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An Anonymous Coward writes:

The plaintiff says that Microsoft's tactic of "forced obsolescence" is an "attempt to monopolize the generative AI market."

https://www.courthousenews.com/microsoft-sued-for-discontinuing-windows-10-support/
https://archive.ph/evqhf

A Southern California man sued Microsoft on Thursday over the software giant's plan to discontinue support for the old version of its widely used operating system Windows.

Though Windows 11 was launched nearly four years ago, many of its billion or so worldwide users are clinging to the decade-old Windows 10.

In fact, the newer Windows only just recently overtook its predecessor, in July.

According to StatCounter, nearly 43% of Windows users still use the old version on their desktop computers. The bad news for them is that Microsoft is discontinuing its routine support for Windows 10 in nearly two months on Oct. 14.

Not that computers running Windows 10 will completely stop working on that day. But they will no longer receive new features or security updates.

The plaintiff, Lawrence Klein, says in his complaint filed in San Diego Superior Court, that he owns two laptops, both of which run Windows 10. Both laptops, he says in his complaint, will become obsolete in October, when Microsoft ends support for Window. [...] Klein says that the end of Windows 10 is part of Microsoft's strategy to force customers to purchase new devices and to "monopolize the generative AI market."

Windows 11 comes with Microsoft's suite of generative artificial intelligence software, including the chatbot Copilot. To run optimally, Microsoft's AI needs a piece of hardware called a neural processing unit, which newer tablets, laptops and desktop computers have — and which the older devices do not.

"With only three months until support ends for Windows 10, it is likely that many millions of users will not buy new devices or pay for extended support," Klein writes in his complaint. "These users — some of whom are businesses storing sensitive consumer data — will be at a heightened risk of a cyberattack or other data security incident, a reality of which Microsoft is well aware."

"In other words, Microsoft's long-term business strategy to secure market dominance will have the effect of jeopardizing data security not only of Microsoft's customers but also of persons who may not use Microsoft's products at all," he adds.
Although the Windows 11 upgrade is free, an estimated 240 million personal computers don't have the right hardware to run the new operating system. And without security updates, they will be increasingly vulnerable to malware and viruses. Those customers will have the option of extended security, which will last until 2028, but at a price: $30 for individuals and $61 per device for businesses, increasing to $244 by the third year.

According to one market analyst writing in 2023, Microsoft's shift away from Windows 10 will lead millions of customers to buy new devices and thrown out their old ones, consigning as many as 240 million PCs to the landfill.

"If these were all folded laptops, stacked one on top of another, they would make a pile 600km taller than the moon," the analyst wrote.
Klein is asking a judge to order Microsoft to continue supporting Windows 10 without additional charge, until the number of devices running the older operating system falls bellow 10% of total Windows users. He says nothing about any money he seeking for himself, though it does ask for attorneys' fees.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Java-like move could land those expecting free trial with a new bill:

Oracle has introduced new licensing terms that some users may see as hidden within the terms for VirtualBox, the general-purpose virtualization software for x86_64 hardware.

An eagle-eyed licensing consultant in Germany has spotted that licensing terms for downloads from the VirtualBox website have changed, effectively ending the opportunity for a free three-month trial once the user downloads the software.

Bernhard Halbetel, who works for advisory firm DBConcepts, has pointed out that anyone who has VirtualBox 7.1 or later might be liable for a licensing charge under the updated terms and conditions, even if they are not using the software.

"Before the change, Oracle would email those who downloaded the VirtualBox Extension Pack and say, 'Thank you for downloading, this is a commercial license, and now we have to talk about your license fees.' And the user could just say, 'We downloaded only for evaluation, and we de-installed it a couple of months ago, and therefore we don't need to pay your fee.' And Oracle has to go away," he told The Register.

"Now they changed in the licensing that the evaluation is not part of the Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL) anymore... so if you download it, then you are trapped, because then you have to pay the fee," Halbetel said. He warned users who have downloaded VirtualBox version 7.1 or later not to ignore such emails from Oracle.

However, users can still get a free evaluation if they get the download from elsewhere. Those who check the Licensing FAQ will find the free evaluation version is available from Oracle Software Delivery Cloud, which requires a login, so users need to sign up.

upstart writes:

Academic study suggests devices cannot differentiate between someone being overworked and being excited:

They are supposed to monitor you throughout the working day and help make sure that life is not getting on top of you.

