They just need to know whether someone is or isn't an adult, which as Jared pointed out, can simply be a flag. There is no reason they need to know anyone's actual age

Fully agree! All that the service has to know is that Johnnie is an adult. There is no reason to know his or her actual age. Which feeds more into the suspicion that this is more of an attempt to break internet anonymity, as opposed to protecting kids

Usually, they'd be copying commands from a website or a manual, in which case the typos should not even exist

My popup count fell drastically once I installed a VPN. Yeah, I still get annoying ads on YouTube, but as far as popups go, they are squelched. Sometimes, particular sites I need to use require me to temporarily disable it so that I can use it, but other than that, it seems to be under control

Yeah, FreeDOS has already said that they can't implement this, and won't! There is no concept of "logging into" DOS: after it goes through the POST and BIOS routines, one ultimately gets to the C:\ prompt. Then it's up to one to type whatever commands one needs to

I do wonder about MS-DOS though? Yeah, Microsoft no longer sells it, but they recently open-sourced it under the MIT license. So anybody who decides to take that source code, compile it and then use it as their OS would have the same thing as FreeDOS (plus a few more features/commands). Wonder whether MS will be on the hook for a minor who decides to do it, and then use it to do whatever?

That's already there in most OSs, where it gives parents the power to control what their kids can download, the number of hours a day they can use it and so on. These laws are just to control the adult population!

Yeah, this law is more about getting rid of online anonymity than ensuring that kids are not online. For the latter, parents are already responsible for that, and it's up to them to ensure that their kids don't live on their phones or computers. Only point in passing such a law is so that one can trace who posts what online, particularly if one is stupid enough to use their subscription accounts to access social media

GrapheneOS has announced that it is not going to comply w/ this age verification law. So if one has an Android phone that's supported, GrapheneOS can be installed on it, and then one can enjoy one's phone experience w/o Google's espionage ecosystem

Good question. I suspect that this "feature" is a CYA, so that if little Johnny enters his age as 27 and law enforcement later discovers that he is actually 12, then Apple or MS or the Linux companies who are implementing this can say that their system does require age, and that the customer lied. In that case, the legal jeopardy will be on Johnny, or his parents

I doubt that any Operating System company would want the burden of verifying one's age. The government would have to make owning a computer as regulated an activity as owning a firearm

In Michigan, the GOP voted w/ the Dems on passing a similar law. It doesn't look like there is a strong Libertarian streak left there, since the Libertarians in the party stupidly burned themselves on the issue of Israel

You beat me to it. There is no reason Apple would want to pass over these markets, if they already support that feature for another country

In that case, one would be able to establish firewall rules around the traffic they bring in

There is no reason why IoT devices, such as fridges, TVs, beds,.... need to be exposed to the general internet. There are various techniques by which devices can just have the connections they need, and nothing more. You're assuming that everyone wants their toys to be on the general internet, when all they want is themselves alone to have control on it from anywhere. That can be done using VLANs, and all these IoT toys can be in secure enclaves that have no internet access

I'm willing to bet that the people who buy these "smart" devices also are geeky enough to have home labs and special setups to manage them. If they're not that geeky, they probably don't buy these fridges w/ screens in the first place

You're using it for exactly the right purpose - for VMs. If used as a mac. even an M1 would destroy it! But as a platform to run VMs of one or more x86 based OSs, it's a very good solution. Icing on the cake: that can include x86-based macOS VMs as well, w/o needing Hackintosh-like VMs

That was the problem w/ welcoming them into the WTO in 1998