Age _indication_ means that when you set up your device or create a user account, you enter a date of birth for the user. The OS then provides a native API to return a user's age bracket (not full date-of-birth). If the user is a minor, the OS will require parental authentication in some way to modify the setting again. This can all be done completely offline. It works because parents almost always buy the devices used by children, and can enter the correct date-of-birth during setup.

Age _verification_ means that some online service has to verify your age, and collects a bunch of (meta)data in the process. This is highly problematic for privacy, security, and the open internet.

In the specific case of CA AB1043: (1) Systems are required to ask the user for their age and just trust whatever they say (2) Applications are required to query the system for the user's age range. Other enacted and proposed device-based age assurance mandates have different properties.

This post goes into quite a bit of detail about the various points of concern: https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/device-based-age-assuran...

It is similar with crypto wars. They try and try until they have backdoor everywhere.

About verification they will try to implement WEI on browsers, and verification on os.

It is a crusade to make you always identifiable. Companies and governments want it so much because it is so valuable to them, it adds so much power over people.

So what's next. They will move borders here, and there. Every year.

Otherwise my Intel NUC server with Debian is 2 years old, so I expect the honest age would be 2 years? I may have parts for some old PCs to put together that could get adult software I guess...

But my main concern with this is applications like Firefox will eventually require this systemd age specific field and a standard systemd function to call. That means this age field will need to be populated and thus locking out the *BSDs and non-systemd Linux.

If that happens, this makes the systemd critics 100% right, systemd is being forced upon all distros by various upstream applocations.

Might seem harmless now but it won’t next time, and you will have already capitulated

The only sane way to do this is you were playing along with arbitrary legislative age-gaters would be to add a generic "additional user info" blob to the account fields, if it didn't already exist.

I wonder if it's time to try something like sixos or Guix SD.

Why are these changes being made on a worldwide basis when the laws that have been introduced are a relatively small fraction of the world? California isn't going to go after individual systemd maintainers. Will California go after Torvalds? I doubt it. Apple? Surely, but this is, quite frankly, a ridiculous thing to even suggest for inclusion into these setups.

If they ever seize your computer, they can probably also tack on computer fraud charges

For root to manage privileges in an OS, isn't a group the most straitforward way?

Can't flatpak read the groups of an user?

the simple fact you sending the same signal over and over again, with all other signals your browser send, it will be another key to make you apart. They don't care if you lie. Important that you lie the same story every time.

And after having your dob, who could easily be a flag if you are less than 18, they could easily request your name, or a document number, but I think it will be much better, it will have some ISP and/or Device ID.