Linux

I guess Linux distros are about to be banned in Cali.

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.

I, and many others, will be born on 1/1/2000 at 0:00 'clock.

Good fucking thing Linux is kernel

what are they they gonna do against it?

What the absolute fuck are these people doing!? An OS does not require age verification for anything but totalitarian intents. Fuck this timeline.

So, umm, what city is always the same time zone as California, but not in California?

This is why I torrent my ISOs

I forgot the name, but I saw a BSD distro state that they are going to block users in California when this law gets put into place. I hope that more OSs do the same. Especially Windows, it could be devastating to California's economy and make them, along with other states and countries, reconsider their decisions on age verification.

I don't live in California but I'm interested in seeing if there are any other OSs that will be blocking California users. I'm probably fine to just continue using Linux Mint but I'm open to trying other distros/OSs in order to participate in this protest if Linux Mint doesn't.

Doesn't even make sense. Virtually all Linux distros can function completely offline. How do you do age verification completely offline? Classic politician who doesn't understand tech trying to look like they're doing something to save the kids.

In essence, while the bill doesn't seem to require the most egregious forms of age verification (face scans or similar), it does require OS providers to collect age verification of some form at the account/user creation stage—and to be able to pass a segmented version of that information to outside developers upon request.

So you just fake a date and call it a day… thank you Cali…

For real though I can’t imagine the sysadmin and docker nightmares that arise from having to completely overhaul your account orchestration scripts to input a garbage birthday.

I don’t think anyone thought of the fact that an account on an OS doesn’t always correspond to a human.

"...operating system providers...", what the fuck does that mean.?

Please explain to a complete doofus how can someone enforce this?

Cant they just download any linux distro from millions of different places and install them on any machine, even offline?

Gotta love it when people who have no understanding of how Linux works writes laws about how Linux should work...

Gavin Newsom is such a fucking tool.

I don't care if there is a package called gnome-age-verification distributed in my linux distro and would prefer it if it means fewer sites with facial biometric tests. If I have concerns about the age verification, then I should be able to type:

sudo dnf remove gnome-age-verification

California probably wants it in linux distros so that linux can't be a justification for big tech still demanding Orwellian stuff in every website (ie "but what about the children who use linux? we need to protect them with Persona too!")

But where would it stop? The hell version of this would be kernel-level-approved-AI-agent-checks, with an OS required to have an approved AI agent with a validated third party key that reports to the government with required telemetry and the kernel makes sure the OS won't run without the approved AI and then makes illegal any scripts for unapproved kernel code modification. And post-Tornado cash, we know code is unfortunately not protected US speech.

Define "Operating System"...

I guess my washing machine & car are also going to be "not for use in California."

Those Cisco switches & Broadcom DSLAMs would be tricky too ... I guess the internet's "not for use in California."

And the air-gapped power station control system? "not for use in California."

It is annoying that these laws come in (I'm also including magical thinking about encryprion backdoors for "the good guys") without any form of real-world, practical assessment. Complete waste of tax payers money and undue stress for everyone.

FFS.

of all the shit out there, that's what needed attention?!

How will this affect enterprise systems with remote installs or ramdisks?

They uh do realize busybox and BSD underpins nearly everyfuckingthing right? Including network stacks. So fucking stupid.

So define Operating System. Are embedded systems Operating Systems? Coz that's going to cast a rather wide net.

env USE=-fascism emerge -ave world

All this age verification crap. Where is the fucking parents? I get that big tech has some responsability in all this. But how about we just make the responsible choice, of not letting a 8 year old near tiktok forinstance? Oh, it is just another excuse for private survailance you say? I see, I see...

Sorry but I don't think the article text backs up the title?

The claim is that they have to enforce age verification, but the quoted law says:

Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.

Doesn't this just mean it needs to ask for an age at setup, so e.g. parents can set it up with an age and they can automatically be restricted?

I don't see anywhere actual verification is required, if you're setting it up yourself then just lie?

No one is going to enforce this. It's political theater, and will in no way protect children.