so like.

[mrnnki@problemeowtic.net]

@eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place

where I live is working on a bill rn and in the process of finding its current text, I found a couple of its drafts. You can literally watch it get stricter, less privacy preserving, and require more retention of data from draft to draft. It sucks so hard

[lezliz@mas.to]

@leberschnitzel Yeah, that is still a concern, even though I'd be angry to the government about that, not age verification.

[oay@mastodon.social]

@eniko If it comes down to it, I guess I'll be kicked off the web, or maybe even entire OSs if I live somewhere that implements that kind of policy.

Said I would never use Web DRM when that happened and I kept my word to this day. Never once used it all those years, so I'm already kicked off the sites that require it (Netflix, Spotify, etc).

But I'm still hopeful that even if the web is closed down, something else will take its place for me, perhaps even something that doesn't exist yet.

[0x0961h@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko You and me both, Eniko.

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

thus far i've held off on switching to linux as a daily driver because i *really* don't wanna lose access to visual studio community edition, but if it's between visual studio and OS based age verification i will absolutely switch

[deshipu@fosstodon.org]

@eniko wasn't Linux already implementing it too?

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@deshipu some stuff is but i'm sure there will be a flavor or hack of linux that refuses to comply

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@arthfach @deshipu nope, doesn't work. and vscode is hardly a proper substitute

[bri7@social.treehouse.systems]

@eniko @deshipu ageless linux

[bovaz@misskey.social]

@eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place yeah, the more I look at what I do with computers, the more I complain of the fact that I can't find anything to replace VS. It's usually not even close, even with some of its feature actively getting worse over the past couple of years.

[lisyarus@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@arthfach @eniko @deshipu I've seen a great argument that Gentoo isn't actually an OS, it's a package manager & repo that you use to build your own OS. As such, the age verification bs doesn't apply :3

[0x0961h@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko i've seen news that a lot of linux distros said they'll implement age verification to comply with laws. some flipped those laws off though

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@bovaz maybe a windows VM running on linux?

but then the performance would probably be shit

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@0x0961h i mean it's an open source OS so i'm sure there'd be ways around it

[bovaz@misskey.social]

@eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place what I used to have at work was a remote azure instance running Windows, where I had VS and all the development stuff. Then they decided they'd rather replace dev laptops more frequently, so we are back to having everything on our machines.

[0x0961h@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko Oh definitely. From what I see "verification" in Linux so far is just "how old are you" "i'm 40000 years old" "thank you, enjoy your system"

Plus you can always download pre-ageverif ISO of a system

[webbop@tech.lgbt]

@0x0961h @eniko unfortunately I see why it's there (to not be illegal), glad that it does bare minimum tho, also, I have never gotten Fedora to ask for my age (hopefully never)

[robinadams@mathstodon.xyz]

@eniko @deshipu The EU system... I have mixed feelings about. I know a few of the researchers who contributed to the working group papers, and they're good people, concerned and even activists about privacy. (Bart Jacobs in the Netherlands is fucking awesome.)

There was an argument around 2022 "We should get an open source EU-wide privacy-protecting ID system and quick, because Apple and Google are sure as fuck going to do their own and if we don't, those will become the de facto standards."

At least in the early design it was supposed to preserve privacy as much as possible. Like, you can make it give a zero-knowledge proof of the boolean "Is this person over 18? Yes or no." without revealing any more information (Name, date of birth, age in years, etc.) The user can know what information the service is getting from it.

And it's open source so everyone can check that the software does indeed preserve privacy the way it should.

At least those were the design criteria going in. I need to check if they became realised.

I don't know, maybe I'm being naive, but overall, I'm glad the EU did this. They're the only Thing who could be big enough and willing enough to make sure a solution like this exists and enough services in the EU offer it as an option alongside just Apple, Google and Palantir that I can hopefully get away without one of the evil companies getting my ID.

And yeah, depressing that it came to this, but given the options in the world atm, I'm glad I'm living in the EU right now.

[jibsaram@68k.social]

@eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place I'm not sure if it would work for your needs, but could JetBrains Rider be an alternative to consider? If it could be a viable alternative for you, it could help set you free from Windows, or at least give you the option to switch later if you wanted to. I'm very much biased here, but I wouldn't want to wish Windows lock-in upon my worst enemy, so I'm just really hopeful there's a possible path forward/out here

[bigkrimpin@mstdn.party]

@eniko yes and more so than i want to admit. i've met so many people online through discord servers and whatnot, i'm afraid that's not going to be possible in a few months. right now i'm waiting for fluxer to release their self-hostable version which i'm going to move my server to and hope everyone moves along with me. but damn, is it ever dire that we have to resort to shit like self-hosting our chat platforms...