California requires age verification on ALL OSes

[Bernie Hoefer]

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I've been both busy and lazy... hence the delay in replying!

On 2026-02-28 17:15 UTC-05:00, David Spoelstra wrote:
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> BTW, this was driven by underage online gambling. There was a recent 
> article (NYT?) where they exposed the problem. Data shows that
> "Roughly 70% of teens aged 12-17 have gambled online in the past
> year." and "Over 25% of high school students gamble frequently."
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Let me guess:  some stupid parent gave their teenager a credit card or some online payment system (like Apple Pay) and doesn't monitor their child's transactions.  Now, because they cannot parent, the whole Internet needs to lose their privacy.

I am very ignorant of all of this, but doesn't one have to give one's birth date to the credit card or online payment system?  So wouldn't the `better` overreach of government be to have the payment processors block payments if the item or service being purchased is not appropriate for the card owner?


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> LOL, they obviously need to teach statistics in high school!
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There are many topics they should teach but don't.  Personal finance being at the top of the list, IMHO:  how loans and credit works, how to set a budget, why you should plan for emergency expenditures, etc...


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> On a tangent, many years ago my computer graphics conference,
> SIGGRAPH, held our conference in Las Vegas.
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> We're all engineers and scientists and know that gambling is a
> losing bet, so no one gambled!
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:-)


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> The> scary thing to me was all the data they collected on our
> attendees gambling!
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20 years ago there was a TV show called _Las Vegas_ where some of the main characters worked in the security center of a casino.  While I'm sure that the show overplayed the security aspect (like doing real-time facial recognition taken from the feed of a security camera that is positioned 50 feet away) a bit, I probably still would be amazed at what a high-stakes security center like that can do.


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