The idea that one should be forced to verify one's age or identity to use one's own computer absolutely baffles me.
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@lordsplodge @hedders @neil Cory Doctorow (yeah, I know…) kind of touched on this in Little Brother. All the kids had these totally locked-down games consoles that were given away free as loss-leaders for the online game companies. But they were powerful bits of kit, and the hacker kids just jailbroke them to run their own software.
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The idea that one should be forced to verify one's age or identity to use one's own computer absolutely baffles me.
@neil It doesn't put enough money in venture capitalists' pockes, so it must change.
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The idea that one should be forced to verify one's age or identity to use one's own computer absolutely baffles me.
@neil I got my first computer when I was 10. My mother still burns every piece of mail with her address on it because "the Iranians proved you can't trust shredders". There's no way on earth I'd have a career in IT if she'd had to enter her personal details before I could play Horace Goes Skiing
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theres no option to log in without password on windows these days?
@ItsePerkele @janeishly @neil In Windows 10 it was still possible to set up a local account. On Windows 11 you can, but you might need to create one with a Microsoft Account first -- not 100% sure. But it is worth looking into whether you can. I *think* you can. The option is just not presented to you in a straightforward way in the setup dialogues.
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Perhaps I am some kind of dangerous computer radical these days, thinking that one should be able to buy or make a computer, install one's choice of OSs and software, create a local user account, and get on with one's affairs, privately and without interference.
Quiet enjoyment of one's computer.
* No age or ID verification
* No jumping through hoops to install software, or third parties restricting the software that one can run
* No third party accounts
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Y’know @neil one of these days you’re going to wake up and find you’ve become a revolutionary anarchist, relatively speaking.
Same here. My opinions remain fairly constant, but the Overton Window almost keeps rushing past.
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The idea that one should be forced to verify one's age or identity to use one's own computer absolutely baffles me.
@neil It's absolutely bonkers. Looking forward to a swath of forked Linux distros that just don't let you install them if you say you're in California.
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@ItsePerkele @janeishly @neil In Windows 10 it was still possible to set up a local account. On Windows 11 you can, but you might need to create one with a Microsoft Account first -- not 100% sure. But it is worth looking into whether you can. I *think* you can. The option is just not presented to you in a straightforward way in the setup dialogues.
@tokyo_0 @ItsePerkele @janeishly @neil at least with windows 11 pro, you can tell it you intend to join a domain and it will let you pass. Unless you get an enterprise license though, it will nag you to log in with a Microsoft account when logged in as a local user. You can get an enterprise licence for 15 quid or so if you look.
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@ItsePerkele @janeishly @neil In Windows 10 it was still possible to set up a local account. On Windows 11 you can, but you might need to create one with a Microsoft Account first -- not 100% sure. But it is worth looking into whether you can. I *think* you can. The option is just not presented to you in a straightforward way in the setup dialogues.
My last windows was 10, I didn't have a password set up. I would wake up in the morning, turn on the computer, go make coffee and try to figure out how to wake up. Then I'd come back to the computer and it would have done its morning wake up routine and was ready to use. I had it set up so it opens the browser and audio player at start up. That way I came to a "ready to go" computer after getting my coffee.
These days with Debian I do have a password in the log in thing, but doesn't matter too much because it takes a fraction of the time to wake the thing up in the morning, compared to what windows did.
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The idea that one should be forced to verify one's age or identity to use one's own computer absolutely baffles me.
@neil It is helpful to think of the computer as a device in isolation, distinct from its possible application as an access point to online services. This distinction is easy to see for those of us who "installed" operating systems in the '70s and '80s by plugging EPROMs into 8-bit microcomputers. I can't imagine how age verification would have gone down then. Do we have to burn a new ROM for every user? No maybe you should store your age on a cassette tape and load it up at 300 baud...
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@neil It's absolutely bonkers. Looking forward to a swath of forked Linux distros that just don't let you install them if you say you're in California.
@neil Or Colorado... or the nation of Brazil. I don't have nearly enough confidence in my government to expect Canada to be safe from all this.
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> you're going to wake up and find you’ve become a revolutionary anarchist
Wow. I sound *sexy*.
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Perhaps I am some kind of dangerous computer radical these days, thinking that one should be able to buy or make a computer, install one's choice of OSs and software, create a local user account, and get on with one's affairs, privately and without interference.
Quiet enjoyment of one's computer.
* No age or ID verification
* No jumping through hoops to install software, or third parties restricting the software that one can run
* No third party accounts
@neil you're just getting old.
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The idea that one should be forced to verify one's age or identity to use one's own computer absolutely baffles me.
@neil
To use their computer, or to use some service or product? I don't agree with either, but the distinction is important. -
Perhaps I am some kind of dangerous computer radical these days, thinking that one should be able to buy or make a computer, install one's choice of OSs and software, create a local user account, and get on with one's affairs, privately and without interference.
Quiet enjoyment of one's computer.
* No age or ID verification
* No jumping through hoops to install software, or third parties restricting the software that one can run
* No third party accounts
@neil Ah but they can't charge you rent on your own computer if it's not locked down.
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Perhaps I am some kind of dangerous computer radical these days, thinking that one should be able to buy or make a computer, install one's choice of OSs and software, create a local user account, and get on with one's affairs, privately and without interference.
Quiet enjoyment of one's computer.
* No age or ID verification
* No jumping through hoops to install software, or third parties restricting the software that one can run
* No third party accounts
@neil only Linux, BSD and other FOSS offerings have this experience now, it seems — so that's like 90% of computer users being registered and tracked from their home computers, without even going into what happens on phones and other devices. I was also baffled when I briefly used Windows/MS Word on another computer and needed to log in with an email to leave margin notes as a different user. On LibreOffice I simply need to type in a different name in the setting, but on Word I had to log in through a remote server. Serious overkill.
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@Bishopjoey @jannem @slothrop @neil
The more the world shifts right, the harder I feel I need to push in the other direction.
Free healthcare, UBI, no billionaires...
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@neil I am very concearned about age verification on OS level thing thats on the talks lately. So i am NOT trying to under estimate this threath, ok. Still i have a total noob question here: how could that ever be enforcable?
Somodoby just goes "fuck that!" Makes a linux distro that does not ask any of that shit and puts it out for free.
How can this effect those users?
@Kantikainen @neil There have been death penalties for owning a radio receiver before.
Production of computer hardware is centralized; the network is owned by de facto monopolies everywhere. The present "the computer is the network" approach to nearly everything is extremely vulnerable to the people who own the wires deciding to say "nope".
E.g., you can't buy the hardware and you have to put up a ~half annual middle class salary bond to get a general purpose internet connection.
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@Tak Yes, computers.
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