The “critique” is a non-issue pushed mainly by uppity Europeans

fwiw I’ve seen it most often from Latin Americans.

The first woman (Christina Koch), non-white person (Victor Glover), and non-American (Jeremy Hansen) in deep space. And Reid Wiseman.

I worry about this sometimes. I don’t ever want to be seen as speaking “for” minorities I’m not a member of, but I do want to be seen speaking “up for” them. And I worry about finding the right balance. I don’t want to speak over them, but do want to help make it clear that I support them and I am opposed to those who are opposed to them. I don’t want to be MLK’s “white moderate”.

It’s not true.

But if it was, it wouldn’t be a reason to dislike Postgres. Academic AI research in the '90s is a far cry from commercial AI companies today.

Thanks!

Actually something just occurred to me. Because my system, unlike the one from the Stack Exchange link or the one described elsewhere in the thread using an ID card, relies on a per-site untraceable request to the government, the government would be able to detect if one user is making a suspicious number of requests. It’s reasonable for one person to make tens of requests, maybe even low hundreds over the course of a lifetime. It’s not reasonable to be making hundreds or more in a day. They wouldn’t know which sites are being accessed with it, or even what accounts on those sites. But they could set rate limits to prevent one person creating too many accounts for others, and potentially threaten legal action against them for doing so.

That threat of legal action is part of the same thing that prevents children from being able to go up to a random adult, handing them a $50 note, and asking for $20 worth of alcohol in exchange. You’re not going to be able to prevent it on a smaller scale, but you can definitely prevent a small handful of people being able to age verify on behalf of thousands of children.

An additional protection could be added depending on how the age verification works. If she verification is “upload a scan of your photo ID”, then yeah, mass verification becomes possible. But if each verification requires you to hold up your photo ID next to your face, speak a specific phrase aloud (with automated lip reading attempting a rough lip flap match), nod your head, write a specific phrase on a piece of paper, and more, all in randomised orders, it becomes a much bigger burden for someone to provide for others.

I’m certainly not advocating this. The level of burden for legitimate users would be too high to consider it reasonable. But it would be possible. Something like this has been used in the past for things like EV code signing certificates, where a larger burden is relatively more reasonable.

What’s the reference here?

It would also reveal to the government that the user was accessing 18+ content

Yes, I did mention that. Although ironically, Australia’s social media minimum age law, and other similar laws being considered around the world, would actually increase privacy in this respect. The government could have separate keys for each age of legal significance (16 and 18, in Australia) and sign with the appropriate one (either the highest the user meets, or all the user meets—the latter would give the site less information about the user’s and).

I don’t believe it is technically possible to get around the example you shared there. Even in the real world, it’s not dissimilar to a child asking an adult to buy alcohol for them.

Insomnia > Postman.

I switched to Insomnia around 2021 when Postman started enshittifying and found I liked it a lot more. Insomnia has also been relatively enshittified unfortunately, but it feels like it’s to a lesser extent.

Here’s one good answer: https://crypto.stackexchange.com/a/96283

It has the downside of requiring a physical device like a passport or some specific trusted long-running locally-kept identity store held by the user. But it’s otherwise very good.

Another option does not require anything extra be kept by the user, but does slightly compromise privacy. The Government will not be able to track each time the user tries to access age-gated content, or even know what sources of age-gated content are being accessed, but they will know how many different sites the user has requested access to. It works like this:

1. The user creates or logs in to an account on the age-gated site.
2. The site creates a token T that can uniquely identify that user.
3. That token is then blinded B(T). Nobody who receives B(T) can learn anything about the user.
4. The user takes the token to the government age verification service (AVS).
5. The user presents the AVS with B(T) and whatever evidence is needed to verify age.
6. The AVS checks if the person should be verified. If not, we can end the flow here. If so, move on.
7. The AVS signs the blinded token using a trusted AVS certificate, S(B(T)) and returns it to the user.
8. The user returns the token to the site.
9. The site unblinds the token and obtains S(T). This allows them to see that it is the same token T representing the user, and to know that it was signed by the AVS, indicating that the user is of age.
10. The site marks in their database that the user has been age verified. On future visits to that site, the user can just log in as normal, no need to re-verify.

