I think I’m following what you mean. To me, though, (using your house analogy) it isn’t that your ex has a key, it’s that the government is demanding that your door remain open. Sure, it’s already off the hinges, but it’s a whole lot easier to put a door back on than to fight the government about it. It’s not currently illegal to protect your data through extreme measures, but this is the beginning of laws that make it illegal. That is why this is worth fighting over to me. What’s more, I can hate and fight against more than one thing, so it’s not a huge issue to be against this.

And sure, all this data is out there, but that isn’t true for future generations. Old data becomes stale. It just seems like such a defeatist attitude to me to cede ground on this, especially when the laws you mentioned actually being worried about would use this as precedent. It’s certainly easier to argue for an ID requirement when you have the data on millions of users lying about their age and use it as justification for a more controlled implementation.

But either way, I think I need to step away here. I feel like I understand you, I just disagree and to continue beyond this without doing more reading on the topic, laws, and trends won’t really help, I think (the last I saw for the New York law was that determining what was an adequate attempt to verify age was fell on the AG, who seemed to be leaning towards third party verification. I’m already out of date with developments there).

I… didn’t say that? Not sure if you replied to the wrong person? But I’ll try to respond to what I can?

Oh whoops, if I did, my bad. That’s what I was understanding your comment about “it’s literally the same check we already have” to be. You’re saying there are already age checks for certain sites (and analysis of your web traffic and associated data being sold) and that this is no different, if I understand correctly. It is worth pointing out that while the California law requires no verification, the New York law potentially requires more than just a declaration of age. It’s worse elsewhere in the world.

All of that is the same thing. It is about building profiles…

Right, but you see how this is also a bad thing right? Given that the FBI has now spoken about buying this data and uses it to target people, I would think that we would all want better privacy protections, not fewer.

1. This is not exclusive to the US.

I don’t see how that should sway opinion about this being a good or a bad thing. It’s a bad thing for everyone, right?

2. I never said this is “the first step towards something >worse”.

No, I am saying that. I was saying that calling this a slippery slope doesn’t feel like it is based in the history of privacy erosion. I’d love to learn more about the original sin in all of this, but just because it isn’t the first step doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight against consolidated, government-mandated privacy violations, right?

Yes? I am sorry that protecting your privacy takes effort? I am >sure that if you pay a random sponsor on an LTT video that >they’ll claim to do everything for you? Like… I really don’t know what to tell you?

I think you’re misunderstanding me. I’m not complaining that it’s difficult. I’m asking why we don’t try and just fix the problem instead of letting something like this slide by because there are other, similar issues.

Can I ask you to explain your point, “age doesn’t matter, your digital footprint carries over?” You mention solutions to protect yourself from the digital footprint carry over, but this law would just make it easier to overcome those solutions.

Now instead of having to figure out the various unique patterns of accessing the internet to determine info about you, you just tell them your age (or that you’re an adult, whatever) on those systems directly.

I also think it’s a bit disingenuous to call ‘this is the first step towards something worse’ a slippery slope when that is exactly how the creeping erosion of privacy has gone in the US historically, but especially the last few decades.

You acknowledge that a lot of people don’t fully understand how to protect themselves (and offer solutions that require more money, time, and education to accomplish) and in the same breath that is why it’s okay that we make data collection easier.

I know this probably comes across as accusatory, but I really don’t mean it that way. I’m genuinely trying to understand what your perspective is.

I see Linux being more and more widely adopted in Europe, for one. I imagine there will be an ‘EU standardized’ distro forked to prevent any issues of interoperability between government systems. Hopefully, such a widespread adoption for PCs encourages more development for Linux from software devs.

The latter part of your points is what really scares me as well. It’s only a matter of time until “protecting the children” becomes “defining what adult content is” and policing gender, sexuality, and politically inconvenient ideas under the guise of morality.

Call me a cynic, but I absolutely do not believe that companies “know that the days where they can just shrug off child predators using their products is coming to and end”. I don’t believe they give a fuck at all. In fact, if somehow a case made it to court and the court laid the blame at the foot of, say, Facebook, or whatever company, for a child being harmed, they still wouldn’t care because the money they make simply existing as is so wildly outstrips any fine they could possibly be levied that it doesn’t make economic sense to do anything differently.

There is real damage being done now and no one seems to care enough to stop it. Why go through all this negative PR about privacy violations if you can just keep doing the same thing?

Now, I can’t claim to know what the “real reason” these laws are being passed is, but if I had to hazard a guess, it would be because it gives more accurate data on users to sell and it is cheaper to advertise to your users when they directly tell you their age. Now, you can freely show pornographic ads, gambling ads, whatever, to your adults without ever having to worry about buying user data to know who will receive it. If a kid sees porn, well, you shouldn’t have let them on an adult account.

