Thanks. I noticed that but I would have to wait till I have a decent connection and then I wouldn’t understand the German anyway.
ciferecaNinjo
joined 3 years ago
1
(crossposted from !humanrights)
The US can be credited with starting the Orwellian idea of forcing all “visa-free” visitors to file an ETA¹. It’s not just a money grab for us$ 20. It’s a snooping mechanism to link people to social media accounts, and then perform a background check on travelers to look for any speech that’s critical of the US.
Someone from Lebanon got a scholarship for Harvard. Then he was blocked at the border by border control. The cause: a friend linked to him on social media said something critical of the US. Even though the aspiring student did not himself criticise the US, being associated with someone who did was sufficient to block his entry. (He eventually made it back after some hassle and back and forth on flights).
Then the UK decided decided to impose travel authorisations as well, thus doing a money grab of £16. Initially it seemed to just be a retaliation against the US. But recently the UK decided to target Europeans.
So now the EU has decided to follow suit. In 2027, the loss of visa-free travel hits Europe. Even those who merely have a connecting flight in Europe will have to pay €20 and pass the background check. You need not even leave the airport to be subjected to this.
Of course it’s bullshit to continue calling this “visa-free travel”. They hope a technical semantical spin will fool people into accepting unfunded background checks coupled with surcharges as still “visa-free”.
¹ Electronic Travel Authorisation
Human rights
Do we still have privacy and free speech, as guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12 and 19, which states (respectively):
- “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”
…
- “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
?
Yes, those rights are protected -- but only if you stay in your homeland. Only if you do not expect to simultaneously exercise your Article 13 rights, which states:
“1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”
What other UDHR-signatory countries have joined this ETA shit-show?
Is this also a loss of a right to be analog?
Cross-posting to !right_to_unplug because:
- the “E” in ETA is electronic, thus implying that there is no offline mechanism for unplugged people and unbanked people (correct me if I am wrong)
- those who declare not having a social media account are distrusted, presumed nefarious, and potentially denied entry (e.g. entering the US with a new/clean phone has triggered suspicion and ultimately entry refusals)
1
Germany has 17 DPAs, each covering a region. Plus there is a federal DPA, apparently. Where do complaints go on cross-border situations?
(www.datenschutzkonferenz-online.de)
1
Germany has 17 DPAs, each covering a region. Plus there is a federal DPA, apparently. Where do complaints go on cross-border situations?
(www.datenschutzkonferenz-online.de)
Just commenting based on the title since I am blocked from YT and also don’t speak German. (An English transcript would be useful)
Ditching Gmail is trivially easy. Boycotting gmail is where the interesting conversation is, because often you need to reach someone who uses gmail. You can do an MX lookup on the domain of the recipient’s email address, but that only works about 70% of the time. If they use an email firewall like Barracuda or a forwarding address, then there is no way to know where the email route ends.
If I cannot get confidence from an MX lookup, then the recipient is getting a fax or postal letter from me. Google could still end up in the loop, but as long as you don’t reveal an email address to the recipient, at least you remain in control over what Google collects and profits from.
I’m not sure what you want a source for. You mean a vendor who will sell one? XO-4 Touch was apparently the last model. I just had a look at laptop.org and the site looks useless now. It used to be full of wikis with copious details about the hardware and software of the OLPC.
There are (or were) a variety of NGOs who worked on getting OLPCs into impoverished schools. One of them was https://unleashkids.org/. They are not in the business of selling them but ~15 yrs ago they were kind enough to sell some. The idea was that teachers and developers would need them to help support the OLPC project. I suggest touching base with them and see what they say, since they seem to still be around.
The XO-4 Touch came with “Sugar”, a foss OS just for kids. It was easy to make it boot into Gnome instead (underpinned by RedHat). And someone made an Android OS that could be flashed onto an SD card and booted in the OLPC. I should mention that the OLPC was never 100% FOSS. The usual shit-show of blobs for some of the hardware drivers. I mainly just used it as an e-reader on Gnome.
I’ve always been baffled that these FOSS e-ink laptops did not make it onto the general marketplace, while at the same time there were no commercial makers of anything like it. There was a “Pixel QI” dual-mode screen that could be bought bare and installed in Thinkpads and other machines, but for some reason that never took off either.
OLPC (one-laptop-per-child) is a FOSS e-ink laptop (but small enough to function as an e-reader). Though I think they are no longer made and they were always hard to get.
The cheque circulaire isn't offered since 2010, that's explained at the bottom of the current fees.
Circular cheques are still being used. I just received one. The articles you link say that the circular cheques will remain when the postal orders are eliminated.
