The EU wallet seems to expect the user to simply have an Android phone with Google Play services that passes Google Hardware Attestation, or alternatively an iOS phone, or apparently you’re not a citizen: https://leminal.space/post/31858818/21120139

It is shocking that this (apparently???) doesn’t seem to be illegal.

Configs are often shared, just to explain my reservations with TOML. For my project, I used INI instead.

I don’t really trust IBM to know what they’re doing, but it’s still a nice sign.

I can’t really decide what extensions my users will face, once they are supported. Therefore too many extensions seems bad to me.

INI can be nicer for non-techies due to its flat structure. However, TOML seems to be in an awkward spot: either I want flat approachable (I’ll pick INI) or not (I’ll pick JSONC). Why would I want a mix?

The lack of intelligence is inherent for LLMs: https://www.forbes.com/sites/corneliawalther/2025/06/09/intelligence-illusion-what-apples-ai-study-reveals-about-reasoning/

This is likely why Apple is the only big tech company that hasn’t entered the AI race with tons of debt and tons of data centers. They’re likely seeing the writing on the wall.

While there could be a new technique arriving to solve this some day, there also may never be one.

It’ll backfire for any non-trivial code base at some point. LLM plagiarized code is just too inherently lacking any sense of big picture. Gen AI doesn’t have the necessary intelligence. I keep linking it but it keeps being relevant: https://www.forbes.com/sites/corneliawalther/2025/06/09/intelligence-illusion-what-apples-ai-study-reveals-about-reasoning/

I doubt it. https://www.forbes.com/sites/corneliawalther/2025/06/09/intelligence-illusion-what-apples-ai-study-reveals-about-reasoning/ Gen AIs are literally so unable to have any basic logical thought, I think this is merely the hype.

To anybody still being scared, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3400S4qMH6o

I have no Android phones. Just avoid the privacy disaster apps entirely. Switch your banks, buy transport tickets that are printed out.

Available options for mostly open systems among others seem to be the PinePhone, the ClockworkPi uConsole, and the Librem 5. The latter two seem to have significant shipping delays and more technical caveats, however.

While on some level I agree, perhaps it’s time to push Linux phones as well?

For anybody who has any sort of techie knowledge, that could be a better long term option once Linux phones get more momentum and funding.

I disagree TPM is a good candidate.

And I think many of us reject the premise we should submit to any central id provider for half of the internet in the first place. There are less risky approaches: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/13/california-law-online-age-checks-00606115

Here are my sources:

1. https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/14/bellovin/ (I don’t agree with every bit of that article.)

   In practice, the security and privacy guarantees of the CL protocol require two different kinds of wholly independent institutions: identity providers (who verify your documents), and certificate authorities (who issue cryptographic certificates based on those documents). If these two functions take place under one roof, the privacy guarantees of the system immediately evaporate.

   (“CL” seems to refer to a common zero knowledge proof algorithm.)

2. https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-doc-technical-specification/blob/main/docs/architecture-and-technical-specifications.md#332-enrolment-methods-without-existing-identification

   Technical Requirements: An Age Verification App shall support the following: […] Request from the operating system a tamper-evident attestation of AVI properties

   (As far as I know, they mean device attestation with this where you no longer fully control your device.)

3. https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui/issues/20

   The EUDI Wallet team is participating in a wider, EU-wide collective sleepwalk into a serious trap: You, along with the entire EU Digital-Identity movement, are hard-wiring the EU’s civic governance to Apple and Google’s hardware and software stack.

4. https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui/issues/15

   Requires accepting “Terms of Service” to access basic functions of being a citizen. Your demo video shows you requiring accepting “Terms of Service” and “Data Protection Information” which I guess should really be “Privacy Policy”.

Feel free to share your sources.

There are solutions to this like having a doc comment right next to the function which is picked up by some API generator. Then it’s easier to keep in sync. That can work well even in languages without explicit parameter types.

