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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

#361

> [..] requires an account holder to _indicate_ [..] i.e. this doesn't require age verification at all just a user profile age property > [..] interface that identifies, at a minimum, which of the following _categories_ pertains to the user [..] so you have to give apps and similar a 13+,16+,18+,21+ hint (for US) if combined with parent controls and reasonably implemented this can archive pretty much anything you nee…

I just set up an iPhone and it asked me if I was (roughly) a child, a teenager, or an adult. So some of this stuff is already here.

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

#362
post #327

This law perfectly demonstrates the constraint problem: regulators assumed age verification is a simple checkbox at account setup. Right now I'm on an ESP32 with free RTOS, will I need to add a keyboard and display just for age verification?

I think it mostly demonstrates that people don't read laws before criticizing them.

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

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 "th…

As with anything, they are all things that could be done better by a company. Airlines are a great example of this. They have changed very little in the last 30 years (again, thanks to all the government regulation and red tape). Smartphones, TVs, (and literally anything else not in the hands of the government) has also seen rapid improvements. Anything the government handles is always rife with overspending, ineffic…

> As with anything, they are all things that could be done better by a company. No

> Airlines are a great example of this. They have changed very little in the last 30 years (again, thanks to all the government regulation and red tape).

And thanks to regulations, we have less airline accidents than ever. Private companies are more than willing to "externalise" any accidents from cutting costs otherwise.

> Smartphones, TVs, (and literally anything else not in the hands of the government) has also seen rapid improvements.

So does government funded medical research, which improves the quality of life of people corporations deem "unprofitable".

> Anything the government handles is always rife with overspending, inefficiency, and corruption.

Because large corporations and rich donors lobby them to do so.

> A company must maintain profitability to stay alive.

So does a government, debt only lasts as long as the lender believes in your ability to pay it back.

> The government on the other hand, is $38 TRILLION dollars in the red.

And which of the Mag7 are not in debt? I remind you that if you wish to compare the USA to companies, they are literally an entity of over 300,000 people. No company employs that many people.

> Yes, the things that "people willingly buy" are the literal engine that makes all of this possible. It is not the reverse.

No, government enforced order is what allowed the engine to exist to begin with. No one would innovate if their IP could not be protected, and we would regress back into cartels if the government could not enforce private property.

The prosperity of the modern world is build upon a foundation of solid governance.

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

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death threats mainly. Personally I think it would be easier if they just made it so that platforms ran a tiny LLM against the content that will be posted - determined if it is a death threat, then require them to be identified before it's posted, then it would solve a lot of these problems. TLDR: Evil people be doxxed internally not everyone.

a "tiny large language model"? lol

See https://tinyllm.org

These days the name "LLM" refers more to the architecture & usage patterns than it does to the size of model (though to be fair, even the "tiny" LLMs are huge compared to any models from 10+ years ago, so it's all relative).

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

#365
post #86
post #73

Sounds to me that this is how kids learn to spin their own operating systems (a la LFS, Gentoo)and apps. This is how people bought personal computers when the mainframe priesthood banned them. It appears that very soon, young people will "de facto" need to have this level of competence in order to survive and thrive in a world of "in loco parentis" operating systems and apps. The latin reveals my age, but one thing a…

I'm sure Xers and millennials are totally going to be okay with a visit from the school cop when their little one is caught with an illegal operating system and looking at charges that could ruin their college and job prospects.

The cheap money will run out long before then, the cop will leave, the school abandoned. There will be forever protests and skirmishes on the long march through collapse.

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

#366
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, but arguably the OS version is better for privacy, as each app can just trust the signal sent by the OS instead of collecting a bunch of personal/biometric data.

until they decide that the OS now needs to collect a bunch of personal/biometric data to avoid people lying about their age or tricking the OS into sending a different signal than the OS should.

> until they decide that the OS now needs to collect...

It doesn't. The device (not the "OS") is registered with government authorities. The device is associated with a single human for the purposes of age verification. And it's a one time action at the time of association.

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

#367
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 log…

It's a lot easier to add an API that's opt-in for an application that needs it. What's the appropriate way an OS should handle an application that doesn't declare this new property? Fail open? Fail closed? It would quickly turn into a mess. IMO it's better to do it this way because the applications that need it (browsers, chat clients, etc.) will use it to provide legal shielding. This isn't a technical problem they'…

Or just do what reasonable states do and create liability for distributing child inappropriate things to children, and require distributors to use a commercially reasonable way to validate age. The law doesn't need to say specifically how to do it, and it certainly doesn't need to mandate things on unrelated third parties like OS vendors and device manufacturers. The people who want to distribute adult content can work with OS vendors to develop acceptable liability shields for themselves.

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

#368
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Young people generalize everything and end up not solving problems. Older people have already seen all the patterns, and realize you have to focus on specifics, and that helps clean up the general issue.

The old people's tolerance for general problems is why the general problems persist. A realistic dynamic is the old people are comfortable with the general problems and have positioned themselves to benefit from them. Indeed, they solved the general problems that troubled them in their youth with political activism in their middle age. The young people have different political needs that require general problems to b…

> The old people's tolerance for general problems is why the general problems persist.

Or they just realize that the general problems are insoluble.

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

#369
post #199

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. 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.

How about we stop screwing around and let becoming a legislator become an attractive & competitive job and just hold our noses at the little things that make politicians as a class generally unattractive people? Like not limitless, not with total impunity, but instead of trying to micromanage our way to perfection every fucking step of the way, we accept that politicians are going to politic.

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

#370

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

USPS - is self-funded, though it is operating at a loss. It also is a legal monopoly, meaning competitors for first class mail are illegal.

Medicaid - funded by the government, meaning people are not willingly paying for it

The National Park System - funded by the government, meaning people are not willingly paying for it

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