Not really. It's more like requiring all vendors who sell cash registers used in restaurants to support checking photo IDs because some restaurants also serve alcohol.

There's no safe way to prove your age to a website. Any scheme requires trusting some arbitrary third party that could secretly be the government doing timing comparisons between the verification and DNS queries and stuff to unmask anonymous users. At least with operating system or browser vendors, they presumably have a strong commitment to minimizing the risk of someone publicly posting "John Doe just visited sexwithseaturtles.com" or whatever.

It's not really that terrible. If you're going to do age verification, you have two choices: browser or operating system. All else is all but guaranteed to be either a privacy disaster, a usability disaster, or both. And either way, every operating system needs to support multiple users, or the "I used dad's iPad to browse porn and buy firearms" problem makes the verification useless.

And major operating system or browser vendors that cater to the general public should make it available by default, because doing so prevents the "You downloaded the AdultCheck module, so you must be a pervert" logic that some people might use to attack people.

What's terrible is the idea of mandating that it be performed at the OS level, rather than just mandating that the OS doesn't get in the way. Browser-level verification is actually far preferable, because there's no need to bake that into an authentication framework when you can just send it out to a browser window. Leave that tiny bit of integration complexity to the companies that actually require it. But this only works if the OS supports multiple users, so that the browser's cookies and storage are not shared across multiple users.

For devices that don't have multiple users, baking it in at the OS level really is the only way, but it could just as easily be solved by baking it in at the browser level and changing the OS to allow multiple users per device. Unfortunately, such technical details are way too subtle a point for most lawmakers to understand, so obviously they did it in the most wrong way possible.

Wait 'til they realize that Android is distributed under a license that allows people to copy, redistribute, and modify it.

As usual, a law created by people who didn't think of the consequences then got modified to fix some of the worst consequences, but because they still did not think of the consequences, the modification created different consequences. And this is why we need better lawmakers.

You don't get low latency by putting things in orbit unless you're competing with things in even higher orbits.

Now if SpaceX created a magic rocket that could defy the laws of physics and do launches for a fraction of the cost sure go ahead. A drastic reduction in the cost of launching satellites and rockets would increase the number of customers. But there really isn't any sign of that. Even if they get that fully reusable rocket working exactly as planned the cost reductions aren't enough to create whole new markets. It's not a paradigm shift it's a solid improvement.

If they get Starship working exactly as planned it's predicted to lower the launch cost by about an order of magnitude over Falcon 9. Falcon 9 generously halved the previous price to orbit.

Falcon 9 has been a pretty big deal, reasonably called a paradigm shift. If Starship delivers it will be a much bigger deal.

I am not. You seem to be going in circles.

If you want to automate proofs by using heuristics, you would need to determine "almost correct".

You do not. You need a policy that rates some choices as better than others. The system learns this, you do not define it. That's what neural MCTS does.

We don't have such a heuristic for theorems without a known proof.

That's why you learn it. If you mean it's unlearnable, that seems highly unlikely. Anyone who's ever learned anything about logical deduction, including things as simple as high school algebra, can tell you that there's a sense some manipulations are better than others and you get better at it with experience.

Google specifically mentions industrial users in their introduction to web serial. Besides, it doesn't matter what it's "targeted" at, it matters what it can do.

Do you know why hobbyists program microcontrollers using virtual com ports? It's not because Adafruit and Sparkfun got together and said "hey, we need a hobbyist stack for programming microcontrollers!" It's because the various types of serial are widely used in industry, have been for forty years, and therefore are already built into everything, including pretty much every microcontroller.

Being able to flash the firmware on your Arduino or WLED controller from a web page is very convenient. Being able to flash the firmware on your walkie talkie, camera, voice controlled devices or mouse and keyboard also very convenient but maybe a source of genuine concern.

Google says the API is "for" educational, hobbyist (okay) and industrial (sounds like an awful idea) users. But people's concerns aren't about what it's intended for but what it could be used for.

this api is about ports that everyday hardware (like e.g. mice and keyboards) hasn't used for decades

Nope. CDC ACM and virtual com ports are pretty common. Lots of industrial devices, equipment configuration including networking gear, cellular modems, etc.

Specifically to the OPs point, while Logitech seems to use a proprietary USB HID protocol, Corsair mouse and keyboard firmware and profile updates seem to go over CDC ACM. I would be very surprised if lots of other manufacturers don't also use it.

The consumer stuff is generally all USB and the ship sailed a long time ago on the browser having access to that.

Browser access to virtual com ports is more an issue for things like industrial control. Somebody is defininitely going to make their SCADA system web based for the "easy updates" and find out.

Still, the ship sailed on that one a long time ago with Chrome too, and more generally a long, long time ago when Google convinced us all it's a great idea for your operating system to download software off the internet every time you want to run something.

Lack of regulation is another issue completely. My POTS phone company had serious infrastructure required to handle emergencies. When I switched to cable for phone, they couldn't handle more than a day without power; if that... depending on the battery of your cable modem. Later, they appeared to have no battery; then with fiber the phone company's new modems had no battery at all and they were the phone company! Copper is being transitioned out and never restored; along with any serious reliability requirements. For me, a windy storm knocks out power for days while they go restore the lines. Internet performs better than power; but I can't tell beyond the 1 day my UPS can run, they do claim better uptime.

Responders get FCC regulated exclusive radio bandwidth. They can't be DoS with emergency traffic. It is an example solution that works. Consumers could get exclusive bandwidth for emergency use; CB radio has a channel for emergency use already, AM radio is available and used for emergencies but poorly regulated. We could plan things out like adults for a change; it's amazing we can think out 1st responders but not go beyond that other than half-measures from past generations. We have zero planning in modern times.

Decide:
1) Use new product/service to replace in-house labor because of the promise of gains from a more optimized alternative with a possible economy of scale that would be difficult or too time consuming to do. Pretend it's long term and predictably stable.

2) Augment existing labor with new product/service to amplify and increase productivity... lower prices, increase output, or at least keep up with the competition with the promise of survival or growth.

Those who pick #2 end up with more gains than those who pick #1. In history and also with current data on AI use. People are too fixated on #1 and many in leadership roles are not worth a fraction of their salaries; it's certainly not a meritocracy. Just luck of the ass kissing backstabbers...

That said, productivity gains do indirectly result in fewer jobs long term and in a saturated market those gains can't be utilized⦠The culture has also shifted in that employees get zero respect and layoffs have become a routine trick to boost stock prices. I would think monthly reporting would undermine the tactic while slower reporting would increase it's usefulness but lower the frequency of it (also increase fraud and shady tactics giving more time for more complex schemes.)

WebSerial is about USB. As far as I know it doesn't even support any other kind of serial port.

No, it means natural gas, which is mostly methane.

Gasoline, and petroleum in general, is way too expensive to use to generate electricity except in special circumstances where your options are limited.