If you can feel a very small tinge of existential horror when you read the words "try to", congratulations, you're a true *nix devotee.

If legislators get grumpy about this, just gently thwap them with your handy copy of The Unix Haters Handbook and tell them you're working as hard as you can under the circumstances.

Age verification is just paving way for things a lot worse: globally unique identification.

They ( politicians ) will weaponize the inefficiencies in this implementation to push for an online verification later on.

And of course Peter Thiel will be somewhere in the middle

My age is a literal comma

we already have that, it's called ipv6

Akahually at my work we used a third party authentication PAM module that uses the gecos field for username mapping.

Nice ragebait

in the middle of the crosshair

The problem with that whole situation is the way the law is written the developer is the one held responsible if a child circumvents the check to access adult content. Therefore, developers will have to pay hefty fines unless they:

-1: Have a way to positively make sure the person enters their age is telling the truth; and

-2: Lock this value from being changed by the user afterwards.

Or: Region lock the OS.

One can see how incredibly problematic this is for both privacy and true ownership and control over your own machine. There is also a lot that needs to be figured out in the law such as what will happen when someone inevitably finds a way to hack the system to circumvent it, especially the region lock. Ultimately, big tech has deep pockets and can shrug off the fines but small nonprofit open source projects will be killed by them.

This law is specifically designed to kill nonprofit-run and private software like Linux.

It’s not about age. It’s about uniquely identifying everyone who uses a computer.

Your dissent has been noted for later enforcement action, Citizen 1d887190-bfe4-4a22-ae6d-4b519a9c5483.

I am actually curious about this. How does privacy get preserved with ipv6?

Ipv6 identifies an exit node, not individuals. Same as ipv4.
The ipv6 doesn't bind to an individual. Your address is different in different places. There can be many individuals per address. You can use vpns as well.

https://networkingtoolbox.net/reference/ipv6-privacy-addresses

And the address space is big enough you can choose a new random address between every connection to avoid tracking.

This makes me nauseous because of the reality.

The UNIX-Haters handbook:

https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf

But think of all the pedophiles it will stop! Surely you don't want pedophiles to get away with their crimes*? What are you, a pedophile?

(* T&C apply, if you are a +1B shareholder, please disregard)

The funny thing is, mergers basically aim to create monopolies, where on a long enough timeline a few handful of people have control over the whole financial system and the capacity for production. Kind of like under communism, except instead of elected leaders it's held by a totalitarian elite of private citizens. So, also kind of like communism.

Making the vendor culpable for a user bypassing a software lock is absurd but then again so is this entire bill.

This law is specifically designed to kill nonprofit-run and private software like Linux.

I do not know if that is true. Most of the political hacks writing these bills have zero understanding of computers and do not even consider Linux in the equation. They see Windows, iOS, Android and macOS.

This is more aimed at mom and dad with three children who have tablets for all the shits and take no responsibility for what the kids do with the devices.

Linux devs will just step back from releasing code packaged with installers and users will have to compile and set any given program up themselves.

I use MacPorts and Homebrew for what I need.

export AGE=OLDENOUGH

Yeah, it felt a little ominous posting it the way things are going.

All of this seems impossible to enforce in the FOSS ecosystem. People can just fork the software and remove any restriction they don't like. That's kind of the whole point of free software. Users are free to use their devices however they like, including in ways that are not intended by the devloper.

You are correct that they have zero understanding of computers. But what you are missing is that they are consulting "experts" who are essentially just big tech lobbyists.

I'd rather be depressed and know what is coming than stick my head in the sand and blame immigrants/trans/Iran/whatever.

I recently read an article from the creaters of PopOS. In that they raise a vaild point. If a child installs a virtualization software (say with the concent of an adult for educational purposes), then they can but browse internet through the VM, with them being the root user, pretending to be adults. It defeats the whole purpose of such verification methods. So their plan would to stick with ID based ones.

I think this was never about age verification, but to uniquely fingerprint every person using internet and to keep accountability.

Lets face it, the internet you knew is dead.

I utilize the GECOS field within my Ansible scripts to facilitate the identification of these entities as being managed by Ansible.

Better than the SSN system....

Most of the political hacks writing these bills have zero understanding of computers and do not even consider Linux in the equation.

Meta literally broke the record for the most legal bribery in a year over shifting the liability from platform to app store (as they're facing tens of billions in fines). Apple and Google have been pumping tens of millions to counter it.

The political hacks are just reading what the corpos wrote for them...

And when you say consulting, you mean that they've been legally bribed with a few mils.

Lets face it, the internet you knew is dead.

Friendship ended with IP. Now I2P is friend.

The best part is that this can be POSIX compliant too!

Your real name bobby?

Check out reticulum as well.

I'll just do what I'm always done since I was 10

"How old are you?"

"115 years young of course"

You're right. Computing devices need to be locked down in such a way that prevents consumers running software that isn't signed by an approved/licensed software vendor owned and/or favored by an oligarch and existing general purpose computers need to be made illegal. We don't need "hobbyist programmers" anymore, humans have no place writing code.

These laws are not written by the technically literate. They are written by attorneys based on the whims of old legislators who think that Siri is a real woman that they are talking to.

While the people who write the laws are competent, the legislators are not.

At the state level, it's even worse because they are often given legislation carefully written by lobbyists and special interest groups.

If you have any inkling to run for office, please consider doing so because we need smarter people in every branch of government.

1/1/1900, just celebrated my 126th

Lol that's a valid UID too.

Can you install a VM without root? I assume the kids account isnt being out into a group with virtualization by default.

Pass.

Its my computer, I own it, gtfo and let me use it how ever I want.

Just set up an audio based check, prompting the user to make dial up modem connection sounds into the microphone. If you do it well enough, you're good and old.

You can. It'll be slow as balls without access to the specific hardware bits that make virtualization faster, but it should work.
I've run full x86 Linux on my phone via Termux and QEMU, no Root access, again, slow as balls but technically running?
I see people doing it on iOS too with UTM SE (SE standing for "Slow Edition" since Apple is anal about JIT on their platform)

On a computer it'll be even easier, and given the extra grunt, maybe slightly less painful

Using linux is not proof enough?

+1B shareholder

Yep, because we all know the last people who would be pedophiles are billionaires.

(/s obviously)

sure, but if an application “requires” age verification for whatever reason, would you prefer the functional equivalent to clicking “i’m over 18 pinky promise” as a standard, or they use biometric data that they all implement differently and then there’s like 33.7 leaks in the next 6 months?

like the whole thing is bullshit, but a file on disk is a wink wink nudge nudge sure we are compliant bud

the true unix way: if you text editor you own the world

Is this the year of linux from scratch - desktop?!

You don't Linux isn't an operating system. It's a kernel. There is no LinuxOS

How is it uniquely identifying users if all that OS shares with programs is the age group? (that btw user chooses, can lie without problem)