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2026-03-1018:223620
Updated age verification restrictions for MidnightBSD usage.
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By codazoda 2026-03-116:23 Is this an effective CTA?
What types of negative side-effects would there be from an “open source” application that was free, open, and restricted entirely by license? Rather than “we make no warranty” the license says “you may not use”.
I’ve also had a few products I’ve released on GitHub as public but never assigned a license, which probably means they are proprietary, unless GitHub TOS says otherwise.
I realize each of these is a unique situation.
By shevy-java 2026-03-1113:30 This is a huge problem. I won't use an operating system that comes with SpyID. I also could not care any less what any fake-rationale a government uses to spy on the people - it is simple illegal.
Then again, not so many use MidnightBSD, so ... not so many affected, right?
This age verification stuff is insane.
Fringe loonies have too much power.
By johnisgood 2026-03-1020:412 reply I suppose it has to do with saving their asses? We probably have to thank the Government for this, too.
In any case, it is indeed crazy. If I were to live by this >10 years ago I would not know anything about Linux or BSDs. Or programming for that matter.
By shevy-java 2026-03-1113:31 This may make sense from their point of view, but from a user's point of view I do not understand why I would want my own operating system to spy on me so the government can get more data, which it may then hand over to others. Now the main problem is that governments become increasingly hostile to The People, but now downstream people suddenly act as surrogate-spy helpers, such as the MidnightBSD folks do. This is a simple case where people should globally reject criminal governments from spying on people.
By stonogo 2026-03-110:05 Meta is putting a lot of money into lobbying for these laws, presumably because it's easier to change laws than it is to fix their business model, and they're probably tired of getting sued for COPPA violations.
By michaelbrave 2026-03-119:302 reply not fringe loonies, big business, Meta and Palantir (and others) are financially pushing for it.
They're pushing because the loonies are pushing. The loonies are passing age verification laws and big businesses don't want the responsibility.
Now... it just so happens that the loonies and big business are connected another way. Despite not much liking each other, they share a political party to advance each other's goals. Only a relatively small fraction of the country really wants to eliminate porn (which is the real goal), but they have enough allies who are willing to tolerate it to make a majority (or near-majority).
Which enables big business to get everything else that they want.
By gr8tyeah 2026-03-1119:32 Billionaires are the fringe loonies
They want us trapped on their platforms and absolution from obligation to police their platforms
They’re involved in indemnifying themselves legally while jacking up RAM prices to prop up their data center investments and make us use those data centers to compute
And they get the government help making us the bad guy if we lie about age verification
They are playing both sides of this argument because doing so keeps them in the conversation altogether. They sell TIE Fighters and Xwings
The entirety of American society has gone absolutely off the fucking rails kowtowing to office dweebs who need to keep us tending the server fields or their buy in data centers becomes worthless
By hulitu 2026-03-1312:29 > The loonies are passing age verification laws and big businesses don't want the responsibility.
Big businesses don't want the responsibility but they want all the data they can get from you. Data brokers pay well.
By gr8tyeah 2026-03-1119:28 Billionaires are fringe loonies
They make up a tiny tiny tiny portion of the human population and whatever nation state they claim to originate from
By carefree-bob 2026-03-112:041 reply Think of the children!!
spends time thinking of children having fun learning BSD
By ducktastic 2026-03-112:07 I wasn't under 18 when I started playing with *BSD/Nix systems on my own, but how tragic that kids who would be drawn to understanding these systems are essentially 'outlawed' from learning them. As another HNer pointed out in a related post, I think this stems from not understanding the delineation between an OS/App/Platform.
