Live data from Hacker News

Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

cybrkyd.com

31–40 of 148 posts

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#31
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Systems are required to ask the user for their age and just trust whatever they say If you're going to do anything like this, this is the thing they actually get right. It removes the inconvenience, privacy invasion, forced use of corporate verifiers with perverse incentives, etc. Meanwhile if the user is actually a child then their age is set by their parent. > Applications are required to query the system for the…

>> Systems are required to ask the user for their age and just trust whatever they say > > This is the thing they actually get right. It removes the inconvenience, privacy invasion, forced use of corporate verifiers with perverse incentives, etc. Meanwhile if the user is actually a child then their age is set by their parent. Well, maybe. For instance, if a child buys their own device they could set the age to whatev…

> For instance, if a child buys their own device they could set the age to whatever they want.

If a child has the money to buy a device without the parent knowing about it then they could just buy a used device that has already been configured with an account or pay a high school senior to set one up on their new device.

> Rather, the way it works is that the developer is then assumed to have "actual knowledge" of the user's age (See 1798.501(b)(2)(A)) and then has to behave accordingly in other age-restricted contexts.

How is mkdir or python3 supposed to "behave accordingly in other age-restricted contexts"? And if the answer is that its behavior is entirely unmodified, why is it required to do something without effect?

Also, who is the "developer" of a thirty year old project with thousands of contributors and multiple forks? All of them? None of them? The last one to make a commit, even if they're outside the jurisdiction?

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#32
post #7

It seems incredibly silly to me that this is being rushed into systemd and other linux components. I understand Apple making changes, and even Canonical, but systemd is not run by one corporation and there is no reason to adhere to a badly written law. Why play along with the charade? If root is root, the "age verification" field does not make any sense. Why are these changes being made on a worldwide basis when the…

Open source is driven by contributions. Most of the time, if someone wants a feature, implements the feature, and submits a reasonable PR to a project, that project will have the feature. In this case, the PR appears to have been written by someone who is not a regular SystemD contributor, and (through a bit of Googling) works for a FinTech company with no obvious interest. I can't comment on why that individual wanted to add support. However, once someone added support, the question for SystemD is not if it is worth implementing, but if it is worth merging. At this point, it becomes a simple case of "the most intolerant wins". For people who care about complying with CA style laws, this feature is critical. For people who don't care, this feature is fine. I doubt it will even make it on mosts lists of SystemD feature bloat that most people don't care about.

This is the same reason a bunch of the food in your pantry is certified kosher. No one is going to not buy something because it is kosher. But if paying a thousand dollars a year to put a small circle-u symbol on the back of your box can increase sales by 1% among observant Jews, most companies are going to do it.

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#34
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Systems are required to ask the user for their age and just trust whatever they say > > This is the thing they actually get right. It removes the inconvenience, privacy invasion, forced use of corporate verifiers with perverse incentives, etc. Meanwhile if the user is actually a child then their age is set by their parent. Well, maybe. For instance, if a child buys their own device they could set the age to whatev…

> For instance, if a child buys their own device they could set the age to whatever they want. If a child has the money to buy a device without the parent knowing about it then they could just buy a used device that has already been configured with an account or pay a high school senior to set one up on their new device. > Rather, the way it works is that the developer is then assumed to have "actual knowledge" of th…

One could interpret the age verification operation must run for every command executed in interactive or non-interactive mode.

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#37
post #3

This is a no win situation and I think systemd is making this change too early. But I have read that field is optional. But my main concern with this is applications like Firefox will eventually require this systemd age specific field and a standard systemd function to call. That means this age field will need to be populated and thus locking out the *BSDs and non-systemd Linux. If that happens, this makes the system…

>But my main concern with this is applications like Firefox will eventually require this systemd age specific field and a standard systemd function to call. That means this age field will need to be populated and this locking out the *BSDs and non-systemd Linux. The risk is real, and the solution is to move away from systemd now, not wait until it's too late. Whatever conveniences it brings over other init systems ar…

> Whatever conveniences it brings over other init systems

You see people rave about the greatness of systemd, then they turn to deploy their applications using Docker and some s6 config.

Re: Age verification on Systemd and Flatpak

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For instance, if a child buys their own device they could set the age to whatever they want. If a child has the money to buy a device without the parent knowing about it then they could just buy a used device that has already been configured with an account or pay a high school senior to set one up on their new device. > Rather, the way it works is that the developer is then assumed to have "actual knowledge" of th…

One could interpret the age verification operation must run for every command executed in interactive or non-interactive mode.

It sounds like you want to automate the invisible purposeless no-op. Is that allowed?
Post reply on HN