“software can’t just ignore laws it doesn’t like” it literally can.

[zzt@mas.to]

@kirtai I cursed myself with this post because right after someone tried to nitpick me to death on how because debian coincidentally doesn’t ship logind by default it’s misinformation to claim that anything in linux is doing age verification

somehow every type of mastodon reply guy is here in this thread and they all fucking love age verification

[zzt@mas.to]

@larsbrinkhoff fucking right? like shit I love ITS (I compiled a tape from your repo soon after I found out about it just to find out more about how ITS is built) but I don’t think I’ve ever brought it up in random casual conversation

[owlor@meow.social]

@zzt The next step after "do not comply in advance" is "fuck you, make me".

[kirtai@tech.lgbt]

@zzt
Oh right, because debian is linux.
/sigh

[kirtai@tech.lgbt]

@zzt
When they start bringing up lisp machines we'll know the apocalypse is nigh.

[losttourist@social.chatty.monster]

@perigee @zzt @MrBerard I will just repeat what Its FOSS said when the feature was merged:

In simple words, this is something that adds a new, optional field that can then be used by other open source projects like xdg-desktop-portal to build age verification compliance on top of, without systemd itself doing anything with the data or making it mandatory to provide

So yeah, that is what this change looks like, but this won't be stopping the haters and conspiracy theorists from making wild accusations, of course.

I don't know which hat you're wearing today ("hater" or "conspiracy theorist") but I do hope you enjoy the look.

[burnitdown@beige.party]

@zzt it's really hard to drop the best alternative we had to Windows or MacOS. if only NetBSD is safe, we're really screwed cause we're practically back to square one. there is not a great deal of binary packages for NetBSD compared to all of the other free software ecosystems. it's kind of like deciding OS/2 will be your "daily driver" as they call it.

[burnitdown@beige.party]

@zzt typewriters ftw

gonna send all of my posts by paper airplane pretty soon

[burnitdown@beige.party]

@zzt @MrBerard@mastodon.acm.org

and now Canada too. fuck everything, destroy it all. let's live on the land again and catch real fish, smoke the meat, and eat in that sweet by and by.

[zzt@mas.to]

@burnitdown watch, someone’s gonna post “let’s see the fascists come for my network of antique teletypes” like ?????

[haui@mastodon.giftedmc.com]

@zzt
Same logic that the germans used to get the jews. Everyone just accepted it. And if a group of people is a threat - like computer fuckers are - we get bribed and brainwashed with incel culture and corpospeak bullshit.

Its literally that easy. Ask your cia case officer at any major us university how that works. They might even tell you.

The western world is a giant fucking psy op.

TL;DR: Start educating computer fuckers instead of blaming. Every westerner is either resistance or complicit

[mrberard@mastodon.acm.org]

@losttourist @perigee @zzt

I feel my asking a naive question has landed me into what I'll euphemistically describe as a 'heated debate'.

I'm kinda seeing both sides, on the one hand slippery slope arguments have questionable validity ('did you know copper wires can enable a surveillance network?') but on the other, if this change doesn't constitute a move worth opposing to you, what event down the line would you actually oppose?

Oh, and folks, cooling the tone would be welcome here.

[jwz@mastodon.social]

@kirtai @zzt Lispns didn't have any of that fascist "process isolation", we had one address space and we LIKED it that way. "Oh oh this page 'belongs' to me." Ok colonizer.

[haui@mastodon.giftedmc.com]

@zzt
One could ask ibm how they implemented the stamp cards for the holocaust. Yet this company still exists, let alone has gotten any form of punishment. Its the same logic for any nazi despite a select few for a show trial. The western states have systematically shielded the nazis from prosecution, same as they do now.

The issue is not the people saying "what should i do, I'm alone." Its the people who say "no mate, the nazis never lost control is a conspiracy theory."

[losttourist@social.chatty.monster]

@MrBerard @perigee @zzt

"What event down the line would you actually oppose?"

I can think of several places where I'd say a line had been crossed:

• any requirement by a distro to make adding that data mandatory (easy to resolve, simply switch distros)
• any requirement by a distro to provide external verification for the arbitrary collection of digits that gets stored in a DoB field

The verification I think is key. As an example, the UNIX adduser command has prompted for things like "Real Name", "Phone Number", "Room Number" for decades. Nobody actually provides that information. This, honestly, is not conceptually different.

[mrberard@mastodon.acm.org]

@losttourist @perigee @zzt

Hahaha 'room number' is brill. They stopped shy of 'name of your frat'!

See, I had a hunch that verification was the real tricky point.
But when this does happen (because it will), not having this DB field verified will mean plenty of stuff can't be done on the alt. distros which do not have it.
Which is not a dichotomy that can be induced if the move was resisted upstream of that?

Or is this an externality, like the problem is w/ services mandating verified age?

[mrberard@mastodon.acm.org]

@losttourist @perigee @zzt

Like 'as long as we will have VPNs and jurisdiction where age verification isn't mandatory, we don't have to worry about the creep of online services being age-(meaning ID) gated?

[mrberard@mastodon.acm.org]

@losttourist @perigee @zzt

Just to inject some levity with a glib comment, maybe I won't matter, as surely a simple cognitive test will be able to sort people who entered secondary education after 2023 from the ones who don't?

I guess annoyingly, this doesn't work once brain-rotten kids are all adults, but I'm sure by then there'll be another cognitive thalidomide whose exposure test will be able to de facto tell age.

[bria@nerdculture.de]

@zzt
I tend to disagree

Most of the "computer fuckers" are against the censorship and enforcement of such law.

But systemd , push by RedHat and Poettering (which have done no good software, remember pulseaudio...) has, I don't know how, a big influence in many distribution board.

Systemd was adopted/forced by distribution even with a big opposition and not being technically sound when adopted.

All the pr to remove this code of "age" into systemd was shoot down by the same.

[ratsnakegames@mastodon.social]

@zzt i wish some major Linux vendors just had the gender-neutral genitalia to say "if this law passes we'll withdraw from the US market".