All over the garage where my car is supposed to be parked.

Agreed. To elaborate:

Sure, the developer is a bit of a Judas for complying in advance, but our anger should be aimed at the people with power and reach promoting these laws in the political sphere (the metaphorical Pharisees).

To those saying “it’s just a field”, please consider that the timing is a more significant statement than the addition of the field itself. Why now? If you don’t support fascism, don’t build the frameworks that support it and don’t let fascists use YOUR platforms or software to make THEIR point, make them fork it and let them fail. I don’t think many members of the senate or house would be capable of adding this themselves. I’d be surprised if they could code hello world in TI-83 BASIC. If they ask you to do it, stub your toe and call in sick. Make it really shitty. Leave in a bunch of bugs that crash the program then blame the age attestation feature to turn users against it. Use copywrited code that they’ll have to remove later due to license incompatibilities. Report your boss to HR for every indiscretion that you might have normally overlooked. Or do nothing; that’s still better than complying in advance.

We have to break the narrative that this is inevitable. There’s enough of us, with concentrated enough knowledge and influence (aka, you folks are a bunch if nerds and I love it!), that if we collectively stop, the whole train stops or derails.

I hear you 100%. This sort of shit comes back with a different name each year. I am SOOOO sick of voting down abortion bans every election cycle.

26 US states, including mine, have initiative or referendum processes allowing citizens to place an issue on the ballot. In some states, that’s how the anti-abortion laws are ending up on the ballot, but we an use their own tools against them. In many states, these initiatives failed so we know we have a minimum of 51% support if it’s a law, and at least 33% support if it’s an amendment (depending on that state and their rules). Polling shows, an even larger percentage, most Americans, do not support these laws. The numbers are on our side.

https://ballotpedia.org/States_with_initiative_or_referendum

If we can collect enough signatures, the voters can put an end to this. If we add it to the state constitution, where the process allows this, we can completely prevent laws doing this from being considered because the only thing that can overrule a constitutional amendment is another constitutional amendment.

I’m gauging interest to do this in Colorado to foil age attestation laws, but we could potentially end the back and forth bullshit in multiple states.

The unit I was referencing has a built in antenna, but thanks for the reminder. A lot of people don’t know this.

I reread my comment and I was vague. I meant the first of the power bank units, not the replacement. The Heltec board works great.

There are worse hobbies. There’s also no shortage of items to try.

Ideas:

• eyeglasses
• braces
• bra underwire
• Freddy’s hand
• Edward Scissorhand’s hand
• fake flowers with a wire core
• bread bag ties
• beer cans
• tire tread reinforcement
• a knight in chainmail
• Christmas tree tinsel
• photoframe
• tie clip
• tooth fillings
• a bicycle
• a tricycle
• chain link fence
• chastity belt
• hammer
• aluminum wrapped baked potato

I got started recently also. I bought a Heltec V3 kit which was tolerably easy but not dead simple. Hardest part was the initial connection via webserial connection in a Chromium based browser. I also bought a Elecrow Thinknode v4 power bank. It has a power bank, wireless charger, flashlight, and radio, and looks super dank. Sadly the radio in the first unit didn’t work for me. I’m expecting to give it another go when the replacement arrives. The unit felt solid, so I think I got unlucky or I made a user error. We’ll see.

I am glad that I didnt get some prebuilt sealed unit for the heltec so I could unplug the battery. I was out of town for a few days and unplugged the battery so it could just run off USB power in my office. It worked the whole time. I accessed it through Wireguard using the app and I could see a couple hundred nodes and the occasional public chat, even when I wasn’t home.

Now when I lose my keys I just shine bright spotlight into the room and look for the flash of alu foil.

I am a Coloradan; I have already called all 4 cosponsors of the bill here. What can I do now? Does anyone know which orgs are fighting against this? We have a petition process to get constitutional amendments on the ballot. My dream would be to collect enough signatures to get this constitutional amendment on the next ballot but I think the deadline for submitting the text (prior to collecting sigs) is late this month:

“No form of AI or ID-based age verification shall be used as a condition for granting Colorado residents access to a website, internet service, or operating system. Age gates that rely exclusively on user-reported age may continue to be used in their current form to inform users that a website may not be appropriate for all users. Colorado recognizes that parents are the responsible party for what their children access online and that requiring ID verification for access to computing resources or digital resources is a violation of free speech and freedom of inquiry.”

