The U.S. has been quietly building up a set of state-level laws that push operating system providers into the age verification plague.
California’s AB 1043, signed in October 2025, requires OS providers to collect age data at account setup and pipe it to apps through a real-time API. It kicks in on January 1, 2027.
Colorado is working on something nearly identical. SB26-051 (which we covered when it was still a proposal) passed the state Senate 28-7 on March 3, 2026, and is now waiting on a House vote to become law there too.
However, these are just state-level laws. A new federal bill, H.R.8250, introduced on April 13, 2026, by Rep. Josh Gottheimer, with Rep. Elise M. Stefanik signing on as cosponsor, has us intrigued.
I use CachyOS, but for the vanilla home user “I bought a laptop!” at bestbuy or whatever the fuck, there’s no local account option anymore. It’s connect to the internet and sign in with microsoft, and nag you constantly every 3 days until you activate onedrive and other microsoft services.
I got an ARM64 laptop through work to test to see how it might work as an experiment and this has been how the device behaves from day 1. It’s a nightmare.
Does windows no longer let you use a PC without the internet? I don’t normally buy PCs with an OS and install my own on them.
As far as I know an internet connection is required on a vanilla OOBE setup of windows 11 with today’s iso or a dell/hp/lenovo preload.
Most user systems ship with W11 Home licenses, no pro, so they don’t even have a domain join option.
It is of course technically possible to install w11 without any internet connection and without a windows license at all, but I think of instructions like “To install Windows 11 without internet connection and using local account, in the OOBE using Shift + F10 and run the OOBEBYPASSNRO command.” to be beyond the capabilities of the lowest common denominator of home users, e.g. the majority of them.