But wouldn't this type of law drive youth to using more exotic distributions to get around the issue? It's not far fetched to think that kids will just live boot from tails or another distro to visit socials and circumvent this rule. Plus with unlocked pixel bootloaders it would be trivial for them to petition their parents for a pixel, hard reset it, unlock the bootloader, install grapheneos via the web installer, and then be on their way. If parents don't know how to monitor their kids I doubt they'll notice grapheneos not being base android.
What is this bill blocking that kids want so bad that they'd go through the trouble to do that... and lose blue bubbles with their friends?
The ability to receive specifically unsolicited DMs from adult strangers?
Opting in to behavioral tracking?
This bill doesn't block social media for kids... I expect their response to be simply that they keep using social media on their phone the way they already do.
Perhaps I'm just too old and don't use mainstream socials outside of HN, but when I was growing up the very act of knowing I was on a "child" account was reason to break out of it alone. I broke a lot of operating systems that way but also got good at repairing them. Jailbreaking was normal. War driving was normal. Breaking WEP just because you could was normal. Later, watching your neighbors go crazy over the fence as you deauthed their devices from their network was normal. It was just part of being a kid and having fun learning about the world.
Tl;dr: I solved my scam issue by emailing first.last@ebay.com of every executive listed on their website.
Anecdotal, but once I sold a GPU to a buyer (which I knew was working), who reported it as defective. He initiated a return and I accepted, as is part of the normal selling process. I then randomly received a toe ring from Amazon addressed to someone that was not me but at my address (luckily it was the name of my parents' dog, so I held onto the package). The buyer then called ebay and said the return was complete and provided the tracking to show it was delivered to me.
I was made aware of this when I got an email saying that the return was complete and the buyer had been refunded. I called ebay to dispute it, since I hadn't received a package. I looked up the posted tracking number, and it represented a shipment from FL to me (PNW) whereas I sent the gpu to NY. It also said the package was 1 lbs, which would have been impossible because the gpu was listed as over 2 lbs by the manufacturer. I explained this to the nice customer service rep. We agreed the buyer could have relocated in the past week but the weight was unexplainable. She couldn't undo the transaction but escalated my issue. A couple days later I got an email saying my case was closed and ebay was siding with the buyer, so I was out the $400 they paid for the gpu since ebay wouldn't release the funds. I was in shock, but I called usps because I thought I must have been missing something. Usps takes pictures of all mail, and the nice man on the phone that called me back looked up the package and described it to me. I then realized it was the nose ring Amazon shipped to me that I thought was a weird Halloween joke from my parents related to their dog. I then emailed every first.last@ebay.com explaining my issue, stating that I, as a seller, could no longer take on the risk of selling on ebay because I had no protection in the case of an obvious scam. The next day I got a call from a secretary, and I explained everything to her, including that, had this been my work, my president would have called me and others into her office and played the recording of this phone call, concluding with, "Go fix this and make sure it can't happen again."
I sold a Mavic 2 Pro drone with 5 batteries. The whole process was a mess. Scammer initially complained that it didn't come with a CrystalSky tablet that was in one picture (that was only added AFTER after he had bid already and asked to see Flight Logs, and was explicitly disclaimed as not being a part of the package, nor was it in the receipts I sent the buyer). After pointing out those details, silence.
Then, three weeks later:
"The batteries don't work. I want a refund."
"Batteries? Any of them? All of them?"
"All of them, none work. I want a refund."
Note that two of the batteries were less than 4 months old, still in warranty.
He then stated he wanted a refund of $800. For five brand-new batteries, that would only be $670.
No evidence was shown, despite multiple requests (like a video of a battery on a charger, or on the drone, failing to power up). I stated I'd like to get the original batteries back, as at least I'd be able to get them replaced under warranty or possibly repaired and recoup some of my money (I was skeptical there was -any- issue, but still, good faith). He "happily" agreed. I asked him to send me a message on eBay (so it was tracked and not avoiding their system) acknowledging that offering a partial refund was contingent on his sending me the batteries back and that he accepts me disputing the refund if not.
He sends a message indicating all of the above.
Refund is sent (for about $700, to include his return shipping costs).
Thirty-five minutes later, I get a message, "USPS says they don't ship damaged batteries, so I will not be returning them". (35 minutes? So what, you were just sitting around waiting for the refund, and then the very moment I sent the money, you jumped in your car, got to the post office, had this discussion, got home, and were able to send me this message? When your home address shows you about 15 minutes from the nearest post office?)
