Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

A new wave of age verification laws requires kids and teenagers to register before they can use a computer. When I was a teenager, I was forbidden to look at Playboy Magazine. I just wanted to read the articles and interviews (Cough, Cough). No, seriously, I did, but I also wanted to look at the photos. Guess what? Although I …

[ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo]

Comparing fruits

I am ambivalent. While studying the anatomy of thr opposite sex is laudable from an educational standpoint, I think it is not the proper analogy to use.

Modern online platforms, like social media, is like hard alcohol; both have addiction and potential cognitive damage as known side effects.

Thus, when thinking of TikTok et al. age verification can be justified.

On the OS level though, that is clearly "throwing out bady, bath and the rest of the furniture"-level bonkers.

If one is sufficiently old, one was blessed by one's early birth. Modern social media is first and foremost designed to make addicted. This is a far cry from the early stuff the parent-generation experienced.

The internet will be to future generations what "medicine of the olden time" is to us: what were they thinking?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Comparing fruits

They have to use a combination of "oh boobies" and "think of the children" because the techbros are rather intertwined with the current government. Plus the demagogues rely upon these networks, they wouldn't like the algorithm quietly tweaked to defavour them.

And, honestly, I wouldn't be surprised to discover down the way that all this age verification nonsense is mass data collection in disguise. You know how Netflix verified me? I had to pay €1 using a bank card (and that €1 was never collected, they only wanted to know the request was authorised). Sure, I could have lied and used somebody else's card, but then the liability falls on my head for lying. If age verification needs photos in various poses, copies of official ID documents.... where does it go, who has copies, who can siphon off copies, how and when is it deleted, what will they do when the info is stolen (note I said when, not if), the list of questions goes on and on. And so far all I see is a great big shrug. If we're really lucky, lessons might be learnt, but I rather doubt it.

Honestly, the continued attempts at normalising corporate/commercial surveillance in our lives (often with governmental support because politicians are dumb and easily bought) ought to be the story, not whether or not it's even remotely viable to run an open source age verification system.

[Chet Mannly]

Re: Comparing fruits

I don't think the support necessarily comes from politicians being easily bought - governments and political parties want this level of surveilance too, and it's cheaper to get FB, Xitter, Apple et al to do it and then just get the info from them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Comparing fruits

>> I wouldn't be surprised to discover down the way that all this age verification nonsense is mass data collection in disguise.

DING DING DING!!!! WINNER WINNER!!! It's mass data collection, and it's not even disguised very well.

>> Honestly, the continued attempts at normalising corporate/commercial surveillance in our lives (often with governmental support

>> because politicians are dumb and easily bought) ought to be the story, not whether or not it's even remotely viable to run an open

>> source age verification system.

As another example: The social media site / app Discord announced (and then walked back) a similar age verification requirement last month over the userbase revolting against them.

It didn't help that one of the companies they chose had a pretty major data leak of people's IDs and other personal information, and that company's response was "whoops, here's where you can go and get free monitoring service for 6 months on our nickel."

One of the companies, Persona, has ties to noted trashpile-wrapped-in-human-flesh Peter Thiel, who has connections to Epstien and runs Palantir, which is also well known as a government surveillance company posing as a commercial entity.

And we've found, over and over and over and over and over again that age verification just... does not work, no matter how much technology you throw at it, and all it does is piss off the section of your userbase that values privacy.

Anon for... reasons.

[JoeCool]

Re: Comparing fruits

I came to the same opinion. I fully agree with the points in the article.

But playboy isn't a good illustration of the inappropriate access. The far better illustration is from the concluding paragraph:

"PornHub, DraftKings Sportsbook & Casino, or Twitter. "

The fact is that there are things that kids 6, 10, 12 should not be exposed to. But the answer isn't to keep them off the internet (impossible, regressive and short sighted) the answer is that those harmful platforms have to be responsible for the harms they can and do cause.

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

Re: Comparing fruits

Same.

Playboy and smutty VHSes are nothing like the hardcore material PornHub et al can supply 24/7.

Usenet and early BBS are nothing like the addictive algorithms of TikTok, Facebook, etc...

It's like equating a drop of water with an ocean.

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Comparing fruits

The only way my Dad could get me into the Barbers when I was under 16, was the prospect of being able to read the 'TitBits' magazine while waiting for a Short Back and Sides.

I guess even that bit of tittilation (less than the Benny Hill show) would be permitted under our new Puritan Overlords.

I'm waiting for them to outlaw shorts on women that don't come to the knee as well as all halter neck tops just in case our hormone laden teenagers get a stiffy.

I grew up in the swinging 60's and saw the hemlines lift from knee level to skirts that were little more than large belts. We just smiled and looked on. We didn't touch. That would spoil the view especially of those see through tops.

Progress? What progress? Oh, you mean reverse gear.

[Persona]

Re: Comparing fruits

I recall back in the mid 1970's the proprietor of a book shop I frequented served time in prison for some of the publications he was flogging. I only bought science fiction books there and was not aware of the under counter offerings. Yes, I was very naive back then. Later when I asked around I learnt that he had been flogging some pretty rough stuff that quite possibly was beyond what we see on PornHub today, or more accurately what we saw on PornHub before the age verification check drove most of its customers away.

[midgepad]

Re: Comparing fruits

Usenet and early BBS still exist, at least potentially, and work no worse than ever.

If they were OK and some later items are dangerous, then going after the later items is more logical, no?

[Stevie]

Re: Comparing fruits

"PornHub, DraftKings Sportsbook & Casino, or Twitter."

And, apparently, the pay-to-equip video games infesting the aether today.

"You spent HOW MUCH on Grand Mine Duty powerups??? On MY credit card???"

[Scotech]

Re: Comparing fruits

Or alternatively, the answer is that parents actually have to parent? I'd hope most parents don't let their younger kids leave the house without some idea of where they're going, and would take some sort of action if they found out their kids were trying to sneak into strip clubs or casinos, buy alcohol or cigarettes, or engage in any other form of illegal or age-inappropriate activities outside the home. The internet is no different.

The analogy that keeps getting used is of proof-of-age requirements for the likes of the above activities, e.g. buying a six-pack, as a safeguard against parental ignorance, but the difference here is that a) the store only needs to check in cases where it's not patently obvious that the buyer is underaged or not, b) the store has no need to make or retain a copy of the ID, and c) there's not necessarily any way for a parent to know what their kid was doing. None of these are true in the digital context - especially the last one, where the parent is the person who controls the child's access to the internet as the bill payer, and presumably controls their access to the devices they're using to access the web too. The idea that everyone should be required to submit copies of identifying information just in case they are a child is already a massive overreach, and extending this to the device is simply unworkable.

[A.P. Veening]

Re: Comparing fruits

where the parent is the person who controls the child's access to the internet as the bill payer, and presumably controls their access to the devices they're using to access the web too.

What bill? Internet at home is a fixed amount per month, shared among all devices at home. And the mobile phone of the child has Wi-Fi access at home to the internet.

Frankly, my control consists of a combination of nurture and "Please don't disappoint me". It seems to be working in both cases.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Comparing fruits

"What bill? Internet at home is a fixed amount per month, shared among all devices at home. And the mobile phone of the child has Wi-Fi access at home to the internet."

The parents are providing said child with the device to access the internet in an unlimited way. There are many hardware and software gatekeeping products to limit access to certain things online. It requires parents to do some parenting and also learn how to configure those things, but nobody said raising kids was going to be simple.

[Jimjam3]

Re: Comparing fruits

A monthly fee is still a bill.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Comparing fruits

b) the store has no need to make or retain a copy of the ID

Yet around here, many stores selling age-restricted goods do either make a copy, or scan the PFD code on the back, both of which give them all sorts of personal data they have no business knowing.

If you ask the clerk about it, they will either say, "it's the law", or, "it's company policy."

[MachDiamond]

Re: Comparing fruits

"both of which give them all sorts of personal data they have no business knowing."

In the US, that can include a Social Security Number.

Full name, address, social security number, DL number, DoB...... Yeah, you really don't want to be providing all of that to be stored by the owner of the corner shop. Never hand the clerk your ID. You may have to display it to them, but don't hand it over. They'll have it scanned in 2 seconds with no way to claw that back even if they wanted to.

[stiine]

Re: Comparing fruits

...the difference here is that a) the store only needs to check in cases where it's not patently obvious that the buyer is underaged or not, ...

Send your dad to Kroger to buy beer without a photo ID and you'll not get any beer. I'm in my late 50s and I've been in line behind retirees with grey hair and a walker and had to watch them get carded buying beer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: get carded buying beer.

I get carded if I try to buy beet at my local ADSA here in the UK. I'm in my 70's with a head of grey hair (at least I have some).

As a result, I try to avoid them if at all possible because since I gave up driving, I would have to take my passport with me just to buy a few cans of beer. Madness.

[joeldillon]

Re: get carded buying beer.

You have a particularly strict ASDA. I'm in my 40s and that doesn't happen to me.

Or perhaps ASDA has Views on the morality of the purchase of root vegetables? :)

[T. F. M. Reader]

Re: Comparing fruits

I encountered this in pubs/bars in the US when I was living there more than 30 years ago (so don't blame enshittification, but feel free to blame the USofA). I was already way older than the legal drinking age of 21. So I once asked a bartender who asked me for an ID, "Do I really look like I am 20?" It turned out that there often were undercover LEOs who were watching bartenders and causing trouble (fines, dismissal, blacklisting, who knows what else) to those who failed to uphold the law rather than uphold common sense.

At least that was the situation in Pennsylvania that had never cancelled Prohibition.

The point is, no Internet needed.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Comparing fruits

"causing trouble (fines, dismissal, blacklisting, who knows what else)"

The "what else" is a suspension or cancellation of their liquor license and a big fine. A bar that can't serve alcohol might as well stay shut until they can get the license back. A hard liquor license is super expensive, limited and requires background checking, notifications, etc. That's why there's more beer/wine establishments as a license for that is less expensive and easy to qualify for.

I was a bouncer way back when and the watering hole I worked at paid a bounty on every fake ID we caught. They could have paid us 5x as much and it would still be cheaper than getting popped by the ABC. It was a fun place and did have a reputation of being really hard to pass a fake ID to get in.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Comparing fruits

"Send your dad to Kroger to buy beer without a photo ID and you'll not get any beer. I'm in my late 50s and I've been in line behind retirees with grey hair and a walker and had to watch them get carded buying beer."

It's their company policy to CYA. With registers that ping age-restricted items and CCTV that might be triggered to make sure the clerk is checking the ID, maybe just handing them something is good enough if you aren't dying what's left of your grey hair. Small shops will not often bother if you look well over age. When I buy anything at the membership big box store, I'm guessing that my age is already in their system or they see that I've had a membership longer than. I won't use the self-checkout as it takes longer since I always wind up with some error that means I have to wait for somebody to come fix it. The human-powered tills just have them glance up when the age thing pings and they punch the "ok" button. Like corner shops, they don't have much of a selection, but it's usually the best price on Guinness and every once in awhile something interesting on special.

[Potty Professor]

Re: Comparing fruits

I encountered a ridiculous situation recently when trying to buy a cheap pruning saw on eBay. The website demanded that I prove my age, because I was attempting to buy a "Bladed Article", by submitting a Credit Card. It would not accept my Debit Card. As I no longer have a CC, I was stumped, so I contacted their helpline. They stated that a CC can only be held by an adult, whereas a DC can be issued to a minor, and as such is not proof of age. I countered with the fact that I had been registered with eBay since 1995, so I could not be younger than 31, but that did not cut any mustard.

I bought the saw from Amazon instead.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Comparing fruits

I seem to recall something about a journalist getting their child to purchase hunting knives and whatnot online, which was oh so horrible because there was no age verification.

My family went camping a lot when I was younger, and I was given my first knife at the age of 7 or 8; so pardon my lack of moral panic. But to be fair, my parents knew about my edged implements; and I can see that some children ought not be acquiring potentially dangerous kit, particularly behind their care-givers backs. I guess if I were eBay, I'd probably elect to have a stupidly blunt policy rather than risk getting sued.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Comparing fruits

> I guess if I were eBay, I'd probably elect to have a stupidly blunt policy rather than risk getting sued

That would definitely be a stupid policy: blunt knives can be (are!) way more dangerous than properly sharp ones!

[MachDiamond]

Re: Comparing fruits

"They stated that a CC can only be held by an adult, whereas a DC can be issued to a minor, and as such is not proof of age."

My half-sister had a credit card when she was about 6 on her dad's account. My other sister and I would try to take her shopping when we needed(wanted) new clothes (and lunch). She also had a state issued ID. It was funny when we'd go out for a family dinner and let her pay.

