What disgusts me about this is the digital markets act names all the tech giants except Cloudflare as gatekeepers. The single most harmful bully on the block is Cloudflare. I can (and am) boycotting Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Amazon. It’s difficult for most civilians but possible.
But if you want to be free from Cloudflare, it’s impossible because Cloudflare has even MitMd public services. You cannot get public information from government sources operating on public money without Cloudflare. Because I choose to boycott Cloudflare, I have had to give up my voting rights. I cannot vote in elections because of Cloudflare. So indeed it’s disgusting that Cloudflare is not even on the radar when it should be at the top.
BTV can cause abortion, in animals? WTF? I guess they must mean miscarriages. AFAIK non-human animals don’t do abortions.
Again, I would say that should depend on statistics.
Certainly that is a recipe for marginalizing minorities. In the US there is a principle that people are innocent until proven guilty. We could flip that and say guilty until proven innocent, but we don’t because we rightfully prioritize the well being of non-criminals above prosecution of criminals. It is unacceptible to say we can harm some non-criminals in pursuit of making it more convenient for cops to do their job. It’s better to overlook 10 criminals than to harm 1 innocent person. It’s not okay to sacrifice non-criminals for the sake of law enforcement.
Isn’t that the case for many preventive security measures? I mean the baggage checks at the airport are time consuming and restrict everyone on bringing liquids, large batteries, forks, knives etc. into the plane.
Passengers are rightfully allowed to bring knives and guns onto a plane, so long as it is in their checked luggage. This does not materially hinder people’s options. You don’t need a weapon when all potential attackers are also disarmed. But you still have a right to take your weapon to your destination, and rightfully so.
To equate a FedEx cash search with shipping batteries in a dangerous way with a precious payload (human lives) is an absurdity. If someone wants to commit suicide there are many better ways to do so than to carry a battery 10,000 feet up and then have it set fire on your vessel. You are not really materially hindering someone’s personal way of life by taking away the option kill themselves and others during a flight.
The passengers who share the plane with someone who wants to transport dangerous materials that compromise their safety directly mutually benefit from safety checks.
At the same time, if the person flying next to me carries a bit of cocaine, then no I do not benefit from a cocaine search and oppose it because it’s a violation of 4th amendment rights (if carried out by TSA). Such a search is looking for a crime against the state, not a crime against the person who sits next to a cocaine user. It’s extra perverse when non-criminals lives are hindered in an effort to enforce crimes against the state and victimless crimes.
Same with routine controls at a border or on the highway. It’s annoying for many people due to delays just to catch some few smugglers, overloaded trucks etc.
This is a good example of harm coming to non-criminals in the hunt for criminals. They violate everyone’s 4th amendment rights to go on a fishing expedition because the cops are too lazy to get a warrant and properly do a targeted search of suspects.
A security camera in a bank will film thousands of regular customers before it ever (if at all) gets to see a robbery.
That’s private sector. I give less of a shit about that because a bank has a right to secure their premises however they see appropriate in their business model, and as a consumer I have a choice whether or not to use a bank. If I don’t like the way they operate, I can opt-out, (unlike Europe where you now have forced banking).
Law enforcement by definition deals with suspects not convicted criminals.
No we are not dealing with suspects. Indiana is performing a general search without a suspect and without a warrant. If Indiana were to say to FedEx “we have a warrant to search pkgs to and from Bill Harvey at address X, please set aside those packages for us to search”, and then the sniffer dogs were used only on Bill Harvey’s payloads, that would be dealing with suspects and I would not object to seizing those pkgs. But still likely dubious for the police to simply pocket the money, rather than tag it and put it in the evidence room.
But wouldn’t the alternative be even worse for you from a privacy perspective? They keep the practice of scanning packages but rather than seizing the money, they send investigators after the intended recipient. That wouldn’t only dramatically increase the costs of law enforcement but also lead to innocents being supervised.
First of all, whether or not to inform the customer that their pkg was flagged is not obviated by the decision to not confiscate. Some TSA workers will search a bag and insert a tag. When you arrive at your destination you might open up your luggage and see a tag that essentially says “TSA was here”. Apart from whether the search was appropriate in the first place, the transparency is proper when the target is vindicated. They found nothing, but they owe it to the subject to be transparent.
Non-criminals rightfully have an expectation of privacy under the 4th amendment. Criminals do not, as it is 4th amendment compliant to search when there is just cause to do so. They should not be searching pkgs of non-suspects in the first place, but if they do and they find no actionable evidence of crime they absolutely should be doing what TSA does and they should do so without keeping the person’s possessions. If it’s a business transaction that includes indications of taxability, and they can also see no history of tax declarations that exceed electronic revenue (or whatever clues are justifiable as cause for action such as past offenses), then the police should be competent in their trade, which is to get convictions, which implies not tipping off the criminal suspect.
Under the status quo, the police are both tipping off criminals and also creating victims out of non-criminals.
Not all money transfers are taxable income. So if police knows that you received 10,000 in a box last year but didn’t declare it that doesn’t automatically mean you invaded taxes.
Of course. If the metadata (sender & recipient + their criminal records) and other items in the package do not suggest that it’s a taxable transaction, they have no cause to treat the pkg as suspect. In this case, they should not have searched it in the first place but on top of that there is no cause for further action either.
Furthermore, the recipient on the label may not be real person.
This would be cause for suspicion of a crime. But Indiana is not limiting their action to pkgs that give cause for suspicion.
