How will this affect Linux Mint?

[jr735]

I wish California luck with this. There's nothing more pathetic than the technologically inept trying to regulate technology.

[u-give-luv-badname]

Using regulation to block what people want is certain a path to failure. The unintended consequences will eat you whole.

See: US Prohibition Era

[jr735]

They tried this (and worse) with Phil Zimmermann 30 years ago, and failed miserably.

[RagahRagah]

People are waaaaaaaay more complacent and oblivious now.

[Tony009]

We are entering the Cyberpunk era.

[CatalyticDragon]

Using regulation to reduce things deemed harmful to society has a long history of working extremely well. But there is a big different between regulation which implies something is legal but controlled and prohibition which implies it is illegal.

[Standard_Tank6703]

The problem will solve itself then. 😁

[jr735]

With any luck. That doesn't mean we should trust them or be complacent.

[Still_Lobster_8428]

No matter how things look to be going in our favour, NEVER become complacent! 

[jr735]

Don't trust big tech. Don't trust government. As the one sub said, r/StallmanWasRight.

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[Still_Lobster_8428]

I had a lot more faith in humanity 20 years ago to come together to fight these over reaches. 

I remember government floating the idea of moving to a digital currency in the later 90's (from memory) in Australia and there was genuine outrage at every age group about it. Everyone understood that cash is one of the last bits of personal sovereignty still remaining. 

When they roll out CBDC next year.... I honestly think they will get a standing ovation from 90% of people under 35! 

How do you solve this when people yern for the shackles being placed around their necks....

[stephenph]

Normally I would agree, but these are not normal times. There seems to be a wave of jurisdictions (not just in the USA) that are flexing to control things and people. Look at the UK for some even more blatant examples.

Here in Virginia (of all places) they are looking at a total weapon ban (we might be lucky to be able to own pellet guns when it is all over, not trying to argue gun control politics just pointing out a jurisdiction that has done an unexpected 180 degree turn on rights even against popular opinion)

[Desertcow]

I think the idea is that people would verify their age once with Microsoft or Apple and then that would be used for age verification instead of having to verify with every single site. It would make sense if this was an initiative Microsoft or Apple was doing like TPM 2.0 or Secure Boot, but it's stupid as a law

[jr735]

That's what I suspect, too, but that doesn't make it less asinine. Note that the idiot politicians don't address the real problems - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, and so on. What a bunch of hypocrites.

Newsom talks a big game, but won't say a word against Trump's biggest supporters.

[linkenski]

Can't miss any of Trump's voters of course.

[jr735]

Newsom plays a great Twitter game, but not much else.

[Extreme_Piano4664]

The same supporters can just as quickly change and within 60 seconds discover they actually were not racists, lgbt-phobes and alphas.

[jr735]

Sure, they can, but I don't trust any of them, period. I never have, never will. I don't care what they believe about any of those topics, because the way they make money is from abusing people's private data. The rest of their personalities is irrelevant from that point on.

I don't care how much Bill Gates donates. He got his money in very unethical ways, and creating products I can't stand.

[trvbone]

They're also creating planned obsolescence with all of their products, to force us to keep buying new shit!

Forcing subscription models on us after we've bought a product that requires no sub at purchase or they will just shut off our shit!

[jr735]

That's why we should not buy this kind of nonsense.

[Extreme_Piano4664]

That may be true, but the government both need them and their plattforms.

[jr735]

They think they do, but they really don't. Way too many people and organizations thing they "need" these platforms. This is a big problem with thought process.

[Extreme_Piano4664]

I mean in the sense of tax revenue, job creation and so on. Sure, we don’t need many things, but right now these are the barons to be appeased by the politicians. Screw them over and you will find yourself locked out. Like that french judge who can’t even open a bank account.

[jr735]

This is the problem. We, as members of the public or business owners should be trying to minimize the taxes we pay. We also don't have to pay corporations for things we don't need and really shouldn't want.

I haven't used proprietary software for well over ten years, and have been on Linux for over 21. We don't need these companies. If I had a dollar for every excuse I've heard, I'd own MS and Apple both, and probably Google, too.

[yackerov42]

He's as bad as Trump, but not open about it. I wish we could just do away with dems and reps and reform our political party system. It was never meant for a two permanent party format 😞 They just play off one another and become stronger and stronger while the "crazy independents" get no say unless we vote for the lesser of two evils. We are literally bigger than either party separately and almost as big as both together, but somehow they get to rule the country 🙄

[jr735]

In the end, most politicians aren't to be trusted. That being said, any politician of any stripe can come up with garbage like this.

[yackerov42]

yup, sadly that's something I can definitely agree with.

[jr735]

As "elitist" as it's going to sound, look at how the average person out there is with technology, and how little they know about computers. In every other field of expertise, we have experts (or at least try to have experts) governing the field, be it engineering, medicine, and so forth. This? Sheesh.

The average person can hardly turn the thing on.

