I can't help, but to react to couple things in Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting article. My aim isn't to bash anyone, let alone the author.

At Canonical, Ubuntu Linux's parent company, developers are talking about local age‑bracket flags set at account creation and exposed via a simple application programming interface (API) or config file, with no online ID checks or central user registry. Specifically, programmers have floated a D‑Bus interface so desktops and app centers like GNOME Software/Snap Store can read a coarse age band without storing full birth dates.

I have expected nothing less than exposing “age” to other applications like browser, messaging apps and so on so forth, and you? Sending out age on boot, or prior to boot, made no sense. Also users can be switched back and forth once OS boots up. In other words, age verification “on boot” makes no sense. Age verification on login or tied to user “does”.

Jef Spaleta, the Fedora Project leader, isn't sure of the legalities, but he thinks it might be as simple as mapping “uid to usernames and group membership and having a new file in /etc/ that keeps up with age.” In this approach, age information might never need to leave the PC. The government would just be told that the user “YoungDude13” is under 16, with no other information shared.

This sounds like oxymoron to me. Yes, exact age of user doesn't, might not or won't leave the PC, in this case. However age (range) is still being hinted somewhere to some place, therefore age, however imprecise, does leave the PC.

I wonder for how long will those “no, we won't!” stances, which seem to be flip-flopping a bit, hold up. I also wonder whether people still laugh about social credit, fingerprint this, facial scan that in you-know-which-country.

That's all.

— Zdenek Styblik 2026/03/13 15:00