If so, that sounds like the gold was obtained legitimately as part of their job, and the only real charge is the faked creds and military leave pay. That is in line with my suspicion that the mentions of gold, watches, and money are just to make it look worse than it was; That those, as ridiculous as they sound, were part of normal day to day CIA shit. That's a very different outlook than the way it seems to paint this - as if someone embezzled $40mil of gold bar and other such commodities while at a high level position in the CIA without them knowing.

While it has a very very strong smell of embezzlement, this line from TFS has me wondering:

"The only charge lodged against David Rush is that he inflated his academic credentials and obtained military leave pay worth tens of thousands of dollars."

Are the watches, gold, and money actually legitimately his and simply outlandish?

Right? And I'd also add that end users should be able to trivially set/override the GPS coordinates returned these location services.

Altruistic use: you could set your desktop to return your precise location, since there is no service that would do so.

For nearly all intents and purposes, that would be an incredibly useful feature in numerous real situations. Using maps? Set it correctly. Looking for good sushi spots near some other location? Set the location. Away from home but want to see local ads when going to {whatever site}? Set it to your home local.

If there is some legally geofenced thing (ex. employment overtime rules that vary by state), I'd argue that such data shouldn't be valid for that use anyway. Just make the user attest to their location and leave it as a legal issue, not a tech issue.

And GPS/Location data *CAN* be overridden today, in some cases trivially. It's just not made readily available to your average user, so they think it's special. IMO, all browsers should have (an optional) title/menu bar button to set your location. It should default to showing the automagic location, whatever it's getting from GPS, or WiFi guessing, or geoIP lookup, or whatever combo thereof, with an option to set a static value and/or pick the location source of your choice, with per-site options as well.

You're asking a question? (seriously... what's you're point here?)

* No, CA has no active age restriction law for porn access, let alone one that requires OS's to collect or report age information.

* Yes, other states have enacted such laws. By "such laws", I am referring to age restriction laws for adult content. It should be obvious that those 23 other state laws are not identical to this the proposed one from TFS.

* Do any of those other 23 such laws have stipulations on what suffices for the age verification, what technical implementations qualify, what the sites must do to comply, etc..? AFAICT, it's a clusterfuck mishmash of various implementations and rules. THAT IS WHY PORNHUB IS BLOCKING INSTEAD OF IMPLEMENTING IT

There is no clear and legal implementation that suffices for all of them. It reminds me of the line in The Big Lebowski, "Say what you will about the tennets of national socialism but at least it's an ethos". I disagree with the proposed CA law from TFS, but at least they have a proposed implementation.

In retrospect, I chose the wrong word; I should have said principals.
Regardless, you're saying that Pornhub should drop their own principals for the sake of capitalism, while we're discussing an adult content age restriction law (an imposition of others morals). Do you not find that a bit ironic?

Not necessarily true, and so what if that is the outcome? They're standing on principals against those pushing their own morals onto others.
And I say it's not necessarily true because Pornhub has other options, like VPN access. Not only can people use a VPN to access it, but Pornhub may get involved in the VPN business (if it's not already) and profit doubly so.

SCOUTS ruled (June 27, 2025) that state-mandated age verification for pornography websites is constitutional. It determined that requiring proof of age is a valid method to protect minors without violating adult First Amendment rights. That says nothing about whether or not it can be overturned. It's not a fundamental right to have age verification enforced; IE: this isn't upholding the First Amendment or something like that; This is saying that their law doesn't violate the First Amendment. Texas, and all other states, are free to overturn the law. The people can overturn the law.

And no one would campaign on making drugs legal, right? Or allowing gay marriage? Or allowing women to vote? I certainly don't think they'll run it on "let's let kids access porn," but that's just the refrain from the other side. I can guarantee this law will not stand as is for 100 years. We have older laws that have stood the test of time; This won't. Perhaps you're scope is more narrowly defined to the next election cycle or two? If you think this SCOTUS decision locks this in for good, just go look at the other rulings they've made in the past couple years, redefining their previous rulings.

But the number of states with age verification laws is NOT balanced between red and blue states.
24 states with such laws: https://linux.slashdot.org/com...
They're all red or swing states.

... hasn't passed this law yet. It made slashdot headlines because of the explicit "Linux" mention.

