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The positive thing that I can see here is that if it helps knowledge go around that running local models is possible and easy, it might reduce the stranglehold of a bunch of companies on the market. I highly doubt the "general public" does anything with LLMs that is outside of the capability of open models. Of course I may be overestimating that "general public"'s interest in consequences of giving multi-billion dollar companies power.

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Quoting: EhvisDid Proton 10 ever release out of beta? Don't remember ever using it except for one recent game where I had to use Proton Experimental.

Yes, it was initially in November 2025.

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Did Proton 10 ever release out of beta? Don't remember ever using it except for one recent game where I had to use Proton Experimental.

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Quoting: PlayingOnLinuxphone

Quoting: LoudTechieThat's the current design and is only hampered by the fact that not everybody celebrates their 18th birthday by doing online 18th birthday specific things.

[...]

A great way to limit the damage would for example be to make certain that age checks can only happen on a certain time interval.
Say for 1 day every month.

Oh yes, than you are non of the people at this one day, but one of the 28-31 days bracket. Makes it so much more unlikely that they collect this data. /s

In fact, that blurs the data just a little bit, but it is still close enough that they can separate these persons from 99.9% of the world. So companies only need further information to find out who of the 0.1% of all people are that person. Without the one months idea it would be more like 0.01% (because as you say people are probably not online at their birthday). It is indeed better, but I think it is clear that "better" doesn't mean much more protection.

Edit:
[It's open source, so adding this feature is feasable and legal.](https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui).

At least something EU learned (making such tools open source). Yes I read it before. But it does not help against any of the bad things. For example if I would be a bad person, I could create an account for "my child" that is not existing and use it for myself to get merged to kids chats more easily etc.

The only way that is really feasible is to not send any data to any service. The services should provide age data themselves, so that a local parent control app can manage app access without exposing information to the companies. There is still a chance that some apps can get the age, but it is more likely to avoid exposing data entirely.

That app feels like the stupid attempt for the digital Euro, which exposes too much information (unlike GNU-Taler). The EU commission may learned something about Open Source, but still not enough to design good digital strategies. They should learn about data minimalism before creating such plans.

On one hand I agree with the statement that an passing an individual age gate shouldn't require passing data to any service.
On the other hand letting the services collect the data themselves is only worse, because they will still know when you crossed the 18+ line(as ordered by you they've obtained this information themselves) and now they will also know whatever information you had to provide to them to reason this information.
The EU app blocks the transfer of the second set of data by centralizing this information by a party that already must have access to this information(this same database is used for the production of your id and all kinds of other government services reliant on date of birth). This is data minimalisation.
Your first point was that minimal data was too much, your second point is that everybody should collect minimal +1

On the pretending to be a kid thing:
Yeah, duh.
This app is supposed to provide proof that you're an adult. Not that you're underage and/or trustworthy.
That's another part of the data minimalization the app provides.
None of the age gating laws require anyone to proof a maximum age(and none of kids group apps do either), because we know kids harm each other just as hard as adults harm them, so we provide them with adult supervision instead. It's just that adults should know better than to harm a kid, while kids don't have to.

The one thing I have a problem is that the government receives information about private activities of its citizens these citizens often would love to keep private("adult" consumption isn't something everybody is proud of), which is why I made the design I made before.

On the GNU taler thing.
Yeah, that's a very smart and experimental system [as such the European commission is directly funding its development through NGI.](https://www.taler.net/en/news/)
[They also launched their own version.](https://www.taler.net/en/news/2024-01.html)

Edit:
Yeah indeed small precision costs are the weakness of latency methods.
Yet A. these first precision points are also where the biggest strides can be made(you can't personalize birthday adverts, you can't scam somebody by claiming to be a relative with proof that you know their birthday, you can't pretend to be them by their doctor who uses it as part of their confirmation method, etc.)
B. Yeah, that's the issue with the principle of least privilege we can't hide more data without significantly harming functionality.

Also something that might help a lot in this case is some form of rate limiting of requests like required user interaction and once a day.
This will amplify peoples own infrequency in adult consumption into uncertainty for the services.

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Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: LoudTechiecriminal dev: Most potential partners avoid me, because I've been proven to be violent in court

Assuming it was a violent crime. Even today, people do still sometimes go to jail for embezzlement as long as it wasn't a big enough amount to make you a new-minted oligarch . . .

According to our favorite mediaoutlet.
He claimed he was jailed, because he was "a very violent person."

Ah. Then I retract my point.

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This is so awesome! With the arm improvements, I truly wonder if sometime in the future, one of my desktop pc builds will be arm architecture and not x86 ...!!! I've had nearly 40 yrs of x86 pcs in my house, wow.

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Quoting: LoudTechieThat's the current design and is only hampered by the fact that not everybody celebrates their 18th birthday by doing online 18th birthday specific things.

[...]

A great way to limit the damage would for example be to make certain that age checks can only happen on a certain time interval.
Say for 1 day every month.

