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Comment by big85 | Hacker News Reader

So, in this order:

1. You need a camera on your computer to allow a third party to verify your age before viewing adult content

2. It applies to social media too

3. It applies to your operating system too

4. Unless you age verify, the law demands your computer must be powerful enough to run an AI, or be internet-equipped and send your private photos to a third party, to detect and prohibit nudity. It must be capable of running in real-time, presumably, to work on Facetime calls and such.

Next step, certainly to outlaw most operating systems and older devices. Excellent news for Google, Apple, and Microsoft, bad for Linux and alternative operating systems. Remember when schools handed out Raspberry Pis?

Edit: And they are asking for this to be implemented for free in three months, because nobody knows how software engineering works. Great job

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So this is ill defined.

However the original proposal was pretty much aimed at phone manufactures. It is perfectly possible for current gen phones (and previous gen) to detect nudes in camera. Infact most phones do that already in order to adjust the exposure, its just you dont see that.

The problem for the UK is that they are not legislating technically. The original proposal was tightly scoped. The problem was, because of the way government runs in the UK it was shelved. Now that its not, the original scoping has been mashed, as its been blended with an child social media ban (quite what makes them think social media is ok for elder millennials++ is also interesting)

If they actually decided to make laws like they did for building materials or cars (ie all phones must conform to EU/BS standard x/y/z) then life would be much easier for everyone. But alas we have forgotten how to govern. something must be done now

>Next step, certainly to outlaw most operating systems and older devices.

They won't have to.

Instead, they'll just make some new essentially mandatory tech which older devices cannot run – update or stop existing, societally.

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Phones and email already seem this way (i.e. "required") – from my perspective as an internet user whom doesn't use phone/email, personally. Nobody believes me when answering "no phone, no email" – free-est man alive - their loss is disbelief.

I am very curious how you make it in current society without a phone or email. It does sound incredibly freeing, but I'm definitely having trouble comprehending how it works.

This is a common response I get. My best suggestion (for understanding) would be: just try, for an entire day day, to be phone and/or email -free. Bonus points for a typical workday replacement.

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For the past nine years I've lived literally next door to my primary places of employement. I do bluecollar tradework, part-time (by appointment, only); I have very few clients, cultivated over years of firing bad clients. I show up, at planned times, complete jobs, go home.

I have an attorney who handles any legal contacts (my "registered agent"). Accountant handles tax BS.

My bank is adjacent to my neighborhood (since I cannot do online banking without text/email/2FA), so I just walk over for account transactions.

When a service "absolutely requires" an email (e.g. online gaming) I'll use a temporary email burner – with a corresponding online purchase (for any future account recovery needs, called-in).

In my city, most street parking is pay-by-phone. I can usually find a "free" spot, but this often takes a few extra minutes – my US city isn't huge so most stores have parking.

I do own a one-way pager; but it's been off for years. My family is essentially one other person, and is within visitable driving range.

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Mostly I just don't like being interrupted/bothered (as much as I love socializing). Am honestly thinking about getting a landline... just to be able to "reach out" by voice, with a small whitelist.

"everybody wins"

Email is the most free, decentralized communication channel we have. It’s fully async, so you consume it at the pace you want. What makes you against emails? Just curious

My primary thoughts on exiting email came after reading Paul Graham's excellent essay on email being nothing more than a to-do list that ANYBODY can add on to [†].

SPAM-rant: I personally feel that a system needs to exist/replace email... which uses some sort of low-tx-fee crypto to "cost money" for each and every email sent. The recipients could then "refund" such fees, optionally & consentually, when they've determined that sender worthy of free-contact.

Everybody else should have to pay to call/text [Ω]. Since no such system publicly exists: I opt-out.

[†] personal anxiety is my biggest reason for hating inbox-opening

[Ω] e.g: similar to postal mailings

Oh yes, that's a good point. Email as a todo list is pretty horrible. I myself have high anxiety and just accepted I will never be able to effectively use emails in the todo list way.

