's debated in every thread. (no laptop + homeschool is not a real option for 99% of people)

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You specify an age at account creation that sites and apps must query. The Internet has been a free place for 30+ years and I don't see a reason to change that. I grew up with the ability to access all kinds of content on the Internet, in an unrestricted manner, and it is sad to see that decision makers now want to take this away from younger generations. We must absolutely resist any attempt at profiling Internet…

You grew up without parental oversight. I did too. This is an attempt to give parents the tools to manage what their children see on the internet. I disagree with that parental oversight probably far, far more than you do. I think it should be a crime when a parent indoctrinates their child into a religion. But this is a counter to far worse laws like requiring you to upload your photo ID to websites to get access. T…

its not the responsibility of the state to provide tools for parental oversight, full stop.
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