In a drug case, indeed you cannot assume the parties on the pkg are accurate. Someone once received a package of mj. Police staked out the house, saw him accept the pkg, waited breifly, then stormed into the house. The pkg was left inside the door, unopened. The recipient argued that he was not expecting the pkg and did not know what was in it. He rightfully won that case. The mistake the cops made was to raid before he opened it. He needed time to open it and then react by calling the police.
Confiscating the evidence before the pkg even reaches the destination is terrible police work. That is not how you enforce crime. It only creates victims from non-criminals.
Regarding all the companies you’ve critized: isn’t that unfortunately the case for many if not most bigger companies?
Yes but not equally so. As an ethical consumer I choose the lesser of evils. Also, this isn’t about me. Consumers have a right to make their own choices. Most do not give a shit about ethics and the masses tend to choose the best financial deal. Some are lazy but ethical. That is, they heard a negative blurb about one supplier and they boycott that one supplier not knowing that it leads them to support a higher detriment.
Cash shipments are officially forbidden as per the FedEx ToS, no matter if the package is insured or not. If money is shipped anyhow it is not covered by the insurance.
Either way, it’s the sender’s choice whether to take the risk as they understand it. And they may not understand the risk. A wise sender would insure the package regardless of the contents. Even if the insurance would not pay out, the mere flag that a pkg has insurance has the effect of deterrance. Staff mostly only steal packages that are uninsured because those do not lead to investigation.
However, after a quick research many of the issues apply to FedEx as well.
I have been boycotting FedEx over a decade for those reasons (but note that I see nothing tying FedEx to the Better than Cash Alliance). But this isn’t about me. A republican would happily support FedEx.
Regarding acceptance of cryptocurrency or other forms of payments, I think that’s similar for sending cash in a box.
Cryptocurrency is as close as you can get in a digital mechanism that respects privacy like cash, but there is still a big difference. CC is a public ledger. Everyone sees every transaction and identities can be discovered and doxxed.
in Germany you’d be having a hard time to find a jeweler or other professional entity that accepts such a form of payment.
Luckily it’s the jeweler’s choice.
First, they won’t want to have discussions if packages are lost or valuables are partly stolen from the package.
Not sure what the point is here. Of course when a package is lost the parties involved both have a mutual interest in a claim being filed. A supplier who does not do their part in filing a claim does not get off the hook for the missing package. They still owe the recipient a package, so it is in their interest to file a claim.
Second, they don’t want to be associated with dubious businesses.
That is exactly the harm that perpetuates when you tie a tool to a stigma. It’s not okay to take away useful tools and options from non-criminals on the basis that criminals use them. We do not ban cars on the basis that they are a tool for drive-by shootings.
Furthermore, there’s a legal limit for cash payments of 10,000€ to avoid money laundering.
That’s shitty indeed because it oppresses non-criminals with a policy of forced banking.
I think to get back to the original topic, it’d be interesting to see some statistics on what percentage of the cases where police seized cash from packages were legal (although against FedEx ToS) and how many were related to criminal activities.
Not really. Marginalizing and oppressing non-criminals is not justified by a hunt for criminals. If your approach to hunting criminals harms non-criminals, you’re doing it wrong.
The case at hand is even more perverse, as the civil forfeiture practice actually hinders enforcement of law. They do the money grab for the money. When you seize cash, you send a clear signal to criminals that they are being investigated. It tips them off with intelligence that helps them adjust their operations. When you seize money from a tax evader a year before they evade tax by filing their fraudulent tax return, you actually sabotage the opportunity to catch them (it’s crime-prevention prevention). You can only catch them by recording the cash and letting it go, then auditing their tax using that information a year or two later.
Indeed. That was my paraphrasing (note the lack of quotes).
your bank has regulatory requirements
Are you talking about 31 C.F.R. § 103.121, which states:
“(i) Customer information required—(A) In general. The CIP must contain procedures for opening an account that specify the identifying information that will be obtained from each customer. Except as permitted by paragraphs (b)(2)(i)(B) and (C) of this section, the bank must obtain, at a minimum,the following information from the customer prior to opening an account:
- Name;
- Date of birth, for an individual;
- Address, which shall be:
(i) For an individual, a residential or business street address;
(ii) For an individual who does not have a residential or business street address, an Army Post Office (APO) or Fleet Post Office (FPO) box number, or the residential or business street address of next of kin or of another contact individual; or …- Identification number,…
?
I can somehow understand why it’s often a percentage.
But luckily under the capitalist paradigm every consumer can decide for themselves what prices are reasonable and decide whether a transaction is in their interest. I don’t care how they justify their price. If they are charging me 1% to move 5 figures, I’m not okay with paying upwards of $100 to move money. If there really is $100 worth of risk in moving money electronically, then I don’t want a piece of that action.
PayPal, Credit Card, Crypto Currency etc. should typically all process within seconds.
PayPal shares your personal info with over 600 corporations:
https://git.disroot.org/cyberMonk/liberethos_paradigm/src/branch/master/rap_sheets/paypal.md
Credit card: there are only 3 to choose from in most regions.
- visa: member of the Better than Cash Alliance; pays merchants $10k to reject cash, thus whenever you pay for something with Visa you help an entity who is trying to impose forced banking on us. Visa also blocked payments to Wikileaks, thus taking away our autonomy.
- mastercard: member of the Better than Cash Alliance. Blocked payments to Wikileaks, thus taking away our autonomy. Sells offline transaction data to Google (and Google does business with the Israeli military).
- american express: ALEC member, thus supports Trump and US republicans, opposes labor rights, fights women’s rights, fights environmental protection and supports climate denial propaganda, fights gun control, fights immigration, etc. Also blocked payments to Wikileaks.