I've been noodling with concepts for what I see as my ideal email client and orienting it towards "conversations" instead of "todo list" is a key aspect I want

I got a pager and a landline [¬]. Bots haven't figured out how to interface with numeric paging systems, yet; nor have most meatsicle operators/salesmen (but it's easy to teach your friends&family). #no-apps #no-location-services #no-text

Should anybody in my contact list need to "email something," we do so while on a phonecall via a temp-burner receiving address (auto-deletes after 10 minutes).

== no email to-do list

If later somesuchbody says "did you get my email, I sent it yesterday?" I can legitimately and verifiably respond "nope."

[¬] the latter, recently; service isn't "on" yet but soon... will not have a ringer, page-only

>orienting it towards "conversations" instead of "todo list" is a key aspect I want

We probably both grew up on AOLim... which to me was a fantastic, globally-accessible solution.

Several employers over the past decades have had IRC groupchats, but it's internal-only, and not quite AIM's glorydays.

Although I imagine if instant messengers were more popular, today..: they'd be just as scammy as everything else-s become.

This isn’t just your photos. This is all content displayed on the device, all content captured by the camera - everything. Full take. GCHQ must be wetting themselves.

We all know this is the first political position. They'll walk back half of it, and what remains will appear to be a compromise, but was what was intended all along.

We all also know they know they will be absolutely ravaged in the next GE, at the scale of the Tories.

The question - why hand that to Farage and his far right? Is Keir Starmer a far right operative in Labour? His track revord would suggest so, but do we have any receipts?

Incompetence. I don’t remember when there was last a competent PM or government - not in my lifetime, certainly, and I am no spring chicken.

Alternative interpretation: the purpose of a system is what it does, and the PMs and governments are competent at something else than what you think they should be competent at.

I don't think so, I kind of wish but he was a skilled human rights lawyer, the head of CPS, an utter moron wouldn't be able to achieve this much, he's not a lettuce.

I'm afraid it's a malicious intent here, and I also wish I could see a competent government, but until one takes on FPTP and media dictating the policy, nothing changes.

The hope is in the angry youngsters, maybe they could vote Greens+LibDems in.

We should all write on our devices private nastygrams to whomever is assigned to watching our devices. The least we can do is mock them.

The fear towards adult content is so insane. I know it’s mostly a pretext, but a meaningful portion of the population will accept pretty much whatever restrictions because they are so afraid of their kids seeing naked bodies

I saw boobs as a tennager and now I'm a terrorist

If anything I'd say not seeing enough boobs as a kid has a positive correlation to terrorism...

Does the law really require third party? Because having on-device functions configurable by parents doesn’t seem terrible at all.

That's not what the UK is demanding. They want client side scanning malware that breaks DRM, circumvents encryption and VPNs, and bypasses other security features in order to scan everything visible on your screen.

Given the PM's association with a certain good friend of Epstein's, it's hard not to wonder if child protection is really the point.

I'm happy the UK government finally decided to outlaw DRM.

It absolutely doesn't. However, the argument doesn't work when it's about connecting the "is the user a kid" bit to the existing and constantly running object recognition (phone cameras already run skin detection all the time to set white balance), so people invent "third parties" and "report people to authorities".

But "Is the user a kid" is already a switch that I (a parent) switch on in the device and that the kid in question can't switch off. That bit seems like a solved problem?

Why would anything else even be needed in that space? The interest of parents and tech companies likely align here.

With just enough fascistic pressure maybe Usenet can be great again. Just have to figure out how to filter known good content from the spam which I think can be solved with OpenPGP identities. Otherwise Tor and download managers for the patient people. Static generated galleries of pictures and videos spread across thousands of small sites. Some downsides of pushing people into dark corners is that all regulation goes out the window along with some tax revenue. Loss of tax revenue may be one way to get their attention.

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