My point is that forcing age-gates on anything provided via such formal systems incentivizes kids to go around those systems and install themselves an OS that doesn’t do age-gating to evade it, not necessarily at school were they’re unlikely to control the hardware, but at home.

Even before this, MS and Google have used their money to create a situation were very few of the formal systems for kids to access computers, such as schools, put anything other than their OSes in front of kids, so only kids who are naturally geeks/techies might have tried Linux out on their own - those kids would always end up trying Linux out because they’re driven by curiosity and enjoyment from tinkering with Tech.

My point is for the other kids, the ones who wouldn’t try out on their computing devices any OS other than the mainstream stuff that they’ve been taught about at school: with this law California might very well just have created a strong incentive for those kids to go around those formal systems and try Linux out on hardware they control, which not all will but certainly more will that they would if there wasn’t a law in place to limit what they can do when using a mainstream OS - if there’s one thing that is common in all societies and historical times is that teenagers naturally rebel against outside control and try and find ways around it, so limiting what they can do in the officially endorsed systems will push them towards alternatives systems which won’t limit what they can do.

deleted by creator

Think about it this way: how do people learn enough about it to program for and admin Linux systems as adults?

Unless things changed a lot since my days (granted it was over 3 decades ago), the path to knowing all about using, administrating and programming software for running under Linux was through being able to play with it for fun as a teenager.

That said, thinking further about it, this might actually push more teenagers to try Linux out to avoid age-gating since they can just download a distro from anywhere in the World and install it in their own PC.

Ok, that does make sense.

If you’re producing electricity in it, you can always bring some water up and use some of that electricity to extract hydrogen from the water to make up for any leaks.

It really depends how bad the leaking is since that dictates how much weight of water is needed to be brought up and electricity must be used for hydrolysis.

Wasn’t the way the Hindenburg burned due to both the Hidrogen AND the alumium oxide paint covering it?

LibreOffice can be used to produce and consume Pornographic Content in the form of of erotic stories, so it makes sense (within the “logic” of this law) that it’s age-gated.

You’re confusing GenX with Boomers - the explosion in Tech was in the 90s, not the 70s.

Even then, most GenX weren’t involved in Tech since when they learned how to use it, it wasn’t yet normalized and widespread, so only really people who found such things interesting went for it and generally the personality type of those attracted to power over others is almost the opposite of the personality type of those attracted to solving problem which are expressed in strict and complex logical structures (for example programming languages or electronics designs).

Considering the massive number of servers running Linux used in the industry, this sounds like a good way to kill the Tech Industry in California.

Good thing I’ve been avoiding the US ever since the Patriot Act.

By the way, highly recommend Canada as a vacation destination.

Remember boys and girls, if the bomb falls from the sky either from a plane or ridding the nosecone of a missile or is shot from the barrel of a tank, that is never Terrorism, it’s only Terrorism if it’s otherwise.

Gotta court the rightwing vote 'cause the leftwing vote can just be corraled with endless repetitions of “If you don’t vote for us you’re voting for Trump”.

After all, that worked so well last time …

Field a candidate which is not evil?!

If they want to they’re the solution for the problem of their own making.

More like “willful corporate minion”

Well, to be fair, not having a proper appreciation for terroir is just barbaric for a French person.

Exactly.

People behaving as “consumers” supports the current system and hence supports the harmful side effects of such system, from the systemic suffering from wealth inequality to ecological destruction.

Whilst very few of us, living within this system, can in practice stop living within the system, we can refrain from living in accordance with the rules of the system which are not imposed on us via removing all other choices or force, but which we are “nudged” or manipulated to follow using marketing or even propaganda, and pretty much everything which is “impulse” or “deriving a momentary pleasure from buying” are the latter kind of thing.

So best change your investment strategy, then.

If people persist in riding this bubble out of greed, it’s only fair if they get burned when it blows up.

Agreed.

One single potentially good thing in the middle of bad things still adds to something bad.

My point is that this shit is happening either way no matter how shit it all is, so if we can recognize and extract one good thing out of it at least on the other side we’ll have one good thing, whilst if we don’t, we’ll have nothing good at all.

The silver lining in all this is that when this bubble explodes we’ll probably have a glut in the supply of HDDs and SSDs, driving prices down.

Just hold any plans to upgrade your hardware for a year or two and you’ll end up better of (for many it will even be a good exercise to wean oneself out of the mindless “instant gratification” impulses one is indoctrinated into by Consumer Society).

I, for one, applaud anything that helps destroy the current Intellectual Property system.

Not the other things, though.