activistPnk

joined 1 year ago
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[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago

fwiw, here is an emacs version:

https://codeberg.org/martianh/lem.el#headline-11

I think what would be most useful would be a usenet→lemmy gateway, so that rich catalog of usenet clients can be leveraged on Lemmy.

[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago

I get rid of them pretty quickly by saying I have no bank account. I might start adding to that “take cryptocurrency?” so they leave with the idea that maybe they should be open to cryptocurrency.

[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

@youmaynotknow is spot on. But consider this a very basic primer on just a small fraction of privacy abuse by banks:

So there’s 22 privacy abuses by banks to get you started. And that just barely scratches the surface.

You can somewhat ignore paragraphs 15 and 23 in terms of privacy. OTOH privacy is hand-in-hand with control and paragraphs 15 & 23 reflect control being in the wrong hands.

[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago

Banks abuse our privacy in countless ways. This could fill a book. This policy amounts to forced banking. I boycott banks. Banks have us by the balls and they abuse that power. A bank recently told me (in effect) to fuck off if I don’t have a mobile phone number to give them.

[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago

It’s impossible to define the amount in relative terms such as “average EU monthly salary +25%”,

It’s not impossible. Indexes are published. This is what they do with rent in places where rent is controlled. Landlords cannot increase rent more than an index. So they have to do the math. And in this case it’s not even a variable baseline like rent, it’s fixed, so the calculation can also be published so people need not do any math.

[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

That’s net (take-home pay), not gross. Tax is high enough that you need to double that figure (€4,400) to get the gross pay. And just wait till you account for inflation, which the EU cash limits apparently fail to account for.

[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

this poll shows it’s non-partisan:

https://layer8.space/@hyakinthos/112554837920009346

The left respects privacy far more than the right. But the left also has that high-taxation tendency. The outcome of that tug-of-war within left-leaning people results in ~73% embracing cash -- just like the conservatives who don’t give a shit about privacy but have contempt for tax.

[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Beware on your next trip to Netherlands, where some bars refuse cash and conceal their contempt for cash (reference)

I just linked your post from that one because it fits well with the story.

(edit) BTW, I would like to see your workmate’s story published in a blog that serves better as a reference. It needs more exposure in a venue that’s not quasi temporary. I would even print hardcopies of it to distribute to cashless bar owners. So a nicely typeset PDF would be useful.

[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

What country was that? I heard about a Belgian who tried to withdraw €10k from her bank account. They refused and also called the police who interrogated her and made a report. Belgian banks have cash withdrawal limits written in the contract. Even pulling out €3k raises eyebrows in Belgium. So withdrawing €30k trouble-free would probably require withdrawing €2.5k once per week over the span of 12 weeks. Is the car seller willing to hold the car for a buyer that long?

[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

That’s not because of the cash. Even white collar workers getting paid electronically get audited because Belgium has a very high audit rate. I heard the probability of getting audited in Belgium is around 50%. Belgian auditors are extremely ambitious and highly motivated. They are employed in high numbers. The only way to avoid being audited in Belgium is to not work in Belgium.

[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This depends on the industry. Domestic workers and builders are often paid in cash in Europe. Belgium even writes it in law that cash wages are prohibited if you work in an industry where that is uncommon. Strange (and discriminatory) law, but indeed white collar workers are legally blocked from cash payment while other industries are grandfathered.

[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 months ago

Indeed national laws don’t generally limit p2p cash, but the EU law encroaches on that AFAICT.

31
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by activistPnk@slrpnk.net to c/zerowaste@slrpnk.net
 

After eating the last pickle save the jar of pickle juice. Then when a broccoli stem becomes available cut the tough outer skin off, chop it up and toss it in the pickle juice. Works well. They reach a taste that’s very close what the pickles tasted like. After 2 or 3 cycles of that the pickle juice starts losing its strong punch. Adding vinegar and a sweetener can help at that point if you don’t have more pickle juice by then.

Otherwise broccoli stems are not too versatile. They’re not that great in veg. stock because they bring a bit of bitterness. So I only use like ½ a stem in a pot of broth (which is wholly from veg scraps).

My next experiment (untested): reusing juice from a jar of jalapẽnos to pickle broccoli stems.

 

I just discovered it’s possible to edit the last msg that was sent over XMPP.

Dino


Has the capability. But it does not give you a record of past versions. It would be useful if Dino would still show you your past versions because you cannot know if the other party saw the uncorrected version. So you should have a record of those erroneous payloads.

