These laws aren't just about porn sites though. They affect sites like Wikipedia. [1]
You don't need to verify your age to enter a bookstore or a library.
And if you really want to control who can access porn then the only way to do that is with a whitelist filter on the device being used.
These laws are onerous without being effective.
I do think a standardized requirement for commercial websites to have content rating meta tags (like the existing content=adult and content=RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA) would be a good thing though, just to make more lenient filtering easier.
It'll be interesting to see how the EU Battery regulation that requires user-replaceable batteries impacts this when it comes into force in 2027. [1][2]
Would lying really lead to more used car sales and thus cause pressure for other to attempt this kind of fraud? And wouldn't people get in trouble for fraud (or at least false advertising?)
When I last bought a used car I found it in a classified newspaper ad: there was no picture.
I looked at every car I considered in-person.
When I found one I liked I paid for an independent pre-purchase inspection, discovered a crack in the radiator, and negotiated the price down to cover my post-sale expense fixing it.
There is a lot of fraud on Craigslist. The fraudsters are very creative. There is this fallacy, the 'Sunk Cost' fallacy, where people accept a substandard result because they feel they have already invested in the result and don't want to 'throw away' that investment. So in a place where it can take 90 minutes to go across the Bay, if you drive clear across the Bay for what you believe to be a pristine item, you may buy anyway (at a reduced price) because you've already invested the time to get there. Whereas, had the seller posted actual pictures of the item in question, you would have said, "I'll wait for one in better condition to come along."
The "success" of Craiglist is that it exposes you item to a wider pool of buyers, which increases the chance that the one person who really wants it, will see it. And if they really want it they are motivated to go out of their way to get to it. But if even the pictures lie and you don't know what you're getting until you get there, your willingness to take the risk and drive out is reduced, which means people will have items that might have sold if you were trusted.
This happens on EBay too. Sellers list something and it isn't as described, and fraudulent sellers will say "but it is! This buyer is trying to scam me." and EBay usually sides with the seller.
My prediction (and hey, its just a guess) is that if people start using these tools to "enhance" the images they use to sell stuff and it becomes a regular practice, then the total population of people who will use Craigslist will go down and prices overall will be reduced as that fraud gets priced in. Sellers won't get as much as they think they should and stop selling there. If it drops below critical mass then the service suffers.
> This happens on EBay too. Sellers list something and it isn't as described, and fraudulent sellers will say "but it is! This buyer is trying to scam me." and EBay usually sides with the seller.
This is not my experience at all and I've used eBay since 2008. eBay is pro buyer to the point that I don't sell anything on eBay (and buy all everything on eBay if price is the same).
Sell on eBay and can confirm this. eBay will side with the buyer 95% of the time, even if we can prove it was their fault. Maybe they side with scam sellers more.
> There is this fallacy, the 'Sunk Cost' fallacy, where people accept a substandard result because they feel they have already invested in the result and don't want to 'throw away' that investment.
I was going to say the same thing. The car on the picture may not have a broken headlight, and the one in reality may, but if it takes for the person >2 hours just to visit that car, they may still end up buying it anyway as they have already invested too much time (and possibly money) into it.
People use transformative filters on their faces on dating apps all the time. If you show up and find someone with a completely different face, is there any chance of romance? I have no idea... the best I can guess is
- No, but people do it anyway due to anxiety
- People can be pressured, the trick is to meet them the first time
- People say they care about faces, but don't actually care about faces
I am not attractive. Thankfully once I am being given the chance to have a conversation with people, after that, they find me attractive regardless of my appearance, in fact, I am more attractive now in their eyes due to the way "I am". Oftentimes all it takes is a deeper conversation.
It happened to me, too. I did not find someone particularly attractive, but their experiences, their views of relationships, the world, and so forth somehow ended up making them look more attractive.
The House's[1] SEC. 112104. EXCISE TAX ON REMITTANCE TRANSFERS. 3.5% tax became 1% in the Senate's[2] SEC. 70604. EXCISE TAX ON CERTAIN REMITTANCE TRANSFERS and a lot of the language changed.
The Senate made a lot of changes (Byrd rule also nuked a lot of stuff) so old articles are of limited use to the final bill.
I don't even know if [2] is the actual final text as there is neither an enrolled or public law version on congress.gov yet.
It's super annoying how often we can't read the final text of a bill before Congress votes on it.
When Microsoft puts out a notice saying that Windows 10 is obsolete and soon will no longer get security updates (scary) then many Americans will do the path of least resistance: buy a new PC with Windows 11 already installed.
Many people don't have space to store an old computer. Many people don't have time to try to sell it on ebay or FB marketplace. So they will again follow the path of least resistance: throw it away.
Sure, some people will donate it. But even then there's so much old working computer stuff in the USA that my high school wouldn't even accept more.
The old working computer storage room was full.
The situation is unfortunate but it's not because people are needlessly wasteful or uncaring. They're just trying to survive and live their lives and Microsoft told them their working thing doesn't work anymore.
Okay, but the ATM is not complicit in the crime. To blame the ATM would be like blaming the bank for allowing the sale of a car that facilitated a heist.
The correct analogy is if a bank is used to facilitate wire fraud, and they absolutely do have to reverse fraudulent payments, even if they're just a middle-man that unknowingly facilitated the fraud, even if they did their due diligence.
