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Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: tfkThis is not the job of a government. This is the job of the parents.

And the article mentions a "parents decide act", which I could theoretically get behind.

Quoting: UltraViolet

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: hardpenguinThis is insane, impractical, and unenforceable under any normal circumstances. What, we want to prevent minors from using technology now? For what purpose? It doesn't make any sense at all.

For what purpose once can speculate, all we know is that this is due to lobbying from Meta who have spent over $2bn on lobbying efforts for this specifically.

Who can then continue to abuse their users, as age-gating will not be in their control (how convenient)

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: LoudTechieThnx for the information.
In which case I'll ask how come only the recorded number of Chinese users visibly fluctuates?
With access one can point to some kind of government interference, with measurement issues that doesn't work.

In countries where household PC ownership is standard (such as Europe and North America - the other significant regions on Steam) the measurement issue isn't a factor.

In other countries where PC bang gaming is standard (such as Japan and South Korea, as I mentioned) the Steam market just isn't as big.

China is a huge market, and the historical console ban among other factors has made playing online games in Internet cafes the norm, where measurement is hard (potentially impossible).

Quoting: LoudTechieThnx for the information.
In which case I'll ask how come only the recorded number of Chinese users visibly fluctuates?
With access one can point to some kind of government interference, with measurement issues that doesn't work.

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: hardpenguinThis is insane, impractical, and unenforceable under any normal circumstances. What, we want to prevent minors from using technology now? For what purpose? It doesn't make any sense at all.

For what purpose once can speculate, all we know is that this is due to lobbying from Meta who have spent over $2bn on lobbying efforts for this specifically.

Quoting: TonyHoyleSo first you've got to define operating system in such a way that it doesn't include half the devices in your house.. (before you can press this doorbell you need to present your passport for verification).

Then you've got to define it so it doesn't make business completely unviable. You're going to make linux illegal?

Then given that narrow definition, if you can even do that, you've got to deal with all the thousands of edge cases..

There *are* solutions coming, like verification apps where the data stays on your device and simply provides attestation that you're over 18, that don't require ham fisted legislation like this. But with lawmakers being typically 80+ they don't understand the problem enough to wait for it.

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: hardpenguinThis is insane, impractical, and unenforceable under any normal circumstances. What, we want to prevent minors from using technology now? For what purpose? It doesn't make any sense at all.

For what purpose once can speculate, all we know is that this is due to lobbying from Meta who have spent over $2bn on lobbying efforts for this specifically.

Quoting: hardpenguinThis is insane, impractical, and unenforceable under any normal circumstances. What, we want to prevent minors from using technology now? For what purpose? It doesn't make any sense at all.

Quoting: TurkeysteaksNot sure what the 'TrendAI' part of the Zero Day Initiative is, but nice to see that the ZDI seems to be helping.

On the AI side though I am curious. I despise AI, and a new reason to hate it is that some of the latest models (namely Anthropic's Mythos) is *reportedly* incredibly good at finding and exploiting vulnerabilities. I take that with a huge pinch of salt because clearly it's somewhat marketing, but it does worry me. If it ever gets into the wrong hands (and to be clear, I don't really consider Anthropic to be the RIGHT hands...) and it is even half as powerful as they are claiming, it really could be dangerous - I feel even more so for Open Source projects.

Hopefully not though.

I'm a SWE, and while I still avoid AI in my workplace for the most part, my colleagues are not the same - but even the most enthusiastic are starting to feel quite sour about it. Even on the most personal and maybe selfish level, it makes the job... really damn boring. I don't want to be a 'manager', I want to code! (which again, is partly why I refuse to use AI wherever I can)

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: LoudTechieIt could be, but I'm not seeing significant fluctuations, which is what surprises me.
I would expect Indian Steam access to fluctuate comparable, but with a different rhythm, to Chinese Steam access.
Simplified chinese spikes are easy too see, yet there're no visible english and/or Hindi spikes.

The number of Chinese users on Steam doesn't fluctuate.

The number of samples recorded varies, on account of sometimes being wildly wrong.

The issue is that it's difficult to count each machine in a PC bang once and only once per year. You can't count them server-side because they're all behind one IP address. You can't count them client-side because the clients get periodically wiped, which erases your means of seeing that you already counted it. Valve put their hands up on the issue - for a while after that they corrected the issues in the data when they came up, but they stopped doing that a couple of years ago so we get the spikes again.

Japan and South Korea could well have the same issues with data collection, but they aren't ~ a third of Steam, so no one notices.