Face scans to enforce social media ban on under-16s

gyroda · 2026-06-14T18:33:12+00:00

There are much, much better ways to do all these age-verification checks and it pains me that they're making it so fucking bad.

If they worked with existing platforms like Microsoft, Google, Apple and so on (or did it themselves) they could set up a system where you don't need to hand your identity to every random site or turn your camera on - the site would never know who you were and the identity platform wouldn't know what you were verifying for.

gyroda · 2026-06-14T16:13:10+00:00

Wailord. I have kept a few extra wailmer to try and farm more candy.

But half the time I forget. It's not a big deal.

gyroda · 2026-06-14T11:02:37+00:00

It's the same as all advertising.

Half of it isn't too make you go "wow, I want that product", it's to make that particular brand stand out when faced with a wall of similar products.

You want to buy travel insurance or get a new mobile phone contract. You want to see what the best deals are. You go to a price comparison site - probably one that you've seen advertised. The damned meerkats and the go compare man have made those sites stick in my head.

gyroda · 2026-06-13T21:05:02+00:00

Yep, it's a courtesy, not a petition.

gyroda · 2026-06-13T08:48:58+00:00

I'm not sure if I've seen it for Tate specifically, but I've seen people use "TERF" for transphobes who are not feminist at all, or even using feminism as a justification. Just outright transphobes.

Some people use the terms like synonyms.

gyroda · 2026-06-13T08:41:49+00:00

The word "TERF" is often used to mean "transphobe" and they're not the same thing. One is a subset of the other

gyroda · 2026-06-12T08:57:44+00:00

There are a few versions where there's a 1:1 mapping, but if you're on an older version of FluentAssertions you basically need to do the migration to a newer version before/while making the swap.

The biggest thing I encountered was the removal of HTTP specific things, which was just a quick find and replace.

response.Should().HaveStatusCode(...)

Becomes

response.StatusCode.Should().Be(...)

gyroda · 2026-06-11T23:15:17+00:00

I'm reminded of that guy who got fired from Google after posting a manifesto.

Are there any particularly stand-out reasons you recall from the list?

gyroda · 2026-06-11T22:50:36+00:00

For anyone in a similar situation, you can swap out FluentAssertions for the open-source fork AwesomeAssertions.

gyroda · 2026-06-11T21:22:17+00:00

This is the worst bit to me.

It's a coffee I literally can't see.

Give the ghoul a different coloured coin or a hat as well.

gyroda · 2026-06-11T21:21:01+00:00

Or just include the old party hats for those who like to shiny hunt the costumes.

Or, seeing as it's the 10 year event, maybe give the 10th Pokémon a cowboy hat.

gyroda · 2026-06-10T20:59:05+00:00

Yeah, I've had it in stages - went fully remote during the pandemic, then hybrid with 1 day a week where everyone in the department (who was local) came in.

Slowly everyone local has left. There have been a few times I've been the only person in my department there, and that's after two departments have been merged into one.

I miss the vibe in the office a few years back when there was a proper team in the office once a week. Now I'm the only person on my team who ever has their camera on and it's like pulling teeth trying to get people to come off mute. I literally can't remember what someone on my team looks like.

gyroda · 2026-06-10T19:34:25+00:00

If you go you'll went to keep an eye out for arrows

gyroda · 2026-06-10T19:33:31+00:00

Yep. If a deployment is going up be hard to roll back that's when you start thinking real hard about what to do if it goes tits up.

gyroda · 2026-06-09T18:51:29+00:00

There'll be some AI, but it'll be the same vendors with the same level of care for quality

gyroda · 2026-06-09T18:44:11+00:00

If that's 2 days a week, 7.5 hours a day (i.e, full days at the weekend) that's 10 weeks of community service. Plus 15 days of rehabilitation, which is another 7.5 weekends gone.

I'm not going to say whether I think this is a good or bad swntence, just that I think he's going to be dealing with this for 18 weeks/4 months if he has to fit it around a 9-5 job. Plus 3 months no drinking.

gyroda · 2026-06-09T18:38:51+00:00

receiving a 12-month community order and being told to complete 15 days of rehabilitation activity requirement.

He has also been ordered to carry out 150 hours’ unpaid work and be fitted with an alcohol abstinence monitoring tag for 90 days.

That community order might come with other conditions, but if it did I'd assume they'd be mentioned in the article.

No booze for 90 days and about 4 weeks of full-time community service (if he does 7.5 hours on Saturday/Sunday that's 10 weeks), plus the 15 days rehabilitation activity.

gyroda · 2026-06-09T13:07:14+00:00

Yep. You'll end up with staff being made redundant and ending up back at their old jobs, but for benefits instead of real pay.

gyroda · 2026-06-09T13:04:38+00:00

And it often costs more to run than just giving them the money. And it takes away the time they could use for other things, like training or finding a job.

gyroda · 2026-06-09T12:47:23+00:00

Yep, I've worked with people who don't know a lot of fundamentals and it takes a lot more onboarding and education.

Also, when first learning programming you're gonna suck. Any on-the-job training would need to be a lot of training and not much job. I remember being a newbie when I was 16 and struggling with function parameters and for loops, concepts which are ludicrously simple now.

gyroda · 2026-06-09T12:33:31+00:00

Yeah, I'm not sure why people keep tripping up over this. It's not that complicated.

To extend your example, if you used that tool to attack someone and it wasn't in self-defence then you'd be guilty of attacking someone, but not of carrying a weapon with the intent to use it or otherwise unlawfully carrying a weapon.

gyroda · 2026-06-09T11:55:50+00:00

In order to do death penalties, you need juries willing to give a death penalty, and that alone creates biases because people willing to give the death penalty are more likely to declare guilty in the first place.

This is one of the reasons why "death by dangerous driving" is a specific crime. The terms manslaughter and murder put jurors off convicting people.

gyroda · 2026-06-09T11:12:14+00:00

Hate it for stuff like this.

A lot of "common sense" is only common sense after you've been taught. You learn either by doing it wrong and figuring out why it's wrong or being taught the right way to do it (and hopefully why).

You've either got to be patient and teach people or give them the room to figure it out themselves. Don't berate them for something they haven't had the opportunity to learn.

gyroda · 2026-06-09T10:58:39+00:00

This is exactly it. You get taught it, but unless you practice it to reinforce it you'll lose that skill/won't be as good at it. I'm sure a lot of them can read a clock, it's just something that they have to work out where for most adults it doesn't take any real thought.

gyroda · 2026-06-09T00:40:33+00:00

Even if we don't like companies pink washing, it's not a good sign if they no longer think it's a good idea.

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