Technology

It would make it illegal to sell our products there, as our central control unit has an OS, too. I know, I have written it, and I have no plans of implementing an age veryfication system for the people logging in to set and control parameters.

I'll just copy my comment from a similar bill in colorado, I will leave the link to the colorado bill in, but here is the california bill as well if you want to read it yourself.

The title is very misleading. This is the actual bill that they are trying to pass. The link already includes a summary, so I will just give you an even simpler explanation and some practical examples why this is actually really neat.

First of all, this is not age verification. No IDs have to be submitted, no selfies or videos will be submitted to any age estimation AIs, so put your pitchforks away (for now, until they decide to expand the bill to include these measures as well, then it's time to burn it down). The name of the bill already tells you what it is: Age Attestation. Aka what every piece of software already does before it shows you explicit content.

With the bill in place, every "operating system provider" has to ask you for your age or date of birth during OS setup, which will then be made available to other software via an API. So instead of having to fill in your date of birth or checking "Are you 18+/21+?" boxes, software will use the new API to check instead, saving you the trouble of doing it manually every time for every application that is not made for all ages.

What makes it even better is that the OS does not have to provide your actual age or birth date, the bill has a minimum requirement of just disclosing age-bracket data. So it could work just like age ratings, which also rely on age groups rather than specific years. Also, the bill explicitly forbids asking for more than your age, sharing more than that via the new API and using the entered age data for anything else than the described purpose, like sending it to a server for tracking purposes.

And finally, as mentioned in the beginning, no IDs or anything else as it is with age verification necessary. You can still lie, just enter 1.1.2000 or whatever you want. Nothing changes, except that you will only have to do it once every time you reinstall/reset your OS or buy a new device.

Interesting post from Fedora on this https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/california-age-verification/181968/6

Impossible to enforce. Pro version of Windows allows for local account creation also with Linux too.

Not just Linux, but embedded OS's too. Also, the age verification requirement is a "reasonable attempt", so maybe a prosecutor decides full face scan checks are the minimum "reasonable effort". Will it hold up? Who knows, but can you afford to litigate it?

Note, there are not exceptions for headless installs, or OS's without an account.

This is actually incredible.

1. Buy all the RAM and video cards. RAM and video cards become too expensive for the average person to purchase.
2. Push AI for everything until dependency develops.
3. Sell remote access to computing power. (AI, Streaming video games, remote desktop, etc.)
4. As the "Operating System Provider," collect all of the personal information necessary to validate that each user is telling the truth about their age.

Result: Zero Individual Privacy- Everything you compute is processed by a computer owned by a big corporation with a backdoor built-in for your authoritarian government (which is owned by billionaires) to surveil.

More liberal fascism? No surprise.

Republicans: Full of pedophiles and pedophiles protectors. Hated by every sane person with any kind of conscience.

Democrats: Not on my watch! I can be an asshole too!

This was passed and signed last October. Why is this just hitting the news cycle?

Read the legislation. It's not just operating systems, its applications as well! All applications, there are no exceptions. Everything from GIMP to the EHR your Doctor uses to a custom Open Claude bot on Github. ALL of them.

Gavin Newsom should drop out of politics and stick to shitposting about trump. He's much better at that.

standing on a San Francisco street corner, opening my trench coat revealing 40 USB sticks

Hey kid, wanna buy illegal Linux?

i was going to say, this has MICROSOFT stink all over it, or at least palintir.

Good luck trying to strongarm foss. Forks and backups included. Also making all linux servers illegal. This will totally not be circumvented. Get lost with your law. Let the parents do the parenting instead of overreaching on mass surveillance and trying to end any form of online anonymity.

My Steam account is 21 years old and can now buy alcohol. Does that count?

This will immediately get struck down in court even if it passes, though everyone should make their voices heard in saying this is complete nonsense.

Yet another case of antiquated politicians not understanding technology whatsoever.