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A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification

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Re: A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification

#161
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incentives are all wrong. You can serve up to 6 two-year terms in the Assembly or up to 3 four-year terms in the Senate, but regardless of which combination you do, nobody in the California legislature can serve more than 12 years combined across both Houses of the legislature. So we don’t have professional legislatures with long-term electability incentives or leadership goals, we have a resumé-building exercise…

And yet, term limits are something many people want in the hopes that it will solve some of the problems in Washington DC. There, the professional legislators can't get anything right either. Do you think there's a middle ground of increasing the term limits to, say, 18 or 20 years?

Age limits might be an alternative. Say at 65 or 70.

That's at an age where wizened legislators can move into advisory roles, instead of needing to find a next career.

Re: A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification

#162
post #124

There's an obvious theme with lawmakers in California—they pass laws to regulate things they have zero clue about, add them to their achievement page, cheer for themselves, and declare, "There! I've made the world a better place." There are just too many examples. For instance: - Microstamping requirements for guns—printing a unique barcode on every bullet casing (Glock gen3 cannot be retired, thus, the auto-mode swi…

The incentives are all wrong. You can serve up to 6 two-year terms in the Assembly or up to 3 four-year terms in the Senate, but regardless of which combination you do, nobody in the California legislature can serve more than 12 years combined across both Houses of the legislature. So we don’t have professional legislatures with long-term electability incentives or leadership goals, we have a resumé-building exercise…

> So we don’t have professional legislatures with long-term electability incentives or leadership goals

Raises an interesting question of who is less popular, the Californian government or the US Senate. The experiments with long-term professional legislatures have generally not been very promising - rather than statesmen it tends to be people with a certain limpet-like staying power and a limpet-like ability to learn from their mistakes. In almost all cases people's political solution is just "well we didn't try my idea hard enough" and increasing their tenure in office doesn't really help the overall situation.

Re: A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification

#163
post #83

There's an obvious theme with lawmakers in California—they pass laws to regulate things they have zero clue about, add them to their achievement page, cheer for themselves, and declare, "There! I've made the world a better place." There are just too many examples. For instance: - Microstamping requirements for guns—printing a unique barcode on every bullet casing (Glock gen3 cannot be retired, thus, the auto-mode swi…

I'm, again, glad to run linux. The distro I run has no affiliated online "account" at all, and I would expect this exempts it from the requirement. I'm no democrat, although I'm sure as hell no republican, and as a resident of the state, I'm also a routine critic of the California state government. I agree that a lot of their activities are indeed, performance art in nature. However I do agree with the identification…

This doesn't have anything to do with democrats and republicans, considering that this bill passed unanimously through every committee and both chambers.

Re: A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification

#165
post #151

How wouldn't this also apply to things like useradd(8) or simply automated user account setup, e.g. like cups, sshd, etc? Do we need to add this to vi for use in vipw on UNIX?

Worse. Google has to add this to all the machines in their data centers? Imagine the expansion of DevOps BS this will enable: Vendors will need support stuff like "account holder is 12msec old, and can access adult content". They can even create a special certification for it.

So... That was the new market that all the ai-layoffs have freed the much needed labor for

Re: A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's the lowest common denominator between the user and every online interaction. The bill basically says provide a date-of-birth as metadata to accounts and provide an API to query the age bracket, not even the age, of the user to applications. It's a privacy-aware, mostly reasonable approach that shifts responsibility to the owner/administrator of a device to enforce it. It's basically just mandating parent…

I'm trying to understand how this is even a bad thing. Where is the privacy invading verification? Surely a given OS can implement the API response however it wants? If you're root, tell me your age. If you're not, (a child account), the admin (their parent) sets the age. Seems fine?

Even ignoring everything else, at a minimum it is backwards.

There is no reason to tell the application, and by extension their developers, how old the user is. The application should tell the user what bracket it is appropriate for and then the operating system could filter appropriately without any of the user’s identifying information leaving their system.

This is also technically superior because it moves the logic for filtering out of being custom implemented by each and every single application to a central common user-controlled location; you do not have to rely on every application developer doing it right simultaneously.

Re: A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification

#167

I'm under the impression anyone doing nefarious things online are probably more-than tech savvy enough to not install an OS that rats them out...right? Isnt that literally one of the first rules of the DNM Bible?

I guess, if you can install the OS yourself, that's adult enough to see whatever adults are doing online.

Re: A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification

#168
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's an obvious theme with lawmakers in California You can remove the in California

Yeah but let’s not and say we didn’t.

I guess let’s say we also add Colorado to the growing list

https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/SB26-051

Re: A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification

#169

How wouldn't this also apply to things like useradd(8) or simply automated user account setup, e.g. like cups, sshd, etc? Do we need to add this to vi for use in vipw on UNIX?

"User" in the bill actually means child, so cups etc. don't apply.
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