Ridley @ WATCH LYCORECO1d ago
I see so many people making a huge deal out of linux stuff adding support for the california age thing, and I'm like. you know basically every online service has been required to ask for your age since 1998? this is literally just "at account creation, the device owner can set an age field. to whatever they want. and then apps can query that instead of asking themselves."
you can set it to the unix epoch if you want
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago
@rcombs yeah i really don't get it
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago
@rcombs everyone knows young people will lie about their age. this enables them to lie about their age very easily. why the fuck would you put up a fuss about it
Show threadCassandrich1d ago
@whitequark @rcombs I think there are two aspects here. One is the matter of unknown and untrusted folks inserting themselves into projects eagar to comply in advance. This expresses a disempowerment of communities and a surrender of editorial control to a fascist government. From this perspective, it's the statement of values that matters more than any practical effect.
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago
@dalias @rcombs how is it "in advance" if there are laws about it today?
Show threadCassandrich1d ago
@whitequark @rcombs Is that a serious question? There is no law that says that we as the authors of a program have to modify it to behave in a certain way. If there is, it's unconstitutional. Even if it weren't, we wouldn't comply. It's complying in advance if nobody is holding a gun to your head or putting handcuffs on your wrists. Governments do not decide what we can write.
Show threadCassandrich1d ago
@whitequark @rcombs Even as a Linux business not up for civil disobedience, it's complying in advance if you don't go to court, either waiting for the state to take you to court, or preemptively suing to block enforcement. You wait until a court rules that you have to comply to do it (and then you deal with the fact that the upstream FOSS projects won't comply, so you have to maintain your own patches to comply, and you can use that hardship to help your case in court) rather than just agreeing to do it to begin with.
Show threadRidley @ WATCH LYCORECO1d ago
@dalias @whitequark it is absolutely absurd to demand this course of action (at great expense and risk) of a business whose lawyers say "yes this is most likely constitutional, yes you're required to comply"
Show threadRidley @ WATCH LYCORECO
@dalias @whitequark like, even if you *did* intend to take this to court, the correct de-risk is clearly to implement the extremely simple required API in advance, so you can roll it out quickly and not end up in contempt if the court case doesn't go your way
Mar 21 at 3:26amWeb
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago
@rcombs @dalias also it's not "civil disobedience" if your ass is not on the line
Show threadCassandrich1d ago
@rcombs @whitequark No, you don't get contempt for taking reasonable time to comply with a court order.
Show threadRidley @ WATCH LYCORECO1d ago

@dalias @whitequark you may well get the fine if the court rules against you and you'd been out of compliance the entire time without a preliminary injunction in place (and who knows if a court would grant one for this)

this is not risk any business should be expected to take

Show threadspherulitic1h ago
@rcombs @dalias @whitequark is it established legal opinion that the solution is "extremely simple"? Or is that a wildly optimistic guess? Every developer hour spent chasing this poorly defined requirement is an hour wasted from a business perspective. If the government wants to play product owner they need to provide actionable acceptance criteria before I lift a finger to implement.