The war on general purpose computing.
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
65 points (95.8% liked)
Technology
81710 readers
3062 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
We don't want kids downloading bad stuff.
Then parents should keep an eye on their kids. Or just don't give them full on access to the computer.
I hate that politicians keep trying to invent technology to do a parents job.
"We care so much about the children!"
Meanwhile: Pedophiles? Is ok. Climate Change? Hoax. Abortion? Is evil. School shootings? Unavoidable. Child labor? Can boost the economy. Also don't forget the army is recruiting, the meat grinder needs feeding.
I think it's absolutely obvious the USA government gives zero shit about kids. They are only being use as laverage just like in any dysfunctional family.
But... In your example about abortion, it would be evil because its killing unborn babies (aka children), so you kind of help their point.
Everything else is wrong though with pedo, climate change, etc.
Blanket statements about abortions are wrong I agree. But banning abortion altogether actually hurts children. It increases the number of dysfunctional families. It encourages dispair and hurts mothers more than it needs to.
Abortions with rules and regulation is a net positive for humanity and children as proven in pretty much every developped country.
As a society let's look after children that are alive before we worry about 3 weeks old fetuses. Let's save the mothers when possible and allow abortion to be a virtious mean to save lives.
Iirc California had a similar proposal to this. I actually think it's not a terrible idea at the core. It's basically an API for parental controls. You set up a device (or account on a device) and say "this is a device for a kid" and that gets used for everything. It actually makes a lot of sense to do something in that direction. Part of the reason people are convinced something needs to be done is because managing parental controls across the different myriad services and apps is a labyrinth that tech savvy parents can barely navigate, and less savvy parents don't stand a chance.
You know it's a bad idea because it's literally what Mark Zuckerberg suggested in court the other day.
How will they know no one else is using the device? Kids use their parents devices and tablets all the time.
It's a backdoor to a national digital ID scheme.
Obviously every device will be required to have both
- An always on camera for facial recoog, recounting of wrinkles using AI
2.Always on microphone for voice age analysis through stress levels using AI
- Running the only safe and super duper secure operating system Microsoft AI.
If you don't have all three it's an automatic 3 strikes felony offense and you're sent straight to labor camps for the rest of your existence no AI needed (silver lining right? Riiiight)
Duh.
holy fuck. the stupidity. it hurts.
Before I go full tin foil hat on this theory, I want to know how they plan on making it so the signal is sent client side without the client being able to fake the signal.
Like, this sounds like something that any type of OS that allows you to install a program will be able to bypass quite easily either by always sending the adult signal or never sending the adult signal
Like reading the bill, they explicitly forbid any type of personally identifying information being transferred. It sounds like it's just a DOB check and if you say you are > 13 or whatever age they have it as it sends a signal.
I'm happy it isn't allowed to send PII but like at the same time, I feel like just having websites put an age check prompt up does the same thing
So… you know how Battlefield 6 requires Secure Boot and TPM enabled, which just so happens to mean you can only use Windows 11? Yeah, they’ve been priming it for a while. Soon they’ll mandate that the browsers have hooks than can read the attestation of the system like Google’s Safety system on Android, and then sites won’t even load if it doesn’t pass.
Next they’ll want you to have a license to program (without AI)
Just laugh and move on. It’s not going to happen.
These people have no idea what they’re talking about. They think that the developers of four hundred Linux distros, FreeDOS, Haiku, *nix, the BSDs, are even going to bother trying. Then you have industrial boxen running obsolete operating systems, routers, all the network devices that run the internet.
EDIT: and then every application that runs on every platform also needs to be updated. Like that’s going to happen.
If they really cared about the children, they would just physically cut the cables at the Colorado border. That’s the only way that any sort of access control can be enforced.
EDIT: and then every application that runs on every platform also needs to be updated. Like that’s going to happen.
No, they're wanting to target at the OS level and i doubt they know or care about linux.