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

California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

tomshardware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 525 posts

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#71

Post by malicka »

mikestorrent wrote: post #63
iamalizard wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No such mandates should take place at all.

I agree with you, as a longtime free speech believe. but... I would also like to keep my kids from seeing the very worst of the internet before they're ready to handle it. I tried using a PiHole but Firefox DNS-over-HTTPS nullifies that now. It's not realistic for me to be watching over their shoulders 24/7; what can I do to keep them away from stuff 99% of people agree isn't for children to see, without something li…

You could block the default DoH services for Firefox, I reckon.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#72

Post by AdrianB1 »

Bender wrote: post #61
iamalizard wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No such mandates should take place at all.

I agree fundamentally and ideologically but we are past that point. The toothpaste is already out of the tube as they say. There will be restrictions so all I can do is suggest more sensible restrictions that keep the control on the client side and do not share data. Any data shared can and will be abused, leaked , sold, stolen without consequence.

I heard that lie about "sensible restrictions" so many times, now I am waiting for "sensible violence", "sensible beating to death" and so on. It is a false argument that "there will be restrictions so all I can do is suggest more sensible restrictions", what you can do is recognize that "no restrictions is an option".

It is like negotiating with a terrorist that wants to kill you and this is his starting position and then he wants to agree on some compromise, like seriously beating you. There is no negotiation.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#73

Post by JoshTriplett »

zeroCalories wrote: post #69
lynndotpy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I hear that people own cameras, what I hear is that people are okay with children being harmed for the sight convenience of the freedom to create photographs. Let's just be honest about how we're calculting things: You think living without a camera, which is how humanity has lived for 99% of its existence, is worse than children being groomed.

[flagged]

> We certainly need surveillance, but it should only come from official sources.

I hope you are never, ever in a position to set any kind of societal policy.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#74

Post by grim_io »

mikestorrent wrote: post #63
iamalizard wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No such mandates should take place at all.

I agree with you, as a longtime free speech believe. but... I would also like to keep my kids from seeing the very worst of the internet before they're ready to handle it. I tried using a PiHole but Firefox DNS-over-HTTPS nullifies that now. It's not realistic for me to be watching over their shoulders 24/7; what can I do to keep them away from stuff 99% of people agree isn't for children to see, without something li…

Well, you can't.

Like no past generation could stop their kids.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#75

Post by pizzafeelsright »

neilv wrote: post #32

Who is actually writing this very concerning California Internet legislation, which will ultimately affect the entire nation and world? Did someone write California Internet legislation without consulting any California Internet companies? Did some California Internet companies write California Internet legislation? Did some other party write California Internet legislation?

No, no, and absolutely.

The bill is written 'do good, stop bad stuff by establishing a committee or group to make sure fund good stuff, bad stuff doesn't happen' then the law passes and lobbyists write the details that fund the programs that tax the people that generate the income for companies that donate to the politicians that sell their votes to the lobbyists and interest groups.

California politicians start with the end goal "maintain power, secure revolt, obtain capital, deny failure".

It goes beyond lying to your face. They will be convincingly genuine, heartfelt, while finding a way to extract as much as possible for themselves, by extension their party, by extension the 'government' and do absolutely anything to keep the illusion that you have a choice, a vote, and a voice.

I lived here my whole life. These politicians are evil. Lie, cheat, and steal - deny if caught, punish if provoked.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#76

Post by Bender »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #72
Bender wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree fundamentally and ideologically but we are past that point. The toothpaste is already out of the tube as they say. There will be restrictions so all I can do is suggest more sensible restrictions that keep the control on the client side and do not share data. Any data shared can and will be abused, leaked , sold, stolen without consequence.

