Give me a fucking break. So Cisco is going to release an age verification update to literally millions of devices? How do I install this age verification update on my Nintendo DS, Macintosh IIvx, or my Nokia 110? And who is going to go door to door to verify that all my devices with operating systems have been updated? Is there a bounty for reporting my neighbours or coworkers when they don’t update?
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
156 points (98.1% liked)
Technology
2312 readers
61 users here now
Tech related news and discussion. Link to anything, it doesn't need to be a news article.
Let's keep the politics and business side of things to a minimum.
Rules
No memes
founded 9 months ago
MODERATORS
This is definitely a case of just planting the seed, and then escalating from there. Go as broad as you can, then pair back requirements to get it passed. Once its in law, you complain that youre not able to police is properly to get more powers and have the law expanded. Repeat ad nauseum. Basically ending on full identification needed to do anything on any device.
What I want to know is: in my own haphazard note-to-self text file cribbed from ArchWiki, is it before or after the disk partitioning step that I'm supposed to add an instruction to "email anthraxx my date of birth"?
Or better yet: at what point in the development of my ad hoc tasking system for an ESP32 do I need to stop and go "shit, guess I'd better add a keypad so 12 year olds can self-report their age and safely be prevented from using the 'romance' setting on this lightbulb"?
Do you live in California?
Then my sincere condolences. But you will figure something out.
If not, just ignore this silly stuff.
What a stupid take, California is one of the largest economies in the world. what gets decided in california often leaks out to the rest of the world because companies don't want to have 2 separate products so even if you don't live there you are stuck with it anyway.
Even if it doesn't affect you in anyway you should still worry about it because other states and countries will soon follow if it is left unchallenged.
Shh this guy might figure out how the usa works in another 10 years. Perhaps he will see a movie about it, I have no ideas where those come from, magic freedom land right?
load more comments
(1 replies)
I don't but I roleplayed for the bit.
If it weren't completely, stupidly unenforceable, I might still worry about this idea being exported to the rest of the world though.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Relevant lines from the article:
If you look at the more niche Linux distros, they're run by small teams of enthusiasts who simply don't have the resources to tackle implementing the necessary systems and real-time API — it's just not going to happen. In those cases, as Tom's Hardware notes, their approach is likely to be labelling the OS as not intended for use in California.
And I don't see anyone in the firing line, except perhaps Californian citizens...
Bigger distros will need to add the prompt, and the path of least resistance is to add it upstream.
Would be interesting to see though what would happen if e.g. the Debian project just said: "Naa, thanks, we are fine without". :-)
And I don’t see anyone in the firing line, except perhaps Californian citizens…
Which, what, Californians are gonna be IP/geo logged and blocked by distro websites from clicking the download button?
Oh no! Whatever will I do! torrents
sounds like people trying to make laws to regulate the internet, again, don't have the first damn clue what they're talking about
Always has been.
Let's dispel with this fiction that they don't know what they're doing. They know exactly what they're doing. They're increasing surveillance.
The amount of bootlickers in here who are like "invading your privacy is good actually" are disgusting.
There is literally one comment in any way saying it is good and that is not even the person you pointlessly raged at, who said nothing remotely like that.
In all fairness, one comment saying this is good is one too many.
It certainly doesn't match this commenter's characterization, especially if you read it. This is a perfect example of the binary thinking that happens on Lemmy. If someone disagrees in any way then they are clearly an evil fuck with a string of horrifying views. This erases the ability to even talk about important issues and it makes everyone's life worse. Notably, the person raging at some idea that isn't even present gets all upset for nothing. No one in this thread believes privacy is a bad thing, but to hear them tell it, that's a very popular viewpoint. It's just idiocy.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Can we just make a verification for intelligence before having children and be done with it?
I don't understand why "progressives" are suddenly attaching themselves to this regressive anti porn crusade all of a sudden.
Parent your own kids and leave mine alone. I care more about the worms in my garden than what your kids do on the Internet.
the law is implemented to that it is useful for everyone to claim they are 3. It will be trivial for kids to change their age (via exploits that will spread like wildfire in schools), so it is useless for keeping kids from adult only content.
if you want a useful system you need cryptographic traceability to someone who leagally vouches for ages - this is a complex system that cannot be mades in a year.
Good thing that there will be systems willing to provide false verification of age
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
It's Linux, we can hack it.
Finally, a stock photo that captures exactly how I feel.
I'll say this is a good idea the day Gavin Fucking Newsom sits down with me, follows the Gentoo Handbook installation process from black box shell prompt to full working KDE desktop environment with all the bells and whistles (email, browser, office suite, printer working, etc.), and then explain exactly at which Fucking step the age verification prompt should be at. Fuck.
So will Nintendo just stop selling the Switch 2 in California or actually pay someone to add a prompt and mark those systems specifically for California?
Doesn't the switch already ask for your date of birth on account creation? It seems one of the cases were they don't care, it's already there. I'm not going to factory reset a switch to test, but in don't think you can't even play without at least a local account, but I don't know for sure.
I don't know about the Switch 2, but I've been using my Switch offline since day one without issue. I think you do have to create a local "account", but I don't think it asks for age or anything, just a name and avatar.
Won't need internet any more soon. Or a phone. Fucked up world is not worth living in.
view more: next ›