Profanity


Has the capability. But it cannot correct a msg that you composed in another client. That may be a protocol limitation. Maybe they don’t want the complexity of having edited versions signed by a different key.

Strangely, Profanity only updates the display if an inbound correction (e.g. from Dino) is minor. Dramatic edits in Dino seem to be ignored by Profanity. Also strange that when Profanity accepts an inbound update from Dino, the existing msg text is updated. One might expect text in a TUI to not be altered in place. It’s an IRC-like interface.

Snikket


Does not have the capability of making corrections. But it fully accepts inbound alterations no matter how dramatic the change is.

 

Had a quick look at Poezio and Libervia while I’ve been using Profanity for a couple years now.

Libervia


  • OMEMO is integrated. OMEMO is important enough that it should be a highlighted feature when looking at the pkg description (apt show libervia-backend) not something we dig for.
  • It tries to be everything, like having games. That broad focus is a bit worrying because so many comms apps screw up at just exchanging e2ee messages that you really don’t want other things competing for maintenance effort. But OTOH it could be quite useful that the backend can interface with a mail client like mutt. And has an activitypub gateway which could have some interesting obscure uses.
  • Docs are in a quite bad state. Man page references broken URLs and the websites that are up point to other broken links. The page with content is https://goffi.org/ and it’s got some bizarre problem where it tries to refresh the screen every few seconds. Really hard to read when it keeps refreshing. /usr/share/docs/libervia-* is also useless. References to broken URLs there too as well as mentions of non-existent files. Docs say to run the daemon you need to execute eval [tic]dbus-launch --sh-syntax[tic], which is baffling as it does not actually refer to the libervia backend. There must be more to it than that.
  • Man page makes no mention of a proxy option.
  • It’s a good design to have a backend and different frontends that can connect to it, generally, but the lack of proxy option complicates that. If the backend has to run on torsocks, will the frontends be able to connect to it locally?

Poezio


  • Well packaged and documented. /usr/share/docs includes an HTML tree of well presented docs. Really seems well organised.
  • Bit alarming and unconventional that when you launch it that it automatically connects to servers even if you never supply a server to connect to. Security feels like an after-thought. I had to run it in a firejail sandbox first just to make sure it generated the config file that I could modify before putting it to use. Docs say the connection it tries to make is “anonymous”, but they use that term overly loosely. There is no mention of Tor. I want to be in control of what connections are made and it’s a bit off that a sandbox is needed to force it to run offline.
  • There is no proxy config option. So unless it looks at undocumented env vars, it should be run on Torsocks.
  • OMEMO is not built-in. There is a separate OMEMO plugin out in the wild, not packaged on Debian. That’s not ideal for Debian users because we have to wonder what quality standards did the plugin not satisfy, and the fact that upgrades can break part of the pkg when only part of the tool chain is in the official repos.

So I think these two apps need to evolve more. Profanity has issues but it seems I’m better off trying to struggle through those.

PGP email in the 1990s was so much more reliable and usable. It’s bizarre how in 2024 e2ee comms have become such a shit show. Most people are using tech giants and not encrypting, which is exactly what the tech giants want. I will not, so I’m out of reach to most people. I won’t touch Signal either because that’s garbage. Maybe Delta chat is worth a look since it claims to do PGP over email in a way that normies can deal with.

1
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by activistPnk@slrpnk.net to c/xmpp@slrpnk.net
 

“Profanity” is an XMPP app. (For those who got the wrong idea about the title)

What I use:

  • Debian with Profanity (preferred for the proper keyboard and TUI)
  • Android with Snikket

What my low-tech comrades use:

  • iOS with Snikket

It’s a bit of a disaster. One iOS-Snikket user gets my msgs but never a notification. Another iOS-Snikket user is plagued with that error msg (some bogus msg about OMEMO being unsupported). My comrades are at the edge of sanity since I’m the one who imposed xmpp+omemo on them, and they have little tolerance for all the problems.

I’m not sure what to try next. I would hate to replace Profanity because it’s the only decent text based option with official debian support. Would it help if the iOS users switch from Snikket to Monocles?

 

It doesn’t take long for mold to grow on empty beer bottles. Considering beer bottles get returned for a refund, you have to assume that the brewery will make an effort to reuse as many as possible.

