I have never destroyed someone else’s property.

I have absolutely fantasized about how I could pull off a flaming arrow, covert flagpole sabatoge, spray paint over cameras or signage, and similar for places that are so overly racist or evil.

I don’t think I’ll ever do it, since I’m more lawful neutral than chaotic good, but I value the people who are.

For a decade or two now, it’s been pretty much assumed that everyone has an internet-connected, camera-equipped, browser-capable device in their pocket. Restaurants, banks, hospitals, employers and even government offices use QR codes and websites to get you to their menus, forms or services.

If ID is being tied to my mobile spy device, then I need my mobile spy device to be a right and not a luxury. $40-50 for a few years of validity, internet access provided at no cost, even if slow. I can have my luxury phone be where I’m ‘anonymous’, but I want the government to subsidize the mobile spy device if it’s a mandatory expense. Even cheap phones cost a lot of money.

To be clear, I don’t want ID tied to my phone, but it’s gotten harder to exist without one, so it should be something we have access to with minimal friction.

Add food, water and shelter to that list, but you can’t ask for them without a web browser.

I’m (barely) ashamed to admit that that one also captivated my attention.

I zoomed in to see where Rodney was looking, but the image was too blurry. (zoomed in on HIS face)

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I really hate how media gladly reused this label.

Antifa, pronounced ant-tea-fuh, allowed it to be disconnected from the actual words it was shortened from, and then used as a boogieman.

We all know there is no central antifa command center, headquarters, or organization. We are “antifa” because we are anti fascism.

As you say, you can label yourself, but you can also label yourself by your enemies.

The anti-fascists are Trump’s enemies, therefore…

What have you done!? You can’t just speak the deep truths like that!

Many people with passports didn’t get the “RealID” because the Passport always usurped it.

That’s a really good point. I have a “RealID”, which is just a way to say that I showed my passport at a DMV; but I also had to jump an extra hurdle to get that star.

If you have a passport right now and don’t have your license with a star, you should do so.

I obviously carry my driver’s license with me everywhere, but when doing things like air travel or interacting with federal processes, I bring my passport since, to me, the federal document supersedes the state document stating federal was checked.

The dystopian scenario is that the federal side can revoke your document and, if you haven’t already been validated, you no longer can validate your federal status; and that federal status can be required to vote or travel.

“Your passport is no longer valid because of <reason>” + You need a RealID to vote now = people who can’t vote because the government doesn’t like them and can invent a reason to invalidate a passport.

I’d say have both: If you don’t have a passport, get one; if you don’t have a star on your state driver’s license or ID card, get one.

I have a steam deck, and love using the device in handheld mode due to the trackpads. But I also like a bigger screen and prefer to play it docked to my TV.

When doing that, I miss the track pads and their value as a precise input or macro pad. There are some games that I have to play handheld because a controller doesn’t give me enough options.

I didn’t buy a steam controller yet, but it’s absolutely on my wishlist for when I can justify it. Waiting on my old PS4 controller to bite the dust. Its trackpad is close, but not as good.

I think in a decade, we will see the Steam Controller trackpads redefining the default controller the way joysticks and bumpers/triggers did.

I hear what you’re saying, but counterpoint:

I’d prefer Steam’s helpdesk staff were paid more, and their janitors, and their contractors, and anyone else involved in making that business work. Gabe doesn’t NEED a new yacht. Some of the people working for him do NEED healthcare.

Gabe is definitely on the not-a-monster side of the billionaire spectrum, but you don’t get that much money with purely your output. You get lucky and have a good idea at the right time, inherit, or rent-seek. Two of those are stupid reasons to have immense wealth, and I don’t think getting lucky is worth the vast gulf between billionaire and struggling-to-get-by.

I think if we could have a wealth cap… say 10 billion right now, an absurd sum, where it’s almost impossible to even spend it all… and after you pass that amount you get fed to a wood chipper; then we would see a lot fewer billionaires and a better world.

My wife is into Tarot and we have others around us that will read (I guess… casually?).

I’m not into them as a real future-telling tool, but I absolutely believe in them as a way to guide understanding of your own thoughts.

