It would be great if that argument prevailed, but it almost certainly won’t.

There’s another fun scenario…

After the midterms, Congress finally decides to do something about Trump. JD Vance exercises the 25th amendment on January 21st, 2027. Congress approves, and Trump sits out his last two years in office. Vance finishes Trump’s term in 2028, becoming wildly popular simply by reversing the worst issues attributed to Trump. He remains eligible for to run for two full terms, each as the incumbent. He doesn’t leave office until 2036.

Those refunds aren’t coming to consumers. That money came out of our pockets and went to the companies. The companies have already been made whole, by overcharging consumers for tariffs we didn’t need to pay. Now the government is going to cut them a check for the money we already paid them.

We could have saved time by just sending our income taxes directly to Elon and the rest of the problem class.

This is why probability needs to be taught, and taught properly. This line of logic clearly demonstrates the problem.

• Your expected return from not playing a $5 ticket is exactly $0.00.

• Your expected return from playing a $5 ticket is approximately $-4.99

“Gaining Zero” is vastly preferable to “Losing Five”.

If you can occasionally afford a $5 ticket, you can occasionally afford to buy shares of an index fund. You’re still gambling, but your expected return is positive.

Android’s “Work Profile” feature provides you a sandbox, allowing you to isolate “work” apps from your regular phone apps. I’ve never used Samsung’s secure folder, but it looks like the two are similar.

“Shelter” (Available on F-Droid) provides an easy way to setup and manage your work profile.

With the work profile set up, you can lock the work profile behind a separate password. (Settings -> Security & Privacy -> More security & privacy. Disable “Use one lock” and set a password)

He’s term limited from being elected. But election is not the only way in which a person can become president.

There is no constitutional requirement that the Speaker of the House be a member of Congress. After the 2028 election, the incoming Congress can elect Trump as the new speaker on January 6th, making him third in line for the next presidential term. They can then certify the presidential election.

If the incoming president and VP are not inaugurated on January 20th for whatever reason, or they resign immediately after the inauguration, Speaker Trump becomes president again.

If you’re getting sunlight at 10PM, you live on the western end of your time zone. In your location during winter, the sun is overhead closer to 1pm than noon.

Your particular jurisdiction might be better served by joining the timezone to your west.

That the boomers hated it is all the more reason to try again.

So we issue Little Johnny a retroreflective PT belt, and/or start the school day 30 minutes later on the west end of each time zone. Problem solved.

It’s not the 1970’s anymore. The fact that a bunch of idiot boomers hated change is no reason to keep this idiot system.

Worse, they’ve grown up on a steady diet of media telling them that “if you say the wrong thing” to a girl, “she’s going to accuse you of something,”

There’s a big problem with the premise of this argument.

The article accepts this “steady diet of media” as fact, but implies that it only affects “guys”.

If there is, indeed, a “steady diet of media” saying this to a guy, then that same “steady diet of media” is saying the same thing to a girl: “If a guy says something wrong, it is reasonable and/or expected for a girl to accuse him of something”. Girls are hearing the exact same message that guys are hearing.

If that “steady diet” actually exists, then the guy’s concerns of accusations are valid, and he should be praised for ensuring he doesn’t “say the wrong thing”.

Suppose Microsoft adds this capability to Windows, and you edit the registry to disable it. How is that any different?

By allowing the end user to change it instead of locking it down, they are not making a good faith effort to comply, and they lose their liability protection. To maintain their immunity, at the very least they will need to prohibit Californians from disabling the feature.

Canonical is prohibited from adding comparable terms.

I can see the argument for something like iOS.

How is iOS any different from Windows here?

Let’s say you own a computer store in California, you sell Windows laptops, and you setup your preinstalled Windows image with the registry edit made, because customers don’t like the silly age prompt. How are you not the OS Provider?

Again, to maintain their immunity under this law, they would have to prohibit me from doing this in their licensing agreement. My violation is what protects Microsoft. I would, indeed, be the OS provider in that scenario.

But in the scenario you describe, I’m not the end user.

Neither Canonical nor I can include the same restrictive terms in our OS offerings. We can simply inform our users that the OS is not California compliant. Our users become their own OS Providers as soon as they decide to use them in California.

