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

201–210 of 227 posts

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

#201

Post by hahn-kev »

shadowgovt wrote: post #74
matheusmoreira wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soon programming will itself require a license. Only government approved individuals will be able to write code. CPUs will only boot software signed by the government.

"Software engineering" is one of the few large practices with 'engineering' in its name that has no mechanism for license granting and revocation for violation of professional standard. That's not what is happening here, but we might see that happen in our lifetimes. Hopefully before someone writes the software that kills enough people to necessitate licensing, not after (since generally, such outcomes are how licens…

You could argue that we have security licenses (eg SOC 2), however I don't think it actually succeeds in making software safe. I think software is hard because unlike a bridge, which is built with limited scope and the risk is known when it's designed, software grows to become load bearing without us really realizing it. Eg CrowdStrike, I never would have assumed that an outage could affect so much of the world.

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

#202

Post by puppycodes »

alphabetag675 wrote: post #10
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…

When we are installing docker repositories on my Rockylinux installation on 100 nodes at once, should we need to manually put an age of the person who is running the script somewhere in the process? Will docker be forced to prevent me from downloading its packages if I do not transmit the age in a header?

None of it is enforcable, its basically meaningless.

Great job politics!

Like lots of laws that are being written nowadays by octogenarians, aimed at strong arming bigger tech companies into designing things differently at the expense of everyone smaller which ironically ends up curtailing our basic freedoms, privacy, etc... even when the intent was otherwise.

Then again I have yet to meet a politician that actually cares as long as: "this looks good for my campaign".

Regulating big platforms that affect billions of people is one thing but I really wish they would write laws actually discriminating between those platforms and everyone else.

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

#203

Post by xboxnolifes »

gzread wrote: post #115
g947o wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure the headline is misleading. But anyone from 10 miles away could see what's going to happen next.

Are there any other places this argument could apply or is it specifically this one? Like if I said "Yes, the university reserves the right to expel students who defecate on the teacher's desk. But we all know where this is going." that'd be pretty crazy, wouldn't it?

If universities didn't have the right to expel students at all and that was proposed, and they had a history of turning small law into totally encompassing law, I would fairly confidently say that the university is on the path to obtain the ability to expel students for any reason it seems fit.

So yes, we all know where this is going.

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

#204

Post by alpaca128 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #198
alpaca128 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think we've reached a point where we're really turning our heads and squinting away from reality if we think that computing is a hobby that no longer poses danger to others. A person using their own machine can hack all manner of other people's machines without their consent. On the flipside, a person who is not even malicious, but negligent, can configure a machine on the open internet with open ports and become p…

And a person using their pen can hack other people's brains, yet free speech is more important.

I think manufacturers being required to provide longer security update support against hacks etc would be more helpful than violating privacy and restricting access to "protect" people. The amazing protective walled garden of mobile devices has mostly caused people to even forget what filesystems are and normalized subscriptions for the most basic things. A license for internet access or whatever would be an incredibly bad idea for anyone but abusive governments and corporations.

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

#205

Post by shadowgovt »

alpaca128 wrote: post #204
shadowgovt wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we've reached a point where we're really turning our heads and squinting away from reality if we think that computing is a hobby that no longer poses danger to others. A person using their own machine can hack all manner of other people's machines without their consent. On the flipside, a person who is not even malicious, but negligent, can configure a machine on the open internet with open ports and become p…

And a person using their pen can hack other people's brains, yet free speech is more important. I think manufacturers being required to provide longer security update support against hacks etc would be more helpful than violating privacy and restricting access to "protect" people. The amazing protective walled garden of mobile devices has mostly caused people to even forget what filesystems are and normalized subscri…

We do, in practice, impose all manner of limitation on free speech while still maintaining the sanctity of that right. Lying in a professional capacity is fraud and punishable even though it's "just words." Being wrong as an engineer or lawyer can cost you your license to practice (as an engineer, even if you never turned a wrench but your directions to build the thing were flawed beyond the reason of the standards of the profession). "Wire fraud" is an aggravation atop regular fraud.