All of the moving around of the token can be automated by the browser/app, if it’s designed to be able to do that. Unfortunately a typical OAuth-style redirect system probably would not work (someone with more knowledge please correct me), because it would expose to the AVS what site the token is being generated for. So the behaviour would need to be created bespoke. Or a user could have a file downloaded and be asked to share it manually.

There’s also a potential exposure of information due to timing. If site X has a user begin the age verification flow at 8:01, and the AVS receives a request at 8:02, and the site receives a return response with a signed token at 8:05, then the government can, with a subpoena (or the consent of site X) work out that the user who started it at 8:01 and return at 8:05 is probably the same person who started verifying themselves at 8:02. Or at least narrow it down considerably. Making the redirect process manual would give the user the option to delay that, if they wanted even more privacy.

The site would probably want to store the unblinded, signed token, as long-term proof that they have indeed verified the user’s age with the AVS. A subsequent subpoena would not give the Government any information they could not have obtained from a subpoena in an un-age-verified system, assuming the token does not include a timestamp.

it has been a rethorical one trying do point out the case of US-defaultism

No, I understood that. My reply was meant to be read as a rebuke to that idea. Because it isn’t an American day. It’s less observed in America than it is in many other countries. Claiming it to be US-defaultism relied on a mistaken assumption that because some Americans are talking about it, it must be a uniquely American thing.

Ironically, your complaint about “US-defaultism” was itself the US-defaultism.

And what does this strange word “international” mean???

It means international. As in it’s an official holiday in a bunch of countries, and unofficially observed to one degree or another in a whole heap more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women’s_Day

(Note: disregard the map shown on this page. It’s unsourced and does not match the article’s text.)

Often, but not always, yes. If the misunderstanding is reasonable and they had ample opportunity for an explanation but didn’t, then yes, it’s an idiot plot.

If they legitimately didn’t have an opportunity to explain, or the explanation, while true, was completely unbelievable, that’s not an idiot plot IMO.

It’s gotten to the point where a lot of people very clearly think even the word conspiracy means “a crazy nonsense theory”. They’ll say “it’s not a conspiracy…” and then proceed to describe a textbook conspiracy.

Oh wow, thanks for that info. I knew LW was uncomfortably liberal but that top comment is very concerning if true.

The removal, if I’m understanding the story correctly, seems justifiable enough on its own (untagged nsfl), but it does seem part of a pattern of borderline decisions all going one particular way…

(If it was removed for being “political”, as some others said, that’s inexcusable.)

School blown up?

This is the first I’ve seen, and it looks like a black square Photoshopped to cover up the kerb near a door? What’s this about a school being blown up?

I’ll be honest, I thought it was someone humorously censoring one of those fairy doors, pretending it’s a government cover-up of the supernatural.

Ok, so, do you agree with it? Or do you think that Notepad++ has demonstrated a good commitment to doing the right thing that means it’s still just as worthy of recommendation as it was last month?

Not my choice. But higher ups.

Ok, but your comment pretty clearly expressed an implied agreement with that choice.

I really like the idea of donating to a broader consortium, like the NLNet that’s suggested already, specifically because they give donations to less consumer-facing elements that might be less likely to attract direct funding.

Other than that though, I’d say donate to the things that (a) you already use a lot, and which (b) seem most in need of funding. If it’s big and famous and fairly stable without significant ongoing costs, it’s probably not as important to donate to. If it’s niche, needs a lot of development to add useful features or polish, or has significant ongoing costs (e.g. servers), that would be a higher priority. Evaluate based on whatever balance of those factors you choose.

Those donations are yours and yes, you can claim them on your taxes if you are willing to do the work of keeping the receipt and itemizing your deductions. I do this every single year.

Fwiw in Australia only donations over $2 are tax deductible. So round-up donations probably aren’t, unless you’re rounding from $47.95 to $50 or something.