Discussion

AgelessLinux

akersten: Now this is what open source development should look like. I cannot believe a few days ago I was thumbing through an email thread on freedesktop.org about how they could implement the mandatory government API in dbus. Can they not read their own domain name?

kykat: The API seems like a funny joke anyway, `sudo setage 12987123`, done.

reliablereason: > "Operating system provider" means a person or entity that develops, licenses, or controls the operating system software on a computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device.It is weird when it comes to open source as the software is usually given out with a no liability licens.I guess the law comes before a contract.

technol0gic: maybe its being done by the people lobbying for the OS-based ID malarkey, so they can have something to point at and jump up and down

bigyabai: I feel like I need to read the prompt to understand what this website wants me to download here. What is it installing? What is it promoting?

kykat: I think it just wants to invite a lawsuit

nerdsniper: I adore their courage. I assume they feel prepared to mount a legal defense? It would seem silly to be this forward about willful noncompliance if they're just hoping to stay under the radar. I can't tell if this is driven by impulsive pettiness with no real plan for how to mount a legal defense, or if they're engaging in a clear-minded legal mission.> Ageless Linux is a registered operating system under the definitions established by the California Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043, Chapter 675, Statutes of 2025). We are in full, knowing, and intentional noncompliance with the age verification requirements of Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.501(a).

wewewedxfgdf: Age checks are 1 million times worse than cookie verifications.

terribleperson: I honestly think the pushback against the California law is a mistake. We are being presented with an increasing number of services demanding identity verification, in the form of ID verification and/or video verification. California is offering an alternative to that, an alternative that only requires you provide your age, without verifying it.If the California law flops, the result isn't going to be no age verification. It's going to be increasing numbers of internet services requiring that you verify their identity with them through some shady third-party you have no control over, until you effectively can't use the internet without giving away your ID.I'd prefer to have no age verification, but it's pretty clear that's not an option. People in power are using minors accessing porn and social media as a cover to push age verification, and it's believable enough that people are going along with it. Approaches where someone attests their age on an OS or account level are our best shot at disarming this push.

kykat: I like the idea, and hope that they are ready to challenge the law. However, the text in this website has a very distinct Claude feel to it.

nextos: Something remarkable and unsettling is how the age verification debate has popped up almost simultaneously in the US, UK, and EU.With the same logical fallacies. Pretty telling about how transnational lobbies and their interests work.Controlling what children do online is a solved problem. Parenting and parental control applications.

gfygfy: Then we don't use those services and then they die. The world isn't Instagram. There have been decentralized channels for literally decades.

pocksuppet: It's designed for parents to enact parental controls on their children. If you're root, you're the parent. Obviously root can turn off parental controls.

simmerup: Except it isn’t a solved problem because kids are getting groomed en masse

pocksuppet: Why should that be our problem when we can just tell parents to parent?

pocksuppet: Shouldn't be unsettling. Different people observed the same problem at the same time. When one of them proposed a solution, different people evaluated if that solution would also work for them.We're seeing second-generation proposals now. The first round of proposals was to post your ID photo to post anywhere. The second round, that came a few months later, is to just ask the parent if the child is over 18, without tracking anything.

BoredPositron: Ask Zuck about it.

softwaredoug: The problem is we’re regulating individual behavior by adding to the surveillance apparatus. We should be regulating the companies and dismantling the surveillance that makes the apps addictive to kids.It’s a way of socializing the losses, this time you lose civil liberties and they get to keep acting unrestricted

ectospheno: I’ve fallen prey to too many people at the top of slippery slopes offering “gentle pushes”. The end result is always the same. If I’m to go down one it will be kicking and screaming not silent as a lamb.

exabrial: Newsom and the corrupt oligarchs in Cali can eat a bowl of crap.

zimpenfish: I wish iOS 26.4 didn't bother because I'm stuck with an immovable "verify you're 18+" flag[0] in Settings even though it was well into the previous century when I was even near 18.[0] I have no credit card and it won't accept debit cards. It also won't use the fact that I've had an Apple account and spent 10s of thousands in my own name at their damn shops, online and real life, over the last 2 decades (and Apple/partners have done at least one credit check on me in that period!) But that's fine, there's an alternative! A driving licence (don't have one of those either) or a national ID (also don't have one of those.) Can I use my passport? NOPE. Absolute farce.

