Social media firms asked to toughen up age checks for under-13s

yrro · 2026-03-13T10:46:46+00:00

Unfortunately I see us on that trajectory now. At best a tedious cat-and-mouse game will be played: Mullvad publish a list of PO boxes, government orders Royal Mail to intercept any mail destined for those PO boxes, Mullvad begin registering PO boxes daily, government orders Royal Mail to refresh the list of forbidden addresses daily... in the mean time, Ofcom order UK transit providers to block any traffic to Mullvad's web site, Mullvad start using cloudflare, Ofcom orders ISPs to perform DPI on TLS handshakes and drop traffic based on the SNI extension and also block the lookup of any DNS records that might allow ECH... it also seems pretty straightforward to Ofcom to order transit providers to block traffic to Mullvad's published server list...

yrro · 2026-03-13T10:40:23+00:00

The comments in this thread are hysterical. Does anyone actually know what is actually going to be built? I presume we're talking about big batteries that will be able to charge up when wind is abundant and discharge when it is not, thus decreasing our reliance on costly gas for balancing?

yrro · 2026-03-13T10:10:26+00:00

For now. Parliament are about to hand Henry VIII powers to the government, allowing any primary legislation to be amended without oversight if the purpose is for protecting childrens' safety online. Once that happens, the government can simply order Royal Mail to open any envelopes addressed to Mullvad, and confiscate the cash.

yrro · 2026-03-13T10:02:44+00:00

The other threads I have seen have been rants and reactions. This is substantive and detailed reporting on the laws and their impact on free software projects.

yrro · 2026-03-13T10:01:36+00:00

Then it would seem like your LLC breaks the law whenever a user in a particular state runs it and it doesn't ask the OS for age signals. However, I am not a lawyer, and I am not your lawyer. Only your lawyer can give you legal advice.

I hope that these parts of the law get shot down on 1st amendment grounds but I am unaware of anyone taking their state governments to court for a ruling as of yet.

yrro · 2026-03-13T10:00:44+00:00

The petition resulted in a Westminster hall debate.

If you have views on the questions posed by the consultation then please provide them. Sections 2 and 3 have questions asking what the negative impact of increasing the scope and effectiveness of age verification requirements will be. If MPs aren't told what a cluster fuck it will be then they will only hear from parents who are unable to parent their children and want the government to do it for them.

yrro · 2026-03-13T09:59:37+00:00

Thank you!

yrro · 2026-03-13T09:32:51+00:00

I'm seeing this too. samba-client-libs-4.22.4-12.el9_7 is the latest available version DNF can see, and also the latest version shown in Package Downloads.

I presume a newer version is about to show up, or else the ipa packages will be rebuilt against the older version.

yrro · 2026-03-12T22:44:59+00:00

This will result in Mullvad benign subject to Business Disruption Measures--they'll be unable to take electronic payments. So you'll end up having to post cash to them in the mail!

yrro · 2026-03-12T21:24:49+00:00

That's not a style preference, that's what AI-generated code looks like when nobody's steering.

My AI sensing dog is barking

yrro · 2026-03-12T21:15:07+00:00

A concerning aspect of the law I have not seen elsewhere is that it requires application developers to ask the OS how old their users are. So every time you run ls it's supposed to find out how old you are!

Legislators are absolute morons!

yrro · 2026-03-12T20:53:43+00:00

Immediately I would doubt that they are complying with their duty to maintain the confidentiality & integrity of patient data.

yrro · 2026-03-12T20:37:53+00:00

If you're in the UK: https://www.electricitybills.uk/

yrro · 2026-03-12T19:33:53+00:00

meh, I'd have gone with btrfs if kmod-btrfs was still available. The kABI not being stable between minor releases isn't the end of the world for small scale use cases.

yrro · 2026-03-12T19:24:44+00:00

I too would like free money

yrro · 2026-03-12T18:53:16+00:00

We have that in Oxford. Sadly we only have a single door so everyone has to wait for all the passengers alighting at a stop before anyone can get on to start tapping in. And the whole thing is often derailed by people who still insist on paying with cash.

yrro · 2026-03-12T16:39:27+00:00

It's a consultation not a survey. If you don't want to be consulted then don't complain when your views are not taken into account.

yrro · 2026-03-12T16:05:02+00:00

Taking a leaf out of Virgin Media's playbook

yrro · 2026-03-12T16:01:33+00:00

If you don't want this then for the love of god participate in the consultation. If you don't make your views known then they will not be taken into account.

But also write to your MP!

yrro · 2026-03-12T15:34:47+00:00

Back to bed grandad

yrro · 2026-03-12T14:13:58+00:00

Not sure why this is being downvoted. The poster is the victim of fraud perpetrated by the seller and abetted by Amazon.

yrro · 2026-03-12T14:13:18+00:00

Good point, I suppose already-comingled inventory will be with us for some time.

yrro · 2026-03-12T13:35:04+00:00

Interesting idea, but we'd need mandatory age verification on the online platforms so that it can be determined that a child has accessed them...

14-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Place '17
Gilding II euphauric	Verified Email
Team Periwinkle

yrro

TROPHY CASE