I understand. Be aware that this can be quite a limiting factor, more than you think. The need to think about home servers starts to clash with the statement that

It was built from day one to be usable by anyone, with zero tech background required.

Possibly. That’s up to your distro. However, consider that EU as well is starting to speak about age verification. It’s quite clear that the whole “West” aspires to be more like Russia and China.

Thank you for the explanation. But I don’t understand how it can work if:

1. I send a message while my contact is offline,
2. then I go offline,
3. my contact comes back online while I’m still offline.

The message needs to be somewhere in between. This is a situation that occurs quite often when you message with people in very different time zones.

Nobody in the middle. No server storing anything. No company analyzing anything

[…]

In deferred mode, it works just like regular email. Meaning your contact doesn’t need to be online when you send the message. Your contact will get it automatically once they come online.

So I can’t send a message while my contact is offline, then go offline myself, and expect that my contact will receive it when they go online? This is quite limiting.

How is PeerBox different from Delta Chat?

I wish, but I’m not so sure. Look at what happened with the Californian age-verification laws and Systemd for example. Some (arsehole, in my personal opinion) FOSS developers hurried up and bent over backwards to start complying. We’ll probably end up having “Linux” distros that will comply, and Linux distros, probably distributed via secret channels, that won’t.

The crucial point in this new press release is the requirement for “operating system developers like Apple and Google to verify users’ ages when setting up a new device, rather than relying on self-reported ages.”

Very true:

But when technologists tell policymakers this, they tell us that they have every confidence in our ingenuity, and also, they can’t be certain we’re not telling a Zuck-style fable about how the stuff we merely disprefer is actually impossible. They tell us to NERD HARDER!

NERD HARDER! is the answer every time a politician gets a technological idée-fixe about how to solve a social problem by creating a technology that can’t exist.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/14/bellovin/#wont-someone-think-of-the-cryptographers

First of all we should submerge the EU parliament with protests, as we did for the chat-control question. Then protest marches, strikes, and so on. Then simple non-compliance. Whatever is undemocratic has automatically null morally legal validity.

I think we can still use the https://fightchatcontrol.eu/ platform for this. Just need to change the text and protest against age verification.

From the press release [my emphasis]:

Require operating system developers like Apple and Google to verify users’ ages when setting up a new device, rather than relying on self-reported ages.

We surely need to send protest emails and letters to legislators and government representatives – as citizens did in EU for the “chat control” proposals – and organize protest marches, strikes, and so on.

But yes, if the regime behaves more and more like a Russian state, rather than a democracy, and doesn’t care about citizens’ protests, then “violent uprising” becomes almost a moral imperative. “Democracy” means “government by the people”, and it’s we people who must make sure no one takes the government out of our hands; nobody else can do that for us.

During our in-person visa appointment in Seattle, a shooting involving CBP occurred just a few parking spaces from where we normally park for medical outpatient visits back in Portland. It was covered by the news internationally and you may have read about it. Moments like that have a way of clarifying what matters and how urgently change can feel necessary.

Our visas were approved quickly, which we’re grateful for. We’ll be spending the next year in France, where my wife has other Tibetan family. I’m looking forward to immersing myself in the language and culture and to taking that responsibility seriously. Learning French in mid-life will be humbling, but I’m ready to give it my full focus.

Sounds like a splendid person.

It’s also a smart move considering that, with age-verification laws advancing, it looks like a good part of the Linux world will become with time another instrument of mass surveillance.

It’s important that any USA citizens that don’t agree with this send a protest email or letter to legislators, and even organize protest marches, strikes, or similar. Protesting here is not enough. “Democracy” = “the people rule”, literally.

Considering that today there’s effectively an OS in everyday technologies, you’ll probably have to verify your age just to open your fridge.

• Urusei Yatsura (the original one)
• Future Boy Conan
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
• FLCL
• One Punch Man

Filled life with hope or thought or awesomeness!

Still more acceptable, in my opinion, than going from “using” to “leveraging”…

Possibly something similar to NixOS: https://www.frandroid.com/os/gnu-linux/3062047_adieu-windows-securix-et-bureautix-le-linux-de-letat-aux-noms-dirreductibles-gaulois

Sadly “people” and “learn” don’t go together well…