I grew up before mobile phones so I know I have the skills to function without one. There isn’t much I would miss. I am ok without social media, maps, chat apps etc.

Its the odd little things that I don’t do very often that could get annoying. Stuff like translating a label in a foreign language. There isn’t really an easy way to do that without a smart phone.

I guess I will be replacing our kids linux desktops with an estasi kommissar approved OS with inbuilt spyware and advertising controlled by her American ex-employer. Who were we trying to protect?

Still stuck on PMG copper with no relief in sight.

We put our balls firmly in their vice and they aren’t moving. If anything every Australian government, regardless of politics tries to tuck a bit more in every year with the standout concessions being digital sovereignty which is truly fucked and about to get much worse. It isn’t just the military/intelligence stuff. They have massive investment here and dominate financial and digital services. Probably the best we can hope for is to be neutral where we can along with a bit of malicious compliance.

If they want to block normies from porn and social media I don’t really give a shit. My fear is they are going to come after the fundamantal technology next: encryption, open source, open computing. eKaren used to work for very Big Tech. Everything about recent moves looks like a huge power grab for big tech and big media to data mine and control us more than ever with the force of government behind them.

They won’t be happy with people like me not buying and using their products, blocking their ads etc. The ultimate enshitification approaches. Total corporate control of our lives.

Which established media? Nine or Murdoch? I think we can assume by their silence that they have a seat at the table and are getting what they want.

I’m still totally stuck on how you’d stop a 14 year old from installing an off-the-shelf Lemmy container into his/her homelab and started using it.

I think Moot was around 14-15 when he started 4chan.

Things rarely proceed to the extremes as they get harder and more pushback the further you go. But the logical extension of wanting access to all public communications and verification of everyone’s online identity is that access to general computation has to be outlawed. Access to a programmable general purpose computer trivially defeats any restrictions you place on commercial services.

We do need to think about how for profit companies forgo their social responsibility and mess with people’s heads in pursuit of profits and if that should be regulated and how. But there are clearly some creepy people online, who might be funded, but aren’t necessarily motivated solely by profit but by ideology who will find ways to target people whatever the government does. Kids need to be prepared to live in that world and be very skeptical and it just isn’t happening. Today’s kids are just as fucking stupid as we were and they can’t afford to be.

The government have leapt straight to regulation, in my opinion likely pushed by some players in the tech industry and possibly five eyes without fully educating themselves. Potentially they are going to do more harm than good. I suspect a lot of kids are going to drift to less regulated and more extreme alternatives and we save a few kids from Tik Tok memes at the expense of more neo-nazi Christchurch shooters.

Meanwhile the “think of the children” Australian government is hands off on any enterprise run by the gambling industry. So much for the wishes of the Labor rank and file to kick gambling influence out of the party. The parliamentary parties allegiances are clear. Do whatever US intelligence and the tech companies say about age verification. Do whatever the mining industry says. Do whatever the surveillance industry says. Do whatever the gambling industry says. Piss weak for a government with a huge majority.

Not sure I actually want a linux phone. Not sure I want a smart phone at all anymore.

I think digital convergence probably went as far as it needed then kept going. Not sure how we went from nokia candybars and palm pilots to having a an always on camera, microphone, location and wifi sensor controlled by foreign advertising companies in our pockets but I think I am over it.

The government could really fuck up the black market if they were smart about it. How much margin do you have to make in a black market to offset the risk of prosecution? Just do the maths. When you control investigation, enforcement, prosecution and excises you would have to be really stupid to fuck it up like this.

This is a huge deflection from real issues. Rich cunts got richer, monopolizing our countries abundance of natural wealth and stacking the system in their favour through decades of government lobbying and corruption. Then they pay some fuckwit influencers to push the line that its the immigrant’s fault. They have been doing this shit for at least a century and its so fucking obvious if you spend 5 minutes researching shit.

