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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

#261

Post by justsomehnguy »

mmooss wrote: post #230
fangpenlin wrote: post #67

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 think they demonstrate a welcome and sophisticated understanding of technology. Their solution to age verification maximizes privacy by not sending any data off the computer besides a simple signal of age category (if I understand the design). They show more sophistication than the parent commment: > 3D printers should have a magical algorithm to recognize all gun parts in their tiny embedded systems Color scanners…

> It seems relatively simple to implement gun part recognition today, especially with the recent leap in image recognition capability

And it's sits fine with you because you are the one who wouldn't pay the price for this "simple image recognition capability". Except you would pay of course, indirectly but at least you wouldn't know for sure so your conscience would feel at ease.

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

#263

Post by mmooss »

xomiachuna wrote: post #251
mmooss wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they demonstrate a welcome and sophisticated understanding of technology. Their solution to age verification maximizes privacy by not sending any data off the computer besides a simple signal of age category (if I understand the design). They show more sophistication than the parent commment: > 3D printers should have a magical algorithm to recognize all gun parts in their tiny embedded systems Color scanners…

3d shape classification is different from matching a set of well-known, mostly fixed patterns (like eurion constellation) necessary to detect currency. With 3d shapes of non-governmental origin this is at best difficult and at worst intractable. Consider the fact that many parts of a gun can be split into multiple printable pieces to be later assembled, making it very nontrivial to decipher the role of the shape. Wit…

It's certainly harder, I agree. We have highly sophisticated, non-deterministic image recognition. We don't have to be perfect to have a significant impact, and to stop the 99.x% of amateurs.

> Paper money being almost non-fungible is a great achievement

Going off on a tangent: Many people in technology and in the public look at cash as backward, boring, even socially embarassing technology. I think few it's amazing technology, an incredible hack: tech we struggle to implement in computers is implemented highly successfully and reliably in a piece of paper.

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

#264

Post by prmoustache »

glenstein wrote: post #2

As noted at the end of the article, I suspect the impact for many OS's is going to be that they add a line in the fine print somewhere saying not for use in California.

They could just comply by prompting the age of the account user in a text file. File that the user is free to edit.

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

#265

Post by aldonius »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #227
roenxi wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 lear…

The interesting middle ground might be to prohibit anyone from serving more than two contiguous terms in the Senate or four in the House. Then if you've done your two terms in the Senate, you can run for a House seat, do three terms there and then your old Senate seat is back up for reelection. Except your old Senate seat now has a new incumbent who is only on their first term and you're running as the challenger. Me…

Interesting idea and I do agree that contiguous is OK but total is not.

I think I'd suggest a more generous Senate term limit. Three terms (18 years) would allow for someone to see out a complete Presidential super-cycle, for example.

The word Senate is etymologically related to "senior", it's a place where you _want_ people to be able to develop a lot of institutional experience.

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

#266

Post by hash872 »

SunshineTheCat wrote: post #252
wredcoll wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is, most government "solutions" cause more problems than they solve The "reality" is that propaganda heavily encourages you to ignore the government successes and only focus on the failures. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine who benefits from that.

> "government successes" Please, name for me one product or service that the US government has created, that people willingly buy, that has made your life tangibly better. I can list a billion made by businesses. Please, go for it. Just one.

The proto-Internet. GPS. Nuclear energy. MRIs. Fracking. The Human Genome Project. Fiber optics. Optical data storage. Jet engines. Heck, the entire space industry. Lithium ion batteries. Radar. Night vision technology. Modern lower limb prosthetics. Just off the top of my head

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

#267

Post by palmotea »

mbgerring wrote: post #258
SunshineTheCat wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "government successes" Please, name for me one product or service that the US government has created, that people willingly buy, that has made your life tangibly better. I can list a billion made by businesses. Please, go for it. Just one.

USPS Medicaid The National Park System I know that the next step is you explaining why these don’t count, or saying “wow only 3” or whatever, but

> I know that the next step is you explaining why these don’t count, or saying “wow only 3” or whatever, but

Oh, there's more: Medicare, Social Security, the highway system.

The whole food/medicine regulatory system is also a big one, and it's the reason a lot of US (and European) products like baby formula are imported into China, because they can be more trusted.

My bet is the GP's going to weasel out using his "that people willingly buy" language. The flawed assumption there is the government should be conceptualized as just another company selling in the market, when the government's actual role is very different.

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

#268

Post by jonhohle »

SllX wrote: post #199
zdragnar wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> And yet, term limits are something many people want in the hopes that it will solve some of the problems in Washington DC. Plenty of shitty ideas are popular based on a hope and a prayer. That’s why you don’t give in to populism. If we’re to impose any kind of limits on Congress, it has to be more intelligent than term limits.

How about, if your taxable income exceeds some multiple of the median income of your district, you are no longer eligible to represent them. It’s pretty amazing how much a representative’s income grows once they take public service positions.

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

#269

Post by LooseMarmoset »

Joker_vD wrote: post #254
fangpenlin wrote: post #67

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…

> Microstamping requirements for guns Eh, sounds kinda reasonable. Ammo already has unique serial numbers embedded in the butt of every cartridge (in some countries, not sure about the US), and guns do leave somewhat unique marks on the bullets upon firing so... sure, why not. Surprised it took that long TBF, the necessary technology has been commercially available since the early 90s, I think? > 3D printers should h…

The micro stamping law is in no way reasonable because removing the micro stamping from the end of a firing pin is laughably trivial. The only people who won’t do this are people who weren’t going to break the law in the first place.

Even people who didn’t want to break the law might find themselves on the receiving end of law-enforcement if the firing pin wears such that the micro stamping is no longer identifiable.

The micro stamping law does nothing to prevent the flow of guns to people who should not have them, and does everything to prevent the use or purchase of guns by people who can lawfully own them - which is the whole point of a law like this. The people who make these laws are well aware of this.

The age verification law, coupled with the proposed hardware attestation that our good friend Lennart poettering is working on will ensure that anonymity on the Internet is gone. This is precisely what lawmakers are aiming for. And just like the micro stamping law, the intent of the law is not the literal word of the law.

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

#270

Post by hansvm »

nlitsme wrote: post #249

I will start making a list for linux then. rm - ok for all ages. grep - 18+, you can obviously use this to search for porn. find - 18+, see grep. reboot - ok for all ages. echo - ok for all ages. cat - 18+, prints the porn you found directly to your terminal. sudo - 18+, obviously. kill - ok for all ages. This is the US, right. ps - 18+, no peeping at other processes.

rm - between -i and -r this is just a less efficient way to search for porn

reboot - you never know what the sysadmin might have loading on boot, unsafe as it could load porn

echo - ASCII art would like to have a word

kill - I know the US will have mixed feelings, but communicating with other processes might allow them to send you porn

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