- credit card does not work in the other direction. A jeweler cannot expect customers who sell their scrap gold to accept credit card. An individual is not going to setup a squareup or whatever it is just to do a one-off transaction.
Cryptocurrency requires both people to use, which kills it as an option in most cases.
All of those options, including cryptocurrency, expose more data than cash and bring in risks with that exposure.
my intuitive feeling was, whoever is willing to take that risk, has a lot of money to transfer and is willing to lose some in favor to stay invisible.
Most people don’t have the insight that my fellow jewelers do. Most people think the risk of an uninsured pkg getting lost is the same as an insured pkg. They decide to save money and take the risk without understanding the heightened risk.
My reason for bringing up insurance was that insurance provides a way to secure valuables like cash. The best security is a good insurance policy. It gives a good option for the legit shipping of cash. The jeweler in the article most likely insured the $47k+ value. But if they didn’t, then it was most likely a young jeweler who has not learned that lesson. Either way, insurance does not likely protect victims from government actions, which is likely why the victims had to directly sue the state.
If you use a courier service that’s specialized on valuables which offers also insurance etc.
Something like that might exist in major cities but probably over 95% of the US is rural where some people are lucky if FedEx is within reasonable reach, much less anything special purpose. DHL abandoned the US, IIRC because they could not spread enough with enough reach to be sustainable. FedEx and UPS have a near duopoly.
One of my banks is threatening to freeze my account unless I disclose my residential address where I sleep at night (with proof! Thus all info that proof comes with). Their privacy policy starts with the standard “we take privacy seriously” then they go on to say deeper in the doc that they may share my personal info around to the full extent allowed by law (using weasel words that try to imply the contrary to sloppy/fast readers), vaguely to credit bureaus (who I have no contract with and who will share the data further, or leak it in a breach). This bank claims “regulations require…” No, they do not. The regs say they must collect residential address OR business address, or if those are not available an address to a family member. So the bank is bullshitting.
At the same time, another bank says in so many words: sorry to inform you we were breached. Cyber criminals have all your sensitive info. We take privacy and security seriously. We offer you a credit monitoring subscription to compensate you. If you are interested, you can share your sensitive info with that monitoring org, who in turn will share the info with their subcontractors. And anonymous access is blocked so you must also share your IP address.
In light of these two shitty¹ banks, I would like to give a big fuck you to those who say:
- “You don’t want your bank to know where you live? What are you hiding? What kind of dodgy shit are you into?”
- “You expect your bank to let you access your account from Tor? LOL. Why don’t you trust your bank with your IP address? Why don’t you want your ISP to know where you bank? What kind of dodgy shit are you into?”
- Bruce Schneiere: “cryptocurrency is a solution looking for a problem”
- “Cash is for tax evaders. You have no legitimate cause to demand cash payment or to pay in cash.”
- “A cashless society protects us from criminals & money launderers”
In the very least, we need a general right to be unbanked.
¹ I don’t mean two imply these to banks are exceptionally shitty. They are just like any bank. All banks, credit unions, etc, are shitty in the same way.
(edit) Bank B also waited several months after they knew of the breach to inform me. So I imagine there were months of backroom chatter: “can we hide this? Do we have to tell the press and the victims?” They must have spent those months debating about whether or not to tell victims.
It’s really annoying that @some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org just took this on the chin. For me even a dispute over $100 would be worth the courtroom battle just to satisfy my curiousity of what happened. A landlord cannot evict without a court procedure, so the tenant would not have to spend a dime on court costs and bring the paper trail to the court. From there, since the banks (all 3 involved) did a shitty job of investigating, they could have been named as 2nd party defendants (sue them all, let the judge sort it out). The investigation should have revealed the bank where the money landed and the actual bank account from there. They could then use the court to subpoena the agency that has “no record of the case”, but who the bank says has the money. If there is no case, then they can return the money (a judge would say).
OFAC obviously benefitted from someone’s court phobia even though the tenant had nothing to worry about.
That’s not how contracts work. Unless the contact specified using that avenue, the only thing that matters is payment received.
You apparently believe OFAC took the money from the sender, not the recipient despite targeting the recipient. A court is not going to say that a payer owes money they already paid and must pay again in duplicate despite a government action to take money from the recipient. I have my money on the tenant prevailing in this case. Since OFAC targeted the recipient, the money likely would have left the sender’s bank and landed in the bank of the recipient. At that moment, the money is on the other side of the wall and outside of the sender’s control. The sender did not hire the recipient’s bank. The money grab would have happened after the money landed in the recipient’s bank. A sender cannot be responsible for a recipient’s bank paying their client.
If OFAC were some ransomware/cyber criminal gang running out of Nigeria, I would agree (as it’s not a government confiscating money from a recipient).
If I say in my contract: pay me by stashing cash under a rock at location X, and the payer complies, and then a bypasser takes the money, that’s a problem for the (foolish) person who drafted the contract that way. The drafter of a contract has a higher responsibility to flaws in the text of the agreement than the party who merely agrees to the contract.
For example, the US specifically has a law that states the benefit of ambiguity in contracts goes to the party who did /not/ draft the contract. This rightfully encourages contract writers to be diligent.
Otherwise you are left with penalizing people for faulty contract terms that they did not draft.
yeah, I was slow to realize that. Like a day slow.
So, if you want to transfer a large amount in cash, most people would probably use a dedicated cash transfer service.
“most people”. Luckily we know that it’s an injustice to marginalize minority groups.