I then suggest we meet in person to exchange them (I live a few hours away, not convenient, but still, $700...). He umms and ahhs, "How will I be able to prove that I gave them to you in person?". I suggest we do it in a police station and point out that his local PD even welcomes people to use their lobby for CL, etc. on their website. More umms and ahhs. "I need to contact eBay support to see if they allow this." I point him to eBay's specific FAQ page describing exactly this and how they recommend doing in person sales, and refunds, documentation thereof, and how they support it. But he ignores that and says, "I never heard back from eBay support, so I'm not sure what to do". I point this page out again, and he goes silent.
I opened a dispute. No evidence was provided for damage or faulty goods, referenced the multiple requests for video, or of anything.) Multiple instances of the buyer trying to show something was problematic with the listing, not abiding by the agreement and refusing/avoiding any method of returning damaged items.
Overnight, no further inquiries.
"We have closed your dispute. Based on our review, the buyer is entitled to keep the partial refund for damage. He is also not required to return the damaged items".
So he ended up with a Mavic 2 Pro, with less than 20 hours flight time, 5 batteries, for in the order of $950, all told.
I still contest that I should be able to solder together a basic computer in my garage and communicate with the internet so long as I follow the communication standards. There is never a reason to outlaw general purpose computing.
A lot of things get deprecated on the internet. You can shout in SSL and nobody will answer back.
Tying any solution to specific companies is the major problem. Because even if the rest of the age verification scheme is well thought out in the user's interest, tying it to Apple and Google not only forces people's dependency on foreign private companies, it also invalidates any pretense of privacy.
Even so, they likely aren't recording everything your eyes see and for how long they linger. They likely aren't recording your entire traversal through the venue, what you do, what you say, what times you go there, from where you connect, etc. Simply being at a public place is one data point. A full history of your entire interaction is a magnitude different.
Can't you just enroll your kid's devices in your home corporate and leverage MDM to force the network to call through your proxy, which denies or downgrades all ECH and then can actively filter to an allowlist or screen the material through your personal or contracted LLM?
It took me about an hour. I sat down, read the docs, installed it via the web installer, then spent the next 45 min deciding how I wanted to segment separate profiles for play services.
Nowadays it seems a lot easier because there seems to be a separate profile isolater you can run in the main profile, which I would choose if I was installing today.
The only hiccup I've had is that sometimes group messages don't send correctly and send individual messages to everyone, but I think that's because I'm on a secondary profile, and it only happens when the phone is receiving a bunch of messages all at once while I try to send to the same group. But I deny network access to my installed swype keyboard, so it may have something to do with that too.
I've been running this for years, since the Pixel 7 came out, which I'm still using.
I love it. I can confidently go through customs knowing that if they yank my phone during some weird checkpoint and try to celbrite it, I'm as secure as can be.
I was asking the Google llm search about why iterative games don't reach their competitive equilibrium the round after revealing the theory. In my example, it was the "guess 2/3 the average game", and I asked it why my class didn't immediately converge to zero after it was explained. The llm said people are lazy and I have autism because I couldn't identify or understand the stopping criteria used by my classmates. I'm still confused.
But shouldn't the extension of logic be the same in either case, even if there is some premature convergence criteria? I have yet to see someone say age verification is okay because the gov ensure X is the maximum use of the tech. If anything, Public Choice Theory compels the grant that the gov will misuse the data given enough time.
Hm, if I query the LLM it tells me about cognitive hierarchy theory, and the Keynesian beauty contest. But my point is, humans are not perfectly rational beings, and sometimes for a reason. (Like assuming that there is more uncertainty than the stated rules imply. Or altruistic behaviour that benefits the group as a whole. And we also have a default to imitate each other, see Joseph Henrich's 2016 Book.) Some of those defaults are culturally learned and leak into pure mathematical games (see e.g. the ultimatum game).
> I vented to one of those call-center people trying to sell me a cheaper power utility for the Nth time, and told her to find another job or something like that
I threaten to kill and rape them all the time, but that usually doesn't do much.
I've found that politely asking them to kill themselves elicits much more engagement, and I hope it at least implants some lasting memory.
I'd argue the proper solution here is backup, as a hdd could die at anytime and leave you with approximately the same outcome. While encryption adds some overhead and increases the surface area for failure, it ultimately requires the same backup solution as anything else.
