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Lots of alarmed comments in here. I agree that it's a slippery slope, but in practice this seems like a good idea to ask OSes to provide an API for this, especially for age brackets (prevents tracking if any user worth tracking is "over 18" -- this may make for a neat tracker blocker if you just need to input a lower age).

Now, the title make it sound like the "verification" is privacy invasive, but if it's just a mechanism to store the age in account data, provided at account creation time, there are many ways to implement this: new field in /etc/passwd, or new config file. Provide /proc/is_user_over18 or some D-Bus API provided by the DE. Could be a new "portal".

I don't see any "official / secure verification service" being enforced, so if it's just another picker besides "time zone" or "keyboard layout", fine by me. If they start mandating something else though... Slippery slope, as I said (though we could use key-signing parties for that).

This could make it trivial for parents to setup a very basic parental control system, and could avoid all these popups about "are you 18+" on Steam and other websites.

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This is punishing businesses / OSes with bullshit work and potential fines. The only way this law works is if someone actually checks you put in the right info (people lie; shocker right???) and fines you / throws you in jail and it can't get anymore 1984 than that.

This really smells like the old DRM days with CDs and export restrictions on encryption. Honestly, I'd just switch to a distro that has a "non-US" version download and get on my with my day. Fuck California and any politician who uses "think of the children" for this sort of invasive bullshit.

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There is the danger that this will stop the possibility of disabling secure boot. I'm not happy about that.

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played a round of Lexispell (fun, but lacking depth and variety in demo form), Scope Creep to the demo's end (simple incremental game with a good theme IMO), and EvoCreo 2 until 3 evolutions and completion of the available quests (twist on classic pokemon games with a slightly more involved energy/ability system). I'll have to check out some of these other popular demos.

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It's funny that almost every article on this has focused on it including Linux but it's clearly aimed at Windows and MacOS. The bill doesn't actually define what an "operating system" actually means. It specifies that this applies to "account holders" but what does that actually mean? It's fairly obvious what it means in desktop environments, but TTYs? Is root an account holder? How old is root, the number of days since you installed your distro?

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Quoting: Jarmer[…] I may or may not have to look up if there's a way to hack or mod these into new chars without ever getting them to begin with!

Why the hassle? Didn’t you say you played through the game 4 or 5 times already?
If you have the Forgotten Gods expansion it is a matter of buying the merit from the NPC in the Conclave of the Three and throwing it into your stash. No internet required.
SSF means you delete your savefile (or move it to a different directory) every time before you create a new character, it has nothing to do with multiplayer.

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Quoting: Jarmerjust curious: what was the scam?

It was me being silly on a secondhand platform (kleinanzeigen in germany), transferring funds via paypal family&friends. I've had just good experience with these in the past, buying lots of things with this method. Well, one should not do that anymore...

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As someone who lives in the US, this is one of those issues that would be bipartisan. Make no mistake, I expect legislation like this to pop up in "red states" like Texas, Florida or Tennessee; if they haven't already.

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Quoting: JarmerI'm not a huge controller user (only on deck) so I'm wondering: isn't this just recreating the steam community layouts feature? Why not just utilize that?

Author of SteamInputDB here

Well, the community features of Steam are not really that great - And have been not that great for ~10 years...
The filter and sorting options especially.

Additionally, it's not really that obvious to some people when it comes to sharing specific configs on third party platforms like Reddit / Discord, etc.

The website is at the current stage what I would consider the absolute bare minimum viable product.
Just imagine what it could be in a few months from now with proper and more direct SteamClient integration and community features Steam lacks

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Quoting: pb

Quoting: doragasuAnd what about my smart light bulb? Will it have to verify my age to turn on?

Your light bulb will stream the picture to the central server where AI will evaluate your age. If you're <18, The light will automatically turn off at 22:00 so you get a proper rest before school.

Also, it will have the wrong time zone, and thus turn off the lights between 15:00 and 03:00

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#ExcludeCalifornia in the EULAs

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Since the Chinese are probably using pirated versions of Windows, what's stopping them from using something Kylin? I'm guessing it is that darn anti-cheat not working on Linux. Or the Chinese don't care.

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I am above 18, so I will tell: I have 120 years - no matter how old I am. Does telling your age should not be prohibited? Why Google, MS and other should known, how old you are?

Quoting: Eocene84As someone who doesn't have kids (thank God) and never will, I'm really tired of being punished because other people can't or won't parent their children, which makes the government feel the need to step in. Hopefully the state I live in, Colorado, doesn't do something like this.

I always told: add special tag to http, so it will inform material is for adult. Parents will install special browser on children PC, which will cut every material marked with that tag. No nonsense law!

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Are there any changes for English only clients? This has been used in the past to avoid bias from Chinese Steam clients.

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Is it just me or does anytime you hear "age bracket" you think about advertising (and/or taxes)? I really want this bill to go away. It sets a bad precedent, or maybe a gateway for worse. Perhaps it's intended to be a "good enough" solution to a pretend problem so that we don't get an even worse solution, but I agree that it's a slippery slope.

If I had to compromise, I might annoyingly settle for a checkbox for being under/over the age of majority. Any more than that binary option is giving away data that doesn't need to be given away. Does age bracket info fall under any US data privacy laws, like HIPAA? Will every single website that requests your age bracket be required to follow HIPAA data security requirements?

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^ LOL I always do the earliest date possibly in the picker. So I was often born on January 1st, 1901. I've seen some stuff man.