Problems with xfer services:
① fees
② privacy
It’s really absurd, but money transfer services often charge a percentage of the amount transferred (esp.if forex is involved), as if sending more money somehow costs them more electricity to transmit. I feel like I’m being ripped off when charged a percentage of money that moves and even if the price is reasonable I will reject that option on general principle.
You potentially pay more to the transfer company than a courrier and give up privacy on top of it.
③ shipping is faster than electronic payment (no joke!)
I shit you not. I tried a payment service once to send a few hundred to someone for a laptop. Two days later I got a fraud alert demanding that I call a number. I was interrogated:
- how do you know the recipient? What is your relationship to them?
- what are you buying?
- why are you buying it?
WTF? When I send money in the mail, the postal worker does not pull this shit and snoop on me. After the interrogation, it took another day or two for the money to reach the recipient. The post would have been faster and hassle free.
④ we now live in a frenzy of AML extremists coupled with the masses being pushover consumers who will go along with being cattled herded. Non-criminals are being harrassed, inconvenienced, forced to overshare information, and generally oppressed in this fishing for criminals which is being carried out with total disregard for colatteral damage to law-abiding people. Why? Lazy law enforcement. They want /their/ job to be convenient. They want evidence of crime to fall in their lap, rather than to do clever good investigative work.
⑤ a sender may have to ship something AND pay money. I know jewelers. It’s common for someone who is buying new jewelry to pay partially in scrap gold. They give the jeweler their unwanted jewelry which has a melt value. The jeweler reduces the price of the new jewelry by the value of the scrap gold. If you are shipping scrap gold, why make a separate trip to a money transfer service and pay more fees? It’s cheaper and easier to put cash in the pkg if you trust the jeweler. Or a customer might want the very same gold or stones their great grandmother wore to be made into something else.
A jeweler told me uninsured packages have a very high rate of loss. Couriers apparently know when jewelry is being shipped, at least when the sender is “Bob’s diamond shop”. Insurance works as a great deterrant. A courrier knows there will be an internal investigation when an insured pkg does not reach the recipient. They can only steal so many of them before a pattern emerges. Insurance is so reliable for jewelers shipping gold and precious stones, they would just as well trust it for cash.
That’s not going to work for long. Best you’re going to get is a stay until you pay.
Hold on. Who are you saying OFAC took the money from, the tenant or the landlord? You can’t have it both ways. The tenant complied with the terms of the contract to send the money as directed. OFAC targeted the landlord. A court would not have impose a higher expectation than following contractual obligations.
I could see if a check got lost in the mail, where the result is that the defentant retains possession and constructive use of the money, then a court would have enough descretion to rule fairly. But the OFAC case is not that case.
IIRC, New Mexico banned civil forfeiture. But the cops kept doing it anyway. So a law change is not enough... enforcement is also needed. Yes, against the police, sadly enough.
I’ve been boycotting FedEx for over a decade. Not for this reason but for the other reasons I mention in this thread.
It’s quite hard because many sellers do not disclose who they use for shipping. I can sometimes add a comment to my order saying “Do not use FedEx. If that’s the only option then cancel my order.” This makes online shopping tedious, so I’ve been driven to just shop locally.
I could not reach that enshitified article but judging from the title, FedEx’s contemp for Black Lives Matter is consistent with their extreme right politics:
- FedEx is an ALEC member (thus opposes labor rights, women’s rights, environmental protection, gun control, taxation, consumer protection, financial regulation, public education, welfare…)
- FedEx used to give a discount to NRA members
- FedEx ships sharkfins, hunting trophies, and slave dolphins
- FedEx was founded by an ex military serviceman (a mostly right wing demographic)
Being on the extreme right would be consistent with BLM contempt. And indeed, fighting unions is FedEx’s core reason for being an ALEC member. Photos of DVDs were leaked and circulated on social media with FedEx on the label and some title like “how to mitigate unions”.
Edit: Nvm the dogs don’t get to keep the money.
I’m sure they get plenty of doggie treats, likely procured with civil forfeitures. Which motivates the dogs to find more. I’m not the least bit worried that the dogs are unfairly exploited from the dog’s standpoint.
As it is openly stated that it will not be carried by FedEx, it’s no stretch that the police will consider it contraband.
It is a stretch. Enforcing contractual agreements is not the job of the police. And it’s also a stretch to say the police are looking to protect the contractual interests of FedEx.
It’s also strangely inconsistent with FedEx’s anything goes practices, whereby FedEx is known for shipping morally dubious payloads:
- #sharkFins (illegal in countries that have a shred of respect animal welfare and the environment)
- hunting trophies
- slave dolphins
Normally, FedEx could normally claim that they are simply maximizing the bottom line in their duty to their greedy shareholders. But the cash ban is not consistent with that. Unless FedEx believes that anyone who loses an insured pkg would claim the pkg included cash as a way to max out the insurance payout. But in that case, it is not in FedEx’s business interest to enforce the policy -- just to be able to point to the policy when an insurance claimant say cash was lost.
(update) In fact, police are preventing crime prevention by grabbing the cash. This inspired me to propose a new rule.
Since it’s a small amount of money, the legal process would be with small claims court. You don’t need a lawyer for that. Small claims is cheap and easy going. It’s typically under $100 to file (which you get back if you win) and in some states a registered letter is sufficient to serve the other party.
