“On one hand those trans kids give me the creeps. On the other, I get to call high school girls hot without consequences!”

But… the market! Think of my investments!

By having your computer shipped to you, mostly.

And the highway is littered with potholes.

I bet she even has a copy of Johnny The Homicidal Maniac.

Does it act as a dumb monitor? Can all smart TV features be permanently disabled?

Theoretically, it’s possible for the user to authenticate their age without either the site or service knowing the user’s identity. Quick and dirty example:

There’s a thing called a ring signature that allows one to prove that one of a large number of people digitally signed something. Let’s say a million people all have private keys whose corresponding public keys are registered to a database after they flashed their state ID at a post office or something to prove they are ≥18 years of age. So, John Smith uses his private key plus all 1 million public keys to sign a statement that he sends to a server saying he’s ≥18. The server then takes all 1 million public keys plus the signed message John provided and verifies that his signature is among the 1 million but cannot calculate which exact public key belongs to John. The verification process requires all 1 million public keys as input; you cannot, for example, try an omit each public key one-by-one to see which causes the verification process to fail.

Currently, there is ongoing research on how to make compact ring signatures since they can be very large the more public keys are involved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_signature

That said, even if you had scalable compact ring signature technology, I’d be more worried about advertiser deänonymization efforts once a user has logged in that check browser canvas size, IP address, user agent, font availability, etc. See https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

Also, ring signatures for age verification don’t actually verify age, just that someone proved their age at some point in the past to the owner of the public key database; just like an adult can log into YouTube on behalf of their children and let the children go to town, John could give anyone access to his private key regardless of age.

“Hey, Uncle, can I use your age tokens to do my research homework? The rich kids all get to use the entire Internet because their uncles let them ride their age credentials. Thanks!”

The Overview Effect (a supposed increase in wisdom from simply seeing your home planet from far away) is mostly a distraction from solving the problems of deciding who gets to own stuff in space and how do we as a society mitigate the risk of autocrats hurling extinction-level rocks at one another for their own personal short term profit.

seconds from disaster

Relevant Hogfather (1996) quote:

A grid is still most efficient

May I introduce you to Magnasanti: No road grid. A map of mostly skyscrapers, libraries, and subway stations. https://youtu.be/NTJQTc-TqpU

“Sims don’t need to travel long distances, because their workplace is just within walking distance. In fact they do not even need to leave their own block. Wherever they go it’s like going to the same place.”

Stratt: I believe in God.

Me: What?

Stratt: Evangelical karaoke

deleted by creator

I have it in good authority that the bank robber filed the scene via the highway road system. Therefore, we are suing the road maintenance workers for failing to screen vehicles for bags full of stolen cash.

Noted! Unpinning the notification post. Thanks for testing gift article links.

That exception probably would be twisted into permission to add an “AI summary” section to each article.

He wants distractions to keep himself and his loyal family out of prison.

My tax dollars at work.

Also somehow my tax dollars at work.

Finally he can know whether or not a given cave is a natural formation.