There’s a new California law making the rounds that’s got me equal parts bewildered and frustrated. Apparently, all operating systems—yes, including Linux—need to implement some form of age verification at account setup. When I first read about this, I had to put down my latte and re-read it three times because surely, surely, this couldn’t be real.

But it is. And the more I think about it, the more my blood pressure rises.

There’s something darkly poetic about watching Jake Tapper announce live on air that his network’s parent company is being bought out, telling everyone in the studio that it “affects everybody I’m looking at right now.” It’s like watching the Titanic’s captain announce over the PA system that yes, that scraping sound was indeed an iceberg, and no, the lifeboats won’t be necessary because the ship is unsinkable. Except in this case, we all knew the iceberg was there, we watched the ship aim straight for it, and now we’re supposed to act surprised when the water starts rushing in.

You know what’s rare these days? Reading a story where the little guy stands up to a corporation and things actually work out. Not just work out, but work out well. I’ve been following this saga on Reddit over the past few weeks, and honestly, it’s given me a bit of hope in what can often feel like a pretty bleak tech landscape.

Here’s the gist: a solo developer created an open-source tool for drone pilots to manage their flight logs. Nothing revolutionary, just a self-hostable alternative to existing commercial services. Then they got hit with a cease and desist letter from AirData UAV, a US-based company providing similar services. The developer’s crime? Making it easier for people to export their own data from AirData’s platform and use it elsewhere.