A minor can have a credit card with their name on it, but it likely needs to be attached to somebody else's account since they can't enter into a binding contract until they are 18.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Comparing fruits

"a) the store only needs to check in cases where it's not patently obvious that the buyer is underaged or not, b) the store has no need to make or retain a copy of the ID"

Many chain stores where I am check ID regardless and I certainly don't look underage at my time of life. I used to like to shop at Bevmo until one day they wanted to scan my driving license rather than just look at it. I left it to the store employees to restock my selections and haven't been back since. Small shops don't bother checking my ID but, the down side is they don't have a very large selection.

I'm also scratching my head as to the validity of the stated reason for The Man wanting ID to operate a computer. Me thinks it's yet another "think of the children" cover story to introduce the masses to another layer of surveillance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cui bono?

The stated reason has no validity. As I understand it, Meta - Facebook - Instagram is (clandestinely, via Digital Childhood Alliance and other astroturf groups) funding these laws, in a bid to offload culpability. As usual, "follow the money" is useful.

And of course, the gov'ts are happy to have a private co. implement a suveillance state on their behalf.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Comparing fruits

The response I usually give to "Think of the children!" is "Just like Jimmy Saville did?"

Seriously the collection of biometric data (and other stuff) is quite dangerous: Not many people are aware that one of the reasons the Nazis were so effective at rounding up "deviants" and other undesireables was because they had access to extensive data collected in the early days of Weimar - data collected when Weimar was progressive/open society, with the aim of ensuring that discrimination didn't occur.

The first target of the extermination campaigns was disabled children and they were amply assisted by IBM in processing census results in particular

[spoofles]

Re: Comparing fruits

I understand where you are coming from but this will not be a solution to that.

Human nature being what it is and kids being what they are will be intrigued and find ways around it.

I think the politicians that propose these kinds of things know this but have to start somewhere, its the thin edge of the wedge.

The goal is full surveillance since that will be what is required to enforce this.

The Aussies tried this and said it would never be used to perform surveillance on the electorate or tamp down political criticism.

Well, as can be expected it failed miserably on both counts.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Comparing fruits

"Human nature being what it is and kids being what they are will be intrigued and find ways around it."

If parents put up good road blocks, about the time their kids can get around them is likely to be the point where they're old enough and should be getting "that talk". Until then, there isn't as keen of an interest in viewing "adult material".

[Alan Brown]

Re: Comparing fruits

"Human nature being what it is and kids being what they are will be intrigued and find ways around it."

AKA "If you want to get something done, forbid your kids from doing it"

[DS999]

Re: Comparing fruits

those harmful platforms have to be responsible for the harms they can and do cause

OK fine, let's use Pornhub as an example. Whether using age blocking or whatever, your 12 year old can no longer access Pornhub. Great, right? Well, what about the other millions of porn sites out there, based all around the world. How you gonna prevent your kid from accessing those? There is no age requirement law that will work, because if its a website not an app then Apple/Google having OS age protection in their app stores doesn't help. And if the website itself is outside your country, your country's laws can do nothing.

The ONLY way you can prevent your 12 year old from accessing porn is via some sort of whitelist - and even that won't necessarily be perfect. But let's assume it is. I'm fine if you want to restrict your kid in that way. You're the parent, you can parent them how you want within the limits of the law. But if you start suggesting things that impact my ability for free use of the internet because you think that's necessary to protect your kid, then we're gonna have a problem.

[stiine]

Re: Comparing fruits

How is a whitelist going to prevent your child from opening google or bing and typing the words "bare breasts" and the checking the box selecting no filter? Its not.

[DS999]

Re: Comparing fruits

Easy, don't put Google or Bing on the whitelist. Make them use a search tool designed to work with the whitelist that only shows results for and from whitelisted sites. They search for "bare breasts" and see "0 hits" or "did you mean 'Rare Beasts'?"

[frankvw]

Re: Comparing fruits

"...until you actually think about what the implication is..."

It's worse than that. As the Oglaf online cartoon site (no link, because NSFW, but feel free to Google) points out, the "Are you over 18 [Y/N]" verification is inherently flawed, because if you're a minor, you can't legally certify anything! So you'll need to get a legal guardian to click the "no" button for you. Which is 100% true from a legal standpoint. Yes, the law is actually that daft.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Comparing fruits

"They search for "bare breasts" and see "0 hits" "

That would be a very tame search. The sort of things that might want blocking are a bit spicier.

[Jimjam3]

Re: Comparing fruits

They search for "bare breasts" and see "0 TITS" "

FTFY

[Alan Brown]

Re: Comparing fruits

Real world example back in the 1990s

University department found that a large chunk of departmental traffic was visits to Playboy's website.

Solution; Block Playboy

Problem: There are multiple aliases for the site and users quickly find them

Solution: Block the IPs

Problem: there are multiple mirrors and they pop up faster than the admin can block 'em

"The ONLY way you can prevent your 12 year old from accessing porn is..."

... by being an actual parent and looking over their shoulder

Technical solutions never work well for what at its core is a social problem.

[Edward Jazzhands]

Re: Comparing fruits

"the answer is that those harmful platforms have to be responsible for the harms they can and do cause.".

This is a one line zinger that sounds good on the surface until you actually think about what the implication is. And I'm very disturbed that 18 people here pressed upvote on it.

You want to hold companies that produce vice products responsible for the harm the product causes? How far do you want to take that logic? Should we force all producers of alcohol to be responsible for every drunk driving death? Should we hold all casinos responsible every time someone declares bankruptcy from gambling?

If you answered yes to either of those questions, what you're really arguing is that those activities should be completely illegal. Thats at least a cohesive argument. Casinos used to be illegal in most of the world until fairly recently. The USA attempted to make alcohol illegal once and it was an unprecedented disaster that resulted in tens of thousands of people dying and established the Mafia as a powerful force in American life.

The point is that if the activity itself is legal then it's completely non sensical to say those companies should also be responsible for the harms people cause to themselves or others when using that vice. If you want to make beer companies responsible for all drunk driving deaths then beer will effectively disappear or be sued into non existence, I'm fairly confident that's how that would play out. So at that point the reasonable thing to do is just make it illegal instead of pretending it's technically legal and then suing it into oblivion.

If there's one thing that really really matters when it comes to the law, it's being consistent. Saying you want to hold vice companies responsible for the harms their vice causes is completely inconsistent with how the law already treats every other vice in society. Inconsistentcy in this area is a recipe for disaster, but it's exactly where we will end up if this idea keeps getting pushed. One line zingers that make people feel good are almost always counter productive.

[HereIAmJH]

Re: Comparing fruits

You want to hold companies that produce vice products responsible for the harm the product causes?

Should we hold snack foods companies liable for treating diabetes?

[MachDiamond]

Re: Comparing fruits

"Should we hold snack foods companies liable for treating diabetes?"

That's a bit too far, but the Government paying for said snacks could be curtailed. There's a lot of fighting about that in the US right now. The Federal Government is starting to put restrictions on buying junk food and energy/fizzy drinks with SNAP (Food Stamps, nutritional support) and states are trying to argue that maybe the person is diabetic and needs the occasional chocolate bar to manage low blood sugar. No mention of there not being a ban on plain white sugar that can be use to make sugary treats. I've limited myself to only being allowed cookies (biscuits) if I make them myself. If I get off my lazy ass and make them, fine. I already know that it takes more motivation to do that than buy a package or six at the store. Just this last week I did some lemon shortbread cookies that were very good. I also baked them in two batches so I didn't have a big tin full all at once. Maybe in another month I'll make something else.

There may be times when going after companies is the correct thing to do if their product or service is primarily used to do bad regardless if it's legal or not. Legislation often lags the real world by a decade or so. Perhaps for adult entertainment, there should be a set of Top Level Domains those companies must use so they are easy for parental blocking software. Similar to magazines needing to be in a blacked out wrapper that covers up any features on the cover and prevents casual viewing.

[HereIAmJH]

Re: Comparing fruits

I don't know that holding commercial food companies accountable for diabetes would be any worse than doing the same for the damages caused by alcohol, gambling, or cigarettes.

I think if an honest scientific study was done, we'd find considerable responsibility in the food industry. They do studies to see what makes things addictive. And they make it hard, and expensive, to buy healthy foods.

Ex. Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers Four Cheese Ravioli..... (long name, Healthy is the first word) is 33g of carbs for 10oz. 3.3g per oz. Most would assume that it is healthier than opening a can of Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli. (no healthy in that name) But is has 52g of carbs in 15oz. 3.5g per oz. The one that is marketed as healthier (by a very small margin) is more than twice the price.

Is it criminal that tomatoes have been cross-bred to increase the amount of natural sugar in them?

As a diabetic you will never control your blood glucose simply by limiting sugar. Total carbs is very important. As well as the type of carb. A personal anecdote, one of the first foods I was told to drop is potatoes. But potatoes don't spike my glucose, grains do. 2 slices of bread will launch mine for hours.

The Federal Government is starting to put restrictions on buying junk food and energy/fizzy drinks with SNAP (Food Stamps, nutritional support) and states are trying to argue that maybe the person is diabetic and needs the occasional chocolate bar to manage low blood sugar.

There have always been limitations on SNAP. Decades ago I had a friend that worked at 7-11, and she explained how she was allowed to sell food stamp customers soda in bottle or cans, but not fountain drinks. And then later, she could sell them fountain drinks as long that they didn't insert the straw. There is a lot of concern in the US about 'Welfare Queens', but it's mostly misdirection. Historically limitations have been focused on convenience foods and vices (alcohol and cigarettes).

As far as using chocolate to manage low blood sugar, I'll admit I have done it, but it's a poor practice. I also have some Code Red in the fridge that I bought during COVID that I use occasionally. I used to keep juice, but soda in cans has a longer shelf life. Neither of these are good because the package size is generally too large and you end up spiking and putting yourself on a rollercoaster. If you are type 2 you should probably do nothing unless you taken too much medication. Your body will release adrenalin, break down fat, and your sugars will come back up naturally. That's hard to do at 3am when you've been woken up by low sugar alarms, you're light headed and your hands are shaking. (the shaking is the adrenalin already being released)

* note that these are my 2 decades of experience, not medical advice. The only advice I'd give is talking to your doctor about getting a CGM, even if you're just pre-diabetic, so you know how foods affect you. Without insurance in 'Merica, it will cost about $80 a month and it could save you from becoming diabetic and needing expensive drugs.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Comparing fruits

"There have always been limitations on SNAP. "

They've become much looser as EBT cards can be used at fast food restaurants.

I've been hungry before so I get it, but I've also learned how to cook as a way to combat the cost of eating. I can remember the first time I baked bread from scratch. My roommate and I mowed down both loaves before they cooled off. It was amazing. Later this afternoon I'm going to assemble a load of BBQ chicken pasties and chuck a bunch in the freezer. Chicken was on offer and I loaded up the slow cooker with thighs and sauce. Cheap, easy and really good. I've enjoy Jamie Oliver's low cost meal series'. The point is that cooking from scratch isn't hard, much cheaper than ready meals and can be much healthier to boot especially if you have allergies or dietary restrictions. It blows my mind that benefits pay for spaghetti ready meals when it's one of the easiest meals in the world to make. I make my own sauce, but sauce in jars isn't too bad of a trade. Cast iron pizza is dead easy and dough is sometimes available at grocery stores although I think it tastes a bit off. The beauty of pizza is that one can chuck in just about anything, even pineapple and have a tasty meal that serves many. Desert is Yorkshire puddings with tinned pears/peaches sauteed with butter and sugar. Delish.

Cooking from scratch can be a good gatekeeper over just opening a plastic bag and gorging.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Comparing fruits

> There is a lot of concern in the US about 'Welfare Queens'

Which totally avoids the actual welfare queens in the military-industrial complex, automobile industries and American farming (the latter being the ones who make the most noise about such things whilst standing there demanding payouts - It was their failure to hedge for a large customer having a zoonotic (animal pandemic) that resulted in the USA-China trade war.)

$HINT: Farmers who have gone out of business because the government culled their flocks to curb the spread of African Swine Fever tend not to buy animal feed for animals and farms that no longer exist with money they no longer have). If China really wanted to hurt the USA all they'd need to do is arrange for a few infection breakouts in the pork farming states (it's wildly contagious to the point that transporting infected animals in an enclosed trailer can easily result in transmission a couple of miles downwind of the roads used - and plausible deniability factors heavily into such things)

It's not simply misdirection at the scales involved.