I heard that lie about "sensible restrictions" so many times, now I am waiting for "sensible violence", "sensible beating to death" and so on. It is a false argument that "there will be restrictions so all I can do is suggest more sensible restrictions", what you can do is recognize that "no restrictions is an option". It is like negotiating with a terrorist that wants to kill you and this is his starting position an…

No harm in pushing for no restrictions at all. I support this idea.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#77

Post by ekr____ »

Bender wrote: post #3

The only device mandates that should be taking place is for the default installations of web clients should be checking to see if parental controls are enabled. This only impacts the major browsers. An intern at each browser company could add this check in minutes. If they are enabled and the person logged in is on a regular account (not admin or power user of sorts) then the base installation of web clients must che…

> The only device mandates that should be taking place is for the default installations of web clients should be checking to see if parental controls are enabled. This only impacts the major browsers. An intern at each browser company could add this check in minutes. If they are enabled and the person logged in is on a regular account (not admin or power user of sorts) then the base installation of web clients must check for an RTA header [1]. If present, prompt for a override password and also give the option for the admin to approve-list the domain at that time. That's it. Not perfect, nothing is or will be.

It's useful to contrast this with the various device-based mandates that have been created in order to get a sense of what legislators seem to be trying to do. With that in mind, a few points:

* What you are proposing allows parents to opt in via parental controls, but age assurance mandates (both device-side and server-side) tend to require positive action to enter unrestricted modes. In some cases (CA AB 1043, for instance), this is just a matter of entering your age. In others, you actually need to demonstrate your age via some technical mechanism.

* While many age assurance mandates focus on adult content, which is primarily consumed via the Web, others (e.g., Australia's Social Media Minimum Age) focus on social networking, which is primarily consumed via apps, so anything that is Web only will not be effective.

* Site-level granularity isn't really fine enough in some cases. For example, the New York SAFE for Kids act prohibits certain behaviors such as algorithmic recommendations when a user is a minor, but doesn't require blocking minor usage entirely. It's potentially possible to implement this with something like RTA, but it would have to at minimum be at much finer granularity.

Section VI of https://kgi.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Age_As... goes into quite a bit more detail about various architectures (disclaimer, I'm an author).

None of this is an endorsement of age assurance techniques; I'm just trying to help flesh out the situation.

> All legislation regarding age verification must revolve around this otherwise people must reject it as an abusive form of tracking and privacy invasion.

It's a bit late for that, given that around half of US states already have some kind of age assurance mandate.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#78

Post by Bender »

mikestorrent wrote: post #63
iamalizard wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No such mandates should take place at all.

I agree with you, as a longtime free speech believe. but... I would also like to keep my kids from seeing the very worst of the internet before they're ready to handle it. I tried using a PiHole but Firefox DNS-over-HTTPS nullifies that now. It's not realistic for me to be watching over their shoulders 24/7; what can I do to keep them away from stuff 99% of people agree isn't for children to see, without something li…

Unbound DNS if compiled with --with-libnghttp2 can listen for DoH and your Unbound/Pihole can forward to any destination you desire. This is what it looks like on my firewall:

    # https://doh-int.mydomain.net/dns-query
        interface: [ip of lan port]@443
        interface: [ip of wifi port]@443
        https-port: 443
        http-max-streams: 220
        tls-service-key: "/etc/unbound/keys.d/unbound_server.key"
        tls-service-pem: "/etc/unbound/keys.d/unbound_server.pem"
Null routing the open DoH resolvers is just having a startup script that reads a list of all their IP addresses and

    ip route add blackhole "${IP}" 2>/dev/null
People will argue that DoH can run on anything which is true but all the major resolvers will always use dedicated IP addresses as to not risk blocking CDN end points.

If the childs account is not able to gain admin privs then their ability to change settings can be disabled.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#79

Post by zeroCalories »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #73
zeroCalories wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> We certainly need surveillance, but it should only come from official sources. I hope you are never, ever in a position to set any kind of societal policy.

[flagged]

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#80

Post by seanw444 »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #50
zarzavat wrote: post #30

A cynical person might suspect that the reason they are doing this is so that Linux developers don't have standing to challenge the law on 1st amendment grounds...

Nah, you're not cynical enough. This is the classic "what we're trying to do is bullshit on a fundamental level so we're gonna just exempt random things until it becomes a niche issue and we can just do what we want and from there we'll just close all those exceptions over time" move. Give it 5yr and you'll have idiots in the comments talking about how the "linux loophole" was a mistake and should be closed. Source:…

They're finally applying their 2A strategy to the 1A.
Post reply on HN