3 ms·
The government really shouldn't be telling us how/what we can compute at all. But on this specific point - It's a bellwether. They're doing this to lay the gro
by ball_of_lint 7mo ago
The government really shouldn't be telling us how/what we can compute at all.
But on this specific point - It's a bellwether. They're doing this to lay the groundwork and test the waters for compulsory identification and/or age verification. Getting MacOS and Windows and Linux and etc to implement this WILL be used as evidence that compulsory identity verification for computer use is legally workable.
- ball_of_lint 7mo agoAnd if the implications of that aren't clear - that would either be unenforceable or be in effect a government rootkit+DRM on every device.
- charcircuit 7mo ago>The government really shouldn't be telling us how/what we can compute at all. You could say the same thing about restaurants. "The government really shouldn't be telling us how/what we can cook at all." When you are selling a product to the public, that is something that people have decided the government can regulate to reduce the harms of such products.
- hellojesus 7mo agoWhat if you aren't selling a product, like open source linux distros?
- labcomputer 7mo agoLast time I checked, health code regulations still apply to kitchens serving homeless people for free.
- kortilla 7mo agoThey don’t apply to recipes nor what you make in your home, which is what open source operating systems are equivalent to.
- ball_of_lint 7mo agoI think it's a bit more analogous to the government telling you what you can cook in your own kitchen. Sure I might have some friends over, maybe even some strangers, but it would be quite overbearing to hold my personal kitchen to the same standard as a restaurant. And there's not really a clear+observable difference between the two on the internet. The biggest difference between the NYT and my cousin's blog is scale, which is pretty hard to know up front - HN itself frequently DDOSes tiny websites.