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

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

pcgamer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 768 posts

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

#411

Post by decidu0us9034 »

michaelt wrote: post #57
cjs_ac wrote: post #18

Ignoring all the tedious 'no, you're a bad person for having different priorities and beliefs to me' comments that this will inevitably inspire, I have to ask: why does the operating system need to be involved in this? The intended target of the regulation seems to be app stores. Someone has fallen victim to Politician's Logic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vidzkYnaf6Y

> why does the operating system need to be involved in this? Well, the politicians probably meant to say “Apple, Google, Microsoft, plus maybe Sony and Nintendo” i.e. the companies that already have biometrics, nigh-mandatory user accounts, app stores linked to real identities, parental controls, locked down attested kernels, and so on. If phones had workable parental controls that let parents opt their kid into cens…

The law defines an operating system provider as "a person or entity that develops, licenses, or controls the operating system software on a computer, mobile device, or any other general computing device." If the intent were to target mobile vendors or app store vendors, I would be fine with it, but that's not the text. Of course it's the case that US lawmakers often write incoherent or extremely onerous legislation and then turn around and say, like, "Oh that's obviously not what we actually meant. We don't know what any of this stuff is, it just sounded good."

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

#412

Post by wraptile »

SoftTalker wrote: post #134
throw03172019 wrote: post #42

Are lawmakers bored? Who is asking for this? Not the tax paying citizens.

Parents who are fed up with social media and tech companies taking no social responsibility. These companies have fewer ethics than a minimum-wage liquor store clerk when it comes to caring about the age of their users.

Maybe they should try _parenting_

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

#413

Post by wraptile »

wredcoll wrote: post #318
sunaookami wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents are lazy and don't want to do what parents should do and cry to the state that they should do it.

Yeah, those parents whose kids died from tainted milk products sure were lazy. How dare they cry that the state should do something?

How is giving spoiled milk equivalent to not being able to talk with your child on how the computer works?

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

#414

Post by WalterBright »

dboreham wrote: post #396
WalterBright wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jet engines - Frank Whipple (England) and Franz Ohain (Germany) invented them. In both cases the governments were not interested in them until flying jet aircraft were demonstrated. Lockheed was ordered by the government to abandon their jet engine project and focus on piston engines instead (which resulted in the US having to get started on jet aircraft by buying British machines). Human genome - J. Venter was the f…

Whittle (Whipple is a painter) "invented" the jet engine while serving in the RAF, so technically not privately funded at the point of invention. There was private funding used later to create prototype engines. Quite a stretch to say the Atomic Bomb was privately funded!!!

Oh right, Whittle (my mistake).

The original Whittle engine was developed with private funds.

From "The Development Of Jet And Turbine Aero Engines" by Gunston:

pg 123: of which £200 came from an old lady who ran a corner shop near Whittle's parents in Coventry

pg 123: But a direct request to Air Ministry for a research contract in October 1936 brought flat rejection,

pg 124: Whittle could see that the only possible way to proceed was to take the gigantic gamble of running a complete engine.

pg 125: Indeed, there was little money for anything. While the RAF backed Whittle in every way they could - for example, by not requiring him to take the usual examination for promotion to Squadron Leader - the Air Ministry contributed nothing to Power Jets until May 1938, and Whittle had to watch every penny. He nearly cracked under the strain, which in fact was to get worse for seven years, not because of the Problems in developing the engine, but from the suspicion and enmity with which he was regarded by officials and manufacturers, and by the outrageous behaviour of the Company picked by the Air Ministry to produce his engine.

(Whittle's engine first ran in 1937).

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

#415

Post by WalterBright »

dboreham wrote: post #396
WalterBright wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jet engines - Frank Whipple (England) and Franz Ohain (Germany) invented them. In both cases the governments were not interested in them until flying jet aircraft were demonstrated. Lockheed was ordered by the government to abandon their jet engine project and focus on piston engines instead (which resulted in the US having to get started on jet aircraft by buying British machines). Human genome - J. Venter was the f…

Whittle (Whipple is a painter) "invented" the jet engine while serving in the RAF, so technically not privately funded at the point of invention. There was private funding used later to create prototype engines. Quite a stretch to say the Atomic Bomb was privately funded!!!

> Quite a stretch to say the Atomic Bomb was privately funded!!!

It isn't possible to untangle its development and claim one or the other.

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

#416

Post by basilikum »

sealeck wrote: post #359
matheusmoreira wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stallman has always been right. It's mind boggling just how right he was about everything. The narratives are changing. All these locks and controls used to be about curbing copyright infringement. Now that AI has more or less rendered copyright irrelevant it's turned into a straight up attempt to control the population. They're barely even making excuses anymore.

> Stallman has always been right. It's mind boggling just how right he was about everything. Mind boggling right about not allowing GCC to be used as a library, his comments on Jeffrey Esptein, a refusal to in any way compromise (e.g. the GNU/Linux meme), etc... Oh and a recognition that free software, while nice, does not in any way solve the underlying issues he claims it does. Similarly to how letting everyone wal…

> his comments on Jeffrey Esptein

Do you disagree with his description of Epstein as a serial rapist? Do you disagree with Stallman's position that Epstein should be described according to the specific crimes he committed: rape instead of using much more vague terms that also encompass much less severe crimes which Epstein himself used to downplay and obscure the actual crimes he committed?

If so, why?

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

#417

Post by WalterBright »

cyberax wrote: post #403
WalterBright wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comcast has a monopoly granted to it by the government.

Not here. It's a natural monopoly, just like sewer lines or electric transmission. Where I live now, I paid $50k to get a private fiber optics line just not to deal with Comcast anymore. There were no other options. We _might_ get AT&T fiber, eventually.

Municipalities normally grant local cable monopolies.

But today there are other options. Starlink, for one.

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

#418

Post by subscribed »

autoexec wrote: post #140
bo1024 wrote: 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.

So many words for....

> Android

> iOS

> MŚ Windows

:)

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

#420

Post by piloto_ciego »

modeless wrote: post #280
SllX wrote: 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…

Your solution to politicians being out of touch with reality is to let them remain in office longer?

The real solution is that nobody should have power.
Post reply on HN