[notiggy]

Re: Comparing fruits

Why even talk about alcohol or gambling? Why not pull in every restaurant that uses any kind of oil for every death linked to heart disease. Car manufacturers for deaths caused by auto accidents (no matter how benign). The list goes on

[JoeCool]

Re: Comparing fruits

Of course it's a complex problem, but there is a serious issue here that needs addressing. And I can tell you what most definitely will NOT work : ignoring fact that because you want a perfect and morally ambivalent solution.

If you want to use the model of "consumer industries" then let's look at Tobacco. They've been sued and regulated endlessly in the name of public health, for what is in fact criminal disregard for human life. How is life right now for Purdue pharma, and the individuals that built their wealth on the headless drug-pusher distribution of oxycontin ?

Online gambling is headed the same way. And why not "social media" companies ?

They know exactly who is using their accounts, because they use that profile to feed them into the profit-generating algortihm. There's the first thing to stop. Yes we can allow shops to sell kink, but we don't give them a pop-up booth in the public library next to the Hugh Lofting display.

So let's drop the defeatist approach disgused as the concientous objecting of a world weary seen-it-all.

And that "zinger" is pithy. Yes I've got words and damn right I will use them when I see fit.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Comparing fruits

"The USA attempted to make alcohol illegal once and it was an unprecedented disaster that resulted in tens of thousands of people dying and established the Mafia as a powerful force in American life."

They then failed to learn anything from the experience and made a bunch of other substances illegal(*) with even worse results - those substances are vastly more widespread and cheaper than they were previously with profit margins being high enough that vendors are willing to take the risks associated with selling to schoolchildren - because, money

(*) All those newly minted FBI G-men had to be kept occupied somehow

Meantime Portugal wiped out the problem in a couple of years with sensible policies and destroying the profit margins. It worked so well that associated crimes plummteted as addicts no longer need to fund their habit and most importantly the uptake in teens/adolescents fell away markedly (see above regarding profit margins) whilst HIV infection rates were slashed

The USA attitude to this kind of thing is what you might expect in a country where institutional cruelty is baked in, medical bankruptcies exist and the incarceration number exceeds anywhere else in the world, including all those authoritarian dystopias which jail people for not worshipping the Dear Leader. Looking to USA laws/procedures for guidance/best practice is best done with a small salt mine onhand.

[NATTtrash]

Re: Comparing fruits

But the answer isn't to keep them off the internet (impossible, regressive and short sighted) the answer is that those harmful platforms have to be responsible for the harms they can and do cause.

And that is why we now have AgelessLinux (https://agelesslinux.org)

[Patrick Chamberlain]

Re: Comparing fruits

and at what age are these things not harmful? Platforms that are harmful need to be held to account - limiting access by age is a distraction from the real issue.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Comparing fruits

"and at what age are these things not harmful?"

Some things can be harmful at any age, although at some point, people have to take some personal responsibility and hopefully they've had parents that have taught them some of that. Certainly won't get any at school.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Comparing fruits

I tend to agree however:

Pornhub etc are now already behind age checks in most of the world.

Betting and Casino sites require you to deposit money to be able to do anything, for this, you need a bank account, and people under a certain age don't have bank accounts that have debit/credit cards that will work here.

Twitter + Social Media...the solution there isn't age restriction or censorship, it's education...we all knew as kids that we shouldn't speak to strangers or let them touch our bits, I fail to see how that sort of education cannot be adapted for modern times.

As for parental controls on routers etc..they already exist and most of them are pretty good, the problem with them is they are usually not very granular and are difficult to access. If we standardise the way parent controls are accessed, we solve a lot of problems...use a reserved URL or something that is preconfigured on every router https://parentalcontrols.local that takes you straight to the parental controls dashboard on any router...to make setting up rules a lot easier, when you set up a device that is flagged as "KIDS" it should announce to the router that it is setup for "KIDS" and a default set of restrictions should apply...rules automatically kick in. These rules should always be configurable and optional and not blindly enforced without parental control.

That's how you fix the problem. You don't need invasive age checks if parental controls become that straight forward.

Is this solution perfect? Hell no...but is it better than any other suggestions...fuck yeah.

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

Re: Comparing fruits

Giving "the powers that be" the ability to block you from using your own computer because it has decided that you are suddenly "underage" is a threat far too easy for exploitation to be ignored. I would never grant the incompetent branch of society known as "government" from having such control over my system.

[parlei]

Re: Comparing fruits

I'm much more concerned about my children deciding to follow people in the Manosphere than them looking at boobs (or even vaginas/penii). One my get then an unrealistic idea of MOTAS anatomy, while the other may cause them to become antisocial menances to society.

[Alex 72]

Re: Comparing fruits

Yes Identity and age verification when necessary is for service provider (or possibly mutual between client and server) but not an OS issue the OS does not know the difference between http://abc.com and http://def.com nor should it. Potentially standards like x509 or FIDO 2 might help and maybe OS support for verifying those in hardware would be de facto required if services took this seriously and the burden were placed appropriately on the purveyors of hard liquor, social media, and mature content, but we would need to trust a registry, not to give up guid for real names without a warrant, and not to sell the data to data brokers for that to work, and who can you trust these days?

[njorl]

Re: Comparing fruits

“ambivalent”? This is your wake up call! https://youtu.be/KZYNTQCa8yw?si=W67QKkmzdh4Cj9fZ&t=50

“Social media” – That its internal discourse is increasingly being funnelled into the corporatocracy’s AI-controlled conduits is a crushing attack upon the proletariat. Of course we need to act decisively to repel this. How about we cease working > half our time for the parasitical state, funding our overlords’ construction of their deep underground complexes and abduction of our children, and/or whatever else it is they do with all of that money that, sure as hell, isn’t being used to make our lives any better? When keeping the wolf from the door is eating up less of our lives, we will have more time to spend actually socialising with real people, without some “common power” selecting who they are, for us, and filtering which of their words we actually hear, say in a public house (remember them?), instead of scrabbling on our little teletrackers for a quick social fix as we wait for the elevator to the company basement or the underground cattle can to convey us to our second job.

But, you thought the answer might be even more identity tracking and automated experience gating, for everyone, so those who are most vulnerable to influence can be, perhaps, better shielded from influences not of, or sanctioned by, our oppressors, while they are being efficiently immersed in the complement by the state “education” system (a.k.a. sheep dip)?

[Bebu sa Ware]

new file in /etc/

From memory /etc/shadow already has a couple of "age" fields. ;)

An /etc/bollocks file

# @(#) /etc/bollocks - see /etc/termcap

logname:has=[y|n]:dob=yyyymmdd:maturity=years:preferences=[lbtiq+]:

There will likely be a RFC for the LDAP schema but the US has pretty much redefined RFC to mean really fucked consensus.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: new file in /etc/

"man shadow" is your friend. They're to do with password ageing. There's one field reserved for future use.

[bombastic bob]

Re: new file in /etc/

In other words all you need is the root password (or unlimited sudo usage) and the knowledge of how to do it, which NO LAW CAN EVAR STOP!!!

I shall be posting instructions online at every reasonable opportunity.

EFF, where ARE you? (car 54 theme)

[bombastic bob]

Re: new file in /etc/

article: So it is that the FreeBSD distribution MidnightBSD has already added a clause to its license, "California residents are not authorized to use MidnightBSD for desktop use in the state of California effective January 1, 2027."

So basically you BYPASS their stupid and DO WHAT YOU WANT, ANYWAY.

Such "laws" are unenforceable in an internationally connected world.

I shall be posting instructions and patches.

EFF - where ARE you...???

[TimMaher]

Re: new file in /etc/

It’s the US @Bebu. So the dob should be “mmddyyyy”. So useful.

FTFY.

[Edward Ashford]

Re: new file in /etc/

DOB should obviously be number of seconds since 1 Jan 1970

Which is going to be interesting for those of us with a negative age.

[JohnSheeran]

I said it another thread and I'll say it again here. It's total hypocrisy. This law is originated from a Democrat and not a Republican. I'm only pointing this out because it's not just a "one side" situation. Both of our parties in this two-party system are corrupt and not out for our best interests. They just go about stomping with different methods. In the mean time, this is the same state that would argue that you shouldn't need a valid ID to vote and that right has clear requirements on it that are easily enforceable if ID is required. Nobody has to invade your personal, private life privacy. That same ID is required to drive a car and to perform many, many other functions in our society but they say that it's not reasonable to expect everyone to have a valid ID to vote. I'm not here to trumpet (pun intended) that we must require an ID for voting. I'm just stating that it's total hypocrisy to try and implement a system like this when they group behind this particular stupidity already makes excuses as to why having a valid, proof of ID is such a big problem for much of our country.

Again, don't focus on the example of voter ID. Focus on the stupidity of this kind of law.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, the "Won't somebody think of the children" brigade have never been partisan. It's not even really the politicians fault, since they're not hired on braincells, just ability to be elected. They get in power, get a glimpse of how fucked everything actually is, panic over how out of their depth they are and seek consultations. Regulatory capture ensures the stupidest, most dead in the water ideas float to the top, covering the Zuckerburgs of the world's arse and allowing them to continue to feed kids crack while hovering up even more of their insecurities to sell back to them.

It's usually not corruption from within government that causes this, but simply large, powerful monopolists doing what they have always done, or the security services once again demanding encryption backdoors. There is often a u-turn, or a compromise, but this doesn't matter because in a few years a new bright eyed, bushy tailed cabinet will be in power. Lather, rinse, repeat. And slowly, over many decades, they capitulate. Once the legislation is written, it is never revoked. It's just the slow ratchet of the erasure of your rights.

After all. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Right?

[NoneSuch]

"After all. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Right?"

Hello Anonymous Coward,

Ironic, you belittle those who wish to remain anonymous by posting anonymously. :P

When rights are eroded over time, as they almost certainly are, the protests build until the only thing that resets the clock is a revolution. There's been 28 countries or so in the last hundred years that did just that. Most were at the behest of the CIA, but not pointing fingers.

Revolutions are not pretty. They kill a lot of bystanders for very few reasons and typically impose worse regimes. So when we post the "Won't somebody think of the children" icon, we are doing just that.

You can post whatever you like. That's your freedom of expression. Enjoy it. In the future, if you hear "Ready... Aim..." I'd suggest screaming "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.” before the next word.

[IGotOut]

@nonewuch

"After all. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Right?"

Hello Anonymous Coward...

Whoosh....What's that's noise? Oh it's the sound of the quote going right over your head.

[stiine]

Perhaps the bystanders should stop being bystanders.

[Denarius]

you forgot the bureaucrats. Every bureaucracy expands, demanding more scope as it does so. See Parkinson Law and Peter principle

[JulieM]

I remember a letter to a local newspaper in which someone made the argument that if a person has nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear.

It was printed; and right beneath it was a single-sentence note from the editor, saying that the letter's author had sealed it in an envelope.

[MachDiamond]

"I remember a letter to a local newspaper in which someone made the argument that if a person has nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear."

There should be no issue if that person hands out business cards with a complete set of their personal information. Right?

It's important to keep secrets. Some things are best kept private. I work as a professional photographer, but I don't put a tag on Google Maps showing where I live. My address is a post office box and I don't invite clients to my house. I think only one or two know where I live other than in general. I just shudder when I see those tags on Google Maps that paint brilliant red targets on the person. I'd not be surprised if some burglars are using those to plan.

[Adrian The Alchemist]

After all. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Right?

Ask the poor postmasters in the UK who were convinced and imprisoned on something like faulty software

The miscarriages of justice in the UK alone are frightenening and we don't learn

[Mr R. Ebel]

Privacy is not equivalent to concealment.

[MachDiamond]

"After all. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Right?"

Do a search for Cory Doctorow's thoughts on the difference between privacy and secrecy. He covers it in depth and does it far more eloquently than I can.

[notiggy]

I like how you expend so much effort trying to come off as non-partisan, but really give it away in the second half. The big (one might say constitutional) difference here is that requiring a _paid_ ID to vote is a poll tax which violates the 24th amendment. There is no such protection for accessing the Internet. That said, I despise all these laws. As someone who might have to make hard choices on whether I continue contributing to Alpine, I really with all these kind of laws would go away.

[JohnSheeran]

It's always funny how the partisans see an enemy at every turn.

Again, the voter ID point was made purely because the party supporting this kind of law opposes that kind of law not on constitutional grounds but because it would "disenfranchise the under privileged". The irony is multiple. One key point is the the under privileged are effectively disenfranchised in our society of laws if they can't obey those laws already because they are under privileged (apparently). Basically, they are willing to take away the rights of the so-called privileged as long as it does seem to cost anything as is the case here. Giving up your privacy and other constitutional rights does cost something.

