I think I'd give this more credit if both the article about it and the distro's official website weren't all complete and utter AI slop. It's pretty cool idea generally, though.
I think I'd give this more credit if both the article about it and the distro's official website weren't all complete and utter AI slop. It's pretty cool idea generally, though.
IDK about the distro official website, but Abishek has been hand-writing "It's FOSS" since before the term "AI slop" even existed, so IDK where you got that idea, but that's real-human slop there....
IDK about the distro official website, but Abishek has been hand-writing "It's FOSS" since before the term "AI slop" even existed, so IDK where you got that idea, but that's real-human slop there.
Honestly, the actual Ageless website looks pretty human-centric, too.
What makes you think "AI slop" (besides the sheer ubiquity of it these days)?
I couldn't tell you. Not the guy you're replying too, but AI generated websites have... a smell to them. You learn to spot the patterns, even if I couldn't really name them. The Ageless Linux...
I couldn't tell you. Not the guy you're replying too, but AI generated websites have... a smell to them. You learn to spot the patterns, even if I couldn't really name them. The Ageless Linux website absolutely does not pass that sniff test, and frankly only some of the text on the page does.
I took a look at the site to see what you were talking about. I think it's important to make an active effort to be aware of these things instead of relying on gut feelings, not only so that...
I took a look at the site to see what you were talking about.
I think it's important to make an active effort to be aware of these things instead of relying on gut feelings, not only so that others can look for the patterns too, but because it's also an important part of self awareness that can prevent you from being manipulated by outside parties deliberately trying to evoke a gut reaction.
And I know that last point has less relevance to this particular topic and might not have anything to do with you, but I use the same kind of pattern recognition I use to spot AI to spot and call out propaganda, and in that regard the two are similar.
Here's what I noticed:
There's a lot of "It's this, not that," kind of patterns on the website.
AI loves to focus on what things aren't in comparison to what they are for some reason. I think the word for it is context framing.
All the headers/headlines try to sound way deeper than they are using illustrative language, another idiosyncrasy of AI.
There's a lot of half sentences designed to make a point, also an indicator of AI. Whenever it's trying to make a point it'll just say a string of half-sentences that make it end up sounding like a tech presentation from a tech bro, which is probably where the patterns come from. These sound better in TED talks or sales brochures, not when explaining basic concepts. Things like this:
This website is a "publicly available internet website" that "distributes and facilitates the download of applications" (specifically: a bash script) "to users of a general purpose computing device." We are also a covered application store. Debian's APT repositories are covered application stores. The AUR is a covered application store. Any mirror hosting .deb files is a covered application store. GitHub is a covered application store. Your friend's personal website with a download link to their weekend project is a covered application store.
More than half of that paragraph, and several others, are just repeating "XYZ ...is a covered app store."
That was just a cursory glance though, I'm sure there are other fingerprints of AI in there too.
The article’s frequent line breaks and bolded phrases reek of AI. I wouldn’t bet my life on it though. Like you said, human slop existed way before AI.
The article’s frequent line breaks and bolded phrases reek of AI. I wouldn’t bet my life on it though. Like you said, human slop existed way before AI.
I feel like I am missing the core problem here. Having the age thing be at the OS level seems WAY safer than any kind of "send us your ID" crap, and on linux it should be as easy as just setting a...
I feel like I am missing the core problem here.
Having the age thing be at the OS level seems WAY safer than any kind of "send us your ID" crap, and on linux it should be as easy as just setting a birthday to 1/1/1970 in the installer if you aren't concerned about parental controls or whatever.
It's the "verification" part. The way the law is written means the OS vendor is liable if the police discover <18s have been lying about their age, which means they're incentivised to actually...
It's the "verification" part.
The way the law is written means the OS vendor is liable if the police discover <18s have been lying about their age, which means they're incentivised to actually verify your age.
From the ageless Linux page (admittedly I switched from AG to the police): Unless the law makes the distinction between knowingly and unknowingly incorrect data, then wouldn't the distributor...
From the ageless Linux page (admittedly I switched from AG to the police):
The enforcement mechanism is the point. AB 1043 does not need to result in a single fine to achieve its purpose. The mere existence of potential liability — $7,500 per affected child, enforced at the sole discretion of the Attorney General — creates legal risk for anyone distributing an operating system without the resources to build an age verification infrastructure.
Unless the law makes the distinction between knowingly and unknowingly incorrect data, then wouldn't the distributor would be liable if the age is wrong for any reason? Happy to be wrong about this.
No, that's not what the bill says. There's no responsibility for OS provider to verify the age of their users. They only need to ask the user at account setup what their ages are. If the user...
No, that's not what the bill says. There's no responsibility for OS provider to verify the age of their users. They only need to ask the user at account setup what their ages are. If the user lies, they lie. The OS provider doesn't have any liability for that.
The liability comes in if the OS provider allows users to create accounts without asking them their age.
The Ageless Linux page is also incorrect--not surprising, it feels largely AI generated and this kind of subtle mistake is exactly the kind that's easy to miss in review. I suggest reading the...
