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SystemD Adds Optional 'birthDate' Field for Age Verification to JSON User Records

1 month 2 weeks ago
"The systemd project merged a pull request adding a new birthDate field to the JSON user records managed by userdb in response to the age verification laws of California, Colorado, and Brazil," reports the blog It's FOSS. They note that the field "can only be set by administrators, not by users themselves" — it's the same record that already holds metadata like realName, emailAddress, and location: Lennart Poettering, the creator of systemd, has clarified that this change is "an optional field in the userdb JSON object. It's not a policy engine, not an API for apps. We just define the field, so that it's standardized iff people want to store the date there, but it's entirely optional. " In simple words, this is something that adds a new, optional field that can then be used by other open source projects like xdg-desktop-portal to build age verification compliance on top of, without systemd itself doing anything with the data or making it mandatory to provide. A merge request asking for this change to be repealed was struck down by Lennart, who gave the above-mentioned reasoning behind this, and further noted that people were misunderstanding what systemd is trying to do here. "It enforces zero policy," Poettering said. "It leaves that up for other parts of the system."

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EditorDavid

Jeff Bezos Seeking $100 Billion to Buy Manufacturing Companies, 'Transform' Them With AI

1 month 2 weeks ago
Jeff Bezos "is in early talks to raise $100 billion," reports the Wall Street Journal, "for a new fund that would buy up manufacturing companies and seek to use AI technology to accelerate their path to automation." "The Amazon.com founder is meeting with some of the world's largest asset managers to raise funding for the project." A few months ago, [Bezos] traveled to the Middle East to discuss the new fund with sovereign wealth representatives in the region. More recently, he went to Singapore to raise funding for the effort as well, according to people familiar with the matter. The fund, described in investor documents as a "manufacturing transformation vehicle," is aiming to buy companies in major industrial sectors such as chipmaking, defense and aerospace... Bezos was recently appointed co-CEO of Project Prometheus, a new startup that is building artificial-intelligence models that can understand and simulate the physical world. Bezos plans to use the company's technology to boost the efficiency and profitability of businesses owned by the fund, a playbook that some investment firms are similarly deploying in sectors such as accounting and property management... [Prometheus has also hired employees from OpenAI and Google DeepMind, the article points out.] While much of the AI revolution has been focused on large language models, billions of dollars have begun to flow to companies that are seeking to apply spatially focused AI systems toward industries including robotics and manufacturing... Amazon, one of [America's] largest employers, has closed in on the milestone of having as many robots as humans.

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EditorDavid