matthewfcarlson: Oh nice! I’ve been wanting to ask someone of your age, how was the Middle Miocene Climate Optimum?

neilv: 1. By involving Debian prominently in its stunt, it this drawing fire upon Debian?2. Are the pile of assertions they're making (which sound like legal arguments and stipulations to me) against Debian's interests?

phyzome: This doesn't meaningfully increase risk to the Debian project, which is already one of the most prominent Linux projects.

eek2121: So, firstly, before I dive into your comment; about the topic above, this is the result of a terrible headline gone wrong in a single state in the US. The language never required any changes to Linux, or Windows, or any other operating system, for that matter.Someone read the text, and made a clickbaity headline, and it went viral. then, another state made a similar bill, and it went viral again.Age verification isn't coming to Linux any time soon, and no, you aren't breaking any laws by either developing for, and/or using Linux if you are a U.S. citizen. It is literally illegal to pass a law like that thanks to the constitution. Outside the U.S.? well depending on the country, you likely experienced something better or worse, Regardless...It is pretty remarkable that it [age verification] has popped up in multiple countries at once. It is almost as though a certain few billionaires are interested in suppressing speech.I wonder who those folks might be? ;)The folks trying to shut down the masses via stuff like this should probably read some history, because that never works out...like ever. Doing the same thing over and over again won't make it work. It won't work this time either.

uniq7: If the solution consists on me and my children sacrificing our privacy then I'm sorry, but I don't care about other people's children getting groomed.Your child, your responsibility, prepare him better for the world or throw the god damn phone to the trash, but please leave me alone.I had more sympathy for parents with this problem before, but not anymore. If they don't respect my rights, I don't see why I should care about them.

Waterluvian: Other people’s kids aren’t your problem until they grow up and form a deeply unfit electorate and their country, representing less than 5% of the world population makes an absolute mess of everything. Then they become everyone’s problem.

lazide: So the last 40 years?

kykat: I wouldn't be so sure, I think the ultimate goal is to link your network activity to your government id, just like the way it's done in China. So the only root left is the government basically.

pocksuppet: Are we talking about what actually happened, or are we talking about doomsday fantasies?

applfanboysbgon: Jurisdictions are already lining up to slide down the slope as fast as they can. New York intends to mandate real verification and anti-circumvention measures at the OS level. There is no room for compromise: any jurisdiction attempting to compel what must be included in an OS is batshit insane and normalizing this is going to very quickly lead to JesusTracker.exe being mandated by Texas and CrocCam.exe by Florida.Contrary to your belief that if we just give them an inch they won't take the full mile, I think it is very important to get people rallied against OS modification altogether. If you take a murky position like "a little bit of age verification, as a treat", and sell people on voting for that / not protesting it, all you're doing is priming the average person for accepting age verification no matter how invasive. Average Joe isn't going to understand the nuances of when age verification may or may not be tolerable, nor is Average Joe going to understand the nuances of when compelled software inclusion may or may not be tolerable. If we want to get millions aligned in the same interest, the message needs to be extremely clear and straightforward, communicating exactly how bad of an idea it is to let each and every jurisdiction compel their own form of surveillance into your OS.

terribleperson: Average Joe thinks age verification is already palatable. Average Joe is happy to give away a photo of his ID. The alternative to OS age attestation isn't no age verification. It's almost every site, and every piece of internet-connected software, demanding your ID.Putting your age into your user account is not the same thing.

applfanboysbgon: > Average Joe is happy to give away a photo of his ID.I don't think this is actually true. Discord walked back its implementation of global age verification for now because it was protested so heavily. Governments can get away with mandating ID for porn sites and Average Joe will not make a ruckus about it because it's a shameful/embarrassing topic they would rather sweep under the rug, but I don't think Average Joe is on board with ID verification to use their computer just yet.

47282847: > I don't care about other people's children getting groomed.These other people’s children will be your own children’s bullies tomorrow and narcissistic psychopath bosses and politicians the day after.

lambda: You're going to need to provide a source for that outrageous claim.Also, which sites that are impacted by the age verification laws are involved in grooming in any way?Please be specific.

lazide: Cite?

sophrosyne42: Are you talking about Epstein, or something else? Epstein largely built his network through word of mouth.

phendrenad2: [delayed]

stirfish: I know this wasn't your point (and I agree with you here), but I heard the exact same thing, word for word, when the Catholic priest was just breaking.

landl0rd: It's obviously vibecoded; the prose is uncanny and grating in a very characteristic way. Easiest tell is how it names the "three device tiers" like a millennial burger joint started by "two crazy guys with a dream".

kykat: It's shocking how few people here seem to notice it, you would expect people using claude et al all day could feel the distinct smell of slop.