I toured a brewery once and they showed us the big industrial bottle washing machine. They said the bottles get scanned for cracks using a laser, and rejects obviously get tossed. The question is: what about mold, which adheres quite well to the corners of the glass? I wonder if the laser also detects bottles that didn’t get clean. Or if they just figure the temps would kill everything and just be considered safe enough from there.

 

The linked article states:

“You always have the right to a minimum 2-year guarantee if the digital content or service turns out to be faulty, not as advertised or not working as expected.”

IIUC, this means if a service is paired with software, and the API + software employs #forcedObsolescence mid-contract, they must fix or refund. Thus two example scenarios come to mind:

  • If you were to pay ProtonVPN for premium service in the year leading up to June 2021 and you ran AOS 5, you would have lost service after less than an annual subscription period. ProtonVPN would have to remedy it under EU law.
  • If your bank charges annual fees and they push a forced upgrade at any time that obsoletes your platform (so you cannot use the forced upgrade), the bank might be in violation of this EU consumer protection law.
 

Wire version 3.38.826 is apparently the last version to target Android 5. The app executes but users get a stupidly written block message:

“Important update Please install the latest version of Wire. [Download]”

Yet a piece of the app continues to function: messages that arrive are still decrypted and sent to the notifications panel. But users are only allowed to see as many words as will fit in the width of screen.

There’s a lot of incompetence and embarrassment here:

  • Quite early obsolescence: AOS 5 users were sabotaged around 2019. (so AOS 5 dropped probably ~7-8 years after it was introduced)
  • Security nannying. Only the user or user’s admin has knowledge of the use case and threat model. Wire cannot possibly know this. Yet they take the liberty of nannying and misplacing power.
  • If there really is a serious security vuln that calls for such drastic measures as forcing people to throw away their hardware and buy a new phone, then why is it ok to process messages for the notification panel?
  • The block screen does not bother to check the AOS version, so it offers users a false option that can only lead to defeat.
  • #Wireapp can normally be fetched directly from wire.com so deGoogled users can reach it. But the block screen tries to force users into Google Playstore, which means the update mechanism is broken for deGoogled users.
  • The app was never in an F-Droid repo, so apparently there is no archive of old versions.

Going forward:

  • It’s FOSS, so if the API did not change then perhaps version 3.38.826 can be hacked to remove the offending code or even just give a fake user-agent string to the server.

  • Software Conservatory should perhaps be tipped off that Wireapp should be archived. And ideally binaries too although I don’t suppose that’s in the normal scope of their role.

 

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/8092448

ProtonVPN did an API bump in this version: Version 2.7.56.1 (2021-06-18) which left everyone with an Android version older than AOS 6 in the dust. So I went to the archives and grabbed the version just before that one. Ran it for the first time, configuration wizard had no issues but as soon as I tried to reach out to the server it refused to stand up a tunnel saying my version was too old. Not only did they leave permacomputing folks behind for sustaining their still-quite-functional devices, but they proactively sabotaged us from the server side.

AFAIK they made no excuses for the API bump. The usual excuse is “for security reasons”... yeah.. bullshit. Anyway, here’s the workaround:

The absolute latest openvpn app still supports AOS 5 (somewhat suggesting there is no compelling security reason to force AOS 5 users to throw away their devices). Or if you have AOS 4 you can take the openvpn version from 2 years ago. ProtonVPN distributes openvpn config profiles and the openVPN app can simply import those.

Also worth noting that F-Droid warns of anti-features on the ProtonVPN app but OpenVPN is free of anti-features. That said, I got an authentication error, but I doubt that’s related to this procedure.

update


ProtonVPN is possibly breaking EU law. If someone subscribed to service less than two years before the forced obsolescence, ProtonVPN is obligated to continue service as long as necessary to serve the consumer for 2 years.

 

There are now two BifL communities in the free decentralized world:

Perhaps each wants to mention the other in the sidebar?