You would not want to sue OFAC though. In this case you would ideally keep a paper trail of your payment attempt and carry on. Give your landlord the proof of payment (attempt) and wait for the landlord to act against you. That’s the easiest.. you wait for the court date and show up with proof of your attempt to pay and a copy of your landlord’s payment procedure (which you followed). OFAC apparently did a money grab on the landlord, not you, so you would come away clean so long as you paid as per your landlord’s instructions.
But wouldn’t a particular dog with particular training who then becomes very interested in your unopened USPS package be a real reason to open the pkg?
Really? I thought pigs were 2-cycle animals (eat their own output on the first iteration, like rabbits), no? I mean, sure, some minority of dogs eat their excrement -- the same dogs that end up in the homes of Blue Collar Comedy comedians. Tough contest I guess. I had a dog that rolled in every rotten dead fish it encountered by the lake. Not sure why.. maybe it serves as a good cologne to attract the females.
Heat pump water heaters already exist. These are hybrid things where a traditional electric water heater is fitted with a heat pump. The heat pump can increase the water temp but cannot deliver enough, so heating elements are still needed to reach a usable temp.
I’m wondering if that design can be improved on this way: instead of powering the heat pump from the wall, the heat pump can be connected directly to a PV. I think that would be more efficient and cheaper because PV output is not normally directly usable. IIUC, it’s variable D/C which must be regulated and/or inverted to A/C involving more hardware, conversion, and waste. But exceptionally, I’ve heard that a PV can directly power a compressor with no middleware. Any reasons this would be infeasible or uninteresting?
Of course the tank still needs wall power for the heating elements, but would use less wall power and entail less conversion loss.
This isn’t crime fighting. It’s an actual crime — a blatant, naked theft carried out by officers, Libertarian Party Chair Evan McMahon writes.
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/13145612
> (edit) Would someone please ship some counterfeit money through there and get it confiscated, so the police can then be investigated for spending counterfeit money?
This isn’t crime fighting. It’s an actual crime — a blatant, naked theft carried out by officers, Libertarian Party Chair Evan McMahon writes.
(edit) Would someone please ship some counterfeit money through there and get it confiscated, so the police can then be investigated for spending counterfeit money?
If you open a PDF document in the browser (thus in pdf.js) and click the down arrow (↓) to save it locally, it redownloads the document instead of simply saving it from the cache. If you lose network connectivity or disconnect then try to save the PDF locally for later viewing, the browser reports connection issues when there was no need for the network.
Tor Browser (Firefox based) does not have this problem.
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/12826007
> Is this a thing?
>
> I always have spare keyboards out of use either from old machines or pulled out of the trash. Many of them have a dead key which ruins their purpose as a primary keyboard. It’s probably not worth the effort to bypass a bad trace. So why not have a 2nd keyboard just for symbols and emoji? ATM to enter a €uro symbol I have to type 3 keys ($specialkey+c+=). Or more importantly, the properly angled single and double quotes (’ ‘ “ ” ) each require typing 3 keys. That shit is annoyingly tedious. And consider all the superscripts¹.
>
> I attached a qwerty keyboard and azerty keyboard at the same time (Debian, wayland + sway). The AZERTY board was treated as QWERTY. So that’s bizarre. Sure it’s useful that the layout is controllable by software, but strange that the keyboard’s native layout is not the default. It seems as if the layout choice (man xkeyboard-config) is universally imposed on all attached devices. Is it possible to configure a QWERTY or Dvorak layout for keyboard 1 and a totally custom or symbolic layout for keyboard 2?
>
> ¹ all the digits on a secondary keyboard could be superscripted like this footnote. E.g. ¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹.. typing each of those requires 3 key presses.
> update > --- > Possible answer: I hear this project enables different layouts to be assigned to different physical devices: > > https://github.com/rvaiya/keyd > > Bit annoying that that project has not made it into Debian official repos, but at least there are deb files.
Some large PVs for rooftops were at a street market for €35 each. I’m not deeply knowledgable about them.. I just know that there are two varieties of solar panels and that the kind that are used from small appliances (e.g. calculators, speakers, lawn lights, etc) are junk. And that junk variety is sometimes used in large rooftop panels. What I was looking at resembled the kind I see on a bluetooth speaker with a slight blue tint so I was skeptical. The info on the backside of the panel indicated “1000 V”. The other thing is, all solar panels degrade over time and reach end of life after like 15 years (though this is improving). They may have been a good deal but I passed on them because I didn’t want to buy them on a blind risk.
How would I know how much life a used PV has left? Would a volt meter give that info, assuming it’s sunny when I encounter them again?
The country is the latest to pass legislation granting a ‘right to disconnect’ outside of work hours.
Two Cloudflare-free tor-reachable articles:
① Australia gives millions of workers 'right to disconnect' ② Australia gives workers right to ignore bosses’ after-hours calls, emails
Those links are also popup-free (at least in my config). But note that ② is a little more junked up and has some video (but my image and autoplay blocking config seems to work).
The wording of the new law sounds flimsy.. leaves it to employers to define whether an interruption is “reasonable”. But nonetheless it’s a step in the right direction.
A Belgian woman told me she received a gift from a relative for €300 in cash. When she tried to deposit it into her bank account, the bank interrogated her over the source of the money, as if this one-time transaction is some kind of terror or money laundering.
In case no one is paying attention, it’s good to be aware of the extremes the #WarOnCash is evolving toward. Banks have become like police without training.. bullying people arbitrarily.
We are collectively like boiling frogs as cashless people are oblivious to what’s going on. Only cash users see the water boiling.