Spivak: Taking for granted that is really the purpose, how does age verification solve this problem? Adults won't have any trouble accessing online spaces meant for kids under these laws. And then why does porn get mixed up in this, it's not exactly a place where kids "hang out."

exabrial: Hell no. Burn it to the ground instead and make an embarrassment out of the illiterate politicians. Nobody voted for this. Nobody wants it.Tarring and feathering was once acceptable. Shame it's out of style.

terribleperson: No one seems to be actually doing that.

w_TF: these laws are feckless and unenforceable, maximal non-compliance will expose that the destiny you're describing only happens if you willingly accept itdo not comply do not pay the fine idiot geriatric lawmakers have no power over what you do with your computer

brightball: It’s not if you’ve paid attention to political trends for the last 15 years.Everything is happening at the same time in every country. It’s clearly being coordinated.

WJW: Well obviously? It's literally being broadcast in the news when diplomats talk to each other. What do you think they are talking about if not policy discussions?

bananaflag: Trade, wars, stuff like that. Foreign affairs, not domestic affairs.

sophrosyne42: We should not give these human rights violations the dignity of being called "solutions", especially as they are anything but.

pocksuppet: I do not understand the immense vitriol against having a parental control option in your OS. Does everyone here work for a gambling company?

pocksuppet: You have posted wrongthink.

terribleperson: Apparently, yes.

jiggawatts: Meta, a multi-national corporation, seems to be behind all of these.See:https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_b...https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1rsn1tm/it_a...

toast0: The text of the law says:> 1798.501. (a) An operating system provider shall do all of the following: > (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.[And some other stuff]. A simple reading says operating systems need to ask the age of the accout holder during account setup. It says the purpose is to provide a signal to a covered app store, but it does not exempt operating systems without a covered app store.

terribleperson: Discord's still doing it, they just delayed it and will supposedly be offering other verification options. They still amount to identity verification, and the noose will be tightened over time.

applfanboysbgon: Discord is going to try again later after waiting for the backlash to die down and seeing if they can massage the PR better, yes. The point is that Average Joe did not want it, so they have to take such measures. You asserted that Average Joe is happy to hand over his ID, but this seems clearly untrue. Even if Discord does do it later, I doubt it will go down happily.

phyzome: It took me a bit, but the choppy, repetitive sentence structure eventually became apparent.

sophrosyne42: Regulating the companies also socializes the costs of implementing age verification measures.The correct solution that does not do this is to put liability on the parents.

ZiiS: This is literally about making parental control applications work better. Nothing in the law requires a child setting up their own system to set their real age. It just lets a parent creating a limited account for a child.

phyzome: I've looked at the bill and it sure seems like it would apply to Linux. What's your case that it doesn't?

UqWBcuFx6NV4r: If I had a dollar for every time a software developer flew off the handle with some argument about “freedoms” because they thought that they were a lawyer…

skywalqer: Well, the device tiers could be an intentional joke also

pocksuppet: That's interesting that you think whether someone is over 18 is a million times worse privacy invasion than their exact location, full name, browsing history, and date of birth. Can you substantiate why that is?

mschuster91: And the groundwork was laid by very well connected think-of-the-children evangelicals, transphobes and sex-work-phobes over years. Never forget this. Meta just added nitromethane fuel to a raging fire.

alpaca128: That is a very dishonest way of framing these laws. Parental control does not need violating the privacy of every computer user.Also sharing the user's personal information does not prevent gambling or protect children, it does the opposite.

nico: And LATAM probably soon to follow, specially Argentina with Milei and now Chile with their new right wing president

sophrosyne42: Milei is a libertarian, and would be very opposed to such a thing.

