re: last few boosts: it used to be the case that all hardware was very hackable, up until 2018 or so. even if the cryptography was solid, the bootcode usually wasn't and then you could run your own linux on it or whatever, in the worst case you'd need a $5 modchip

unfortunately, by now, hardware vendors have learned how to design chips that are secure against such attacks, even if the bootcode contains simple mistakes. this makes everything much more complicated, and even "all-powerful" modchip attacks are either ineffective, or would cost roughly $500 per device

(if enough people are interested, I could do a big explainer about what exactly makes these new hardware designs 'impervious', but that's not for this post)

which is all to say, we really need a political solution to this problem. accepting any sort of law that mandates others to control our own computing devices is disastrous (not just age verification/chat control, but also remote attestation for banking/government apps)