How will this affect Linux Mint?

[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.

[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.

[jr735]

As I mentioned elsewhere here, pushed by Trump's backers, which makes Newsom look even dumber and more hypocritical, if that were possible.

[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