 

This is the machine translation (Argos Translate) of Lidl’s “zero waste” announcement:


The revenues generated by this initiative will be fully donated to the Belgian Federation of Food Banks

Monday, 10 February 2020 — The Lidl supermarket chain launches the "Good appetite, Zero gaspi" project in all its Belgian stores. The goal of this initiative is to limit food losses and to allow Lidl to reduce food waste by 25% (as compared to 2015) by the end of 2020 and 50% by 2025. The discounter sells products that are always consumer-friendly at broken prices such as cartons of fruit and vegetables of 3kg for 1€, meat and fish to be consumed the day for 0,50€. Revenues generated by "Good appetite, Zero gaspi" will be donated to the Belgian Food Bank Federation. Broken price products to stop food waste

The "Good appetite, Zero gaspi" initiative will significantly reduce the food losses of the ensign. “By 2020, we aim to reduce food losses by 25% compared to 2015 and 50% by 2025. Since today, the "Good appetite, Zero gaspi" project has been implemented in Belgium, where every day we present to our customers different food products that are always consumer-friendly at a small price:

  • 1€ for dry products with slightly damaged packaging and cartons of 3 kg of fruit and vegetables

  • €0.50 for all types of meat, fish and pastries to be consumed on the day

  • €0.20 for dairy and ultra-fresh products (compound salts) to be consumed on the day. »

Philippe Weiler, Lidl Sustainability Manager

Lidl Belgium has a structural agreement with federation of food banks in Belgium. The revenues generated by this initiative will be donated to these two associations. Lidl wants to be a state-of-the-art sustainability supermarket by 2020

Lidl has recently presented a new sustainability strategy composed of 20 ambitious goals by 2020, and a goal is dedicated to food waste. Philippe Weiler: "To achieve this goal, we must both fight food waste and revalue food surpluses. »


Ideally the staff should notice that something expires today and put a zero waste sticker on it which marks the price down to €0.20 or €0.50, depending on whether it’s meat or veg. The problem is they are not diligent about spotting the expiring food. And worse, there are inconsistencies:

  • Lidl store 1: if you point out an expiration date of today to the cashier, they will ring it up under the zero-waste pricing (€0.20 or €0.50). The sticker is not needed.. just there to highlight the low price customers. So while standing in line it’s wise to check dates for stuff expiring today to lower the price.

  • Lidl store 2: they are apparently deliberately not putting the zero waste sticker on things expiring today. If you point out the expiration to the cashier, they refuse to alter the price. They even called the manager over who said “no zero waste sticker, no discount”.

  • Lidl store 3: sloppy about which sticker. Sometimes meat gets the veg price (€0.20) and often veg gets the meat price (€0.50). And the cashier refuses to correct mistakes.

So unfortunately every store is different and #Lidl HQ says that’s expected.

I have no idea what happens when something expires on Sunday, when they are closed (I saw a pastry on Saturday that expired on Sunday but didn’t think to ask for zero-waste pricing). They certainly will not sell something that is past the date under any circumstances.

update


I’ve found there are differences based on the item involved as well. Shops are not at all fast and loose with the zero waste discount if it’s a pie which goes from €5.50 to 50¢.

  • Lidl store 1: Refused to give me zero-waste pricing on a pie first thing in the morning, but they allowed the zero-waste pricing on a salad and some pasta. They said they will only markdown the pie in the afternoon. Next day I found another pie expiring that day. It was 1pm but they blocked me again, saying it had to be after 4pm. The goal posts keep moving!

  • Lidl store 4: Refused zero-waste pricing on a pie mid day, but said after 5pm they would.

  • Lidl store 5: Was there shortly after 5pm and happened to find a whole pie with the zero waste sticker (50¢). That must be very rare.

update 2


  • Lidl store 1: found an item on Saturday that will expire on Sunday. Zero-waste pricing refused.

update 3


None of this matters because we should be boycotting Lidl anyway.

 

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/6224624

If you incorporate these ingredients in your cooking, your left-overs will last longer:

  • honey
  • salt
  • garlic
  • sugar (only in high amounts according to feedback; small amounts shortens the life)
  • ginger
  • sage
  • rosemary
  • mustard
  • cumin

From other articles:

  • black pepper
  • mustard seed
  • turmeric
  • cinnamon
  • cardamom
  • cloves

Acids mentioned by others:

  • vinegar
  • citric acid
  • lemon/lime juice
 

If you incorporate these ingredients in your cooking, your left-overs will last longer:

  • honey
  • salt
  • garlic
  • sugar (only in high amounts according to feedback; small amounts shortens the life)
  • ginger
  • sage
  • rosemary
  • sage
  • mustard
  • cumin

Additionally from other articles:

  • black pepper
  • mustard seed
  • turmeric
  • cinnamon
  • cardamom
  • cloves

Acids mentioned by others:

  • vinegar
  • citric acid
  • lemon/lime juice

I just had some harissa get moldy after just a couple weeks in a jar in the fridge. I was surprised. I suppose it implies a lack of the above ingredients.

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