NGram

They do use handheld and never define it, but I can hold my laptop with my hand so I’m not sure that’s necessarily a good way of disqualifying laptops. That also seems to strictly apply to the operating system (“runs an operating system designed […] for software applications on handheld electronic devices”), which might be a fun legal quagmire as well since Linux is designed for all sorts of platforms. If I install Linux on my (formerly) Windows laptop does it suddenly become a mobile device?

It does bring up another interesting niche of computers: handheld PCs, especially handheld gaming PCs. Does this law apply to Steam Decks?

This whole thing screams “written by tech illiterates” since it seems to ignore regular computers and only focus on phones when it’s all just variations of the same thing – form factor and the software running on top isn’t very relevant to whatever goal I presume they’re trying to achieve. If they really want to collect everyone’s ID, age, and other privacy-violating information they’d be better off doing it everywhere. But maybe I shouldn’t give out advice for speed running fascism…

That was my interpretation too, except not restricted to “modern” websites. It sounds more like any website, modern or not, JS or not.

The part that is funny in that situation is that probably means web browsers are considered “app stores”. From a technical standpoint that’s actually pretty accurate (though they also handle running the “app”, unlike a regular app store), but has the fun consequence of making web browsers also “app store stores”. Most browsers can be used without an account though, so I look forward to the dumb antics companies with large legal departments come up with for this one.

Do you still hangout with your childhood friends? Would you want to marry them years later? Socioeconomic status changes how people treat you, including people you already have existing relationships with. It can also affect how you treat other people if you’re not a very good person. And unfortunately a lot of not-very-good people are rich and/or famous because it requires the willingness to exploit others for personal gain.

Imagine you’re a famous person. Many people who are less famous than you now want to be you. Many other people now dislike you just because you’re famous (or maybe because some bad thing you did got covered in the media which any regular person would get away with). How do you find people who aren’t in one of those two categories to not only befriend, but date? The easiest way is to find someone in similar circumstances as you: a similar level of famous and/or rich. Sure, there are other ways, but they’re harder.

I’ve got no clue about legal documents, especially how they work in Texas, but this seems weirdly broad and with a pretty glaring loophole.

The weirdly broad part:

(2) “App store” means a publicly available Internet website, software application, or other electronic service that distributes software applications from the owner or developer of a software application to the user of a mobile device.

This sounds like any website suddenly becomes an app store as soon as it starts distributing software for a mobile device. So (ignoring my following point), if I suddenly post my new APK on my personal site suddenly it’s an app store!? Also aren’t websites software applications? That’ll be a fun one to fight out with browsers…

(4) “Mobile device” means a portable, wireless electronic device, including a tablet or smartphone, capable of transmitting, receiving, processing, and storing information wirelessly that runs an operating system designed to manage hardware resources and perform common services for software applications on handheld electronic devices.

This sounds like it includes laptops but not desktop computers.

The glaring loophole:

(a) When an individual in this state creates an account with an app store, the owner of the app store shall use a commercially reasonable method of verification to verify the individual’s age category under Subsection (b).

So if your app store does not require an account, you do not need to verify anyone’s age!? I’m all for it but that doesn’t seem to be in the spirit of the law. F-droid and my (example) personal-site-turned-app-store rejoice!

More features that are preparing for full federation support! Exciting!

Unfortunately Nvidia is also big tech so starving out (sort of) competitors doesn’t help get rid of douchebags. It actually has the added risk of giving some of the douchebags a monopoly.

Buying one of those AMD Ryzen AI Max chips actually makes more sense now…

Yes, it seems like all of their source code, including the apps, is open source under a good license. Open source is not necessarily related to privacy though. Being more privacy-respecting than Tinder is a very low bar.

Personally, I’d recommend steering clear of this until they stop using Big Tech. Dating apps can involve a lot of private data being exchanged so ideally this would be at least end-to-end encrypted (it’s not encrypting data at rest) and available on F-Droid. Sending data to OpenAI is completely unnecessary, but the e2e encryption and app build transparency would be good enough if they can’t leave Google and Amazon for server hosting. It also doesn’t help that the app is just a joke (or so it seems).

It’s in their privacy policy https://duolicious.app/privacy/ under “How We Share Data”. The first two make a bit of sense (assuming they don’t host their own servers, they’re likely running in Google’s and Amazon’s datacentres), but wtf is OpenAI doing there!?