This "good/bad people on both sides" type of argument doesn't hold up here, IMO.

You're basically saying that capitalism trumps morals, and this is quite the issue upon which to make that claim.

Also, as FictionPimp noted, there are other paths to the money that don't require them to kowtow to such laws, and may even net them more, and with fixed contracts to boot. Win-Win for Pornhub, and a loss for all users in those states, which will place the blame where it belongs - on the state/law.

Lastly, assuming these won't be overturned or augmented is naive AF. AFAICT, Pornhub wants those making these requirements to provide the age verification solution or STFU. In the meantime, they'll rake in more VPN money. Some sort of update or change is inevitable.

Point of order - California is NOT yet doing any of this. Those 23 GOP leaning states have already enacted such laws. But don't let facts get in the way of your hate.

Are you colorblind? How many of the 24 states that already have age verification laws, and are already blocked by Pornhub, are blue states?

State list: https://linux.slashdot.org/com...

Maybe you're unaware, but Pornhub has chosen to restrict access rather than comply with age verification laws. There already 23 states where they have done this (see my post above for the list). I doubt they'll cave to this even-more-draconian law. ... or maybe you're using "pornhub" like "kleenex"?

Meanwhile, the list of states that currently have age verification laws for adult content (NOTE: California isn't on this list):

Alabama
Arizona
Arkansas
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio ** the only one Pornhub isn't blocking due to an exception in the laws language
Oklahoma
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
Wyoming

Source: https://mashable.com/article/p...

For me, it's the "requirement" to have it enabled at the OS level. If it was the state requiring the feature to be available, but one could simply opt out of setting that up during install, and apps would then allow any content (as opposed to blocking if the age data isn't present), then I'd be OK with it. That would be enough to enable parents, guardians, workplaces, public terminals, etc.. to make use of it if they so chose, without forcing it on everyone.

As-is, this simply means that apps used from a Linux install that lacks age verification will likely default to blocking adult content, and all others will be required to go through age verification and have that data associated with their computer and account. I'm still firmly against that. Give parents the tools needed to curate as they see fit, but don't force it on everyone.

You need a qualifier on "more information" before that question can be answered.

If that "more information":
* includes numerous false positives
* and those using it trust it all as truth
* and it gets used against innocent people
then the answer is a resounding "NO" - it is NOT better to have garbage information being trusted as gospel.

For example, someone in this thread suggested deleting the photos, but retaining the AI results (the plate number, car model and color, identifying marks, etc..). There would be no means of verifying whether or not those results were accurate. If those details are then used as facts with no way to challenge their origin, that would be abhorrent.

Another way it's not good is if someone is after you - like an ex, a stalker, a disgruntled coworker, etc.. Having more details out there about your movements is not helpful, no matter what subset of people can or can't view it in their day to day lives. With such a large federalized system meant to be used by myriads of departments across the country, there are simply too many authorized users to ensure that none will be bad actors. ... And this is all assuming that the data protections actually work.

Fair-ish point as well :-)
Being able to fake a picture has been possible since pictures, and ever more-so. You could Photoshop an image and project that onto 35mm negative film and develop it for a very difficult to disprove fake.
However, in this case, there could be a trivial solution: create a cryptographically secure fingerprint for each image using a secure key that is only on that camera. The public key can be made readily available to verify the fingerprint. That could verify that the image was signed while on the device (barring a leak of the key). Include a timestamp in the image itself. Any tampering or format shifting would break the fingerprint.

Your alternative, destroying the evidence, is simply not acceptable. If unable to secure the chain of custody, you throw it all out.

However, if we're doing thoughtcrimes now, you can keep all the AI results and use those for analysis hints and such to lead to results. It's similar to sloppy police work, and will likewise result in putting innocent people behind bars. IMO, and that of many people I respect, that's not good.

Ah, yes. Use your credit/debit card or digital wallet (ex. Apple Pay) to take the bus to avoid surveillance.

FYI, though I'm not sure of the myriad of other cities, NYC MTA busses only accept cash for local/limited routes, and that will be phased out by the end of 2026 for a fully digital system.

If feasible, take a bike. Maybe use a car share service (ex. zipcar)? Everything would still be tracked, but connecting those dots might add enough of a layer to prevent some abuses of the data.