US government in 1996: strong encryption is a munition and you can go to prison for years if you export
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And to be clear, I'm old enough to remember when strong encryption was a munitions, I'm speaking about these actions from first hand and near-first hand knowledge
@wwahammy Yeah, I started my career in 1995 and this is accurate. We never used to be this obsequious.
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RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@wwahammy/116264430375745593
US government in 1996: strong encryption is a munition and you can go to prison for years if you export
FOSS engineers: hey so only use this if you're in the US but we'll give instructions for how to do it otherwise
California in 2026: we're passing a law that allows the AG to sue OS providers in civil court if they don't implement age verification in order to restrict Apple, Google, Facebook and the worst companies in the world.
FOSS Engineers: OMG THEY MIGHT COME AFTER OUR LINUX LAPTOP VENDORS WHO HAVE LIKE 3 TOTAL CUSTOMERS WE SHOULD HAVE IMPLEMENTED AGE GATING YESTERDAY I PROMISE WE'RE NOT CHALLENGING YOUR AUTHORITY GOVERNOR NEWSOM
@wwahammy lots of "reasonable people" just following orders
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And to be clear, I'm old enough to remember when strong encryption was a munitions, I'm speaking about these actions from first hand and near-first hand knowledge
@wwahammy When I started at Google in 2016 I had to sign a bunch of export control paperwork because I *might* be able to find some encryption algorithm somewhere in the VCS I guess.
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@wwahammy are any of the devs even in California?
I remember illegal numbers (it was not that long ago actually) when people went out of their way to meme in the face of law.
@pointlessone i get the impression these are corporate devs astroturfing
and this highlights exactly why FOSS and capitalism are incompatible
because there is no Freedom under capitalism
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@wwahammy I still want to know what age one should put for “root”?
@revk that is a good point, there's no exemption for root.
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@revk that is a good point, there's no exemption for root.
@wwahammy 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
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@wwahammy 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
@revk totally. But technically, the system should probably ask what root's age is on first boot.
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RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@wwahammy/116264430375745593
US government in 1996: strong encryption is a munition and you can go to prison for years if you export
FOSS engineers: hey so only use this if you're in the US but we'll give instructions for how to do it otherwise
California in 2026: we're passing a law that allows the AG to sue OS providers in civil court if they don't implement age verification in order to restrict Apple, Google, Facebook and the worst companies in the world.
FOSS Engineers: OMG THEY MIGHT COME AFTER OUR LINUX LAPTOP VENDORS WHO HAVE LIKE 3 TOTAL CUSTOMERS WE SHOULD HAVE IMPLEMENTED AGE GATING YESTERDAY I PROMISE WE'RE NOT CHALLENGING YOUR AUTHORITY GOVERNOR NEWSOM
@wwahammy For real, sometimes I wonder if there is a chunck of FOSS dev that came from Windows world and never left behind that mindset.
I look at you, Red Hat...Unfortunately, without extra workforce would be hard keep up with the projects either... hmmm.
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RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@wwahammy/116264430375745593
US government in 1996: strong encryption is a munition and you can go to prison for years if you export
FOSS engineers: hey so only use this if you're in the US but we'll give instructions for how to do it otherwise
California in 2026: we're passing a law that allows the AG to sue OS providers in civil court if they don't implement age verification in order to restrict Apple, Google, Facebook and the worst companies in the world.
FOSS Engineers: OMG THEY MIGHT COME AFTER OUR LINUX LAPTOP VENDORS WHO HAVE LIKE 3 TOTAL CUSTOMERS WE SHOULD HAVE IMPLEMENTED AGE GATING YESTERDAY I PROMISE WE'RE NOT CHALLENGING YOUR AUTHORITY GOVERNOR NEWSOM
@wwahammy @wizzwizz4 more vlc media player shipping deCSS so you can fucking play DVDs on linux and less "but its illegal!!!11 i have to let the state control my every action forever before they even ask me too" .. ugh
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RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@wwahammy/116264430375745593
US government in 1996: strong encryption is a munition and you can go to prison for years if you export
FOSS engineers: hey so only use this if you're in the US but we'll give instructions for how to do it otherwise
California in 2026: we're passing a law that allows the AG to sue OS providers in civil court if they don't implement age verification in order to restrict Apple, Google, Facebook and the worst companies in the world.
FOSS Engineers: OMG THEY MIGHT COME AFTER OUR LINUX LAPTOP VENDORS WHO HAVE LIKE 3 TOTAL CUSTOMERS WE SHOULD HAVE IMPLEMENTED AGE GATING YESTERDAY I PROMISE WE'RE NOT CHALLENGING YOUR AUTHORITY GOVERNOR NEWSOM
@wwahammy
>OMG THEY MIGHT COME AFTER OUR LINUX LAPTOP VENDORS WHO HAVE LIKE 3 TOTAL CUSTOMER
They'd probably have more if they built their things around coreboot-compatible ITX boards, instead of just rebadging Clevo and Tongfang's stuff.
(same goes for the hucksters at Framework, along with the used car salesman known as Purism) -
@wwahammy
>OMG THEY MIGHT COME AFTER OUR LINUX LAPTOP VENDORS WHO HAVE LIKE 3 TOTAL CUSTOMER
They'd probably have more if they built their things around coreboot-compatible ITX boards, instead of just rebadging Clevo and Tongfang's stuff.
(same goes for the hucksters at Framework, along with the used car salesman known as Purism)@wwahammy
(point is that FOSS is supposed to be an outlet for the ideas that Big Tech is too conformist/captured/straight-up calcified to work with) -
RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@wwahammy/116264430375745593
US government in 1996: strong encryption is a munition and you can go to prison for years if you export
FOSS engineers: hey so only use this if you're in the US but we'll give instructions for how to do it otherwise
California in 2026: we're passing a law that allows the AG to sue OS providers in civil court if they don't implement age verification in order to restrict Apple, Google, Facebook and the worst companies in the world.
FOSS Engineers: OMG THEY MIGHT COME AFTER OUR LINUX LAPTOP VENDORS WHO HAVE LIKE 3 TOTAL CUSTOMERS WE SHOULD HAVE IMPLEMENTED AGE GATING YESTERDAY I PROMISE WE'RE NOT CHALLENGING YOUR AUTHORITY GOVERNOR NEWSOM
@wwahammy the infrastructure for enforcing the law on the internet has scaled up *a lot* during those last 30 years, i'm afraid
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@wwahammy For real, sometimes I wonder if there is a chunck of FOSS dev that came from Windows world and never left behind that mindset.
I look at you, Red Hat...Unfortunately, without extra workforce would be hard keep up with the projects either... hmmm.
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@dalias/115010611094788311
@iswyrm @wwahammy There absolutely are and that's where almost everything wrong comes from. I've been saying this for at least 2 decades.
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