@nik @torproject @mullvadnet I find that too bad, but back then it made sense since usernames rarely were long enough and in the academic-scientific envoirment of #Unix (and most of the #Internet) #Anonymity and #Privacy weren't priorities at all back then.
"#AgeVerification" is #Cyberfascist| Bullshit and it's being pushed by #NSAbook / #StasiBook / #Facebook / #Meta as means to kill competition like the #Fediverse!
#introduction
Hello,
I am a #sysadmin looking to keep up to date with new stuff going on in tech, both in the professional industry and hobby, #selfhosting #selfhosted arena.
If it’s tech I’m probably interested in it, but specifically I am messing with #meshcore these days and trying to self-host a #discord alternative. I love #linux and #unix and nerd out over the history of both.
The Wander System is a fantastic bit of #Unix #InteractiveFiction history, as well as originating in Washington State (where I grew up). I had no idea until listening to this episode that it pre-dated #ColossalCave by a couple years, because the version we all tried to play and gave up on early came from 1978.
Also it was easy enough to just read the game files for hints, as they were all in plain ASCII. I found from reading the sources that Tim Gilberts tried to build that it was installed to obscure these files via the setuid bit, which was a feature of even the original First Edition Unix on the PDP-7!
I wonder if anyone has any source backups of a pre-78 version, and how it might have looked before the boom in text adventures.
There is kind of an implicit promise within both #floss and the #unix philosophy, that users maybe should care about how their software is put together. That they can be empowered by both the design of the system, and with the code.
AND I feel like reality lately is just kicking the teeth in, of every user who cares about their software.
Crazy... After a week of continuous use with Debian (with daily reboots in the morning), my Logitech MX Mechanical keyboard suddenly started acting up: some letters got stuck and were displayed dozens of times while I was typing. Other keys weren't registering at all.
Well, I thought, maybe there’s something wrong with the keyboard—dirt, crumbs, dust, or something like that. So I switched keyboards to an MX Keys—exactly the same issue. No improvement even with a third keyboard (Cherry, via cable).
So I removed the built-in NVMe with Debian, installed one with Zorin OS—absolutely no input errors. Same thing with an NVMe running Fedora. Everything back to normal. I’ve never experienced anything like this before. The mysterious mysteries of Linux. 😆
#linux #unix #opensource #freesoftware #debian #zorinos #fedora #logitech #cherry #keyboard
Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲/𝟬𝟯/𝟮𝟯 (Valuable News - 2026/03/23) available.
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Cases in point:
1. Only Colorado bill SB26-051 has exemptions for intra-business apps if being used by employees of the business.
1. Louisiana bill HB977 requires the 'providers' of covered application stores to collect age data, connect minor to parent accounts, and send various notifications from upstream projects to users and their parents. Colorado and Illinois bill HB5511 place the requirements on the 'providers' of operating systems, instead. (Hello, #Debian Developers! You both 'control' a 'covered application store' per LA and 'develop' the operating system software on 'computers' and 'devices' per IL/CO.)
1. Louisiana explicitly requires that store providers maintain information about parent accounts in the accounts database. Colorado and Illinois do not.
1. Only New York bill 2025-S8102 rules out just asking the user for xyr age and trusting it ('user self-reporting of age').
1. Only Colorado has data exemptions for H.E. institutions.
A lesson can be learned from timezones in #Unix.
At (almost) first there was the simplistic implementation of the TZ environment variable having something like GMT0BST1 ; then extended to things like GMT0BST1,M3.5.0/01:00:00,M10.5.0/01:00:00 . This was 'good enough' for people who didn't care about time from a few years ago; and who didn't live in a place with multiple timezone jurisdictions; and who didn't travel widely. It got ossified into the Single Unix Specification.
https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/basedefs/V1_chap08.html#tag_08_03
Then came the Olson tz database which encoded the complexities of odd laws and complex histories in loads of differing jurisdictions around the planet.
Of course, the laws on #AgeVerification are already following the latter model.
The simple dæmon + account database age field system that I predicted on 2026-03-01 is the simplistic implementation.
An Olson-level implementation will need to know current location, business/work/school/personal use, & accountholder's parents.
Kevin Karhan 
Heidi
Space Hobo
trashHeap 
Majenko
vermaden
vermaden
JdeBP