I received the amended Colorado Age Attestation bill.

[moonleay@mastodon.de]

@carlrichell I am using Linux since I was 15 or so. If wouldn't know half as much about computers, servers and networking, if I hadn't had access to Linux, FOSS & open computer equipment at a young age.

[ernmander@squatch.online]

@carlrichell Good luck on Thursday Carl

[carlrichell@fosstodon.org]

@moonleay yes, and gotta have root to really learn!

[carlrichell@fosstodon.org]

@jackryder that's a great story. Thanks for sharing!

[carlrichell@fosstodon.org]

@thomasfuchs the public's idea of computing has shifted to consuming apps. Open platforms are more important now than ever.

[eickot@mastodon.social]

@carlrichell @moonleay nothing like breaking linux, to learn how to fix it (replace linux with almost anything)

[human3500@ottawa.place]

@carlrichell Linus wasn't quite a kid when he started Linux, but you don't start a big project like that without some small ones under your belt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds

[evanwolf@mastodon.social]

@carlrichell Computer literacy starts young. I started coding at age 12.

Kids are citizens too. And civic life, learning what's going on and using your freedoms of speech and assembly, is thru computers. This steps on constitutionally protected civil rights from the first amendment on...

[vandorb12@infosec.exchange]

@carlrichell most would rather this bill not going forward. This does nothing to protect those at risk.
Seeing a carveout for FOSS is not enough of an olive branch.

[tom_ofb@23.social]

@carlrichell dunno if this anywhere near what you aimed for, but my son made this game using the open source game engine Godot and also used Krita to create some of the art: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3565330/Squinky/
He's still 13, started at the age of 11 with this project.

[chip_unicorn@im-in.space]

@carlrichell

Just visit https://scratch.mit.edu/ for some adorable projects that kids wrote.

[moonleay@mastodon.de]

@eickot @carlrichell Nothing like updating Ubuntu and rebooting the PC without GPU drivers

[kgf@hachyderm.io]

@carlrichell I started learning programming in high school (around age 16) and was messing around with QBASIC years before then. Can't say I would've known to pursue computer science if not for all of that.

I also attribute a significant amount of my Linux literacy to an amazing Swedish friend I met online, who IIRC was around 17 years old at the time. He got me started on Slackware in 2002 or 2003. (He was a couple of years younger than me, and unfortunately passed away due to cancer not long after that.)

So yeah kids do some pretty cool stuff and can even teach their elders new tricks that can help shape their entire careers.

[sparrows@calamity.world]

@carlrichell I learned programming by mucking around in GameMaker, I made a brute force factorizing program to check my math homework.

That freedom to build whatever I needed would have been restrained if I couldn't access GameMaker as app at all due to my age.

[eickot@mastodon.social]

@moonleay @carlrichell I remember once that I broke my Xorg config just before an exam. (Yes, it was an update of debian testing)

[qbit@mammothcirc.us]

@carlrichell can we just not pass the bill? Is that even considered?

[drwho@masto.hackers.town]

@qbit @carlrichell Nope.

[deathkitten@firetribe.org]

@carlrichell@fosstodon.org I get why you're focused on getting open source excluded here, but we really need to be fighting this nonsense as a whole. Surveillance instead of holding toxic social media companies to account for their predatory behavior is insane.

That said, an exception for open source is better than nothing. So thank you for at least trying that much.

[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.