same for alcohol

The problem is that it leaves a paper trail.

Grace also knows what number n got verified, and the identity of the user n. Later, the website can ask the age-verifying service who user n actually was. It requires that the age-verifying service cooperates with the website, though, but this could be mandated by law, which would create a single point of (privacy) failure.

PS: i love your writing style. It’s so simple and clear :)

Cryptography is a really complicated subject. You managed to express it very easily understandable.

Yeah a small false-positive rate will have to be accepted. This is the same like you can’t fully prevent minors from getting access to alcohol. Consider that their older sibling can buy it for them (at an increased price, ofc).

What matters is to keep the rate of false positives reasonably small, i’d say.

See my comment in this thread involving drawing a piece of paper from a box in real life. Since nobody knows which piece of paper you draw from a box, if many people do this at the same time, it’s impossible to establish an one-to-one mapping between age-verifying tokens and people’s identities.

I doubt this doesn’t actually leave a paper trail.

At some point, you send that nonce to an age-verifier service. So they can keep track of it, and if the 18+ website you visited at some point later wants to know your identity, they can ask the age-verifier service who asked for that nonce to be signed.

This involves that two organizations are corrupt, however: both the 18+ website and the age-verifying service. Law could mandate that they both cooperate, however, thus creating a single point of (privacy) failure.

I still believe it is doable, however. Check my other comment involving a piece of paper that is drawn from a box. My method relies on the fact that the age-verifying service doesn’t actually know which code they gave you, just that they gave you one. For digital services, seevices can always keep track of their input/output, which is not always possible in real life.

It is doable, i think. Consider:

You go to your local library. They verify you’re above the age limit (like they do at supermarkets when you try to buy alcohol: either look you in the face and recognize you’re clearly old enough, or have to show them some kind of id, details vary.)

You pick a code (put your hand in a box and draw a piece of paper at random). Nobody knows what code you picked except you. If lots of people do this at the same time, it’s impossible to accurately map codes to people’s identity.

You scan the code (like QR code) with your social media app that you use, and it associates the code with your account. Now everybody knows you have a valid code associated to your account, but nobody knows your identity.

(The code could work something like a cryptographic signature, where you can show that you have a valid code without actually revealing the code, so others can’t simply copy it. That’s a technical detail that you need to leave to the programmers to accurately understand.)

i was told there’s 3 different approaches to therapy: talking about your feelings, changing the way you see the world, and giving step-by-step advice for doing things in daily life.

maybe you just need to try the other 2 approaches

I’m out of the loop. How is she a fascist?

Thank you. I have been saying this for years (more than a decade now).

Feminism fought for the independence of women from abusive husbands/partners, by making them earn their own money, so they can be free. I would not say that the majority of the population feels particularly free today, because the economic situation strangles them. There is a new dependency created in stead of the old one: The dependency from the employer. Especially with at-will employment, a manager or higher-up can fire you at any moment, which can cause homelessness and despair. These are not good things that we want to have.

The logical consequence of fighting for freedom and equality is to fight for economic equality: People should be able to eat and sleep in peace, without having to worry about their circumstances tomorrow. “Equality” does not mean that everybody has the same amount, but that everybody has the chances they need to succeed in life.

We need a universal basic income, or any equivalent of it such as handouts in various forms.

get them jobs

jobs are ableist. i don’t see why people revere them so much.

from my experience, netflix is one of the few companies who actually produce hot new shows somewhat regularly. it’s weird to me how everybody keeps shitting on them.

It genuinely floors me that few medium and large-sized companies don’t use Linux for desktops.

our university does. at least on most computers.

especially if it’s a windows computer :D

I like the analogy with a surgeon or a firefighter.

Of course, the surgeon has to be available in case somebody needs an operation. But the best that can happen to society at large is that the surgeon is never needed because nobody’s sick.

Same with firefighters. Of course they have to be there to fight fires, but it’s better if houses don’t start to burn down in the first place!

“Companies aren’t innovating anymore and it’s costing the economy”

companies aren’t innovating anymore because physical limits have been reached. Moore’s law holds no longer true. Transistors can’t be packed more tightly into space anymore while also making the computer chip cheaper at the same time.

I’d argue it’s actually more the fault of the politicians than the CEOs, because the politicians cut taxes for the rich and set the rules of the game for companies to operate in; companies merely take opportunity of the exploits presented to them.

I’d also say that companies have a so called “fiduciary duty” to maximize shareholder values, as typically understood by economy classes. the way to change that behavior is to change the rules to which the companies have to keep. that means, instead of exploiting workers, they should pay taxes and benefit the community that way.

i had a samsung s4 mini (one of those really old phones, which are closer to a nokia brick than a modern smartphone IMHO) for years and it worked well. it lasted for 5+ years minimum. i bought a new samsung smartphone in 2022 (second hand though) and it shipped broken. randomly shut down, some kind of power issue. i never bothered to return it because it was rather cheap anyways and i had installed a custom OS on it at that point, which voids the warranty.

I bought a motorola afterwards but am only semi-happy with it. everything seems to work well with it, but i don’t feel like it’s a good phone. it feels kinda sleazy, somehow. i’m not sure whether it’s only because of the color scheme it uses or sth else, but it doesn’t feel alright. i’m still looking for a new phone.

any recommendations for long-lasting phones?

for desktop computers it used to be acer (laptop) for me. i bought one in 2012 and it lasted close to 10 years, which i consider really long. even then, i didn’t buy a new one because of hardware defects, but because the hardware specs were long out of date. i bought a new acer (laptop) in 2021 and it enshittified heavily, lasting only 18 months before i had to buy a new computer.

then i bought a thinkpad (laptop) and have been happy with it ever since. it’s been running for at least 2-3 years by now and shows no signs of aging at all, even though it’s already second-hand. great device.

Relying on turnover sales and nothing else.

The best way to grow the economy is to develop spaceflight. If you fly to mars, there’s millions of acres of free real estate waiting for you. Time to construct and grow the market.

There’s no more meaningful growth on Earth possible, because the physical limits have been reached. This effect has been predicted as far back as in 1970 with the report: The Limits To Growth. We’re finally seeing the effects of that now.

From a macroeconomics perspective, the best way forward is to give people money (handouts) so they can buy more stuff. More consumerism -> hotter economy.