An important part of the Youtube content is the transcript at the bottom of the video description. There are some 3rd-party sites that collect and share the YT transcripts separately but then the naive admins put the service in Cloudflare’s walled garden, which is worse than YT itself and purpose-defeating to a large extent. (exceptionally this service is CF-free, but it says “Transcript is disabled on this video” in my test: https://youtubetranscript.io)
Invidious should be picking up the slack here.
And Lemmy could do better by automatically fetching the transcript of youtube/invidious links and include it, perhaps spoiler style like this.
The article does not state how she paid and got caught, but this should serve as a situation that highlights the importance of cash preservation.
(update) prosecution seeks a 15 year sentence.
I browse with images disabled. But sometimes I encounter a post where I want to see the image, like this one:
https://iejideks5zu2v3zuthaxu5zz6m5o2j7vmbd24wh6dnuiyl7c6rfkcryd.onion/@JosephMeyer@c.im/112923392848232303
When opening that link in a browser configured to fetch images, it redirects to the original instance, which is inside an access-restricted walled garden. This seems like a new behaviour for Mastodon thus may be a regression.
It’s a terrible design because it needlessly forces people on open decentralised networks into centralised walled gardens. The behaviour arises out of the incorrect assumption that everyone has equal access. As Cloudflare proves, access equality is non-existent. The perversion in this particular case is an onion is redirecting to Cloudflare (an adversary to all those who have onion access).
There should be two separate links to each post: one to the source node, and one to the mirror. This kind of automatic redirect is detrimental. Lemmy demonstrates the better approach of giving two links and not redirecting. (But Lemmy has that problem of not mirroring images).
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/12108012
> The EU guarantees most people a right to open a “basic”¹ bank account. Superficially that sounds good, but of course having a right to open a bank account implies that you can then be expected to have an account. It’s an enabler for the #warOnCash. The right to a bank account is a masquerade of freedom from which oppression manifests. > > Anyway, you have to ask: do you really have a “right” to open a basic bank account if the procedure for opening the account is inherently exclusive? That is, if a bank only offers a basic account to people who are online, doesn’t a problem arise when this right to an account then leads to an assumption that everyone has an account? > > Some banks take the requirement to offer basic accounts seriously by making the application a static PDF which can also be obtained on paper form. So the only thing you need is a pen (to open the account and presumably to use it). But it’s bizarre some banks put the application for their basic account exclusively in an interactive online format. Are offline people just getting “lucky” if a bank happens to offer a basic account application on paper? > > ¹ “basic” is not just common language here. It refers to a specific type of account that fulfills specific legal criteria.
The EU guarantees most people a right to open a “basic”¹ bank account. Superficially that sounds good, but of course having a right to open a bank account implies that you can then be expected to have an account. It’s an enabler for the #warOnCash. The right to a bank account is a masquerade of freedom from which oppression manifests.
Anyway, you have to ask: do you really have a “right” to open a basic bank account if the procedure for opening the account is inherently exclusive? That is, if a bank only offers a basic account to people who are online, doesn’t a problem arise when this right to an account then leads to an assumption that everyone has an account?
Some banks take the requirement to offer basic accounts seriously by making the application a static PDF which can also be obtained on paper form. So the only thing you need is a pen (to open the account and presumably to use it). But it’s bizarre some banks put the application for their basic account exclusively in an interactive online format. Are offline people just getting “lucky” if a bank happens to offer a basic account application on paper?
¹ “basic” is not just common language here. It refers to a specific type of account that fulfills specific legal criteria.
There are some very slow nodes (like Beehaw) where the server is apparently so overworked it cannot render a login form most of the time. The browser times out waiting. In the rare moments that there is a login opportunity, about ½ the time the login fails with a 2 second popup saying “incorrect login credentials”.
It’s quite terrible because obviously users would assume their account has been deleted --- because that’s how most online services work. Admins do not generally give warnings or say why an account is deleted. They just hit the delete button. Like Marvin in Office Space who was not told he was laid off.. they just “fixed the payroll glitch”. This is generally how communication works on communication platforms.. admins just pull the plug.
So because of how people learn that their account is deleted, users cannot distinguish a purposeful account removal from a faulty server. If you have a Beehaw account and you are told “incorrect login credentials”, don’t believe it. Keep trying. Eventually you’ll get in.
ecfr.gov used to be a decent source for looking up laws. When looking up the anti spam laws, the linked page is littered with links to an access-restricted Cloudflare site (www.govinfo.gov). The important parts of the law are missing from ecfr.gov. It’s common for various states to have this mom-pop shop competency level, but tragic and embarrassing that the US feds lack competency to the point of Cloudflare-dependency.
Often Cornell University publishes federal law and mitigates the embarrassment to some extent. But when looking up the CAN-SPAM law at Cornell, the Cornell law site redirects to another access-restricted Cloudflare site (www.gpo.gov).
There needs to be a fundamental high-level that requires all laws to be accessible to all people, not just people who Cloudflare is willing to give access to.
If you need to pay someone in the US, it’s interesting that you can walk into the bank used by the recipient and make a deposit into their account. You just need to know their account number and IIRC that even works with cash. There is generally no fee. Sometimes tenants and landlords have that arrangement.
Anyone know if that’s possible in Europe? Does it depend on the bank? I know the conventional way in Europe is to bring cash into the post office, and the post office will take the cash and transfer the money to the recipient. But there is a transaction fee and I think a restriction as well that the payer must be a resident. Can a payer go direct to the recipient’s bank and get service, ideally without a fee?
In the stock Lemmy web client there is apparently no mechanism for users to fetch their history of posts. The settings page gives only a way to download settings. This contrasts with Mastodon where users can grab an archive of everything they have posted which is still stored on the server.
