101–110 of 227 posts
This headline is misleading. The California law requires that the OS store and provide the age bracket. It does not require that any verification take place. I am not arguing that this is a good idea, but it is simply false that the law requires that Linux 'check kids' IDs before booting'. The New York law is worse, and should be opposed, but the article only mentions it at the end - and even then, we actually don't…
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There is no limit to the power grab. The only acceptable thing to do is to dig the trenches before it gets worse.
The trenches will eventually be overwhelmed regardless. Once the government has AI and sensors, it will mandate its ubiquitous use. For minors, we have this lovely law coming in NYC: that will broadcast to everyone that you’re a minor: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S8102 But let’s talk about around the US. For example, all cars manufactured in 2029 and onward will be required to have a built-in alco…
That's not much of a source -- a 100-karma user in 2020 based on "I've known this for a long time. A quick google confirms that many people think the same." I don't believe it is true.
This headline is misleading. The California law requires that the OS store and provide the age bracket. It does not require that any verification take place. I am not arguing that this is a good idea, but it is simply false that the law requires that Linux 'check kids' IDs before booting'. The New York law is worse, and should be opposed, but the article only mentions it at the end - and even then, we actually don't…
Many parents will not be proactive in protecting their children online and I think this is a legitimate societal problem. The idea of algorithmic feeds for adult content that descend into increasingly "engaging" depictions is something I find horrifying. I do not want my kids to experience those "loss of innocence" moments too soon by letting their curiosity lead them into things they are not equipped to confront yet…
Huh... I am the opposite. I want my kids exposed to the brutal realities of the world asap. I reflect that my innocence caused me to make some extreme major mistakes as a young adult that took a decade to show itself. I cannot go back, and now I am suffering terribly. I blame my parents at least a little bit, but I blame western idealism more majorly.
If my old man slapped me on the back at 13, called me a man, and made me scroll through the morbid reality subreddit and do a book report on the Nanjing Massacre or My Lai I think that would be really damaging.
I think the stories we tell our children about the world, naive as they can be sometimes, tell us a lot about what we value in our societies and the ways in which we hope future generations will surpass us in overcoming our own failings. Everyone has to learn later that the truth is messy, yet the existence of brutality doesn't disqualify idealism and goodness.
I don't mean to imply that I'm denying your experience, but for most people, I hope, cynicism is temporary response to the disillusionment of the complexity of the world and not a persistent worldview.
These kinds of laws just seem like unworkable messes to fool the tech ignorant into thinking they care about kids.
Application side I get, there is an entity there running the application, that can be fined or banned or what have you. But software itself? No.
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To be fair, "it's just a fucking hobby" no longer being an excuse has been a long time coming, much in the same way that driving cars or flying airplanes started as just a hobby but became no longer one when practicing it had outsized consequences to non-practitioners. Signed, someone who notes frequently that the default apache configs probably put a web developer in violation of the GDPR (since if you just left on…
You’re arguing against freedom of computing, itself an extension of freedom of thought and freedom of speech. These laws are an attempt to regulate not just what you do with your computer, but how it operates . This is fundamentally an attack on rights and freedoms, and if it goes unchallenged then it will expand into other areas. Maybe that doesn’t move you; it seems like you don’t care much for personal liberties.…
https://theonion.com/the-future-will-be-a-totalitarian-gover...
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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.)
I think the intent was for the OS to know the user age, but only provide an age range, so it could automatically upgrade people as they aged (but I could be wrong about that).
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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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
The comment you replied to only said the first "it's just one step" part. You're imagining the rest. Are we not even allowed to make factual statements when something is, in fact, just one step? "It's bad to factually describe what's happening because it will get worse" is a terrible way to make your case.
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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…