From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

We have Microsoft employees/former employess actively injecting the
birthdate field into various linux application code bases.

https://tboteproject.com/systemdfindings/
--
"'Twas in the static that I was born, a phantom of the pixelated
plains." - Mr. Rogers.

I've been using Mr. Rogers as my Gamer Tag since the Xbox came out in
2001 while playing Halo with my Army buddies in the Barracks.
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

On 23/03/2026 15.29, MrRogers wrote:

We have Microsoft employees/former employess actively injecting the birthdate field into various linux application code bases.

https://tboteproject.com/systemdfindings/

as long as they default to epoch 0 ;)

the good news is that there is a lot better init systems to use, so just switch :D
--
//Aho
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

On Mon, 23 Mar 2026 09:29:18 -0500, MrRogers wrote:

We have Microsoft employees/former employess actively injecting the
birthdate field into various linux application code bases.

https://tboteproject.com/systemdfindings/

General-purpose Linux mechanisms are all about mechanism, not policy.
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

Lawrence -

On Mon, 23 Mar 2026 09:29:18 -0500, MrRogers wrote:

We have Microsoft employees/former employess actively injecting the
birthdate field into various linux application code bases.

https://tboteproject.com/systemdfindings/

General-purpose Linux mechanisms are all about mechanism, not policy.

I wouldn't say Linux is fucked over this.
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

stgiga$B$5$s$N(B<10q2s3m$2mcc5$[email protected]>$B$+$i(B

Lawrence -

On Mon, 23 Mar 2026 09:29:18 -0500, MrRogers wrote:

We have Microsoft employees/former employess actively injecting the
birthdate field into various linux application code bases.

https://tboteproject.com/systemdfindings/

General-purpose Linux mechanisms are all about mechanism, not policy.

I wouldn't say Linux is fucked over this.

Linux just needs to be strategic in how they handle this.
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

On Thu, 3/26/2026 4:53 AM, stgiga wrote:

stgigaさんの<10q2s3m$2mcc5$[email protected]>から

Lawrence -

On Mon, 23 Mar 2026 09:29:18 -0500, MrRogers wrote:

We have Microsoft employees/former employess actively injecting the
birthdate field into various linux application code bases.

https://tboteproject.com/systemdfindings/

General-purpose Linux mechanisms are all about mechanism, not policy.

I wouldn't say Linux is fucked over this.

Linux just needs to be strategic in how they handle this.

"When you lay railroad tracks, you get trains"

The mechanism IS the policy. For that is how Linux
decisions have been made in the past. That is how
you got SystemD for example.

Linux has no careful weighting. If something is
old and not shiny, it is removed. If several
shiny things exist, all three of them are present,
and the entire ecosystem eats the cost of supporting
all three in parallel (when any normal human would
have picked the one that met the requirements,
and turned off the fluffy finicky ones).

If there is a birthdate field, next it's a government ID
field and so on, maybe a picture of your fine self
(with its prison number) and an iris scan.

I don't have a problem notching out California via geolocation
and having the installer just stop. That too is a policy and
a mechanism, all rolled into one. Why don't we add a geolocation
subsystem, with the config file having the coordinates of
California as a configuration example ? After all, we wouldn't
be making a policy by doing that, we would "just be playing
our part by being helpful". Surely both mechanisms, accepting
this bullshit and resisting this bullshit, should BOTH be
present in Linux, right ? Because it's not POLICY after all.
It's just OPPORTUNITY.

Paul


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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

Paul formulated on Thursday :

On Thu, 3/26/2026 4:53 AM, stgiga wrote:

stgigaさんの<10q2s3m$2mcc5$[email protected]>から

Lawrence -

On Mon, 23 Mar 2026 09:29:18 -0500, MrRogers wrote:

We have Microsoft employees/former employess actively injecting the
birthdate field into various linux application code bases.

https://tboteproject.com/systemdfindings/

General-purpose Linux mechanisms are all about mechanism, not policy.

I wouldn't say Linux is fucked over this.

Linux just needs to be strategic in how they handle this.

"When you lay railroad tracks, you get trains"

The mechanism IS the policy. For that is how Linux
decisions have been made in the past. That is how
you got SystemD for example.

Linux has no careful weighting. If something is
old and not shiny, it is removed. If several
shiny things exist, all three of them are present,
and the entire ecosystem eats the cost of supporting
all three in parallel (when any normal human would
have picked the one that met the requirements,
and turned off the fluffy finicky ones).

If there is a birthdate field, next it's a government ID
field and so on, maybe a picture of your fine self
(with its prison number) and an iris scan.

I don't have a problem notching out California via geolocation
and having the installer just stop. That too is a policy and
a mechanism, all rolled into one. Why don't we add a geolocation
subsystem, with the config file having the coordinates of
California as a configuration example ? After all, we wouldn't
be making a policy by doing that, we would "just be playing
our part by being helpful". Surely both mechanisms, accepting
this bullshit and resisting this bullshit, should BOTH be
present in Linux, right ? Because it's not POLICY after all.
It's just OPPORTUNITY.

Paul

Thank you for saying something because I haven't decided how I want to
respond to the "It's just a field for a date" arguement.

This is the number one counter-arguement and I'm dumbfounded by it and
truely questioning if I even want to respond to delusional people.

"It's just a field for a date" = What's wrong with you people? I look
at people who say and see no hope of having a conversation with them,
cause it's already a lost cause of communicating with them.

Honestly instead of speaking with these people, just reach out to your government officials via email and say soemthing.
--
"'Twas in the static that I was born, a phantom of the pixelated
plains." - Mr. Rogers.

