Apparently this will include Linux…
Good luck with that
Gavin Newsom is such a fucking tool.
People wonder why the Dems are unpopular. 2 of my Dems here in Colorado are pulling the same OS age gate shit right now. What I want to know is: “who fucking asked for this?”. Everyone seems to be doing it at the same time, but many people don’t want it. Smells fishy. Let’s not elect these assclowns to anything ever again. Why are you doing authoritarian shit when we elected you to advocate on our behalf.
In my book, a take that extremely authoritarian and unconstitutional should end your political career instantly. You can watch it all on your TV at home like every other clueless boomer (shout out to the boomers who are with it, actually understand, and care). How can we send people to represent us who will openly sell out our and our children’s futures for a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions?
Tbf every single politician is.
Every politician should be… At least here in America. They are supposed to be our representatives, regardless of how they feel.
They are not. Not the grand majority of them, anyway.
Holy fuck. The stupidity. It burns. It buuuuuurns
Doesn’t even make sense. Virtually all Linux distros can function completely offline. How do you do age verification completely offline? Classic politician who doesn’t understand tech trying to look like they’re doing something to save the kids.
The only platforms for now where this might work are Windows, macOS, iOS, and stock Android, however as Muta hypothesized, if this extends to hardware-level, a law could just mandate SecureBoot and lock out the ability to implement custom keys, and then only allow a short list of state-approved OSes to boot on the hardware, which no doubt Windows would be on that short list.
Similarly, all non-Apple mobile devices as an extension to that could be locked exclusively to stock Android, eliminating custom ROMs like LineageOS or GrapheneOS as an option entirely, let alone mobile Linux distros.
Me, buying cellphone parts from another state to assemble myself like an 80% lower to avoid having to drink a Verification Can every time somebody calls me:
I think I just invented the concept of a “ghost phone”
Me, using 8 bit adders to make my own CPU because everything else is now locked down to all hell
That seems as reasonable as suggesting they could pass a law requiring everyone to hire a govt licensed computer user in order to interact with their devices, and otherwise touching a keyboard or touchscreen would be illegal.
It doesn’t feel like a realistic estimation of what they would actually try to do. There’s too much that is currently dependent on Linux, you’d do better to just dismantle and ban the internet.
"(1) Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.
Sounds like it’s a text box that enter input into. Making it completely pointless.
According to Gabe Newell, something like 90% of steam users were both on 1/1/99 (might be fudging the numbers somewhat but presumably you get the idea).
They will make it a crime to not have any OS that is not compliant, that simple.
How will this affect enterprise systems with remote installs or ramdisks?
And are they going to require ID to verify birth dates, or is this just going to be a drop down menu? If the latter, I’m pretty sure everyone’s birth date is 1/1/1901. I’m so tired of this surveillance shit masquerading as “save the children” nonsense. I hate to say it, but this is a parenting problem and if your kids are more tech-savvy than you are, they WILL find a way around these safegaurds.
I’m pretty sure everyone’s birth date is 1/1/1970
FTFY
All this age verification crap. Where is the fucking parents? I get that big tech has some responsability in all this. But how about we just make the responsible choice, of not letting a 8 year old near tiktok forinstance? Oh, it is just another excuse for private survailance you say? I see, I see…
Just want to clarify that nowhere in the actual law does it require verifying the age of the user. It does not require IDs or face scans.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043
Please read it. It is a very short law <15 minute read tbh.
The law does exactly what you ask for. Parents setup the device and put their child’s age. If they lie or circumvent the system then the parents get fined if their child is affected by content on the internet.
for now
“Won’t anyone think of the cHiLdReN?!”
Everyone needs to realize that all the age verification stuff is just a step towards the purpose, which is having any and all computer operation tied to the person — i.e. as Cory Doctorow has put it, the war on general computation.
I’m a parent and legit think that majority of parents should not have been parents and have no minimum required skill to raise a human being. It’s sad because it’s really not that hard but most people don’t think a day ahead when raising their kids and just follow a “vibe”, so spending a weekend on parental controls is an insurmountable task.
I’m not a parent and wish there was some kind of minimum requirement.
I AM a parent. And I will take the fight. Even though all other parrents will call me the “tin foil hat” rather that, than letting my child become a predators next meal online… These parrents has no idea what social media is all about. It’s a fucking addiction. The children can’t see this, this is why it’s our job to protect them.
As usual, the solution is education. Parental education needs to be prioritized imo. That said, I have no idea how we would implement such a thing. Most likely better general education would help at least.
“Lets fight ICE” also “you need an id to use your laptop and be verifed by big tech to use it” Worse then clowns. Fucking traitors
what are they they gonna do against it?
Fucking stupid. What now, everyone adds a script to enter 04/01/1984 for every continuous integration pipeline? Every kubernetes cluster has to include an age automation? Idiot politicians should not draft policies about shit they have no clue about.
Politician: The lowest form of life on earth (lower than slime mold… sorry for insulting slime mold).
They produce nothing of value, never have and never will, true sociopaths, total liars, elitest narsacistc parasites and oxygen wasters and generally evil…
I wish one could implement “mental-age verification”. That way almost all politicians on Earth would be blocked from important technologies.
Put the square peg in the square hole.
Please explain to a complete doofus how can someone enforce this?
Cant they just download any linux distro from millions of different places and install them on any machine, even offline?
Bios are becoming more and more locked down, that’ll be the next thing, at the tech lobbyists behest.
soon we will need bootloader unlock exploits (or the blessing of our overlords) to install anything other than (unrooted) stock os, not unlike android and chromebooks.
we desperately need to break free from US tech.
The law only penalizes instances that affect children. So by circumventing this law does not mean you would be charged with any fines. But if you circumvent it and your child uses the device then you would be liable no more than 7500$ (since in this case it would be an intentional violation).
I am not a lawyer. This is just what I understand the law to penalize.
OS providers and developers are also not liable if you set an incorrect age for your child intentionally or by mistake, only you would be.
But if they flaunt this law (do not try to comply with best effort) then they would be liable for each affected child.
Edit: sorry this didn’t exactly answer your question. How they enforce it would be that it is tacked onto other charges from what I understand.
Edit 2: oh and children can’t be charged, only adults (18+).
Gotta love it when people who have no understanding of how Linux works writes laws about how Linux should work…
It goes way beyond Linux. Think any device that could download something at some point. Gas station pump, calculator, FreeDos, VxWorks, etc.
There is a lot of language like “or can download an application”, so if you can download something, then that thing could be an application, and thus that device and it’s OS is covered.
I have never internally facepalmed harder in my life
And every point of sale system everywhere
The law only specifies “computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device.”
Which is extremely vague. It appears that the intention was to just affect end user devices. Not specific purpose systems.
must be between the ages of 13 and 65 let’s go ahead and set it to retirement age
I have genuinely no idea how that could work.
I believe I get the genuine intent (protecting children) but I have so far never encountered any device or software or both that didn’t relatively easily bypass user authentication.
The closest I’ve tried are (expensive) XR headsets like the Apple Vision Pro or the Microsoft HoloLens both thanks to eye tracking. Basically for these you have to validate you are who you claim to be when you put the headset on. If you remove it, put it back (or on someone else head) you have to do it again. Nobody else (unless you explicitly share) can then see what you are looking it.
Every other devices I’ve seen, including mobile phones with banking apps, typically ask you to authenticate then assume than you are the one who keeps using the device. Meanwhile anybody else can grab the device from your hand and be “you”. Typically specific action (e.g. password change) do require to authenticate again but “normal” usage does not.
I have genuinely no idea how that could work
It couldn’t. It’s political showboating.
