The proposals apply to “providers” of “hosting services“, of “interpersonal communications service”, and of “software application stores” (you can look up the definitions for yourself in the published texts). It’s hard to see how that would apply to purely P2P systems, except that distributing an app for it via app stores would likely require user age verification.
Flathub, the snap store, gnome software, etc. all technically meet the definitino of software application store.
Makes me wonder (and worry) if they can stretch the definition to apply to standard package repos as well. Are we going to be entering an era where you have to verify your identity & age to apt-get software?
I think that real danger is a very real possibility with legislation like this. Not in the way that you won't be able to buy "unlocked" devices, but that web services and government services just flat out won't be accessible to you if you aren't on a sanctioned device (with the sanctioned spyware).
Think things like requiring play integrity attestation to access banking, or an equivalent service baked into macOS, Windows, iOS. If you aren't on one of those proprietary and spied on OSes, you can't access most of the web.
So technically the hardware will remain relatively open, but they'll make it so you can't interact with the rest of society with it.
That would still be the relatively benign outcome. You can have one device for all the official stuff, and another device for your own software, “free“ OSs and the “free” internet. However, I could see a future where anything that accesses the internet is required to be an iPhone-like clamped down device.
the worst (and the only) way possible: hold authors or distributors of the said software responsible: Order apple and google to remove apps, Order ISPs to block domains that host PWAs, Issue arrest warrants for authors of software that does not or cannot comply.
I did not sell PIA. I entered into a merger agreement to create a publicly owned privacy company. Without getting into detail, I left the company on principle receiving only 1/3rd of the value for the shares.
Used to love? What changed? PIA hasn't always had the best performance but they are on the list of VPNs who were subpoenaed and had no data to give the court.
my $.02 : I tried them, but found their "we support Wireguard" a bit misleading. They only did so via their app. No way to get a stable configuration for a router (other than run a python script to get one from the app, without any guarantee how long is that config valid for).
I appreciate the engagement, but it’s become clear that this particular user has been repeatedly following my posts to respond negatively - a stalker if you will [1]. I’d prefer to keep the discussion focused on facts, not personalities.
The key point, you don’t have to trust us, and we don’t want you to. Trust code, not people. That’s the foundation of the entire effort.
1. The so-called “takeover” was being organized long before my involvement, as shown by domain registration dates and internal meeting notes. I was a more convenient target than Christel, which might explain why she asked me to buy it from her.
2. False narratives were already being circulated to open source projects before any administrative changes occurred. The subsequent channel topic changes were a reaction to those actions, though I’ve acknowledged those decisions weren’t ideal in hindsight.
On broader context, much of what’s now called “funding FOSS” doesn’t reach active developers. It tends to reward organizers and promoters rather than those writing meaningful code. Supporting individual developers directly remains a better way to sustain real innovation.
Ironically, several of the ex-staff I defended for years against serious allegations (search “OldCoder” if you’re unfamiliar) went on to form Libera, attempted to seize the freenode IRC domain, and created a false narrative about events. It’s disappointing, but not surprising given the leftist politics at play.
If you want to understand the larger trends affecting open source today, I recommend Lunduke’s Journal and similar analyses. Most major FOSS projects are no longer developer run… just look at Mozilla for an example.
Why would you need a connection at all to play local content that would need a VPN? Are you using one of those players that "streams" the torrent? That always seemed like a novel idea once bandwidth was available for that, and I guess plenty of seeders. It could also be the stereotype I've built in my head that the people that torrent lean towards hoarders adding to their local inventory.
Went over my last conversations with Gemini 2.5 and asked the same things to GPT-5 with thinking on, the latter was consistently worse both in content and form.
I wouldn't have guessed Gemini to win the AI race in 2025 but here we are.
I would be surprised if they didn't, just from the difference in number of employees and resources. Google can pursue 20x as many dead ends, anthropic and openai have to commit to a few things and hope they're right
Whenever these things come up I have to point out the most of these manufactures don’t do bios updates. Since spectre/meltdown we see cpu and bios vulnerabilities every few months-yearly.
I know u can patch microcode at runtime/boot but I don’t think that covers all vulnerabilities
What if the foss app has the “scanning” but can be disabled with a compile time flag
Is my email client going to have to implement this scanning if I use pgp?