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The California method for age verification is something I have been saying for years, put the decision in the OS and the OS has an API to get a non-granular, “is the user over 10, over 15, over 18”. Generally, it doesn’t need to be more accurate than that and it is as privacy preserving as it can be. Generally, when the kids are younger, they can’t afford to buy a half way decent smartphone themselves, so it will be set up by the parents and they can add it to the family account and set the age.
If they can’t do that, they should probably educate themselves on at least the basics of tech, before letting their kids loose on technology. This really isn’t the job of governments or companies, this is the job of parents and bad parents are basically ruining it for everyone.
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Re: Glenn Fleishman’s upcoming surgery for a heart valve replacement: this is a routine surgery today. The big issue is recovery times. Fortunately, the patient can have a big impact on that.
There’s a supplement called Urolithin A that helps to rejuvenate/restore high mitochondrial function in all cells. The molecule is formed by the fermentation of berries (often pomegranate) and nuts by gut bacteria. Some might know the company P
M promoting the heart health benefits of their pomegranate juice; this is more concentrated and more reliable than gut bacteria in the fermentation process. Timeline, a Swiss company, extracts the organic molecule from berries and ferments it in the lab; they sell Urolithin A under the trade name “Mitopure”. It’s a pricey supplement, but is effective and has very few side effects. IMHO, this supplement is a good idea for anyone but especially good for recovery from invasive surgery involving general anesthesia. I’d recommend taking this supplement for a month before surgery.
Almost all of the light in patient rooms and ICUs is bright blue light. There is a tiny amount of red light and essentially zero infrared light. This is a brutal environment for mitochondrial health. Getting natural sunlight is the simplest way to increase our environmental infrared light, but there’s not a single public hospital I’ve heard of that would wheel reovering patients outside to soak up some rays. 
4x board-certified Doctor Roger Seheult published a YT video Case Study: Sunlight Treatment for Hospitalized COVID Patient - Outcome and Implications on December 6, 2023. The patient was on heavy oxygen supplementation. After being wheeled to a courtyard at the hospital for some daily sun-time, he improved significantly day by day. After 4 days, he was recovered sufficiently to be released. One must appreciate Dr. Seheult, the patient, and the entire care team’s willingness to experiment with this treatment and go through the PITA of mobilizing a patient with a snake’s nest of IV drips and AC electronics outdoors daily. Kudos for your curiosity and willingness to experiment in the name of science! Hopefully, this is only the beginning of “sunlight therapy” for recovering hospitalized patients.
An alternative to achieve similar effects is with a small portable Red Light Therapy panel. One can consult the Photobiomodulation Database for a list of almost 9,000 (!!!) papers about the health benefits of red and near-infrared light therapy. Researcher Vladimir Heiskanen curates that Google Docs spreadsheet manually; it must take ~15 minutes to create and double-check a single row in the spreadsheet – at least 2000 hours of work over many years! You can grep through entries on a variety of topics, including wound healing and recovery from surgery. I think the best way to use it is to query with the help of AIs. Here’s commentary on a pertinent AI search
The Grand Glow-Down: Why Bother with This Photon Phantasmagoria? Across 20+ RCTs and reviews, PBM’s M.O. is absurdly simple: Red/near-IR light (600-1000nm) tickles cytochrome c oxidase, floods cells with energy, and evicts inflammatory squatters—slashing recovery by days to weeks. No invasives, no opioids, just light doing the heavy lifting. Downsides? Mostly “meh” if dosed wrong (too much = counterproductive charbroil), but at 2-14 J/cm², it’s safer than your uncle’s BBQ skills.
The AI is right: it ain’t rocket science to add a little broad-spectrum exposure to your hospital stay. The papers cited in that summary are here and here. I’m fond of “absurd mode” from that certain AI; YMMV. Feel free to ask in “normal” mode, or prompt another AI. Manually grepping or otherwise perusing the database is highly recommended. If you appreciate the preternatural diligence of this researcher’s labor of love, I’m sure he’d appreciate a note. Contact info is at the top of the spreadsheet.
Why are there so many papers on this topic? It’s pretty easy and inexpensive to research the application of a particular light frequency to a particular medical condition. Interestingly, there’s very little information on the general impact of a low level environmental red light on an individual’s heal and recovery after surgery. If a patient stay after open heart surgery could be cut by one day, there could be a reduction of hospital expense by thousands of dollars – never mind the speedier recovery for the patient. Hospitals should be highly motivated to try this. I appreciate the laser-focus of these many researchers on particular conditions, but I’d love to see some more focus on general health and recovery.
How should someone go about doing this? Get a small RLT panel like a MitoPro 300X or Biomax 300. The MitoPro 300X comes with a built-in table stand; the Biomax 300 tabletop stand should be purchased separately. Install the apps for these devices on your smartphone and be familiar with using it. These particular lights allow separate and dimmable control of both the red and infrared LEDs in the panel. You can have the red LEDs on during the day (maybe on a dim setting), but not at night. OTOH, the infrared LEDs are quite unobtrusive; only a tiny bit of their light is in the visible spectrum. You don’t need to have the panel near you; you can have it 7-8 feet away. That will give you plenty of photons – kinda like being outside in the shade.
