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Inside the Systemd Age Verification Debate: Developer Responds to Criticism (itsfoss.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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Dylan M. Taylor is not a household name in the Linux world. At least, he wasn’t until recently.

The software engineer and longtime open source contributor has quietly built a respectable track record over the years: writing Python code for the Arch Linux installer, maintaining packages for NixOS, and contributing CI/CD pipelines to various FOSS projects.

But a recent change he made to systemd has pushed him into the spotlight, along with a wave of intense debate.

At the center of the controversy is a seemingly simple addition Dylan made: an optional birthDate field in systemd’s user database.

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[–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

It's not just server-side: A lot of fingerprinting happens client-side, for example using a canvas to check what features your graphics card supports. You can see this in action via services like https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ or https://amiunique.org/

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    That's not the fingerprinting happening client side, that's just information supply. Fingerprinting is about what the server does with that information.

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