I bet it’s like the one discovered in Portugal which is of a mineral form of it for which there is no technology to industrially extract the lithium.

In other words, about as feasible as “we can extract all the <insert mineral> we want from sea water”.

Well, yeah, we’re well into the stage where it’s not quality that sells Google products and services.

This is the Pillaging Stage of Google’s business: as they screw both customers and users (Google’s customers aren’t their users) for short term “growth” they can only hold market share by taking advantage of market barriers to entry, networking effects and their current market share to force both customers and users to keep on using Google products and services.

The problem is that even if somebody out there is willing to go to the work of making device drives, bootloaders and OS releases for the hardware, it still can’t happen because the information about how to talk to the hardware isn’t open, same thing for the bootloader and even if those things are reverse engineered often even the ability to install an OS there is locked down on the hardware.

As you correctly say, the dream of any software just running anywhere isn’t possible because that’s not how hardware works, but the current situation is not one were what’s blocking it isn’t just the natural architectural structure of hardware, it’s one where the hardware makers have purposefully and to quite an extreme level locked down their hardware so that even if people are willing to do the work of doing what it takes to run an OS there, they can’t because necessary info to use the hardware isn’t available and the hardware is even locked down against OS installations for those who don’t have the necessary cryptographic keys.

The idea that the Major Software Enshittificator which is Samsung would ever go along with this is incredibly naive.

Samsung was one of the first to fill their smartphones and tables with tons of useless “Samsung” software that can’t be removed by normal means, and even people who had their older and less insanely stuffed with junk devices got them forcefully filled with that crap via updates (making their older devices unusable, “incentivizing” them to get new ones).

Samsung hasn’t been consumer friendly for at least a decade.

I’m sure they learned their lesson…

… which is why they’re fine with it happening again.

I bet they’re going to start selling CDO² again, only this time the underlying debt will be data center debt instead of mortgages.

I’m hoping that this kind of thing explodes VPN usage, thus training a generation to actually be far harder to track and surveil than otherwise, achieving the very opposite of the true objective of such bills.

It’s USB rather than bluetooth, though maybe there are bluetooth versions.

Absolutelly, if you can’t use it with a remote and have to use a keyboard and mouse it’s not the same thing.

However, my setup is easilly controllable with a remote: I have Kodi running always on top in it and use one of these.

With that the sofa experience is the same as with a dedicated TV Box (except that the remote can’t power it ON, only OFF, but for me it’s fine since I leave it always ON) because that remote just sends the right “keypresses” to control Kodi (apparently the shortcut keys are standard) so from a user point of view one interacts with it the same as with a TV Box or Smart TV.

The PC-ish stuff (such as managing the bittorrent server) I do remotelly from my main PC via SSH and web interfaces.

Mind you, I have a keyboard and mouse connected to it because sometimes I want to use the browser, but if all you’re doing is watching stuff like with a TV Box, that’s not needed.

I’ve been doing the exact same thing for over a decade.

Over time I’ve had 2 differen TV Media Boxes (and Asus and a no-name brand), an ASUS EEE PC with Linux and an Android TV Box.

What I have now is an N100 Mini-PC, with Lubuntu and Kodi always running on top (and set up to start on system start).

I also have one of these so it’s the same “sofa experience” as a with a dedicated Media system (with just the funny detail that the Power button in the remote will turn the system OFF but it won’t turn it back ON again).

Because that thing is designed for low power consumption, I leave it always on.

This is literally the best such system I’ve had in all this time.

As a cherry on top, it also doubles down as my home NAS and bittorrent server on top of a VPN.

I use a Mini-PC with an N100 CPU.

It literally has a peak consumption of 15W, though I seldom see it go above 10% CPU usage (which is nice because even the small fan it has almost never goes on) so even when I’m actually using it as a TV box it consumes a lot less than 15W. It consumes even less when idle.

So it’s always ON.

As a side benefit it’s my home NAS and a bittorrent server managed via a web-interface, both things for which it makes even to have a machine always running.

Haven’t actually seen any difference in my power bill.

Also it works fine with something like this if one really wants the exact same sofa experience as with a dedicated TV box or a Smart TV.

As I just wrote in a post under the previous poster’s one, you can use a Mini-PC with a low-power processor like the N100 and a wireless remote and it will definitelly not look or sound like a “big loud box” (not least because the fan almost never goes on and when it goes it’s quiet - it turns out that even an N100 is overpowered for just working as a TV box so CPU usage is almost always below 10%).

Further, you can put Linux in it and then manage it remotelly via SSH, so after setting it up you don’t need a keyboard or mouse connected to it.

The end result is something that doesn’t at all look like a PC and which, thanks to the remote, you use just like a dedicated TV box.

Hardward for reference: Mini-PC, Remote

PS: That PC is a lot more expensive now than when I bought it 2 years ago.

I have a $150 N100 Mini-PC with Lubuntu and an always on Kodi for that.