But a study has concluded that smartwatches cannot accurately measure your stress levels – and may think you are overworked when really you are just excited.

Researchers found almost no relationship between the stress levels reported by the smartwatch and the levels that participants said they experienced. However, recorded fatigue levels had a very slight association with the smartwatch data, while sleep had a stronger correlation.

Eiko Fried, an author of the study, said the correlation between the smartwatch and self-reported stress scores was "basically zero".

He added: "This is no surprise to us given that the watch measures heart rate and heart rate doesn't have that much to do with the emotion you're experiencing – it also goes up for sexual arousal or joyful experiences."

[...] Fried said although there was a lot of academic work looking for physiological signals that can act as proxies for emotional states, most were not precise enough. This is because there is an overlap between positive and negative feelings – for example, hair standing on end can signal anxiety as well as excitement.

Fried, an associate professor in the department of clinical psychology at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and his team tracked stress, fatigue and sleep for three months on 800 young adults wearing Garmin vivosmart 4 watches. They asked them to report four times a day on how stressed, fatigued or sleepy users were feeling before cross-referencing the data.

And the results, published in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, found that none of the participants saw the stress scores on their watches meet the baseline for significant change when they recorded feeling stressed. And for a quarter of participants, their smartwatch told them they were stressed or unstressed when they self-reported feeling the opposite.

upstart writes:

Small clouds out as VMware again changes partner program:

VMware has advised partners its current channel program will end, and it seems that smaller players won't be invited back.

[...] This is the second major shakeup for VMware partners in eighteen months, after the Broadcom business unit's January 2024 decision to terminate members that operated VMware-powered clouds that ran on fewer than 3,500 processor cores.

That change caused great unease. Axed service providers could not secure licenses to run VMware-powered clouds, leaving them with hardware they could not legally use for its intended purpose. Customers of axed partners faced forced migrations.

VMware responded to community concerns by creating a "white label program" that allowed small cloud operators – now known as "secondary partners" – to acquire licenses from the "primary partner" that remained in its channel.

The white label program will soon be history, meaning many VMware users will need to find a new home.

[...] The VMware ecosystem now has good reason to fear Broadcom is capricious, because just last March the company hailed its revised partner program as ideal for customers and partners alike.

By changing its partner program twice within 18 months, Broadcom will therefore anger and disappoint many customers by forcing them to make a costly and complex cloud migration.

Partners that made the cut a year ago and have now been ejected will likely be furious – and with good cause because they will have invested in VMware practices that may soon be dust.

[...] Broadcom points to growing VMware revenue as evidence its approach is working.

Acquisitions are seldom quick or clean. While Broadcom can point to improved software and product development prowess, this one has been painful for VMware customers who surely now deserve a period of calm and predictability, even if that's not the best outcome for Broadcom shareholders.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Experts working to benchmark resource use of AI models say new version's enhanced capabilities come at a steep cost:

In mid-2023, if a user asked OpenAI's ChatGPT for a recipe for artichoke pasta or instructions on how to make a ritual offering to the ancient Canaanite deity Moloch, its response might have taken – very roughly – 2 watt-hours, or about as much electricity as an incandescent bulb consumes in 2 minutes.

OpenAI released a model on Thursday that will underpin the popular chatbot – GPT-5. Ask that version of the AI for an artichoke recipe, and the same amount of pasta-related text could take several times – even 20 times – that amount of energy, experts say.

As it rolled out GPT-5, the company highlighted the model's breakthrough capabilities: its ability to create websites, answer PhD-level science questions, and reason through difficult problems.

But experts who have spent the past years working to benchmark the energy and resource usage of AI models say those new powers come at a cost: a response from GPT-5 may take a significantly larger amount of energy than a response from previous versions of ChatGPT.

OpenAI, like most of its competitors, has released no official information on the power usage of its models since GPT-3, which came out in 2020. Sam Altman, its CEO, tossed out some numbers on ChatGPT's resource consumption on his blog this June. However, these figures, 0.34 watt-hours and 0.000085 gallons of water per query, do not refer to a specific model and have no supporting documentation.