If it makes you feel better, the party that claims to be all about our so-called freedom is more than willing to intrude on that freedom with illegal monitoring, financial misconduct, misuse of government powers, etc. Sadly, they aren't unique either.

So, go find your partisan arguments elsewhere. They are all criminals and just open your eyes and see it. Neither has your best interest at heart.

[b0llchit]

Down the rabbit hole

Just wait, in due time:

• lying about your age will become a felony
• the use of computers will be restricted to official software only, verified by the government
• encrypted communication not piped through official channels in plaintext will be banned
• programming requires a license and all code must be submitted for official review before you can run it

[Captain Hogwash]

Re: Down the rabbit hole

Programming will be done by government approved AI and generated code will be automatically submitted to another government approved AI for review prior to release to the prompter.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Down the rabbit hole

This is where it will be pushed to.

I can foresee 'wire fraud' convictions for twelve year olds. In Soviet America, everyone is a criminal.

[HereIAmJH]

Re: Down the rabbit hole

Don't forget pirate internet access feeding directly into the dark web.

The Internet will get split between the 'official' one, where all the mundane online shopping exists, customer service requests, access to government services, and the one that the properly bribed will be happy to ignore..

Anything prohibited will be on the dark side. And it will make Prohibition look like child's play. And of course, a huge rise in organized crime taking advantage of everyday people while bribing politicians and public servants.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Down the rabbit hole

"Anything prohibited will be on the dark side. "

It's much like that now. To keep my searches from being misinterpreted, I do many of them using TOR/DDG/Qwant. If I just want to know the price on lumber at the local store, I'll do that in the clear. If I'm unsure of a reference in a book I'm reading, I'll do that in the dark.

[Qwerty44]

Re: Down the rabbit hole

It's like modern updated version of Orwell's 1984.

[TimMaher]

Re: 1984

The Ministry of Truth would like a word, @Qwerty44.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Down the rabbit hole

"lying about your age will become a felony"

There's me spending my last years locked up. Oh well, there may be a time when I'm short of funds, hungry and cold.

I was brought up to be truthful. Later in life I learned where and when it's a good idea to lie my pants off. I could protest and not fill in the information and that would mean I don't get a cookie OR I can make some shit up and get the cookie. I like cookies.

[Dan 55]

The California law is this is age indication, not age verification. It's like the on-device age verification in that there was in the 2000s on computers and consoles. It's fine for the parent who wants to use it and ignorable for the parent who wants to continue having no interest in parenting. It's odd that it was written in law, but it has been and here we are. The good bit is that age indication has been written into law, not age verification.

You tell the GUI how old you are on first run or in user settings, and this data is stored in a file which is readable by the software package downloader app (the "app store"). If you wanted to make it nicer for the user, you'd check which area the user is in in regional settings and hide or show the age option so as you don't bother those users who aren't in an age indication area. Further updates to the age field require the root password.

Then Ubuntu, Mint, or whoever update the SQL tables in the app store, adding the new column, and setting the minimum age to 3 for every app, and return this new field to the software package downloader. The 1% of apps which need it are adjusted by hand. Then the software package downloader filters on the new field and also displays it with each software package.

Then the parent doesn't give their offspring the root password and that's it, job done.

If there were a standard age file in Linux then Steam could use it too, and suddenly it all starts to make a bit more more sense.

It's not thin edge of the wedge or the end of the world (which in case you hadn't noticed, the thin edge of the wedge was about a year ago and the end of the world is real soon now). It's just a tool that a parent can use if they want to without having to stand over their kids' shoulder which is what some people consider parenting, but it really isn't.

[david1024]

So, that escalated fast

Since I don't want my children's PII and restrictions on their computer, I'm not parenting? Maybe I parent so that I don't need an OS-Based nanny?

Try this on for size: Obviously, since you think the state needs to nanny, you've got your own parenting issues and your parents were bad. (See how dumb that type of conclusion is and how damaging it is to society?)

Be careful of that name-calling and wild speculation.

[Dan 55]

Re: So, that escalated fast

It's not PII, it's a number. It doesn't even have to be the right one.

Ten years or so ago I set age controls on the console so it didn't show games which weren't appropriate. Later on I unset them because it wasn't necessary any more. Did using age indication make me a terrible parent? You tell me.

It would have been nice to have got to a point in the free market where every device has on-device controls to set an age and app stores/social media/games heed that setting. Unfortunately we didn't get that, we got a free-for-all instead. So really given all the laws that could be enacted as a consequence of that, this is probably the least worst one.

If you want an example of worse laws, look to Australia or the UK.

[Chet Mannly]

Re: So, that escalated fast

"It's not PII, it's a number. It doesn't even have to be the right one."

The prudes are forcing age verification at an OS level. If it is allowed with 'trust me this is my age' false information how many seconds do you think it would take for them to add a full PII requirement to protect the children genius?

[Captain Hogwash]

Re: on-device age verification in that there was in the 2000s on computers

I've been using computers since 1979 and never saw that.

[Dan 55]

Re: on-device age verification in that there was in the 2000s on computers

Second, third, and fourth paragraphs were my idea for how to have age indication in Linux, but there a reply just below tells me it's already been done.

[Colin Bull 1]

Re: on-device age verification in that there was in the 2000s on computers

You missed one of the classic games of the era - Leisure Suit Larry. The age verification was a hoot.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/917513-leisure-suit-larry-1-in-the-land-of-the-lounge-lizards/faqs/36594/age-questions

[TimMaher]

Re: using computers since 1979.

Snap.

[thames]

This is already part of Linux and has been for years. It's called OARS, which means Open Age Rating Service. It's used by Gnome Software, KDE Discover, and Flathub. It just doesn't become active until you install parental controls (provided by libmalcontent and malcontent-control). The information is stored in /var/lib/AccountsService/users/${user}

I haven't tried it myself.

[Dan 55]

So Linux does have age indication parental controls. All that has to be done is distros provide the package by default and life goes on.

Thanks for the info. It's a shame knowledge about this isn't more widespread, then we wouldn't have articles proclaiming the death of Linux, distro owners prohibiting distribution in California, or so many people believing on-device parental controls are a threat to Linux.

[QET]

Like that shit's not getting uninstalled post-haste.

Besides, let's not encourage the Microslop tier brainrot Gnome et al got going on, in the first place.

[Anonymous Coward]

> If there were a standard age file in Linux then Steam could use it too, and suddenly it all starts to make a bit more sense.

Try telling that to an indignant mob lighting torches and waving pitchforks about and see how many downvotes that gets you.

They would rather have CSAM available for all rather than allow sensible privacy protecting efforts to prevent that.

[Doctor Syntax]

Where are these privacy protecting efforts of which you write? There have been multiple demands over the years but surprisingly (or maybe not) nobody has produced a proof of concept to be picked apart by real security experts.

[Dan 55]

Age indication, i.e. the administrator setting the age of the user. Here's an example in Windows 7. No verification with 3rd parties.

Are we now all seriously arguing against this? It seems so.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe they're arguing against the forced inclusion of a government-mandated and verified age indication system, which is what some of the states seem to be doing with these new laws.

If it was just a simple "how old are you?" prompt on install that'd be one thing, but that's NOT what some of these laws are planning to implement. New York's version (still in committee), for example, wants OS providers to conduct "age assurance" as defined by another department of NY state, and delete the information required for such age assurance once age is confirmed.

I don't know exactly what "age assurance" is defined as in NY, but from the requirement to delete information afterward, I suspect it's not simply "how old are you?" but something more akin to the "prove that your government-issued ID and face match" style.

Our conservatively-minded Supreme Court is unlikely to find such things unconstitutional, though there are some fairly strong arguments against forcing people to show their government papers before installing an OS.

If ID checks are required 'for age' before you can use a computer, it's not really that far to go to get to "only documented people are allowed to use computers in the USA".

[Dan 55]

However I don't believe I argued in favour of NY's law. It's an impressively bad law and if there's any sanity left in the world (debatable) it will be amended or thrown out.

I've argued for on-device controls which app stores, social media apps, and games would observe. Which is what California's law is, what we've found that Linux can already do, and which means the entire article can be cut down to the last two paragraphs.

I didn't downvote you BTW.

[Doctor Syntax]

Why should I, in the UK, have the OS of my computer, used only by myself, have to include this simply to oblige Dan55 and some computer-illiterate US state legislators? And if it's made a legal requirement there it very likely would have to be incorporated because the same distro is available anywhere?

[4d3fect]

Our conservatively-minded Supreme Court is unlikely to find such things unconstitutional, though there are some fairly strong arguments against forcing people to show their government papers before installing an OS.

I don't have much confidence that those old white men have any fucking clue about what an OS is and what it means to require PII to use one.

[Kernel]

"Age indication, i.e. the administrator setting the age of the user."

This would work well - not!

I'll take the example of my son's household - he is a builder and my d-i-l is a senior paramedic. Neither of them computer illiterate, but for them computers are merely another tool in which their only interest is "does it work or not?"

I can assure you that for any computing device in their household the only holder of the system admin password is my 12 year old grandson (and has been for a number of years) - he's a good kid, but he's not going to cripple his own ability to maintain their computers.

[HereIAmJH]

They would rather have CSAM available for all rather than allow sensible privacy protecting efforts to prevent that.

I would prefer CSAM not be available to anyone. But age verification isn't going to stop it.

If that confuses you, then maybe you should check what an acronym means before using it.

CSAM is not children getting into sites that they are not mature enough to handle:

"Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is not "child pornography." It's evidence of child sexual abuse—and it's a crime to create, distribute, or possess."

https://rainn.org/get-the-facts-about-csam-child-sexual-abuse-material/what-is-csam/

Seems like there should be some sort of note about the Epstein files here.

[Doctor Syntax]

It tells you something about the computer-literacy of the sort of people making these proposals.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

"They would rather have CSAM available for all"

And terrorism. We're all about the CSAM and terrorism here.

----> ah, that's where I left my BBOM

[jpennycook]

> Then Ubuntu, Mint, or whoever update the SQL tables in the app store

Do you imagine apt-get getting updated to support ages, especially on a computer used by the whole family? And what if it's being run by a service account, or as part of the system, not by an actual user?

[Dan 55]

There's no need to include apt-get, the law says app store which for Linux is the distro's GUI software package downloader or Steam.

[Lon24]

Real men, boys and babies don't use GUIs where wget will work. I'm old enough to remember when one could get quite excited by some enterprising lineprinter output.

I'm the one with a handy card punch in the pocket.

[oldandgrey]

Better stay clear

Yes, I have been using them too: https://ithistory.org/db/hardware/ibm/ibm-port-punch

As the legislation differs from place to place, and tends to be formulated very broadly and imprecise, it would be foolish for the Linux and BSD communities to get involved. If you touch this mess, you make it your problem.

[buchan]

> There's no need to include apt-get, the law says app store which for Linux is the distro's GUI software package downloader or Steam.

On some distros, the "GUI software package downloader" is just a GUI front-end for the apt-get equivalent.

Here's one example: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Software_management#Install_and_remove_software

[Doctor Syntax]

"There's no need to include apt-get, the law says app store which for Linux is the distro's GUI software package downloader"

This is by far the most informative comment you've made. I doubt you intended it to be, at least not in that way.

[vtcodger]

Inevitably

If there were a standard age file in Linux then Steam could use it too, and suddenly it all starts to make a bit more more sense

Inevitably, in many distributions, age will be installer age at installation time stored as an integer in /etc/age. But on others it will be user age at login time in seconds since epoch. And on red Hat and Debian it'll be in years in floating point. in /usr/local/age. There will be several other variations most of which will be against the law in India and Bolivia because those countries require age to be reported in hours since the birth of Ada Byron (aka Ada Lovelace) on December 10, 1815.*

*And, like the article says, underage users will most likely lie about their age anyway.

[Old Used Programmer]

You've never installed the OS on or used a Raspberry Pi, have you?

[MachDiamond]

"The California law is this is age indication, not age verification."

So, utterly pointless. There's been a big pile of taxpayer money spent on the topic for no real purpose.

[heyrick]

Would any of these dipshits like to suggest...

...how one is supposed to have a reliable way of verifying age in an open source operating system...

...when it would be trivial to "userage = 42;" then "make"...

...and quite a few people are ideologically opposed to the idea of binary blobs so having them run a closed age verification service would be a non-starter...

...and wouldn't that be a brilliant way to backdoor systems that people think are reasonably secure, so not trusting is a completely valid approach.

Anyone? 'cos all I can hear is the sound of crickets.

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

Re: Would any of these dipshits like to suggest...

