Case in point: Typing from a spare Surface Pro that I installed Ubuntu and some support drivers on for the touchscreen. Some update broke the touchscreen drivers, and I needed a keyboard and a lot of googling to repair them.
If this had happened on Windows, someone likely could’ve taken it to their repair shop or to Microsoft. Sadly, these days even Microsoft might’ve dropped any user aid.
If you don’t want your info (whether you are an adult a teen or a child) to be shared with “owners of apps that are on the Epstein list”, then don’t install those apps. There is nothing in this law requiring you to download any particular app.
Linux, as well as any decent system of security, operates via varying levels of trust. If I install a game on Steam, that does not get root access with permission to rewrite my kernel. Similarly, if I have banking info on my device, it doesn’t get to view that, or anything with my face or name. You can install and even run something without trusting it with your life.
If an app were sending this data to a third party, like palantir, then they would be in direct violation of this law.
We have seen time and time again that courts do not provide adequate protections for these types of data breaches. The law does not matter. At the most, software companies get slapped on the wrist, but more likely they get away with it, as “programming is hard, and it’s easier to just send everything”. It is far, far easier to assert that a malicious app is not submitting marketing, or “fuckability” information on your child if that device does not denote itself as a child’s device in the first place. That’s only possible if the law isn’t hammering the OS into openly exposing its own user data to anyone that asks for it.
Your last point about personal responsibility is an important one. It’s why, if you happen to be using an old insecure device running Windows XP, you can toy around on the web with it, but you should disconnect it from your personal network, and should not enter personal info on it. Any device software that is forced to keep an open “Would_President_47_Seek_To_Rape_This_User” flag, available to every application, is removing that option for personal responsibility.
Does it even allow for user privacy protection? Nothing I’ve read of the bill suggests that an app could ask whether the user is of a fuckable class by its Epstein-list owners, and allow the user to block the prompt. Every other app has to ask for permission to use the camera, to write to certain directories, they can even be firewalled to prevent network access. The very idea that an OS must code in a form of user information that must be provided to any app, trusted or not, is a warped, Palantir-driven approach to (in)security.
Most practitioners of data security are aware of the severe dangers of fingerprinting users, and that is a hardline issue. Thus, in order to maintain their security practices, their only choice is to not collect this sort of info on users at any level. If they’re delivering a security product with a built-in vulnerability, they’re not delivering a security product. It’s much better to just surrender one state until it invents sanity.
Wake me when that actually leads to enforcement penalties. This law is vague enough as it is, no company is going to get slammed for “accidentally” skipping a user permission check, and having their FunPad app offer up your age info to one of Palantir’s long fingers.
Even entering DoB is imo too much of a privacy breach. In my view, they should just take the highest age bracket described, apparently 18+, and then ask that on OS installation: “Are you over the age of 18?” If the user says yes, it installs, and every app is hardcoded to receive that 18+ bracket when checking demographic. If they say no, then it simply replies that users under 18 may not install it under the laws of California.
My libraries still lend out a lot of DVDs. I ended up getting Fallout S1 in that format, and while it was a resolution drop, it was perfectly bearable.
I can guess for the audience using discs, a lot still have archaic hardware to play them on.
Right, but isn’t Lemmy itself a bit of a “less features” version of Reddit? I’m not here for features, I’m here to get away from toxic Reddit mods because fuck spez.
I’ll admit, I might have taken the bet that “reddit but not reddit” would hold at least some interest.