Apparently this will include Linux…
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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.
Good luck with that
I guess Linux distros are about to be banned in Cali.
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 just heard that, too.
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This is why I torrent my ISOs
Gavin Newsom is such a fucking tool.
Tbf every single politician is.
Every politician should be… At least here in America. They are supposed to be our representatives, regardless of how they feel.
They are not. Not the grand majority of them, anyway.
If you run for office to be different from all the rest and win, do you immediately become corrupted upon election?
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Please drink a verification can
People wonder why the Dems are unpopular. 2 of my Dems here in Colorado are pulling the same OS age gate shit right now. What I want to know is: “who fucking asked for this?”. Everyone seems to be doing it at the same time, but many people don’t want it. Smells fishy. Let’s not elect these assclowns to anything ever again. Why are you doing authoritarian shit when we elected you to advocate on our behalf.
In my book, a take that extremely authoritarian and unconstitutional should end your political career instantly. You can watch it all on your TV at home like every other clueless boomer (shout out to the boomers who are with it, actually understand, and care). How can we send people to represent us who will openly sell out our and our children’s futures for a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions?
So define Operating System. Are embedded systems Operating Systems? Coz that’s going to cast a rather wide net.
Selective enforcement. Basically if they want to do shit to you they will prosecute you, otherwise they won’t bother.
I can’t wait for my microwave to ask me to take off my glasses, face the camera, and turn my head slowly from left to right.
You are right that operating system is not defined. But the definition of operating system provider is this: “(g) “Operating system provider” means a person or entity that develops, licenses, or controls the operating system software on a computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device.” (emphasis mine)
Which should clearly exclude embedded devices.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043
good lord, not even the solar powered four-function calculators are safe!
But embedded computing devices these days are regularly general computing devices, and have been for a long time. If my insert appliance x with an ARM processor isn’t a general computing device, then why is my raspberry pi?
Need a face scan to use my fridge
That is not something I had considered, I fully agree.
So many devices are built around SBCs running linux. I guess my first thought was that it is more about how the device is used and not what that actual OS is. But then how would the OS even be able to tell the difference.
This is a distinction that they should have spelled out explicitly in the law.
They basically defined curl as an app store: “facilitates the download of applications”
I mean sure, if you ignore the 2 words just before what you quoted.
“distributes and facilitates the download of applications from third-party developers”.
I don’t know that I would consider curl as “distributing” software. But as always it depends on how the court interprets it.
Full section for context:
(e) (1) “Covered application store” means a publicly available internet website, software application, online service, or platform that distributes and facilitates the download of applications from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing that can access a covered application store or can download an application.
(2) “Covered application store” does not mean an online service or platform that distributes extensions, plug-ins, add-ons, or other software applications that run exclusively within a separate host application.
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.
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 non-Apple 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.
Another thing that could hypothetically be done given NK does this already so there’s precedent as far as this goes, is any given government could make their own Red Star OS equivalent, and then have that as the only state-approved distro
"(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).
No one is going to enforce this. It’s political theater, and will in no way protect children.
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.
Were that to happen, I imagine it would be a relatively simple matter to move everything out of state, or even out of the country if need be.
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.
Well… don’t live in rogue nations then, I guess?
Define “Operating System”…
I guess my washing machine & car are also going to be “not for use in California.”
Those Cisco switches & Broadcom DSLAMs would be tricky too … I guess the internet’s “not for use in California.”
And the air-gapped power station control system? “not for use in California.”
It is annoying that these laws come in (I’m also including magical thinking about encryprion backdoors for “the good guys”) without any form of real-world, practical assessment. Complete waste of tax payers money and undue stress for everyone.
FFS.
Imagine you’re not allowed to use your washing machine if you’re under 18.
It will get repealed when all the always-working parents can’t stand “teenager smell.”
The law only specifies “computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device.”
Which is extremely vague. It appears that the intention was to just affect end user devices. Not specific purpose systems.
I’m going to report the shit out of any of these companies if they have locations in California and Colorado (if it passes in CO). If the law is scoped that wide, there’s no way they’ll actually be compliant. Even corporate desk phones have an OS. :-D
I mean you can. They only get fined for children affected by violations of the law. Soooo…
Linux distributions should react by asking users to confirm they’re not in California. They’ll backpedal fast.
Eveny single website running should do this, and refuse to display for Californians
Linux is like 3% if steam users. Linux doesn’t control enough market share for it to have any effect
All this age verification crap. Where is the fucking parents? I get that big tech has some responsability in all this. But how about we just make the responsible choice, of not letting a 8 year old near tiktok forinstance? Oh, it is just another excuse for private survailance you say? I see, I see…
I’m a parent and legit think that majority of parents should not have been parents and have no minimum required skill to raise a human being. It’s sad because it’s really not that hard but most people don’t think a day ahead when raising their kids and just follow a “vibe”, so spending a weekend on parental controls is an insurmountable task.
I’m not a parent and wish there was some kind of minimum requirement.
I AM a parent. And I will take the fight. Even though all other parrents will call me the “tin foil hat” rather that, than letting my child become a predators next meal online… These parrents has no idea what social media is all about. It’s a fucking addiction. The children can’t see this, this is why it’s our job to protect them.
“Won’t anyone think of the cHiLdReN?!”
As usual, the solution is education. Parental education needs to be prioritized imo. That said, I have no idea how we would implement such a thing. Most likely better general education would help at least.
Just want to clarify that nowhere in the actual law does it require verifying the age of the user. It does not require IDs or face scans.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043
Please read it. It is a very short law <15 minute read tbh.
The law does exactly what you ask for. Parents setup the device and put their child’s age. If they lie or circumvent the system then the parents get fined if their child is affected by content on the internet.
for now
Everyone needs to realize that all the age verification stuff is just a step towards the purpose, which is having any and all computer operation tied to the person — i.e. as Cory Doctorow has put it, the war on general computation.
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As a Californian parent, I’m teaching my kids to use Linux to be safer against surveillance and control. It is 100% my responsibility because I chose to have children and let them use computers. It’s a dangerous world out there.
IDs in databases get leaked.
How about don’t implement it and when California realises they need computers then they might change their mind?
They will make exceptions for themselves. Like how none of the laws passed in the UK apply to the military, politicians, and police. Even for their own personal use.