I've been using Mr. Rogers as my Gamer Tag since the Xbox came out in
2001 while playing Halo with my Army buddies in the Barracks.
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

On Thu, 26 Mar 2026 11:14:48 -0400, Paul wrote:

The mechanism IS the policy. For that is how Linux decisions have
been made in the past. That is how you got SystemD for example.

On the contrary. systemd is precisely one of the many examples of the distinction between “mechanism” and “policy” that I was talking about.

For example, many people complain about the systemd journal and how
they prefer the old syslog mechanism. Well, that’s still there if you
want it: the two can interoperate, to the extent that you, the
sysadmin, get to control which log messages are sent where -- to both mechanisms, or just to one, or nowhere -- just discarded. And/or to
other places, like the system console.

The systemd journal offers much more fine-grained control over logging bandwidth and storage usage, message retention, secure sealing to
guard against tampering etc. But it’s your choice how you want to set
these up.
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

On Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:41:27 -0500, MrRogers wrote:

Honestly instead of speaking with these people, just reach out to
your government officials via email and say soemthing.

But isn’t the Government precisely the entity people are afraid of?
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

On 2026-03-23 20:15, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 23 Mar 2026 09:29:18 -0500, MrRogers wrote:

We have Microsoft employees/former employess actively injecting the
birthdate field into various linux application code bases.

https://tboteproject.com/systemdfindings/

General-purpose Linux mechanisms are all about mechanism, not policy.

<https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/24/foss_age_verification/>

<https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2026-March/052078.html>

read also the replies.


<https://linuxiac.com/systemd-introduces-birth-date-support-for-upcoming-linux-desktop-age-controls/>

<https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/03/21/0424203/systemd-adds-optional-birthdate-field-for-age-verification-to-json-user-records>
--
Cheers, Carlos.
ES🇪🇸, EU🇪🇺;
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

On 2026-03-23 17:11, J.O. Aho wrote:

On 23/03/2026 15.29, MrRogers wrote:

We have Microsoft employees/former employess actively injecting the
birthdate field into various linux application code bases.

https://tboteproject.com/systemdfindings/

as long as they default to epoch 0 ;)

the good news is that there is a lot better init systems to use, so just switch :D

If the desktops chose to implement the birth checking feature via
systemd, then what? :-D
--
Cheers, Carlos.
ES🇪🇸, EU🇪🇺;
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

On 26/03/2026 21.25, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2026-03-23 17:11, J.O. Aho wrote:

On 23/03/2026 15.29, MrRogers wrote:

We have Microsoft employees/former employess actively injecting the
birthdate field into various linux application code bases.

https://tboteproject.com/systemdfindings/

as long as they default to epoch 0 ;)

the good news is that there is a lot better init systems to use, so
just switch :D

If the desktops chose to implement the birth checking feature via
systemd, then what?  :-D

Use elogind and it will just give epoch 0 :P
--
//Aho
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

On Thu, 26 Mar 2026 11:14:48 -0400, Paul <[email protected]d> wrote:
<snip>

I don't have a problem notching out California via geolocation
and having the installer just stop. That too is a policy and

<snip>

The age field has been added because some people want it and the people who are in control of decisions for what gets included in systemd chose to include it. It's their
software, so it's their choice.

Why should Paul be the one who gets to decide what should and should not be included as an optional feature in systemd?

Why should I let Paul decide what should or should not be done with software on my
system?

While the age field is only available if you choose to install use systemd-homed, which
I don't have installed on any of my systems, I do not disagree with the authors of
systemd-homed having the choice to add the field if that's what the authors want.

If you don't want age checking available as an option on your systems, fine. Don't install
the systemd-homed package. Don't try to force your decisions on others.

Regards, Dave Hodgins
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

On Thu, 26 Mar 2026 19:43:21 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

On Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:41:27 -0500, MrRogers wrote:

Honestly instead of speaking with these people, just reach out to
your government officials via email and say soemthing.

But isn’t the Government precisely the entity people are afraid of?

The Camel's Nose.

Just like armed ICE agents getting set up in the U.S. airports.
The Camel's Nose.

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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

On 28 Mar 2026 14:13:57 GMT, Allodoxaphobia wrote:

On Thu, 26 Mar 2026 19:43:21 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

On Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:41:27 -0500, MrRogers wrote:

Honestly instead of speaking with these people, just reach out to
your government officials via email and say soemthing.

But isn’t the Government precisely the entity people are afraid of?

The Camel's Nose.

Is that expressing a position for or against the Government?
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

David W. Hodgins$B$5$s$N(B<[email protected]>$B$+$i(B >On Thu, 26 Mar 2026 11:14:48 -0400, Paul <[email protected]d> wrote: ><snip>

I don't have a problem notching out California via geolocation
and having the installer just stop. That too is a policy and

<snip>

The age field has been added because some people want it and the people who are
in control of decisions for what gets included in systemd chose to include it. It's their
software, so it's their choice.

Why should Paul be the one who gets to decide what should and should not be >included as an optional feature in systemd?

Why should I let Paul decide what should or should not be done with software on my
system?

While the age field is only available if you choose to install use systemd-homed, which
I don't have installed on any of my systems, I do not disagree with the authors of
systemd-homed having the choice to add the field if that's what the authors want.

If you don't want age checking available as an option on your systems, fine. Don't install
the systemd-homed package. Don't try to force your decisions on others.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

Locking out Cali would be bad.
--
stgiga mailto:[email protected]
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