Or am I missing something?
IIUC, there is no GDPR issue here because no data is personal (because all Lemmy accounts are anonymous). But if a Lemmy server were to hypothetically require users to identify themselves with first+last name, then the admin would have a substantial manual burden to comply with GDPR Art.20 requests. Correct?
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/11937000
> The article is normally paywalled but I prefixed 12ft.io/ to it, which worked for me. Google supposedly quit caching websites but old caches are still reachable with 12ft.io. > > The UK’s GDPR might make it hard for banks to use people’s purchase data to derive their alcohol & tobacco habits, so apparently banks have to rely on interviews. Still, it would be foolish to rely on the GDPR. There are also stories of banks looking at spending data to deny mortgages, which I would guess is happening in a place without privacy safeguards like the US. > > I’ll quote the article here as well: > > > Homebuyers could be forced to provide detailed information about the amount of money they spend on alcohol each month to qualify for a new mortgage under a new clampdown on reckless lending. > > > > In a sweeping review of the mortgage market published today, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) said lenders needed to be far more rigorous about their financial checks of potential borrowers. > > > > It said lenders should delve deeper into homebuyers’ personal spending including the amount they spend on alcohol and tobacco. > > > > Spending on shoes, clothes and childcare could also be assessed under a new, industry-wide “affordability test”. > > > > At present, the FSA does not prescribe rules about assessing a consumers’ ability to repay a mortgage and practices vary from one lender to the next. > > > > In its document, the City regulator said: “There is clearly a responsibility on all lenders to extend credit only where a consumer can afford it and, in our view, a robust assessment of both income and expenditure is key to ensuring affordable mortgages. > > > > “We propose to require all lenders to assess the level of a consumer’s expenditure in determining the affordability of a mortgage product, to ensure that lending decisions are based on a consumer’s free disposable income.” > > > > It conceded though that there were some flaws with its plan with consumers potentially underestimating their spend or “failing to incorporate past experiences into their budgeting”. > > > > The new measures, which aim to stamp out risky lending that has been criticised for compounding the financial crisis and tipping hundreds of thousands of homebuyers into negative equity, also include a plan to ban self-certified mortgages, dubbed “liar’s loans”, and to stop lenders from exploiting consumers who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments. > > > > It also proposed that the FSA should regulate mortgages for landlords for the first time. > > > > Self-certification mortgages were aimed at self-employed people with irregular incomes. The mortgages, which did not require proof of income, accounted for one third of new loans in 2007. > > > > Their proposed banning was first revealed in The Times last week. > > > > But the FSA stopped short of ruling out “supersized mortgages” by introducing caps on loan-to-value, loan-to-income or debt-to-income multiples. > > > > Such mortgages were typified by Northern Rock which, at the height of the housing boom, offered 125 per cent home loan deals. > > > > Gordon Brown wrote in a newspaper article at the weekend that it was “critical we end reckless banking practices that have left so many people worried about their finances”. > > > > Jon Pain, managing director of supervision at the FSA, said: “The mortgage market has seen extraordinary upheaval over the past 18 months and while it has worked well for the vast majority of borrowers, some have suffered great financial distress. We recognise that we need to bring about a step change in regulation.” > > > > He said there had been a “mutual assumption by too many borrowers and lenders that the good times could not end.” > > > > The new reforms, he said, would ensure firms “only lend to people who can afford to pay back the money”. > > > > But mortgage experts questioned the ease of imposing some of the new measures and expressed concern about the possible impact on homebuyers. > > > > Ray Boulger, mortgage expert at John Charcol, said the new affordability test could prove difficult to implement. “I think it will be very difficult in practice to go into too much detail,” he said. > > > > Homebuyers, he said, often forget the detail of their spending. “They will remember the weekly shop but not the £3 they spend on a sandwich each day.” > > > > Paul Broadhead, head of mortgage policy at the Building Societies Association, said he had “significant reservations about the possible unintended consequences of some of the ideas.” > > > > He said: “We believe that home ownership is something that should be encouraged, and it is vital that lenders retain the flexibility to respond to the very individual financial circumstances of individual borrowers.” > > > > He added that self-certification mortgages were suitable for a minority of people and that an outright ban was “not appropriate.” > > > > The Council of Mortgage Lenders said it was “important that the principle of consumer responsibility is not lost in such a regulatory environment, as it is a basic tenet upon which transactions of all kinds between firms and consumers rely”. > > > > The report said there was a “clear and non-controversial case” for banning self-certification mortgages, instead compelling lenders to insist that customers provide evidence of their income. > > > > “Our analysis shows that self-cert borrowers take out larger loan amounts than borrowers with standard products and fall into arrears much more frequently. To address these issues we propose to require verification of income for all mortgage applications,” it said. > > > > The loans have been vilified as a significant contributor to the banks’ toxic loans problem because some customers have lied about their income. Defaults on self-cert repayments have been at much higher rates than the industry average. > > > > HBOS and Bradford & Bingley were among the biggest self-cert lenders. HBOS was sold to Lloyds TSB in a rescue deal in September last year and B&B collapsed and had to be partially nationalised. > > > > The plan to bring mortgages for landlords into the FSA’s scope for the first time was necessary the regulator said because of the big part the industry had played in “fuelling property price appreciation” > > > > The FSA said: “As well as being a general contributor, buy-to-let funding funding has particularly helped to inflate prices of certain property types and locations such as city centre apartments. > > > > “The overall impact on house prices inevitably has implications for our interest in the sustainability of the mortgage market.” > > > > The market for buy-to-let mortgages has grown rapidly. Gross advances grew from £3.1 billion in 1999 to £44.6 billion in 2007. > > > > The paper has been put out for consultation until early next year with a “feedback statement” to be published in March.
