A must read thread from @sleepyowl, particularly for anyone laughing off the "oh they're trying to enforce age verification at an OS level, well I'll just change my open source operating system settings"

[skrlet13@sc.skrlet13.xyz]

@cwebber
https://flisol.info/InstallFest

I don't know if you have an equivalent of the Festival Latinoamericano de Instalación de Software Libre, but there's a install festival in Latinoamerica with presentations too. It is organized by volunteers yearly

[luc0x61@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@cwebber @sleepyowl Think again: maybe you're already updating systems with CPU and GPU microcode that's there to slip in some backdoor.

[theotheroracle@solarpunk.moe]

@cwebber @sleepyowl
open semiconductor fabs when ,

[skellysoft@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@cwebber @sleepyowl genuinely as time goes on I'm wondering if its a good idea to have at least one strictly offline device/machine

[raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie]

@cwebber @sleepyowl
Age verification is a loss of privacy to big US Corporations and to your Government for all Adults.

"Think of the children" is purely an excuse for surveillance. It's up to parents to "police" child access to technology or Internet, or books, or music. No-one else.

This is a denial of human rights for all adults.

[lgsp@social.tchncs.de]

@cwebber @sleepyowl

Great insight! Where is Bunnie Huang? We need more people like you and him, I think. Hack everything!

How is the MNT reform fro this pont of view?

[suetanvil@freeradical.zone]

@cwebber @sleepyowl

This. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

[joeyh@sunbeam.city]

@cwebber @sleepyowl nobody is gonna prevent you from playing with your free softwares on your purple fisher-price laptop. It just cannot load any of the top 1000 websites (or anything on cloudflare), because they all require remote attestation of an adult OS.

[theotheroracle@solarpunk.moe]

@cwebber @sleepyowl i know its not super feasible , but i don't see any other way out of this

[dain@hachyderm.io]

@cwebber @sleepyowl do you happen to know if Google could decide to lock the bootloader of a Pixel phone with a software update?

[cwebber@social.coop]

@joeyh @sleepyowl I mean, for most people, and most of the time, that's the same thing

[gimulnautti@mastodon.green]

@cwebber @sleepyowl Age verification is the trojan horse for absolute surveillance

[crazyeddie@mastodon.social]

@cwebber @sleepyowl They've artificially caused a shortage of RAM and hard drives so you can't build your own.

Much of the time the bootloader can be cracked. They're getting much better at that though. They can also use these same methods to keep you from gaining access to networks if your bootloader can't sign with a certified key--which your overwrite won't.

It's not hard to see what they're up to. I just don't know what to do about it. It looks like checkmate to me.

[longplay_games@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@cwebber @sleepyowl Lol, joke's on them - nobody can afford to build a new PC anymore...

(I'm kidding of course, this is a truly awful and dystopian future but also... nobody is paying 50k for RAM just to get a locked UEFI)

[longplay_games@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@SkellySoft @cwebber @sleepyowl I have 4. It's absolutely vital.

[fname@kamloops.social]

@cwebber
If we’re permitted to buy hardware at all:

Les Orchard (@lmorchard@masto.hackers.town)

It's probably alarmist, but this has me thinking: What if governments and bastard oligarchs actually manage to reverse the personal computing revolution of the last 50 years? Nothing in tech is inevitable, not even individual practical access to hardware. https://マリウス.com/hold-on-to-your-hardware/

Hackers.Town (masto.hackers.town)

@sleepyowl

[abmurrow@hachyderm.io]

@cwebber @sleepyowl Yeah, the total refusal for some folks in FOSS to take this seriously because of a pinky promise in open licensing is going to make us sleep walk into this if we're not careful.

I think it's pretty easy to put up your blinders and refuse to acknowledge our individual shortcomings.

Most of us are software folks-- this will be a hardware based lock in. Many of us software people struggle with hardware issues and many of those simply cannot be sidestepped with a clever hack.

Just look at the ongoing issues with Nvidia drivers, Wayland support, LibreBoot, and standing community conventions like GUIX's tacit refusal to run on anything with proprietary drivers to get a taste of the absolute uphill slog we will all face if the community has to contend with this kind of low-level issue everywhere all at once.

The thing that drives me nuts too is that, although I suspect some issues on the internet can be solved with clever legislation, I don't think this is the way to do it. AT ALL. This whole thing feels like it was drafted by desperate polititicians who succumbed to a flashy tech bro slide deck and marketing pitches without a single thought to security, maintainence, economic impacts, etc. Like. Y'all. You have massive data centers filled with Linux boxes that some unlucky sod is probably going to get saddled with plugging their own biometrics into just to run a load balancer for the DMV. Does that feel sustainable?

Its the SaaS equivalent to legislation-- slap a bandaid on it and when people complain, blame them.

I don't live in either of the states where they're discussing this and my elected legislators are the "stick my fingers in my ears and yell real loud" types. What can I do now to help prevent this from being adopted? Are there any advocacy groups throwing their hat into the ring that we can rally behind?

[kevinrns@mstdn.social]

@cwebber @sleepyowl

Let ALL the Democrats in California know, they will be primaried, until they are gone. GONE.

Rescind the law. Veto the law, primary the Democrats.

#california #democrats #caldems #ageVerification #fascism #screamingAngry #fools #jackasses

[brokar@mastodon.social]

@cwebber @sleepyowl

Microsoft isn't trying to force the usage of UEFI and TPM for nothing by only allowing online accounts and Bitlocker is enabled by default and only optional on Enterprise editions and servers.

And the day may come where hardware vendors sell only hardware where UEFI and TPM aren't optional anymore and enabled by default. That will be the tipping point.

I sincerely hope this is just a dystopian thought.