alt Hacker NewsStallman was, once again, right. We need free software and hardware more than ever because of idiotic laws like this. Because of the decentralized development model, there is no single company or developer that can be unfairly targeted and coerced into adding anti-features such as age verification or encryption backdoors. California can shove its requests where the sun don't shine.
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I'm almost certain we will live to see "they can't fine all of us" get torn to shreds in real time as government language models patrol the 'net for software projects that lack an age verification call.
Why, we could even see a legal requirement for code repositories to run one themselves, constantly scanning for compliance. That way the compute cost is offloaded properly on the citizenry :)
It is indeed strange that California suddenly became a lobbyist's paradise. Louis Rossmann doesn't have an infinite number of time available and he is more an East Coast person, even after having left New York, but it would be really interesting to see which lobbyists drafted that law. It will probably be copy/pasted to more states soon.