"A more complex model like GPT-5 consumes more power both during training and during inference. It's also targeted at long thinking ... I can safely say that it's going to consume a lot more power than GPT-4," said Rakesh Kumar, a professor at the University of Illinois, currently working on the energy consumption of computation and AI models.

The day GPT-5 was released, researchers at the University of Rhode Island's AI lab found that the model can use up to 40 watt-hours of electricity to generate a medium-length response of about 1,000 tokens, which are the building blocks of text for an AI model and are approximately equivalent to words.

[...] As large as these numbers are, researchers in the field say they align with their broad expectations for GPT-5's energy consumption, given that GPT-5 is believed to be several times larger than OpenAI's previous models. OpenAI has not released the parameter counts – which determine a model's size – for any of its models since GPT-3, which had 175bnparameters.

upstart writes:

Using a fan can make older adults hotter in a dry heat:

Montreal Heart Institute-led research has found that older adults using an electric fan at 38 °C and 60% relative humidity experienced a modest fall in core temperature and greater comfort. Fan use at 45 °C and 15% relative humidity raised core temperature and increased discomfort.

CDC guidance warns against fan use above 32 °C because of concerns that added airflow could speed heat gain in vulnerable groups. Modeling studies and small laboratory trials have hinted that airflow may help when humidity is high, but effects at very high temperatures in older adults have remained uncertain. Older individuals face elevated heat-related morbidity, creating an urgent need for practical, low-cost cooling ideas.

In the study, "Thermal and Perceptual Responses of Older Adults With Fan Use in Heat Extremes," published in JAMA Network Open, researchers performed a secondary analysis of a randomized crossover clinical trial to test how fan use and skin wetting influence core temperature, sweating, and thermal perception during extreme-heat exposures.

[...] In the humid chamber, fan use lowered rectal temperature by −0.1 °C, raised sweat rate by 57 mL/h, and improved thermal sensation by −0.6 AU (arbitrary units using an ASHRAE 7-point scale) and comfort by −0.6 AU. Skin wetting cut sweat loss by 67 mL/h and eased perceptions, and combining both strategies produced the largest perceptual gains: thermal sensation −1.1 AU, comfort −0.7 AU, without altering core temperature.

In the dry chamber, fan use raised core temperature by 0.3 °C, boosted sweating by 270 mL/h, and worsened sensation and comfort by 0.5 AU each. Skin wetting alone lowered sweating by 121 mL/h and improved sensation by −0.4 AU, with comfort unchanged.

Study investigators conclude that electric fans can serve as a safe, low-cost cooling option for older adults during hot, humid weather at 38 °C, but should be avoided in very hot, dry conditions. Simple skin wetting offers an additional means to manage heat stress while limiting dehydration. Public health agencies may use these findings to refine summer heat-safety messages for seniors.

Journal Reference: Georgia K. Chaseling et al, Thermal and Perceptual Responses of Older Adults With Fan Use in Heat Extremes, JAMA Network Open (2025). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.23810

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Damien Miller (djm@) just published a Post-Quantum Cryptography FAQ page to the OpenSSH web site. It describes OpenSSH's use of and approach to post-quantum cryptography. A big goal is to minimize the risk from hostiles saving SSH traffic now to then crack the encryption later as new technology allows.

Fortunately, quantum computers of sufficient power to break cryptography have not been invented yet. Estimates for when a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer will arrive, based on the rate of progress in the field, range from 5-20 years, with many observers expecting them to arrive in the mid-2030s.

The entire privacy of an SSH connection depends on cryptographic key agreement. If an attacker can break the key agreement then they are able to decrypt and view the entire session. The attacker need not perform this attack in real time; they may collect encrypted SSH sessions now and then decrypt them later once they have access to a quantum computer. This is referred to as a "store now, decrypt later" attack (also as "harvest now, decrypt later").

OpenSSH supports post-quantum cryptography to protect user traffic against this attack.