Telemakhos: I don't think this is a left- or right-wing issue: Australia was one of the first to ban kids from social media, and Australia is not right-wing by any measure. Canada is hardly right-wing, but age verification is bill S-210 in their parliament.What you're seeing is a coordinated push by transnational interests; Meta's name has come up in discussions of the funding behind this push. At the very lest, verifying age also verifies that a person is real and not a bot, so advertising firms like Meta will benefit from verification. That's not right-wing or left-wing but rather the influence of business over the political, and neither wing of the spectrum is immune to corruption.

lambda: The whole point of the California/Colorado laws is to provide an alternative to that. The whole point is that it provides a privacy preserving way to provide a signal about whether someone is in a particular age bracket, without requiring any kind of third party ID verification.I am so puzzled by everyone who objects so strongly to these operating system based opt in systems; all it does is provide for a way for a parent to indicate the age of a child's account, and an API for apps and browsers to get that information. If you're the owner/admin of a system, you get to set that information however you want, and it's required that it only provides ranges and not specific birthdays in order to be privacy preserving.

alpaca128: Evidence says otherwise: https://web.archive.org/web/20260313125244/https://old.reddi...

terribleperson: I don't really want the free internet to be relegated to onion sites and a hypothetical mesh internet. As things stand, every service is going to either tightly control content or adopt age verification because the alternative is being taken down by governments.

gfygfy: Too bad, so sad. That's the entire reason onion exists. The public web is going to get increasing enshittified and you can either use Tor or get used to staying on Facebook with Grandma sharing cakes alongside 60 ads.

amarant: The climate was optimal. Everything else was kinda mid tbh.

noosphr: Is there anything that's not communists fault?Oh sorry, wrong decade.Is there anything that's not republicans fault?

rorylawless: The simpler explanation is that we live in a world that is more connected than ever so politicians, campaigners and the rest can get policy ideas almost instantly. There is no grand conspiracy, just a smaller world.

alpaca128: The former will be mandated by law, the cookie law requires a way to opt out. Why would you not prefer avoiding a privacy violation over a guaranteed one that is smaller...for now?

helterskelter: Meta is why all these laws are happening. Please reach out to media outlets with this investigation so it can get more coverage. People need to be talking about this.https://tboteproject.com/

FpUser: >"What do you think they are talking about if not policy discussions?"Whom are they fucking next Thursday on that island

delusional: Liability? You want to make give parents fines for their children accessing Facebook at a young age?

sophrosyne42: No, I am just saying what policy will allow the legislators to achieve their goals.So if your goal is for the state to decide what is good or bad for children, then yes, giving parents fines when their children access 18+ content will motivate those parents to parent their children. That will be an effective way to achieve your goal. Other policies have issues with externalities (ignoring the inherent externalities of creating liabilities ex nihilo, which will exist no matter what policy you choose).If you believe that parents should get to decide what content their children, then like me, you would oppose any kind of legislation with this goal in mind.

ekjhgkejhgk: > Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications.This is absolutely not true.Here in the UK schools are swarming with ipads and shit like that. They're given to primary school children because they're "more engaging". Children are supposed to practice their reading and even handwriting[1] on ipads. Naturally they're on youtube instead. It's really bad. As far as I can tell, private schools are even worse. Currently the only way that I know to escape this is homeschooling.Saying "it's a solved problem" is incredibly dismissed to parents who do everything right in their homes, but then send their children to school and schools exposed their children in this way.It's also ignorant and caters to the interests of the companies who push these shit onto schools. Please stop saying that, it's harmful.[1] leaving this reference here because I'm certain that people without school aged children won't believe this is actually true: https://www.letterjoin.co.uk/

bigDinosaur: All discussion of foreign affairs is the discussion of domestic affairs somewhere.

bunbun69: I can not help but think that this is performative AI slopWe get it, you’re against the government and big tech

argsnd: Separate from this policy debate I think you’ll find Australia is a country where the right frequently wins actual majorities of the vote.

awesome_dude: People discuss policies all the time, and take inspiration from jurisdictions where those policies /appear/ to be implemented and "working"The idea that there is an age requirement (for certain content) has been around for a very long time (Facebook, for example has a no under 13s rule in their T&Cs, many porn sites have a 18 years or older declaration before allowing access, and so on)Australia has recently implemented law(s) that take the next step forward, and the other countries in the world that have been wanting something similar are seeing that, seeing that there haven't blowback from corporations or voters that makes the idea of the law unpalatable, and thinking that they too can implement laws that work in similar ways.If you actually pay attention to global politics you will see that this sort of behaviour occurs fairly regularly (look, for example, and the legalisationg of homosexual marriage, there was a law legalising it in the Netherlands in 2001, then Belgium did similar in 2003... and so on as more countries saw that their own voters were amenable to the idea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_same-sex_marri...)edit: There's no grand conspiracy at playAnother example is the cannabis use laws, cannabis was heavily criminalised in the 70s, there was pressure from the USA for other countries to follow suit.BUT from the early 2010s several states of the USA legalised recreational use - this has also bought the debate back to the fore for many countries, with reassessments and changes occuring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S._j...

drivebyhooting: I wonder if we can get a popular referendum to sentence Meta to capital punishment.There would be great rejoicing.

charcircuit: Associating open source with projects that brazenly violate the law is not what open source should look like.

whattheheckheck: Milei will do trumps bidding

jacquesm: There is no way that this will happen on any Linux box that I use. And this is why I'm an enemy of device attestation and the requirement to register operating systems in the first place, no matter whether it is Apple or Microsoft.

tim333: They all copy each other. Also some of it was set off by the book, Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation.

coldtea: >I don't think this is a left- or right-wing issue: Australia was one of the first to ban kids from social media, and Australia is not right-wing by any measure. Canada is hardly right-wing, but age verification is bill S-210 in their parliament.I'd classify both as very corporate friendly, far centrist, which is just as good as "right wing". Nothing about actually empowering the masses, and even less so the working class, only elite pseudo prograssive talking points.

Nevermark: Shorter paths of communication.Smaller quorums needed for control.Fewer people with more wealth pushing through what they want across more borders.We are seeing a rapid centralization of power.

LooseMarmoset: > out of stylea bunch of viral tiktok videos could bring it back pretty easy.

themafia: No.I do not want an "API" in my OS to reveal information about me. I do not want this to operate without my consent. I do not want to be limited from accessing certain sites because I refuse to implement this.No age verification at the OS level. If Meta needs to verify ages for their _profitable_ business, that's entirely _their_ problem. Get your hands off my equipment.

dataflow: I had the same reaction as you this entire time until half an hour ago when I saw the second link in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382650Meta being behind all of these efforts makes it incredibly suspicious, especially given the New York law is ridiculously more invasive than the California one. It sure makes it seem like there's likely a larger plan here that this is merely facilitating.So I don't think I can still buy it at face value that California's version is a good-faith attempt to balance privacy and child safety, even if that's what it is in the eyes of the legislature, given who's actually behind it and what else they've been pushing for.

phyzix5761: There's 2 axes on the political spectrum. Economic and Social axes. Liberal and Conservative is one dimension (Economic) and Authoritarian and Libertarian is another dimension (Social).In the US both the Democratic Party (Liberal) and Republican Party (Conservatives) are considered Authoritarian on this 2 dimensional graph.Milei claims to be a Conservative Libertarian so, in theory, he should be opposed to this. We'll see what he actually does.

coldtea: >Milei claims to be a Conservative Libertarian so, in theory, he should be opposed to this. We'll see what he actually does.That's just for the gullible. In practice he's about power and self-serving interests, just like any "libertarian" in office.

macintux: You'd get 10-20% at best in favor. People are not even paying attention to what's happening in the White House, they're definitely not attuned to the storms brewing around social networks and their negative impacts.

coldtea: >>> Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications. >This is absolutely not true.Here in the UK schools are swarming with ipads and shit like that. They're given to primary school children because they're "more engaging". Children are supposed to practice their reading and even handwriting on ipads. Naturally they're on youtube instead. It's really bad.And how does that refute what the parent said? Those school ipads could also have YouTube locked or restricted to a whitelist of channels.

macintux: > ...giving parents fines when their children access 18+ content will motivate those parents to parent their children.And, like most such policies, will disproportionately impact the working poor.

themafia: So it seems normal that a bunch of politicians, in the current climate, got together and decided that the weakest form of age verification imaginable absolutely had to get passed everywhere?That's incomprehensible to me.

coldtea: It's part of a whole bundle of tightening censorship and increasing control in a pivot towards techno-feudalism, and militarization of society...