The Ageless Linux page is also incorrect--not surprising, it feels largely AI generated and this kind of subtle mistake is exactly the kind that's easy to miss in review.
I suggest reading the bill directly. It's not that long, and it's clear there's not any requirement for the OS provider to actually verify the age they are given. This is the only requirement, the rest is basically supporting infrastructure:
Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.
New Linux distro just dropped ... literally "Debian without OS-level age verification". Even better and more interesting (also linked in the parent article) is their website, working to document...
New Linux distro just dropped ... literally "Debian without OS-level age verification".
Even better and more interesting (also linked in the parent article) is their website, working to document the position of all major Linux distros on this issue, as well as getting ready to provide explicit tutorial documentation on how to rip OS-level age verification out of your distro of choice.
No word yet on Microsoft's position on the subject.
I find this really interesting. Fundamentally, I agree that age verification should not be within the purview of an OS, but at the same time given we're already in a world where websites are being...
I find this really interesting. Fundamentally, I agree that age verification should not be within the purview of an OS, but at the same time given we're already in a world where websites are being forced to, perhaps OS level age verification is the lesser evil? It centralises the vulnerability and opportunity for data leak, so only one entity is doing the age verification instead of every website/identity provider
I don't think websites should be in the business of age verification either, exactly for the risk of data leaks. The safest way to store data is to never obtain it to begin with. And if you want...
I don't think websites should be in the business of age verification either, exactly for the risk of data leaks. The safest way to store data is to never obtain it to begin with.
And if you want to protect the kids from bad websites, that's what parental controls are for. If you don't want your kid to see something and talking to them isn't working, push for better parental controls rather than this arbitrary surveillance.
For example the owner of a device could activate "child mode" on an account (without age verification) which changes the user agent on the device to have a child flag, and when you try to access websites and apps the vendor checks for the presence of the flag and disallows access. Then you have a law requiring vendors to check for the flag with strict penalties for non-compliance, pushing the burden onto the companies. I'm sure there are issues with this too, but my point is there are other ways to police access anonymously.
This feels like shooting the messenger to me, there's no burden or punishment for the providers of harmful content with this law.
Isn't that basically what we're doing here? The API the bill requires doesn't send the age to the website. It's in fact legally prohibited from sending the age to the website. It sends whether the...
Isn't that basically what we're doing here? The API the bill requires doesn't send the age to the website. It's in fact legally prohibited from sending the age to the website. It sends whether the user is in one of four age brackets, because there are different legal requirements per age bracket.
Having the OS report a pass/fail signal to a querying app or site is much better than uploading your biometrics and government IDs to eleventybillion different sites. So long as that OS doesn't...
Having the OS report a pass/fail signal to a querying app or site is much better than uploading your biometrics and government IDs to eleventybillion different sites.
So long as that OS doesn't then also snitch on what sites you've been visiting to some other third party, keep a log of them or otherwise do anything nefarious with the data. Ideally it wouldn't keep it at all.
Once that's implemented though, the next logical step instead of self determined age, is to have the OS collect and process more robust identification data, so that it can do identity verification, as well as age verification.
I mean, we were fine with the first part right? That would only be a little more. And then, we could have ...
In an attempt to head off slippery slope arguments, I'd point out that the default position is /currently/ to upload government ID and biometrics. So arguing that that position is the mid game of OS level age attestation is not slippery, but rather based on evidence of current practice.
It's definitely slippery,it's just that we're already on the slide. It's RCS all over again. Apple, Google,and Microsoft will develop an "open standard" that is incidentally unable to be implented...
It's definitely slippery,it's just that we're already on the slide. It's RCS all over again.
Apple, Google,and Microsoft will develop an "open standard" that is incidentally unable to be implented if you don't have an Apple, Google, or Microsoft signing key.
On the topic of ageless distros, NixOS is an interesting example, because it's not a distribution, but a configuration which you use to locally build your operating system.
On the topic of ageless distros, NixOS is an interesting example, because it's not a distribution, but a configuration which you use to locally build your operating system.
I think I'd give this more credit if both the article about it and the distro's official website weren't all complete and utter AI slop. It's pretty cool idea generally, though.
IDK about the distro official website, but Abishek has been hand-writing "It's FOSS" since before the term "AI slop" even existed, so IDK where you got that idea, but that's real-human slop there.
Honestly, the actual Ageless website looks pretty human-centric, too.
What makes you think "AI slop" (besides the sheer ubiquity of it these days)?
I couldn't tell you. Not the guy you're replying too, but AI generated websites have... a smell to them. You learn to spot the patterns, even if I couldn't really name them. The Ageless Linux website absolutely does not pass that sniff test, and frankly only some of the text on the page does.
I took a look at the site to see what you were talking about.
I think it's important to make an active effort to be aware of these things instead of relying on gut feelings, not only so that others can look for the patterns too, but because it's also an important part of self awareness that can prevent you from being manipulated by outside parties deliberately trying to evoke a gut reaction.
