Buelldozer

Assuming its not cheap piece of crap that isn’t UL listed and that’s where the problem is.

Well…we’re waiting!

The easy answer is to use commercial displays. They are more expensive and may not have the latest tech BUT they last longer and don’t do the spyware shenanigans.

Add Illinois to the list.

https://legiscan.com/IL/bill/SB3977/2025

Because not everybody is willing to roll over and give up.

Where in the bill does it say that?

I appreciate that you provided a link to the bill in your previous comment and I’m taking my response directly from there. Here’s a quote of the first sentence of the bill summary.

"The bill requires a developer to request an age signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the developer’s application is downloaded and launched. " (Emphasis Mine).

Okay so maybe it’s a bad summary, let’s look at the text of the bill. On the 2nd page it says:

“The bill requires a developer to request an age signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the developer’s application is downloaded and launched.” (Emphasis mine).

Then again on Page 5:

“(2) (a) A DEVELOPER SHALL REQUEST AN AGE SIGNAL WITH RESPECT TO A PARTICULAR USER FROM AN OPERATING SYSTEM PROVIDER OR A COVERED APPLICATION STORE WHEN THE DEVELOPER’S APPLICATION IS DOWNLOADED AND LAUNCHED.”

So yeah, the bill literally says it in both the summary and the text.

So what is an application?

From Page 3 “APPLICATION” MEANS A SOFTWARE APPLICATION THAT BE RUN OR DIRECTED BY A USER ON A DEVICE." Huh, no ambiguity there.

And where would that make sense? What would Notepad or File Explorer do with my age range? That would make no sense at all.

Ask Colorado and California, it’s their legislation.

And yes, as a professional developer I would definetely comply and use this API instead of bothering my customers…

That’s good because if you don’t then you cannot have users in California nor in Colorado (assuming this legislation passes in Colorado).

…every time by askIng them to confirm their age, but since I’ve never worked on any age restricted software in the first place, it does not affect any of my products.

**Why do you think that matters?**There is no exception for your apps in the the Colorado or California legislation! You as a dev MUST comply with this law. If you choose not too then I hope you are prepared to deal with up to a $2,500 fine per user that turns out to be a minor!

“6-30-104. Enforcement - penalties.3 (1) A PERSON THAT VIOLATES THIS ARTICLE SHALL PAY A CIVIL PENALTY OF NO MORE THAN TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR EACH MINOR AFFECTED BY EACH NEGLIGENT VIOLATION, OR NO MORE THAN SEVEN THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR EACH MINOR AFFECTED BY EACH INTENTIONAL VIOLATION. THE ATTORNEY GENERAL SHALL ASSESS AND RECOVER THE PENALTY IN A CIVIL ACTION .”

Hmmm, okay well what is an “app store”, maybe your app is distributed in a way that allows you to sidestep the law?

"(5) (a) “COVERED APPLICATION STORE " MEANS A PUBLICLY AVAILABLE INTERNET WEBSITE , SOFTWARE APPLICATION, ONLINE SERVICE, OR PLATFORM THAT DISTRIBUTES AND FACILITATES THE DOWNLOAD OF APPLICATIONS FROM THIRD- PARTY DEVELOPERS TO USERS OF DEVICES .”

Soooo, if you’re stuff is available on Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, GOS, STEAM, EA, or anyone else’s app store you need to comply. If your stuff is distributed from your own website you need to comply. If your stuff is distributed from GitHub you need to comply. If your stuff is distributed via package manager on Linux (that’s a software application!) then you need to comply.

Colorado’s legislation is slightly smarter than California’s in that it at least carves out some exceptions regarding applications for Enterprise, Commercial, and Government use but there are still caveats.

tl;dr This law and California’s clearly and specifically apply to applications as well as Operating Systems, are not “neat”, and its easy to predict that most F/OSS developers absolutely will not comply with these restrictions.

This bill is not “neat”. It literally REQUIRES every piece of software in existence to query for the users age bracket. Do you think that any F/OSS software devs are going to comply with this horseshit?

MSO and EXO have a value proposition that Cloud PC doesn’t and Cloud PC at minimum doubles the cost.

It was never crazy and people were predicting this since the 90s. It’s essentially a return to the dumb terminal & mainframe paradigm that was in use prior to desktop pcs.

Business’s will not adore this. Cloud PCs in M365 or Azure cost money, often as much per year as it would cost to just purchase a pc to begin with.

Read the legislation. It’s not just operating systems, its applications as well! All applications, there are no exceptions. Everything from GIMP to the EHR your Doctor uses to a custom Open Claude bot on Github. ALL of them.

You don’t have enough AI-ready GPU cores so Teams is running the local copilot model on the CPU with your most recent outlook emails in order to prepare a dummy to send to the cloud for further analysis

That’s a depressingly probable reason even though you meant it as techno-babble. It is actually possible that the machine doesn’t have enough NPU power!

isn’t it time to get off Windows?

I’m already using Linux everywhere I can both personally and at work, heck even my work laptop is running Linux. The blocker on my work desktop is that the remote access tool I use multiple times a day doesn’t have a functional Linux version.

I could switch my work desktop over to Apple but I’ve never liked MacOS.

I’ll hate it because this already happens with links in MS Teams where despite having a high spec work computer it makes the system so sluggish that the mouse cursor won’t move smoothly for 15 seconds or so while it sorts itself out.

I mean I’ve already got a Core i7 with 32G of RAM and an NVME sitting on my desk so how much freaking horsepower is THIS little stunt going to take?

This kind of crap is driving popular creators, like Geerling, to move to other places. YT / Alphabet has lost the plot.

I think old school internet folks are underestimating just how much of a grip Big Tech has on users’ attention.l, and their devices.

With all sincerity this is fine. Seriously, let’s leave it this way.

As someone who was already around when Eternal September happened the Internet was never for normies and inviting them into the space has destroyed it. Everything that attracts the attention of normies ends up ruined; MySpace, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Slashdot and so very many more…they are all trashed because when they attracted enough users the commercialization started.

So maybe lets just leave the Fediverse for those “in the know” as long as we can.

Thank you for this. I know some people won’t appreciate it but not every community needs to be a full time political outlet.