rkeene2: To me, the biggest issue is that it seems to think of computers as something you use while being near and having only one user at a time accessing, where computers you use might be far away and have thousands of people accessing them per day with hundreds of concurrent users and tens of thousands of accounts.If you don't intentionally allow accounts access to any app stores, do you still need to collect the data ? It says to collect it, and that's the purpose but it doesn't say if you're not permitting that purpose you don't have to collect it

macintux: > I am so puzzled by everyone who objects so strongly to these operating system based opt in systemsThe government legislating APIs is an uncomfortable precedent given the culture wars that are raging right now. There seems little reason to expect this will stop here.

ekjhgkejhgk: > Those school ipads could also have YouTube locked or restricted to a whitelist of channels.There's so much wrong here.A) there's ways around that stuff that any child can figure out.B) schools aren't in fact obligated to enable those, and some don't.C) who decides on what channels are allowed? The school does. But teachers are basically people off the street that did some basic training and (from my experience) have zero critical thinking. This are not the best and brightest.D) big tech will tell you "this is age appropriate" and the only thing that means is that you probably won't see porn. Anything else, including gambling ads on youtube, you do see.You see, you're trying to discuss the specifics which in this case is a losing approach if your goal is to protect your chidlren from being victimized by the attention economy. The reason is that those benefiting from the attention economy have more lawyers and more engineers to deploy than any individual parent.

coldtea: >A) there's ways around that stuff that any child can figure out.No, there are not for hardware locked devices with the proper controls (what apps, websites, etc to allow).>B) schools aren't in fact obligated to enable those, and some don't.The technical problem is solved, if they don't want to implement the solution that's on them.>C) who decides on what channels are allowed? The school does. But teachers are basically people off the street that did some basic training and (from my experience) have zero critical thinking. This are not the best and brightest.Again, irrelevant. A common policy can be created (e.g. by ministry of education experts) and shared with schools.

ekjhgkejhgk: > > B) schools aren't in fact obligated to enable those, and some don't.> The technical problem is solved, if they don't want to implement the solution that's on them.Just to be clear - do you not understand that a parent might be parenting, but some times their children is in care of a school? Your focus on "a technical solution exist" is missing the real issue here, and it's not a technical one.

saint_yossarian: More than one thing can be true.

pndy: Not sure when exactly that happen but decade years ago or so, people were sharing this spoofed infographic in which the Internet was a cable tv-like service where you'd pick big media sites you'd subscribe to, IPTV/streaming, optional secondary sites - all of this curated and safe, free of any dangers. No lewd content whatsoever.And honestly, I can't get rid of the feeling that this is where we're heading into. These are last years of the wild Internet and its next iteration will be passive and probably in 99% generated corporate safe slop.

sophrosyne42: All regulations, because they cause increased costs, will affect the poor the most, since an increased cost will cause the marginal consumer/producer to become submarginal. That is the choice that is made when regulation is enacted, whether the regulatora recognize this fact or not.

Phelinofist: Once the new Poettering startup took off you won't get any choice. SCNR.

macintux: Running as a libertarian, and governing as a libertarian, are two entirely different things.

sophrosyne42: He has been doing pretty well so far.

kybernetikos: I don't want to give the impression that I don't find the whole direction of travel concerning, because I do, but as I understand it, the requirement is that the system administrator assigns ages to the users on their system. That seems pretty reasonable to me, and maybe even like a good idea in some scenarios. As far as I know, we aren't talking about software that fights against the interests of the system owner - that's the admin. In fact, I think this might be a feature I would even want.

throw7: "AB 1043 passed the California Assembly 76–0 and the Senate 38–0. Not a single legislator voted against it."Amazing. We the people are not engaged. It really feels like we're at the end of history or something.

teaearlgraycold: That dude gives off such slimy vibes. Not like he’s evil. More like he’s unqualified to be in the position he’s found himself in. His presentations on talk shows gives me the impression he knows just enough about the topic of digital effects on society to throw together a book. The he lets people raise him up to the microphone and speaks for the sake of speaking. Hardly an expert, not an operator.Compare to people who have the means to build, modify, and test the systems they talk about. Maybe no one can be this kind of an expert in the field of sociology. But if that’s the case do not present yourself as confident. Answer most questions with “I don’t know”. Refuse praise. Exude humility.

