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

Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

theregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 227 posts

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#141

Post by bee_rider »

mothballed wrote: post #88
EGreg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What's hilarious is that in supposed dystopic corrupt hellholes I've lived or spent time in (Syria during the civil war, Iraq, Philippines, etc) all of this is unimaginable. Westerners view freedom as having a piece of paper that says they are free plus not having to bother fighting off ISIS or the gangsters because the even bigger gangster in a clean uniform and nice jackboot will take care of it. Much of the rest o…

I often wonder what rights were not written down because the people writing the Constitution in the US just didn’t think of a state with enough capacity to infringe on them. I think a lot of surveillance stuff is like that: they concerned themselves with improper searches because that was how your privacy was violated. They didn’t even consider a system that could just automatically log all public actions and what could easily be inferred from those logs.

That said, I don’t think I would like to live in a region governed by gangs or rebel groups, even if they probably don’t have the capacity to annoy everybody, the low odds of a catastrophic interaction with enforcement seems bad.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#142

Post by iamnothere »

gzread wrote: post #130
iamnothere wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep repeating those talking points, we all know what this is really about. It’s bad enough as it is, and it’s the foot in the door for much worse. Before now, nobody has ever tried to legislate how an OS should work. This is unprecedented and unconstitutional.

How has HN gotten to this point where citing the actual text of a proposed law is downvoted while wild speculation is not? There are already laws about OSes, that they shouldn't spy on you and so on.

Feel free to cite an extant American law that explicitly defines how an OS should behave. You won’t find one. Again, this is unprecedented.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#143

Post by alpaca128 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #68
iamnothere wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is paying FOSS devs who will be implementing this? Who is providing them with legal indemnification since they are now apparently subject to fines for a fucking hobby if they do it wrong? Who is making CA the only jurisdiction instead of the myriad contradictory laws all over the place? Who is stepping in to make sure no additional legislation comes across regulating how FOSS has to include backdoors or weaken en…

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…

> driving cars or flying airplanes started as just a hobby

Those still are hobbies, you just need a license for it now. Which makes sense since crashing an airplane is a bit more devastating than crashing a computer. But most hobbies don't need a license and aren't a danger to others.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#144

Post by tzs »

dv_dt wrote: post #40

Hmm the Reg article seems to have missed the reporting on Meta being behind many of the US lobbying groups - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362528

They probably omitted it because it is irrelevant. It says (according to the title of the Reddit post...the body has been removed) Meta is supporting laws to collect more data, which they profit from.

The Register article is about laws that were specifically designed to not give Meta and their ilk anything more than an unverified age bracket. The age reported is whatever the person who set up the account on the computer said to report.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#145

Post by quesera »

gzread wrote: post #129
quesera wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know those existed, and so I kind of see your point. The counterpoint is that if your job was to prevent/punish financial crimes that affect consumers, would it make sense to ignore these exchanges? Heck, if M:TG cards were the medium, and they could be moved across international borders with a few keystrokes, then surely those would be watched too. I won't argue that it's not privacy-invading for legitimate…

If my job was to promote open source software it would make sense to ban proprietary software. That doesn't mean I should actually be allowed to do that.

If you were the government, and the legal structure gave you an obligation to do X, you would do X.

Your implied comparison of "promotion" vs "monitoring" makes zero sense though.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#146

Post by mothballed »

quesera wrote: post #137
mothballed wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is revealed as a fraudulent premise in many states, though. For instance, Illinois doesn't require ID to vote, yet requires an FOID to bear a firearm. How is it that you don't need an ID to exercise the rights of voting 'citizens', but you need one to exercise the right of 'people'? Consider that virtually all 'citizens' are also 'people', and even if you argue they are not, the portion of voting citizens that a…

Fewer people want guns than want to vote. Consequences of errors with guns are higher than with voting, because elections are audited and mistakes and fraud are found and reversed. You cannot helpfully audit misuse of guns, after the fact.

I reject your premise that the outcome of voting is less dangerous than dropping FOID requirements in places with no ID required to vote, and reject that it is actually reversible (can't undo all the dead school girls in Iran).

But lets accept your premise as true.

You're proposing something like rank-stacking the risk of various rights of citizens and people and if they're high enough on the stack it's OK to to ID and if they're lower maybe it's not OK. That seems to move the goalpost quite a bit from your prior argument.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#147

Post by dv_dt »

tzs wrote: post #144
dv_dt wrote: post #40

Hmm the Reg article seems to have missed the reporting on Meta being behind many of the US lobbying groups - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362528

They probably omitted it because it is irrelevant. It says (according to the title of the Reddit post...the body has been removed) Meta is supporting laws to collect more data, which they profit from. The Register article is about laws that were specifically designed to not give Meta and their ilk anything more than an unverified age bracket. The age reported is whatever the person who set up the account on the compu…

The body content is still here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47361235

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#148

Post by mghackerlady »

LtWorf wrote: post #80
pelagicAustral wrote: post #14

Be nice to hear Linus' take on it.

If you want interesting takes ask RMS.

I really should do that, plus GNU needs to decide whether or not to comply with these laws (GNU is an operating system, albeit an unconventional one with 2 kernels)

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#149

Post by quesera »

mothballed wrote: post #146
quesera wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fewer people want guns than want to vote. Consequences of errors with guns are higher than with voting, because elections are audited and mistakes and fraud are found and reversed. You cannot helpfully audit misuse of guns, after the fact.

I reject your premise that the outcome of voting is less dangerous than dropping FOID requirements in places with no ID required to vote, and reject that it is actually reversible (can't undo all the dead school girls in Iran). But lets accept your premise as true. You're proposing something like rank-stacking the risk of various rights of citizens and people and if they're high enough on the stack it's OK to to ID a…

Voting errors and fraud are reversible. Instances of errors are reversed in every election. Instances of fraud are very very rare, but also reversed.

This happens before the winners are certified, and before they're given the ability to drop bombs.

I don't understand your confusion.

In the US, ACH transactions are reversible and trusted throughout the nation. Bitcoin transactions are not, and are not. This seems parallel to me.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#150

Post by labcomputer »

nszceta wrote: post #8
NoraCodes wrote: post #4

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…

There is no limit to the power grab. The only acceptable thing to do is to dig the trenches before it gets worse.

And how well did that strategy work for Apple with the DMA?
Post reply on HN