Yep, which from a system setup point of view makes a lot of sense. I’m glad law makers are thinking about computer system design even if the laws aren’t perfect out the gate. At least in this instance it isn’t some covert data collection exercise!

To be honest I haven’t read the law in detail, but I doubt they’ve thought about things like automation, share accounts and other sysops concerns but it’s better than the past 30 years where lawmakers treat digital and the internet like some mystical black box that’ll sort itself out.

A bunch of nerds who only cared about perfection.

That way the idea can’t be corrupted cause a nerd’s obsession is more powerful than anything.

“Age verification” is a big umbrella. Claiming that merely checking an entered birth date is the equivalent of uploading an ID is disingenuous and just fishing for clicks.

Yes, there are tangible connections to other concerning privacy violations in this space… but come on. Steam asks you for your birth date before you watch an R18+ game trailer. I’ve been lying on that form for over twenty years, since before I was 18.

Getting upset over this feels like the beginning of getting your panties twisted over everything. “Oh no, someone pressed a button on a keyboard, that’s how nukes are fired!”

This feels like a non issue.

Cries upside down (Australian)

Anyone else getting Old El Paso vibes from the colour scheme?

I came here to say something similar. It’s not merely tech that’s to blame but the kind of tech we have today. Kids are being raised to be consumers of tech and tech services. They don’t have basic fundamentals that millenials had to learn to access porn on dialup.

I’m guessing he grabbed a pussy and pulled it out Mortal Kombat style.

I have been thinking this for some time, why not just have a certified burner phone or tablet and then a free phone as your main?

Realistically most of us have to install shitty insecure apps to survive in this modern world, but that doesn’t mean all our personal data and stuff has to be on the same device.

For the cost of one brand new top model phone, you could probably get a low-mid certified device and a decent Fairphone or equivcalent.

So you’re saying aliens are treating Earth the way wealthy countries treat poorer countries…

Makes more sense to me than the truth that pedophiles are in charge and so greedy for more wealth they’d risk everything they own and the planet with it to gain some intangible number on paper!

Plot twist: Trump outs all the worlds billionaires as aliens. It turns out that’s why there like that.

Hell yeah bro.

MAGA are busy creating and watching Child Sexual Abuse Material on Elon Musks X.

I wish it were merely that. I think Y Combinator, and the culture it promotes, is part of a much deeper problem in the IT industry: digital colonisation (or astroturfing, if you will). Vast amounts of capital are used to blitzkrieg entire markets, not to build better services but to erase alternatives and own the only platform.

That’s how companies like Uber Eats gained dominance. They didn’t become market leaders by being better, they swung enormous capital at every problem, undercut local business until they were driven out, then jacked up prices and degraded service once competition was gone. Uber Eats is just one example of this pattern.

This astroturfing phenomenon has spread everywhere: business directories, event planning, community platforms, even the ways people in a local area connect and share prosperity. What looks like “innovation” is often just foreign investors capital overwhelming local ecosystems that were working just fine.

Google is the clearest case study. They gave us genuinely useful tools, Gmail, Maps, Android, and wrapped it all in “Don’t be evil.” Once everyone was locked in, the mask was removed. Surveillance, enclosure, rent-seeking, supporting a fascist government regime. The evil didn’t suddenly appear, it was always there. That’s where the initial capital came from in the first place!

Y Combinator didn’t invent this, but it systematized it: scale first, destroy competition, extract later. The startup business model of tech bros seeking capital was exported overseas and countless idiots today try to ape it at fake tech conferences that are about seeking investor funding, not innovation or a brighter future. The damage isn’t just economic, it’s cultural and social, and it hollowed out entire local and digital communities in the process.

Oh no, exploitative capitalists don’t wanna fuck over Canadians. Must suck for them…

In 2008, Iron Man had just come out and blown everyone’s minds. iPhones were still quite new, so was Facebook. Obama got elected and everyone was excited by the first black president, even here in Australia.

The worst part is all our data is stored on American servers run by megacorpos. ID information scanned by venue terminals is one, but even private health records and sensitive government documents are being chucked into Amazon S3, Azure/OneDrive and Dropbox.

The government should be prioritising secure, independent digital infrastructure but they’re too busy giving our tax dollars to foreign consulting firms so they can build bad websites.

Given America’s obvious advantages with the scale of its military resources, I thought that the fight would be easy too, but after thinking about it I’m not so sure. War is not simply a matter of having advanced weapons and lots of units.

Considering how retarded Trump’s administration is and how demoralised the most professional and loyal military personnel are, combined with civil unrest domestically… I don’t think Trump can execute a successful invasion of another country without losing everything. More competent administrations (barely more*) have started wars and it cost them dearly in the ballot box.

You can have the best jets and ships and missiles, but if the personnel operating them think you are a pedophile and a traitor, giving illegal orders through a compromised chain of command… how effective do you think they will be in a theater of war?

Let’s hope we never find out.