• 117 Posts
  • 241 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • That does not seem to be the reality down on the ground. A guy was complaining about his 50 EUR cash deposit being refused because he could not prove the source.

    Maybe you are thinking what the law mandates, in a situation where banks are free to be more extreme than the law? A lot of banks generally try to be “overachievers” when it comes to legal compliance because consumers are pushovers and regulators only care about the legal infringements that concern the state and not consumers. Some banks refuse cash deposits entirely and outright. So if that’s legal, why would it not be legal to demand proof of source on a deposit of €50?

    BTW, if you find a bank that minimally complies with the law and gives the full legally permissible amount of privacy to customers (and respects GDPR data minimisation laws), please let us know! I don’t think such a thing exists.





  • the site isn’t useful if I keep it locked down like it is now

    I’d say it’s crippled but not useless, just as old-fashioned non-federated forums are still useful despite limitations. And as it is now we still have some of the fedi benefits.

    bug 1

    One bug comes to mind, which should perhaps be reported against kbin. Is the current locked down state something that is facilitated by the software, or did you hack it to redirect outsiders to login screens? If it’s the former, then the software is disservicing users who unwittingly post a link back to the access-restricted resource. If I cross-post by posting a link to fedia.io/yadayada, I should ideally get a warning to say “are you sure you want to post a link that is inaccessible to outsiders?”

    bug 2 (more of an enhancement)

    One work around is for a Fedia user to create a post, wait for a non-fedia response, then dig up the cached version on the non-fedia host and publicise that link in other places. That’s already possible with a bit of navigation effort. It would be useful if users could obtain a link farm of cached versions of any post or comment. Not just for the situation at hand but with small hosts coming and going coupled with censorship as well, users of mastodon, lemmy, and [km]bin all suffer from dataloss. A sophisticated client could use caching info to locally build/recover a complete thread, as well as track points of data loss.

    Anyway, just brainstorming here.



  • I don’t know the Belgian case, but I think it’s the same thing in many member states; the publishing of laws online is done by private for-profit companies, and comes with weird restrictions.

    Belgium has an open data law obligating the state to make available to the public generally all information that the state has, with some reasonable restrictions w.r.t private info about individuals. Legal statutes themselves would obviously have to be openly accessible under that law. That law was even used to force publication of train routes and schedules. I’ve not read the law but I guess it’s likely sloppy about what constitutes “open”, because the state’s own website is access restricted (e.g. Tor IPs are blocked).


  • I’ve always appreciated your competence and diligence in setting a good example of responsible hosting without resorting to shitty technofeudal fiefdoms like Cloudflare. Nice to see you are standing your ground and not selling the users out (unlike lemmy world and many other boot licking hosts).

    I must say there is a notable side-effect to this. Since mbin does not have a cross-posting feature, I have been cross-posting by creating a link post to my original post from other relevant magazines. Now all of those links are unreachable to outsiders. To outsiders, I polluted their magazine with access-restricted links.

    I can think of only two workarounds:

    1. Make the original post on a publicly open forum, then link to that from other forums. This means the original post can never be on Fedia (which has the side-effect of reducing fedia publicity); and/or
    2. Copy/paste the payload of the original msg into the cross-post.

    Fix 1 is impossible for existing past threads. Fix 2 is tedious and it’s a maintenance burden esp. if a post needs edits or updates. Fix 2 is also problematic because if I withold the original link, users cannot find other discussions that are scattered; but if I supply the original link, then non-Fedia readers cannot reach the OP anyway.

    That will mean we don’t show up in search engines and whatnot, which for some will considered a good thing and will likely cause others to leave.

    Worth mentioning that paywall sites handle this by giving crawlers special treatment. I’m not necessarily suggesting that though.

    There is a remaining problem related to the login form. Calls to the login page are breathtakingly expensive,

    The login form loads must be through the roof because whenever a non-fedia user follows a cross-post into fedia, they are redirected to a login form which did not happen before.

    There would be some relief if Mbin would implement a cross-post feature that automatically copies the OP text into the body, which would cut down on the number of visits. At the same time, I’ve always considered that a sloppy approach because edits are not sychronised. So in principle the threadiverse probably needs a smarter API specifically for cross-posts.

    The use of 3rd-party clients would obviously give relief on the login form loading. But I have not found any decent 3rd-party clients for Lemmy or [km]bin - (perhaps because I’m fussy… I could really use a text UI in linux that stores content locally).


  • If a resource blocks certain IP addresses, that is not open access. It is access restricted. It is a deliberate blockade against a demographic of people.

    “Open data” has different meanings in different bodies of law, so your comment is meaningless without context. But in any case, we can call shenanigans whenever an “open data” legal definition fails to thwart access restrictions in an Emporer wears no clothes type of attempt.

    IOW, you cannot claim that an access restriction ceases to exist on some emotional plea that you believe the access restriction is just, appropriate, or necessary. An access restriction is an access restriction. “Open” implies open to all people, not some select demographics.
















  • Well, it wouldn’t require lying but certainly it seems tricky. You can deregister before you leave the country and neglect to provide an address for where you are going – because you wouldn’t necessarily know in advance and you cannot provide information that does not exist. So they clear your address from your id card which then just has an empty address.

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t have a specific legal obligation to state where you live abroad.

    Though one snag is that you have a legal obligation to vote in elections and you must vote in the nearest embassy, which requires giving an address to get on the voting roster. However, voting is not strictly enforced. If you fail to vote there is a small fine but I don’t think they actually hit unregistered people abroad with that. If you do not vote in 3 consecutive elections, then you could lose your voting rights for a few years, I think.

    I do not believe the bank gets a notification that you have deregistered. But at some point your ID card on the bank’s files will expire and they will expect an updated copy and freeze your account until they receive it.

    If you walk into an embassy to “renew” your passport, do they demand an address? I would think you would pick up your passport at the embassy a week later. Or do they mail it?

    Anyway, I can understand giving in to surveillance and disclosing US ties, but OTOH it seems like a nightmare to do what’s expected as well… to be tagged as a toxic US person. It’s a mess either way. Perhaps the wisest move is to “move” to Canada, stay there a couple months, setup residency, then move to the US and just neglect to mention it. Get mail forwarding from Canada.


  • Half their internet banking site is off-limits to me

    Mind elaborating? Did they restrict your account specifically, or does the website simply treat logins from the US differently? I’m surprised you wouldn’t retain full cloud access so long as your account exists under the terms you signed up for.

    I don’t understand why you would tell your Belgian bank that you left Belgium, particularly when your new residence is the US which flags you as a toxic asset that requires special handling. That could only work against you. Surely you would be better off not telling them you moved and use a VPN to Belgium to access your acct.




  • Considering your apparent adversity to surveillance advertising US tech giants, it’s a bit of a surprise that you would consider using ItsMe, a service that forces you to trust Cloudflare and be subject to Cloudflare’s bullying, oversight and access restrictions. There is no way to use ItsMe without letting Cloudflare see your sensitive data.

    That said, I do not know the answer to your question because I would never even try to use ItsMe in the very least because of it’s hostility toward tor users.