EU age verification app not planning desktop support • Hacker News Board

Re: EU age verification app not planning desktop support

#411

Post by gyomu » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 1:43 PM UTC

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #334

harrisoned wrote: post #179

> At present the project is focused on mobile platforms, specifically Android and iOS, as they cover the vast majority of users and real-world use cases. (..) Desktop support is not currently within the project's scope. This is the equivalent of a "Do you guys not have phones??"[1] but on a way larger scale. At least where i live i am able to use the bare minimum of phones, even working with tech. The friction is inc…

the point is to have everyone "collared" and traceable. The conspiracy guys all worry about getting micro-chipped but that's far too invasive and obvious for modern society. the new Control gives the illusion of endless opportunities and freedom while also being the very method of limiting that freedom. It is the leverage through which control is exerted. to quote Gilles Deleuze's Postscript on Societies of Control(1…

It is insane to read Deleuze, Baudrillard, Debord, etc. in 2025. Just insanely prescient, and the perfect illustration that being able to describe and anticipate problems is nowhere near sufficient to solve them.

Re: EU age verification app not planning desktop support

#412

Post by Asooka » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 1:57 PM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #265

alexchamberlain wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if my battery runs out?

They are verbose and vague about it: "Some passengers may be concerned about what they can do if they lose their phone or of their devices run out of battery before the pass board the aircraft. Ryanair has said they will assist people experiencing difficulties free of charge at the gate gathering their information and flight details which will be cross-checked and validated against the flight manifest so that they ca…

Oh so I can just carry a phone with a dead battery and don't have to go through their idiotic app.

Re: EU age verification app not planning desktop support

#413

Post by sunshine-o » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:15 PM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #224

harrisoned wrote: post #179

> At present the project is focused on mobile platforms, specifically Android and iOS, as they cover the vast majority of users and real-world use cases. (..) Desktop support is not currently within the project's scope. This is the equivalent of a "Do you guys not have phones??"[1] but on a way larger scale. At least where i live i am able to use the bare minimum of phones, even working with tech. The friction is inc…

Another recent news about mandated app use: Ryanair now (from November) requires using their app for the boarding pass, no more printouts from the desktop. Also, they refuse to show the QR code for the boarding pass in a mobile browser via the website, you must use their app. https://www.msn.com/en-ie/travel/news/ryanair-s-new-check-in...

What do you expect?

Ryanair has always been an horrible corporation in the business of shipping drunk and old people for £5 with the help of public subsidies. They also largely abused their staff to enable that business model.

They are like many other corporations creating more and more fragile systems and I bet one of those days something is gonna go wrong and nobody will board their plane for a day or two.

Just stop feeding the beast...

Re: EU age verification app not planning desktop support

#414

Post by oblio » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:39 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #282

oblio wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know that all those sudden repairability and longer OS updates Samsung and Apple keep touting worldwide are due to EU regulations, right? Easy battery and screen replacements, USB C on iPhones, 7 years of US updates, etc, all due to the EU.

Yeah, all sorts of pointless crap. 7 years of updates, that's the iPhone X? Yeah I couldn't care less. USB-C? Don't care. I use wireless charging. If we could lose all of that in exchange for losing cookie banners I would take it in a heartbeat. In another couple of decades the EU will be an irrelevant market as their population becomes even poorer. Then we can finally be free of their nonsense. The only risk is that…

Sure, then you can enjoy the wonders of 9/9/6 and coal rolling as you wish.

Oh, wait, you can already do that :-)

Re: EU age verification app not planning desktop support

#415

Post by 7bit » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

_w1tm wrote: post #407

harrisoned wrote: post #179

> At present the project is focused on mobile platforms, specifically Android and iOS, as they cover the vast majority of users and real-world use cases. (..) Desktop support is not currently within the project's scope. This is the equivalent of a "Do you guys not have phones??"[1] but on a way larger scale. At least where i live i am able to use the bare minimum of phones, even working with tech. The friction is inc…

Maybe off-topic but I remember when people were worried about services becoming digital and older users no longer being able to access them without a personal computer. Fast forward a few decades and now the old users are on desktop and we’re worried about services only being available for smartphones.

