Exactly, and some of the laws require just asking if the age is over a some pre-defined threshold, not sending the full date, for example “is the user over 18? Is the user over 15? 13?”

And just to be clear, I do think that “protecting the children” is just an excuse to push surveillance tech that was very convenient to use after the Epstein files. I am strongly against these laws and I am supporting ($$$) activist groups fighting against them. Do consider donating or getting involved too if you can.

But this specific change isn’t adding surveillance to Linux. It’s just a date of birth field that a parent can set. I can see why a parent would want it instead of using shady and intrusive “child control” software that takes over the computer.

You need to store the date of birth to update the user’s reported age automatically. It makes sense and puts the “protecting the children” responsibility back on parents instead of third parties that every website is now starting to use.

The systemd solution is not even reusable for actual verification because it can’t provide any cryptographic proof of the verification! It’s literally just a date.

a sensor triggers

screen goes dark

rock crubling noises close by

… RUN!

Say no more!

Life pro tip that will make your IT deparment hate you: you can use Evolution and change the client id to match outlook’s one in the advanced settings. It’ll look like you are using the standard outlook client from your IT department point of view, but you’ll actually get a usable interface instead. I assume that thunderbird has the same options to override the client id, but I haven’t checked.

Don’t blame me if you get in troubles though.

On my system I am using kde x11 instead of wayland for the same reason. Last time I tried wayland I was getting half of the framerate compared to x11.

At some point I want to switch to a gaming-oriented distros and see if it’s magically better there.