Oh yes, than you are non of the people at this one day, but one of the 28-31 days bracket. Makes it so much more unlikely that they collect this data. /s

In fact, that blurs the data just a little bit, but it is still close enough that they can separate these persons from 99.9% of the world. So companies only need further information to find out who of the 0.1% of all people are that person. Without the one months idea it would be more like 0.01% (because as you say people are probably not online at their birthday). It is indeed better, but I think it is clear that "better" doesn't mean much more protection.

Edit:
[It's open source, so adding this feature is feasable and legal.](https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui).

At least something EU learned (making such tools open source). Yes I read it before. But it does not help against any of the bad things. For example if I would be a bad person, I could create an account for "my child" that is not existing and use it for myself to get merged to kids chats more easily etc.

The only way that is really feasible is to not send any data to any service. The services should provide age data themselves, so that a local parent control app can manage app access without exposing information to the companies. There is still a chance that some apps can get the age, but it is more likely to avoid exposing data entirely.

That app feels like the stupid attempt for the digital Euro, which exposes too much information (unlike GNU-Taler). The EU commission may learned something about Open Source, but still not enough to design good digital strategies. They should learn about data minimalism before creating such plans.

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Did they backport the dll loading order patch? 👀

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Quoting: WanderdueneWill Mint's extended release cycles have an impact on me as a gamer?

Yes and no ... it depends on your use case. Few days ago I helped someone switching to Linux and that person was using a VR headset and a flight simulator controller. For the special controller there is support in mainline kernal since February this year. So without an up to date kernel it does not work out of the box. For VR on the other hand it is better to have the latest drivers. A friend told me it broke more often on Mint than on Arch.

There are indeed reasons to chose Arch over Mint and you may have other special reasons that speak against Mint. Also you will have to wait little bit longer to get newest Mesa improvements as +30% raytracing performance for AMD cards etc. But every year those huge improvements will become less, so you will be affected less in upcoming versions of Mint.

For gaming in general it doesn't matter. Any game that runs on Arch should also run on Mint. If you value the overall user experience in Mint over other distros, it is probably the best option for you, even if you do not have newest drivers. Personally I am on Debian and backport drivers. I am also still waiting for raytracing improvements, but it does not really affect my non raytracing gaming experience (and I cannot even play most games with raytracing anyway).

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Quoting: Pikolo50 GB is plenty for anything that's not video. My mobile data plan is 2GB and non-video calling and streaming applications don't use more than ~500 Mb a month.

But I can't see how they can possibly keep it free

Google money.
Google pays most of their income for having google chrome as their default search, since it lost a anti-trust lawsuit in the USA.
Also upsells.
Mozilla sells(actually pretty valuable) premium services including more VPN access.

Edit:
Okay more accurately they sell e-mail relay services where you can beg to be one day included in an extra premium option for phone relay services and vpn access.

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Clearly in terms of AI and especially AI sovereignty, AI client #99992087 was clearly the best use of resources. Utilizing OpenAI compatible providers and MCP? How daring.

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Gothic 1 Classic

Glad to see classics getting improvements alongside new releases

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I just realized this is good news for me.
I maintain a Mint system for somebody else from a large distance.
The more stability, the better.

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Quoting: lilovent

Quoting: elmapul"AI-generated code is based upon sources of unknown origins and may not be compatible with the Zlib license, or may introduce conflicting license terms if they include code from other projects."
finally someone quoted the licence issue

So, what license is then, when humans copy paste from StackOverflow?

Stackoverflow has an official licensing policy.

[CC BY-SA 4.0 for posted content](https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing)

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Mint is reliable and easy. If they need time, give them time.

And if you are impatient you can use another distribution with bleeding edge Cinnamon or use XanMod kernel, distrobox and flatpaks to have a reliable system and some bleeding edge packages.

Hope they can deliver one of the best LTS ever. 😀

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Quoting: elmapul"AI-generated code is based upon sources of unknown origins and may not be compatible with the Zlib license, or may introduce conflicting license terms if they include code from other projects."
finally someone quoted the licence issue

So, what license is then, when humans copy paste from StackOverflow?

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Deadly Premonition, if it works out of the box, is a very significant change.
That means it's a game that now runs better on Linux than Windows.
Hopefully it still works after DPFix tweaks too.

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That's quite some improvement nicee.

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Eyy mindustry.
Always good to see development on the games I play.

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Quoting: WanderdueneI really enjoy using Mint because it's stable and very user-friendly, and I also welcome the fact that planning and stability are being prioritised by the developers. Will Mint's extended release cycles have an impact on me as a gamer?

Probably not, but I can't be certain.
If you've a bunch a games on your wishlist that currently are badly supported by Linux gaming.
Then it might slow down your timeline when you might be comfortably able to play these games.

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Quoting: PlayingOnLinuxphone

Quoting: spacemonkeyonly the minimal required information is passed on to the app or website.

Which is already the maximum amount of information passed to the app or website. If you are under 18 you will switch that date once you become mature, so they know exactly your birth. For us adults no issue so far, but for all upcoming generations it means a fully transparent birthday.

Can't we just begin to teach our kids first? Where is the talk about improving schools? They could learn stuff that is also useful as adult, not just as child.