I even got a wireless remote for it - turns out Kodi’s keyboard shortcuts are standard so there are wirelless remotes that just identify themselves on USB as a “keyboard” and just have the remote buttons mapped to the correct shortcut key for that function. The remote looks the same as any other remote (though if you press the power button it switches OFF the PC and then you can’t switch it ON again with the remote).

It works pretty much like a dedicated TV media box and it’s my living room were you can’t really tell it’s a PC unless you know what to look for.

As an upside, it’s also my home NAS and bittorrent server, remotelly managed from my official PC via SSH and web (the bittorrent server has a web interface).

I’ve actually been using TV media boxes for over a decade (long before Smart TVs) and this is the best setup I’ve ever had.

“Normal” SUVs are something like 70% more likely to kill the pedestrian in a collision with one that cars like sedans.

SUVs are anti-social cars.

IMHO, it’s a great example that The Law isn’t really done to protect common people that those things are allowed on the road when they’re actually unecessary (unlike, say, delivery vans) and almost twice as deadly for other people than normal cars.

Clearly a Penis Compensation Device.

"Next, even assuming the whole thing is perfect and has been checked and confirmed by independent experts, how do you guarantee that once the infrastructure is in place the whole age-gating software isn’t just made closed source and covertly of changed to turn it into a full-blown civil society surveillance system?"

For chat control app: blockchain where only recognized child safety organizations can add photo-hashes For age verification app: it’s zero knowledge proof, so you get a white card without any private data? so how can that turn into full blown surveillance system? The only thing I don’t like is uploading my ID online to the app, let me get verified by showing my ID to municipal services without uploading it, would be good ig

Oh man, so much superficial stuff there.

For starters you did not answer my main question: How exactly does any of this stop the authorities from just making the app close source and changing it to do whatever the fuck they want?

Next “recognized child safety organizations” just moves the problem of “who choses what gets blocked” around. Who “recognizes” an organisation as genuinelly for child safety? Who authorizes them to add photo-hashes to the blockchain? What is the official process for all of that? Where is the Judicial oversight? Where is the fucking Judicial oversight? You know, the way by which for example an artist can get their tasteful drawing which is not adult but “had too much skin” for some moralistic type in one of those organisations taken of the blockchain.

Further: Who gives you the “white card without any private data”? How do you for sure it doesn’t have some kind of ID and it’s not in some database right linked with your personal info?

“Also, who gets to chose which sites are locked behind age-gates and which are not. Is the list open? Can it be appealed? How easy it is the appeals process? Is there Court supervision of the whole process or is it some people in a closed room with no Judicial oversight choosing what gets put behind that lock and what doesn’t.”

Child safety organizations? Independent organizations with clear criteria or something? But yeah good questions idk

Again, PROCESS. Who approves anybody to oversee this? What power do they those people have? What’s the process to reverse bad decisions?

Further, you can hardly reconstruct the picture for validation from the hashes in blockchain, so it’s not really public, now is it?! The hashes are public but the content represented by them is not, so de facto the list of what’s being blocked is not public, so how would the public know that it’s actually correct and not, say, some moralist blocking sex-education images?

I mean a very common trick by politicians in areas prone to Corruption, such as public contracts or public-private initiatives is to set some shit up with potential to abuse and then a toothless or captured “independent” overseer - it provides the appearence of honesty whilst in practice being the very opposite.

Further, your answer is again superficial. “Child safety organisations”? Meaningless without a detailed definition of what’s considered child safety, how they’re overseen to actually abide by such definition rather than say, being moralists or well-meaning but incompetent amateurs. If I was to proclaim to the Estonian Authorities that “I’m a ‘child safety organisation’” would they just let me put whatever I wanted on that blockchain? Dive beyond the surface with even the minimum analysis of the problem space and, as usual, the devil is in the details.

This isn’t just a technical problem, it’s a process problem and a regulatory problem - if this is not done properly whatever technical appearence of anynomity you have can be defeated by the process side of things (like having a record somewhere linking that “anonymous” white card with you or whatever state sanctioned app mandated to run in your devices being turned closed source and changed to covertly track you) and that applies not just on the user side but also the lists side of things (how the sites to block are chosen can be abused to block people from seeing things which are not adult but rather political) and the server side of things (as in, is there any software the sites have to run and what independent oversight is there for what it does).

Tech does not work in a vacuum and is not the whole system by itself - it exists in a human context, not least because it’s done by people (or at least in accordance to the specifications of people if you’re vibe coding it), it’s installed or distributed by people, it gets data that ultimatelly comes from people, and it’s use by people - there is literally no point in tech that does not in some way affect or is affected by people - and thus tech can be abused and subverted by the human/process side of things. This is why good hackers also use social hacking - because you can subvert tech via the human side.

So the bits that have to be protected for this to not just do what it’s claimed by people that it’s supposed to do (and to keep on doing it even when bad actors get a hold of it), extend all the way to the process side of things and into things like Judicial oversight (because any human process that’s not overseen by a powerful independent entity gets abused sooner or later). And, guess what, all of that if far heavier than a pie in the sky list of tech fads.