Of course it won’t help LLMs as much, but I personally don’t mind that.

I am referring to the EU Wallet age verification app: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui/ Sorry that I forgot to link it.

And just because it might beat PostIdent, doesn’t mean it’s sane to give up online anonymity for age checks everywhere. The EU claims the wallet will allow anonymous age checks, but if they ever tracked you, pretty sure you wouldn’t know.

Seems like a solution would be 1. update docs and 2. don’t use LLMs to code.

Sorry if I misread your post, but hopefully this comment of mine is relevant:

In my humble opinion, the digital wallet is horrible, because as far as I can tell 1. it requires Google device attestation so all custom ROMs are out and to be a citizen you can apparently no longer own your device, 2. unless you use iOS or Android you’re apparently not a citizen and you can’t e.g. purely use Linux (this is as far as I know not the case with the German AusweisApp), 3. once everyone is used to using some citizen app like that, I feel like a fascist government could easily tie it to a social score or other authoritarian measures bewyond the age verification. 4. There is a privacy friendly alternative approach for age verification anyway, that most governments seem to conveniently be ignoring: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/13/california-law-online-age-checks-00606115

Also see here on the EU apparently trying to make this mandatory: https://leminal.space/post/31858818/21120139

The EU has apparently decided that this has to be done for most public platforms by July 2026, so Discord may not have much of a choice and other platforms will likely follow: (Edit: I forgot, the EU strict age verification stuff seems to be limited to EU DSA’s definition of “platforms” so as a text messenger I’m not sure Discord is part of it. But this’ll still likely be coming to more services near you and perhaps Discord is just voluntarily joining the chaos…)

I could be wrong I’m not a lawyer, assume everything I write from here is bullshit, but see here:

https://www.mlex.com/mlex/articles/2368265/online-services-get-up-to-12-months-to-apply-age-verification-eu-guidelines-say “Online services get up to 12 months to apply age verification, EU guidelines say” This was in July 2025.

EU guidelines in question seem to be:

1. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/commission-publishes-guidelines-protection-minors and

2. https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/redirection/document/118226

Quotes:

“[…] the Union legislature enacted Article 28 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and the Council (6). Paragraph 1 of this provision obliges providers of online platforms […] to ensure a high level of privacy, safety, and security of minors, […]”

“Self-declaration is not considered to be an appropriate age-assurance measure as further explained below.”

“In the following circumstances, […] the Commission considers the use of access restrictions supported by age verification methods an appropriate and proportionate measure to ensure a high level of privacy, safety, and security of minors: […] an online platform accessible to minors has identified risks to minors’ privacy, safety, or security, including content, conduct and consumer risks as well as contact risks (e.g., arising from features such as live chat, image/video sharing, anonymous messaging)”

“Age estimation methods can complement age verification technologies and can be used in addition to the former,” (AKA the alternative to a literal gov ID check seems to be big data AI sucking up all user data to estimate user age.)

The in my opinion horrible solution the EU seems to have found to avoid sharing the physical ID for services that don’t want to request one, is apparently this app: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui Which from what I can tell

1. The EU app seems to require Google device attestation so all custom ROMs are out and to be a citizen you can apparently no longer own your device,

2. Unless you use iOS or Android you’re apparently not a citizen,

3. Once everyone is used to using some citizen app like that, I feel like a fascist government could easily tie it to a social score or other authoritarian measures bewyond the age verification.

4. There is a privacy friendly alternative approach anyway, that most governments seem to conveniently be ignoring:

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/13/california-law-online-age-checks-00606115 (I think Germany may already ask something like this of the more popular preinstalled operating systems, but I could be wrong.)

Anyway, I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice. But spread the word, somehow press seems to be ignoring this.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/us-stock-market-crashes-today-why-are-dow-sp-500-nasdaq-down-today-tesla-meta-microsoft-in-red/articleshow/127780471.cms This isn’t investment advice, I just thought this might be interesting to read! (Additional angle of same story)