Previously:
(2025) New OpenSSH Flaws Enable Man-in-the-Middle and DoS Attacks
(2024) Timeline to Remove DSA Support from OpenSSH
(2021) scp Will Be Replaced With sftp Soon
(2020) SHA-1 to be Disabled in OpenSSH and libssh
(2016) Upgrade Your SSH Keys
(2015) OpenSSH 6.8 Will Feature Key Discovery and Rotation for Easier Switching to DJB's Ed25519
(2014) OpenSSH No Longer has to Depend on OpenSSL

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/coding-error-blamed-after-parts-of-constitution-disappear-from-us-website/

The Library of Congress today said a coding error resulted in the deletion of parts of the US Constitution from Congress' website and promised a fix after many Internet users pointed out the missing sections this morning.

"It has been brought to our attention that some sections of Article 1 are missing from the Constitution Annotated (constitution.congress.gov) website," the Library of Congress said today. "We've learned that this is due to a coding error. We have been working to correct this and expect it to be resolved soon."

[...] "Upkeep of Constitution Annotated and other digital resources is a critical part of the Library's mission, and we appreciate the feedback that alerted us to the error and allowed us to fix it," the Library of Congress said.

[...] The temporarily deleted sections of Article 1 consist of about 650 words, as can be seen in an Internet Archive version comparison. This included part of Section 8 and all of Sections 9 and 10. One deleted bit contains authorization for Congress to provide and maintain a Navy, and to call forth a "Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions."

Another victim of the temporary deletion was the section on habeas corpus.

[...] Of course, the Constitution can't be changed by simply deleting passages from a government website, but the error temporarily made it more difficult for people to look up parts of the founding document.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Extra-Strong Bacterial Cellulose Sheets as a Biodegradable Alternative to Plastic:

A team led by researchers from the University of Houston and Rice University has demonstrated a method for producing stronger, multifunctional bacterial cellulose sheets that could support the development of biodegradable alternatives to plastic.

The work, published in Nature Communications, outlines a scalable, single-step biosynthesis approach to produce sheets of plastic-like bacterial cellulose material.

The research addresses growing interest in sustainable materials that reduce environmental reliance on petroleum-based polymers.

Using fluid dynamics to guide bacterial cellulose synthesis

Bacterial cellulose, a naturally derived biopolymer produced by certain strains of bacteria, is known for being biodegradable and biocompatible. However, its mechanical properties have traditionally limited its use as a structural substitute for plastic.

The team used a custom-designed culture system featuring a rotating, oxygen-permeable cylindrical chamber. This setup generates directional fluid flow, which encourages cellulose-producing bacteria to move consistently in a single direction during biosynthesis. As a result, the bacteria produce cellulose nanofibrils that are aligned within the sheet, yielding a material with improved tensile strength, flexibility, foldability, optical transparency and long-term mechanical stability.

"We're essentially guiding the bacteria to behave with purpose. Rather than moving randomly, we direct their motion, so they produce cellulose in an organized way," said study author Maksud Rahman, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Houston.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/08/heres-how-deepfake-vishing-attacks-work-and-why-they-can-be-hard-to-detect/

By now, you've likely heard of fraudulent calls that use AI to clone the voices of people the call recipient knows. Often, the result is what sounds like a grandchild, CEO, or work colleague you've known for years reporting an urgent matter requiring immediate action, saying to wire money, divulge login credentials, or visit a malicious website.

Researchers and government officials [PDF] have been warning of the threat for years, with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency saying in 2023 that threats from deepfakes and other forms of synthetic media have increased "exponentially." Last year, Google's Mandiant security division reported that such attacks are being executed with "uncanny precision, creating for more realistic phishing schemes."
[...]
The Mandiant post showed the relative ease with which members of its security team executed such a scam in a simulated red team exercise, designed to test defenses and train personnel. The red teamers collected publicly available voice samples of someone inside the targeted organization who had employees report to them. The red teamers then used publicly available information to identify employees most likely to work under the person being faked and called them. To make the call more convincing, it used a real outage of a VPN service as a pretense for the employee to take immediate action.
[...]
Precautions for preventing such scams from succeeding can be as simple as parties agreeing to a randomly chosen word or phrase that the caller must provide before the recipient complies with a request. Recipients can also end the call and call the person back at a number known to belong to the caller. But it's best to follow both steps.

