> it is fundamentally the UK’s fault by requiring such draconian measures
It would appear the UK doesn't:
> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.
Apple has done this sort of thing before, where they don't like a law, they'll implement some unnecessary and shitty feature, and then say "hey don't blame us, blame your MPs!".
Sometimes Apple's malicious compliance is in service of (or less generously: aligned with) users' interests. I didn't know about the added fees that parent mentioned, so I appreciate them clarifying in this case.
> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.
> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.
While Ofcom hasn't required it yet, they have indicated that they very much plan to[1]. Apple is pretty clearly getting out ahead of this, and simultaneously removing the burden of compliance off all of the relevant app developers (which seems in line with their overall privacy stance - I'm more inclined to trust Apple with my ID than I am some social network)
That mentions app stores, but I can't see anything about device-level age-verification there.
Also, does Ofcom have the power under the Online Safety Act to mandate app-store verification (or device-level verification, for that matter)? Or would it require secondary, or even primary, legislation?
Americans don't claim to use imperial weights and measures; they use customary weights and measures, which were also used in the UK prior to the creation of imperial units with the Weights and Measures Act 1824.
The origin of US Customary units is British, even if the US, Liberia and Myanmar are the last countries still using it. The UK has almost entirely adopted metric (yards and miles are still used for measuring distances on roads and pints are still used for milk and beer, and the last government made the eccentric decision to permit pints for wine, which no producer used because they couldn't get the bottles), but these systems of units have identities beyond whether or not they're in use anywhere.
EDIT/CORRECTION: Milk is sold in multiples of 568 mL, so while the quantities are pints, the measurement is metric.
> EDIT/CORRECTION: Milk is sold in multiples of 568 mL, so while the quantities are pints, the measurement is metric.
What distinction do you intend to make by that? 1 pint is 568ml.
If you mean in labelling or something, no, they're marked 1/2/4 pints. Usually also with litre markings. You can also get metric sized bottles, i.e. on the supermarket shelf you'll often see one brand's 2 pint bottles next to another's slightly smaller 1l bottles.
The supermarket price labelling will be in £/litre, regardless of whether the bottle's pints or not, if that's what you mean?
Beer and cider are the only drinks that are legally not sold by metric volume in the UK. They have to be served by the pint, 2/3, 1/2 or 1/3. Every other drink has to use metric.
But that just means the quantity has to be expressed in metric units, possibly in addition to imperial, correct? E.g. I currently have a carton of milk in my fridge that’s labelled “2272ml 4 pints”.
Not for alcohol measures. Beer and cider have to be sold in pints, and there is a list of allowed sizes used for other drinks. Also the size of the standard measure used for spirits needs to be displayed on a sign at the bar.
Not really. The UK uses imperial units for most of the things you use units for in daily life (roads, cooking, drink sizes, body weight, utilities, land area...), even though they theoretically converted to metric. Canada is similar.
> The UK uses imperial units for most of the things you use units for in daily life (roads, cooking, drink sizes, body weight, utilities, land area...)
Not really. Old people might cook with funny old temperatures/measures and weigh themselves in stones, but it's fading out, contemporary cookbooks and gym culture are all metric. I've literally never seen a utility bill in anything other than metric (even if it's slightly weird metric like kWh or cubic metres of gas).
_Human_ body weight. I grew up measuring everything in kilos apart from people, which has I guess what amounts to its own wholly idiosyncratic scale, the stone, that no one I've since met outside of the UK has heard of.
I don't know why really, it's just 14lb, why does the US/Canada just stick with very large numbers of pounds instead of breaking it up as with others?
Kilograms seem more and more common for human weight too though, largely driven by fitness apps & communities I think. I doubt children in school today are accustomed to stone; only pounds and ounces for birth weight perhaps, but even that is metric medically and converted for the parents' familiarity these days I believe.
No medical professional in Blighty weighs people using imperial measurements. The only people who really use them are the elderly and (bizarrely) the type of crappy slimming magazine seen at supermarket chekouts...... The kind satirised by Viz as titled "Less Cake, More Exercise".
This myth keeps getting repeated. It hasn't been true since 1949, when British subjects in the UK became Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies.
In 1983, the status of CUKC was renamed to British citizen (for those CUKCs resident in or closely connected with the UK: the situation in the remaining colonies was more complicated). At the same time, the status of British subject was officially restricted to those few British subjects who didn't qualify for citizenship of the UK or of any other Commonwealth country in 1949, and who were formerly known as "British subjects without citizenship".
So we are officially and legally citizens, not subjects.
I think I've heard something similar -- that subjects have duties while citizens have rights.
But of course, citizens typically also have duties -- commonly, the duty to take up arms to defend the state -- and subjects can legitimately expect a reciprocity of obligations from the sovereign (e.g. the enforcement of the "King's Peace"), which sounds quite a bit like rights to me.
(All of which is a verbose and not very coherent way of saying that I agree with you.)
It would appear the UK doesn't:
> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.
-- https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verif...
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