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Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

agelesslinux.org

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Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#601

Post by charcircuit »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #253
charcircuit wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This leads to anarchy or selective enforcement. Unjust laws should be removed.

> Unjust laws should be removed. Yeah, in an ideal world. Good luck with that. We live in a deeply unjust world where laws are literally bought and paid for by corporations. This age verification nonsense is just the latest example. They aren't going to sit idle if we attack their lobbying efforts, they're going to come after us. God only knows what a surveillance company like Meta can do to you if they really hate y…

Please review how laws are created. Meta can't write a check to the US Treasury and add a new law. That's not how it works at all.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#602

Post by muyuu »

gzread wrote: post #549
muyuu wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because the laws are coming with massive fines and penalties that will apply to people not even selling anything unless you can confidently dodge American law enforcement, which is a big ask unless you are solidly anonymous somehow, then you are forced to react in some way

There's a huge fine in North Korea, perhaps even death, for saying "Kim Jong-un is a poopyhead" but I just said it and I don't care because I'm not in North Korea and I don't do any business there.

America enforces their law all around the world. They also have a strong power to lobby and set legal trends all over the world. It's a good thing NK don't have the capability, and perhaps the will also to do so.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#603

Post by greycol »

CJefferson wrote: post #311
sophrosyne42 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulating the companies also socializes the costs of implementing age verification measures. The correct solution that does not do this is to put liability on the parents.

So do you think we should remove all laws on selling cigarettes, alcohol and guns to children, make it the parents job?

Do you think we should mandate fridges should have locks if they can contain alcohol?

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#604

Post by gzread »

headsman771 wrote: post #580
gzread wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in CA AB 1043 requires or even suggests losing the ability to modify software running a computer.

I will reiterate: there is no way to enforce laws or policies like this without restricting the ability to modify the OS. There is already a pre-existing push to bring attested computing to Linux. The California law is not the only OS level age verification law passed or in the process of passing in the US. One wonders if you're being intentionally obtuse.

How do we enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act?

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#605

Post by gzread »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #594
gzread wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That design would require websites to have separate sections per age bracket.

No more or less than sending age information or registering an ID does. In all cases they must track content classification at some granularity (individual resource, single page, subdomain, some other scheme) and act on that information. The only thing that varies is how they act.

Yes, when it's client-sent they can hide classified parts of the page. When it's server-sent you either mark the whole website 18+ or you hide 18+ content for everyone.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#606

Post by fwipsy »

throw10920 wrote: post #554
fwipsy wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps your comment didn't say what you believe, then.

It does. Read it again: > Either you believe the system is just and you follow all the rules (and work through the system to changes the individual rules you believe are unjust) [...] I believe the system is just. That does not change in the presence of those unjust rules that you listed above, because those laws can be changed and are changed regularly, and because they're not egregious enough to constitute a failur…

I understood you perfectly, but you didn't understand me. You're trying to create a false binary between "follow every law as written, until it gets changed" and "drastic action." Nobody wants to take drastic action, so (you say) we should follow the laws.

You seem to agree that there are unjust laws, but you don't realize the scope of the problem. There are many unenforceable laws, with drastic consequences if they were enforced, which are not being fixed[0]. A just system would not perpetuate unjust laws indefinitely, and so under your framing, everyone who disagrees with these laws and is not willing to follow them should take "drastic action."

In fact, there's no such binary. We live under a flawed system which contains unenforceable laws; we can just ignore those laws (which law enforcement already does) even if they are not changed, without needing to overthrow the system, emigrate, or whatever it is you meant to imply by "drastic action."

[0]https://claude.ai/share/b5d93161-65f8-432e-b04e-af98d951038e

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#607

Post by widowlark »

themadturk wrote: post #560
widowlark wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

having children is a choice. Therefore, the difficulty of that choice is not really a factor in our lawmaking nor should it be.

Is it, though? The trajectory right now is to remove the choice of parenthood. If some people in power have their way, it will not only be illegal to end a pregnancy, it will also be illegal to prevent it to start with. If a male and female have sex (and I doubt a sufficient number of people will give up having hetero sex), the result will often be a child, and there will be no safe, legal choice in the matter.

I certainly want people to have easy access to contraception and abortion. However, I also think that it's still a choice. I never said it was a good one (I agree, you'd be hard pressed to stop folks from having sex)

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#608

Post by cogman10 »

MintPaw wrote: post #539
prohobo wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm completely baffled why anyone still engages with the "official" framing around this. Obviously, it's not for protecting children. Obviously, it's a technocratic trojan horse for increasing surveillance capabilities on digital systems. This is so cynically anti-democratic that they obfuscate the real purpose, don't even bother to make it plausible, and everyone is left talking about how "awful it is" that it's alr…

Because it's not at all obvious. The vast majority of people posting on Hacker News in 2026 probably had extreme exposure to the internet early in life and turned out alright. So they're probably not as concerned about children being exposed to adult content. But clearly people in other cultures have a huge problem with it. Don't fall victim to survivorship bias + echo chamber. There's not another obvious solution to…

> There's not another obvious solution to the problem

The problem with this solution is it's far too overly broad while also not working well. It leaves out the most important parts from the legislation while specifying universal compliance.

What the law should have been is "Operating systems intended to be used by minors should have this age verification specification implemented" with a nice documentation of that specification and how it should work. As written, you'll basically end up with the potential that every single OS ends up with it's own age verification system, which defeats the entire point of these laws in the first place.

Saying "all operating systems" puts us in this complicated and dumb position where now an embedded OS needs to worry about age verification of it's user.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#609

Post by dataflow »

lambda wrote: post #497
dataflow wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same reaction as you this entire time until half an hour ago when I saw the second link in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382650 Meta being behind all of these efforts makes it incredibly suspicious, especially given the New York law is ridiculously more invasive than the California one. It sure makes it seem like there's likely a larger plan here that this is merely facilitating. So I…

Just because Facebook supports it doesn't mean it's bad. They may not support it for the same reasons, they probably just don't want the cost and liability of doing identify verification themselves and so want to make sure all of the cost and liability is on the OS vendor. Yes, the New York proposed law is far worse, and we absolutely should be pushing back against that. And Facebook doesn't care, because they only c…

> Just because Facebook supports it doesn't mean it's bad.

I didn't say just because Facebook supports a law that it makes it bad.

I said the fact that Facebook has been lobbying for such legislation across a ton of jurisdictions, that makes it suspicious.

I stand by that. This is suspicious, whether it's ultimately bad or good.

Re: Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age

#610

Post by pocksuppet »

akersten wrote: post #269
pocksuppet wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's basically the government said "no asbestos in food" and some contrarians set up a website selling asbestos food, except not really because they don't have a product.

> it's basically the government said "no asbestos in food" and some contrarians it's actually the government saying "you must include salt in your food" and a few people who cook dinner at home and don't care for salt set up a website teaching you how to desalinate your... (well, there's no direct continuation of the metaphor here, but the point is it's very important that this is not the government banning a develop…

It's the government saying "you must put fluoride in tap water" and a few people making a big fuss about selling unfluoridated water
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