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I think that we will discover there are a lot of users born on 1/1/2008 out there. 🤔😁

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I'd love to see actual counts in addition to the percentages, since a drop in percentage doesn't necessarily mean an actual drop in users. But I don't see such detailed info on Steam's survey results page, so I don't expect that's possible to report on here.

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Quoting: EWG

Quoting: Chrisznix

Quoting: EWGI don't understand games like this. Instead of virtually pretending to do things. I could actually pick up an instrument, book shows, and all the rest. lol

That´s cool, you probably should then. :)
For me, i never stepped above hobby levels and went down the Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) path of instruments and synthesizers. I know some folks that went that route, and quite well actually, but man is that a tough life. So... i'd rather play Legends of Rock. :)

The [Mod: Dwarf](https://mod.audio/dwarf) solves GAS. It's fully libre and does everything from effects, utilites, amp+cab sim, to loops, metronome, and other stuff. Forget the AxeFX or huge pedalboards that cost in the thousands. lol

That sounds like more gear though (just kidding). It also only solves part of the problem, what's stopping the urge to buy multiple guitars? I have a Stratocaster and a Spanish guitar, but I should also get an electric guitar with humbucker pickups and an acoustic guitar with steel strings.

I'm a 30 something with young kids who has just picked up the guitar again after dropping it when I went to university. And while I really enjoy (re-)learning this skill, I don't have the time or desire to do all the things you do in this game. They're very different things, this game isn't even about playing music and more about the life of a musician.

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Quoting: Eocene84As someone who doesn't have kids (thank God) and never will, I'm really tired of being punished because other people can't or won't parent their children, which makes the government feel the need to step in. Hopefully the state I live in, Colorado, doesn't do something like this.

This has nothing to do with parents properly parenting their kids or not. This is all about control and consolidation of power. Taking the power away from the individual and putting that power into the hands of the gov to tell you what you can and can't do. This is just one tiny aspect of the overall goal. The gov doesn't give two shits about parenting.

so instead of you going about your day doing whatever you want with your computers and websites, now you have to check in with the gov and ask them if it's okay if you go about your day doing whatever you were doing. Then they can tell you yes or no. They have the power now, and you have lost your freedom. Yay Murica.

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The last diagram in your steam tracker page "Linux market share on Steam, another way to look at it" is also interesting.

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Quoting: Eocene84As someone who doesn't have kids (thank God) and never will, I'm really tired of being punished because other people can't or won't parent their children, which makes the government feel the need to step in. Hopefully the state I live in, Colorado, doesn't do something like this.

It's sadly not about protecting children.

It is simply a lazy and easy excuse because any criticism of the law will open you up to be marked as "dangerous to children" and thus socially destroy you. It has been used for all kinds of things going back hundreds of years. It is unfortunately quite effective on the species as a whole.

These laws also hurt small businesses and marginalized groups harder than large businesses and privileged groups, so it is unfortunately very apropos in the current political climate.

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I liked Windrose.

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proper comment is something about fornication and the equine transport
🤬

The lunatics are running the asylum.

(and yes, 1984 was not a "how to")

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I am above 18, so I will tell: I have 120 years - no matter how old I am. Does telling your age should not be prohibited? Why Google, MS and other should known, how old you are?

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Quoting: Jarmeroh didn't know that! I always play every single arpg ssf because I dislike multiplayer, but ..... now that you've enlightened me to these "merits" I may or may not have to look up if there's a way to hack or mod these into new chars without ever getting them to begin with!

You don't even need multiplayer - SSF means "never trades items from your other single player characters" and that's presumably not you - you just need a character that's already reached that difficulty. Go buy a Merit with your Elite or Ultimate character, stick it in the shared stash, et voila. You do need the Forgotten Gods expansion for them.

That said (and I have over 1,000 hours in) I've never really found the GD story to be that much of a slog to work through in all honesty. You can complete the base game in a few hours when you know where you're going and have some decent equipment shared.

Of course there's also nothing wrong with just not playing Ultimate if you don't want to. The game has plenty of content without it.

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It's funny reading the comments to this because I wonder how many actually read through the article.

This is the compromise we could hope for; if they're going to keep demanding an age verification, having that verification instead ONLY on the host device instead of it being face or ID scanning, and that host device simply sending a signal to any requesting site, etc, that "this user is in this age bracket", that's about as secure as you could hope for while still meeting a requirement for an age check, especially if it remains as just a "enter your birthdate" text box at the setup of an OS. It keeps the onus of verification off the website providers, which means user account creation isn't required to verify age because it can just ask for the proper flag from your OS or app provider, and is better for privacy overall than what others are proposing.

The BEST for privacy, of course, would be to never have to ask for that information in any way, shape, or form, but it appears that bridge has already been burnt, so we're now just hunting for the best and most secure and privacy-enabling compromise without just streaming your damn face to every web page 24/7 while you're using it.

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I hope they do not search for reason to made GNU illegal.

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Quoting: Eocene84Hopefully the state I live in, Colorado, doesn't do something like this.

Too late. There are reports that they are doing the same thing.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/colorado-lawmakers-push-for-age-verification-at-the-operating-system-level

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As someone who doesn't have kids (thank God) and never will, I'm really tired of being punished because other people can't or won't parent their children, which makes the government feel the need to step in. Hopefully the state I live in, Colorado, doesn't do something like this.

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