The best defense is a good offense…

I thought it was a big truck? Or maybe a series of tubes?

Amanda said while the government had promised the ban would make it easier for parents, “the reality of trying to enforce them has left me feeling that the burden has been pushed back on to families”.

I fully agree that some of the burden of age verification has been returned to the families, and I can only hope that the rest of the burden is soon returned to them as well.

The rest of the response I want to give here would violate 3, 4, 5, 7, and probably 1.

To be viable, a solution is going to have to include replacement for the functions provided by fossil fuels. Without those functions, we’re back in the stone age. Scientists might tolerate that, but the general public will not. Electric cars and electrified trains will solve a large part of that problem, but sea and air transport aren’t anywhere close.

Synthetic gaseous and liquid fuels and lubricants can be produced using atmospheric CO2 as a feedstock. The problem is that the process is energy intensive. But, that very problem is also a solution to another one.

Solar and wind electrical generation has a massive problem with seasonal variability. We can solve the daily variability with various storage methods, but there is no viable way for storage to manage seasonal variation. Basically, a solar panel that is sized to meet our needs in the short days of low-angle sunlight we get in winter will produce more than three times as much energy as we need under long, high-angle sunlight in summer.

Excess production reduces the profitability of every generator on the grid. So we get to a situation where profits are maximized long before we meet our generation needs. Any further increase in generation capacity decreases expected revenues. We are motivated to reduce solar generation capacity before our needs are fully met, rather than increasing it to fully meet our needs. This is the real problem currently coming over the horizon; the one we need to begin addressing.

We can frame this as a problem of variation in supply. Or we can reframe it as a problem with lack of variation in demand. The latter is a much simpler problem to solve. The problem isn’t that we produce too much power in the summer. The problem is that we use too much power in the winter, but not nearly enough in the summer. We need to decrease our winter consumption, and increase our summer consumption to match what we produce.

If we soak up the excess energy in spring, summer, and autumn to produce synthetic fuel and lubricants from atmospheric CO2, we keep renewable generation profitable year round, while also producing a carbon-neutral replacement for petroleum oil.

(This is not a theoretical: the Air Force has certified all of its aircraft to operate on Fisher-Tropsch-produced synfuels. These fuels are direct replacements for petroleum fuels, but are developed from catylizing CO2 and hydrogen into long-chained hydrocarbons, rather than refining from petroleum.)

There is a giant hole in the middle where we don’t really have a good option yet, and yeah, it will take something shutting down factories for a few months, but I really don’t see that as remotely realistic until shit gets dire.

That hole is not nearly as big as it seems. Conventional baseload generators (Nuclear and coal) have a similar problem matching the daily demand curve. They can’t ramp up and down very quickly to match the curve. Their production has to be matched to the trough, the lowest daily demand, and can’t be raised much above that. Baseload generation is the most efficient conventional generation, so they want to push as much load to it as possible.

Grid operators have compensated for this limitation by incentivizing off-peak consumption. They are already using demand-shaping methods to fill the overnight “trough”. By raising the trough, the baseload rises, and baseload generation produces a much larger percentage of total power production.

One major problem with these incentives is that they drive consumption overnight, where it can’t possibly be met by anything except storage and baseload generation. These “perverse” incentives need to be rolled back a little faster. The cause of our summer overages is not excess solar capacity. Those overages are because of excess overnight demand, requiring excessive baseload generation. Allowing the trough to lower, we reduce 24/7 baseload production, which makes room for additional solar and wind.

The problem with “just use the excess power for something” is that it doesn’t happen all the time. It’s not three seasons, it’s more like <1000 hours a year.

You are making that claim based on our current generation mix and capacity. Our renewable capacity is not currently capable of fully meeting our needs in the middle of winter. We need more renewable capacity - much, much more.

You need to consider a scenario where we actually do have enough solar and wind to meet our needs during winter.

A solar panel, operating on a summer day with 16 hours of high-angle sunlight produces about three times as much power as it does on a winter day with 8 hours of low-angle sunlight. (I’m sure you know this; I only mention it to make sure we’re on the same page.)

