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This headline is misleading. The California law requires that the OS store and provide the age bracket. It does not require that any verification take place.

I am not arguing that this is a good idea, but it is simply false that the law requires that Linux 'check kids' IDs before booting'.

The New York law is worse, and should be opposed, but the article only mentions it at the end - and even then, we actually don't know what the verification mechanism would be. I've heard a proposal that "age verification passes" be sold at liqour stores and porno shops, for example, who already seem to do an acceptable job of checking ID without destroying people's privacy.

When we are installing docker repositories on my Rockylinux installation on 100 nodes at once, should we need to manually put an age of the person who is running the script somewhere in the process? Will docker be forced to prevent me from downloading its packages if I do not transmit the age in a header?
Who is paying FOSS devs who will be implementing this? Who is providing them with legal indemnification since they are now apparently subject to fines for a fucking hobby if they do it wrong? Who is making CA the only jurisdiction instead of the myriad contradictory laws all over the place? Who is stepping in to make sure no additional legislation comes across regulating how FOSS has to include backdoors or weaken encryption?
From the article:

> These laws can, and almost certainly will, get worse. New York's proposed Senate Bill S8102A explicitly forbids self-reporting. The state Attorney General will decide how to enforce it. For example, to use Linux, you might need to submit a driver's license.

There is no limit to the power grab. The only acceptable thing to do is to dig the trenches before it gets worse.
Sure the headline is misleading.

But anyone from 10 miles away could see what's going to happen next.

The initial mislead comes from the bill[1] where it's described as "verification" in the name and digest but nowhere in the law itself.

1. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

> It does not require that any verification take place.

Yet

How is it misleading? It says "nanny state vs. Linux", in second paragraph says "several states in the US", then mentions EU and Brazil and California is mentioned first in seventh paragraph. It's not about California.
Age verification passes? Now not only would extra costs be added for users to verify their age, that sounds like an age verification passes is a form factor that could easily be resold to someone else.
One thing will lead to another; if we let them have this now, they'll demand verification next - "closing the loophole", some ambitious politician will claim.
And where is the information about a person's age stored? On their ID. They're just checking ID on the honor system (for now!)
> liqour stores and porno shops, for example, who already seem to do an acceptable job of checking ID without destroying people's privacy

The difference being, of course, that as an adult one can simply refrain from frequenting a liquor store or porno shop if one chooses not to.

It's not practical to refrain from using a computer while participating fully in modern society. The UN has indicated Internet access to be a human right.

Have you heard of the slippery slope? A cornerstone of American political philosophy?

Arguments like this one are why the authoritarian ratchet continues to turn unimpeded over time.

The register is a satirical publication.
Oh really? What else should it snitch on me next?
It's funny that they want to do these checks in a country where even the checks for voting are very iffy.
Hmm the Reg article seems to have missed the reporting on Meta being behind many of the US lobbying groups - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362528
They probably omitted it because it is irrelevant. It says (according to the title of the Reddit post...the body has been removed) Meta is supporting laws to collect more data, which they profit from.

The Register article is about laws that were specifically designed to not give Meta and their ilk anything more than an unverified age bracket. The age reported is whatever the person who set up the account on the computer said to report.

The overwhelming majority of programmers likely cut their teeth on computers as kids. Any attempt to restrict computer access to 18+ will only handicap American programmers in the job market.
Or lots of parents will put their ID into their kid's computer so that they have full access.
Yep, and a disturbing amount of people here want to pull the ladder up behind them.
I guess going forward if you are under 18 and want to learn programming and not be harassed by the government you have to go back to having and offline only computer and stack of o'reilly books?
Soon programming will itself require a license. Only government approved individuals will be able to write code. CPUs will only boot software signed by the government.
How would this hinder a kid learning programming? How would it even be noticeable?
Honestly, that method produces better programmers. Fewer, but better.
Totally inaccurate. The actual technical requirement is to add a self-reported age field to user creation flows, and that the value selected be made available to applications.

But let's just pretend something totally different is happening. It's more exciting that way.

So TempleOS is still illegal?