Are we the old people now?

Re: EU age verification app not planning desktop support

#416

Post by jeffrallen » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 6:49 PM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #308

jeffrallen wrote: post #198

I looked into the Swiss version of this, which is documented here: https://swiyu-admin-ch.github.io/ They faced the same question. Here is their answer: https://github.com/orgs/swiyu-admin-ch/discussions/20 The tldr is that they have a legal requirement to bind "verifiable credential shares" with the same human who got the e-ID originally, up to the current best practical technology. On Android, they judge that to be…

> The tldr is that they have a legal requirement to bind "verifiable credential shares" with the same human who got the e-ID Glancing at the thread, I don't see that conclusion. User 'sideeffect42' cites some laws and says >> As I read this it nowhere says that the e-ID has to be bound to a device. It only speaks about binding it to its owner which (IANAL) could be implemented by password protection (like KeePass) as…

This post made you and a bunch of other people aware of where to go engage with the Swiss e-ID devs if you want, so hopefully you found that useful.

Re: EU age verification app not planning desktop support

#417

Post by nozzlegear » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 8:14 PM UTC

ktosobcy wrote: post #402

nozzlegear wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please get off of your high-horse and actually try to interact with wider world and not the IT bubble :) That seems pretty rude and uncalled for, why would you say that to me? Do you think that I don't have friends outside of the "IT bubble" myself, or that I don't have my own spouse who is a non-tech person?

What's so rude and uncalled for? It's just a statement without steeping to any offensive vocabulary. And it's kidna funny that you are offended by it while you outright dismissed my comment with your "all knowing": "Unless you enter everyone's home to take an inventory of their devices, it stands to reason that you're going to see more smartphones than anything else by just looking around." - wouldn't you say that wa…

> What's so rude and uncalled for? It's just a statement without steeping to any offensive vocabulary.

Spare me your sophistry.

Re: EU age verification app not planning desktop support

#418

Post by reitanuki » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 8:23 PM UTC

jwally wrote: post #122

Here's my crack at a good-enough solution for the U.S. It doesn't have a ton of granularity - but the concept is shovel ready now, dirt cheap, and privacy preserving. Video Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmcUJ5u65Q0 Actual Demo: https://app.hornpub.click How it works: 1) Go to app.horpub.click 2) Create an ephemeral passkey 3) Extract its public-key and id (this binds the credential you're creating to your dev…

This doesn't seem to work at all, maybe a Firefox issue, but it tells me to insert my security key when I generate passkey. I don't have a security key, so I'm totally at a loss of what to do. (And somewhat poor style on Firefox's behalf, to not explain what is going on to someone who doesn't know what one is)

Re: EU age verification app not planning desktop support

#419

Post by GoblinSlayer » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 9:18 PM UTC

harrisoned wrote: post #179

> At present the project is focused on mobile platforms, specifically Android and iOS, as they cover the vast majority of users and real-world use cases. (..) Desktop support is not currently within the project's scope. This is the equivalent of a "Do you guys not have phones??"[1] but on a way larger scale. At least where i live i am able to use the bare minimum of phones, even working with tech. The friction is inc…

>This is the equivalent of a "Do you guys not have phones??"

Remotely related: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/manor-park-ottawa-sidewalk-re... there are dozens of us, dozens.

Re: EU age verification app not planning desktop support

#420

Post by brookst » Fri, Sep 26, 2025, 1:27 AM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #49

brookst wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree EU is nothing like USSR, calling it a market economy is kind of questionable. It’s a bit of a hybrid, which companies allowed to market and sell on their own but with intense regulatory control over product design. From USBC to ad supported business models, the EU has fairly tight control over how products are designed and monetized, in a way that I don’t think can be described as a pure market economy.…

since when a market economy need to have no regulation? Market economies are contrasted with planned economies, i.e. how prices are determined and production allocated, and the EU most decidedly is not that.

Since when is “no regulation” the only alternative to bureaucrats defining minute product details that customers are perfectly capable of preferring with their wallet?

Really, that was a very lazy false dichotomy.