They don't solve problems. They just write laws. And if you are caught breaking those laws, then the problem is yours.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Would any of these dipshits like to suggest...

Laws need some relationship with reality. A law to abolish gravity could be written but wouldn't be enforceable. The enforceability is tested when it comes before a judge. A test case with a good battery of expert witnesses could be its downfall.

However, in the US the real problem could be the 1st amendment. Until the FBI solved their problem another way Apple was contesting the order to put in a back door on the grounds that it was compelled speech and therefore unconstitutional, code being established as speech in Bernstein vs US.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Would any of these dipshits like to suggest...

"Laws need some relationship with reality. A law to abolish gravity could be written but wouldn't be enforceable."

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2017:

“The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia."

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Would any of these dipshits like to suggest...

Paraphrasing only slightly:

"The laws of God are very commendable, but the only law that applies in ..."

I can think of quite a few places where that sort of statement wouldn't go down well. To paraphrase another well-known phrase:

"Reality is a harsh schoolmistress, but fools will learn from no other."

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Would any of these dipshits like to suggest...

Since when has reality mattered. Given some of the people in control over there (and over here in the UK, we don't seem to be too far behind at times), I could well believe some of them could think they could ban gravity and pass a law to that effect. As previously stated, not enforceable, but that wouldn't stop some people arresting you anyway and leave it to the courts to sort out.

[mark l 2]

If you look at one of the businesses lobbying FOR this law its Meta, as then once the age verification is the responsibility of the OS they are then off the hook for doing age verification themselves as they can just say we allow users to access our services based on what age the OS says they are. And pass the buck for any age checks to someone else.

The whole age verification falls apart anyway as soon as you move from consumer OS to that of businesses. No enterprise is going to want to have to do external age verification checks for every device and user they set up on their network, or what about servers that don't run a GUI and could be admin by people from all over the world. So no doubt there will have to be some use cases carved out for exemptions to this ill thought out law and as soon as you start making exemptions the kids will jump on that and find ways around ages check in minutes.

Although it might actually be good for Linux in these states as once kids realise that it will be trivial to bypass age checks on Linux since the source code is available and within days of any distro putting in age checks someone will fork the code and have removed it. It might actually push adaptation of FOSS in those regions.

[Dan 55]

At the moment you can't even tell Meta apps your age. If their apps are obliged to query the OS for the age and it's set too low, then their apps will be disabled into uselessness and won't be downloadable on new phones. Legally.

[david1024]

So, enforcement?

So, if you can't self-certify age... The state is going to have to support some kind of Internet service (and that won't be a juicy dos target). Or maybe license 3rd parties to do it.

This seems like a way for cloud-type computing to attack standalone machines -- you know, because the cloud knows best. I don't see any cloud/virtualization vendors not wanting to promote this. This has the side effects of making old OS and computers illegal? So we need new ones or move to cloud?

I say go for it, implement this fast and let it fail hard as the clown show it is.

[Dan 55]

Re: So, enforcement?

You can self-certify age. It's not verification. Read the California law.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So, enforcement?

Read the New York one.

[Dan 55]

Re: So, enforcement?

Worse than UK and Australia, which took some doing.

[Richard 12]

Re: So, enforcement?

The New York one is utterly insane.

The California one seems reasonable - self-selected brackets is absolutely fine, because it's self selected and brackets.

As a parent, the only thing I want is simple to configure and reasonably effective parental controls that aren't easily accidentally bypassed.

My partner and I set up my children's devices. We want to put in the age brackets we want their accounts to use - and it's not necessarily related to their physical ages.

If they deliberately bypass them, then it's up to us to talk to them about why they did that, and decide what to do.

If they get root access to and delete the config file, that's no different to if they picked a lock on the shed. Maybe they only did it to show they can, but there's dangerous things in the shed and inappropriate things on Steam and we'll have that talk.

In short, I don't want The Algorithm to show them things they're not ready for - because it absolutely does, we've already had one case of screaming tears because YouTube rolled a wildly inappropriate advert in the middle of a perfectly fine video. (Resident Evil is not the same as Super Mario)

That was entirely because Google deleted the YouTube Kids app, so they were in "guest" mode on the "big TV" by mistake.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So, enforcement?

> The state is going to have to support some kind of Internet service

OR the state is going to support some kind of door to door policing; there will be more than enough applicants for "your local official age verifier" from the curtain twitchers to the self-appointed "voting fraud inspectors". The enthusiastic ones won't even make you call for them to come over and type their key into your OOBE screen: they'll happily knock in your at any time they find convenient "to just check your OS is still compliant".

[Anonymous Coward]

Next, they'll ban people with an address

that contains the word SEX.

Back in the early days of the internet, many US sites were so paranoid they banned people with addresses that contained the three letters SEX.

So no one in Sussex, Middlesex, Essex, counties here or in the USA could register.

Madness? You betcha but remember that the Pilgrim Fathers were puritains. They hated the human body so much that for a woman to even show a bare ankle was heresy.

The current evangelical movement in the USA want a return to the old days where only White Men who own land can vote, stand for office or even drive a car. The women in their world are there to have babies and raise the next generation of White Men.

[Ordinary Donkey]

Re: Next, they'll ban people with an address

Though to be fair Scunthorpe was never missed.

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

Re: Next, they'll ban people with an address

I believe this is called the Scunthorpe problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Next, they'll ban people with an address

Which is similar to, but distinct from, the clbuttic bad-ass-word-replacement problem.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Next, they'll ban people with an address

South Yorkshire has a similar but more masculine problem.

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

Re: Next, they'll ban people with an address

Yeah, I always thought naming it after Scunthorpe left Penistone hard done by.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Next, they'll ban people with an address

Have a look for an image of Catshaw Cross.

[steviebuk]

Re: Next, they'll ban people with an address

They want The Handmaids Tale to be real.

[Tron]

They are using Orwell's dystopia as a manual.

Paranoid control freaks using health and safety to destroy tech and the economy.

[thames]

What is the difference from existing Parental Controls?

"Linux" already has this in the form of Gnome Parental Controls. I'm not sure what is needed beyond perhaps changing the installer to ask if you want to include this optional package in the installation instead of you adding it later.

I've never tried it, but once you install it, it includes more features in the user account set up to do all the age related things a computer can realistically do.

So the parent installs Linux and is root and then sets up user accounts for each child as appropriate. Job done.

As for applying age related restrictions to someone with root access, good luck with that one. By definition, root can do anything, including changing or replacing parts of the OS.

[Doctor Syntax]

"Linux is for the young, intellectually gifted, and curious."

Is it that US legislators are not happy with voters with these characteristics?

[prh99]

No, they're just corrupt. When various pressure groups like Common Sense Media and rich tech companies like Meta come along and say the OS or app stores should verify age, this is what you get. You also get press releases about protecting kids and holding tech companies accountable...while taking money from Meta to do exactly what Meta wants.

All so Meta etc can avoid liability for COPPA violations.

[prh99]

Also apparently the Digital Childhood Alliance is a fake Meta funded grassroots group that has actually never done anything other than lobby for Meta's preferred legislation.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

This explains a lot about why I have so much difficulty.

I'm old, a bit slow, and more odd than curious.

[MachDiamond]

"Is it that US legislators are not happy with voters with these characteristics?"

They aren't happy with anybody that can see through their bullshit.

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Insert unfocused rage here

I'm struggling to get animated about this. My kids both under sixteen have iphones, they need apple accounts to do this which I set up with their ages (roughly correct), and that's fine. They can't do certain things and if there needs to be an exception, as the responsible adult for those accounts I'm asked and can give approval. It largely works.

If they use a computer rather than a phone, it's also going to be one I've set up for them. Frankly I don't want them on pornhub or 4chan, and while obviously I keep an eye on them I would have no major issue if the OS also had a knowledge of their (approx) age and was able to use this to limit them too. None of this stops me setting up a Raspberry Pi for them to play with. But the internet is an open sewer and if you're under sixteen and using it unmonitored, I would ask why.

And if you're over sixteen, this doesn't matter one jot. If my next computer asks me for an age to create an account, I type in a random date from the 1970s and move on without a second thought.

Will it work 100% of the time? No. Is it going to prevent adults from doing what they want? No. Will it make it harder for dubious businesses to target my kids? Yes.

I realise this is off-message so lets just assume I made lots of allusions to Orwell and government overreach, and said "think of the children" a few times.

[My other car WAS an IAV Stryker]

Re: Insert unfocused rage here

"[T]he internet is an open sewer and if you're under sixteen and using it unmonitored, I would ask why."

I did at that age in the mid-'90s, with dial-up. Only one parent had the technical acumen to even try to get online; the other had no hope.

Of course, back then, the internet sewage was only sewer-sized -- now, it's an ocean. And no, I don't want my kids playing in it, but that's my job, not an OS's. Yet eventually I must release them into the wild and hope they'll not rush into the worst like I did in college (with massive bandwidth that's always on).

[Fido]

Re: Insert unfocused rage here

My understanding is the California law started out as privacy protection but amendments to the bill almost literally replaced the phrase "strict limits on the dissemination of personal information" with "an API to provide age-bracket signals."

Raspberry Pi was originally conceived in response to an increase in students wanting to major in computer science at Cambridge who had no computer skills: no programming experience, no system administration experience, no networking experience and so forth.

Ideally a real computer so cheap a child could afford to own one allows 12 to 17 year olds a chance to learn without messing up the PC that Mom and Dad use to pay bills and send email.

A Pi boots from an SD card because removable media makes it easier to reinstall the OS after each learning experience. The hardware is not locked down like a tablet, mobile phone or gaming console. That's because the way to learn computer skills is by doing and doing requires the under 18 owner to have root access.

This poses a unique problem when Facebook wants the operating system to determine the age bracket so they can avoid being responsible for fines related to collecting prohibited personal information on children.

A discussion on how AB 1043 affects Raspberry Pi OS appears at

https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=396519

While the above thread is just comments from users and does not provide any official information from the Raspberry Pi company, it is still more entertaining than falling down the stairs.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Insert unfocused rage here

Ideally a real computer so cheap a child could afford to own one allows 12 to 17 year olds a chance to learn without messing up the PC that Mom and Dad use to pay bills and send email.

Also cheap enough for schools to let kids loose with them, and hence actually teach something other than "how to do X in Microsoft Y". And as you say, it's reasonably easy to start each class with a fresh image (or just swap the card as required), so no worries about starting a class with a load of randomly borked systems.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Insert unfocused rage here

"If my next computer asks me for an age to create an account, I type in a random date from the 1970s and move on without a second thought."

And if that were all it would be annoying but not serious but that would be utterly pointless without being able to verify your age. In order to do that you would have to provide whatever is deemed necessary for some company that some US state legislatures thinks are good enough for them. If different states disagree it might be a separate company for each state.

GDPR? So many letters as far as they're concerned.

That's what this is about.

[Doctor Syntax]

Legislators need to remember that in a few years the current under-16s or whatever will be voters. They will have created new cohort of voters already pissed off with them.

[Stevie]

Chances are, no they won't.

Engagement in the democratic process is lamentably low in western countries that give them the chance.

[Doctor Syntax]

One consequence of poor engagement is that votes are all too often cast against something rather than for something. Give a group something to vote against and its members will be more likely to vote. A thousand wound up kids vs ten thousand adults would can't be arsed? Not good numbers for a candidate.

[the Jim bloke]

The Australian preferential voting system effectively lets you vote against who you like least.

That, combined with compulsory voting, has mostly kept the crazies out of power until recently, but the rise of social media is sucking us towards the American style cult of personality politics.

[MachDiamond]

"One consequence of poor engagement is that votes are all too often cast against something rather than for something. "

And a good thing too. Most of the things I vote against each time are things that should have never been put forward in the first place. It's also easy to find dunderheads to vote against than somebody you are happy to vote for. Once you've eliminated the bottom of the barrel scrapings, you are lucky to have any choices left.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take A Look (in the UK) AT.....

https://use-their-id.com/

And this is only the START of shenanigans!!

[Stevie]

Bah!

This seems appropriate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0kfe5tkdD4

[hayzoos]

Being knowledgable is not a parental requirement

Being a parent has very few requirements. Natural selection takes care of the worst. If you can produce offspring, congratulations you are a parent. Being tech savvy is not required. Being smarter than your offspring is not required. Being smarter than a politician is not required. It bodes well for humankind for yougnsters to be smarter than the current average adult. As a child I could have bypassed these OS age things. My parents were wise with experience and in their areas of expertise, not stupid. I knew more about these new-fangled computer things. I still learned a lot from my parents. My mother is still learning a lot from me about computers. I see a lot of parents where their kids will be able outsmart them on these OS age things. But those same parents could successfully impart behaviour the old-fashioned way by imparting respect for elders (obviously with exceptions) no tech solution needed.

