Technology

Like... "This"

My computer, regardless of the OS that it runs, should do my bidding and only my bidding.

If I want to enable or disable something, that should be my prerogative.

I commented in a similar thread and I'll restate it here:

I do support parental controls being an option, and will use the whole Free-Market thing and choose to use an OS that has parental controls for my children -- but I am also happy to see my children evade my restrictions with their knowledge and skills. And, more specifically, these need to be OPT-IN. As a parent, I can create an account and identify it as supervised or give it an age range, and that's all cool. What isn't cool is making me Verify* MY age range in order to create an account on a device I own.

*especially verification that involves giving up my privacy, such as face scan, government ID or similar PII. We used to have laws protecting this data. I've helped build whole systems to ensure that only trained admins had rights to access customer PII.

H.R. 8250 is an attack on freedom to use... everything... It's so vague, and doesn't even describe it's terms the way the California bill does. A Missile developed by Lockheed Martin has an Operating System and I'm certain that if I had one in my hands I could make it run DOOM, thus making it a 'General Purpose Computing Device'.

... Maybe those Doom-on-fridge/toaster people were on to something. Samsung, LG, etc need to quickly evaluate their fucking toasters to ensure they can't run DOOM, or ensure they can verify a user's age before enabling toasting.

I also (dis)like how section 2.A.5.i will require the commission to describe how every operating system will verify a parent or legal guardian's age's within 6 months and then have an effective date of a year. Has anyone involved with writing this bill done software development?! Sure, this sounds simple on paper, but I have a 30+ year plan to actually implement it; because I'm a volunteer open source dev working on my OS in my free time without pay.

Anyone looking at this and thinking it's a good idea, take a moment to think about this: Who has resources to dedicate whole teams to implementing this privacy invasion? It's the big players like Microslop, Apple, Google, and a handful of Enterprise-grade Linux/Unix providers. Anyone else could face financial ruin for distributing their home-grown OS experiment if it gets enough attention and that will prevent new distros or operating systems from being developed, leading to effectively regulatory capture by the existing players. That's not going to end well.