Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Liberated Systemd

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 77 posts

Re: Liberated Systemd

#51

Post by znpy »

iamnothere wrote: post #30
znpy wrote: post #21

As i get old i get more and more annoyed and this useless armchair activism. This piece of software is useless and cannot be employed anywhere and it’s essentially a futile exercise in virtue-signalling. The problem is not technical, it’s political. Go and make some actual political activism, don’t shit out useless software.

This particular project is making a small political point, that this attempt at regulation of FOSS is useless and easily circumvented. The impact is proportional to the effort (small) but it’s not useless any more than running an ad would be. Ageless Linux is a similar project, but with a larger possible impact, as it has the potential to serve as a test case for overturning the law. By directly and flagrantly violat…

Moot point, moot-er argumenting. Lawmakers are barely aware that github exists.

Re: Liberated Systemd

#52

Post by spaceheeder »

gzread wrote: post #14
tux3 wrote: post #2

This does a terrible job explaining, but it seems to be in protest of age verification laws in operating systems. The only commit is removing a user birthday field.

The existence of the user birthday field is mass surveillance, but the GECOS field, which contains your full name and street address, and the username, which often contains parts of your name and is mandatory, somehow are not. Full access to your home directory, which includes all of your passwords and usernames and confidential data, also somehow is not an invasion of privacy.

Correct, because putting additional data in GECOS is completely optional. This isn't about having your email client know your birthday, it's about phoning home to gate functionality. Verifiability, attestibility, all the loopholes that you think make this harmless are the croaks of a frog that is unjustifiably confident that the water in the pot won't continue getting hotter.

Re: Liberated Systemd

#53

Post by gzread »

iamnothere wrote: post #31
gzread wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this is a reactionary political statement and not a well thought out privacy project

Funny that the supposed “reactionary” statement is the one opposing bills backed by anti-porn activists and the Heritage Foundation.

Yeah, that's what reactionary means. Just blindly opposing things.

Re: Liberated Systemd

#54

Post by gzread »

spaceheeder wrote: post #52
gzread wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existence of the user birthday field is mass surveillance, but the GECOS field, which contains your full name and street address, and the username, which often contains parts of your name and is mandatory, somehow are not. Full access to your home directory, which includes all of your passwords and usernames and confidential data, also somehow is not an invasion of privacy.

Correct, because putting additional data in GECOS is completely optional. This isn't about having your email client know your birthday, it's about phoning home to gate functionality. Verifiability, attestibility, all the loopholes that you think make this harmless are the croaks of a frog that is unjustifiably confident that the water in the pot won't continue getting hotter.

Putting your birthday in the birthday field is completely optional.

Re: Liberated Systemd

#55

Post by gzread »

egorfine wrote: post #23
gzread wrote: post #9

Why are people worried about age bracket category (optional, defaults to "over 18") but they're not worried about remote attestation (will be mandatory to view any website)?

They are. I think this is the main reason why sane people are revolting against age groups, because mandatory KYC to use a locked-down Linux begins exactly with that: a small integer field in userdb.

Wouldn't it begin with one of the several other fields that already exist there?

Re: Liberated Systemd

#56

Post by gzread »

worksonmine wrote: post #38
SahAssar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I leave "Users full name" empty and it's fine. And you're free to not fill out this field aswell. Full name is probably a lot more unique and sensitive than birthdate

Maybe, what's your point? Do you think it's a good idea for operating systems to comply with 1 or 2 exceptionally retarded state laws? The full name is as far as I know never exposed to websites right? Computers need to stay what they've always been. Chips that we run our programs on. Linux is the last free (as in freedom) option and they will try to take that away too.

I think if there's a law saying, like, GUIs must show stars when you enter your password unless the user clicks the button to make it visible, complying with it is good. Some laws are actually alright.

Re: Liberated Systemd

#57

Post by mongol »

the_biot wrote: post #28

So this looks like a spite fork intended to make a point, not likely to become a widely used fork of systemd. However, 1) he is right, and 2) systemd's recent full-throated embrace of AI for programming make it clear that systemd really is in dire need of a fork. This project has gone full corporate insanity. I was never one of the vocal anti-systemd folks (I think it's a huge improvement over SysV-style boot stuff),…

I have missed the AI angle in relation to systemd. Has it been discussed on HN by any chance?

Re: Liberated Systemd

#58

Post by M95D »

SahAssar wrote: post #33
gasull wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's the first step. “Information, once collected, will be misused.” ― Richard Stallman, How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?, 2013

I believe collected there refers to actual centralized collection. This does not get sent to anyone, it lives on your computer. Or do you think that having files on your local disk means that they will be misused? I'm pretty sure most people already have their birthdate somewhere on their computer.

> This does not get sent to anyone

I bet the browser gets it.

Re: Liberated Systemd

#59

Post by NekkoDroid »

mongol wrote: post #57
the_biot wrote: post #28

So this looks like a spite fork intended to make a point, not likely to become a widely used fork of systemd. However, 1) he is right, and 2) systemd's recent full-throated embrace of AI for programming make it clear that systemd really is in dire need of a fork. This project has gone full corporate insanity. I was never one of the vocal anti-systemd folks (I think it's a huge improvement over SysV-style boot stuff),…

I have missed the AI angle in relation to systemd. Has it been discussed on HN by any chance?

Not that I know of, but it also isn't really anything worth talking about imo. They added claud review as additional "eyes" on PRs (which already found actual bugs missed by maintainers) and added an AGENTS.md for the people using agents. They require disclosure of usage of agents (including which one) to know to be ready for the usually pitfalls encounted with them.

Like... they could say they entirely ban agents usage in their repo but how likely is that someone that wants to use them just doesn't contribute because of the policy instead of hiding the usage?

IIRC it also effectively is the same policy as the Linux kernel.

Re: Liberated Systemd

#60

Post by SahAssar »

M95D wrote: post #58
SahAssar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe collected there refers to actual centralized collection. This does not get sent to anyone, it lives on your computer. Or do you think that having files on your local disk means that they will be misused? I'm pretty sure most people already have their birthdate somewhere on their computer.

> This does not get sent to anyone I bet the browser gets it.

The browser also has access to all of your files (at least unless strictly sandboxed). If the browser exposes it to websites isn't that a browser issue instead of a systemd issue?

Like if a browser offered up full unfettered filesystem access without any prompt or consent that'd be a browser issue, not a linux issue, right?

Post reply on HN