[find users who cut cat tail]

> For example, to use Linux, you might need to submit a driver's license.

One of the most American statements I've read this week.

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming soon, to a cop-shop near you...

Amnesty bins.

Bin 1: Knives, machetes, swords & other sharp weapons.

Bin 2: Nitrous cylinders, herbal cigarettes, dodgy pills.

Bin 3: Slackware CDs.

[Tonystorcke]

Will the community just lay down and get screwed?

It is really pathetic that no one has figured out yet that the way to fix this is through the courts in the United States. Perhaps some company with guts like IBM who is the patron of Red hat might decide to come forward and use their considerable influence and resources to bring this to the Supreme Court. This is a matter of privacy and a possibly even free speech.

[ChoHag]

Re: Will the community just lay down and get screwed?

Nobody wants to be the person who's accused of peddling porn to children.

If you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to ... no wait that's last year's witch hunt.

[prh99]

Re: Will the community just lay down and get screwed?

The Supreme Court enabled all this when they reversed decades of precedent to say that age verification does not burden the 1st Amendment. They were ruling on Texa's age verfication law for porn, but ended up taking a hatchet to the precedents that had kept wide spread government mandates on age verification from being legal. They also slapped an onerous burden on courts with their Moody decision requiring laws be challenged as applied. So court have to detail all the possible applications of a law and show that a “substantial majority” are unconstitutional. It's why the 9th Circuit is currently chipping away at California's “Age Appropriate Design Code” instead of just throwing it out as unconstitutional.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Will the community just lay down and get screwed?

company with guts like IBM

Yea, right! I used to work for IBM and I still suffer the PTSD, they are not the company you appear to think they are. They are evil, two faced and will screw you as quick as look at you.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Will the community just lay down and get screwed?

That is the company we think they are.

[David-M]

Reality to me is it should only be up to OS providers to provide a controllable ecosystem with a default parental setting or two with blacklist and it should be up to the parents/guardians to activate it.

For that to work there needs to be an advisory default setting recommended by a government to choose, and neighbourhood discourse to get parents on board with activating it knowing that they're broadly working together.

Children might go and obtain their own phone outwith this which the parents will need to watch out for, and which might merit some kind of social media account and logon vetting however that's harder to make work than getting parents to club together to work to the same tune...

[HereIAmJH]

Reality is that people should be responsible for their own ecosystem. Rather than writing a whole bunch of code that is likely to end up intrusive, use simple, existing technology for controlling an ecosystems.

Libraries, schools, corporations, government agencies all use proxy systems to stop their users from going to unapproved sites. Let these big corporations that want to push their compliance problems onto OS manufacturers set up proxy services that parents can subscribe to. All that needs to be done is set up approved site lists for age brackets or personal beliefs. (some religions find certain content objectionable that others don't) Parents configure their child's device to use the proxy that they feel is appropriate.

Unless protecting your children is too unimportant for you to shell out a few bucks a month.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not going to work. When my girlfriend's oldest daughter turned 18, she paid for her own iPhone and plan, and then recycled the 6 older cell phones she had used since she was 13 that her parents hadn't known about. If you need to ask how a 13 year old girl pays for the latest and greatest cell phones and their monthly bills, don't, because you really, really, won't like the answer.

[jpennycook]

Playboy - the science fiction magazine

Playboy published a lot of science fiction: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?24780

For example, Arthur C Clarke: https://arthur-clarke-fansite.blogspot.com/2007/05/wind-from-sun-18-stories.html and https://findingaids.library.tamu.edu/index.php/wyps-nq5e-3twh

[IvyKing]

Re: Playboy - the science fiction magazine

FWIW, "Wind From The Sun" was first published as "Sunjammers" in Boy's Life.

[stiine]

Re: Playboy - the science fiction magazine

And Harlan Ellison, Larry Niven, and many, many others.

[Redact Ted]

Lobbying behind the bills

I saw a YouTube talking head discussing who lobbied for the bills, Meta and Google.

The posited reason is they want to pawn off liability for age verification to the OS so they can escape fines for 'letting' kids on their platforms.

[ecofeco]

Re: Lobbying behind the bills

Winner winner, chicken dinner

[AdamWill]

They did work, though

"In the meantime, though, there's another issue. These kinds of laws don't work. They've never worked. Prohibition failed in the United States. I kept reading Playboy"

They *did* work, though. For a law to "work", it does not have to prevent every incidence of the act it prohibits. By that standard, *every* law fails. People get murdered every day; should we repeal the law against murder?

Age restrictions "work" in several ways. Primarily, they *significantly reduce* the incidence of the prohibited behavior in the prohibited group. Yes, you kept reading Playboy, but it probably wasn't *easy*, right? You had to sneak it from a parent or get it from a friend or try to blag your way through buying a copy. or whatever. Your (and my) access to age-restricted porn when we were young was hugely different from the present day, where anyone can load an internet full of porn with no practical restriction whatsoever (it's quite easy to find it *by mistake*).

An important consequence of this is they make *not* doing the thing socially acceptable (and hence normal). This is the point of social media restrictions. Nobody is expecting them to keep every 15 year old off Instagram. But they do at least reframe things so that you're not The Weird Outcast if you're 15 and *not* on Instagram.

I don't think these are good laws, in various ways, but "age restrictions never work" is a very bad argument against them.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: They did work, though

Laws against murder don't get repealed* because despite "failures" there's no downside.

Prohibition was repealed because failed, was unpopular and had substantial downside in terms of fostering organised crime.

You have to look at the operation of laws in the whole. Legislators are not good at doing this. They want to achieve some specific object and are unwilling to consider (1) that those against whom their law is intended to work will not simply obey it but will look at ways to circumvent it and that (2) if it adversely affects a large part of the public else it will become unpopular.

A law which requires registration and verification of every computer user, risking leaking of personal data will have sufficient downside, taken in connection with its likely failure rate, to get repealed.

* Strictly speaking, I think murder is contrary to Common Law. If so there's no specific legislation to be repealed but we'll let that pass.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: They did work, though ... nope

"An important consequence of this is they make *not* doing the thing socially acceptable (and hence normal)."

Fancy wishing and nothing more. Stupid laws are laughed at and *no-one* takes them seriously and *that* is normal. Not obeying the 'law'.

See: prohibition.

You people never learn that stupid laws do not work. No only that, it's a total loss of privacy .. .but people like you don't care about that either or even see that as a good thing: A total surveillance state is a good thing, right?

"Think about kids" *never* think about the kids, there's always something more sinister buried in the idea. Usually fascism.

[david 12]

Re: They did work, though

Prohibition was always politically contentious in the USA. A large chunk of the population didn't even think that Beer was 'real drinking', most of the problem was with distilled spirits anyway, but 'think of the children' So eventually prohibition was repealed when enforcement started to become effective. This took several years, and the popular story is about the ineffective prohibition in the early and mid years. but the detailed historical facts has been done Prohibition in the USA was repealed when it started working.

[ChoHag]

The first line of this article is misleading. These new laws don't require kids and teenagers to register before they can use a computer, they require that everybody registers before they can use a computer so that some third party knows if they're a kid or teenager or not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Forbidden Fruit, Texas edition...

For many years, it was a 'state jail felony' to possess 6 or more obscene objects (defined as dildos, strokers, that sort of thing)...

Some local sex toy shops successfully claimed they were selling condom application instruction devices, or arty (but rubbery) sculptures instead. All references to 'sex (etc.)'' on the packaging were blacked out, and an additional sticker was applied to most of them that they were 'not intended for insertion into, or stimulation of, any bodily orifice.'

It took Ted Cruz's office losing in the US Court of Appeals in the early 2000s before it was finally legal for adults to own 6 or more sex toys in Texas.

This being Texas, and no Texas politician being willing to sponsor a repeal bill, the law is still in the statute books, but can't be enforced.

[Excused Boots]

Re: Forbidden Fruit, Texas edition...

Seriously? Wow, just fucking wow!

[ecofeco]

Let's try a different perspective

I see this as restriction of free speech.

I also see the full 800lb gorilla of more data spying.

[roy12ba]

I was 12 years old when I got my first linux computer, and the way my dad protected me from the internet was by not letting me on the internet.

[Doctor Syntax]

How long did it take you to work your way round that?

[Anonymous Coward]

"How long did it take you to work your way round that?"

You had the money to pay your own internet connection, did you?

[steviebuk]

But its fine

to still be able to read the Daily Fail and its shitty showbiz page. That has boobies, but that apparently is OK.

[steviebuk]

What

are you in for?

"Murder"

"Robbery"

"Armed Robbery"

And you tim?

"Using Linux underage"

[skelly28]

Re: What

No I got banged up because I was using my smart fridge without registering it. Who knew.

[steviebuk]

Re: What

Funny enough that essentially was Kevin Mitnick's story. When he was in prison, with no actual conviction just awaiting trial, he was in with murders and rapists etc. Even they told him "Why are you even in this place." Some of the murderers in the prison he was in were in for less time if I remember right. I believe it was mention on the

Freedom Downtime

Documentary about him.

[J.G.Harston]

Is the latest release of DRDOS going to be labelled "illegal to use in California"?

These morons don't understand - no, are *INCAPABLE* of understanding - the difference between an operating system, a data access application application, and data content.

[Sparkus]

I smell the evil hands of

Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft behind all this..........

[stiine]

Re: I smell the evil hands of

Evil? No. Simple reasoning: why should we pay to implement this when we can get someone else to do it for us and provide us with a simple API? This moves all of the product liability to someone else.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

The level of stupidity being peddled by the senile cretins who are proposing these laws is truly mind boggling.

It's something this week, next week it'll be something else equally stupid and repressive. VPNs are already in the sights of some lawmakers. Cue that dumb as a rock woman in England who said that VPNs should now be banned. Then when she learns about Tor, that'll be the next "loophole" in the firing line.

It is not even remotely close to being a crime to try and protect your privacy and security online. People still bang on about how encryption is somehow evidence of wrongdoing, when it's just people taking care online. Now this OS level stuff comes along and some gullible people are saying "oh it's not that bad really". Do they seriously believe that or are they just suffering from a huge case of denial?

What's next, government permission to buy a phone or computer, where all the details are stored in a government database?

It seems that "1984" and "Minority Report" are not coming some day, but that the day has already arrived.

[the Jim bloke]

Punishing the users for the sins of the providers

It is a measure of the absurdity of our modern culture that this is even suggested.

Because it is somehow too hard to stop the social media giants from hosting this crap, yet totally reasonable to persecute the general public for looking at it...

[steviebuk]

Re: Punishing the users for the sins of the providers

Like the police, wanting DRM to be put into phones so you can't swap parts out. Because they can't be fucked to actual catch the people stealing the phones (yes I know the real reason is they are underfunded but still).

This screws over independent repair and anyone at home who wants to fix their own kit.

Doesn't help, many moons ago now on a Rogue Traders type program they did a piece on a local police station about bike theft. That they weren't doing anything about it. To prove the point they marked the bike, as the police suggest they do, then left it to get nicked. It did. About a month later I believe it was, the local market had a police stall (memory of this is rough) and there it was, the bike.

It was asked why hadn't the police contacted the owner, the bike was marked, so why was it in their "People haven't claimed their stuff" sale. The police blamed the stolen goods department, claiming it was run by civilians who, it appears, clearly hadn't been bothering to do any marking checks.

[DrewPH]

1984

"What made George Orwell so optimistic about the future in '1984'?"

https://speld.nl/2026/03/12/wat-maakte-george-orwell-in-1984-zo-optimistisch-over-de-toekomst/ (in Dutch but I'm sure that won't be a barrier to this readership)

Satire? Perhaps.

[Eric 9001]

Wow that's a wrong title

But it's not possible for Linux to do that, as Linux is so useless it can't even ask the user the password for an encrypted disk during boot, or even work out how to mount many unencrypted partition layouts - it needs an initramfs of GNU or BusyBox (if BusyBox, it's typically BusyBox+GNU bash+crypsetup) for the script that asks for the password and unlocks the partition.

Linux doesn't even qualify for "open source" either - considering it contains proprietary software (sure it uses an "open source development model", but it's very confusing that is applied to software that doesn't meet the 10 requirements).

[JulieM]

Re: Wow that's a wrong title

Keep going, you've almost worked out what a bootloader is doing.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Wow that's a wrong title

That's the GNU GRUB OS for me - and yes it can in fact ask for the password and unlock and mount the drive just fine - too bad there's no decent way to pass the open partition to Linux - you can either dump the raw encryption keys to the command line (then available to every user with `cat /proc/cmdline`), or use a GNU initramfs to mount the drive again (which is dirty, but at least the initramfs is encrypted, so you can put a keyfile in it, so you don't need to enter the LUKS password again).