And I know that last point has less relevance to this particular topic and might not have anything to do with you, but I use the same kind of pattern recognition I use to spot AI to spot and call out propaganda, and in that regard the two are similar.
Here's what I noticed:
There's a lot of "It's this, not that," kind of patterns on the website.
AI loves to focus on what things aren't in comparison to what they are for some reason. I think the word for it is context framing.
All the headers/headlines try to sound way deeper than they are using illustrative language, another idiosyncrasy of AI.
There's a lot of half sentences designed to make a point, also an indicator of AI. Whenever it's trying to make a point it'll just say a string of half-sentences that make it end up sounding like a tech presentation from a tech bro, which is probably where the patterns come from. These sound better in TED talks or sales brochures, not when explaining basic concepts. Things like this:
More than half of that paragraph, and several others, are just repeating "XYZ ...is a covered app store."
That was just a cursory glance though, I'm sure there are other fingerprints of AI in there too.
The article’s frequent line breaks and bolded phrases reek of AI. I wouldn’t bet my life on it though. Like you said, human slop existed way before AI.
AI slop is slop because the majority of the corpus is slop.
I feel like I am missing the core problem here.
Having the age thing be at the OS level seems WAY safer than any kind of "send us your ID" crap, and on linux it should be as easy as just setting a birthday to 1/1/1970 in the installer if you aren't concerned about parental controls or whatever.
It's the "verification" part.
The way the law is written means the OS vendor is liable if the police discover <18s have been lying about their age, which means they're incentivised to actually verify your age.
That's not true at all.
From the ageless Linux page (admittedly I switched from AG to the police):
Unless the law makes the distinction between knowingly and unknowingly incorrect data, then wouldn't the distributor would be liable if the age is wrong for any reason? Happy to be wrong about this.
No, that's not what the bill says. There's no responsibility for OS provider to verify the age of their users. They only need to ask the user at account setup what their ages are. If the user lies, they lie. The OS provider doesn't have any liability for that.
The liability comes in if the OS provider allows users to create accounts without asking them their age.
The Ageless Linux page is also incorrect--not surprising, it feels largely AI generated and this kind of subtle mistake is exactly the kind that's easy to miss in review.
I suggest reading the bill directly. It's not that long, and it's clear there's not any requirement for the OS provider to actually verify the age they are given. This is the only requirement, the rest is basically supporting infrastructure:
New Linux distro just dropped ... literally "Debian without OS-level age verification".
Even better and more interesting (also linked in the parent article) is their website, working to document the position of all major Linux distros on this issue, as well as getting ready to provide explicit tutorial documentation on how to rip OS-level age verification out of your distro of choice.
No word yet on Microsoft's position on the subject.
I find this really interesting. Fundamentally, I agree that age verification should not be within the purview of an OS, but at the same time given we're already in a world where websites are being forced to, perhaps OS level age verification is the lesser evil? It centralises the vulnerability and opportunity for data leak, so only one entity is doing the age verification instead of every website/identity provider
I don't think websites should be in the business of age verification either, exactly for the risk of data leaks. The safest way to store data is to never obtain it to begin with.
And if you want to protect the kids from bad websites, that's what parental controls are for. If you don't want your kid to see something and talking to them isn't working, push for better parental controls rather than this arbitrary surveillance.
For example the owner of a device could activate "child mode" on an account (without age verification) which changes the user agent on the device to have a child flag, and when you try to access websites and apps the vendor checks for the presence of the flag and disallows access. Then you have a law requiring vendors to check for the flag with strict penalties for non-compliance, pushing the burden onto the companies. I'm sure there are issues with this too, but my point is there are other ways to police access anonymously.
This feels like shooting the messenger to me, there's no burden or punishment for the providers of harmful content with this law.
Isn't that basically what we're doing here? The API the bill requires doesn't send the age to the website. It's in fact legally prohibited from sending the age to the website. It sends whether the user is in one of four age brackets, because there are different legal requirements per age bracket.
Having the OS report a pass/fail signal to a querying app or site is much better than uploading your biometrics and government IDs to eleventybillion different sites.
So long as that OS doesn't then also snitch on what sites you've been visiting to some other third party, keep a log of them or otherwise do anything nefarious with the data. Ideally it wouldn't keep it at all.
Once that's implemented though, the next logical step instead of self determined age, is to have the OS collect and process more robust identification data, so that it can do identity verification, as well as age verification.
I mean, we were fine with the first part right? That would only be a little more. And then, we could have ...
In an attempt to head off slippery slope arguments, I'd point out that the default position is /currently/ to upload government ID and biometrics. So arguing that that position is the mid game of OS level age attestation is not slippery, but rather based on evidence of current practice.
It's definitely slippery,it's just that we're already on the slide. It's RCS all over again.
Apple, Google,and Microsoft will develop an "open standard" that is incidentally unable to be implented if you don't have an Apple, Google, or Microsoft signing key.
On the topic of ageless distros, NixOS is an interesting example, because it's not a distribution, but a configuration which you use to locally build your operating system.