They are initiated by the same people - the government - and pursue the same goal - mass surveillance. They should 100% be fought against and grouped together.
once vendors are forced to put on hooks to some enforced age verification system, it will creep everywhere like cookie banners which you cannot escape even in Antarctica
When it comes to free software, I don't see what prevents anyone from patching out such undesired "features." This is why free software is more important than ever. Official distributors like System76 may have to comply, in CA at least, but I won't.
technically yes, but if those features have to come, for instance, in all kernel distributions, how many people would you expect to patch and compile their own kernels manually?
let's say no distros would do it because of risk of exposure to massive fines, and you'd have to get patches from dodgy places because regulators keep stamping them out of the mainstream with threats of prosecution
> technically yes, but if those features have to come, for instance, in all kernel distributions
It isn't the kernel's role to verify ages. The whole issue with FOSS is that it isn't even clear which component (of a Linux distribution for example) should be responsible for things such as age verification. No single part is an "operating system" by itself.
of course it's not, but this has been already floated
if we stuck to what makes sense, nothing of this would have been even proposed - making sense is not something legislators are necessarily bound by
and if we're talking of enforceability, plenty of people can be targeted and will be targeted if things follow this path, it's not like the main developers controlling the different systems in Linux - for instance - are anonymous
take for instance System76, they're not even remotely in charge of the OS their computers run, but they know that 1) they may either leave their users with a nerfed connection if age signals are implemented at the browser protocol level, or at the application level and 2) they may be made responsible and liable for every computer they sell without those provisions, like it's going to start happening in Brazil in a few weeks
plenty of people are possible attack vector for governments, and the very threat will cause an effect
does anything of this make sense? no
but it doesn't mean there is no present danger, just because your jurisdiction has not issued concrete threats yet or because you mean you can tell lawmakers you use OSS and therefore their laws don't apply to you
the only thing they need to make "unverified" devices illegal is that the mainstream are all already corralled into "verified" systems, and you'd be effectively marginalised
Right now I'm on a 2021 MacBook Pro, I'm debating whether to upgrade to the new M5 Pro laptops or to wait until next year; so that's 5-6 years. My desktop gets upgraded over time, so it's not really on a "cycle"; it's more that every few years, I may decide to get a more powerful CPU, or more RAM, or a new GPU, or more storage, or whatever else. Though I recently (as in, during the past year) upgraded from an AM4 CPU to an AM5 CPU, so that meant I replaced more than usual; everything other than the GPU, storage, power supply and peripherals. (I switched from ITX to mATX for an extra PCI slot so the case had to go; though it still lives on in the form of a lab PC of sorts, along with my old i7 6700k)
But common among all these replacements is that they're not really planned in detail years before. I may weigh up factors like "I don't really need an upgrade right now" against factors like "the market looks like it'll probably get really shitty later this year", or "I could really really use an upgrade right now" against "but the market is shitty now and we're right before a product launch which will shake things up". But I always react to my current or near-future needs/wants and current or near-future market conditions.
So hearing "the RAM market will be good again in 5 years" is completely irrelevant to me. My decisions are entirely based around how the RAM market is right now and how I believe it will look throughout the year or the next.
So did they raised the ridiculous small "per tool call token limit" when working with MCP servers? This makes Chat useless... I do not care, but my users.
Oh, "you are absolutely right". It was written in Modula-2. I got it mixed up.
But related languages anyway. :-)
Edit:
Yes, I prefer the monochrome display and version too!
Still using my monochrome SM124 monitor with Steinberg Cubase 3.1. It is a work horse. Only my eyes getting worse. Not the screen!! :-D
For legal reasons, all BahnBet users, their devices, and their emotional baggage are hereby classified as legal residents of Schleswig-Holstein, the only German state where gambling is fully permitted.
This is non-negotiable. By creating an account, you have moved to Schleswig-Holstein. Your new postal code is 24103. You now speak rudimentary Danish."
This is a reference to the weird situation that Schleswig Holstein was really the only state that allowed gambling until 2021 (there were exceptions). Every (legal) online gambling platform officially required you to be from Schleswig Holstein, otherwise, you were not permitted to join.
Of course, this went exactly as you'd think. However, since 2021, you can get a gambling license in all of Germany.
Fun fact: Since it's illegal to gamble with a non-licensed provider, using international platforms like polymarket can get you in trouble.
If you need to interact with some things in platform.openai.com, you know it is not months away, it is there already now. I had to go through forms and flows there, so buggy and untested, simply broken. They really eat their own dog food. Interacting with the support, resulted in literally weeks of ping pong between me and AI smoothed replies via email to fix their bugs. Terrible.
My memories are different. Macs were run by media guys for graphics, video and audio. Tech nerds used, sure Windows, DOS, but also Linux already, many types of Unixes, Netware, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST or Falcon. But Macs? No!
I was young but I do remember during the 90's my really nerdy computer/programmer friends being into Apple stuff until around the time Steve Jobs left, then getting into Unixes and eventually messing around with Linux or going back to Apple when they adopted a Unix base for OSX.
My own experience was learning on an old IBM PC at school, then Apple 2s later. Also my dad was a programmer (but maybe less nerdy/more professional) so I got second hand x86 hardware and learned to program on Windows with Visual Basic, Delphi and Visual C++ (since he already had licenses). Eventually I got into Linux in the late 90's.
Maybe "tech nerd" is being interpreted in a specific way that I don't quite follow. Are the multimedia guys with the expensive tech setups not nerdy enough?
"And it turns out there are a couple hundred people already who would like me to continue writing code and sharing it publicly and openly. That at least sustains me roughly on the level of unemployment benefits in European countries. And I hope that this will even slightly increase – I will not have a Silicon Valley level software developer salary, but I’ll have enough money to cover my expenses."
reply