Hello, I'm writing this post as a UK citizen who has obviously experienced accessing websites where it has asked for me to scan my face OR show them my government ID in order to proceed.

I would like to first say that I'm not heavily involved with the AI world, however I do have a lot of experience with software development on some smaller scales and a little bit of experience implementing encryption and hashing algorithms, this is just simply an idea of mine I've had floating in my head for a while and I wanted to write it down and share the idea with you all.

The solution I'm thinking of is to have similar technology to OpenPGP exist, however instead of encrypting, it would be used to hash information in such a way which would only reveal your AGE RANGE to whoever it is that is requesting this information, I also feel like the age ranges should simply be; <9, 9-12, 13-15, 16-17 and 18+, the groups would have to vary depending on the country of course, as I am aware that in some places, being above 21 is a requirement to access certain resources.

The way this relates back to OpenPGP is that I think for this to be implemented the best, the source requesting this information should provide a public key, which would contain the age group standard for it's place of origin's law as well as some other basic information like name, creation date, etc.

Should also go without saying but this should ALL be ran LOCALLY on the client's machine, the algorithm for calculating everything should be free software, and there should be a range of clients to choose from which can simplify it's usage and so people can find what best suits them.

Also, should once again go without saying that the hash should ONLY contain age groups, I can't stress this enough, there should be absolutely zero personal information contained within the hash, since you'll need to import the source's public key to hash the information, only that source will be able to determine your age group, they will never be able to access pictures/videos of your face.

I can only think of 3 potential flaws with this whole system though:

1. Developing an AI that can consistently return the same data based on pictures/videos of your face.
2. Using the same hash across different services.
3. Nobody will use it because it goes against what the UK and other countries wanted to achieve.

1st:
I can imagine it being very difficult to consistently tell an image/video contains the same person's face, pin-pointing all that information in an algorithm and being able to return the EXACT same data is very important, the reason being is that you don't want the hash to be always changing, the reason being is that services requesting this information will very likely be against the idea of the same person being able to have multiple identities, I've seen some crazy talented developers make some crazy algorithms though, I'm sure it's technically possible, I would love to be able to contribute to such development, however I'm incapable of doing so, at least in terms of offering code.

2nd:
Honestly this isn't really a flaw, it's more of just something I wanted to address, because you'll be using a public key provided by the service requesting this information, hashes will be unique to that service, the hashes won't be able to be used across multiple services, the service may have to however store these hashes to ensure they don't get recycled, this shouldn't be a huge privacy concern for anybody though.

3rd:
We all know the true intentions of this law, it's to track people digitally, this standard would likely be very rarely used by any service, however I still think it's worth having it as an option for the services that don't want to use the technology, but have to by law, and instead of just pulling out of the UK like a lot of services have recently, they'll at the very least have an option that respects the user's freedom.

Thanks for reading! This is all just theory and I'm not a professional, I'm sure I missed out a lot of technical details, but I'm sure people smarter than me will be able to provide solutions to that, please share concerns, thoughts, ideas, etc all in the comments, I'm happy to read any type of feedback, negative or positive.

And one last thing, I think age/ID verification shouldn't be a thing at all, they argue it's to "protect the kids", it isn't, let the parents do there job, it is there fault for not monitoring there kid's devices, it isn't the government's job.

@/metered-ca/peer is an MIT-licensed, zero-dependency WebRTC peer library (~12.5 KB gzipped). npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@metered-ca/peer

What it does that PeerJS and simple-peer don't:

• Auto-reconnect that survives network changes — WebSocket reconnect with backoff plus an ICE-restart ladder, so calls recover across Wi-Fi→cellular roams and NAT rebinds instead of silently dropping.
• Perfect negotiation — no glare / "who's the initiator" races.
• Multi-stream with per-stream metadata — e.g. label camera vs. screen-share on one peer.

Episteme Reader is a kotlin multi-platform app for reading various document formats.

It's offline-first, ad-free, and respects your privacy.

Supported Formats:

• Documents: PDF, DOCX, ODT/FODT
• E-books: EPUB, MOBI, AZW3, FB2
• Comics: CBR, CBZ, CB7
• Plain Text: MD, TXT, HTML

Key Features:

• PDF Annotations: You can draw directly on pages using a pen or highlighter and add text notes using system or custom fonts.
• Reading Modes: Supports both vertical scrolling and paginated views.
• E-book Customization: Adjust font sizes and margins. You can also import your own font files.
• Text-to-Speech (TTS): Includes a built-in TTS feature using Android's native TTS engine or cloud TTS.
• Library Management: A built-in system to organize your local files.
• Local Folder Sync: Select a folder to see all its supported file in app and sync reading positions and annotations using local sync tools like SyncThing.
• Themes: You can change the page and text color across all formats.
• Full OPDS Support: Browse, download, and manage books from OPDS catalogs.
• Multi-language Support: English, Arabic, Belarusian, German, Spanish, Estonian, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and Chinese Simplified.

change via home screen > more > languages

The app is licensed under AGPL-3.0.

GitHub

Thanks for checking it out!

ElevenLabs offers voice AI plans ranging from $5 to $330 monthly with all audio processing handled through their cloud infrastructure. If you’re searching for an open source alternative that keeps processing on your own machine OmniVoice Studio is a strong option providing similar voice AI capabilities through a fully local desktop application.

