We went to Spectrum 2 days ago to replace my sons oldish phone with a new phone and plan from Spectrum. His old plan was on T-Mobile. We are still waiting for the eSim and phone number to transfer to his new phone. Spectrum says it might take 72 hours. But it appears the problem is likely on T-Mobiles end. I wonder how many others are being held hostage to this situation?

No mod points today but +1 Insightfull

Sorry - inception - not conception. Although the brain fart makes the post a bit funnier maybe.

Age verification is something that has been missing from the 'internet' since its conception. A minor can browse porn or whatever with no age check. You may think that is fine, but you are a minority in that. An age verification should have been put in place with all OSes years ago. If there is not a simple API to report user age to the applications that need it, the bureacrats will ram something more invasive like an internet ID down our throats. And if the OS has no alternative way to supply the basic requirement - age verification - then we have no good argument to prevent something worse being mandated.

Just trying to warn you- it will happen if we dont head it off.

'Websites can implement their own age verification using state-issued ID checks and other measures'

You would prefer people to have state issued id checks ? This is exactly what we should be making unnecessary by providing an api that simply returns userAgeInYears - not an ID.

. 'You sound like the kind of person who would support the worst episodes of history: Nazism, Communism, and all state repression. How many times have you found yourself telling people "If you have nothing to hide, then there should be no problem!" ?'

Never said that. You sound more like a Nazi than i do. Seriously, it is reasonable to require age verification for lots of things. Maybe you are just an anarchist. Civilized societies generally have rules. We should keep those rules reasonable.I say an API returning user age is more desirable than requiring a state issued ID on your computer or person.

Whether it is in SystemD or not, Linux maintainers should get out in front of this before something more onerous is mandated. It is not hard to store the user DOB at account setup and provide an api that returns UserAgeInYears to the requester.
It is not unreasonable to require age verification for some apps or websites. Linux should provide a simple mechanism to do just that and nothing more. If we dont, i am sure there will be a mandate at some point to provide much more personal information than that.
Will it be hacked? Of course, same as when a kid borrows his cousins ID to buy beer. Or the lazy parent will just allow the kid to set up his own computer. But that is on them - not on the OS. We should get out in front of this.

No mod points, but it seems reasonable to me as well.

"And those models need to suck up virtually all of what humans have written."
No, they dont. As a matter of fact sucking up everything they can beg borrow or steal is what causes 'hallucinations'. They are doing it wrong. They should be using curated and task focused data and making task oriented AI. One for coding, another one for cooking, etc. Of course that is more difficult to build, so they dont bother. Just feed it more BS from reddit or wherever, that'll fix it!

I was thinking of getting a dash cam for my car. But i call these people glass holes. Would that make me a dash hole? It is not really that different, the dash cam does not notify it is recording either.

Consolidation. They see the US as a shrinking market. And they are probably right. Just my guess.

I picked the top one which is considered the most authoritative.

Webster agrees with me. 'a machine that resembles a living creature in being capable of moving independently (as by walking or rolling on wheels) and performing complex actions (such as grasping and moving objects' You are the one confused.

No a car is not my idea of a robot and neither are the human guided or programmed drones, they are drones that only do one thing - explode. A proper robot should be autonomous and capable of many different tasks. Some lawn mowers today i would consider are robots. Here is a link to a proper robot: https://bostondynamics.com/pro... (Boston Dynamics)

The poster was right about the propaganda aspect though. Ukraine is using drones, most of them guided by humans or preprogrammed with coordinates. Not anything i would call a robot. And i am sure they are using AI for decision support tasks but i seriously doubt AI has much to do with the drones. This is more propaganda to pump AI. I hope the bubble bursts soon.

If i had points i would mod this up.