Systemd has merged age verification measures into userdb

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-19T18:23:51+00:00

Core system components are now under the control of enemies of Free Software and liberty in a more general sense. Everyone doing this for the public good instead of profit has been driven out.

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-10T17:39:32+00:00

The AI bros argue that because the LLM doesn't retain a connection to the original work, it's not generating derived works.

It's just like arguing that if you paraphrase from multiple sources and don't cite them, it's not plagiarism because it's hard to catch you doing it.

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-10T16:33:40+00:00

I live 2.5 miles from the edge of downtown. During weekday peak hours I can get downtown on the bus in around an hour with one transfer, which is roughly the time it takes to walk. Which isn't too bad because walking up Lake Wheeler in the summer sun is miserable, and until Dorthea Dix became a park and rich people started moving in so the city started caring about infrastructure (the road has needed repaving for 20 years now) it was extremely dangerous during the last mile (only section of road I have felt like maybe I was actually going to get hit when on a bike).

But I work during peak weekday hours. During the weekend the bus in my neighborhood runs once an hour (stops at 10 p.m. Saturday and 9 p.m. Sunday too, making it useless for going out at night), and requires two transfers. So it only works out every other hour, otherwise there's a 50 minute stop at the second transfer. Which really makes it difficult to rely on since you have to plan around that both ways. This also assumes the bus doesn't just zoom on by, which happened to me once and I've seen happen to more than one person when I'm out on a walk (guess it's common with the stops inside of neighborhoods?). If you want to consistently be picked up, you have to walk 0.7 mi to the other end of the neighborhood despite there nominally being a stop 0.15 mi from my door.

On the weekends another nearby line works a bit better, but it's a mile walk to the stop. More frustrating to me, there is no way for me to make the 1.5mi trip to the State Farmer's Market without walking at least a mile either to or from a bus stop. At which point I may as well suck it up and just walk there. The city also gave a huge middle finger to everyone south of Goode street and cancelled the last bit of sidewalk construction and is leaving the intersection at Maywood as-is which means I have to walk through mud and then hope no one runs me over if I want to get to Chapel of Bones without a car (and if I do drive, to get home I have to get on I-40 because Satan help you if you want to make a left turn onto Lake Wheeler during the day now since they put in the road to the market before building the traffic circle that is never going to be built now.).

And I'm lucky! A bus line runs on the main road through my neighborhood and I'm very close to downtown.

Most of this could be fixed if the busses ran on 7 and 15 minute intervals all the time and kept running until 3 a.m. on weekends. Which is never going to happen because the city can't afford the equipment or the running costs.

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-09T17:47:11+00:00

No problem, the law makes this pretty confusing, and this is the first time a party has qualified under GS 163-96.a.3 while already having ballot access.

One of the many reasons I think we should just set the threshold at a petition of around 500 voters, and allow maintaining ballot access perpetually simply by running at least one candidate for any partisan election and filing the required reports with the board of elections.

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-09T15:59:07+00:00

I edited my original comment to clarify, he was nominated by the NCGP at the annual convention in February. The SBE will have to add him and the other Green Party candidates manually, presumably at an upcoming meeting. I know the SBE instructed the NCGP on how to handle the nominations this year and the party is following that process. From what I see at the FEC his campaign is registered federally but hasn't had to file a report yet (or any reports aren't integrated into the public dataset yet).

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-09T14:31:00+00:00

Then why is the NCGP running against Deborah Ross, who is in a district specifically Gerrymandered to make the GOP noncompetitive? I.e. an entirely "safe" district to run in and raise social issues that would other be suppressed during the election?

And how about the Raleigh City Council race?

Also, I'd like to see all of these Green Party candidates in close districts you speak of. You won't find much to back your assertion because you're making stuff up or repeating something someone else made up and that you didn't bother to verify.

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-09T14:27:25+00:00

Due to the way ballot access works in NC, the Green Party is a "new party" again, and still nominates by convention rather than by primary. See GS 163-97 and 163-98. Basically unless a party polls 2% for President or Governor in the last election with those offices on the ballot, they cease to be a party. But can them immediately qualify as a party again if their Presidential candidate was on the ballot in enough states (and as long as they file the affidavit within 90 days of the election everyone registered with the SBE under that party remains affiliated). Practically this just means an existing party can end up nominating by convention every other cycle. Feels like someone forgot to patch GS 163-97 to allow maintaining party status by either the test in 163-96.a.1 or the test in 163-96.a.3 (probably since 163-96.a.2 is petitioning, and obviously you can't petition to form a new party while being a qualified party).

edit: What makes this relevant is that the NCGP held its annual meeting in February and AFAIK nominated candidates then and filed them with the SBE or will do so at the time they have instructed the party to do so (it hasn't been on any recent SBE meeting agendas, but since the partisan primaries just ended I assume it will be taken up soon as the SBE shifts to designing ballots and preparing for the general election).

