Can't wait to use and promote illegal operating systems that do not verify age.

[dianora@ottawa.place]

@Doomed_Daniel @WTL @catsalad Yes. We are furiously agreeing. However I suspect electrolytics drying out will kill most commodity devices before the chips completely die.

[dianora@ottawa.place]

@Doomed_Daniel @WTL @catsalad As you would know there are open source initiatives for hardware (including CPUs) as well. I'd be fine with a slower computer that was more robust. Hell I've programmed PDP-8s. ;)

[doomed_daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@Dianora @WTL @catsalad
yeah but that has always been a problem and AFAIK is usually fixable with not too advanced soldering equipment?

[dianora@ottawa.place]

@Doomed_Daniel @WTL @catsalad IFF you can get the capacitors yes. I have a hot air rework station.

[lambdacalculus@masto.hackers.town]

@catsalad "You wanna use TOPS-10, kid? You're not old enough!"

[edtmwed@social.vivaldi.net]

@catsalad Why call it illegal? What laws do you have in your country? Why don't you oppose it? The comment is just so -

[dacmot@sunny.garden]

Please keep us posted @catsalad!

[matildalove@wetdry.world]

@edtmwed "why don't you oppose it" lol. lmao. i don't know what democratic utopia you come from, but here in the united states the lawmakers don't listen to us

"why call it illegal" take a wild guess

[jprjr@mastodon.social]

@catsalad funny enough I think the laws mandating all of this might be illegal.

Bernstein v. United States determined that writing software is an expressive act and protected by the first amendment.

We generally say the government can't coerce speech - can't make kids say the pledge of allegiance, for example.

Punishing a volunteer software dev for not writing age verification code? Sure sounds like coerced speech to me!

[jprjr@mastodon.social]

@catsalad what's bananas to me is there's a way to do this totally legally. Make it incentive-based instead of punitive.

Create some criteria to certify an operating system as California Family-Friendly. Say the state will only buy such operating systems.

Apple, Microsoft, and Google would absolutely do it and get certified. But the open source stuff could continue not giving a shit.

Not the most ideal - still a privacy issue but at least it's not mandated, we'd have a choice to opt out.

[murodegrizeco@toad.social]

@catsalad

These days age all of us so fast.

Soon even toddlers will be hundreds of years old.

[rgegriff@masto.hackers.town]

@anon_4601 @catsalad this has happened before. People found out about the CARNIVORE program and people started using scripts to append random triggering phrases to their emails.

The secret service just started going hard against randos and everybody cut it out real quick.

[kadin2048@mefi.social]

@catsalad we live in an unpublished draft of a Cory Doctorow novel that he shelved for being too stupid.

[anon_4601@nerdculture.de]

@rgegriff @catsalad

Exactly. That’s why it needs to spread like a 'virus', not a script users run.
Plausible deniability is key.....

There are plenty of furious engineers right now. With Google forcing mandatory developer verification and closing AOSP, many open-source devs feel cornered. They are the perfect candidates to slip a tiny 'extra function' into their unsuspecting apps....

[serapath@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@tubetime @GerardThornley @Amorpheus @catsalad

nobody said it was easy.
the first published linux version 0.01 was published in 1991.
Would anyone believe where this could go decades later? no!

did anyone imagine open source 3D printers and a network of private ppl offering 3d printing services would ever be a thing?

etsy even offers 3d printing services.

It just needs a start.

There are projects like the https://mntre.com/ and a lot of open tech exists to further grow an ecosystem

[serapath@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@Amorpheus @catsalad

national regulations

you mean regulatjons made by the epstein class?

its hard to regulate an open source bazaar where private ppl offer their printing services.

what are you exactly afraid of?
why wouldnt platforms like etsy or more open alternatives exist in the future?

[gerardthornley@hachyderm.io]

@tubetime @Amorpheus @serapath @catsalad 🙂 yeah, I was kidding! I know we aren't going to knock up a PCB-based, GHz-speed, super-scalar, super-pipelined CPU in our sheds. (And the power consumption of you could! 🔥)

Now that I am thinking about it, though, I wonder what actually would be achievable for an enthusiastic amateur with means? For instance, would it be plausible for them to make an actual 6502 chip? At what point in the history of silicon manufacturing did cost and complexity make it utterly unachievable outside of the existing players in the industry?

[gerardthornley@hachyderm.io]

@reallylazybear @catsalad aye. I heard something recently pointing out that the current shift rightwards in Western politics was really predictable - a combination of the bulge in the demographic as the boomer generation pass through their retirement years, coupled with the long-observed tendency of people to become more conservative as they get older.
I also heard that we're passing the peak in that bulge at the moment, so as long as no idiots cause another huge generational ripple in the demographics, things might start to get a bit more balanced again.

[serapath@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@GerardThornley @tubetime @Amorpheus @catsalad

i do think in a fediverse world and beyond that peer to peer world, where people leave big tech and embrace self custody, may it be through self hosting (if ppl got the skills) or through embracing peer to peer apps where their identity is represented by a "seed phrase" that represents thei cryptographic keypair, which they write down and store away safely.

...hardware you can trust in is vital, even if it is slow, so ppl will buy open hardware🙂

[dirkhh@hachyderm.io]

@catsalad
We should start a movement that does that. We'd need a catchy name, though.
Open Sauce or something like it. We should workshop that