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The more I think about this, the more it seems they're not talking about linker map files[1]....

[1] https://www.tasking.com/documentation/smartcode/ctc/referenc...


systemd also stores the real name of the user using this computer in the same user record. Why not remove that as well, as it could uniquely identify the user of the computer? Or the uuid field...

Because the law requires the operating system to take proactive measures to ensure the age is correct.

You can put "Luke Skywalker" into the name fields, or even nothing at all, and there's no legal mandate that those fields be filled in or accurate.

The birthdate, however, has a legal mandate to be correct and checked for correctness by the software developers of the OS.

For example, if you visit facebook, tinder, or your bank and any of them store and communicate your actual age, the OS is mandated that it must update that field. Google's creepy analytics would also get involved here as if you put your age as a 99 year old, but google analytics show you are more likely to be 20->25 then the OS is supposed to update that age field with the better information from google.

And of course, facebook, google, and every other website can ask your browser for an age range and they are required to report it. Which makes this a symbiotic leaking of information.

All of this is about destroying anonymity on the internet. Today it's the age that needs to be perfect with communication efforts. Tomorrow it'll be the name. And of course, that will all be linked to every social media account.

Why is this bad? In many governments, it isn't. However, this presents a clear mechanism to track and monitor people who dissent with the government.


> The birthdate, however, has a legal mandate to be correct and checked for correctness by the software developers of the OS.

please tell me which law mandates that the birthdate that I put in a config file on my PC has to be correct?


It doesn't mandate that you correct it, it mandates that if something is more certain that the OS must update that field.

It's in both the Colorado and California laws.


so what will keep you from just doing "sudo vim" on that config file afterwards? Right: Nothing

You're right, you can go in and reset that field. You can also patch systemd to ignore requests to update the field. Nothing stops you the individual from bypassing the law.

The nasty part of the law isn't that a technically minded person can easily circumvent it. The nasty part is that you have to circumvent it and a lot of people likely won't. You circumventing it makes you stick out more than if you just leave it in place as is as the majority of people won't be doing that.

The point I and others are making is this is a law designed to track individuals and it only ramps up from here. And with this being the intent of the law, it's really only a matter of time before "sudo vim" becomes an illegal act. (or an act these governments attempt to make illegal).


but nobody is tracking anyone yet. The API is not yet in place, in fact there isn't even any idea on how that API should look like. This will likely take a few years to finalize (if ever).

Right now this is just one more field in a database (config file), nothing more and nothing less. Claiming it's the first step to "making sudo illegal" is quite a large stretch, don't you think? If that were the case, Windows DRM, Denuvo, and all those would also have been "the first step in making sudo illegal". Remember, circumventing DRM is against the law for ages now


The FBI for years has had teams of people navigating forums and derailing discussions. The people doing this are paid. Assuming you aren't a fed, you are not paid. Respect yourself and don't do their work for free.

Because this is a reactionary political statement and not a well thought out privacy project

Funny that the supposed “reactionary” statement is the one opposing bills backed by anti-porn activists and the Heritage Foundation.

Yeah, that's what reactionary means. Just blindly opposing things.

The problem is the law itself not whether a software package complies with it. Let me rephrase: people like you are the real problem, rather choosing to harass software maintainers that are merely following a ridiculous law instead of harassing your government to not implement it.

"Just following orders"

The thing is you can do something against these orders like we in the EU do every year against chatcontrol and other ridiculous laws. It's in your hands... stop sitting on them and stop moralizing other people's behaviour if you do jack shit yourself. If we will ever see the problem that some software mantainers have to comply to a law that will directly kill people you can bring your nazi talking points back to the table.

Like OpenAI and drones, for example?

Despite the name OpenAI is not an OSS Project.

Yet OpenAI has programmers implementing integrations with military technology. Those programmers are "just following orders." Nazi Germany weaponry was not an OSS project, it still killed millions.

guys, it's just a friggin data field in a local config file! Nothing that will end the world.

You can all come back when that supposed "law to force OSS to implement an actual age verification" is being discussed.

Otherwise, please get rid of all your knives (those are used to stab people by the thousands RIGHT NOW!) and your guns (those are used to shoot people by the thousands RIGHT NOW!) before complaining about a feature that is killing nobody


It goes nowhere of course, but people seem to think that the age verification laws that are currently being drafted everywhere somehow make this the obvious next step.

They don't understand that it's still all on your computer and you can of course set the birthdate to whatever you want (or not set it at all).

tl;dr: it's a tinfoil hat fork


So what’s the point of the “feature” then?

To make it easier for software to get a sane default? Same as why you put in your real name, it'll be used as default. For example I don't want to have to select my birth year on every website I visit. If there's a way for the browser to get a default year, then that's good for me.

Steam also asks you for your birth year all the time when visiting some of their pages, it's annoying as hell because you can't just type the year, you have to select it from a drop down list. They store it in a cookie, which is cool as it makes the process more streamlined. So you're also saying that this is a bad thing?

There is no law requiring you to put the correct birth date in a config file on your PC, the same as there is no law requiring you to write the correct birthdate on your wall calendar or whatever.


Tried it. Doesn't work. Does not show any vessels for me, list (and map) stays empty, console is full of "WS closed: no close frame received or sent. Reconnecting in 10s"

HN hug of death?


You got an aisstream.io key and set it before launching? Check the README.You can hard code it in shadow_tracker.py too

Bedtime in Sweden. Back tomorrow if you need support.


yeah, seemed I had an error in that key, it cut off 2 characters at the end. Works fine now, thanks!

Good!

Tried to do onboarding guide as proper as possible with the scripts and for different OSs. Many OSINT hobbyists/enthusiasts out there, but not all of them are familiar with installing dependencies/launching Python etc

It takes a few 3 min runs to render/populate the map.

Happy tracking!


Feels like that could be the point of the site. It's a shadow fleet where the ships are trying to stay hidden from tracking. That would be a great site.

Kind of like my favorite book on my self title "Everything I Know About Women". It's a hard cover book with hundreds of pages. Every one of them is blank.

I guess I find dumb things funny


:)

A hybrid war going on in the Baltic region. Women involved too

We have been running the main system a year. Loads of data, less women

Now there is this light version for the hobbyists, onboarding tricky for some users, but README covers it all


Chuck Norris didn't die -- Death just became Chuck Norris

Death did not come for Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris came for Death.

yeah, same happened to me, the first site I was sent to was a list of people sending in random "sunday thoughts" (or whatever it was called) on (actual physical) postcards which then got scanned and posted. There were some good things in there. Now I can't find that site again because I didn't realize it was randomized...


muscle memory mainly, I guess?

Sure, switching might not be that troublesome, but I can tell you the first 48 hours or so will be painful, you'll insert stray ":" and "i" characters everywhere :)


I barely use vim these days, and I still do that in every text editor.


Kana is a phonetic alphabet, you write things exactly the way you pronounce them. Since both "brown" and "braun" are (roughly) pronounced the same (at least to Japanese ears), they are written the same.


I don't see why platforms would have to store the data indefinitely.

Once you are verified, you just flip a bit "verified" in the database and delete all identification data.

No reason to store the data indefinitely


I don't think telling people to directly look into sunlight is good advice


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