LibreMonk

joined 1 year ago
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[–] LibreMonk@linkage.ds8.zone 2 points 8 months ago

Thanks for the tip. It seems to work but I have to say it’s a rough UX because the UI is really meant for a graphical browser. I could not even paste my UID and PW in to login.

[–] LibreMonk@linkage.ds8.zone 2 points 8 months ago

For the same reason, I suppose you would love text adventure games like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where you have to come up with your action, as opposed to getting visual aids which come like a loaded question, steering you and somewhat robbing you of control.

[–] LibreMonk@linkage.ds8.zone 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

indeed.. #NeonModemOverdrive failed for me too.

So, how did you do post to lemmy.ml? Did you use cURL? If so, I would love to see the sample code.

[–] LibreMonk@linkage.ds8.zone 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

It is exactly that.

There are ~95 pages of rights and obligations covered in EU Directive 2015/2366, as well as EC Regulation 593/2008. Have you read them, or anything else to substantiate your claim?

You’re trying to solve the wrong problem.

There is no such thing as a “wrong problem”.

You do you. This thread is not about your problems. Start your own thread if you want a different problem worked. In this thread, you can either help solve the problem at hand, or fuck off.

[–] LibreMonk@linkage.ds8.zone 2 points 8 months ago

There was a story about a German guy insisting on paying his radio licensing fees in cash. He setup an escrow account and paid his invoices into that, so that the state could not claim he was just using cash refusal as an excuse not to pay. I don’t think I ever heard what came of the legal case.

[–] LibreMonk@linkage.ds8.zone 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I heard postbank was eliminated in Germany but post office banking is still an option in other countries. I doubt any post office banks stand on their own. The one I’m aware of is just a proxy for another crappy bank.

Many elderly people can’t use a smartphone so smartphone only options definitely sound like a no go.

It’s somewhat convenient that tech illiterates are in the same boat with the streetwise (who are tech saavy enough to distrust commercial tech that’s being pushed down our throats). But there are efforts to divide us. Elderly folks are getting social helpers with tech, which will shrink those resisting enshitification of everything to a population that’s easier to marginalise. I also don’t suppose it will be long before the tech illiterate elderly are no longer with us anyway.

[–] LibreMonk@linkage.ds8.zone 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

at least in Germany companies and state are not anymore required to accept cash for invoices

Yikes. That’s a shame. There is the EC Recommendation of 22 March 2010 (2010/191/EU) which wisely states:

A debtor can discharge himself from a payment obligation by tendering euro banknotes and coins to the creditor.

I am surprised Germany has gone against that. I thought cash was loved by Germans.

[–] LibreMonk@linkage.ds8.zone 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Glad to hear you’re standing up for yourself, and others. And glad to hear an analog option is still possible. That’s by far the most important option. If you can do everything offline, then you can escape whatever garbage tech they try to push. Essential services like banking and utilities should always have an offline analog option.

[–] LibreMonk@linkage.ds8.zone 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

The thesis is: what are our rights? Knowing your rights is a good idea /before/ you go off and try to solve a problem.

It may very well be that we have no useful rights and the choices are: be bullied, or find a different bully. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Other banks are garbage too, so it may be better to improve the bank you have (if possible through legal actions and exercising your rights) then to make it someone else’s problem.

[–] LibreMonk@linkage.ds8.zone 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

you should probably just keep the money in cash

Of course. Cash would solve the problem. But creditors are refusing that now and also refusing cards at the same time. Otherwise the bank card could get cash out of the ATM and pay the creditors.

[–] LibreMonk@linkage.ds8.zone 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

No, not anymore. They became app exclusive. Customers must become an Apple or Google patron, or just use the bank card. They also closed their shop doors and terminated their phone number. If you call them on their unpublished phone number, they insist: “email us” and they refuse to give any service over the phone. And their email goes through gmail (and no PGP key given). Paper letters are ignored. They also refuse manual transfers. The app is the sole means for transfers.

[–] LibreMonk@linkage.ds8.zone 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

The EU has that covered as REGULATION (EU) No 260/2012 imposes 2FA.

But for me personally, I do not trust closed-source apps from surveillance advertisers running on a Google or Apple proprietary platform, no matter how well they do the 2FA. Even if the endpoint were impenetrable, I do not trust the bank itself not to snoop -- in part because I do not trust the GDPR, which is scantly enforced and regularly disregarded to a laughable extent. And from the ecocide PoV, I refuse to throw away good hardware and support designed obsolescence. They can pry my old phone from my cold dead hands.

 

cross-posted from: https://linkage.ds8.zone/post/341870

I signed an agreement with a creditor that obligates me to pay them using a bank inside the country. This was fine initially but then I moved out of the country and the acct was closed. Other banks will not open an account for me and the creditor refuses cash. So the creditor is treating me like a non-payer to a quite harsh extent.

I have over-simplified here but I just want to know very generally what the common practices are around the world for contract law situations where someone without much bargaining power signs a contract that obligates them to do something that’s only achievable if other 3rd-parties agree to serve them, and then those other 3rd-parties later refuse.

BTW, I am not interested in advice on situational hacks and angles like “find a friend to pay for you”. I want to know how courts treat the situation when all options have failed. Are people typically held accountable for agreeing to something which relied on actions of others?

(the situation is not in the UK but I am still interested in answers as to how these kinds of situations are dealt with in the UK)

 

cross-posted from: https://linkage.ds8.zone/post/341870

I signed an agreement with a creditor that obligates me to pay them using a bank inside the country. This was fine initially but then I moved out of the country and the acct was closed. Other banks will not open an account for me and the creditor refuses cash. So the creditor is treating me like a non-payer to a quite harsh extent.