An alternative approach is to go with the NIRA Lighting desk lamp. Leave it on all the time and alternate between “day mode” and “night mode”. NIRA bulbs are these cool screw-in hybrid bulbs that contain LEDs and several small incandescent capsules (see Patent #12092303 drawing above). “Night mode” on that desk lamp turns off the LEDs. Inventor Scott Zimmerman is the co-author of the science paper Melatonin and the Optics of the Human Body (2019). The NIRA bulb is compliant with the current DOE minimums of 120 lumens/watt (even though the radiated infrared light is obviously not in the visible spectrum), but it cannot possibly hack the 2028 regulations of over 45 lumens/watt. We definitely should not go back to the highly-inefficient days of Edison Bulb incandescents, but relegating all of our internal lighting to visible light is simply unhealthy and dumb. This is the Lumen Lie (which is shockingly close to Severance’s “Lumon Industries” 
); lighting efficiency requires a broader spectrum of perspective than what we can currently see.
I think the NIRA desk lamp by your bed would be a great way to broaden the spectrum after surgery without freaking out any of the nurses in the ICU or general patient rooms. Swapping between “day mode” and “night mode” should keep you from pissing off anyone sharing the hospital rooms and keep the good photon vibrations. You just might be able to cut significant time off of your stay and get back to full functionality quicker! After you’re home, strive to get outdoors for at least an hour a day and to continue to use indoor lighting that gives you red and infrared radiation.
I had similar surgery ~10 years ago. I knew none of this; I did a fair amount of stumbling, fumbling, and bumbling on my path to recovery. To be fair, we knew far less about red light therapy and fermented pomegranate berries than we do today. Anyone well-armed with the science can do far better than I did. Scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson could use a little enlightenment. If this stuff works for you, a talented and motivated writer could move the world. In a few years, I fondly hope that hospitals will appreciate and benefit from the light we cannot see. It’s an elusive obvious. If you benefit, please consider writing about this. Thank you, Glenn, and good luck.
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I never liked Labubu but Tim Cook’s was cute haha.
Great episode. But as always: when I watch live I have a hard time remembering things to post on the forums.
Next week I’ll be listening to the show live from Vancouver. I wonder if Richard will be also in Vancouver at the time.
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I enjoyed the South Park episode this year where Red persuaded Butters and he went to extraordinary measures to acquire a rare Labubu from the local pop-up toy store. Stories like that were classic South Park. I’d never heard of the dolls before; that was a good kickstart.
My favorite South Park hack was the South Park’s move back in 1999. Apparently, Parker and Stone pushed very hard to get an R rating for the film – the exact opposite of what most producers do. Brilliant.
One of the jokes in that film was that a bunch of kids bought tickets to some PG rated film and sneaked into the R-rated movie. That’s exactly what happened to the R-Rated South Park film! I remember the theater was filthy with teenagers. The teens enjoyed the profanity and body noises in the first act. OTOH, when everyone started singing rather than saying their lines in Act 2 – like Les Miserables – they were left trying to find the humor. Seeing them with a lost puppy-dog look in their eyes was tremendously funny – even better than the first act. Bless their hearts! It was a one-time-only cinematic experience. OTOH, all those freeloaders in the theater didn’t do much for the movie’s Box Office. I heard the BO was pleasing, but Paramount was a bit peeved with Parker and Stone. That was just another fabulous joke!
@Leo mentioned about having T-Mobile and the Starlink satellite service option, but hasn’t used it. I had a couple of long weekend trips in September where I knew I could be in areas with spotty, or no, cell coverage, so I paid the $10 to activate the service. While I didn’t need to use it, it was nice knowing it was there. When I’d get out of cell service, I’d get a notification that I was connected to the satellite service. When I got home from the second trip, I turned off the service.
I also got my AWU3 before the second trip, so I had access to that service through Apple. I tested that and it worked fine, other than having to face the right direction and wait for a satellite to come into range. Having both options provides even more peace of mind.
Agreed. Age ranges handled by the OS is much better than other methods of age verification. One of the largest grocery chains in the country (I’m looking at you Kroger) requires the scanning of your driver’s license when you buy alcohol, and maybe cigarettes. They claim they’re not keeping the information. Let’s just say I’m skeptical. Pretty much every other business just looks at your license to verify that you’re old enough.
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Re: “sando”. I’m fairly confident this originated in Japan, where consonants (apart from ‘n’) can mostly only exist as prefixes to vowels. They adopted the English word rather than inventing a new term, but the only way to phonetically represent the sound of the word “sandwich” is with the characters ‘sa’-’n’-’do’-’i’-’chi’, or “sandoichi”. They shorten it to “sando” in everyday speech, I believe. All corrections gratefully received because I never got beyond beginner level. I’m only part way through listening to the show recording, so I don’t know if it got discussed in chat later.
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Instead of asking each person to upload their id cards to every site and having the risk of these being stolen increase exponentially, the way age verification could be implemented is by a centralised api, or a handful of id providers. Organisation that have these details already.
In Greece this is what has been done, so whenever someone needs to authenticate with a state service they just need to authorise that service to use the government owned id provider which then can verify that person details.
In this case the platform may acquire some of the details of the person it needs to perform its job. The same thing could be used for age verification where you just get a true or false and nothing else.
Identity management in the form of single sign on and identity providers are a thing that exists already and can be used for age verification without having to share credit cards or government documents with any private companies.
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In addition to the above I got a bad example from the Scottish government, apparently they use an app called yoti, that ask you to upload an approved government id such as drivers license in order to prove your identity.
Then they proceed to tell you you will see ads while using their app unless you consent to a bunch of things.
Needless to say I just deleted the app. You do not want your identity provider to be pushing ads to you. It’s guaranteed to sell your info to the first bidder. No hack needed for information leak.
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Secure by design!!! 
I use Yoti, I must have missed the bit about seeing ads. They are a UK government-certified ID provider, and their privacy notice explicitly says they do not share or sell your data other than the minimum needed for the ID process.
You need to accept a bunch of things otherwise you may see ads. Also please check this Data protection and IT security issues with age verification app "Yoti" - Mint Secure
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good information this
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