Well in part it’s just being perceived that way. The car will decide if you’re drunk somehow becomes government surveillance. The App Store will ask for proof of age: government surveillance. And so on.

I’m not saying that this is a false interpretation but certainly it’s leaned on extremely hard in the way people report on and talk about these things. Hence why you get the sense that everyone everywhere is suddenly completely about government surveillance.

I think we could have a whole conversation about drunk driving and the efficacy and fairness of this kind of measure without even cracking the lid on government surveillance. But no one wants that. Nope, if it isn’t a direct descent straight into Fascism, it doesn’t get clicked on.

As far as I’m concerned, Tom Waits solved ticket scalping back in 1999. He did two shows in my area on the Mule Variations tour. When you bought tickets, you could only buy two, and you had to give a name. Not an id, just a name. And then at the door, you had to show ID. You would anyway because it was a 21-and-up show, but the name on the ID had to match the name on the ticket. They didn’t scan shit. Just the doorman glanced at the name, and compared it to what was printed on the ticket. You could buy as many pairs of tickets as you wanted under the same name, but you couldn’t then sell them to people because their ID wouldn’t match at the door.

Simple. Non invasive. It worked. The show was amazing.

There is a difference between authoring and submitting, right?

Also, having buttons on your clothes is an abomination. Hooks and eyes only.

What accountability has there been for bad code by humans?

That’s probably why they say “a human is responsible” not “a human must validate it.” I certainly agree that validation is not always possible. And this problem will get worse in time.

I recall a brief flash almost a year ago where Meta released some kind of LLM framework open source and it seemed like it was taking off in the circles of developers I know. But then I never heard about it again. Similar flash in the pan about DeepSeek.

Those days were brief if they ever existed. It’s actually pretty common to offer new users even sweeter deals for joining, and zero promotions to get loyal users to stay.

C’est l’année de l’ordinateur Linux!

It’s the year of the Linux computer!

Oh man! I thought this was going to be the rare case where you could actually say the thing in French with fewer characters, but French loses by 1. Dommage! And English doesn’t even have a contraction for “the,” of which there are two in this short sentence!

You can get by on public fast chargers for the interim. 120V is also more viable than I expected. I was all ready to install a 240 line for a charger when we bought our EV but a year later we haven’t actually needed to yet. No long commute in our household, so 🤷‍♂️BTW we did exactly what you described: bought a very low-miles used Bolt on Carvana.

Take the plunge if you want to.

You have to imagine that there’s always someone who is right in the middle of the car purchasing process and perhaps on the fence about which way to go. A sudden change in circumstances can influence which way things fall. There may also be people who’ve been thinking about switching who suddenly feel convinced it’s the right choice and go take the plunge.

Basically people are out there primed to make a choice already and this just tips them one way.

I hope more people try it because hot damn, I love having an EV. We got a gently used Bolt last year and it’s exceeded my expectations in every way. It’s quick and QUIET inside and so far we haven’t had the need to go beyond a regular old wall socket 120V charger (we mostly just drive in-town). But wow I love driving it and never stopping to gas it or even change the oil. It’s such a simple and satisfying experience.

Can we yet call the discovery of fusion a “thing that happened to energy?” ;D

It’s getting there, I suppose!

And if you own one from before, the only responsible thing to do is sell it on the used market to reduce demand for their new cars. You might not get the price you want but come on. You could afford a Tesla; I’m not crying for your pocketbook.

Show me any single thing anywhere that has ever reduced children on social media by 30%.

Maybe if you could, I’d give a shit what they said about the bill before it passed, or what you think. Since you can’t, I’ll call it, objectively, not rosily, the greatest success of all time in getting children off social media.

And I will still be downvoted here regardless because people hate age verification (with cause). But more than one thing can be true at the same time.

7 in 10 children remain on major social media services? Does this mean they got 30% of the children off of them? I’d say that’s something other than total failure. A start.

Funny… the one thing I still use Facebook for is getting rid of crap I don’t need - my neighborhood Buy Nothing group is there, though I wish it weren’t.

I’m doing my part!

Maybe it’s the difference between undoable or not undoable.

If you think about it, when a judge gives you a “suspended sentence” for a crime, it is permanently suspended meaning there is no set expiry. But it can be made to expire if needed.

That was a swear, not a prayer.