My core concern is that a technical infrastructure of mandatory government software in people’s devices (which is a requirement of this, otherwise there’s nothing there to stop children from acessing whatever the fuck has hashes in that blockchain), once in place can be abused, and as we’ve already seen in Europe, Democracies can and do turn into Fascism at any point and Fascists just love to have an infrastructure in place that can easilly be changed (just push an updated version down) to, say, eavesdrop on people or block everybody from accessing specific political content.

Oh, there are so many iffy things there.

For starters:

the verification app will be zero-knowledge proof

Next, how exactly is being in the blockchain something that helps guarantee anonymity in an age verification access control system? The whole point of the blockchain is to guaranteed non-deniability, the exact opposite. At best it stinks of “we’ve thrown a bunch of techno-fads into this proposal to make it appealing to ignorant techno-fans”.

Then, there are a TON of ways of de-anonimizing data if the thing isn’t perfectly done, especially when it gets crossed with other data. Is there a group of independent experts analysing each and every version of the protocol and the app to make sure it’s not just directly anonymous but also resilient to de-anonimization?

Next, even assuming the whole thing is perfect and has been checked and confirmed by independent experts, how do you guarantee that once the infrastructure is in place the whole age-gating software isn’t just made closed source and covertly of changed to turn it into a full-blown civil society surveillance system?

Also, who gets to chose which sites are locked behind age-gates and which are not. Is the list open? Can it be appealed? How easy it is the appeals process? Is there Court supervision of the whole process or is it some people in a closed room with no Judicial oversight choosing what gets put behind that lock and what doesn’t.

Beyond that, it’s the responsibility of parents to watch over and control what their children are doing, not everybody else. The whole focus should be on giving parents the tools for that (for example, with a standard protocol for sites to inform browsers and home firewalls that they’re serving adult content, thus allowing parents to block it internally without the information of who is watching what ever leaving their home network), not mandated government software supposedly controlling the access of the whole fucking civil society to arbitrary web-sites and who knows what else.

Last but not least, it’s literally the smallest impact and easiest to achieve option to have the websites push out standard markers for “adult content” to browsers and home firewalls so that parents can restrict their children’s access, not putting locks on every such site AND having age identification on any and all means of accessing those websites on every single piece of networked computing hardware that anybody in Estonia might use to access such websites.

The entire thing is far too heavy and affects way too many devices and too much software to be the “best solution” for the problem of protecting children from adult content, but it sure is the best solution for the objective of having government access control software in every single computing device used in Estonia.

Same reason why a CEO with a half-arsed strategy they want to enact hires a highly paid management consultancy which by an amazing coincide produces an “analysis” or “study” that “identifies” “problems with the company” and “recommends” that the company executes said half-arsed strategy, and later after it fails miserable, said CEO will blame the consultancy.

Modern publicly traded company CEO’s aren’t hired on actual competence as strategists or top-level organizers, they’re hired on self-aggrandizing skills, personal connections, near-fraudulent misportrayal of their capabilities, or in other words, salesmanship.

At least in software development they can expect whatever the fuck they want, but when people are overworked due to trying to fulfill unreasonable expectations they make stupid mistakes so there are more bugs that slip through to much later phases were they’re harder to correct and the consequences of them are way more costly to undo and have no time for “spring cleaning” kind of work such as Refactoring code, so the codebase much more quickly becomes heavy, unwieldy and more bug prone - so harder to change (for example, do add new features or fix problems) and more likely to fail when it is change - leading to the need for a full rewrite (which costs $$$) much sooner.

In other words, increase the load on people and what you’re doing is causing a bit more work results delivered now in exchange for A TON of otherwise unnecessary work that will have to be done later (from extra bug fixing and even fixing the consequences of bugs, to full system re-writes because the old code base is an unmanageable mess) as well as a massive fall in productivity because the code has turned into a hot mess.

And this is without even taking in the account the consequences of using AI to generate code: unless we’re talking about such a minuscule project that it can be generated all in one go (i.e. non-professional stuff or tiny helper scripts), it’s not going to be a single consistent design with consistent coding practices, thus from the start already being a hot mess, way harder (read time consuming, read costly) to bugfix and change.

IMHO, there’s going to be some serious fireworks in just about all companies that went full-on with vibe coding, with the recent sequence of truly idiotic problems with Github and Windows 11 probably being a visible display of the beginning of that.

(Mind you, the funny bit is that all those senior techies that are already being hired to fix this shit and will need to be hired in larger numbers, are way more likely to tell any manager with unreasonable KPIs to go fuck themselves and even leave if pressed too hard to work themselves to the bone to try to achieve that which they know with absolute certainty is impossible, since it already is and it’s going to be even more a “sellers’ market” for the more experienced types so leaving is no problem).