Spyke
programming.dev

Would it be possible to add a layer on top that shows you when an app requests it, and shows you a checkbox about what you want it to report? Or just block the call as not supported.

Faking it to be child (or just random with each request) until you need a higher number could mess up with advertisers and in general fingerprinting.

18

I think it is accessed through xdg-protal, and the usage tracking and permission etc. likely happen at that layer.

The xdg-desktop-portal project is adding an age verification portal (flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal#1922) that needs a data source for the user's age. userdb already stores personal metadata (emailAddress, realName, location) so birthDate is a natural fit.

15
feddit.org

This is all wrong to me, schools and parents should educate their kids and take interest in what they are doing online, it shouldnt be forced by the government.

16

This seems to be Linux's Microslop. Not only did they add it to Systemd, they banned users on Reddit for just talking about it. I laughed when Microsoft banned users for using the term Microslop. Not so funny now, I guess.

12
lemmy.world

They add a field you can add a date to if you want. Seems reasonable

10

Seems like we should find out who wrote that commit and put a name to it. Then look at any other commits he has ever made and treat those the same way we do malware.

He shouldn't be a coder anymore. Ask his coworkers or neighbors, as a supporter of the Epstein government, has courts ordered he wear an ankle monitor to keep him far far away from any children or a keyboard?

1
fedia.io

Oof, I might have to figure out another distro that doesn't use Systemd, given that it is very common to find on most Linux distros. I wonder if I will jump into the deep end and use FreeBSD or perhaps learning NixOS to declare the banishment of Systemd from my system.

7
Laserreply
feddit.org

NixOS is very tightly coupled to systemd, though there are efforts to change that

11
fedia.io

I've been reading about that myself...There are people trying to build an alternative init system for NixOS, looks like that effort is a long battle. FreeBSD could be a very hit or miss prospect for me, as I'd need to confirm the hardware support before making the jump. I have a 2021 PC, my general hardware would be supported in theory...The NVIDIA and Wayland support would make or break my choice, as I don't want to use smelly X11. It's time to move on from that antiquated display server.

2
lemmy.world

Gentoo and Artix are probably the most known distros with OpenRC. (I think Void too? I remember Void did things special too)

3

I thought about Gentoo, Artix, and Void Linux are all very hands on...There are different levels to them, as Void Linux depends on runit...I might consider learning Void in order to stay outside the reach of Systemd. Arch isn't necessarily a bad base to build on, it does make me nervous. ROFL So Void Linux is now in the running for me.

1
lemmy.world

Likely the easiest course of action will be forking systemd. At least we can also stop the AI slop the main contributor also likes, rewrite it in some more maintainable language (not necessarily Rust - languages more close to C like D or C3 could ease porting and make C devs happier), etc.

1
Sunshinereply
piefed.ca

Looks like I’m putting on chimera after this.

1
feddit.org

Why is the new field to enter your age worse than the already existing fields to enter your full name and home address?

-1

I'm sure you understand the issue isn't the actual field but the premise behind why it's being added.

8

The road to fascism (and enshittification) is paved with people telling you to stop overreacting...

1
ani.social
  1. Read my bio before you proceed: I don't want Zionist interactivities.
  2. I am not going to play a game of false equivalences.
  3. As a black anarchist, why do I care about these pretentious “fields”? I can remove them at the editor phase before I compile.
  4. Do you no longer compile your own distros to defeat the trust problem?
-5
Senalreply
programming.dev

I'm not even who you're replying to but this is too interesting not to at least try to ask.

As this is probably going to be our first and last interaction I'll preface this by saying we probably share a lot of the same values but it seems our approaches are different.

So here goes.

  1. That's a hard pass from me. As a concept i mean.

If you require me to read a set of rules to interact with you that's an immediate red flag for me, regardless of how reasonable they are.

I'm not suggesting you stop requiring them, i'm just saying i'm also free to ignore them.

That being said i did actually read them on this occasion, i have no compulsion to abide by them, it just so happens that they mostly align with how i interact in general. That probably doesn't seem like much of a distinction, but it is to me.

As a side note, I'm a stickler for word choice and a solid 90% of people i've ever interacted with who claim to dislike pedantic grammar police are actually salty because they are being called out logical incorrectness in their word choice or sentence structure.

This is purely anecdotal and i am in no way accusing you of this, but for me it's an orange flag to see something like that.

  1. That's fair, i'd expect nothing less.

  2. This is the interesting one, i don't disagree on the principle but i'm interested to see how far through this you have thought.

As i said to the person i replied to, the issue here isn't the field itself so much as the intention behind it.

If you're far enough down the technological self reliance rabbit-hole to be compiling your own OS then you probably aren't too fussed about dropping a few services if they mandate age verification, (the third party kind, not solvable by self compilation).

As a hypothetical. let's assume somebody technically competent (but common sense deficient) has a visit from the good idea fairy and convinces someone in power to mandate age verification at the ISP level.

Is that a "stop using the internet" kind of moment or a "pirate ISP" kind of thing, perhaps a Cuba style local internet type deal or something else entirely ?

  1. That's a big ask for the everyday consumer, as it stands at least.

Does this way of thinking also address trust in the code itself or does that require you to read and understand all of the code being compiled, including libraries and other supply chain artifacts ?

Does it extend to hardware as well, with things like IME, PSP and perhaps DASH all the trust in the world won't counter internal hardware based attacks ?

Not that i'm saying to do nothing, just wondering where you sit on this subject.

2
Senalreply
programming.dev

If you can't understand it, chances are you can't answer it so this saves us both some time.

I was half-hoping someone with a big "I subscribe to this specific and obscure political ideology" would be expecting questions/discussion.

