The object of a system of authority is order, not justice. Justice matters only after injustice sufficiently compromises order.

  • 6 Posts
  • 116 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: August 8th, 2023
  • Buelldozer@lemmy.todaytoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Colorado lawmakers push for age verification at the operating system level
    3·
    9 days ago

    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.

  • Buelldozer@lemmy.todaytoSelfhosted@lemmy.world•In what way am I the product when using CloudFlare's free tier?English
    2·
    3 months ago

    The term VPN is pure marketing bs. What is called VPN today used to be called Proxy Server.

    Perhaps if you are only talking about the consumer level stuff advertised on TV. Otherwise I can assure you that “Virtual Private Networks” are a real thing that have absolutely nothing to do with Proxy Servers.

    On down the comment chain you mention "…our computers would not see each other and would not be able to connect to each other via that service. " as some kind of test of whether a thing is a VPN or Proxy Service but what you’re missing is that this is a completely common and advisable configuration for companies. In fact Zero Trust essentially demands configurations like this. When Bob from Marketing fires up his VPN to the Corporate Office he doesn’t need access to every server and desktop there nor does his laptop need to be able to access the laptops of other VPN users. They get access to what they need and nothing more.

    Hell the ability to access the internet via the tunnel, called Split Tunneling, is also controllable.

    It’s that ability to control where the tunnel terminates that allows consumer VPNs, like Proton, to be used the way they are.

    So while private individuals absolutely do use VPNs as an ersatz replacement for Proxy Servers they are nowhere near the whole use case for VPNs.

  • Buelldozer@lemmy.todaytoSelfhosted@lemmy.world•Cloudflare blocking AI crawlersEnglish
    14·
    8 months ago

    For example, I’ve noticed that some websites start throwing captchas at me or even just straight-up refuse to load with 403: unauthorized errors because I have my router set up to load-balance across two Internet connections. (At least, that’s my guess as to why it’s happening.)

    I maintain several multi-wan commercial setups and they don’t have this problem. I obviously don’t know what your setup is but I’d guess something is wrong with how its handling flows / connections. Once a connection is established between your edge and an internet resource that flow should remain “stuck” to whatever wan port it started with and it sounds like that isn’t happening.