The GNU GRUB OS will never implement age restrictions.

[JulieM]

Re: Wow that's a wrong title

GRUB is not an operating system.

[the Jim bloke]

Re: Wow that's a wrong title

..GINAOS ???

[Eric 9001]

Re: Wow that's a wrong title

Works fine as an OS on my machines.

It runs standalone and includes a shell and a kernel.

Let me guess, GRUB isn't an OS, but somehow Linux is an OS, despite how it's only a kernel and lacks even a shell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the Kids

In prior comments, I've mentioned OS-level age-verification as slightly preferable to platform-based age-checks, but I must clarify in case someone thinks me a hypocrite (even as an A/C).

As I'm pretty sure I mentioned at the time, OS-level verification needs to be applied only to kids and minors, probably achieved through endpoint control of kids/minors devices only. School or library computers might do so through user accounts. A shared family computer might do the same. Even a single-user device also has a user account, but there could be other methods. The enforcer, and age-verifier, is the school, library or parent - no online age-check or record keeping required, and indeed, that's exactly what we're trying to avoid.

What's needed is the tools to make this kind of setup easy for schools, libraries and parents ... it's really not that hard, if you consider creating an account type of 'Under-18' with heavily restricted privileges, including no application downloads except from an approved whitelist. Without endpoint control, kids will always find workarounds but enforcing this kind of endpoint control on *every* user account or on sole-adult devices is the main problem. I don't see why the API couldn't simply be active only for designated 'Under-18' accounts/devices. It could trigger on-device filtering, block VPNs and/or route traffic to an ISP-based proxy filter (a thousand percent better than a handful of platforms self-regulating while the rest go untreated), but the key is to only affect the underage traffic and leave the adults alone. Some manufacturers are already marketing devices where the selection of a 'child safe' mode is featured.

There are still problems, though. It'd probably block kids from participating in coding projects ... maybe unless their accessible coding tools are all cloud-hosted (and monitored) ... and there'll no doubt be other trade-offs. I'd much prefer parents do their parenting.

I get tired of the tech-illiterate activists and politicians who keep telling me it's OK because "it's like checking IDs at an off-license/bottleshop" ... but they don't keep records, they don't care about your actual ID and there's no third-party misuse risk. They are, in effect, using an anonymised token only in edge cases (if you *look* under-18), and only a tiny subset of IRL activity requires an age-check at all with bugger-all threat of mission creep. It's just not possible to do online age-checks with the same minimised impact. The politicians' version is the equivalent of age-checking (and recording) *everyone* on entering a shopping mall because there's a bottleshop somewhere inside.

You CAN keep kids safe, indeed safer than current govt proposals or laws, without affecting adults. We, who've mucked around with this stuff for most of our lives, know how. Ask us! ... or maybe we'll grab our pitchforks and march on Parliament.

(And the GitHub thing ... while my comments usually take govt's stated intentions at face value, that keeps cropping up in my mind as an indicator that they really might be up to something else ... like incrementally introducing full-time tracking of everyone, everywhere online.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Only the Kids

A store checking age when buying wine and whisky is different because after some time people look old and the age check goes away because the store keeper can tell a person is sufficiently old. On the Internet, older age brackets also result in greater access, but there is no obvious way to tell how old someone is just by looking at their physical appearance. As a result adults will need an Internet age check no matter how many wrinkles and how much grey hair.

Said another way, the default age bracket has to be under 13 in case a child reinstalls the operating system, makes a new account or buys a phone. Then older age brackets (especially adult) must be indicated by a cryptographically signed certificate issued by an age bracket authority that ties each user to a particular device by serial number.

Luckily (and by miraculous coincidence) all computers have serial numbers these days, so the government-required API should be easy to implement.

[bazza]

Important Edge Cases Forgotten (as usual)

There's an awful lot of operating system installations that are not on the Internet. If a jurisdiction passes a law requiring that all OSes check in with some sort of central age verification service, what are non-Internet installations going to do?

This kind of law risks accidentally making it illegal to not wire up a computer to the Internet. That would be a bad thing.

The kind of folk who don't wire up computers to the Internet does include some quite important use cases: secure government networks, embedded OSes (e.g. in lab or medical equipment), military systems, rural users who have no connection option in the first place and don't like Elon Musk, etc. It'd be kinda ridiculous if a nation's army woke up one morning to an OS update that then demanded to know who you are and what your age is and to please keep your tank connected to the Internet so that it can check.

Sensible law makers would realise this and come up with some sort of means for exceptions. But I can't see how such exceptions could be achieved without becoming very, very messy.

[skelly28]

Re: Important Edge Cases Forgotten (as usual)

Yes exactly, this stupid set of laws makes it impossible for us to use compliant operating systems in critical national infrastructure that has and never will have internet connectivity for very good reasons.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

This is already a solved problem

1. Users set up an identity that can be used with ZK proofs (eg, a directed graph with a Hamiltonian cycle only known to the user)

2. Users authenticate this identity with a government agency (along with documentary proof of identity), which provides a "known to us" certificate

3. User requests some sort of permission/certificate linked to the presented (and authenticated) identity

4. Government (or their proxies) issues a certificate saying something like "if this user can produce an authentic "known to us" cert, they're over 18"

5. At point of use, the person anonymously (and with ZK) proves that they have the given permission to the service provider

No need for third party databases. Just PKI (like how browser certs are managed) and ZK proof mechanisms.

Or even go with something like fucking Kerberos. The technology we're talking about is ancient.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This is already a solved problem

To prevent the exchange of cryptographically signed adult age-bracket certificates with zero knowledge proofs traded over the Internet by children, the certificates could be tied to each device by serial number.

In my experience a joke stops being funny when people take it seriously.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This is already a solved problem

Acting the fool is nothing to be proud of.

[skelly28]

How about NO. Don't implement it. Also Intel Manage Engine is running an OS, an Intel version of Minix, that's an OS, so now every single PC with ME on it needs to be updated and I wonder how Intel will do age verification on that, my 'Smart TV' (not internet connected obvs) is running a bastardised Linux, the OS mentioned in this piece, so will they be updating those to do age checks? My NAS is running... oh my god it's endless. Cars, fridges, smart anything, switches, physical access control systems, CCTV cameras and on we go. So, how about NO. The usual answer to "Please jump off a cliff" is "no thank you".

[BillGatesOfHell]

What verification?

1:VPN Poland

2: Enjoy

[Uplink]

Separation of concerns

I would argue that any age verification system is the responsibility of the pre-boot environment (BIOS, UEFI), rather than of the OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Separation of concerns

To be acceptable (and that's still dubious), the age-verification mechanism, if hosted on a device or computer, must be implemented at a level that restricts only designated child user accounts, that is, in the OS. Other (adult) users must not be affected. This is fundamental to gaining acceptance amongst the user community instead if initiating a life-long dirty battle between bone-headed legislators and dumb activitists on the one hand and tech-literate users, developers and administrators on the other.

Given the long history of restricting privileges and resource access through account and sign-on mechanisms, age-restricting only a child's account, and leaving others alone, shouldn't be too difficult. But there are challenges:

(1) Indicating the age bracket in a zero-knowledge way outside of the device/computer;

(2) Not permitting the child to administrate or jailbreak the device/computer; and,

(3) Providing a very simple tool to the system administrator - who may be a parent or guardian - so they can implement the child account restriction.

I don't think any of these challenges is insurmountable. Much of what's needed already exists in one form or another.

Implemenation at any level lower than the OS has far too wide an impact - it's a recipe for mass-surveillance and security backdoors - and surveillance is already a high risk even at the OS level. Implementation at website or platform level (i.e. outside the OS, whether at sign-in or when accessing a resource) has major privacy drawbacks (though it's possible that some kind of zero-knowledge token system might come along in future).

I can't see any way this can be implemented while preserving privacy without allowing for parental consent (control) to be a core inclusion of the scheme. Even the platform-based age-verification schemes (face scans, etc) are easily bypassed without parental enforcement. To do it right means the [proposed] laws should NOT be enacted as is. The law, if any, should require the OS to offer the age-restriction tool (for child accounts) as an *option* (at the very least, opt-out though I prefer opt-in), require easy management (to suit a parent) and require adult privacy (zero knowledge) be preserved. Then let industry figure out how to do it in a zero-knowledge way (as some companies say they can, and some are actively working towards).

[Fluffy Cactus]

Re: Separation of concerns

Deciedly unsmart. You seem to love every Big Brother Surveillance concept.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Separation of concerns

No, I really don't. If you knew me at all you wouldn't ever say that.

I merely live in reality.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: Separation of concerns

So if Dad boots up the computer, and later logs off and wee Jimmy logs on, wee Jimmy has Dad's pre-boot authetication details.

[Antifa - Ost]

There was a pretty well designed age verification system in Leisure Suit Larry imho

[Boris the Cockroach]

I see a market

opening here.

Over the course of many years of fiddling about with various flavour of linux, (mostly Fedora, Mint, and CentOS) I've burned a fair few DVDs with whatever linux I was playing with, DVDs I can boot from and have have everything on them ready to go, AND.... they dont have age checks on them.

$10 per disc + shipping...... (just to cover my costs of course)

[david 12]

Australia "complete ban on social networks for young people"

No, Australia has partial ban on social networks for young people.

Young people may not post. They may read, listen and watch.

That's not a "complete" ban, My boy (who only consumes social media) found the whole thing confusing.

Q:"I thought they were going to block Tik-Tok??" A:"No, that's just lazy reporting"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Australia "complete ban on social networks for young people"

> "Young people may not post. They may read, listen and watch."

That's not right. They're forbidden from having user accounts (at all). Much content is restricted without logging-in - that's the point - so only limited, and fairly innocuous, content is available (to read, listen, watch). The major exception is Youtube, where the majority of content is still available (to listen, watch) when logged-out but that still restricts 'adult' content.

[jonfr400]

Origins of age verification laws everywhere

Some people did two separate traces of who is making those age verification laws everywhere. Meta seems to play a very large part in this push of getting this into laws.

Here are the related links. They have been removed from reddit and other social media. I do believe this information is accurate. I am sure that is there's more into this than appears in this research.

https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings

https://web.archive.org/web/20260313090844/https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billion_in_nonprofit_grants_and_45/

[Fluffy Cactus]

Re: Origins of age verification laws everywhere

Well anything a big software company introduces sucks from beginning to end. Meta, huh?

So, good bye Facebook! Good by, WhatsApp! Goodbye to whatever crap Meta produces!

If they hate their customers, the customers will leave.

[Michael Hoffmann]

Sytraya...

At time of writing, we are about a week or so into the new "age verification" laws for porn sites in Australia.

Within days, every media outlet was reporting on the insane jump of VPN subs down under.

Waiting for the next round of "VPN age verification" ending in "use of computer verification with permanently actrivated webcam, comrade!"

Orwell was wrong: it's not the boot in the face forever, it's the mouth-breathing moron of a politician drooling their nonsense on your forever and ever. Voted in by people who watch reality TV shows. How about voter verification laws? Do you watch MAFS? You're banned from voting!

Uhm, sorry got a bit sidetracked there...

[Antron Argaiv]

The OS is not at fault here.

It's the content, and that's only avaialble with a network connection. So...age verification should not be done in the OS, but at the time of connection to the ISP...which, of course, would impact revenue, so we can't have that.

[TReko]

This has nothing to do with the kids

The reason they want "age verification" is to know your identity. Who you are.

Protecting the kids is just a convenient excuse.

[FuzzyTheBear]

Distraction

For Americans , it's all about distracting them from the Epstein files. On top of a very bad idea. Educate the kids and teach them to be responsible adults and behave like one ans leave Linux alone. Better yet , let the OS distributions decide , i am all for forbidding at the licence level the OS being installed in those nanny states, Grow up and educate the kids first,.

[martinusher]

The obvious question(s)

What's an operating system? From a legal perspective just saying "I knows it when I sees it" isn't going to fly.

(Come to think of it, what's a 'user'?)

It was said many years ago now that we (that's the government) missed the boat big time with computers by allowing to be distributed without requiring systems and their users to be licensed.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: The obvious question(s)

The USSR tried that, starting with typewriters, going on to photocopies, and even cameras. Didn't work.

Amazing that California sees the USSR to aspire to.

