systemd has not implemented age verification

This needs to be clear: systemd is under attack by a trolling campaign orchestrated by fascist elements. Nobody is forced to like or use systemd, but anybody who wants to pick a side should know the facts.

Recently, the free software Nazi bar crowd styling themselves as "concerned citizens" has tried to start a moral panic by saying that systemd is implementing age verification checks or that somehow it will require providing personally identifiable information.

This is a lie: the facts are simply that the systemd users database has gained an optional "date of birth" field, which the desktop environments may use or not as they deem appropriate. Of course there is no "identity verification" or requirements to provide any data, which in any case would not be shared beyond authorized local applications.

While the multiple recent bills proposing that general purpose operating systems implement age verification mechanisms are often concerning, both from a social and technical point of view, this is not the topic being discussed here. They are often suboptimal, but for a long time I have been opposing attempts to implement parental control at the network level and argued that it should be managed locally, by parents on their own machines: I cannot see why I should outright reject an attempt to implement the infrastructure to do that.

If we want to keep age-appropriate controls out of the hands of centralized authorities, the alternative is giving families the means to manage it themselves: this is what this field enables. Whether desktop environments use it for parental controls, for birthday reminders, or for nothing at all, is their users' decision.

By the way, the original UNIX users database has allowed storing PII in the GECOS field since it was invented in the '70s. Similar fields are also specified by many popular LDAP schemes: adding such an optional field is consistent with the UNIX tradition.

And while we are at it, let's also refute the other smear campaign started by the same people: the systemd project is not accepting "AI slop". What happened is that a documentation file for the benefit of coding agents was added to the repository. To be clear: agents still cannot submit merge requests. The file itself remarks that all contributions must be reviewed in detail by humans, and this is basically the same policy used by the Linux kernel.

We are suprised at how huge this bird is.. A high school student hatched some "Miyazaki JiDokKo" eggs from the "producers" little section at a local supermarket chain. As they got too big (and the noisy?) he needed someone to take them. So they are near Aoshima's ocean in UchiUmi at the Ocean Home Guest house with John Paul from the UK now.. The rooster seems to have fought off a badger that was trying to eat one of the hens.. I need to talk more with an older neighbor that raise 3 or 5 different kinds of birds: Shamo fighting birds, Silkies, Chabo short-legged birds, and a few Boris Brown for eggs.. The Silkies incubate or him along with a nice 20-30 egg Showa Furanki incubator.. During a chance encounter by the river he told me that birds hatched from Miyazaki JiDokKo eggs may not meet the requirments for the brand label.. Later during a tour of his coops he said all the local heirloom JiDori birds have strains of Shamo fighting bird in them.. A friend in the mountains said the Shamo-derived birds are the tastiest but that opinion was not shared by the on other fellow foreigner aficionado I spoke with about all this.

Maybe the requirements for Miyazaki JiDokKo birds are a certain percentage of local genes that are greater than the percentage of genes from breed brought in from abroad.. Within those requirements maybe different farmers, or vendors or even municipalities, have various combinations of crosses.. That may be true of the Jidor label if not for a more strict prefecture-wide Miyazaki JiDokKo lable.. Ah..well.. it may start to make sense evenutally.. In the meantime I'm dreaming of two strains.. an independent tree-roosting bird that can survive in an orchard on their own... And a big guardian strain for around the brooding boxes.. These Amakusa Daiou (I'm guessing) throwbacks from the Miyazaki JiDokKo eggs may be a step toward a guardian straing!?!??

amakusadaiou.com/
amakusadaiou.com/user_data/his…
#天草大王 #AmakusaDaiou