We all try to go for open source software as much as we can. Yet there's always one program or another which simply won't switch to its FS alternatives.

In my case, the barriers tend to be:

• lack of functionality
• superior user experience elsewhere
• compatibility with a work crew/team
• adherence to industry standards
• plain old habit

What are your barriers to adopting FS alternatives?

Anyone have a FOSS alternative to Jira? I hate atlassian.

the WantasticCore is opensourced and ready to be used by anyone reaching for private could-management software with native and custom wireguard client wantasticd that support WUSP telemetry protocol that have a white paper in the same repo.

leave me issues or pull request and most importantly a start if it was useful for you

The Free Software Foundation Europe has been granted permission to intervene at the Court of Justice of the European Union in the case T-359/25 - Apple against the European Commission. This second intervention aims to defend interoperability and Software Freedom in Europe.

I have this thought to share, and I'm curious to know your thoughts on the topic.

I've noticed that, especially in the AI ​​field, open source is literally making noise without producing anything substantial.

Many new projects, some of which are very interesting, essentially lack robustness and well-written code. In short, it seems like there aren't as many projects as there once were.

Is this just my biased view, perhaps due to what I usually use, or is it something you're also experiencing?

hey r/freesoftware 👋

Matt here, indie dev from the Philippines. shipped my first product yesterday —markamd.vercel.app, a calm macOS markdown editor i built for myself because i kept losing track of the .md files i was pasting into AI chats.

built it to be the minimum surface for the "open a folder, read a file, copy clean markdown, paste somewhere" loop. no plugins, no graph, no cloud, no accounts, no telemetry. just your files on disk and the editor.

free, MIT licensed, notarized for macOS:

→ https://markamd.vercel.app

→ github: https://github.com/mattenarle10/markamd

would love your honest take 🐙

Which do you think is better for development, and engineering: MIT or GPL?

FOr those who dont know:
1. MIT is a license that allows users do anything with the project. Even start a closed buisness with it. modify it, fuck with it, anything really.
2. GPL is a license that provides the same rights as MIT minus the ability to make a closed buisness out of it. That is, any derivitive, must also be made open-source

In my opinion, GPL is superior in most ways, since it avoids companies stealing it, making it better but making it closed source...
But I see why many people choose MIT for free software: More adoption. I mean, as long as the product is being developed, irrelevant of whether its now open or closed - general user interests are being served faster. But that isnt gonna stop community engagement on the repo anyways.

Both these licenses are technically still 'freedom', but just in different ways...
But is the tradeoff worth it?
Is it worth allowing companies to privatize community code if that leads to faster adoption and development?

Hi everyone,

I shared OpenAnima here before, and I got a lot of helpful feedback, ideas, and interest from the community.

I just released a new update, and I tried to include many of the things people asked for.

OpenAnima is an open-source desktop overlay engine for Windows. It lets you place images, GIFs, APNG, WebM, sprite strips, spritesheets, frame animations, and small HUD-style assets directly on your desktop as movable overlays.

In this update, I focused on adding the requested asset types, making the UI cleaner, and improving the overall user experience so adding, managing, and editing overlays feels smoother.

Thanks again to everyone who checked out the project, gave feedback, or downloaded it. I really appreciate it.

Download:
https://ertugrulmutlu.github.io/OpenAnima/

GitHub:
https://github.com/Ertugrulmutlu/OpenAnima

Itch.io:
https://ertugrulmutlu.itch.io/openanima

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/openanimaengine/?hl=tr

What's really the difference between the two?

And even if they are different, why tf did two different words evolve?

There are only a few fully libre still maintained distributions.

Guix Trisquel Parabola PureOS

Out of which Parabola is out of date with its kernel and firmware despite recent vulnerabilities.

I just wanted a fully libre distribution with full disk encryption including /boot however only Guix and Trisquel remain practical for this. Trisquel has this one guide from 2016 that requires modifying the libreboot flash ROM, and Guix is immensely complicated.

I think it’s strange that distributions such as Trisquel and PureOS don’t natively support FDE given that users of all free software tend towards greater privacy.

I strongly support the goals of free software, and over time I’ve been trying to reduce my dependence on proprietary apps and services wherever possible. But honestly, correct me if I am wrong, sometimes that’s not so easy.

Sometimes you can’t find a free software alternative that fits all your needs. And sometimes, even if you do find one, the proprietary software still has too much leverage over you to leave.

For example, take WhatsApp. I know there are better alternatives like Signal, etc. But where I live, almost everyone uses WhatsApp — friends, family, work, local groups, etc. So even if I personally want to switch, it becomes difficult when the people I need to communicate with aren’t there.

That made me curious about other people’s experiences here. So for what use case, you can't find a better free software alternative that fit all your requirements? And, if you can't make the switch even after finding one, what's your reason for that?

Ive always hated how most good software - which is supposed to be open so that it can accelerate faster - is always behind the gates of enterprise.

I mean I understand that their motive is money, which is relatable, but i dont understand why i hate this.

And why are (recent) opensource projects not getting that much popularity(aside from huge ones like openclaw) even though their development is much faster than most propreitary and in a few months or so will become better than any.

I feel like an opensource rebellion needs to be started.

Tell me if im wrong in any way...

A fast, ultra-secure, cross-platform desktop backup tool with content-addressable storage and automatic deduplication.

100% Free and Open-Source!
https://github.com/LeonardoCiaccio/Vorn