These protections could go further, but they haven't. Why is it just "okay" that someone can call you up on the phone and convince you that your loved one is in mortal peril and you have to wire money to them right now? Why is the party transiting that fraud or providing the wires connecting entire fraud offices to the global telephonic network not responsible for enabling that attack?

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

#206

Post by eudamoniac »

kevinh wrote: post #178
soulofmischief wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of the slippery slope? A cornerstone of American political philosophy? Arguments like this one are why the authoritarian ratchet continues to turn unimpeded over time.

Slippery slope is famously a fallacious argument. My first exposure to it was people insisting that legalizing gay marriage would end up legalizing marriage to animals.

"If this observable trend continues, it will eventually reach a point that is along this trajectory" is not a fallacy.

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

#207

Post by GoblinSlayer »

gzread wrote: post #114
bee_rider wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, like, what about IOT devices. Are lightbulbs and thermostats going to need to attest the age of their users? There are so many computers without a useful concept of a user identity. I honestly think the California law is well intentioned (in the sense that it just asks the OS to attest the age of the user, so, lawmakers probably thought this could be done in a privacy-preserving and minimally annoying fashion),…

It doesn't ask for any attestation. It's literally just a user profile setting that can be changed by the root user.

There are various initiatives

> These laws can, and almost certainly will, get worse. New York's proposed Senate Bill S8102A explicitly forbids self-reporting. The state Attorney General will decide how to enforce it. For example, to use Linux, you might need to submit a driver's license.

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

#208

Post by alpaca128 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #205
alpaca128 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a person using their pen can hack other people's brains, yet free speech is more important. I think manufacturers being required to provide longer security update support against hacks etc would be more helpful than violating privacy and restricting access to "protect" people. The amazing protective walled garden of mobile devices has mostly caused people to even forget what filesystems are and normalized subscri…

We do, in practice, impose all manner of limitation on free speech while still maintaining the sanctity of that right. Lying in a professional capacity is fraud and punishable even though it's "just words." Being wrong as an engineer or lawyer can cost you your license to practice (as an engineer, even if you never turned a wrench but your directions to build the thing were flawed beyond the reason of the standards o…

> Why is it just "okay" that someone can call you up on the phone and convince you that your loved one is in mortal peril and you have to wire money to them right now?

It is not okay and is in fact a crime. Making it more illegal by forbidding access mainly hurts normal users of the network.

> Why is the party transiting that fraud or providing the wires connecting entire fraud offices to the global telephonic network not responsible for enabling that attack?

Same reason the electric grid is not responsible because it powered the phones, and water is not responsible for generating its electricity in a power plant. The phone network is a medium for communication, and so is the internet. And they can be abused just like air as a verbal communication medium between a scammer and a victim can.

> We do, in practice, impose all manner of limitation on free speech while still maintaining the sanctity of that right.

And we do impose legal limitations on online scams while still maintaining access to the internet. What more do you want?

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

#210

Post by shadowgovt »

alpaca128 wrote: post #208
shadowgovt wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do, in practice, impose all manner of limitation on free speech while still maintaining the sanctity of that right. Lying in a professional capacity is fraud and punishable even though it's "just words." Being wrong as an engineer or lawyer can cost you your license to practice (as an engineer, even if you never turned a wrench but your directions to build the thing were flawed beyond the reason of the standards o…

> Why is it just "okay" that someone can call you up on the phone and convince you that your loved one is in mortal peril and you have to wire money to them right now? It is not okay and is in fact a crime. Making it more illegal by forbidding access mainly hurts normal users of the network. > Why is the party transiting that fraud or providing the wires connecting entire fraud offices to the global telephonic networ…

> What more do you want?

A solution that works, honestly. Because phone scams are so abundant now that people are ceasing to use phones.

Post reply on HN