AFAIK that is youtube delaying the video stream on purpose because you were supposed to watch ads in that time. If you wait 5-10 seconds it will start playing. For me it happens only on the first video, and autoplay is still instant afterwards. I am gladly waiting out the loading screen than watch ads. Knowing that I probably make google lose money on every view makes the wait even more bearable (I am never logged in, and anyways I always run youtube in private mode, so there’s almost no profiling happening)

Exactly, and some of the laws require just asking if the age is over a some pre-defined threshold, not sending the full date, for example “is the user over 18? Is the user over 15? 13?”

And just to be clear, I do think that “protecting the children” is just an excuse to push surveillance tech that was very convenient to use after the Epstein files. I am strongly against these laws and I am supporting ($$$) activist groups fighting against them. Do consider donating or getting involved too if you can.

But this specific change isn’t adding surveillance to Linux. It’s just a date of birth field that a parent can set. I can see why a parent would want it instead of using shady and intrusive “child control” software that takes over the computer.

You need to store the date of birth to update the user’s reported age automatically. It makes sense and puts the “protecting the children” responsibility back on parents instead of third parties that every website is now starting to use.

The systemd solution is not even reusable for actual verification because it can’t provide any cryptographic proof of the verification! It’s literally just a date.

a sensor triggers

screen goes dark

rock crubling noises close by

… RUN!

Say no more!

Life pro tip that will make your IT deparment hate you: you can use Evolution and change the client id to match outlook’s one in the advanced settings. It’ll look like you are using the standard outlook client from your IT department point of view, but you’ll actually get a usable interface instead. I assume that thunderbird has the same options to override the client id, but I haven’t checked.

Don’t blame me if you get in troubles though.

On my system I am using kde x11 instead of wayland for the same reason. Last time I tried wayland I was getting half of the framerate compared to x11.

At some point I want to switch to a gaming-oriented distros and see if it’s magically better there.

I think you got a bit confused… FEX is used in the steam frame (VR headset) because it uses an ARM processor to save battery. The steam machine uses a normal x64 CPU and appears to be using some relatively standard pc hardware, so no compatibility layers are needed for windows (only drivers are needed) I doubt you’ll be able to install windows on the steam frame though, for the reason you say (arm compatibility is a mess).

The only good ubuntu is 4.04 “Not Found”

There are some surviving national circuits like PagoBancomat (as the sibling comment from Scrollone) and Dankort (Denmark) and girocard (Germany). My personal impression is that they are slowly going out of fashion in favor of visa/mastercard only (probably because they can’t offer better prices than them).

I don’t see a solution to the duopoly, apart from lobbying politicians to support this national payment infrastructure. Especially in recent times I can also see how some governments might not want to rely entirely on two US companies for running their entire economy, so something might move on that side, so there’s hope on that side.

The EU has already been moving on this front in the last years by forcing the banks to provide programming interfaces to initiate bank payments, and that’s why you can now see more and more options to “pay by bank” online in EU. These online payments generally skip card circuits and run over normal SEPA bank transfers.

More info here on the last part: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Services_Directive