Linux

Can someone explain why it isn't just a boolean that say is adult or something like that? Maybe I misunderstood but it seems like the new California law would approve that.

But I would rather the parents to use parent control.

Yeah the fact that this "guy" wouldn't be on video or audio even with the guy interviewing him and only did DMs furthers my suspicion that this dude is straight up a bot or a group of people working for a company.

Seriously, has anyone ever seen or heard this person? He has a blog and stuff where he parrots Google talking points and the like.

Weird doing an interview all by DMs honestly.

complying with a relatively inconsequential law

This downplays the impact to privacy these laws can have but sure, personal harassment is bad.

Counterpoint: fuck this guy for complying with the technofascists in advance like the bootlicker he is.

actions done collectively by SystemD

Nope. It only needs one maintainer to do the PR

It'll discourage people from becoming open source developers

You know what will discourage Them more? Id verification

relatively inconsequential law

Give me your Id. Seriously, go and give me your ID with nothing blurred.

Yeah I'm not going to give this guy his desired victim role. He put a lot of effort into make privacy invading pull requests. Death threats and doxxing is too far but he deserves some insults.

Don't collaborate with fascists.

I’m going to bullet my thoughts on this whole thing because I’m annoyed by the general response, and the implementation as well:

• I don’t wish harm on the dev and I don’t dislike them. I don’t even know them
• Death threats are ridiculous; that’s the working class attacking itself again
• That said, I want to know what compelled this dev to preemptively implement this field not in 1 but in 2 separate PRs
• Both the field and the law itself do not serve the user at all; it’s a bullshit vague law that is using children as cover—again (I’m old enough to know how this game works)
• I’ve always viewed Linux as the rebel among all of the corporate slop we have to constantly dodge, so it is super gross when I see changes in Linux that were made to appease laws built and pushed by fascist tech companies and governments
• Did the dev even open a line of discussion anywhere, or was the PR supposed to be used for that?
• What’s his motivation? Money? Fame? I’ve been a programmer for 20 years and I’d never jump on a chance to add something that aligns with laws I think are unethical dog shit—especially in the Linux space where the whole goal is to not be Windows
• I’m a bit frustrated with the casual “what’s the big deal?” mindset that a lot of people I’ve encountered have about this. Are we not living through the same timeline where the US has fallen under the control of a fascist regime that is being eagerly assisted by Meta, Apple, Microsoft and a ton of other massive corporations? How do people not see that this is the beginning of the wedge? And let’s say it peters out and nothing else happens. I’m not going to be ashamed of the fact that I was a squeaky wheel over it because I’ve seen how these things go. You follow the money and suddenly the bigger picture comes into focus. Why on earth a meager single little dev would implement this, unprompted, is just beyond my reasoning.

This reminds me of when Guillermo Rauch from Vercel praised Trump multiple times. Bro, you’re not Tim Cook. You’re not Ellison, Zuck, or Musk. You’re not even on their level. You’re not going to get on their radar. I have PTSD from fellow tech folks being weirdly aligned with fascism and this whole dumb thing is giving me that vibe again. I don’t think this is that 1:1, but this is like the metal scene. You have to dodge the fascists that seem to weirdly permeate corners of the culture. People that refuse and get annoyed by right-wing labels, but still help right-wing grifters, are their own unique brand of pathetic.

Lost me at “If you ever wished ill upon another human being for complying with a relatively inconsequential law”

How does that boot taste?

Agree death threats are crazy harassment, etc but I definitely wish I’ll will towards fascist collaborators.

We're demanding that the government we pay for respect basic human needs. Privacy is not a luxury. It's a need. They went to far with this shit so they can take the next mile. Fuck them all and fuck California's lawmakers for doing it. We should be sending them letters of discontent too.

Lawmakers and politicians in the US ruin everything more and more everyday.

I don't think enough people realize that this is catastrophically bad. It'll discourage people from becoming open source developers, it'll discourage people from using Linux, and it'll discourage legislators from taking the Linux community seriously.

Sure, but personally, I don't want a linux community that's driven by corporate needs and governments that have been paid off by them. I don't view it as a catastrophe, if that's the version of "the linux community" that we lose.

None of that is to say that harassing devs is correct. It's not, and never is. Harassing anyone with death threats and dogpiling is not on. But if we take that out of the picture, negative pushback that drives away devs that would otherwise have helped implement universal age gating isn't something I'm terribly upset over, because I don't want the version of community they're taking us towards

On a completely unrelated, off-topic note. Here is the same person talking about Google's new "advanced workflow" for "sideloading apps" on Android.

The title of his blog post is "Google's New Android Sideloading Flow Is a Fair Trade"...Figures.