Original Submission

jelizondo writes:

IFL Science is reporting on a breakthrough in quantum superposition:

States in quantum superposition are notoriously fragile, but researchers in China have reported creating such a state that lasted for a whopping 23 minutes and 20 seconds. While this record-breaking result is exciting in itself, the team believes that it could open new ways to high-precision measurements and even information processing for quantum computers – possibly even allowing scientists to probe the limits of physical theories.

A yet-to-be peer-reviewed study by scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China involved cooling 10,000 ytterbium atoms to just a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero and trapping them using light. Each atom was precisely controlled and placed into a superposition of two distinct spin states. This is known as a "quantum cat" state.

In the famous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, we see a cat closed in a box with a poison activated by a random quantum process. Without opening the box, we cannot ascertain the state of the cat, so it is both alive and dead, two contradictory states in the non-quantum reality we experience. In the quantum world, quantum cat states are superpositions where a quantum state can exist in several ways at once, although it's impossible to tell which one it really is, so it's effectively all of them at once.

In the recent experiment, it is the length of this quantum cat state that is astounding. In nature, the superposition will collapse into one or the other in a fraction of a second, but here it persisted for 1,400 seconds. The team thinks that with a better vacuum system, it can be made to last even longer.

"It's a big deal because they're making this beautiful cat state in an atomic system and it's stable," Barry Sanders, from the University of Calgary, who was not involved in the study, told New Scientist. "A probe gets jiggled and pushed and nudged and prodded, and then by seeing what happens, you learn about the things that interact with it."

The research shows that there are lots of different elements that can be used for these devices. It doesn't have to be ytterbium, although they did show that this particular setup with the ytterbium atoms is extremely sensitive to measuring magnetic fields, with exciting applications.

This is not the only recent record-breaking event when it comes to quantum cat experiments. Last year, researchers successfully placed the heaviest macroscopic object in superposition. It was a crystal weighing just 16 micrograms, but it shows that the field is truly breaking new ground into what is possible.

A preprint paper describing the experiment and the result is available on the ArXiv.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Asian hornet's unique buzz may hold secret to containing invasive species:

Asian hornets buzz at a unique frequency that could be the key to controlling their spread, scientists have found, as the invasive species experiences a record year in the UK.

Researchers have said this is "great news", as the hornet nests can now be more quickly found and distinguished from those of other species, meaning their threat to bees and other pollinators could be contained.

Vespa velutina dismember and eat bees, and have thrived in France, where they have caused concern because of the number of insects killed. They sit outside honeybee hives and capture bees as they enter and exit, and chop up the smaller insects and feed their thoraxes to their young. Just one Asian hornet can hunt down and eat 30 to 50 honeybees in a day.

Their numbers have soared in recent years in the UK. There were 57 sightings in 2023, more than double the previous seven years combined, and 2024 broke that record with 71 confirmed sightings.

This year, that number has already been surpassed; the National Bee Unit is reporting 73 Asian hornet sightings and 28 nests in 2025 to date – more than double the 28 recorded sightings in the same period last year. The large wasps overwintered in the UK for the first time in 2023-24, which means they could be in the country for good.

Scientists, beekeepers and the government have battled hard to keep hornet numbers down, running a national hornet-spotting campaign so their nests can be identified and destroyed. But despite this, their numbers continue to increase, putting native pollinators at risk.

Now, scientists at the University of Southampton have made a breakthrough, establishing for the first time the frequency and volume of the sound from their nests. This means detection and removal of the creatures could become faster and easier.

They have established the fundamental frequency of Asian hornet nests to be 125 hertz and the loudness in the region of 51 decibels, which is comparable to a normal conversation.

The new research means the sound can be used to distinguish them from the nests and hives of other wasps and bees. This will be particularly useful in September and October, when the nests peak.

Acoustic engineering graduate Sophie Gray, who undertook the research, said: "We observed and measured two Asian hornet nests and a European hornet nest in Jersey before they were destroyed. We found that the fundamental frequency is 125 hertz and that the nest can be detected from about 20 metres away with a directional microphone.

"We also recorded European hornets and honeybees to determine if we can differentiate the frequency. The fundamental frequency of the European hornet is about 110 hertz and honeybees about 210 hertz. It was great news to discover that the frequency is unique for each species, so they are distinguishable."