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve tried minetest, but I’ll have to take a crack at she others. If it was just a game I played by myself, I would absolutely use those alternatives. I’ve played on a string of “civilization” servers for a decade or two now. Hundreds of people forming nations and interacting with real economies, diplomacy, and wars. A few key mods create the conditions of scarcity and balance destroyability/defensibility of the buildings. All of it is perched on a stack of custom mods. I’m not sure how hard porting them to Minetest would be. Some of these relationships are longer than my IRL friendships at this point.

When I started, we were using FOSS tools like Mumble to communicate, then they used Reddit and Team Speak, then eventually most nations moved to Discord for voice and text. I HATE discord. Maybe it’s because I’m too old, but I can’t follow a conversation for shit on there. At least everything is Linux compatible.

If I could find some interested devs to make the mods compatible, I’d gladly pitch in to help run a fully FOSS mineman civ server.

While the players can span all ages (a few grandparents on there), most are Gen Z and for some reason, Gen Z seems to care less about FOSS and open software. They’ve been propagandized fully by the proprietary web 2/3.0.

The only reason I still have a Microslop account is Minecraft. I have to assume that’s one of the reasons they bought it.

They haven’t fessed up yet that that’s part of their plan. I expect to hear from them after they’ve passed the first half.

That’s it! >:-( I’m going back to init. /s

Everyone thinks they’re a great driver… but I know that even when I’m exhausted, I will signal 90% more turns than these clowns I’m forced to share the road with.

It launches from a submenu in the game, but the exe comes from steam workshop and I think it sots in the game folder. Interesting stuff and I’m excited at all the love Linux is getting from gamers this year

It’s interesting to read you guys discussing proton. I’m getting ready for an epic Cities Skylines build, potentially the most advanced and detailed I’ve ever built. I was previously playing on Windows, but cutting it down to “gaming only” doesn’t accurately reflect how much I hate Windows. I need to eliminate it entirely.

I’ve been trying to decide if I should use the proton version or the native Linux version of Cities Skylines as both exist. This thread makes me think Proton will likely result in the most playable game. I’ve used both native and proton in the past.

That said, while most mods will work on either, there are a few that launch as separate programs and would have to be run under wine. If I launch coolmod.exe by clicking an in-game menu would it try to run it with proton like game itselfor would it just default to my OSs standard behavior (probably opening wine)?

My wife laments the fact that my laptop, desktop, and the family PC all have different desktop environments and the text is so small you need a magnifying glass, and yet, I have never seen her struggle to use any of them. Her Windows work PC however…

This is a great explanation of what drove me away from Gnome into the loving arms of KDE. I used to be a Gnome 2 die hard. I don’t like Gnome 3, but I’m still glad it exists because some of you guys do.

I need a certain level of customizability.

The same could be said of sociologists and plumbers. Sociologists know about people and society, plumbers know about plumbing, and computer scientists know about computers.

With a topic of computers and society, like this one, they each have insight on the situation. I would hope getting them in a room together would lead to solutions less harmful than what’s been proposed thus far.

I’m going to report the shit out of any of these companies if they have locations in California and Colorado (if it passes in CO). If the law is scoped that wide, there’s no way they’ll actually be compliant. Even corporate desk phones have an OS. :-D

People wonder why the Dems are unpopular. 2 of my Dems here in Colorado are pulling the same OS age gate shit right now. What I want to know is: “who fucking asked for this?”. Everyone seems to be doing it at the same time, but many people don’t want it. Smells fishy. Let’s not elect these assclowns to anything ever again. Why are you doing authoritarian shit when we elected you to advocate on our behalf.

In my book, a take that extremely authoritarian and unconstitutional should end your political career instantly. You can watch it all on your TV at home like every other clueless boomer (shout out to the boomers who are with it, actually understand, and care). How can we send people to represent us who will openly sell out our and our children’s futures for a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions?