Damn. Who could possibly have seen this coming?
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The author gives the situation benefit of the doubt that it does not deserve. It is not "mutating" or "creeping;" the ABSOLUTELY INTENTIONAL, ORIGINAL PURPOSE is simply now becoming more and more obvious, even to the people who desperately want to pretend it isn't happening.

Can I preorder my satellite linked shock collar?
Oh look, another attack on the freedom of speech that anonymity allows. Here's hoping "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore
pretty soon we'll see an official spec for the header X-Current-User-Social-Security-Number
Who chose the stock image for this? I haven't seen that style of phone since I had an LG Vue back in 2009.
That's the phone you'll have to go back to using, to stop them identifying you. Their AI can't understand tech that old
The cost of living in this world is simply resources paid into the arms race.
For me, I focus on what I want out of my tech services. Learn to build and learn to maintain. There will be ways to mask, spoof and anonymize.
And for sure, although it won't be today, there will be legislators who move against this trend. This is, and always has been, a matter of legislation. Separation from church and state is now separation of tech and state.
Also I know we all reasonably hate cryptocurrencies but you will for sure be able to use Monero to buy prepaid phones even after it's illegal, seeing as you can use it to buy illegal guns and drugs now lol
So if it's just illegal from the seller's perspective and not illegal to possess, it'd be a pretty easy law to circumvent.
Still, that won't help the domestic abuse victims and all other people who need burners and aren't tech savvy.
I emaoled my congresswoman about this. I told her not to support it and why; but more importantly, I told her that anyone with the technical acumen will simply not comply with this law.
That's the hidden cost of what orange Shitler has unleashed, the debasement of our public institutions. How powerful is a government that is ignored by its constituents?
Whoa, so can we stop using our social security numbers for everything yet?
not the part of shadowrun i wanted to become reality
always has been.jxl
Told ya, you fucking systemd simps. It’s all a really fucking wet slope.
systemd has nothing to do with this lmao, if you see this and immediately think "this wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t let systemd discuss putting an age field 2 months ago!!!!!1!" you are severely, severely misled. to stay nice.
nvm i’m pretty sure this is just ragebait
Hehe. The people who ignored systemd are the same people who don’t think any of this is a problem. The kind of people who can’t understand that you have to fight this kind of bullshit anytime it pops up or it eventually wins.
It just won.
I'm still trying to figure out how systemd has anything to do with this. Any configurable level user database could have implemented this. /etc/passwd has your "Real Name" in it as well. Finger protocol could have been selected to expose this. Literally there's dozens of different places the age thing could have been implemented. The maintainers of systemd decided to be the first. Hell, MidnightBSD just added a daemon to implement it.
Likewise if you're informed enough you also know there's a flag to explicitly block it and ways to patch it out. While I'm typically a Slackware and sysvinit type of person, there's nothing unique about systemd that enabled the shitty law California passed. And fi you really care about privacy, how about less gloat and more information about ways around it, like this fork.
You'll go a lot further educating folks how to get around the things you perceive as bad rather than whatever your original comment was. The entire point is to get people ... on your side.
That the developers chose to add it at the same time as all the age verification stuff was starting is too much of a coincidence. It shows that some developers in important roles will go along with age verification. The systemd thing can be argued the way that it has been but it's the beginning of the slippery slope
That the developers chose to add it at the same time as all the age verification stuff was starting is too much of a coincidence.
It'd be weird if they added it before the laws were passed, but not that strange to implement it afterwards, but before the deadline.
Exactly. The point is not the technical details of the implementation. The point is that their act of capitulation endorsed the concept.
As Free Software developers, they had an ethical obligation to resist and they didn't.
People already choose a side. I don’t care to change peoples minds, just mock the morons.
i guarantee you the lawmakers who pass this kind of awful law have no idea what systemd even is or what it does
blaming it (or "systemd simps") for this is a colossal waste of time. the surveillance society has been progressively installed in the imperial core ever since 9/11, age verification and what’s it turning into is a consequence of this, and systemd adding an age field is a consequence of that.
blaming systemd for this shit, even in part, is so bafflingly silly, such a ridiculous example of swapping cause and effect that i can’t imagine you’re doing it sincerely but apparently people agree with this???
that’s like blaming the small creek in your garden for the existence of the raging river upstream. idk.
I’m blaming the PEOPLE who say “no biggie, just a number” who can’t seem to get it through their thick, dumb, argumentative skulls that these kind of things ALWAYS AND WITHOUT EXCEPTION lead to loss of privacy and more authoritarian laws.
There’s a big picture. Stop arguing the tiny points with me and SEE IT.
Stop arguing the tiny points with me and SEE IT.
i agree, that’s why i think talking about systemd here (and arguing wether they want to implement this or not) is a massive distraction
anyways i’m gonna practice what i preach and stop talking about systemd now, enough bytes of online traffic have been spent on this
You're shooting the messenger. Meta and others are lobbying governments hard for this. They're the ones causing you to lose your privacy. Not the volunteers that maintain systemd.
Then those volunteers can refuse. But they won’t, because they agree with this direction.
It’s plain as day. You’ll agree with me in a few years.
And you can go contact your local/state/federal government representatives (I mean actually call, or go to town halls). But you won't, because hating on systemd is more important to you than your privacy.
It's as plain as day. You'll agree with me in a few years.
Lmfao, you think contacting reps is a thing that works in 2026? You must be over 60, right? With no clue where the world is going… or, you LOVE where the world is going… that’s probably more accurate.
No, it's pretty clear that you're the one that LOVES where the world is going. You have zero interest in changing where things are going, you just want the satisfaction of saying "I told you so".
Well, guess what. Everyone else already knows everything you do. The volunteers are systemd aren't going go to jail for you. They haven't implemented age verification yet (no, an optional field in a schema is nothing close to verification) because they haven't been forced to yet. If laws pass such that they have to add it or go to jail, yes they'll implement it.
And when that happens, it will be because people like you took the effort to divide us instead of presenting a unified front against the corporations that are lobbying to take away our privacy.
But you won't care about the last part, because you'll be feeling too smug from "calling it".
It was obvious from the start that enabling DRM and surveillance was the point of systemd all along.
"Everything that contradicts my naive worldview is just ragebait"
Sure, buddy.
We have this app...

Ditch it and use mygov instead. cut out the proprietary middleman who charges everyone out their ass to implement it.

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