It's important to understand that "age verification" schemes being passed by states, ostensibly to "protect the children", won't do that and will bring about incredible abuses.

In order to age verify children, obviously EVERYBODY of any age must be verified, for every account, under every name or pseudonym, ultimately on every site no matter how public or private the topic, and before downloading any apps.

Children will find ways to work around this. They'll use the accounts of adults, which will be openly traded. But because these age verification systems must by definition be based on government IDs, the verification process creates a linkage between your account names and your actual identity, subjecting you to all manner of leaked personal information, government abuses (think MAGA in charge), and worse. Firms will claim their systems either don't keep this data or can't be abused. History strongly suggests otherwise, and when courts step in, those firms will have to do what the courts say, often in secret, when it comes to collecting data.

Age verification is in actuality a massive Chinese-style Internet identity tracking project -- nothing less -- and there are many politicians in the U.S. who look with envy at how China controls their Internet and keeps their Internet users under police state controls.

Ok I’m doin the thread I said I wanted to do last week. (feel free to mute unless you enjoy a little second-hand drama as a Monday morning treat)

Attn #devrel people! Are you job hunting? Does this pic of search results look familiar? Have you ever seen a bunch of job postings like this from Canonical and thought “gee I should apply to one of these”?

I’m here to tell you:

IT’S A TRAP! 🧵

In search of a “Zero Toil” HomeLab: Immutable Linux, ZFS, WatchTower and Keel

👆 Blogged about my #HomeLab #fcos #immutableLinux #zfs

https://blog.gripdev.xyz/2024/03/16/in-search-of-a-zero-toil-homelab-with-immutable-linux/

I've been a TikTok user for about 5 years. I've seen things change a lot on there. But, also, I know what I've seen is related to how their algorithm's model of my interests has changed. Their algorithm isn't a magic oracle, but I do think they've managed to implement something interesting.

Your mileage will vary. But, when I see folks dismiss the service as "that place where the kids do their little dances", those folks are telling me they have no idea what's going on with TikTok. (That, or maybe they're just faving every dancing kid they see?)

I haven't seen a teen dance on there in probably 3-4 years. I see cats & crows & critters, queer jokes, drag acts, nerd fandom stuff, political commentary, general life-in-america commentary, current news, ADHD & autism content - all stuff I'm interested in care about and it's all served up more reliably than on any other communications channel.

The main thing TikTok themselves seem to inject are incessant attempts to make me directly buy something - which, I mean, seems more honest than weird advertising.

I do have to work hard to keep the tinfoil hat from settling on my head, though. Maybe I'm soaking in "Chinese propaganda" so thick I don't perceive it? But it seems really suspect that my government's been able to turn on a dime so fast with this thing of all things.

My real tinfoil-hat notion brewing is that all "China" (or insert random adversary here) has to do to destabilize America is just let us talk about how fucked up shit is - they don't really have to nudge us at all.

Just published a new model. This is a remix of a remix of a remix of a remix of an Ikea clock... really!

This model adds both mounting hardware AND new software for the "Improved Wandering Hour Clock" model. If you make this, you'll have one of the most impressive clocks I've ever seen. The hours on the face fly around in a twisty pattern, and the clock controlled by an ESP32 via a built-in web server. My changes are the smallest part, but I'm still proud of my work.

The clock in motion: https://www.printables.com/model/327198-improved-wandering-hour-clock

My changes:
https://www.printables.com/model/688154-mounting-plate-and-enclosure-for-wandering-hour-cl

@3dprinting #3dprinting #clock #ikea #printables

A reminder: When that major security bug shows up in one of your dependencies, and you need to ship a fix right now, that's not the time to discover you're 3 years and 6 API-breaking changes behind the version that has the fix.

Upgrade your dependencies when you don't *have* to. That way, when it is critical, it will be fast and low-risk.

This is *especially* true about that risky upgrade you've been avoiding. Take the hit now when you can schedule it. Don't let others schedule it for you.

In hindsight, I think the most powerful thing about quote tweets was that you could highlight behaviors and stances that were unacceptable, and at-scale that created a sense of culture.

There are quite a few posts aggressively missing my point I'd love to quote-boost, but since I can't do that here, I can only tackle things one at a time as replies. And then the cross-instance nature means many won't see that!

So that's fun.