On 2026-03-05 03:17, jslee wrote:
On Thu, 5 Mar 2026, at 11:57, Kevin wrote:
California != Canada
The end.
A rather myopic post, IMO.
Firstly, regarding the most likely enforcement mechanism:
Have you forgotten (or were you not around for) the “Trusted Computing”
and “Secure Boot” saga?
Don’t be so quick to believe that you’ll always be able to turn it
off/work around restrictions of what boot images your computer will
allow.
Secondly, regarding “it’s just California”, and trying to not be too
political here: have you not noticed the multiple waves of nations
implementing eerily similar legislation at around the same time?
Eg. age verification for social media, or requiring[1] platform vendors
like Apple to provide backdoors when requested.
It may well be only California now, but don’t expect that to remain
true for very long. And if it’s enforced via the “trusted” platform
stuff, how do you expect the motherboard manufacturers to respond? SKUs
per variant of the laws? Sounds unwieldy and inefficient and expensive
I do fervently hope it ends up being a storm in teacup, as the saying
goes, but I’m not feeling particularly confident about it.
[1] see “assistance and access” legislation in Australia and
equivalents in quite a few other nations
John
secure boot and age verification apis are not the same thing. stop
conflating them.
yes, coordinated legislation is worth watching. but "it might get worse
someday" is not an argument about what this law does right now.
right now it does nothing to openbsd.