And well, the law represents an intent.. if self-reporting won't work (obviously won't), then the scenario where PCs end up as locked down as smartphones is not far fetched.

> Jef Spaleta, the Fedora Project leader, isn't sure of the legalities, but he thinks it might be as simple as mapping "uid to usernames and group membership and having a new file in /etc/ that keeps up with age."

Personally I think Linux distros should ignore this law and put a disclaimer on their download sites. I expect OpenBSD will do just that. If Linux decides to make this a requirement, I guess I know what OS I will move to next.

Anyway, Instead of a new file, there are optional fields in /etc/passwd that can be used for "age". These fields can be added as comma separated fields. But, maybe he is thinking of making the new file readable only by root ?

Code is speech, so how on Earth isn't this a First Amendment violation?
This needs to be higher
I'm flagging this for the misleading and incendiary headline.
Have you not ever heard of The Register? It's not a news site, it's intentionally opinionated. And the headline is accurate anyway....
When I was very young I installed OpenSUSE on my underpowered windows PC, it was really a hacker man experience that is engraved in my mind as a core memory. As a child I just thought it was cool to have a new and faster desktop, but as I've grown older I've stayed with Linux for its ideas and principles. Hopefully these laws can be overturned...
I started using Linux when I was in high school. I got my first job years later because I knew my way around Linux much better than other candidates. My OS never tried to track my age to prevent me doing what I wanted. I used to live in one of these places where OSs should report user’s age and I am glad my kid will grow up in one that doesn’t (yet?).
California isn't the whole world, or to put it better, anyone who doesn't have a registered office there has no reason to worry about its laws.

It wouldn't hurt to remind every legislator of that.

We have got to do something about the bad powerful people!
Biased headline indicates misleading contents.
This was literally the example in the book "Weapons of Mass Instruction" by Gatto.
"no actual age verification" is doing a lot of work in these defenses
Many parents will not be proactive in protecting their children online and I think this is a legitimate societal problem. The idea of algorithmic feeds for adult content that descend into increasingly "engaging" depictions is something I find horrifying.

I do not want my kids to experience those "loss of innocence" moments too soon by letting their curiosity lead them into things they are not equipped to confront yet. Hell, I still have those moments as an adult on occasion.

There has to be steps we can take as a society to address these legitimate challenges ourselves so that governments can no longer hide behind them in tinkering with mechanisms for stability and control. Maybe a "sunlight disinfects" approach.

It seems to me that this is a parental responsibility. Understandably, we have shifted increasing amounts of those on to the state. However, there are fireplaces, stoves, drills, and other power tools at home. Is the state responsible for children getting into those?
The CA/CO/IL law where the root user just sets the age of the child's user seems pretty sensible.
I think it’s more that they have no idea that Linux exists, or headless operating systems used on servers and embedded devices. They are trying to legislate based on the experience of having an iPhone.

FOSS (and frankly all systems that don’t use walled garden commercial app stores) should be exempted from this, at a minimum.

This is all just unenforceable theater. Are they going to jail or fine open source developers if they create an OS that doesn't support the requirements? Are they going to do customs checks for OSs? Firewalls?

These kinds of laws just seem like unworkable messes to fool the tech ignorant into thinking they care about kids.

Application side I get, there is an entity there running the application, that can be fined or banned or what have you. But software itself? No.

> The real problem is this hodgepodge of laws; it's the growth of the surveillance state. From voting rights in the United States, facing Trump's Orwellian-named SAVE America Act, to Ring's doggie tracking system that can also be used to follow people, to Trump booting Anthropic to the side for refusing to allow its AI tools to be used for mass surveillance, privacy is on the decline.

I understand it is popular to pick on the current administration, and there are plenty of rightful reasons to, but let's not forget this has been happening way before either of Trump's terms (see: KYC laws). The only difference between then and now is that current administration has essentially taken a mask-off approach, so we get to see this discussion finally brought up by mainstream media outlets.

Be nice to hear Linus' take on it.
when you leave California, please leave the bad ideas there.
Perrhaps they can add ID-checking to the gnu compilers, too? lol