Your links were quite helpful. This looks like the most relevant bit for answering my question (from this article):
(en translation)
…According to the office of the Minister of Public Action and Modernization, Vanessa Matz was able, via the circular cheque, to guarantee a concrete and free cash alternative for the most vulnerable. In particular, this measure concerns those who do not have access to banking services or who are isolated. Neither circular cheques nor prepaid cards will be billed to beneficiaries, says the firm on Tuesday.
(fr original)
…Selon le cabinet de la ministre l’Action et de la Modernisation publiques, Vanessa Matz a pu, via le chèque circulaire, garantir une alternative cash concrète et gratuite pour les plus vulnérables. Cette mesure concerne en particulier ceux qui n’ont pas accès aux services bancaires ou qui sont isolés. Ni les chèques circulaires ni les cartes prépayées ne seront facturés aux bénéficiaires, précise le cabinet mardi.
That seems to explain what I was misunderstanding. I thought if the fee for cheque cashing is going away, perhaps so are the cheques. That would be very disturbing but that’s not the case. Apparently the 4€ fee is going away.🎉 I believe that fee was always illegal. Glad something was done about it.
Remaining question: how does a postal order differ from a circular cheque? What do we lose when postal orders go away? AFAICT, they function the same. This article seems to say circular cheques require movement -- going to a bank or post office to cash it, which is a problem for some handicaps. But I don’t get why that would not be the case with a postal order as well. How does a postal order get converted to cash? Is it perhaps about showing ID? Is it a case where a family member could cash a postal order for their grandparent, but not a cheque?
Ice cubes would be interesting for non-fortified wine. But I suppose sherry might not freeze at 15% alc. (not sure). Anyway, someone else told me only 12% alc is needed for shelf-stability, so that solves the problem. Sherry can simply be kept at room temp.
Glad to hear about the 12% threshold. All the cheap sherry I have easy local access to are 15%.
Cooking wine is indeed cheaper and lower quality. But more importantly it is shelf-stable. You can open a bottle of cooking wine and keep it in the cupboard. The stuff is labelled “cooking wine” in the US so that it is treated as such. It probably gets around some of the tight liquor controls there.
Europe does not seem to have a product with preservatives specifically for that purpose. So you would use substandard wines for cooking. If champaign goes flat because an open bottle sat out overnight, it’s still good for risotto. But I would still chill it if I weren’t making risotto the next day. In the case at hand, I don’t want to be keeping a bottle of sherry in the fridge.
When using a whole bottle in a day, then of course there is no issue. But it takes me a year to get through a bottle of Sherry.
It depends on the level of competency of the executives. If the approach done with low frequency, feedback to upper management could trigger someone to calculate whether lost sales is worth it. If it is done on a large scale, then less competency is required for upper management to do the calculation. So the frequency of abandoned carts to have effect depends on the competency of management.
it prevents the business from functioning correctly and I think in that hypothetical scenario, you’re definitely hurting cashiers.
It’s not a boycott. You can abandon a basket in one Spar shop to send a msg then still buy the stuff at another one.
But let’s suppose it’s not just a signal but actually a boycott. To harm the cashiers the boycott would have to be on such a large scale that it causes at least one Spar shop to shut down. Do you really believe that would happen? It’s beyond unrealistic. Only 60% of the population even cares about cash. Many fewer even shop at Spar to begin with. It would be unlikely if even just 1% were to boycott on this issue. Then you have to figure that the 40% of the population who is okay with forced banking and cashless society would counter the boycott by patronising Spar when they otherwise wouldn’t. On top of that, this is not a hill Spar would die on no matter how incompetent they are. They would give in to the boycott far before closing shop.
In short, you have no chance of harming cashiers.
Giving the cashiers work to do does not “harm” them. If anything it improves their job security for them to have more work to do. They get paid the same whether it is putting back abandoned items or collecting money from shop supporters.
If the cost of unfruitful overhead labor coupled with lost sales does not change the behavior of the executives, fair enough, they are their own incompetent adversary in that case. We can setup conditions for them to make smart and favorable decisions but in the end it’s on them to make the smart decision.
It cannot be about addiction prevention especially when there is only one casino in a given area. The staff sees the faces of addicts on a regular basis, their behaviour, and emotions. This is better information than they could get from a transaction record.
Having to register is common across casinos I think.
It’s recent. In any case, I would like to find rare casinos that are free to enter anonymously.
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I hope it won’t run bank apps. When my bank tries to shut down their website and force me onto a smartphone (which is inherently not a smart move for privacy and security), I want to be able to show them that their app won’t run on my linux phone so there is pressure to keep the website running.
Fuck phone banking. Let’s have some separation of church and state.
boot lickers who want to run corporate spyware → Android or iOS
freedom seekers who want to keep their dignity and autonomy → linux
Worth noting that banks deliberately block alternative platforms. Some detect whether they are running in an emulator and refuse to run. And “emulator” is very loose. I saw a bank app refuse to run on a laptop that natively ran Android.