When I was growing up, there was a way to solve a simple yes/no or a/b question you couldn’t decide by flipping a coin. Heads, you go A; Tails, you go B. If, upon the coin being revealed, you are disappointed or feel negatively then the other answer was the one you actually wanted, even if it wasn’t surface thoughts, and that gave you more insight.

Tarot fills a similar need, but is much more broad or vague. Ask “them” about a question and get a random set of extra questions: Does the Tower mean your decision is bad, or just will result in significant change, which could be good but shake stuff up; high Pentacles? Sure, maybe it’s worth money to change jobs, but what if it comes with a ton of extra stress.

When read by another, The reader can also prompt you to be clear about your desires or fears, and the cards are a good tool for opening up.

As a skeptic, Nah. As an untrained therapist, Yah: “How does that make you feel?”

I was about to reply that you forgot your /s, but then I refreshed my browser tab.

Like… there are multiple documented cases of sycophantic llms confirming people’s delusions. ‘ai psychosis’ is just a short way of saying the AI is a non-funny-improv-comedian and will always “yes and” your prompt.

prompt: “I feel bad and think I need to kill myself”

response: “You’re totally right, here’s some help in how to do that…”

prompt: “I have this great idea: If we eat broken glass, we’ll be healthier”

response: “Absolutely. Glass is made out of silicon dioxide, which has some health benefits if consumed in small amounts.”

prompt: “You told me to see a doctor, but I don’t want to”

response: “I’m sorry, you’re right. You don’t need to see a doctor. Your chest pain is perfectly normal.”

My examples are more physical things instead of mental because the consequence is more clear, but the same issue exists for mental health.

Using an AI for therapy or medical advice is a stupid, dumb, very bad idea. It will at best magnify problems.

Suggesting that disabled or impoverished people use it because they can’t access actual mental healthcare seems equivalent to eugenics to me.

the sad thing is, it’s the best option a lot of people have

That I will agree with. Maybe we should spend a small fraction of the money going into data centers on providing healthcare instead.

Who could have predicted this!?

Not an LLM, that’s for sure. Maybe all the people screaming about this exact scenario, though.

I’m the rube.

I’ve been privileged to have enough money that I didn’t need to repair my stuff when it breaks. I’ll just buy a new one. I’m generally talking big devices like house appliances and cars and I will still repair them: I.e replacing a gasket on my clothes washing machine, general maintenance on cars like oil, belts, etc. I’m not a monster.

But when the maintenance cost became similar to just replacing the device outright, I’d just buy a new device. Hey, upgrades are fun.

Until a few years ago.

Modern devices are just absolute shit: They spy on you, requiring internet access for a fucking dishwasher to function; Your car might now have a remote disable feature, or cameras that tattle if you drive while looking tired; They are made of the cheapest materials and designed to fail to force you to get the newer model.

I know this was a thing a while ago, but I’ve become more aware of it recently, and I’m worried that I might have some of the last pieces of non-smart spy-tech that I can easily get.

In 2010, I wanted a 2015 car with bluetooth, keyless entry and lane assist kinds of features.

In 2026, I want a 2015-era thing, if not one from before then.

My father has a fridge in his garage that has been mostly used for storing left-overs for ages. That fridge was the one I scribbled on with a marker when I was a tiny kiddo. I’m in my 40s. How long has your fridge existed?

I’m now spending more time learning how to maintain my stuff so that my non-internet-connected fridge lasts me until after the apocalypse.

And everyone who cried out a warning at the first step was ignored.

I wanted a Tesla when it was the upstart ‘we can make a viable EV’ brand.

I don’t judge anyone in a Tesla “car”, since I was only enough money away from buying one and thinking I was being environmentally conscious and an early adopter supporting the future. And that time was simpler, when the fascism and technocracy was still hidden in general.

Cyber trucks, though… By that point, it was clear what you would be supporting.

And the stupidest part of this is the ‘omg my IP’ angle from a publisher.

You’ve destroyed this game because it’s not economically viable for you, and therefore the IP of how the server-side operates has no value; these are no longer secrets worth protecting.