My main issue often boils down to the amount of people still on Windows. The huge market there pulls developer attention that way so much that often my choice in software is narrowed down to “the one that has a Linux build”. And sometimes that isn’t even the case and now I need to find a way to simulate Windows for this piece of Software to work in some capacity.

Now, that’s not all that often that this is true, but when it is, it’s annoying.

Oh shoot, I’m an idiot. Tuxedo is what I was looking at. 😅 Thank you for the link!

Yeah, unfortunately I’m stuck with laptops for now. I’ve had to move at a minimum once a year for the last six years or so, so I basically don’t keep anything I can’t put into a pair of hiking bags to lug around with me.

Without getting into specifics, I am ideally taking a temporary job that will give me a fair amount of disposable income, but I’m committed for a year with an option to do a second year.

It’s kind of a rare opportunity for me and I’m not even certain I’ll get it, but if I do, then the price of an upgrade doesn’t really matter to me much, within reason. It’s essentially going to be my only valuable item for the foreseeable future, for work, play, hobbies, all of it, so I don’t mind putting extra money into this to make sure it works well and lives a good, long time. I mean, I’m not gonna throw 4 grand at a laptop, but some of these other pricey ones at like System76 and Framework aren’t off the table for me at this point.

Wow, really? I was just looking at these and they are super interesting. You’re not wrong about that up front cost, though, yikes. What is it that makes them so seemingly modular? Is it proprietary stuff? Or is it just the focus of how it’s constructed? I’d be super leery about getting locked into ‘their ecosystem’ if they suddenly went under or something.

Oof, thanks for the heads up. I honestly think I have a pretty good list of components to double check at this point and it’s driving me away from anything bleeding edge. Whatever I end up getting, it’ll be something that’s new-ish right now, but I’ll be buying it a year from now.

I did check out System76 and even if the price is a bit high, it would be kind of nice to support a company in the EU. That alone has a bit of appeal. I haven’t seen Framework before, though. I’ll look them up, thanks for the tip!

Yeah, tell me about it on the price. I’m tempted to just bite the bullet on low framerates to see if prices come down, but this upgrade is already close to a year out anyway, so who knows. Maybe it goes up? Maybe society collapses, haha.

I’ve never ended up upgrading RAM in a laptop, though. Is soldered versus not soldered really that huge of a deal? I mean, outside of what you mentioned here regarding the price.

Oh wow, that’s actually super helpful! Thanks!

Thanks for the tips! I’ll make sure I’m checking individual components for compatibility long before I hover the buy button. Another user mentioned buying a year old as well, so I’ll probably also take that advice. And thanks for the heads up about fake comparison sites and such!

I’m a pretty big fan of Lenovo so far. My experience with their hardware has been pretty much complaint-free. It’s what I’m using right now with Mint, as well. GPU is definitely part of my current issue, the other is RAM, and the last is SSD space.

GPU is just getting old, I certainly don’t have the RAM I need, and I sprung for the 500gb model because at the time this was primarily a game dev machine that only ever played Kerbal Space Program, haha.

My go-to is FFXIV, but I run it with a pretty large number of mods, which is what is hard to keep up with on my current laptop. Between that and just not being able to play any modern game, (in particular, I wanted to be able to play the new Silent Hill F), it’s definitely more of a want, but it’s a pretty strong want. 😅

My current laptop is about 6 years old, and it’s getting to the point where my frame rate during raids is dipping below 60 frames quite frequently, even with the minimum settings, which is what got me looking at upgrading.

I’ll look at Linux pre-installed vendors, though, I hadn’t thought about that. And the year old tech is a super good tip also, thanks!

My go-to is FFXIV, but I run it fairly heavily modded as do most of the group I play with, so I don’t have a super firm set of minimum specs since it fluctuates pretty heavily.

Besides that, every now and then, a modern game comes out that I’d like to play on Steam, like Silent Hill F, which is just completely beyond my laptop at this point.

A gaming laptop. My current one is fine for most everything else at this point. I don’t game super hard, but when I play my go-to game or try out something new, I wanna at least not be bouncing between 30-45 FPS.

Coming from the indie dev scene a while back, as an indie dev, you are typically burning every single hour in your day making a game, begging for money to get the game to market, pitching your game to publishers, or screaming into the void that is social media in hopes anyone will click your link. You simply do not have time or effort to spare. It’s a hugely saturated market and the currency is public attention.

So, you tend to cast the widest net possible in hopes you get some kind of traction, which means marketing to Windows users. I’m sure plenty of devs would vastly prefer to be on and build for Linux, but the fact of the matter is the marketshare is smaller and Proton exists.