singpolyma3: This is true but then why regulate every website instead of regulating... The schools

ekjhgkejhgk: 100% agree with you. I'm not arguing for regulating websites. In my scenario the schools are the actual problem. (EDIT: Actually, Meta and such companies are the actual problem, but in our world nobody expects that they have anybody's best interests in mind. But schools should.)I was just responding to the phrase "this is a solved problem you just have to parent".

user3939382: It's a shim for a legal requirement to tie TPM to your license and then to all online activity and computing.

jamesgill: Linux is not an operating system; it's a kernel. Wouldn't that mean this current legislation affects Linux distributions, not Linux itself?

usef-: Btw, it doesn't need to be actively coordinated for this to happen.Building architectural styles used to be per city and now buildings look roughly the same worldwide. Style is dependent on the year built not the location.Because every architect is "reading the same magazine" worldwide now that the internet exists, rather than debating in their own city.Similar monoculture of global thought is happening in all fields.

matheusmoreira: Unjust laws should be violated.

Ageless Linux is a registered operating system under the definitions established by the California Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043, Chapter 675, Statutes of 2025). We are in full, knowing, and intentional noncompliance with the age verification requirements of Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.501(a).

aniviacat: They seem to be ready for this:> Q: What if the AG actually fines you?> Then we will have accomplished something no amount of mailing list discussion could: a court record establishing what AB 1043 actually means when applied to the real world. Does "operating system provider" cover a bash script? Does "general purpose computing device" cover a Raspberry Pi Pico? Can you fine someone "per affected child" when no mechanism exists to count affected children? These are questions the legislature left unanswered. We'd like answers. A fine would be the fastest way to get them.

pocksuppet: I am predicting it now: They will not be sued or fined.

taneq: Yep, the goal of civil disobedience is literally to get sued/charged/arrested in order to force the issue to be (hopefully) properly and publicly resolved.

EarlKing: The truly aggravating part is that if they really wanted to thumb their noses at the Attorney General's office and get away with it there's a pretty straightforward way to do it: Fork every single project they want to offer through their operating system and thereby become a first-party developer-distributor thereof. AB 1043 is worded in such a way that it really doesn't apply if the operating system developer doesn't provide a covered application store (see 1798.501(a)(1)). This should apply in every other such app store accountability act in every other state (save Texas, since this is the text they seemed to adopt after the Texas law was challenged). Instead, all they're going to accomplish is getting pimpslapped by the Attorney General's office.Maybe they're interested in performative noncompliance, but I'm not. I'd rather engage in creative and effective noncompliance.

sophrosyne42: They argue that they are a coverd application store.'Definition: "Covered Application Store" '"Covered application store" means a publicly available internet website, software application, online service, or platform that distributes and facilitates the download of applications from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device that can access a covered application store or can download an application. — Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.500(e)(1) 'This website is a "publicly available internet website" that "distributes and facilitates the download of applications" (specifically: a bash script) "to users of a general purpose computing device." We are also a covered application store. Debian's APT repositories are covered application stores. The AUR is a covered application store. Any mirror hosting .deb files is a covered application store. GitHub is a covered application store. Your friend's personal website with a download link to their weekend project is a covered application store.'

dataflow: I have a feeling they're going to be very disappointed with the actual answers they'll receive to these questions.

Telaneo: On the one hand, I'd love a judge to respond 'yes' to all of these, if only to confirm how ridiculous they are and that a reasonable implementation is impossible. On the other hand, I'd hate for a judge to respond 'yes', because then the enforcement of said ridiculousness becomes vindicated.

Tuna-Fish: The site makes it very clear that the purpose is very explicitly not to "get away with it", it's to try and get fined, presumably to then challenge the legality of the laws in a higher court.

EarlKing: Yes, I know that. I'm saying this is utterly futile and if they really wanted to accomplish something they'd structure themselves as I described above. If their goal is to highlight the absurdity of the law... they won't actually accomplish anything. The Attorney General is not going to magically decide this was a terrible idea and reverse course. If they want to change the law then this isn't the way to do it either. If they want to ensure business as usual then what I propose is one way to do that.

dataflow: These aren't all yes/no questions. And what I'm saying is I think anyone who thinks there's some sort of paradox in answering these will be in for a rude awakening. E.g., "How do you fine someone per child affected?" Idk, maybe the parents that become aware of their children being affected would join a lawsuit, and others would not be parties to the suit?