We are barely producing excess renewable power in the summer, which means we are producing about 1/3 the renewable power we need in the middle of winter. So instead of our current excess during about 1000 hours a year, I need you to consider a scenario where we have about three times the amount of solar and wind power that we currently have. That’s what it will take to fully meet our needs, year round. That’s the amount of excess power we need to be able to absorb in the other three seasons so we have enough renewable generation capacity available in winter.

The only way to bridge that gap is with batteries,

No, actually, that is not the “only” way. You are talking about “supply shaping” measures: moving energy from time-of-production to time-of-demand. And yes, we certainly do need some supply shaping measures to meet overnight demand. We do need to match the daily variation between supply curve and demand curve to make renewables work. But, the only way supply shaping can feasibly work with seasonal variation is with the inclusion of non-renewable generators. We simply cannot store enough renewable power from summer for use in winter, nor can we transport anything close to that amount of power across the equator. Batteries (and other grid scale storage methods) are not the answer to the seasonal variation problem. Supply shaping is not the answer.

There is, in fact, another shaping method available, and it is actually far more efficient: “Demand shaping”. With demand shaping, you don’t bother trying to store any more power than you absolutely need to. Instead, you just use it, directly, at the time it is produced. You do something useful with that power when you have it, and you shut down that consumption when you don’t have the available power to drive it.

One major benefit of such an industry is that if it is not currently profitable to operate on our excess production, the solution is to increase that excess production: Install more panels and turbines. Sell your power to the grid when it is more profitable to do so. When it isn’t, keep your power, and use it to produce fuels, or anything else you can sell.

The real structural solution would be to completely overhaul the electricity market … but I don’t see that happening.

That’s exactly what I am talking about. I’m talking about what we need to do to make it happen.

Demand shaping: We go to aluminum smelters and steel mills and we tell them if they want to operate year round, their power costs are going to triple. They need to cut their power requirements for the shortest 60 days of the year to keep their current rates. They schedule an annual maintenance period to coincide with this winter shutdown.

We stop telling them they can only work overnight (when nuclear needs them) and they need to transition to daytime operation (when solar needs them)

I saw that documentary.

They are pretty pointless unless we find some way of sucking down excess power when it is available. Fischer-Tropsch synfuel production, for example, can convert CO2 or biomass into carbon-neutral fuel for the transportation industry. Desalination, hydrogen production, and a wide variety of other power-hungry industries can be brought online for three-season operation. This keeps solar and wind generators profitable in the summer, which justifies expanding solar and wind projects. The three-season nature of these industries withdraws their demand in winter, allowing solar and wind generation to meet a larger percentage of total demand.

The designated subject for your personal protest is the richest person within 20 miles of you.

Worse, they’ve grown up on a steady diet of media telling them that “if you say the wrong thing” to a girl, “she’s going to accuse you of something,”

There’s a big problem with the premise of this argument.

The article accepts this “steady diet of media” as fact, but implies that it only affects “guys”.

If there is, indeed, a “steady diet of media” saying this to a guy, then that same “steady diet of media” is saying the same thing to a girl: “If a guy says something wrong, it is reasonable and/or expected for a girl to accuse him of something”. Girls are hearing the exact same message that guys are hearing.

If that “steady diet” actually exists, then the guy’s concerns of accusations are valid, and he should be praised for ensuring he doesn’t “say the wrong thing”.

Suppose Microsoft adds this capability to Windows, and you edit the registry to disable it. How is that any different?

By allowing the end user to change it instead of locking it down, they are not making a good faith effort to comply, and they lose their liability protection. To maintain their immunity, at the very least they will need to prohibit Californians from disabling the feature.

Canonical is prohibited from adding comparable terms.

I can see the argument for something like iOS.

How is iOS any different from Windows here?

Let’s say you own a computer store in California, you sell Windows laptops, and you setup your preinstalled Windows image with the registry edit made, because customers don’t like the silly age prompt. How are you not the OS Provider?

Again, to maintain their immunity under this law, they would have to prohibit me from doing this in their licensing agreement. My violation is what protects Microsoft. I would, indeed, be the OS provider in that scenario.

But in the scenario you describe, I’m not the end user.

Neither Canonical nor I can include the same restrictive terms in our OS offerings. We can simply inform our users that the OS is not California compliant. Our users become their own OS Providers as soon as they decide to use them in California.

And a user of Ubuntu only has access to the functions that Canonical has provided.

That is not at all accurate.

