macOS already ships age verification

What in the absolute fuck is this.

I would like to remain open-minded about this. I am also using the full-freight, enteprise version of Claude Code running 4.5 Sonnet to compare the text of two PDF files, and it repeatedly pulls out false text and quotes. This is the simplest of tasks, and this is March 2026.

Yup, LLM's are why Pi's cost almost twice as much as they used to, and other electronics are following suit. From my colleagues at @spectrum.ieee.org:

"Age-restriction laws push platforms toward intrusive verification systems that often directly conflict with modern data-privacy law." spectrum.ieee.org/age-verifica...

Weeps in Doherty Threshold. The road to this particular hell was paved by web apps displacing native OS software, and now the OS itself can't cut it.

don’t worry guys, bluesky can be perfect so long as we all get along. first things first, we just need to agree on that vi is better than Emacs.

"AI rewrite specialist" is "prompt engineer cosplaying as editor" (or maybe vice-versa. Ugh.

Normalize "absolutely unreachable" for sure!

This is a really powerful piece from @thatsabrina.bsky.social that also makes me really want to read her new novel: lithub.com/the-power-of... #romancelandia

The Scottish island mentioned in this story is worth looking up!

Great, if somewhat depressing, assessment for anyone considering buying a PC soon, by my @spectrum.ieee.org colleague Samuel K. Moore:

This is one of my favorite Hands On we've ever published: did you know that with a General-class Ham license and less than $100 bucks you can build, launch, and monitor a globe-circling balloon? #amateurradio #hamradio #picoballoon #citizenscience spectrum.ieee.org/explore-stra...

Gods work.

Aertel was the bomb: you could e.g. look up arrivals at Dublin airport and see if a visitor's flight was delayed before schlepping all the way out there to pick them up, or get a fresh weather forecast. It's hard to convey how awesome that was to anyone who didn't experience life pre-Internet...

I'm not ADHD! I prefer to call myself a stochastic recaller.

What I imagine is happening right now at Netflix's content delivery network's operation center, as the 8pm EST release time for Stranger Things 5 approaches: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwMU...

This looks amazing, but if it hasn't been designed so you can visit every exhibit by only making left-hand turns I will be very disappointed.

Yay! I really enjoyed Stargate, and how it plausibly progressed from small-scale planet-of-the-week adventures to full-up galaxy-scale space opera. True, it didn't hit the kind of TV highs that contemporaneous genre shows like BSG or Lost achieved, but it didn't misfire either, until maybe SGU.

this thing hides posts it judges as ‘rude’, by some US standard. Thereby silencing most of the conversations in Ireland and Scotland, at least.

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #251 "Backrooms"

This has been my earworm for nearly 10 days now, so I'm so so sorry, but now I have to inflict it on you: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHsp...

Escape From PETSCII Castle Preview #Commodore64 #C64Gaming #PETSCII #RetroGames #HomebrewC64 #EscapeFromPETSCIICastle theoasisbbs.com/escape-from-...

Some of you will already know @crowdsupply.bsky.social's @helenleigh.bsky.social from conferences like Teardown and HOPE. I got to interview her about the biggest mistake people make gearing up from project to product: simply not charging enough. spectrum.ieee.org/helen-leigh-...

Oh no! I've been running into Greg in his zoot suit or similar every couple of years at HOPE for the last two decades or so, and he was always such a thoughtful presence... RIP

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #250 "124"

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #249 "Grin"

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #248 "Suspension"

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #247 "Patience"

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #246 "Collanade"

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #245 "Dissolve"

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #244 "Whispers"

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #243 "Overhead"

<Laughs hysterically in Irish orthography>

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #242 "Fully Computerized"

What's your sign

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #241 "Carved"

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #240 "Breezy"

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #239 "Bermuda Vertex"

A fun one for @spectrum.ieee.org's special issue on scale: while this tech isn't what we used to think #interstellar exploration would be like at all, it has the advantage of being much closer to doable, with mission durations comparable to what we're already used to with planetary flybys. #space

Remember that photo I posted of the guts of a homebrew #C64 cartridge? Well, this is what it was for, a demo in a traveling museum exhibit version of @spectrum.ieee.org's Chip Hall Of Fame! #6502, #Commodore, #Assembly #retrocomputing #6510

Who's your favorite Jedi? (wrong answers only)

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #238 "Attack"

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #237 "Aggregate"

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #236 "Table Setting"

For 12 years I've been responsible @spectrum.ieee.org's annual rankings of the Top Programming Languages, but this is both the most interesting and possibly final one we do as the impact of AI is heralding some fundamental changes for programming languages #coding #vibecoding #programming #TPL2025

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #235 "GW"

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #234 "Flotsam"

Rescuing 1 image a day from the depths of my Photo Library #233 "2-branes"