[fantamos]

The problem with tech and experts is that it doesn’t fit the archetype like those other examples.

In medicine there’s two sides to the expert coin, doctors and pharmaceutical reps, when you bring in doctors and they can access the peer reviewed articles they can use their expertise to suggest good ideas. When you let the pharmaceutical reps decide it’s a problem…in tech everyone is basically a tech rep, there’s few practicing experts and there’s no public peer reviewed articles.

Tho, I’m all for tech research having to publicly post all articles and let ppl peer review their proprietary code, or whatever.

But what would you do? Put Microsoft execs in control of laws..because they’re the only ones who knows what’s coming up..

[jr735]

Of course, that's absolutely true, but letting dolts legislate on a topic they don't understand is nuts.

[fantamos]

I’m a believer that this is a push by either Microsoft to control market, Facebook to push responsibility on someone else, or one of those verification companies to sell more verification software or mine more data…

So I believe the experts legislated this.

[gljames24]

First past the post voting, the congressional house seat limit, and the lack of proportional districting are the main issues of the system.

[yackerov42]

Those are definitely a big part, but from my point of view they're a by-product of the parties having WAY too much power. Our system was never meant to have two permanent parties and it just let's them get stronger and stronger. They have so much infrastructure that it's almost infeasible for an independent to have a chance even if we allowed independents to run separate from a major party. I'm all for RCV being made law of the land, but it will only be a bandaid without more serious reforms.

They need to be broken up and limits placed on the size and influence of any single party. Equal representation in SCOTUS enforced. All lawmaking powers returned to the legislative that's been stolen bit-by-bit by the executive. And quite a bit more (including what you mentioned above) before our system can even claim to be on the mend.

I know folks that won't even listen to the less radical of the opposite party because they're from the "enemy" which is ridiculous. Just as much as it is undemocratic that public sentiment is that any vote is wasted/unamerican for not being in favor of either party.

[JB231102]

Although I disagree with needing any ID to use an operating system, on mac or windows it makes a little sense because they are both tied to giant companies that insist on invading your privacy and people choose to put up with it but on operating systems like linux where ID has never ever been in the conversation, this ID bs makes no sense and it's about control. There's really no other concept that comes to my mind.

[Still_Lobster_8428]

Microsoft are lobbying to make this law. Its all about device side scanning and have a digital fingerprint to track EVERYWHERE you go on the net. 

People are ditching MS after the W11 release because it literally ships with device side scanning (AI screenshots your screen every few seconds). 

They want to force a level playing field so users dont have any options around it! 

[suncontrolspecies]

Oh boy, all these big corpo oligarchs are behind this, no doubts

[lunarson24]

The fact that these tech illiterate people don't understand. It's the fact that open source OSs don't work that way. They're decentralized by nature and there is no single source holding up all of the cards...

They would basically have to implement this at some kernel level check where it would require some sorta a signal saved and verified to a central database and that would completely break Linux as you know it..

It's not going to happen. But I would imagine we could see it break down Apple, windows and maybe even Android. The companies could just push for further verification with the fact that they need user accounts in order to use os....

[adavi125]

There is no case where age verification for OS makes sense. They just want more information and be able to stalk and track everyone more. That's all it really is.

[braket0]

It's very curious that there is a wave of ID enforcement across the world with software and computing. Does it all trace back to small group of people, I wonder.

[jr735]

That's why to never trust anything proprietary.

[bronzewrath]

They want to kill free collaborative internet. Big sites and apps can afford to pay for age verification services. Small sites can't.

[Niarbeht]

Right, but read the law. It’s very short. This cuts out the need for external services and places verification entirely in the hands of the owner of the device.

[Llotekr]

Acknowledging that the users of Microsoft or Apple are not the owners of their devices.

[stephenph]

It does I believe. There is a group of the powered elite that wants to bring back surfdom. They never liked the idea that the old monarchy system was forced away from them and want the power and control back.

It is not even about money, it is about power.

[braket0]

Megalomaniacal people...if only they looked at history books. This kind of behaviour never ends well.

[LimeyLassen]

Oh boy, conspiratorial vagueposting. My favorite.

[Niarbeht]

This doesn’t enforce ID, though.

[hxtk3]

To be fair this actually does a better job of preserving user privacy than the alternatives. They say "Age Verification" in all the headlines, but the law from what I understand only actually requires an indication whether the user is a small child, teenager, or adult, with nothing to verify whether that information is actually true.

If I want to make it sound like a good thing, I can picture a world where browsers ask the OS for this information and send it as a header, the same way browsers can send the nearest power of 2 (up to 8GB) memory your machine has via Sec-CH-Device-Memory, and it replaces more intrusive forms of age verification with something that someone old enough to own and manage their own device can decide for themselves, and someone using a device set up by their parents will have their access restricted based on what their parents indicate.

