Apparently this will include Linux…
Can this be circumvated saying it’s distribution rather than OS ? 🤠
No more than gun laws can be circumvated by referring to firearms as ‘high energy shooting implements’
Or just refusing to run servers in California. Much like the US DRM encryption restrictions of the 90s. Where the whole Linux community just had distributions required parts of the download to happen in non US servers.
A single, (although big and very active in Linux) state, will always have more limitations then a nation. The issue comes if it becomes US national. And then the US starts pushing other nations to sign agreements.
Given at some point trumps harm to all international treaties will likely be repaired. Their may come a huge opportunity for US politicians to renegotiate international treaties.
Assuming trust is ever returned.
distinction without a difference - lawmakers won’t care
The way this is written, it would just be a case of entering your age or DOB at account creation, which wouldn’t be so bad. Indeed, this would be the kind of parent-empowering solution I’d like to see, since it kind of assumes the admin of a device (who sets up user accounts) is an adult who will enter the correct info for their kids.
Of course, there’s always the concern they might try to push for adding 3rd party age attestation after the fact, with this being the thin end of the wedge. And it’d be a bit of a pain for the various linux distros to organise a compliant solution even IF it’s just adding a new parameter to useradd and the associated “age signal” API for applications to query.
associated “age signal” API for applications to query.
I’d just add an environment variable.
Nothing more required.I suspect something the nonprivileged user can effortlessly change would be deemed insufficient. :P
The user needs to tell the system what their age is, so if I get up and a 15yo sits on the computer, they need to change the environment variable before starting any program.
No need for higher privs.In every OS I know of including linux, you need admin/su rights to create a user account. If the age is tied to the account that at least prevents tampering without admin/su access.
But does the law require that?
From the interpretations I have seen, it doesn’t even require real verification, just a way to tell the app, the age of the user.Honestly I’m not sure. I feel like I’d want that as a parent tho, personally.
So as a parent, you want every person on planet Earth, making a software, to bear the burden of making sure your child cannot use their software without your consent?
That’s what it sounds to me. You just have to enter a date of birth, which I think puts parents in control of this, rather than shady websites.
Something that I, as a parent, really miss, is the ability to have some parental control without having to subject myself to horrifically broken systems like those from Microsoft and Google, which are just painful to use and don’t offer any meaningful control. Minecraft has become almost impossible to use lately, and apparently it’s going to get even worse.
More applications should have a simple child mode that connects it to a parent mode that allows the parent to keep an eye on what their kid is doing and enable or disable some features for them, but instead, they make it impossible to create an account, and if you do, you’ve got an account that can’t do anything. It’s broken and stupid and shouldn’t be so difficult.
Maybe Linux could set a better example in this.
Doesn’t even make sense. Virtually all Linux distros can function completely offline. How do you do age verification completely offline? Classic politician who doesn’t understand tech trying to look like they’re doing something to save the kids.
They will make it a crime to not have any OS that is not compliant, that simple.
"(1) Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.
Sounds like it’s a text box that enter input into. Making it completely pointless.
According to Gabe Newell, something like 90% of steam users were both on 1/1/99 (might be fudging the numbers somewhat but presumably you get the idea).
The only platforms for now where this might work are Windows, macOS, iOS, and stock Android, however as Muta hypothesized, if this extends to hardware-level, a law could just mandate SecureBoot and lock out the ability to implement custom keys, and then only allow a short list of state-approved OSes to boot on the hardware, which no doubt Windows would be on that short list.
Similarly, all mobile devices as an extension to that could be locked exclusively to stock Android, eliminating custom ROMs like LineageOS or GrapheneOS as an option entirely, let alone mobile Linux distros.
Me, buying cellphone parts from another state to assemble myself like an 80% lower to avoid having to drink a Verification Can every time somebody calls me:
I think I just invented the concept of a “ghost phone”
Me, using 8 bit adders to make my own CPU because everything else is now locked down to all hell
That seems as reasonable as suggesting they could pass a law requiring everyone to hire a govt licensed computer user in order to interact with their devices, and otherwise touching a keyboard or touchscreen would be illegal.
It doesn’t feel like a realistic estimation of what they would actually try to do. There’s too much that is currently dependent on Linux, you’d do better to just dismantle and ban the internet.
They uh do realize busybox and BSD underpins nearly everyfuckingthing right? Including network stacks. So fucking stupid.
This shit law was written by people who probably don’t even know the difference between software and hardware.
I don’t care if there is a package called gnome-age-verification distributed in my linux distro and would prefer it if it means fewer sites with facial biometric tests. If I have concerns about the age verification, then I should be able to type:
sudo dnf remove gnome-age-verification
California probably wants it in linux distros so that linux can’t be a justification for big tech still demanding Orwellian stuff in every website (ie “but what about the children who use linux? we need to protect them with Persona too!”)
But where would it stop? The hell version of this would be kernel-level-approved-AI-agent-checks, with an OS required to have an approved AI agent with a validated third party key that reports to the government with required telemetry and the kernel makes sure the OS won’t run without the approved AI and then makes illegal any scripts for unapproved kernel code modification. And post-Tornado cash, we know code is unfortunately not protected US speech.
turns on VPN
Oh no, anyways.
If they’re ever ignorant enough to ban VPNs we’ll be fucked.
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Easy enough to send threatening cease and desist letters to distro maintainers that may not have a penny in savings. This is a huge gift to Apple and Microsoft that probably had enough of Linux hoarding in on their market share.
Apple and Microsoft are both rather large Linux customers. On desktop, they sell their operating systems, but both of them use a lot of Linux in the enterprise. Apple more so, but Microsoft is no slouch.
MacOS is FreeBSD under the hood, which would also suffer from this.
I think that’s a bit different. If all desktop OSs are affected by this law, Apple is in no better or worse position than their competitors. The mach kernel that macos is built around would still be available. TBH, I’m not even sure how reliant Apple still is on the mach source. If such a law were to effectively outlaw Linux, it would have massive implications for pretty much every company with a moderate or bigger enterprise footprint.
There’s a shirt that you could buy where a kid is asking his dad what clouds are made of. Dad replies, “Linux servers, mostly.” It’s no less true today than it was then.
It’s not the kernel, which is their own work for a long time now. It’s the userland utils, which are almost entirely taken from FreeBSD and track that project.
Although BSD utils are updated at a glacial pace, so it probably wouldn’t be much work for Apple to do that themselves.
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Well… don’t live in rogue nations then, I guess?
of all the shit out there, that’s what needed attention?!
Curious for what it’s a distraction, eh?
Good luck with that
Every day this gets worse
And literally no one is doing shit to stop this. It is almost like personal property rights, privacy, and everything else are now dirty words that will make you look like a criminal.
So, umm, what city is always the same time zone as California, but not in California?
Vancouver? Portland?
Apparently not Vancouver
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-adopting-year-round-daylight-time-9.7111657
I guess Linux distros are about to be banned in Cali.
what are they they gonna do against it?
What the absolute fuck are these people doing!? An OS does not require age verification for anything but totalitarian intents. Fuck this timeline.
