TLDW:
Brazil is requiring OS level age verification by march 17th, 2026.
New York about to vote on a law that would “require all manufacturers of internet-enabled devices, operating systems, or application stores to conduct commercially reason-able and technically feasible age assurance for users at the point of device activation.”
In order to “incentivize” age verification, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced that they will ignore COPPA violations for software performing age verification.
In order to “incentivize” age verification, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced that they will ignore COPPA violations for software performing age verification.
COPPA prevents companies from collecting data on minors without parental consent.
Sounds like the Epstein Class is still in charge of the FTC.
Feels weird upvoting this comment. I have to remind myself. It’s not you I’m mad at. You’re not the one doing this. You’re just the messanger.
The irony knows no bounds, the one half decent reason age verification could exists for is so these companies have no more excuses to ignore coppa because now they can just pretend everyone is a consenting adult.
Yeah, this does not sound like it’s going to make our children any safer.
Sounds like the Epstein Class just wants to know where the children are and make it legal to groom them.
They are taking the power of personal computing away from us…
Pretty much. They‘re essentially outlawing privacy so there will be no point in resisting. This is worse than Orwellian.
I feel like there is a line coming with hardware and software and that will be the last of it’s type as the move towards subscription based services is forced onto everyone. Its a shame people won’t vote with their wallets. It just means I’ll have my basement crammed with old tech and I’ll go full old man mode and stop keeping up with technological progress.
Thats my plan.
Too bad you will need hard drives for that. And all the rest.
No no. OLD tech. Books do not require hard drives.
Books like “A Canticle for Liebowitz”
Just learn how to harvest the next generation of chips out of their subscription-based devices that don’t have any onboard RAM or GPU, and then integrate it into your existing system.
You might have to write your own firmware and triple-check for any backdoors that might send your data back to the mothership, but it’s not like you have to cut yourself off entirely as long as you maintain your own self-sufficient system.
If anyone has recommendations for ways to preserve personal computing, please share at !homecomputing@piefed.social
They can pry it out of my cold dead hands
This will make it more anonymous because verification relies on a token defined in the OS rather than uploading identification.
It’s gonna be fun when people are sitting around a campfire talking about how bad tech ceos, wall street backed corporations, enshittification, corrupt politicians and fascism all led to the extinction of the tech golden age… as they prepare their spears to fight the next wave of machines coming to harvest them.
Pedal powered microwave.
You’re way too optimistic.
I’m putting my money on Mr. Burns, A Post Electric Play.
Oh Shit Boots Riley says they are making a movie on that… I need the Apocalypse to hold out long enough for that to happen or for him to be part of the traveling group performing it.
Can’t wait
13 days 😂 Tell me you don’t know how software development works or how operating systems are developed without telling me.
can we stop linking to lunduke (he’s a transphobe chud)
He’s a small hat zionest
So this is the thing I’ll eventually end up in jail for bypassing. I coul’ve sworn it would be drugs.
Oh well.
Yeah, the fact that I can wave to a cop walking out of a store where I just bought some pot, but might face massive fines for not doing age verification for a pong game I wrote is insane. I mean, I still want to be able to smoke my pot legally, but I also don’t want to have to care about who plays pong.
Accountless linux distros incoming
Can’t wait for distros to post a disclaimer that this software is strictly intended only for use on the moon.
Better yet. Say that the software isn’t intended for any use at all and they don’t allow you to download it, but then leave an open directory with the images
“By downloading this software, you agree you are a very naughty boy or girl.”
Rename the ISOs to BMP images and say they’re art instead.
Isn’t Tails OS accountless? At least the non-persistent version.
Yes, even persistent isn’t really an account. It’s just a encrypted portion of the drive to store files between boots.
theres no reason to post lunduke. surely we can get our info from literally any other source
Honestly? I’ve done a lot of looking over the last few days and he’s literally the only person I’ve found talking about the Brazilian law coming into effect in 12 days. If you have seen any coverage from anyone else, I would be really interested if you could pass a link my way.
Not coverage, but here’s the actual law being passed. Can be translated from Portuguese easily enough.
Already had a read through it this morning. Seems like some few not too bad ideas mixed through with quite a lot of poorly thought out ones.
Linus Torvalds is the closest thing Linux has to a manufacturer
Linux is just a kernel.