That's the current design and is only hampered by the fact that not everybody celebrates their 18th birthday by doing online 18th birthday specific things.

That's not the only possible design though.
One can use rate limits and artificially induced latency to fight that.

A great way to limit the damage would for example be to make certain that age checks can only happen on a certain time interval.
Say for 1 day every month.

Also this assumes one can form a trustworthy pseudonymous profile of the target.

Edit:
[It's open source, so adding this feature is feasable and legal.](https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui).

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In the context of gaming, I think Linux matured enough, so you don't desperately need all the latest goodies as soon as possible anymore. Although I personally prefer a rolling distribution, I don't see leap distros as outdated on arrival anymore (I mean only for gaming). So slower releases are fine.

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Quoting: Phlebiac

Quoting: LoudTechieYou don't report backdoors to reviewers.
They already approved them and thus presumably stand behind them.
You publish them on social media(as demonstrated by the xz-backdoor)
What it can result in is dumb social media discussions about when something is a backdoor.

Ah, you meant intentional back doors; sorry, I misunderstood. Dumb social media discussions are easily ignored, so that's ok.

Semi.
When there's a weakness in the code that was added by mistake. I consider it a security bug.
When there's a weakness in the code that was intentionally added by people who in some way managed to impersonate the figure which approves code for that project; I consider it an unintentional backdoor.
When there's a weakness in the code that was intentionally added by the person who approves code for that project; I consider it an intentional backdoor.

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Quoting: spacemonkeyThe EU actually just released an app that enabled users to proof their age to an apps or website. This enables the user to stay completely anonymous, only the minimal required information is passed on to the app or website.

https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/european-age-verification-app-keep-children-safe-online-2026-04-15_en

US take not please. We don't need your BS.

But a lot of trust is still placed in the company that manages the national digital id system of your nation and your nation(they suddenly know which 18+ sites you visit by who requests it).
It's 10 times better than the 10 most common ways to do age verification, but it's still scary. Although you won't hear me arguing it's impossible to avoid this porblem. It's still a problem..

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I really enjoy using Mint because it's stable and very user-friendly, and I also welcome the fact that planning and stability are being prioritised by the developers. Will Mint's extended release cycles have an impact on me as a gamer?

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Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: LoudTechieAlso the big maintainers(Linus, KDE, FSF, RHEL, etc) will face pressure to add the feature.
In the end it will become a build option to add and not add this.

That would be the easy thing. But that ultimately means nothing as it is removed quicker than it can be added. It is fundamentally impossible add this sort of thing into an open source system and have it "work". And what comes then is the scary part. If anyone can remove said protection, then maybe a "smart" government official will decide that only "approved" systems should be bootable on computers. Bring in "SecureBoot NG-STC", a mandatory security system that makes sure that only lawful systems can be booted on computers! Problem solved!

A. As a Linux user you're vastly underestimating the amount of technical skill required to flash a new version of the OS and/or alter read only marked user values. Defaults matter the vast majority of people will use the code provided by the manufacturer and stick to it.
B. It's a lot easier as a parent to check this one trick than monitor a kid's entire online presence. One could even provide an external media check a parent/teacher/adult could use to check for unauthorized modifications.

Still I find it realistic, but than coming from police forces which just always want more government mandated spyware on your device.

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Quoting: grigi

Quoting: LoudTechieIt's not attached to the computer it's attached to the user account(poor FreeBSD doesn't have accounts)

They don't have their own accounts either. How many home PC's actually have separate accounts? I mean houses where chaos rules?

Virtually zero, that's what.

That's my point.

A. From that point it's the parents decision, since it costs nothing to make extra accounts. Making this a "parents decide" thing.
B. We might be encountering my privileged upbringing here. My parents had the tendency to maintain separate account for the device owner and the rest of the family, so I assumed this to be common practice. Help with account setup could be included with the maternity care.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: LoudTechiecriminal dev: Most potential partners avoid me, because I've been proven to be violent in court

Assuming it was a violent crime. Even today, people do still sometimes go to jail for embezzlement as long as it wasn't a big enough amount to make you a new-minted oligarch . . .

According to our favorite mediaoutlet.
He claimed he was jailed, because he was "a very violent person."

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I don't know how this is going to work. From all the people with kids, I'm the only one who has separate accounts for every member of the family -- everyone else has a single account in their computer, which is used by everyone in the family. People will not start using accounts in their computers as it's too hard for most people I know of. And if nobody uses accounts, there's no way to enforce the law. Heck, many people share their accounts also with their kids phones...

It used to be hard to create email address for a kid because of age restrictions, but it looks like that has changed since I tried it last time... So at least you can now create an email account in Google (and some others I tried) for a newborn child.

Most people aren't good with computers, heck, I know many families which have no computers (just phones and maybe a tablet) in their house. I just don't think that this law will work in practice.

That said, I do like the idea that it's going to be mandatory to have parent controls in the devices, especially if all service providers need to obey the rules to moderate their content for kids. But in the end, it should be the parents who control the age limitations for their kids, not the government or some company.

Also there's always a way to get around limitations and kids are very good on doing that.

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Gotta admit, that looks really dashed cool.

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