A response I gave elsewhere in this thread.

This authority will provide you with tokens indicating you are 18+ (or whatever age verfication you may need) These tokens are stored locally, and contain no identifying information other than a simple “is this guy 18+?”

So they’re reusable? One token can be used for multiple age checks, right?

If not, then think about what that means.

1. The token gets sent back to the authority for revocation.
2. The token is authorised by the central authority as still valid.
3. The token is uniquely identifiable
4. The central authority knows who it issued each token for
5. The central authority knows who has asked it the verify age.

Sure, the company you’re purchasing from may have no new information, but the central authority now has everything it needs to know:

• How often you buy tobacco, alcohol or medications
• What discussion boards you are a member of
• Have you purchased anything age restricted from any store (e.g. propane from a DIY store)

Your step 4 will make the token reusable, or at least reusable within a time frame. If a token can only be used once there has to be some information flow back to a central approval authority.

They already know how often you do all the things you have to be over a certain age to do?

This authority will provide you with tokens indicating you are 18+ (or whatever age verfication you may need) These tokens are stored locally, and contain no identifying information other than a simple “is this guy 18+?”

So they’re reusable? One token can be used for multiple age checks, right?

If not, then think about what that means.

1. The token gets sent back to the authority for revocation.
2. The token is authorised by the central authority as still valid.
3. The token is uniquely identifiable
4. The central authority knows who it issued each token for
5. The central authority knows who has asked it the verify age.

Sure, the company you’re purchasing from may have no new information, but the central authority now has everything it needs to know:

• How often you buy tobacco, alcohol or medications
• What discussion boards you are a member of
• Have you purchased anything age restricted from any store (e.g. propane from a DIY store)

…and they don’t do it unless you look like you might be underage.

Can somebody explain peertube for me? It sounds like it should be a federated video service, but either the federation doesn’t work very well or there’s nothing on it.

3yo cars are pretty much always less than half. ICE or EV

It’s the beginning of reality biting for sure.

I think the big one will be when companies like openAI and anthropic have to file audited books in order to IPO (which they both want to do).

The fallback argument for the social media ban is that it’s better than nothing. But with results like these, it may be worse than nothing, given it potentially creates new problems. Children will remain online with arguably less supervision and support, new privacy and digital security vulnerabilities seem to have appeared and the worst aspects of social media lay largely unaddressed.

I wish more people understood this. Changing something can mean you’ve caused harm unintentionally, even if you haven’t identified it yet. Too many people seem to have the thought process “We have to do something! This is something. Let’s do this.” without ever considering the harm they might do.

WHAAAAT?!?! Educating people is better than telling them what to do?

…but who taught her to flop off the couch? That sounds like an aunt or uncle.

That’s just a savings account isn’t it?

It’s a hell of a moment when they can out perform their parents, isn’t it?

We Brits use Czar as a colloquialism for “person in charge of…”.

So the head of the water regulator might be referred to as the water Czar (and they deserve a similar fate).

Should never have been in the browser anyway.

The rationale for bail out the banks previously was that the retail arms (what you and I use) were so intertwined with the commercial arms that allowing the commercial part to fail caused the loss of everyone’s money. Regulation was introduced (at least in the UK. I don’t know about elsewhere) that ring fenced the two from each other, making future bailouts unnecessary. The commercial arm would shoulder the risk of its own investments.

Doesn’t stop corrupt politicians bailing them out though.

No. Pretty sure it’s true of patents too. Might depend on which court you’re in.

It can’t be completely circular. There is an end customer that will expect something for their money eventually. Right now it’s driven by huge amounts of debt, but you can’t be on that forever. At some point it unwinds

5 year patents should exist IMHO. I think that’s a reasonable chance to monetise an invention. Short enough to remove the use of patents as munitions between companies.

After that it’s open season and you’ve allowed society to use it in any way in return for that 5 year protection.

Which is a damn good point. If you don’t protect a patent in a reasonable time frame I believe you lose the right to protect it. If Dolby has had this patent for a long time, and allowed it to become part of a standard, it may be a quick dismissal of the case.