- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.wtf/post/49143200
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/71629767
This is unacceptable. And I’m sick of all the fucking workarounds to maintain basic privacy.
Thinking that the free open-source software (FOSS) community will not find a way to work around whatever comes their way is the pure essence of ignorance. Remember when crypto was export restricted? Yeah, it got exported no problem. Only FOSS users had strong crypto outside the US.
If they try to repeat this with age restrictions, well, I use Gentoo and will probably be able to just put in a number which the OS then reports to whoever asks. Aren’t we all born on 1970-01-01?
Thinking that the FOSS community can’t get locked out of all modern AMD/Intel class processors is naive.
Most servers and half the phones run Linux. Linux will not be locked out by any CPU maker. It would be suicide to do so.
How long do you think it would take for “special industrial licenses” to be required to get “Linux accessible” CPUs?
Actually, I expect that to not happen at all. Jurisdictions in the US already started to exempt FOSS OSes from age restriction stuff.
But if they actually try… look at how well prohibitions worked in the past - even when the prohibited thing was legitimately harmful and outlawing it made actual sense. When there is demand there will be supply. You can still get the absolutely worst drugs in the US. Surely it would be easier to get unlocked CPUs into that country than deadly drugs.
And if it really became impossible to get western CPUs that can run Linux inside the US… I could still just switch to Chinese hardware because like most people I luckily am outside the US. China is catching up.
Thinking that any modern CPU vendor would lock out Linux is not naive, it’s the demonstration of pure ignorance and utter lack of knowledge in the world of technology.