BTW Immigration rates are high, not because of bleeding heart lefties, but because rich people have a pyramid scheme based on population growth pushing up property prices and want us to keep fighting for jobs so we aren’t in a position to demand better wages.

Immigration levels are too high because it benefits rich cunts. Join a union or environmental groups and vote on your own self interest and don’t be a sucker.

Only if they ban those shit single serve sauce packets first and go back to free sauce in your pie from a manky old plastic squeeze bottle. if they don’t a person could be forgiven for thinking it was some tokenistic dog whistle bullshit.

Americans are dumb cunts.

Nobody ask Albo why an Australian gambling industry billionaire operates a youth streaming platform while his government is going through the pretense of acting to protect vulnerable youth from online harm. Kick is for handwave over 18s only so nothing to see.

Can’t get away with accusing politicians of being corrupt here but they never seem to act effectively against the interests of wealthy people do they?

As usual follow the money. The automotive lobby keeps killing people to make profits. They control the flow of information and public policy. People die for profits. That is all there is to it. If we wanted to cut pedestrian deaths all it takes is for people to shake off the influence and care about their families and community instead of swallow the mindless shit fed to them by paid influencers and media and then hold politicians accountable.

Too many huge trucks on the road and I don’t just mean the taxpayer subsidized yank tanks. Hugely profitable private logistics companies got public rail defunded over decades to the point it is unusable. Can’t walk to schools or shops now without having to cross unsignalled intersections crossed by huge road trains all day and night. Successive governments have pushed heavy vehicle traffic onto B roads through small town centers and roads never designed for it and off the major highways with their bypasses and safety upgrades. All because they are too cheap to fund the necessary infrastructure upgrades at a small number of choke points. One day a double tanker of dangerous chemicals isn’t going to make a turn with the shops on one side and kindy and childcare on the other. It will make the headlines for a couple of days and then it will be back to heads in the sand.

This country has some excellent institutions and people but fundamentally the media and politics is controlled by a small corrupt elite regardless of which party governs.

Jellyfin doesn’t know shit about my kids’ age, gender or political beliefs and that is the way we like it.

What pissed me off with the Disney one was them putting it on my kid’s profiles instead of sending me an email. From memory they did give a non-binary/intersex/prefer not to say sort of option but there is no winning choice because no matter what you supply it has the potential to be used as an algorithmic input in future and deliver overly narrow content. I don’t think they should requesting that information. When the yearly subscription runs out they are gone along with the rest.

Perhaps some companies are trying to get ahead of the game. It they can demonstrate they are ahead of things it might be a bargaining point.

The google one was kind of weird because I wouldn’t consider the app in question an adult only app, the account had aged to 18 from probably 5 or so years ago. And it is my first time seeing the option to verify age with a picture or government id like they have in the UK now.

Disney wasn’t an age verification in the sense of the Australia/UK laws and I am fairly sure it was a demographics update to gather more marketing information for the option of a future advertising rollout. Just general enshitification.

I gave a fake age years ago, only by a year to get around some bullshit. Had to correct that when I verified :-(

He is a good kid. He doesn’t give a shit about crap like social media. I just wanted to install an open source email client for our self hosted family email and I had to get it via f-droid because its apparently for 18+ on google play. Like he is old enough to download and compile it from source. What is this bullshit? It let him have Signal though that was a while back. The younger kids are all on family link - but 17?

So first one was having to tell some yank company all my kids ages and gender (wtf?) to access their Disney+ profiles despite me being the adult who runs the account and having set appropriate limits like G and PG for them. Why the fuck does disney have to know a kid or a dog or a cat is watching if I pay the money. (However this started we all know Disney wants it for future targeted advertising and everyone in on this bandwagon for ulterior motives now)

Now my 17 year old (practically 18) needed to install an app in google play on his phone. Google play insisted on age verification. It wouldn’t accept his visa card. It wouldn’t accept his drivers license and then it shat itself but looks like he is verified now but now now it won’t let him install apps. It’s still happy to advertise to him though.