Tootfinder

I've seen a bunch of "the CA age verification law is the best way to do a bad thing and so we shouldn't oppose compliance" takes, which others are rightly pointing out is a bad stance because it's blindingly obvious that compliance now sets the stage for compliance later and the clearly set up later is mandatory verification of age data. Even if you think that, for example, California's current "progressive" government won't go there, we're all currently seeing just how easy it is for a new government to pick up the oppressive tools the "good" government was using "restraint" with and put them to worse ends.
On the other hand, I'll freely admit that distros *do* need a way to shield themselves from liability right now. The clear (to me; IANAL) correct solution is to say on your website "don't download this OS if you're in a jurisdiction where it's not legal for us to provide it."). Assuming this does put you in the clear liability-wise, it has several positive effects:
- Stops zero people from downloading it.
- Makes it clear that your project will not collaborate with fascists/oppressive regime enjoyers.
- Means that when the next law makes verifying user ages mandatory (and/or explicitly requires using Palantir-adjacent services to do so) you've already got a strategy in place and there's no need for a "debate" in your "community" about compliance.
- Gets users more practice with "the law is malicious/needlessly bureaucratic/oppressive; let's ignore it" which to be honest people in general clearly desperately need at this point.
- Is the most effective political move if you want to resist the way things are going. Forcing the other side to explain why "California bans Linux" is good rhetorical strategy. Make *them* try to explain "well it's actually not so harmful since we let users set it themselves" and answer your follow-up "but what if next year the requirements change; I just refuse to go along with this slippery slope stuff and I'm not bothered if that means you want to *ban* me."
#AgeVerification

In the category of "For every complex problem" (Mencken) - #BECCS & #biofuels as the current example.
Burning wood for power worse for climate than gas equivalent, report finds

In the category of "For every complex problem" (Mencken) - #BECCS & #biofuels as the current example.
Burning wood for power worse for climate than gas equivalent, report finds

Well burning wood for power (currently what we do at Drax in the UK) doesn't make sense now and it seems it still won't make sense in the future, even with carbon capture:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/20/bur…

I explained something for a friend in a simple way, and I think it's worth paraphrasing again here.
You cannot create a system that constrains itself. Any constraint on a system must be external to the system, or that constraint can be ignored or removed. That's just how systems work. Every constitution for every country claims to do this impossible thing, a thing proven is impossible almost 100 years ago now. Gödel's loophole has been known to exist since 1947.
Every constitution in the world, every "separation of powers" and set of "checks and balances," attempts to do something which is categorically impossible. Every government is always, at best, a few steps away from authoritarianism. From this, we would then expect that governments trand towards authoritarianism. Which, of course, is what we see historically.
Constraints on power are a formality, because no real controls can possibly exist. So then democratic processes become sort of collective classifiers that try to select only people who won't plunge the country into a dictatorship. Again, because this claim of restrictions on powers is a lie (willful or ignorant, a lie reguardless) that classifier has to be correct 100% of the time (even assuming a best case scenario). That's statistically unlikely.
So as long as you have a system of concentrated power, you will have the worst people attracted to it, and you will inevitably have that power fall into the hands of one of the worst possible person.
Fortunately, there is an alternative. The alternative is to not centralize power. In the security world we try to design systems that assume compromise and minimize impact, rather than just assuming that we will be right 100% of the time. If you build systems that maximially distribute power, then you minimize the impact of one horrible person.
Now, I didn't mention this because we're both already under enough stress, but...
Almost 90% of the nuclear weapons deployed around the world are in the hands of ghoulish dictators. Only two of the countries with nuclear weapons not straight up authoritarian, but they're not far off. We're one crashout away from steralizing the surface of the Earth with nuclear hellfire. Maybe countries shouldn't exist, and *definitely* multiple thousands of nuclear weapons shouldn't exist and shouldn't all be wired together to launch as soon as one of these assholes goes a bit too far sideways.

I see no sign of any recognition from those who would want such a ban that they see any of the collateral damage a successful ban would have on the majority of kids who are not falling for this bullshit. That they are banning any good at all along with the bad.
Under 18s only
I see that the lobbying for these laws are funded by the absolute worst companies on the internet, those who will be entrenched by the legal compliance costs, that will cement themselves as the arbitrators of who is allowed to access the internet.
It’s a gift to Palantir and other surveillance companies. The very people running these algo-feeds are the ones who benefit from IDing every user and stalking them across the internet on their government-approved internet-licence IDs.
I don’t think even a successful ban on social media for kids would actually address the issue of kids being exposed to sexism and misogony or reduce the kids alienation and depression.
A ban can’t help, will make many things worse, won’t address the problem, and will make competing with the worst surveillance capitalists on the planet more difficult.
Going to war with every internet site and advice forum and making internet access harder won’t fix anything, and will have massive collateral damage against everyone seeking support from strangers or trying to learn things their parents won’t teach them.
But I see we are going to do it anyway.
The direction is clear.
Those companies do get what they lobby for, and they are lobbying hard for ID checks on every website, wrapping their desire to enclose the internet commons for themselves in a faux concern for children’s welfare.
And governments wish to monitor and control the internet, so they will pass these laws.
I wonder how many parents have a family group-chat that they’re going to accidentally ban their kids from using, not realizing that ‘social media’ might include Whatsapp? 😆
It won’t fix anything, it will make the situation for kids worse, impose costs and rents and hacks and exploits on all of us, and increase government and corporate power.
Many will lose access to their networks of support and help.
So it goes.
We will build a better more censorship resistant internet. It’s already here really: Briar. Matrix. Nostr. Bitchat. Veilid. Spritely. And the rest.
The laws may push us there faster.
The race will go on.

A minimal wake-vortex model explains formation flight of flapping birds
Olivia Pomerenk, Kenneth S. Breuer
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.22043 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.22043 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.22043
arXiv:2602.22043v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Collective patterns of motion emerge across biological taxa: insects swarm, fish school, and birds flock. In particular, large migratory birds form strikingly ordered V-shaped formations, which experiments and direct numerical simulations have demonstrated provide substantial energetic benefits during long-distance flight. However, the precise aerodynamic and morphological mechanisms underlying these benefits remain unclear. In this work, we develop a reduced-order model of the wake-vortex interactions between two flapping birds flying in tandem. The model retains essential unsteady flapping dynamics while remaining computationally tractable. By optimizing over a six-dimensional state space, which comprises the follower's three-dimensional relative position and three independent flapping parameters, we identify the energetically optimal leader-follower configuration of northern bald ibises. The predicted optimum agrees quantitatively with live-bird measurements. Because of its simplicity, the model allows for direct interrogation of the physical mechanisms responsible for this optimum. In particular, it isolates precisely how the follower's wing kinematics interact with the leader's wake to enhance aerodynamic efficiency. The model predicts an 11% reduction in total mechanical power for a follower in formation flight -- consistent with experimental estimates -- and shows that this saving arises from reductions in both induced and profile power, dominated by decreased profile power enabled primarily through reduced flapping amplitude and, secondarily, reduced upstroke flexion. These results provide a mechanistic explanation for the structure of V-formations and offer new insight into the aerodynamic principles governing collective flight.
toXiv_bot_toot