The article is normally paywalled but I prefixed 12ft.io/ to it, which worked for me. Google supposedly quit caching websites but old caches are still reachable with 12ft.io.
The UK’s GDPR might make it hard for banks to use people’s purchase data to derive their alcohol & tobacco habits, so apparently banks have to rely on interviews. Still, it would be foolish to rely on the GDPR. There are also stories of banks looking at spending data to deny mortgages, which I would guess is happening in a place without privacy safeguards like the US.
I’ll quote the article here as well:
> Homebuyers could be forced to provide detailed information about the amount of money they spend on alcohol each month to qualify for a new mortgage under a new clampdown on reckless lending. > > In a sweeping review of the mortgage market published today, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) said lenders needed to be far more rigorous about their financial checks of potential borrowers. > > It said lenders should delve deeper into homebuyers’ personal spending including the amount they spend on alcohol and tobacco. > > Spending on shoes, clothes and childcare could also be assessed under a new, industry-wide “affordability test”. > > At present, the FSA does not prescribe rules about assessing a consumers’ ability to repay a mortgage and practices vary from one lender to the next. > > In its document, the City regulator said: “There is clearly a responsibility on all lenders to extend credit only where a consumer can afford it and, in our view, a robust assessment of both income and expenditure is key to ensuring affordable mortgages. > > “We propose to require all lenders to assess the level of a consumer’s expenditure in determining the affordability of a mortgage product, to ensure that lending decisions are based on a consumer’s free disposable income.” > > It conceded though that there were some flaws with its plan with consumers potentially underestimating their spend or “failing to incorporate past experiences into their budgeting”. > > The new measures, which aim to stamp out risky lending that has been criticised for compounding the financial crisis and tipping hundreds of thousands of homebuyers into negative equity, also include a plan to ban self-certified mortgages, dubbed “liar’s loans”, and to stop lenders from exploiting consumers who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments. > > It also proposed that the FSA should regulate mortgages for landlords for the first time. > > Self-certification mortgages were aimed at self-employed people with irregular incomes. The mortgages, which did not require proof of income, accounted for one third of new loans in 2007. > > Their proposed banning was first revealed in The Times last week. > > But the FSA stopped short of ruling out “supersized mortgages” by introducing caps on loan-to-value, loan-to-income or debt-to-income multiples. > > Such mortgages were typified by Northern Rock which, at the height of the housing boom, offered 125 per cent home loan deals. > > Gordon Brown wrote in a newspaper article at the weekend that it was “critical we end reckless banking practices that have left so many people worried about their finances”. > > Jon Pain, managing director of supervision at the FSA, said: “The mortgage market has seen extraordinary upheaval over the past 18 months and while it has worked well for the vast majority of borrowers, some have suffered great financial distress. We recognise that we need to bring about a step change in regulation.” > > He said there had been a “mutual assumption by too many borrowers and lenders that the good times could not end.” > > The new reforms, he said, would ensure firms “only lend to people who can afford to pay back the money”. > > But mortgage experts questioned the ease of imposing some of the new measures and expressed concern about the possible impact on homebuyers. > > Ray Boulger, mortgage expert at John Charcol, said the new affordability test could prove difficult to implement. “I think it will be very difficult in practice to go into too much detail,” he said. > > Homebuyers, he said, often forget the detail of their spending. “They will remember the weekly shop but not the £3 they spend on a sandwich each day.” > > Paul Broadhead, head of mortgage policy at the Building Societies Association, said he had “significant reservations about the possible unintended consequences of some of the ideas.” > > He said: “We believe that home ownership is something that should be encouraged, and it is vital that lenders retain the flexibility to respond to the very individual financial circumstances of individual borrowers.” > > He added that self-certification mortgages were suitable for a minority of people and that an outright ban was “not appropriate.” > > The Council of Mortgage Lenders said it was “important that the principle of consumer responsibility is not lost in such a regulatory environment, as it is a basic tenet upon which transactions of all kinds between firms and consumers rely”. > > The report said there was a “clear and non-controversial case” for banning self-certification mortgages, instead compelling lenders to insist that customers provide evidence of their income. > > “Our analysis shows that self-cert borrowers take out larger loan amounts than borrowers with standard products and fall into arrears much more frequently. To address these issues we propose to require verification of income for all mortgage applications,” it said. > > The loans have been vilified as a significant contributor to the banks’ toxic loans problem because some customers have lied about their income. Defaults on self-cert repayments have been at much higher rates than the industry average. > > HBOS and Bradford & Bingley were among the biggest self-cert lenders. HBOS was sold to Lloyds TSB in a rescue deal in September last year and B&B collapsed and had to be partially nationalised. > > The plan to bring mortgages for landlords into the FSA’s scope for the first time was necessary the regulator said because of the big part the industry had played in “fuelling property price appreciation” > > The FSA said: “As well as being a general contributor, buy-to-let funding funding has particularly helped to inflate prices of certain property types and locations such as city centre apartments. > > “The overall impact on house prices inevitably has implications for our interest in the sustainability of the mortgage market.” > > The market for buy-to-let mortgages has grown rapidly. Gross advances grew from £3.1 billion in 1999 to £44.6 billion in 2007. > > The paper has been put out for consultation until early next year with a “feedback statement” to be published in March.