Administrator access to Windows is not at all comparable to root access on Linux. Windows “root” access is held solely by Microsoft, and granted only to Microsoft employees and contractors. They are the only ones with the capability of changing Microsoft’s binary blobs.

Canonical doesn’t restrict root access. Everyone who installs Ubuntu has root access by default.

Suppose Canonical adds this capability to Ubuntu. Suppose I take an Ubuntu install, and remove this capability. Who is the provider of the resulting OS, Canonical, or me? Obviously, I am responsible for the changes; I am obviously the OS Provider in this scenario.

What I am saying is that I was the OS provider before I made the changes.

Let’s remember that the law distinguishes between the OS and Applications running on that OS. They require that the signalling apparatus be included in the OS. Technologically, the distinction between OS and Application is somewhat arbitrary. For commercial OSes, it’s pretty simple: The OS is what Microsoft declares to be part of “Windows” is the OS; everything else is an application.

Suppose Microsoft refuses to include this signaling apparatus. The end user cannot modify Windows, so does not become liable as the “OS Provider”. The user can bolt on the functionality as an application, but cannot make it part of the OS. Microsoft is the one facing the fines under this law.

For FOSS software, the end user’s root access gives them the ability to add this signaling capability to the OS running on their machines, even if Canonical refuses to distribute a compliant OS. The user’s ability to make their own OS compliant with California law makes them the party liable for non-compliance.

The windows user uses the OS. The windows user does not control the OS. They only have access to the functions that Microsoft has provided. The Attorney General of California won’t be able to argue that the sysadmin is the OS Provider of a Windows installation. The OS Provider of Windows is Microsoft.

The Attorney General of California would easily be able to argue that the OS Provider of a particular Linux instance is the sysadmin of that instance.

If your code is installed on a general purpose computing device that is provided to a child, you can be fined.

If you provide code to the general public without requesting an age signal from the receiver’s OS, you can be fined.

The attorney general of California might consider the JavaScript in your web page to be “content”. They might consider it to be an “application”. There is no clear distinction. If you request an age signal before providing content, you can be fined. If you fail to request an age signal before providing an application, you can be fined.

The more I read about this law, the less I think it will actually go into effect. It’s going to face a whole series of injunctions. The lawyers are going to bill thousands of hours, but the whole thing is going to be scrapped.

The law doesn’t require anything of users, it requires something of OS providers.

For a FOSS OS, any user with root access would be considered an “OS Provider” under the definitions provided in this law. With FOSS, there is no real distinction between “user” and “developer”.

No… The law literally says that if you make a good faith effort then you are not liable.

It used to be that my liability was to the people using my code. If I code badly, they won’t use it, and I might be blocked from contributing to a project. That was the worst penalty that I faced for providing bad code.

Now, I might have to argue against a lawyer claiming my mistakes are negligence, and my efforts are in less than good faith, with financial penalties should they prevail.

They merely need to point to my opposition to this law as evidence that I am not acting “in good faith” to support it.

Throwing up our hands and exiting California and Colorado is playing into Microsoft’s desires. It is also the only rational response should this law go into effect as planned. Which means the proper course of action is to denounce this idiot law, not lend it our support or rationalize the harm it causes.

And if I make a good faith effort, but it doesn’t work right, that’s a $2000 penalty. Every time that snot-nosed, unsupervised kid opens an app.

You could of course decide to not provide to residents of California and Colorado.

Yes, that’s exactly what Microsoft and Google want. They don’t want my FOSS OS competing with their commercial offerings.

The law effectively only applies penalties to the parents.

This applies penalties to far more than the parents. If I provide an operating system to a California parent, and my operating system does not include this “signal” apparatus, I can be fined $7500 every time a kid launches an application on my OS, for my deliberate decision not to implement their asinine horseshit.

I highly doubt it’s ever going to come into effect. We’ll see injunctions later this year.

A windows sysadmin does not need to be granted the authority to alter or disable the binary blob that performs the age verification. Microsoft can restrict that access and maintain control over that aspect of the OS. As they will be held liable for allowing it to be disabled, they are not likely to do so.

Canonical cannot compel a similar restriction in its users and sysadmins, due to the FOSS-ness of the software. They cannot be held responsible for what that sysadmin does with their software. The sysadmin, then, becomes the OS Provider.