The species first came to Europe in 2004, when the hornets were spotted in France, and it is thought they were accidentally transported in cargo from Asia. They have since spread rapidly across western Europe.

Original Submission

wirelessduck writes:

Visionary tech pioneer and philanthropist Dame Stephanie Shirley has died at the age of 91.

The boundary-breaking entrepreneur arrived in London at the age of five, just weeks before the outbreak of World War Two, and went on to become a computer industry and women's rights pioneer in the 1950s and 1960s.

She founded the software company Freelance Programmers in 1962, which shook up the tech industry by almost exclusively hiring women, and in later life donated almost £70m to help those with autism and to IT projects.

She was very smart and truly formidable, even adopting the name "Steve" to help her in a male-dominated tech world.

She died on 9 August, her family said in an Instagram post on Monday.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes Some turbulence at CalyxOS:

CalyxOS is an Android distribution that claims a focus on privacy and security. So when an announcement from the project begins by saying ""we want to assure you that we have no reason to believe the security of CalyxOS and its signing keys have been compromised"", chances are that good things are not happening.

In this case, it would appear that Nicholas Merrill, one of the founders of the project, has left for unclear reasons, and CalyxOS is responding by pausing all releases — and security updates — while its release process, signing keys, and security protocols are reworked. The result will be no updates for ""four to six months"". The project is recommending that its users ""should uninstall the OS"" and wait for an all-clear signal. CalyxOS may have its work cut out for it when the time comes to try to convince those users to come back.

From the announcement:

As you know, we announced a recent leadership transition. When senior personnel have access to signing keys and leave a team, it is security best practice to update signing keys and conduct audits. So in accordance with that, we are using this transition period to update our security protocols, including updating the signing keys and taking other steps to further protect our users.

In the past, security audits have been conducted for parts of CalyxOS, such as the Seedvault project, but not for the entire project. As more and more people across the globe started using this tool, we intend to conduct a broader security audit and publish the reports for the public to review.

As mentioned in our community letter below, we estimate that this audit and the implementation of new security protocols and signing keys will take four to six months, but we will endeavor to complete this process as soon as possible. However, for the time being, current CalyxOS users will not be able to receive further security software updates until our new security protocols are in place.

Without security updates, we can only be honest that this does not guarantee the level of security we strive for, especially when global threats to privacy and human rights are at a critical moment. That is why in the meantime we have posted the recommendation that people who are running CalyxOS should uninstall the OS and follow our community channels for updates, including when the latest version of CalyxOS becomes available again.

[...] We also understand that many community members have expressed interest in having an installation option/images for CalyxOS available again. Due to the overwhelming feedback from our community, we've decided to make the images publicly available once more. Please be aware that this decision is not a recommendation to migrate to CalyxOS now.

[ED. note:] CalyxOS is an Android-based operating system for select smartphones, foldables and tablets with mostly free and open-source software. It is produced by the Calyx Institute as part of its mission to "defend online privacy, security and accessibility."

https://archive.ph/YaJu0

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Americans, Be Warned: Lessons From Reddit's Chaotic UK Age Verification Rollout

Age verification has officially arrived in the UK thanks to the Online Safety Act (OSA), a UK law requiring online platforms to check that all UK-based users are at least eighteen years old before allowing them to access broad categories of "harmful" content that go far beyond graphic sexual content. EFF has extensively criticized the OSA for eroding privacy, chilling speech, and undermining the safety of the children it aims to protect. Now that it's gone into effect, these countless problems have begun to reveal themselves, and the absurd, disastrous outcome illustrates why we must work to avoid this age-verified future at all costs:

Perhaps you've seen the memes as large platforms like Spotify and YouTube attempt to comply with the OSA, while smaller sites—like forums focused on parenting, green living, and gaming on Linux—either shut down or cease some operations rather than face massive fines for not following the law's vague, expensive, and complicated rules and risk assessments.

But even Reddit, a site that prizes anonymity and has regularly demonstrated its commitment to digital rights, was doomed to fail in its attempt to comply with the OSA. Though Reddit is not alone in bowing to the UK mandates, it provides a perfect case study and a particularly instructive glimpse of what the age-verified future would look like if we don't take steps to stop it.