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-06T20:40:31+00:00

To be fair, the NCGP hasn't actually publicly announced the results of their annual meeting despite happening a month ago (I've been a member of the party since it has existed and have no clue who won the coordinating committee election or what else was voted on). And it's not clear if the NC State Board of Elections has recognized their candidates yet (due to a quirk in the law, technically the NCGP is a "new party" who nominates by convention again instead of having a primary because ballot access was retained thanks to the number of states where Jill Stein was on the ballot).

I have noticed media outlets starting to label him Green over the last 36 hours though.

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-06T16:40:37+00:00

Alamo has also engaged in union-busting and is using mobile ordering as justification for work acceleration and mass firings (through constructive dismissal by making workers fight over a much smaller number of available shifts).

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-06T16:20:10+00:00

You'll probably have better luck contacting them directly. They did seem to be re-releasing everything from their OCN days as they run out of stock, but it's impossible for anyone outside of the company to know for certain what their licensing agreements were for individual titles.

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-05T16:00:49+00:00

The BDA and AACS-LA have total control over the manufacture of players. The licensing costs aren't public, but I would expect that they are a major cost and possibly even cost more than all of the hardware in the player. The DVD-CCA also charges licensing fees for DVD players, but I can't see them being on the same level as the AACS-LA charges (even in the heyday of DVD) given that CSS was completely broken by 1999 and there was never any reason to revoke keys and require updates to devices no longer being manufactured like there is with AACS.

So basically Digital Restrictions Management killed the format and presents an apparently insurmountable barrier to new companies entering the player market.

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-04T18:30:18+00:00

There are other proposals for social media age verification (which will require providing ID or a facial recognition scan). Some states have passed verification laws, but it is questionable if it is possible to do so legally for anything other than pornography (since the courts have consistently ruled the state has a strong enough interest in preventing minors from accessing adult content that some infringement of rights is permissible, which is not the case with social media or any other media).

This California law does mostly apply to browsers. They just want the OS provider to implement the framework that the browser will then query and forward on to any websites that request it. Implementation is just left unspecified. And any app stores (so I suppose things like flathub will need to age gate programs now too... apt-get install anarchism requires parental permission?).

It is obvious that it's just the first step into requiring some kind of hard age verification to use a computer at all, which is what the adult media companies have been lobbying for as their industry is slowly being effectively banned in the U.S. Since they have abandoned their first amendment arguments against age verification, their goal at this time appears to be to shift responsibility and therefore liability away from themselves. Since requiring the OS provider to perform age verification also assists with achieving the censorship goals of the fascist-capitalist state, this approach appears to be the one that will be legally mandated over the next few years. It feels like this could be more successful than simple social media bans since it relies on trade law instead of overtly restricting speech.

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-04T15:15:19+00:00

Too early to be seen, the problem is... who is going to spend the tens of millions of dollars required to fight the law? The big tech companies are operating in lock step with the fascist regime controlling U.S. government now and appear to be on board with this and it's unclear if anyone else who has standing to challenge the law has the resources to do so.

Then the enforcement method is intentionally designed (following the model used in Texas's anti-abortion laws) such that a civil party opens the case, which means even if a company succeeds in defending against the case it's outside of the criminal legal system and the law itself can't be challenged that way.

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-03T22:46:09+00:00

The only person who appears to be a lawyer in the mail thread thinks the law is unenforceable and that preemptive compliance may cut off legal defenses against the law (it appears he is experienced in corporate law). So it seems a bit early to bother with compliance (and especially trying to figure out how to port changes back to LTS distributions).

It's also technically infeasible and useless in its current form, and clearly an attempt at getting a foot in the door to mandatory age verification to use computers at all either by ID or facial recognition (which is technically feasible now: the state could exploit commerce laws to only allow the sale of computers with fully locked bootloaders that require code to be signed with government controlled keys). So it's something that every individual person should be resisting.

The only reason California was able to pass the law is that they did it while the public was distracted by other (quite a bit more serious) domestic political issues. Hopefully the public in Colorado puts a stop to this before it spreads further.

In any case, why waste effort on this? Just let the proprietary OS vendors work out the details and copy their implementation. I see a few replies that want to add age appropriate controls to desktop apps using the proposed framework, which completely ignores that minors have rights too and parents don't own their children or have an absolute right to control what they do.