“But crypto!” is irrelevant; don't engage in providing high-risk services without looking into what the risks actually are and who is legally responsible for absorbing them.
I think a lot of people who were or had kids pre-internet streaming probably watched PBS, at least sometimes.
Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, Reading Rainbow, Joy of Painting, Arthur, Bill Nye, Barney, Teletubbies, etc.
It's not like there were a lot of TV choices for kids if their parents couldn't afford cable (and some stations like Cartoon Network didn't even exist until 1992+, I think even Disney Channel was a premium channel like HBO).
Notably, it doesn't say the governor has the right to refuse those "orders". If the governor had that right, they would be requests, not orders.
A very interesting article about this situation from a Georgetown law professor was posted somewhere deep in this discussion and is well worth reading.
The professor is strongly opposed to the deployment, and calls it "dangerous" and "pernicious" among other things. Nonetheless, he "thinks the federal government has both the constitutional and statutory authority to override local and state governments when it comes to law and order" and that "this [clause] is better understood as a purely administrative provision than it is as giving a substantive veto to the governor."
According to Governor Newsom he wasn't communicated with at all.
In an interview with All Things Considered host Juana Summers, Newsom said the mobilization order was not done with communication to or approval by his office. [1]
> This time can also be significantly reduced through phone number hints from password reset flows in other services such as PayPal, which provide several more digits (ex. +14•••••1779)
I've never thought about this but it's extra scary. If you have the same phone number and email address with enough services and they all mask in a different order for reset hints...
If it makes you feel better (it probably won't) hundreds/thousands of services have collected your phone number over the years (for 2FA or any other reason), with or without consent, and a large chunk of them have had data breaches. So your name-email-phone number combo is 100% already available in public data dumps.
Yeah, you could get an unlisted number but you were charged for it and almost no one did because it was also how people you wanted to get in touch with you found you a lot of the time. Not that data breaches aren't bad but a lot of the breached info has been pretty routinely available for a very long time. (And, as you say, cell phone numbers are probably less routinely available than landlines were.)
I don't go out of my way to publish my cell or address but a lot of people have them.
My old man was a doctor and the local phone company at the time (GTE) automatically made our home number unlisted. Presumably this was done for other “critical” professions who might receive many home calls that should be directed at their place of work.
Being unlisted was sometimes devastating to a 1980s kid’s social life… I missed out on multiple birthday parties and other invitations. My sisters probably lost out on some dating opportunities.
people always trot this out, but it was very possible to have your information unlisted so it was not printed in the book. you could also use a different name. an old coworker selected to have his name listed as David King so that when found in the book it would show up as King David.
having an unlisted number wasn't uncommon. for privacy minded people, it was a simple phone call to make it unlisted, and most just did it at time of getting the number.
nonetheless, pre-opting, your information was there, so anyone with a phonebook from before you made that decision would have your information. if an organisation had an interest in invading people's privacy it would not be complex to simply keep a copy of every edition of the phonebook
so what you could opt-out? your info was/is still in any phonebook from before you opted out. any well-prepared organisation, which these modern data-collection firms are, would have no problem whatsoever keeping every edition of the phonebook for this purpose.
yeah the discrepancy is that its harder now. phonebooks were essentially free and had people's addresses in them
There are now Telegram bots to find such information. The fact that this bruteforce was revealed probably annoyed many users (like the infamous "EoG" bot).
There were a few stories in the past about people social engineering their way past support by asking one companies support for the last 4 of a card and then using that last 4 for a different company.
> Those security lapses are my fault, and I deeply, deeply regret them.
> But what happened to me exposes vital security flaws in several customer service systems, most notably Apple's and Amazon’s. Apple tech support gave the hackers access to my iCloud account. Amazon tech support gave them the ability to see a piece of information – a partial credit card number – that Apple used to release information. In short, the very four digits that Amazon considers unimportant enough to display in the clear on the web are precisely the same ones that Apple considers secure enough to perform identity verification. The disconnect exposes flaws in data management policies endemic to the entire technology industry, and points to a looming nightmare as we enter the era of cloud computing and connected devices.
There's services that do this automatically for a price, and they've been around for a while, for e-mail, phone numbers, and much more. Any bits (literally, bits) of information given without authorization (or plausible belief it's the intended user on the other side) will be efficiently put together from a variety of sources, as there's no shortage of incentive, and many all over the world prodding services used by billions of people worldwide. And then eventually leaked..
There used to be deep web services that provided a lot of this stuff for free back in the early 2000s or so. I think everything like that is behind at least some level of paywall now but it's not hard to get a fairly complete dossier on someone given a bit of background information and a pretty small expenditure.
Get personal info, then call carrier for a SIM swap, access crypto from there. Bonus: no KYC, since it's the other person's identity + you can login from 4G internet, so a trusted IP range.
I haven't been able to get into my main Google account for years because they enabled 2FA without warning and it had a phone number I no longer have. I have the username and password and I get all the emails because I also have the recovery email address. I just need to get the recovery code by SMS.
You don't need to verify your age to enter a bookstore or a library.
And if you really want to control who can access porn then the only way to do that is with a whitelist filter on the device being used. These laws are onerous without being effective.
I do think a standardized requirement for commercial websites to have content rating meta tags (like the existing content=adult and content=RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA) would be a good thing though, just to make more lenient filtering easier.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65388255