I received the amended Colorado Age Attestation bill.

[drewnaylor@mastodon.online]

@carlrichell Really hoping all these bills fail.

[dylanmtaylor@mastodon.social]

@carlrichell Thank you so much for your work on this! I love that there is now a FOSS exception in CO. I'd love to see the same in CA, NY, and the federal bill that was just proposed. Ideally we don't need to implement any age verification at all and the only thing added is a mechanism parents can use to control content if they wish to.

[jeremiah@tldr.nettime.org]

@jackryder @carlrichell Also, responsible for Friend. What a fall.

[asymmetricblue@mastodon.social]

@carlrichell @jackryder Looking at text of the bill, I find the definition of Device and Operating System lacking.
For example, if I had a car with the Android Automotive OS, would I need an account for every driver? What if a 12 year old tried to listen to a satellite radio station that has explicit content?
There are so many single user mode devices out there that are basically general purpose hardware, with an OS and a GUI. Will they require whole industries to fit their mold?

[gabemoralesvr@mastodon.social]

@carlrichell During covid, my friends and I built a smart mailbox that would sterilize mail for people using UV lights back when people didn't know how the virus was transmitted. We used a raspberry pi for the project, which of course ran Raspbian for the OS. Much cheaper, easier to work with, and more well suited for the job vs a microcontroller. How in the ever loving hell would this project work if the "microcontroller" required age verification? Just an example of how dumb this idea is.

[gabemoralesvr@mastodon.social]

@carlrichell what about stuff like Amiga Workbench? They still make Amiga OS. How would something like that work?? That's not FOSS... but Amigas lack the ability to even phone out to facilitate age verification. Amigas don't even have an RTC. This entire idea is technologically infeasible.

[gabemoralesvr@mastodon.social]

@carlrichell I began doing computer programming at 8. If this bill had been in place in the early 90s, I wouldn't have my career today. This will lead to immense brain drain in the US.

[gabemoralesvr@mastodon.social]

@moonleay @eickot @carlrichell "Oh, I suddenly only have single monitor support again, I must have updated."

[carlrichell@fosstodon.org]

@Tom_ofB that's impressive! Thank you for sharing.

[carlrichell@fosstodon.org]

@eickot @moonleay I've been there

[carlrichell@fosstodon.org]

@jzb @neal @eff I did catch that and it's one of the more draconian efforts with full verification. I don't expect it to go far but it is scary. Companies that provide verification services are pushing these laws.

There is apparently a group of open source projects starting to coordinate. I heard this from the FreeBSD Director and am supposed to receive an invite soon. I don't know who is involved yet.

Other projects like RockyLinux have reached out as well as others.

[swee@mastodon.swee.codes]

@carlrichell This is going to be a bit long..

Heya, hopefully me counts, but am is 15 years old and me has used lin ucks since like uhh age 11 (mom introduced me to Zorin OS, and I explored more to Linux), me was already interested in programming and breaking software since age 9 and open source software helped me even more with that with good documentation and community.

When I was 13 close to 14 I discovered IRC (with Libera.Chat), and that changed my whole life and it also became my comfort zone on the internet, the people there also inspired me to get a domain (https://swee.codes) and i also became a furry after using IRC :3

IRC also inspired me to start self hosting stuff, I currently selfhost a ZNC with 128 users (and also seen in https://wiki.znc.in/Providers), and some others listed on https://swee.codes/services

oh and not to mention the many projects on my self-hosted git site - https://git.swee.codes/swee just has 63 public repos, not that much /s

I've lost interest in looking at Linux distros and became more interested in exploring more unixes, my home server runs FreeBSD (https://oreo.node.swee.codes) and I've also tried Haiku and SerenityOS

At least I'm not an idiot that searches "how to convert .bat to .exe" and uses Scratch anymore, thanks to open source software. :3

I really hope Washington doesn't copy California and Colorado, and that we find a way to fight for anonymity

[vandorb12@infosec.exchange]

@qbit @carlrichell can we honestly expect politicians to do the right thing?

[dgr@toot.li]

@carlrichell I would like to have the feature to enable parental control on my Linux for my kids but I'm not happy with the laws. I would like the law to require sites and apps that want kids as users/customers to be required to provide a PEGI like signal. This way I control if I enable the feature on my machine and the OS and the browser does the checking if the user can launch the app or open the site.
Also distributions could add the PEGI class to the packages in their repos.

[gabemoralesvr@mastodon.social]

@carlrichell Idea: Challenge those pushing this idea to define operating system in precise technical terms. Do not allow them to use vague, layman definition for operating system. Because I guarantee you they will be conflating "operating system" with "desktop environment' and they are not at all the same thing. OSes exist because monolithic computer programs owning the entire processor was considered unsafe and outdated by 1998 when Apple finally was dragged screaming across the line.

[gabemoralesvr@mastodon.social]

@carlrichell The entire purpose of modern operating systems is to facilitate multitasking operation by interacting with context switches with the scheduler. When you break down what this means in plain english, the bill becomes "It's illegal to run multiple programs at once without giving your age." Which should be nakedly obvious as to why this isn't accomplishing their stated goals and only hurts non-corporate technologists as a whole.

[gabemoralesvr@mastodon.social]

@carlrichell I thought law was supposed to be the realm of ultra-precise language for a reason. You can't build a law against a vague vibes definition. The vast amount of normal computer users have no idea what an operating system is despite thinking they do, and I 100% guarantee these lawmakers you speaking of are just as ignorant. If the logical arguments won't hold sway, turn to the argument of the language.

[gabemoralesvr@mastodon.social]

@carlrichell give one final argument: You can very easily write monolithic programs that will do everything they are trying to avoid, without being classified as an OS. And, in fact, those monolithic programs would be harder to regulate because at that point, they simply become programs without any real defining characteristics to isolate them by the language beiung used.

[gabemoralesvr@mastodon.social]

@carlrichell Wasn't it just a yearish ago that these same types of lawmakers were trying to pass a built to make using C and C++ illegal for government contracts because they aren't threadsafe? Ask them how this bill is at all in line with their previous attempts at safety. Because this bill would give more utility towards those monolithic programs, thus making them more attractive to use. And monolithic programs are not safe beyond being threadsafe.

[qbit@mammothcirc.us]

@vandorb12 @carlrichell we absolutely should! And if they aren't we need to inform them of what and why they are doing wrong!