And a user of Ubuntu only has access to the functions that Canonical has provided.

That is not at all accurate.

Administrator access to Windows is not at all comparable to root access on Linux. Windows “root” access is held solely by Microsoft, and granted only to Microsoft employees and contractors. They are the only ones with the capability of changing Microsoft’s binary blobs.

Canonical doesn’t restrict root access. Everyone who installs Ubuntu has root access by default.

Suppose Canonical adds this capability to Ubuntu. Suppose I take an Ubuntu install, and remove this capability. Who is the provider of the resulting OS, Canonical, or me? Obviously, I am responsible for the changes; I am obviously the OS Provider in this scenario.

What I am saying is that I was the OS provider before I made the changes.

Let’s remember that the law distinguishes between the OS and Applications running on that OS. They require that the signalling apparatus be included in the OS. Technologically, the distinction between OS and Application is somewhat arbitrary. For commercial OSes, it’s pretty simple: The OS is what Microsoft declares to be part of “Windows” is the OS; everything else is an application.

Suppose Microsoft refuses to include this signaling apparatus. The end user cannot modify Windows, so does not become liable as the “OS Provider”. The user can bolt on the functionality as an application, but cannot make it part of the OS. Microsoft is the one facing the fines under this law.

For FOSS software, the end user’s root access gives them the ability to add this signaling capability to the OS running on their machines, even if Canonical refuses to distribute a compliant OS. The user’s ability to make their own OS compliant with California law makes them the party liable for non-compliance.

The windows user uses the OS. The windows user does not control the OS. They only have access to the functions that Microsoft has provided. The Attorney General of California won’t be able to argue that the sysadmin is the OS Provider of a Windows installation. The OS Provider of Windows is Microsoft.

The Attorney General of California would easily be able to argue that the OS Provider of a particular Linux instance is the sysadmin of that instance.

If your code is installed on a general purpose computing device that is provided to a child, you can be fined.

If you provide code to the general public without requesting an age signal from the receiver’s OS, you can be fined.

The attorney general of California might consider the JavaScript in your web page to be “content”. They might consider it to be an “application”. There is no clear distinction. If you request an age signal before providing content, you can be fined. If you fail to request an age signal before providing an application, you can be fined.

The more I read about this law, the less I think it will actually go into effect. It’s going to face a whole series of injunctions. The lawyers are going to bill thousands of hours, but the whole thing is going to be scrapped.

The law doesn’t require anything of users, it requires something of OS providers.

For a FOSS OS, any user with root access would be considered an “OS Provider” under the definitions provided in this law. With FOSS, there is no real distinction between “user” and “developer”.

No… The law literally says that if you make a good faith effort then you are not liable.

It used to be that my liability was to the people using my code. If I code badly, they won’t use it, and I might be blocked from contributing to a project. That was the worst penalty that I faced for providing bad code.

Now, I might have to argue against a lawyer claiming my mistakes are negligence, and my efforts are in less than good faith, with financial penalties should they prevail.

They merely need to point to my opposition to this law as evidence that I am not acting “in good faith” to support it.

Throwing up our hands and exiting California and Colorado is playing into Microsoft’s desires. It is also the only rational response should this law go into effect as planned. Which means the proper course of action is to denounce this idiot law, not lend it our support or rationalize the harm it causes.

You’re having a conversation with a troll spanning across at least 10 different communities over three months?

The “context” is that “banning” is clearly one of your primary interests. You might consider starting a community on the subject.

And if I make a good faith effort, but it doesn’t work right, that’s a $2000 penalty. Every time that snot-nosed, unsupervised kid opens an app.

You could of course decide to not provide to residents of California and Colorado.

Yes, that’s exactly what Microsoft and Google want. They don’t want my FOSS OS competing with their commercial offerings.

The law effectively only applies penalties to the parents.

This applies penalties to far more than the parents. If I provide an operating system to a California parent, and my operating system does not include this “signal” apparatus, I can be fined $7500 every time a kid launches an application on my OS, for my deliberate decision not to implement their asinine horseshit.