Companies like Red Hat/IBM operate in Illinois and for better or worse have controlling interests in Linux and across open source projects pretty broadly. Wouldn't they be forced to include the capability in their products, which then percolate out to everyone just by network effects?

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johnsmith1840 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I don't see how they enforce it though? Isn't this saying every linux instance needs basically a backdoor network access? How would verify the 30 pods on my node are from minors or adults without that? Or this is more about a user facing node? So my aws nodes need to verify my age before I ssh in?

Remote desktop services?

Sounds so complicated to actually do.

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MrJohz a day ago | parent | next [-]

There's no verification necessary. Instead, you'd just set a flag on all of those pods that says "this is an adult". Or more likely, you wouldn't set anything, there would be no changes at all, because that would be the default.

However, if I gave my child a laptop with Linux installed, the law would force the OS to provide some setting somewhere that I can toggle that switches the installation to child mode. (On Linux, I imagine it would make sense to have this be a per-user toggle, so my kid's account would be in child mode, and the root account would not.) The applications on that computer would then be required to check that setting if they want to show "adult content" (here defined as algorithmic feeds, notifications between certain hours, the ability to receive messages from identified adults). Similarly (this isn't clear but would presumably be technically required) browsers would pass this setting on to websites in some way.

Another way of seeing it is this: you know the DNT/Do Not Track header that you can optionally set in your browser and (theoretically at least) websites will not track you? This is essentially that but for certain kinds of content. If you set the header, websites won't be allowed to show algorithmic feeds, etc.

Basically all of this is in the article, which lays it out very clearly (if you ignore the Claude-isms).

	▲	johnsmith1840 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Oh, that's not that bad? Literally a flag at bios/admin layer defaulting to adult. I mean completely unenforcable but still not that crazy

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dd8601fn 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I suppose they only have to confirm that the OS supports age bucket reporting... not that you're using it.

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FuckButtons 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

finally the die hard systemd haters will have an actually valid point.

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LPisGood 2 days ago | parent [-]

I’m unfamiliar with systemd’s haters or why this would give them a valid point. Could you please elaborate?

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genewitch 2 days ago | parent [-]

systemd is a massive blob of code that infects every part of a system and all of its subsystems. It completely changed the way system administration was done, the way init scripts work, and added tons of things to init that some argue aren't necessary, like dhcp and DNS.

Newer linux folks like it because they're used to it, people who don't like it use devuan, gentoo, or one of the others that still lets one use openRC or whatever else.

upthread someone mentioned that systemd already has the ability to store the birthdate of a user. Why would an init system need that? It doesn't, but here we are.

	▲	Melonai 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Maybe I'm about to be too pedantic, but I never quite got the argument of systemd being massively bloated based on examples of it including DNS and DHCP. Sure it's a mono-repository that includes all these services, but in the end you do run them separately? The actual "systemd, the init system" doesn't have DNS, DHCP or a user birthday database built-in, those are contained in their own services, namely systemd-resolved, systemd-networkd, and systemd-userdbd respectively, and, although systemd does genuinely lead you down the path of using them (which might be a real problem!), there isn't actually a definite requirement to do so. systemd will gladly run your BIND, ISC DHCP and NetworkManager for you if you tell it to, no? In fact we do so at my place of work. Just because they are under the same project as the init system doesn't mean they are one monolith, I think. To me that feels like saying "Why does the GNU C library include a bootloader!". Now it's not like there's not plenty to dislike about systemd, it is a wide-reaching project that has managed to get a huge mindshare of the lower-level services needed to run a basic Linux server or desktop, and that has caused many utilities and services to appear that have a hard dependency on it, which is obviously bad for anyone running services that aren't part of the systemd package set, just take a look at NixOS, it's practically built purely on systemd, with efforts to support alternative init systems essentially archived at this point. Plenty of people also quite dislike Lennart, or how involved corporations are in the systemd development, and other people have loads of other reasons. One of my own gripes is speed for quite a few basic procedures in networkd. There's enough stuff to hate about it! I think it's not really necessary to pretend that your init system runs a DNS server and stores birthdays.
	▲	gh02t a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Newer linux folks like it because they're used to it, people who don't like it use devuan, gentoo, or one of the others that still lets one use openRC or whatever else. This is a bad generalization. Counterpoint, I've been using Linux as a daily driver for like 25 years now (and have also used other Unixes/likes fairly extensively). I have my gripes with systemd, but I personally prefer to use it over OpenRC etc. I don't think I'm alone, either, as distros like Devuan are pretty far down on usage lists. There are plenty of Greybeards out there who dislike systemd enough to use something else, but I suspect there are at least as many out there who like it or don't care enough to use an alternative.