Redhat with fedora and steam with the arch based steam os will be the ones that have to implement it.
Adding that nonsense to enterprise Linux distros will be hilarious to watch.
And Steam can just sell blank hardware and let you install some distro you find on the Internet. Streetlight did that with one of their albums.
And what happens when someone forks fedora and removes it for their own machine. Who’s the manufacturer then?
I am pretty sure anyone will still be able to install a distro/fork from a free country, but steam is unlikely to go this route because convenience is part of the package. They may not even care to resist because they already ask your age for the steam store.
I am more curious what this will do for non standard devices with multiple users. Even kitchen equipment may run a derivative of linux these days and they don’t come with keyboard access.
I hadn’t even thought of those. Are Samsung fridges going to verify my age?
You will have to show ID to prove you are of age to drink if there is alcohol in it if you want to open it. No ID, no fridge access.
Sorry. You gotta go to jail now. Your toddler grabbed a juicy juice box from your smart refridgerator without being 18+.
The only solution is getting a smart fridge for each household member.
You’re probably writing that on a device that has a secure boot chain. So far it was there without strict enforcement, but once the manufacturers decide you only get your shit signed if you implement $ARBITRARY_ORWELLIAN_GOV_RULE, you’re pretty much fucked.
You mean I can voluntarily not participate in society?
BRB installing Linux everywhere.
If it doesn’t generate a token you won’t be able to access the site.
You and the 13 people that upvoted you have zero understanding of what an operating system is.
lol okay
Man, they really want to find out who they need to murder, don’t they?
Because that’s the bottom line. Everybody understands that, right?
AI is all about replacing as many human jobs with automation as possible, and the Age/ID laws are about tracking down anyone who complains about it.
This is what we’ve known was coming for decades. It’s finally here.
I will literally pull my AMD socket A mobo out of the box and run windows XP before I comply with this bullshit.
Or switch to one of the growing number of Linux distros who have taken the stance of “not a fucking chance are we complying with that idiocy” and then just hope where you live doesn’t pass a law like this and those distros are forced to region block downloads for you 👍
There’s also the worry that if enough places push something like this through, could end up being a case of a vast swath of the internet will just refuse to work without receiving an approved “Age Assurance Signal”…
Or the bigger worry that this is the beginning of the end of proper human interaction with the internet. Access and child protection laws become so strict that only chat bot agents are legally authorised to use the internet and we all become beholden to these programs for everything from looking up a recipe to requesting access to research papers to help support your masters thesis or fucking whatever.
How on earth are they going to enforce this in smaller IOT chips? I just got an esp32-c3 for like $1.50. I highly doubt that things is able to run whatever bloatware they are going to require.
Will be selectively enforced and they’ll gradually tighten down over time.
Sounds like they make these laws specifically to arrest you.
“Woops, your dishwasher has no age verification, now we can arrest you and make you confess whatever we want”
It literally only requires a single bit flag.
And pointing to where that bit is, and what that bit means, and proof that that bit is immutable.
You don’t know anything about software development do you.
Consumer tech fucking sucks. We tried you guys. Time to call it quits on the internet and personal computing. Humans ruin everything.
Yeah, I’m kind of excited to explore what kind of activities outside has come up with since I was a teenager. Gonna have a lot of free time now that computing won’t be fun anymore.
“You need to use the app to reserve a space for the public park.”
This is actually true to visit national parks now.
*unregulated corporate greed
One question:
"On your first computer, how did you open a program?
Load “*”,8,1 ✅
program.exe ✅
Double click the icon ✅
“Program? Is that like an app?” ❌
Load “*”,8,1 - However, this would not open a specific program, just the first file on the specified drive (if I remember correctly). For a specific program, you would have to name the program.
The word app still makes me cringe hard.
Lemmy users upvoting Brian Lunduke is surprising. He’s very right wing from what I remember
People might not know who he is anymore. since his veer to the right hes become a lot less relevant to the linux community
Yeah that was my suspicion also, they simply don’t know him.
I’m getting old.
He’s nuts, but even nuts can do something well time to time. Just look at pistachios.
I’ve literally never heard of this guy before.
My router hasn’t confirmed shes over 14, please advice, it’s getting probed by the USA president.
Wait, the Dear Leader’s member is RJ45-sized? Wow, that’s even more pathetic than I had anticipated.
And shape. The tab must be why he is so cranky.
