Get llama.cpp and try Qwen3.6-35B-A3B. Just came out and looks good. You’ll have to look into optimal settings, as it’s a Mixture of Experts (MoE) model with only 3B parameters active. That means that the rest can stay in RAM for quick inference.

You could also try the dense model (Qwen3.5-27B), but that will be significantly slower. Put these in a coding harness like Oh-My-Pi, OpenCode, etc. and see how it fares for your tasks. Should be ok for small tasks, but don’t expect Opus / Sonnet 4.6 quality, more like better than Haiku.

There must be something that ensures the response is legitimate. Otherwise, if it’s client-side and fully offline, I can just spoof the app to return the response “Yes, over 18”. If it’s not the government doing the verification, it’s Google or Apple, which will give them access to all the “adult” websites you visit. Also, another reason for the EU to push for strict device attestation, without any DIY stuff (i.e., no more GrapheneOS, LineageOS, etc).

I couldn’t find a desktop app on the EU’s GitHub (another red flag, btw, using GitHub for this). All that seems to be available is code for the Android or iOS apps. Could you share it, if you can?

Even with the Zero Knowledge approach, you will still run an app on a phone (what if I don’t have one) that will make some call to the government’s servers, which will most likely know what website you’re trying to access. We’re moving the data mining from some third party to the government, which can be wrongly used later if some idiot comes into power. If it’s not making a call to a government’s servers, I would be surprised, since you could imagine someone just bypassing this to always return “Over 18”.

Even funnier (read “sad”), this initiative will probably rely on Google and Apple to keep it robust, and will likely have no availability on rooted phones or non-Google Play Services ones. It’s premature at best to deploy this in a meaningfully safe way.

All great on paper, but why would EU leaders fight against Trump? They’re all fragmented, trying to hold on to their countries’ benefit. Given the most recent decision to cripple the 2035 ban on ICE cars due to pressure from Germany and Italy, I really doubt the leaders here are capable of punishing Trump.

Even if von der Leyen pushed for this (which I doubt, see her behaviour in the first USA EU Deal), the EU would have to act unanimously to do it, and we already know that it is not possible. Given recent polls, it might be possible that Hungary will keep Orban as PM, and other countries will soon vote in their own MAGA-like leaders. See Romania, Bulgaria, and quite a few others in Eastern Europe where corruption is rampant. They’d sell their own mother if it got them a second villa.

I wish to be as hopeful as the author, but the EU leaders keep proving the opposite. In order to survive, the EU should have focused on separating from the US during the Bush era, or even as late as Trump’s first mandate. As it is, the EU will probably just wait for Trump’s term to be over, and then return to business as usual. I am afraid we won’t be seeing any big disturbances to the current world order for a while, unless the AI bubble bursts (which will probably be due to other factors, not EU intervention).

Right, but then rich people can no longer exploit other regions if everyone is considered equal! Think about the shareholders for a bit :/ (I’m sarcastic, in case it is not clear :D)

The main problem here is that people flocking to positions of power are often the ones that do it for the wrong reasons. Until that part is sorted out, we will keep having leaders that will enforce things that are best for them and their closest ones. Some form of anarcho-communism would probably help this, but the current globalisation effort will make it very hard to implement. The best thing we can do as individuals is to just improve our social circle, and try to rely on as many local things as possible.

Even the comic-book bullies are better than this… The sad part is that the West will continue to lick the boot, hoping everyone will just forget. I really hope that that is not the case. What Greta did here is very impressive, and I hope that her spirit will inspire other young people to vote out these dumbfucks in government that try to do damage control in this situation.