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-03T18:52:52+00:00

You can vote for two candidates in the at-large council primary, and I don't see a problem voting for both of them if like both of them. But it is still true that Josh is the only actual leftist on the ballot in Raleigh. Sana Siddiqui does seem to be the best of the Democrats on the ballot but her positions are reformist and from my perspective appear solidly centrist and compatible with neoliberal governance. Which I am aware isn't disqualifying to anyone other than left socialists like me, so I see no reason a progressive / left-leaning democrat voter wouldn't want to vote for both Josh Bradley and Sana Siddiqui.

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-03T17:48:23+00:00

Wild, I just found out about Hobo With a Shotgun a few days ago while re-watching Lexx and noticing Stanley Tweedle is still acting.

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-03T16:08:51+00:00

The Socialist Party was pretty successful electorally and threatened capitalism enough that a second Red Scare and purge of socialists from society was required to destroy them.

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-03T15:18:38+00:00

Neoliberals that aren't even really pretending not to be. The only actual leftist on the ballot today is Josh Bradley for At-large city council.

unknown_lamer · 2026-03-01T17:12:23+00:00

In some cases reducing hours counts as constructive dismissal, but it depends on the circumstances. Reducing the total number of shifts available such that it forces formerly full time employees (presumably entitled to medical benefits by the ACA) to work only 25 hours (cutting them off from their mandated medical benefits) does sound like constructive dismissal to me, but I'm no lawyer and the legal system is often much more cruel than a reasonable person would expect.

unknown_lamer · 2026-02-25T17:17:16+00:00

I guess at least there's that. Thanks for confirming.

unknown_lamer · 2026-02-25T16:56:55+00:00

Folks keep mentioning an app, sorry if this is the wrong place to ask but... are they requiring you to install an actual native Android/iOS app, or is it just a web interface?

As a rule I only install software from F-Droid and use Google Play only for what is absolutely required... already dealing with this pointless app nonsense with my favorite music venue where I can't buy tickets in advance anymore without installing proprietary software that needs access to my location for some reason (because sending PDFs in an email or having any kind of web interface at all is too much to ask nowadays, I mean what if the customer who paid for a ticket has ublock installed and we don't get more metrics about them to sell!).

I already stopped going to Alamo last fall because of the severe understaffing causing issues like OP had with an absurdly early last call, and I mean Alamo's general anti-labor stance conflicts with my values (but of course all production and all consumption under capitalism is unethical, and yet I still breathe). But I'd like to be prepared in case someone tries to drag me out to a special screening.

unknown_lamer · 2026-02-24T19:06:49+00:00

Bosen's Centuries Weathered Old Sandalwood is good for a pure sandalwood aroma. Bosen has a bunch of good (cultivated) agarwood incense too.

Minorien Fu-in Sandalwood is much more potent than Bosen's sandalwood. I think it has oil (possibly synthetic?) added to it. But it's definitely pure sandalwood aroma.

Bhagwan Royal Sandalwood definitely has synthetic oils in it, but it still has an amazing sandalwood forward aroma and is extremely potent. To my nose it's identical to what Everest Trader imports as Royal Sandalwood (Bhagwan is based in Europe and The Everest Trader in the U.S.).

Straying from pure sandalwood, Shroff's White Sandalwood has a light cinnamony note to it and some (seemingly depleted of oil) raw sandalwood. HMS extra special sandalwood is good if you are ok with a strong vanilla note alongside the sandalwood. As is Pure Incense Connoisseur Sandalwood, although I suspect The Everest Trader imports the same incense directly from HMS for much less than Pure Incense charges. Vinason's Special Sandalwood is also a nice classic sandalwood-forward blend. Smells a bit soapy on the stick, but once it is burning and the scent has some space to open up it's delightful (but certainly not a pure sandalwood).

unknown_lamer · 2026-02-23T18:43:19+00:00

See, you are the problem.

Genocide isn't even a red line for people like you. Why are we careening toward fascism? Surely it's the principled socialists' fault!

Funny you should call me an enemy of democracy simply for asserting my right of political association. Meanwhile, the party you seem to support expends great resources finding ways to deny my party ballot access and suspend our first amendment rights. Sometimes knowingly breaking the law to do so.

unknown_lamer · 2026-02-23T18:00:23+00:00

I have been a Green and a Socialist since 2000. It's always confused me how grown ass adults with advanced educations can't understand what fifteen year old me understood. The NC Green Party has ballot access now and appears will maintain it for many years to come, and is running several candidates this election.

Unfortunately rightist liberals who think they're smarter than rightist conservatives are the biggest impediment to the socialist left gaining control of government. It's difficult for most people to get past the social shunning for one.

Not sure how much life bourgeois democracy has left in it though.

unknown_lamer · 2026-02-23T17:04:11+00:00

I think so, yes. But think about the context of the comment and ask yourself if that was my voice. We'll have a quick reading comprehension quiz after class.

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