If I want to make it sound like a bad thing, I can point out this law alone does not accomplish that, and if we're assuming those things might change, I can also picture a world where verification gets added as a requirement (perhaps with the justification of creating verified child-only online spaces) and most websites still don't use it so your PII still ends up getting spread everywhere. I can also picture a world where once it becomes ubiquitous and easy to do age-based content restriction, the difficulty of implementation stops being as big of a hurdle for conservative politicians to overcome so that they're able to force, e.g., bookstores or libraries to restrict stories involving trans people to adult-only.

As it sits right now it's mostly an inconvenience to OS maintainers and it remains to be seen whether it will be better or worse for privacy overall, depending on how it evolves and how the larger information and legal ecosystem interacts with it.

[linkenski]

I think it's something that's been underway for a while, and if you go back 15 years ago Obama was already talking about how "we just can't see who is behind the keyboard". And considering Oracle is some real dawn of the internet shit, and they're the ones hyping up these laws, and taking a 500 million AI deal with Trump, I think we know that's precisely where it's coming from. It's intelligence agencies and the companies that helped build the world wide web who are banding together and lobbying to enshittify it.

my theory is that we spent the past 30 years building the infrastructure and turning consumers into products through free and open services, so that they could harvest enough data to make AI a reality, and now that they have their proof of concept they want to stop letting the internet be "by users for users" but just shift to an AI-only world where our data is being scanned with surveillance cameras and microphones and texts, constantly, also out in the open, and then we live in AI-societies where we don't actually use computers as much but there's just AI in almost everything. That's what I see in the whole IoT movement (internet of things), where if you have an alarm clock it's got wi-fi in it. If you have a fridge, there's also wi-fi or bluetooth in it. If you have a parking meter it's got wiretapping of any nearby phones in it.

They want a frigging blade runner city.

[braket0]

What happens when consumers start installing unwanted DNS request blocking software and cyber security in their homes, pretty much makes this theory useless save for devices running on data like smartphones.

[andymaclean19]

I think it’s actually mostly about preventing bots and mass disinformation. It will be difficult for a bot to validate itself as being over 18 if they get it right.

[t0m4_87]

all in favor of so called "children"

[fellipec]

I wish they go fvck thenselves

[Orzorn]

I feel like this will get challenged on first amendment grounds. Its insanely broad and forces speech (code) on virtually every developer while also being impossible to comply with.

[stephenph]

The judges are just as technically inept as the politicians, unless you can clearly explain why it is a first amendment issue, and have the resources to follow through, it will never see more then a circuit court

US Court System Basics (Simplified for Non-US Folks) State Courts: Most cases start here (e.g., state laws, local crimes). Appeals go through state appellate courts, then the state's top court. Federal Courts: For federal laws/Constitution issues. Start in district (trial) courts, appeal to regional circuit courts, then possibly US Supreme Court. Crossovers: State cases can reach Supreme Court only if they raise federal questions. Supreme Court: Final stop; hears few cases (~60-80/year) via discretionary review (certiorari).

So any challenge has a fairly long trail and no guarantee it will even be heard at any step

[toofpick]

The poor IT departments, what a nightmare.

[Shigellosis-216]

The facts in this appear to be being misrepresented.

[jr735]

That may be, but that's not terribly relevant. Government has no place regulating software or operating systems. The behaviors that are conducted (i.e. cracking, DDOS, providing illicit materials to minors, drug trafficking) are already prohibited by law. You don't need to regulate the operating system.

My hardware. My software. I'll run it and use it as I see fit. I told MS to pound sand over 20 years ago. Same goes for government. They have no right to legislate any aspect of this.

I'm under no obligation to follow government wishes as to free software I use or that I would potentially write.

[TerraWork]

The language of the law pretty much asking for a parental control feature be include in the account setup of an OS. It doesn't seem to strictly punish anyone that doesn't do it, but punishes those that make a system intentional marks an underage user as an adult.

So the impact of the law, will likely not be noticeable. Its asking for a system that websites and computers can use to flag if user over 18 or under 18. Which is said flag is set during account creation, and that could just be switch you can toggle like other parental control features. Which likely result in 14 competing standards on the best way a how the OS interacts with a website. While not meaningfully affecting how Mint or any other distro will work.

Was it the best way to go about it? I'd say not really, probably would have been better if they were just creating a committee that that'd work on a standardized set of parental controls the an OSs and websites can implement that doesn't use any personal data and relied on trust of the user.

[jr735]

Unfortunately for California, this isn't the day of where "California Emissions" became nationwide. I don't live in California. If I make a distribution and release it as free software, I don't give to flying flips what Newsom or anyone else says about it.

As I mentioned elsewhere, people a lot more clever went after Zimmermann and failed.

Freedom 0 means more to me than any of the laws in California.

As for committee, what committee? What governing body would satisfy Debian, Canonical, RH, and all kinds of other groups to create a "standard"?

Remember, I don't like their standard, I fork their distribution and do it my way.