Then again, that's on me, i did see the big red flag warning at the beginning and went ahead anyway.

The flags are there for a reason i suppose, worth a try.

4
piefed.ca

Systemd has finally croaked. Time to remove that garbage.

2

It already late i think too many years gone and so big legacy depending on it

1
lemmy.zip

No they haven't, they added a field where a user can store their birthday, as required by law in parts of the US.

Or do you recommend them to ignore the law, and jeopardize the whole project? Do you want linux get banned in California? You are mad at the wrong people

1
Mikinareply
programming.dev

Yes, they should in fact just state that Californian users are not allowed to use it.

35
infeeeeereply
lemmy.zip

Basically that's the other option. But considering a lot of the maintainers live there, it's just easier to comply with the stupid law until it's reversed.

-2

Linus banned the Russian maintainers. So there is precedent to boot the commie losers off their maintainer role.

It sucks to lose talent, but they should have moved out of that shithole decades ago. It's on them for still living there.

1
infeeeeereply
lemmy.zip

Ok, who decides which law is clown and which isn't? You? Or Sam Altman? I guess he has a different idea what laws he wants to follow. See, it's a slippery slope you recommend.

Change your clown laws, and don't bully projects who just wants linux to become viable alternative to common people. Don't make perfect enemy of good.

-8
Sunshinereply
piefed.ca

False equivalence as privacy is a human right. Article 12 of the UN declaration of human rights.

People have the right to switch projects and criticize the actions of the developers.

20
infeeeeereply
lemmy.zip

So it's the legistlation's fault again, why aren't you mad at them, why only systemd? In other jurisdictions you don't have to use this field. And I don't see anything in the PR about the verifability of the date. It's just an optional number it stores in a db, offline.

Programmers have to become lawyers now?

Also a lot other projects has a birthday field, e.g. last time I worked with was LDAP: https://ldapwiki.com/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Birthdate I guess it's there since the 90s.

-9
lemmy.dbzer0.com

The hell are you on about? People can, and are, upset about both. That said, changing a piece of software is monumentally easier than changing laws when you're up against an entire industry lobbying against your interests.

That's why you see the focus on the software.

Systemd refusing and telling CA to figure it the fuck out would have been one of the strongest counters to this bullshit currently available, and that option was just thrown in the fucking garbage. Of course people are going to be mad at systemd.

8
infeeeeereply
lemmy.zip

That whatever happens the problem is always systemd. Chain of events:

  • voters vote for corrupt politician
  • big tech compaies bribe said politician to have shitty law
  • freedesktop requests systemd for backend to comply with said law
  • systemd just adds the field to the userdb

Who is to blame for all of this? Poettering who else...

-5

Blame? The realm of source code is ours! It takes less time to undue the PR then we are taking bickering about it.

1

Why aren't coders the only people allowed to be lawyers instead of these political activist clowns?

The only people who are remotely qualified to be my peers, to have the honour of being in the same room as me, are published package authors.

So yes, coders are more qualified to be lawyers than lawyers.

1
lemmy.dbzer0.com

Literally yes. I want them to force CA and other places considering these laws to actually evaluate the cost of locking their IT infrastructure out of Linux for this. I want them to demonstrate that a relatively small area of the world can't just change the trajectory of international open source projects at their own whim.

At this point that is by far the strongest option available to push back against this mess, and they just completely fucking trashed it in some misguided attempt to "play ball".

Now, all the government numptys who don't understand tech will just point to systemd and go "it wasn't a problem for them, you're just being difficult" when it comes to furthering their overreach.

20

I thought that having to actually go through brexit would force the UK to reconsider, but they didn't.

3

No they haven't, they added a field where a user can store their birthday, as required by law in parts of the US.

That's an obvious foot in the door. The law is going to get worse. And we users expect the services we've been trusting all this years to see that too and act accordingly in response. As long as the critiscism remains civil, it's perfectly valid.

Do you want linux get banned in California?

There is no single Linux. Each distro should have the agency to decide for themselves how or if they want to operate in California.

13
gruereply
lemmy.world

Yes, I expect them to stand up for the rights of users. Why don't you?

9
feddit.org

Adding an empty age column in a file that already contained one for your full address doesn't violate anyone's rights.

-3

It's complying in advance, when civil disobedience is called for.

The problem isn't the technical change itself; the problem is the motivation and context.

6

The premise for why it's being added however, subjectively does.

Which you know.

Also full address and name aren't mandatory, so it's not really a good comparison.

edit: I just realised i also replied to the same comment from you elsewhere in this thread.

3

Rights? Why does the question of rights arise when discussing malware?

wtf! Everyone has an excuse for absolute everything and anything.

1
Nate Coxreply
programming.dev

This entire problem would go away if these projects just changed their terms of service to ban running in California. The tech sector runs on Linux, having Linux deny service over this would immediately see lobbying to kill the law start in Ernest.

This is true elsewhere too of course, but the buying power of Silicon Valley can't be ignored.

7

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

Or do you recommend them to ignore the law, and jeopardize the whole project? Do you want linux get banned in California? You are mad at the wrong people

IMHO, having Linux Foundation and the organizations behind Linux components (such as systemd) to follow the same steps that of IBM back in 1930s (similarly, IBM was just "following orders", amirite?) wouldn't be wise, either.

3

Errr absolutely yes! Either grow a pair or i won't be one of their users.

Are we going to abide by laws in North Korea or China next?

Coders write the code, not the Epstein government types.

We as coders can say absolutely no. Like the doctors should have during scamdemic.

When will systemd be banished off all servers on the planet?

3