This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Sorry for the stupid question, but what would an “operating system provider” mean here? Does that mean “the organization that builds and distributes the operating system”? If so, Linux is sort of screwed in CO; even The Linux Foundation can’t act for Linux the same way Apple or Microsoft can for macOS or Windows respectively. Maybe Red Hat could, but only for their flagship distro RHEL, and the E stands for Enterprise, lest we forget.
If “operating system provider” were interpreted to mean “system administrator”, however (which is a stretch, but still), that might be a decent solution, since it has the effect of age-limiting content in an enforceable way, but keeps identity information from being centralized under a government or (single) private agency. The sysadmin for children would be parents, who are the only ones who would be providing the hardware, and that could work, especially if there was only the child’s account on the device (like a cell phone).
I dunno if the above is horribly ignorant; if so, I’m open to being more educated on the topic.
It also says the age will be acquired 'upon login', so I'm not sure how that would work with linux. More anti-tech old farts making the rules
More anti-tech old farts making the rules
Wish we could blame it on them being old, but the primary sponsors aren't that old. Matt Ball looks late thirties, early forties at most and Amy Paschal looks late forties, early fifties at most. I couldn't find background on their specific ages, but Matt Ball's bio refers to still raising his children, which also implies the younger side.
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/SB26-051
Ah, I found the official answer to my question in the definitions (definition 9):
"OPERATING SYSTEM PROVIDER" MEANS A PERSON THAT DEVELOPS, LICENSES, OR CONTROLS THE OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARE ON A DEVICE.
This still leaves room for ambiguity, though, especially when it comes to Linux: is the OSP the person who installs the OS (e.g. a sysadmin)? They control the operating system on that device. Or are they the individual/organization that deems what software counts as a given operating system (e.g. Microsoft or Linus)? They develop and license the operating system that happens to be on a given device. Maybe it’s both, but the context suggests the latter more strongly to me.
You will need to verify your age to breath the freaking air next!
Another aspect beyond making Linux legally dubious is this: How do they actually secure the age-data?
Age is generally two characters with a limited character set [0-9] even with an extremely well hashed and salted you're looking at only less than 70 combinations being very likely.
There are penalties for sharing with a third party, but what if it's trivial for a third party to exfiltrate this data?
GOTEM! THIS IS ALL ABOUT POWER & CONTROL, AND THESE PEOPLE WANT TO COVER THEIR ASSES TOO!
Hey Colorado. GFY and get your damn politicians under control.
First I've heard of it, dude. Don't get your knickers in a twist.
Ok but isn’t that just this?
Declared Age Range / AgeRangeService - iOS
Use Play Age Signals API - Android
Maybe our goverments should spend more effort to determine if it's citizens are even just alive or dead to put a dent in the half a trillion dollars the fed govt pays out to dead citizens they dont know are dead. Then we can maybe talk about how the fuck these idionts are guna conrirm th3 age of their living citizens.
Or hey heres another thought, use this effort to design a better consumer price index which is currently a huge guess of economic status based on the most minimal of factors of the tiniest sample sizes of data.
Where did you get this from? Sounds like more of the crap from DOGE where Musk had no clue how computers work so he just assumed that everyone listed in SSI was getting automatically paid.
Google already allows you to save your ID in Google Wallet and share specific details via NFC. Why can't I just use it to provide my year of birth?
Yeah this will end well.
They keep trying to make Linux more appealing.
