Great Blue Heron

That makes sense - thanks

Shouldn’t he be in the cage? Why should she have to be inconvenienced to protect herself from him?

It’s fun to point at the crappy performance of current technology. But all I can think about is the amount of power and hardware the AI bros are going to burn through trying to improve their results.

This is perfectly logical and I agree. Except that this controversy has prompted me to go learn about Lennart Poettering. I’ve been using systemd forever and I like it - I like journald and remote journald, I like networkd, I even deleted cron off my systems and use systemd timers exclusively. I knew there was some controversy about Lennart, but I didn’t really care. Now that I’ve read a bit about his background and, maybe more importantly, his new company - I don’t have a good feeling for the future of systemd.

I’m thinking the same. I understand the people saying it’s no big deal, it’s just an optional field. But the existing optional fields (GECOS) have been there since the beginning of time. The original Unix user database (/etc/passwd) was created in a different time. Things have changed in the last 50 years and we now know that a simple field in an OS level database is not really an appropriate place to store PII. I don’t know what the solution is, as these laws are coming and there will be some people that need to comply, but I don’t think the current change to systemd is the right approach.

On the plus side - this controversy has prompted me to look into other options for my home servers and I’m loving the minimalism and simplicity of Alpine. (This isn’t a knee jerk reaction - I’ve been frustrated by the bloated feel of mainstream distributions for a while - more the straw that may break the camel’s back)

I’ve never followed the people or the politics - I just started using systemd when it appeared in whatever disto I was using at the time and liked it. I’m trying to catch up now because I have reservations about using projects that incorporate AI (and I’m learning this may be impossible to avoid) and I most certainly won’t use anything that implements age verification. (The irony of typing this on a device that has age verification via my credit card hurts)

I accept that Microsoft had significant influence over systemd when Poettering worked there, but I don’t understand how they do now.

I also understand that Poettering likes Windows, and wants to make Linux more like Windows. That’s not the same as Microsoft controlling systemd.

Are you saying that Amutable is just a front for Microsoft?

Do you believe Microslop funds and maintains systemd because Lennart Poettering works there, or is there more to it than that?

If it’s just that Poettering works there, you may be interested to know that he left in January this year.

I’ve got a Sony and even it’s showing home screen ads - normally it’s just “suggestions” for shows on streaming services I don’t have, but the occasional car ad also comes through. I have a theory that the reason Sony are getting out of the TV business is that they don’t want to develop their own TV OS and they’re sick of their customers complaining about the ads in Google’s OS.

I’m about to get a 2nd one and I’m seriously considering a computer monitor hooked up to a mini PC running XBMC or something.

It’s not just that it’s slavery, but it’s literally destroying the people doing it. Being exposed to so much horrendous content has lasting impact. It’s like the coal mines (or any number of other body destroying examples) but it’s not lungs that suffer, it’s the brain.