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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

#721

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

The USPS is failing because people aren’t that interested in it.

Medicaid is hardly a competitive market, but medication pricing alone says it is a failure. On Medicaid, my FIL can’t get his prescription for G7s filled by anyone.

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

#722
post #473

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…

No company ever got a man to the Moon. Sure, some companies participated in the process. But it was a government that did it. It's been more than 50 years and private companies haven't been able to match it. The greatest technical achievement of mankind was done by a government. Private industry could, at best, help. Sorry all the other things you name are great. But the winner is government.

Until recently, no private company wanted to go to the Moon.

And it is particularly ironic to select that since the government’s attempt to return is the most expensive, slowest, least tested launch system possible, and still needs help to get to the Moon.

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

#723
post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a coincidence the equally clueless citizens are asking for these laws. Like in business, sometimes it's better to do "some thing" when you're not smart enough to do the right thing. Maybe you get there, maybe you don't, but inaction is not looked upon kindly.

What citizens are asking for age verification? I have met exactly ZERO people who want this. It’s only the authorities who want it.

Do these groups count as the authorities?

Children Now (co-sponsor). International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (co-sponsor). AAPI Equity Alliance. California Parents for Public Virtual Education. Parents Support for Online Learning. Protect Our Kids.

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

#724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Also it’s not age verification really, it’s just a prompt that asks for your age to share as a system API for apps from above app store, no verification required) It's not enough to adhere to the age signal: > (3) (A) Except as provided in subparagraph (B), a developer shall treat a signal received pursuant to this title as the primary indicator of a user’s age range for purposes of determining the user’s age. > (…

> Developers are still burdened with additional liability if they have reason to believe users are underage, even if their age flag says otherwise. This is true, but > The only way to mitigate this liability is to confirm your users are of age with facial and ID scans, This doesn’t follow. It says “if” the developer has clear reason, it doesn’t obligate the developer to collect additional information or build a profi…

Post where?

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

#725
post #521

I've taken trips to California in the past for both personal and professional reasons. I'm seriously reconsidering whether I'll do that again in the future. What happens if I bring a laptop with an "illegal" OS without this unwanted "feature" into the state? Will I be denied access to public wifi in hotels and restaurants? Or will it grant me access, but snitch on me -- make a call to the state police to come deal wi…

All of those worries you list are extreme and unreasonable and ruled out by spending two minutes reading the bill: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... The only remedies listed are: > 1798.503. (a) A person that violates this title shall be subject to an injunction and liable for a civil penalty of not more than two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500) per affected child for each negligen…

But wouldn't the creator of the Operating System be liable instead of the person who actually brought it into the state?

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

#726
Pay close attention to which Linux distros trip on their shoelaces in their rush to implement this. Those are the people who will lick boots right up until we're not allowed to use PCs anymore, and turn you in for illegal assembly code.

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

#727
post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So say one of the 50% of children that have unrestricted access goes somewhere they shouldn't, or interacts with people they shouldn't. How is it detected so the parents can be held liable? What does the implementation look like to you?

The same way anything illegal is detected: a police report.

So never.

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

#728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first reaction is that this is an insanely bad law: * The signal has to be made available to both apps and websites * So if you dutifully input valid ages for your computer users, now any groomer with a website or an app can find out who's a kid and who isn't. You just put a target on your kid's back. * A fair share of parents will realize this, and in order to protect their children, will willfully noncomply. So…

> So if you dutifully input valid ages for your computer users, now any groomer with a website or an app can find out who's a kid and who isn't. You just put a target on your kid's back. I'm not going to say that's impossible but the number of sites that do the right thing and reduce risk are going to vastly outnumber that. And 90% of those kids already have targets on their backs by virtue of the sites they visit.

What risk exists from sites that are doing to do the right thing?

This smells strongly of I just made it harder for those that do the right thing and did nothing to solve any problem.

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

#729

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.

> echo - ok for all ages. > cat - 18+, prints the porn you found directly to your terminal. Sound good in theory, until you realise that any teenager knows perfectly well how to trivially get around the lack of `cat` to read their terminal smut: $ while read -r LINE; do echo $LINE; done

cat ~= rev | rev. Are all isomorphisms also 18+? Does it spread to | or rev?

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

#730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux isn’t really an operating system but more the kernel of the OS. In this case, Android would be the OS. Do you remember this copypasta? https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/s/3nonwfDeyX

I remember it when RMS was shouting it from the rooftops. I'm not sure that ART/Linux is any more catchy than GNU/Linux, but just as GNU wasn't the OS, neither is ART. Don't get me wrong, these are all very silly pedantic arguments in the face of such a law.

They are very non silly, because whoever is the actual OS vendor gets to implement this. It's relevant whether kernel developers or OS maintainers need to implement this.
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