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Inside the Systemd Age Verification Debate: Developer Responds to Criticism (itsfoss.com)
submitted 2 days ago by cm0002@europe.pub to c/linux@programming.dev
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Dylan M. Taylor is not a household name in the Linux world. At least, he wasn’t until recently.

The software engineer and longtime open source contributor has quietly built a respectable track record over the years: writing Python code for the Arch Linux installer, maintaining packages for NixOS, and contributing CI/CD pipelines to various FOSS projects.

But a recent change he made to systemd has pushed him into the spotlight, along with a wave of intense debate.

At the center of the controversy is a seemingly simple addition Dylan made: an optional birthDate field in systemd’s user database.

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[-] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

That's not blocking the fingerprinting, that obfuscating the data. The fact that you are doing that itself becomes part of the fingerprint being built. Services like Tor or Chameleon don't stop the fingerprinting process running, they just make it more difficult (but not impossible) to tie the fingerprint to your actual identity.

[-] quick_snail@feddit.nl 0 points 1 day ago

It's making the fingerprinting efforts useless. Sure, they can do it, but many of us are blocking them from being able to uniquely fingerprint and track us across the internet

this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
126 points (91.4% liked)

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