[captain veg]

I don't know why

When I was a nipper living in mid-Kent it was always in the bushes or brambles near the main road that you found some kind of porn magazine. I never knew why. We -- me and my equally juvenile mates -- found them gigglingly amusing.

Are we now to see equally baffling laptops apparently abandoned in the roadside foliage?

-A.

[Mr R. Ebel]

Why is this a discussion?

NO.

No discussion. No excuses, no sob stories, no masquerading authoritarians taking every single thing and destroying it by sly attempts to say "Think of the children!".

Renegement of authority whether personal or on behalf of others they are legally obliged to protect say: "the parents" or those in "loco parentis" used to mean something, now, along with decency and integrity, politeness and the social contract, it has been destroyed.

Parenting via iPad is abhorrent. Do better.

This is a crude and unsubtle attempt to yet again muscle in to the lives of people, who for some unknown reason want to trust global corporations with "safety" when time and time again it has been proven that they are incapable, insufferable and downright criminal in what they do. Still its "easy and convenient" right?

Those who trade their own safety and security for convenience deserve neither security nor safety.

I'm absolutely SURE that those databases are unhackable, right? No cloud storage system or credentials database EVER gets hacked? No doubt there will be post after post citing lovely marvellous shiny reasons why it will be different this time ....and... and... and... it won't.

I know, i just "don't understand". Keep telling yourself that.

If "they" could just destroy FOSS and the pesky Open Source people, life would be fine and dandy for them. This is an attempt to do just that.

The most secure code is that which is open to reveiw, by many eyes. More eyes are needed, more vigilance against "them" is required.

When your ISP can only be accessed by retinal scan and fingerprints "for safety" perhaps you will realise that this is a control system, by then it will be too late. Just keep repeating the mantra "Think of the children!" whilst renaging personal responsibility for your entire life and any whose lives you are responsible for.

"The world is a dangerous place" - really? who made it that way?

Mortgage your freedom if you want, if you can't see it... discuss away.

Let it happen and it's over.

NO.

[Paradoxide]

Age verification brought to you by Microsoft

Are we going to have to use VPNs to download our preferred operating system without big brother looking over our shoulders? Will VPNs soon become illegal too?

It's a bit comical how easy it is to defeat these efforts. Any teenager with sufficient motivation is much more agile, literally and figuratively, than the average legislator.

The thing is these efforts don't come from the vacuum. Someone sponsors and funds these efforts, deceiving these gullible people into the belief that this can be an effective approach to limiting exposure to "harmful information".

[Fluffy Cactus]

Re: Age verification brought to you by Microsoft

Hilarious, about "will VPN's become illegal too".

Why, because I tried to sign in to my old MSFT email address (yes, I am ashamed I still have that), and I did that from a relatively small country in Europe. I had no VPN at the time.

So, MSFT forbid me from signing in to my own email, apparently because they thought I was not who I really was.

I called MSFT, told them the problem, and the MSFT guy on the phone said: Get a VPN, and pretend to be in the USA, and the problem will go away!.

Accordingly, I got that VPN, installed it, ran it, and the problem went away.

I concluded that MSFT's security system was designed by absolutely (redacted) software "experts".

[streaky]

Sigh.

This whole idea is so cringe I can't even tell if it's a joke.

To be clear, they want to destroy general purpose computing.

Wait until they find out about all the open AI models that you can run yourself without going through Google, ChatGPT et..

[Jamesit]

If distros add a restriction on who may install, then they are no longer free software. To be free software requires no restriction on use and distribution.

[Pantagoon]

They want to keep kids nice and innocent so their billionaire paedo buddies can have more fun with them.

[APro]

Foot meet bullet.

So now "el governmente" wants to stop children accessing a computer's naughty bits, because they could then seek out naughty bits on that there Internet thingy?

Well, I've got news for that lot of power mongering media whores that call themselves politicians - not all, in fact, the vast majority of children below 16 aren't interested in the opposite sex. Most of them only know of the "subject" due to it being forced into there heads at school, or due to them being bored and searching for "it" online because they're too scared to go outside and have a real childhood due to the constant "possibility of attack" etc, and the fact that there are precious few safe zones (e.g. youth community centres) left due to local government cut backs (despite their wages still increasing above base rate).

This scenario of blocking root and high priority access also inhibits children from learning about computers. Coding their own device driver for some circuit they've built, or even just tinkering with smart home devices are blocked. We don't have computers like in the 80s which were single user and did not require being network connected (looking at you Windows), and everything was documented and could be modified without the potential for being sued. Children will cease to be interested in the computer as an entity, and the future's SysAdmins and OS developers will disappear.

It happened in the past (1985) where glues were banned to under 18's due to the abuse by the few. The model building "industry" for want of a better term collapsed (most of the customers were children) and many a store that I frequented to get glue, paint and the model kits themselves disappeared almost overnight. The glue abusers moved on to worse substances - butane and aerosol propellant - and the death rates increased from around 15% to 60%+. The fallout of this collapse appeared when film industries and architects found it difficult in the 90s and onwards to find model builders for films, or to create an exhibit for future building projects. Those still around are aging out now as the backlash against CGI (which ironically replaced model building in the 2000s) starts to hit.

For me, at the time of the '85 ban I was actually trying out ways of remote controlling models with simple Z80 based computers at the time, but when I found I couldn't buy the model supplies without my parents being there (who were working all hours) I felt victimised due to the stupidity of a few. I obviously stayed with the computer side of things, but I had friends who only had the interest in plastic models and felt sad for them.

[AlgernonFlowers4]

Tit for Tat

Why not tatoo the date of birth on everybody's bottom as a QR code?

Porn sites would then be incentivised to verify age because when they scan the code they also gain extra content for their site at no cost to themselves.

And this concept could easily sold to the general public as you show me yours and I'll show you mine.

[Anonymous Coward]

This should be understood as a free‑speech matter rather than a software matter. Licensing considerations do not alter that distinction. Any exemptions Linux seeks under the Open Software framework will not insulate it from regulation, because regulation is the one thing politicians reliably know how to do. Once the E.U. began directing software developers on how their products ought to be constructed (despite not being developers themselves) it opened the door for broader regulatory intervention in software development by other countries as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Multiple settings?

Apologies if someone has already asked this, but what happens if someone makes it too compicated for government by having more than one use per computer? Parent needs VPN access to connect to work, child wants access to school work, child friendly games without preditory adults etc? Many parents are just gonna say sod it and lie.

[morfiend]

going to be interesting when politicians learn that IOT devices also use linux.

who's ready to be age checked to get a beer out of your own fridge?

or to turn on a smart light after midnight.. etc and smh.

[Mark 65]

We’re in the era of internet ducking stools

[midgepad]

my camera has an OS

As do many other gadgets.

[nijam]

> Prohibition failed in the United States.

No it didn't; it gave a huge start-up boost to what we now know as "organised crime".

And of course one of the great lessons was that banning something that people want simply means bigger profit margins for the suppliers.

[drankinatty]

The foreseeable result of the tech-incompetent promulgating tech-policy

It makes as much sense as a washed-up Fox news weekend host running the American military -- what could possibly go wrong? This is another classic example of one OS is not like the other (hummed to catchy Sesame Street jingle), and how "one size fits al"l tech regulation -- doesn't. The crux of the matter is Linux, as an OS, does not provide access to content that the misguided lawmakers are attempting to ensure age-checks regulate. Period.

The genius lawmakers have once again aimed their policy gun at the wrong target. Age verification is only plausibly needed for those applications that access media or content. With Linux, the OS simply provides user and system-level I/O that separate applications and their dependent libraries can make use of however they like.

The case is quite difference for Windows that does arguably provide access to content through it's tightly coupled and highly integrated Edge (chrome) browser that has its tendrils spread across every aspect of the OS. The same simply isn't factual when applied to Linux. Even less so than with ISPs/social media claiming they are simply on-ramps to the internet or platforms and have no control over content...

The fundamental difference between OS makes the proposed laws laughable if they didn't run the risk of causing no end of headache and debate. You have already seen the Archlinux general mailing list put under "Emergency Moderation" as a result of the issue (the knee-jerk use of which has become an increasing problem with that distribution).

So what to do? If you are unfortunately stuck in the US in the present climate, you pick up the phone and call your representative and let them know why this approach simply doesn't work with open-source software and why the differences in what OS's do make a "one size fits all" approach unworkable and damaging.

Those providing the prurient content or platforms are the proper targets to implement age-verification. (the brewery isn't responsible for checking IDs...)

[egbegb]

EU "requires" Age Verification in Linux???

Linux is open source.

I can remove whatever the EU mandates from open source Linux.

I can compile and run my-own Linux.

I can also sell my-own Linux.

You can buy my-own Linux

I can also just give away my-own Linux

I can give away the instructions for compiling and running my-own Linux

Using AI, you can automate fetching, compiling, and booting

my-own Linux on your computer.

Help me understand how forcing code into an open source

operating system solves any problem whatsoever?

Sure, EU, require it. We'll put it in Linux and instruct any and

all how to remove it.

This is only rocket science to politicians.

[Fluffy Cactus]

Re: EU "requires" Age Verification in Linux???

I wish you could do ONE OTHER THING:

EXPLAIN LINUX TO OTHERS WHO WANT TO GET AWAY FROM APPLE AND MSFT!

That is what is missing in the market, and it is also the reason why so few people can work with LINUX.

Where are the books and explanations for LINUX?

Speaking of explanations: Has anyone like me ever tried to understand explanations from software nerds on Youtube?

Don't they all mumble about stuff, and then, with extreme speed, type something into a computer, without showing it

to anyone, and then call that an "explanation". Sorry, no, that's just like some underhanded three card monte, which

leaves everyone without anything that could be repeated.

So, LINUX guy: Explain this, and figure out how to write a book for LINUX newbies. We'd be happy to give it a try.

But remember: What you think "everyone knows" is exactly "not what the beginner knows".

That's the difference between nerd and teacher.

Thanks!

[DartfordMan]

While I agree with the sentiments, I'm not sure I can agree that Australia should be accurately named 'Western'; but then of course there is no such thing a a West Pole or East Pole, so I suppose it all depends on where you are standing at the time.

[Fluffy Cactus]

I am older!

I want to be grandfathered in!

And I ABSOLUTELY do not want to be bothered by software companies or any redacted government members with zero understanding of anything!

So, I am asking all the countries of the world, and the empires of Apple, Google, MSFT, Linux, Samsung, Meta, Alphabet, Adobe, Oracle, Palantir, etc the following question:

Can we assume that anyone who starts an email address might need to be at least 4 years old? Hear me out before you laugh! OK?

Let's say we can agree that 4 years old is a good assumption for that, OK? Please?

Alright, now that we are over that tough hurdle, may be we can agree on JUST ONE ADDITIONAL ITEM:

IF, and I said IF, I started my email address 15 years ago, say Jan 27, 2011 and we add 4 years to that,

could we agree that I am at least 19 years old NOW, TODAY? Can we agree on that? Or is that math

problem too hard for both scared to death parents, software dudes, weirdos, and creepy politicians?

OK, if I were a lawyer, and this were a court, I WOULD NOW SCREAM: ANSWER THE QUESTION !!! But I won't do that.

And since such (redacted) people cannot or do not want to answer questions, they need my help with that!

I am exceedingly glad to help!

HERE IS THE ANSWER: IF the creation date of my email address is at least 15 years ago or older, THEN I NEVER EVER WANT TO

BE BOTHERED ABOUT MY AGE, EVER AGAIN! From anyone, not from software *redactiots" , not from *redactitarded" politicians, not from anyone!

Can you (redacting) hear me, MSFT, Apple, Google, Craple, Linuxel, Clomper ???

I also do not want to give me my phone-number, because you (redacted) software (redact-heads) sell my info to crooks, scammers, spammers

and related people I NEVER WANT TO GET CALLS FROM! DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?

I am trying to say this as nicely as I can! I am way, way, way freaking older than 19 years of age.

And I admit: Every day I pray that (redacted) software people, their (redacted) lawyers and the utterly (redacted) politicians be struck down by Zeus with a divine lightning bolt.

I WOULD ENJOY THEIR DEMISE! If I could dance, I'd dance in the streets. I promise, I could muster the strength for several sarcastic claps!

Because people who are that (redacted) should not be in charge of anything. No, not even babysitting my dead hamster, who died of natural causes, and is buried.

It's only because I wanted to make the world a better place.

Can you see how hard it is to improve anything on this planet?

[Martin In Oz]

Meta is to blame

Meta has funnelled $2 billion through not-for-profit shells to push phone age verification laws: https://www.gadgetreview.com/reddit-user-uncovers-who-is-behind-metas-2b-lobbying-for-invasive-age-verification-tech