https://agelesslinux.org News and Commentary from the Ageless Linux project en-us Sat, 18 Apr 2026 16:00:00 +0000 https://agelesslinux.org/map.html Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) introduced H.R. 8250, the "Parents Decide Act," on April 13, 2026. It is the first federal bill to adopt California's OS-level age verification model directly. Every "operating system provider" — defined as "a person that develops, licenses, or controls the operating system" on any general purpose computing device — must collect a date of birth at account setup, obtain parental verification for users under 18, and expose an API that hands the date of birth to every app developer. No exemption for open source, non-commercial, or hobbyist maintainers. Enforced by the FTC as an unfair or deceptive practice. Referred to House Energy & Commerce. The sponsor's press release named "Apple and Google" as the targets; the statutory text catches every Linux distribution maintainer in the country. State Law Tracker updated with new Federal card and timeline entry. Sat, 18 Apr 2026 16:00:00 +0000 https://agelesslinux.org/map.html#hr8250-introduced-2026-04-18 https://agelesslinux.org/fax.html Send a one-page fax to your California legislator about AB 1043. No age verification required. Sat, 18 Apr 2026 09:53:33 +0000 https://agelesslinux.org/fax.html https://agelesslinux.org/fax-transparency.html Public fax coverage for every target state. Ten U.S. senators and representatives have a DC fax. Everyone else has decided that faxes are beneath them. Sat, 18 Apr 2026 09:53:33 +0000 https://agelesslinux.org/fax-transparency.html https://agelesslinux.org/fax.html New /fax.html: address entry, legislator lookup, four CYOA persona paths (parent, developer, student, privacy advocate), section-cited fax template, live preview, send flow, and sharing. Every step teaches one thing about AB 1043. The form is the argument. Paired with /fax-transparency.html — "The Shame Wall" — which documents fax coverage across Congress and target state legislatures: 10 of 538 federal members keep a DC fax line; 120 of 120 California state legislators are reachable via the algorithmic Capitol fax pattern. Tagline: "No age verification required to send a fax." Sat, 18 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0000 https://agelesslinux.org/fax.html#launch-2026-04-18 https://agelesslinux.org/map.html Michigan HB 4429 and SB 284 — identical bipartisan bills based on Digital Childhood Alliance model legislation — pulled by sponsors April 6, 2026 after privacy advocates identified critical gaps: no limits on data use, no restrictions on combining data with other personal information, no data deletion requirements. First state to withdraw bills based on this model. State law tracker updated with new "Withdrawn" section and timeline entry. Sun, 13 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0000 https://agelesslinux.org/map.html#michigan-withdrawn-2026-04-13 https://agelesslinux.org/distros.html MidnightBSD merged PR #302: a complete age verification stack in the base OS. The aged daemon stores per-user age/DOB in SQLite, exposed over a Unix socket, enabled by default. Includes agectl CLI, agev(3) library API in libutil, and age-based Unix groups (age4p, age13p, age16p, age18p) for mport package gating. Purely self-declared — no external verification. PR body acknowledges it "will not comply with Brazil or the proposed law in New York." First operating system to ship a base-system age verification daemon. Geographic COPYRIGHT exclusion of CA and Brazil remains alongside. Sun, 29 Mar 2026 12:00:00 +0000 https://agelesslinux.org/distros.html#midnightbsd-aged-2026-03-29 https://agelesslinux.org/citations.html Added the EFF's comprehensive age verification resource hub (eff.org/Age) to citations. New citation cards for the hub overview and "Who Is Harmed" exclusion statistics (15M without licenses, 43% of trans Americans lack correct ID, 100M with facial differences). Two new Further Reading entries for the hub and "Does the Tech Even Work" technical analysis. Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:00:00 +0000 https://agelesslinux.org/citations.html#eff-hub-2026-03-20 https://agelesslinux.org/distros.html systemd PR #40954 merged March 18, adding a birthDate field to user records — the data layer for the emerging age verification stack. Distro tracker updated with systemd (upstream), NixOS, Artix Linux, and Kicksecure/Whonix status change. Emerging Standard section rewritten for the systemd + xdg-desktop-portal pipeline. Wed, 19 Mar 2026 22:00:00 +0000 https://agelesslinux.org/distros.html#systemd-birthdate-2026-03-19 https://agelesslinux.org/map.html Added Illinois, New York, and Brazil to state law tracker; expanded timeline and penalty tables Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:27:14 +0000 https://agelesslinux.org/map.html#updated-2026-03-19 https://agelesslinux.org/distros.html Added Arch Linux 32 (excluding CA + BR), updated MidnightBSD to reflect Brazil exclusion, added source citations Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:27:14 +0000 https://agelesslinux.org/distros.html#updated-2026-03-19 https://agelesslinux.org/support.html Ageless Linux — Support Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:19:09 +0000 https://agelesslinux.org/support.html