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California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

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Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem with that as long as it's not the government controlling the age verification. It should be a parent. And as a parent I want the ability to properly control my children's devices - the fact that Apple, and especially Google pretty much ignored this feature until now is a big part of why we have these dumb laws in the first place. Think about it - if every phone you got asked you at first config "are…

> And as a parent I want the ability to properly control my children's devices * https://www.apple.com/uk/child-safety/ * https://families.google/familylink/ * https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/family-safety You already have the ability, all parents do, that some (or most) haven't is why this crap gets proposed in the first place and used as a justification for invading everyone's privacy. If (some) paren…

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Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#372
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly like GDPR shouldn't have mandated millions of websites to pop up a consent form, as a global browser setting could would have set consent as a user preference. But the objective of these regulations aren't what it says on the tin.

The GDPR doesn't directly mandate cookie banners though. It wants consent from users prior to processing their data. Also, the browser flag that indicates no consent already exists: https://globalprivacycontrol.org/faq

I agree the legislation simply makes consent a requirement, and browsers could have implemented a flag from the get go for websites to read from.

Glad it is now in place.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

457 deaths in US history. 1200 deaths a day from diarrhea in India. Put it in perspective.

The real elephant in the room is that 60% of our school shootings are streetside minority violence spilling into schools, not angry white incels mowing down classmates.

As someone from a country where neither happens, I don't think this distinction matters a lot.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#374

We got into this mess because people wanted Facebook to have age verification, and MZ decided to push the responsibility on to OSes. The result looks to me like Facebook will ban access from non-approved OSes like Linux. Android will still be allowed, GrapheneOS probably not.

I'm not sure it is very bad that facebook won't be accessible from Linux.

It won't be only facebook in the long run. Once this works for facebook more and more sites will be pressured to use age verification by law. Once that works well enough it will probably come for all sites, even ones that don't really need it. Take a look at the cookie law and how people handled that to see a recent example.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#375
post #224

i still think this should be solved at the protocol level. if you want to access the adult stuff, you have to staple a non-identifying zk-proof-of-age to your http/spdy/etc requests, otherwise it all just operates as usual.

The default state should be adult. Kid devices should have something special on setup that makes them kid devices.

Or even better, don't have anything like that at all anywhere other than in front of the screen. I really don't see how it is a good thing for a six year old to interact with the Internet in any way.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#376
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they’re American, guns are just part of our education system.

They aren't but they should be. Many lives could be saved by making gun safety a mandatory class for all US students. If every kid had to learn the basic rules of gun safety, a significant number of accidental deaths could be prevented, and even many not so "accidental" deaths could be prevented because people would immediately recognize when someone else is being unsafe with guns. And gun safety rules are good thing…

I think you're optimistic about the overlap between "people who tit about with guns" and "people who absorb education".

I dread the outcome of practical safety lessons because, the moment you give a classroom guns, then some teenage edgelord is going to pantomime shooting their buddy, or escalate a playground beef.

People do not work the way you want people to work :-(

May i offer an alternative? Make gun ownership a tedious bureaucratic procedure. Reams of paperwork will filter out many stupid. Stupid exist who can fill forms, but it's a smaller set.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re being pedantic? Future forecasts and estimates can’t mesh with the trolly problem? If that’s your stance sure, you are correct. I do feel like you missed the whole point of the exercise though, and are hiding behind an absolute that is never achievable.

Look, nobody brings up the trolley problem because they're concerned about what they're going to do when a train car goes out of control. They use it as a metaphor to attempt to make an argument about a different, actually real, situation. My argument is this is pointless because no real world situation will ever meaningfully resemble the trolley problem. The correct answer to the trolley problem is STOP THE TROLLEY.…

The idea that "stop the trolley" or "slay the dragon" is cost-free is a wish. You've merely added a third horn to the dilemma. "Someone brave attempts to jump onto the moving trolley, risking their own neck" might well be the preferred choice; the expected outcome may marginally improve; the shape of the problem remains.

I hope you're arguing out of perversity, not conviction - such is valuable, and i did have to think for a minute. I agree that lateral thinking can be productive.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But California AB1043 is an anti-control law.

It's one of the better implementations, but it's still ultimately a law made to give controlling bodies more information about a previously anonymous activity. It's still a foot in the door.

It makes it illegal for them to have as much information as they already have. Therefore it requires them to delete information.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#379
post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next year has been the year of the Linux desktop for as long as I remember.

It is always the next year

I put my mum on Linux three years ago, and os-related issues dropped to approximately zero. I'm claiming 2023.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That solution doesn't actually work, and it angers me that people can't see why it doesn't work. That solution requires that the entire website must be child-safe or none of it. That solution requires that Tumblr must ban porn if Tumblr has any underage users. The alternative would be that Tumblr would randomly not load for underage users because some recommendation or ad would be over 18, and so it would rapidly hav…

Why must an age rating apply to an entire website? As one example, the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) (and to a lesser extent the prior Recreational Software Advisory Council (RSACi)) had a rating scheme that allowed sites to provide a default rating label that was then overridden for individual pages and resources using tags and RDF-based labels. For example, Tumblr could set a family-friendly default ra…

Because let's say you have a website like Reddit with a mixture of 18+ and 13+ stuff. Something that's 18+ but not explicit gets really popular. Pornhub will now livestream congressional debates, someone posts a link to this, and it gets fifty zillion upvotes as people can't resist commenting "wtf". Now you have a dilemma: do you show it on the front page or not? If you show this on the front page and it's 18+, it'll lock children out of the front page, which for many of them means they're locked out of the entire site because that's the way they know to access the site. But if you don't, then the law is forcing you to censor your front page for everyone, even for adults.

The solution is obvious: you show it on the front page if the user is 18+. However, your proposal deliberately forbids this and says the front page must be the same for everyone. Which leaves the other two bad options.

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