If someone else is willing to host it at their cost then the only thing that can do is bolster the franchise. When a niche game has a devoted following that’s willing to build infrastructure to keep playing together, then you know it was a management fuck-up and not a game one that killed it.

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.

Just to be clear: symptoms are part of a disease.

Trump is a symptom and also part of the disease. Is there more to the disease than just trump? yes. There are kind of a lot of parts of this disease and they include effectively all of the current Cabinet, House, Senate and Judiciary. Some of those symptoms are democratic and, while I consider many of these democrats to be personally accountable for the issues we face, I also hold that the system is the real problem.

The existing system is the disease and, while we made it over 200 years, I think about the phrase ‘a more perfect union’ in that a perfect union is a goal, but was not a guarantee and bad actors will find loopholes and vulnerabilities.

We tried to get rid of kings; and did for a time, but eventually replaced them with technocrats.

There’s only a handful of them, and a LOT of us. Let’s aim for the next more perfect union and ditch these modern kings.

Edit 2, coming back later with more thoughts:

The real difference is that Attestation, or lack thereof, puts any legal issue on the user who claimed to be something they were not, whereas Verification will put the onus on the OS developer, API developer, app developer and anyone else in the chain, which is just insane.

Parent walks in on kid watching porn? That’s not the fucking OS developer’s fault, and needs to be handled inside the household and not in court, if at all. I could have a whole conversation about what I fear that my son might find online, and it’s not PornHub, it’s Joe Rogan or similar “influencers” and grifters.

Whole tangent into “protecting the children”:

In a sane, non-fascist surveillance-state world, this would be called parental controls, and be something opted-into instead of forced – and it used to be a thing. I’m all for an OS that has the ability to have supervising user with parental controls, and will chose to install those on my kid’s devices. My son has a phone that doesn’t have unrestricted access to the internet because he’s a pre-teen and is still developing the ability to discern reality from propaganda. He also has a Nintendo Switch with screen time and game limits so that he can play, but can’t play ALL the time and can only play things I’ve approved (As of like 2020, hes gotten older and I’ve removed most restrictions – hooray growth!).

He hates the restrictions, but that’s tough stuff for him because he can text his friends to coordinate an online game session, call me if he gets in trouble, map his way home, calculate pi, etc, which I couldn’t do in my pre-teen years before pocket computers. I think it’s OK for there to be options for parents to manage their kid’s digital existences and, critically, I think it’s OK when my son escapes my borders through skills he learned. When he installs his first VPN on his phone, I’ll be so proud.

It was a rite of passage when we learned how to get a terminal in an ancient MacOS, or use notepad to launch a program like a browser on a school computer. These guardrails will always fail and the only way to solve them is human to human conversation.

Not Legislation. Call your Representatives (And Senators if this or something like it escapes the House) and tell them this shit is not acceptable.

There is some nuance to the language, and there might be litigation to follow; but age attestation and age verification are wildly different things:

Age attestation is just providing a birthday, like many sites such as steam, require before accessing most games. There’s nothing stopping a 10-year-old from claiming to be 30.

Age verification, though, will be more of a legal process: requiring government documentation, biometrics, ai data harvesting, tracking, etc. and will result in the OS theoretically being required to keep your specific pii to provide to downstream consumers of this data.

Those of us who grew up in the age of the early Internet have ‘handles’ or ‘usernames’. Those that grew up in the later Facebook age use their real names. Us elders see this tying of identity to computation as an invasion of privacy.

I’ve had this handle for decades across multiple platforms. I’ve probably identified myself, but you would need to put in at least some work to figure out what human being I am. We call that doxxing right now, and it’s generally seen as hostile. This bill eradicates even that layer of defense by requiring my computer to know who I am, and sharing that data with Meta, Google, Facebook, Lemmy, etc. effectively my computer will doxx me.

While the intermediate result is not that my privacy is instantly compromised, anyone with a clue can see the future here: if the OS knows who you are because of this law, then the browser can know who you are, and the website can know who you are and when you say things the government doesn’t like, you can be… Removed.

This is what we call a chilling effect. And that is also generally understood to be bad.

This bill, and all others like it, are bad.

Edit: And if this bill is defeated, there will be others. This is not going to end, and each version will be an existential threat to privacy.