cheeto already walked it back https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/14/us-strikes-iran-bahrain-jordan-uae-tankers

To be fair, Taco Bell was already a thing.

That’s not evidence of anything, it’s just a tautology stating that machine-id is indeed used, which has never been under any dispute throughout this discussion. What I provided was rationale for why machine-id is problematic, and why systemd makes the problem worse. You have not provided any rationale for why it’s necessary aside from stating a tautological fact here. Again, nothing new has been added to the discussion in the process, but you insist on continuing it for reasons unknown. I’ll just let you have the last word here since that’s what you seem to be after.

Have a good day.

Seems pretty obvious that it’s going to be China given that China sits at the centre of production of most of the things the rest of the world consumes meaning that the global economy is centred on China.

Maybe go back and read through the thread because I very clearly and repeatedly explained myself. I’m not going to do it once again for you here. You’ve basically made this huge assumption that machine-id was somehow critical to adopt for which I’m not aware of any supporting evidence, nor have you bothered providing any rationale for. You just keep stating it as fact. Meanwhile, as I’ve explained, systemd makes the whole situation worse precisely by creating a monolithic structure which everything depends on, and which makes solving the problem more difficult now. I don’t think there’s any point continuing the discussion though because we just keep restating the same points here and I don’t think any further understanding will be gained by anyone from continuing to do that.

Every society is three meals away from chaos. - Lenin

Also, given that electricity costs in China are like a third of what they are in the US, it’s fundamentally cheaper for Chinese companies to operate.

You have yet to explain what the net positive that machine-id brings to the table is. I’m eagerly waiting for you thesis.

lmao that’s amazing

I’m glad he is your president because he tore down the curtains and now the whole world can see the US for what it really is.

What’s actually being said is that the west is hypocritical, preaching one thing and doing another. Also, your whole argument is demonstrably nonsense because during the Cold War the west was secure enough to not block any Soviet media. It’s not like Russia has a more powerful propaganda machine than USSR did. What changed is that now there is domestic discontent in the west due to collapsing living standards which is what’s making people open to alternative views. Banning outside media is just an attempt to sweep underlying material problems under the carpet.

as shocked as you are by this development

looks like they’re working on fixing that

in completely unrelated news https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/12/former-emir-of-qatar-sheikh-hamad-bin-khalifa-al-thani-dies-reactions

Just ran across somebody talking about it on a forum. To be clear, having a consistent id can be useful outside of tracking, which is probably why it got introduced, but clearly tracking potential wasn’t considered fully here.

yeah it’s pretty clever and I love the low tech approach

You could, but there was no machine-id on Linux originally and it was something that got added and arguably shouldn’t have been. Again, I’m really struggling to understand why you’re so invested in defending this decision. Like it’s obviously a bad decision, it’s not necessary, why is it so hard for you to just say that.

I believe liberewolf does hide your machine id

yup, both Chrome and Firefox expose your machine-id by default

I think the example holds up fine actually. The difference is that in the second example the company decided that AI should be used here, and never consulted the worker about the process. That’s the key part in the whole thing, and this sort of thing has been happening long before AI I might add. Business people decide on some arbitrary timeline they pull out of their ass, and then it gets handed down to the workers who’ve never been consulted about the feasibility, then when the timeline can’t be met or the quality is shoddy, it is the workers who are blamed.

The AI itself is incidental to a more general problem that the worker is put in a situation where it’s basically impossible for them to do a good job with the time and resources available. What makes this case a reverse centaur is that AI is the driving force, and the human is expected to clean up after it, but without even having the proper resources to do so. The whole reason the human was in the loop in the first place was precisely because everybody knew you can’t trust AI, so there needed to be somebody to blame in the loop.