I have over-simplified here but I just want to know very generally what the common practices are around the world for contract law situations where someone without much bargaining power signs a contract that obligates them to do something that’s only achievable if other 3rd-parties agree to serve them, and then those other 3rd-parties later refuse.

BTW, I am not interested in advice on situational hacks and angles like “find a friend to pay for you”. I want to know how courts treat the situation when all options have failed. Are people typically held accountable for agreeing to something which relied on actions of others?

(the situation is not in the US but I am still interested in answers as to how these kinds of situations are dealt with in the US; of course legal tender is a right the US gives to debtors, but I’m looking for more general legal concepts)

 

I signed an agreement with a creditor that obligates me to pay them using a bank inside the country. This was fine initially but then I moved out of the country and the acct was closed. Other banks will not open an account for me and the creditor refuses cash. So the creditor is treating me like a non-payer to a quite harsh extent.

I have over-simplified here but I just want to know very generally what the common practices are around the world for contract law situations where someone without much bargaining power signs a contract that obligates them to do something that’s only achievable if other 3rd-parties agree to serve them, and then those other 3rd-parties later refuse.

BTW, I am not interested in advice on situational hacks and angles like “find a friend to pay for you”. I want to know how courts treat the situation when all options have failed. Are people typically held accountable for agreeing to something which relied on actions of others?

 

TL;DR → The main problem is coming up with a way to reorder an array non-randomly but without introducing bulky code. Like the effect of shuffling a deck of cards in a deterministic cheating way.


Full background:

I would like to generate reference numbers for letters sent via postal mail. An sqlite db is used to track the sequence numbers (but not the reference numbers). This is the bash code I have so far:

typeset -a symbolset=(a b c d e f g h   j k   m n   p q r s t u v w x y z     2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9)
ln_symbolset=${#symbolset[@]}; # 41 is the answer, not 42
itemseq=$(sqlite3 ltr_tracking.db "select max(counter) from $tbl;")
printf '%s\n' "next letter reference number is: $(date +%Y)-${symbolset[$((itemseq / ln_symbolset))]}${symbolset[$((itemseq % ln_symbolset))]}"

An array is defined with alphanumeric symbols, taking care to eliminate symbols that humans struggle to distinguish (e.g. 1l0o). Then integer div and mod operations produce a two character number which is then prefixed with the year. So e.g. 2024-aa. Just two chars gives more numbers than would ever be generated in one calandar year.

This code mostly satisfies the need. But there’s a problem: a recipient who receives two letters can easily realise how many letters were sent in the time span of the two letters they receive. Most numbers will start with “a” “b” or “c”.

I do not need or want a cryptographic level of security which then leads to ungodly 16 byte numbers. Simplicity¹ is far more important than confidentiality. Just a small tweak to stifle the most trivial analysis would be useful.

One temptation is to simply manually mix up the order of chars in the symbolset array, hard-coded. But then that makes the code less readible. So I probably need to create a 2nd array “symbolseq” which arbitrarily unorders the symbolset array. I say arbitrary and not random because the sequence must be deterministic and static from one execution to the next.

An associative array is one idea:

typeset -A symbolset_lookup_table=(
[a]=k
[b]=3
[c]=s
…

I’m just slightly put off by the fact that it’s not readily evident that the RHS values are all used from the same set as the LHS keys exactly once.

I should probably encode the year as well. This would give a two char year:

printf '%s ' "$(((2024/41) % 41))" "$((2024 % 41))" "→ ${symbolset[$(((2024 / 41) % 41))]}" "${symbolset[$((2024 % 41))]}"

output:
8 15 → j s

(edit)
All the calculations must be easily reversible so a ref number can be converted back into a sequence number for DB queries.

¹ simplicity in both the code and in the numbers generated.

 

cross-posted from: https://linkage.ds8.zone/post/273391

Can anyone recommend a download manager for AOS 5 that can accept as input a list of URLs? This is what I’ve tried:

  • GigaGet (must hand-type each URL manually)
  • Download Navi (must hand-type each URL manually)
  • Aria2App (strangely, it apparently needs a server and cannot simply fetch files directly)

#askFedi

 

Can anyone recommend a download manager for AOS 5 that can accept as input a list of URLs? This is what I’ve tried:

  • GigaGet (must hand-type each URL manually)
  • Download Navi (must hand-type each URL manually)
  • Aria2App (strangely, it apparently needs a server and cannot simply fetch files directly)

/cc @askfedi@a.gup.pe #askFedi

 

I was thinking about the problem with JavaScript and the misery it brings to people. I think I’ve pinned it down to a conflict of interest.

Software is supposed to serve the user who runs it. That’s the expectation, and rightfully so. It’s not supposed to serve anyone else. Free software is true to this principle, loosely under the FSF “freedom 0” principle.

Non-free software is problematic because the user cannot see the code. The code only has to pretend to serve the user while in reality it serves the real master (the corporation who profits from it).

JavaScript has a similar conflict of interest. It’s distributed by the same entity who operates API services -- a stakeholder. Regardless of whether the JS is free software or not, there is an inherent conflict of interest whereby the JS is produced by a non-user party to the digital transactions. This means the software is not working for the user. It’s only pretending to.

 

This is what I found for screen capturing:

There is an adb method that works by running the Java desktop client net.srcz.android.screencast.Main, but there is no way to capture the screen if you’re not near a PC with adb. I got burnt because I needed to capture the window of a broken captive portal, and the browser refreshes the screen when it’s backgrounded and then brought back to focus.. which is a bit fucked up of a behavior.

update


I just found this post which mentions some options that my search missed.

 

Lemmy and kbin have this problem: there is no way for a user to block a whole instance. If you want to block all #lemmyWorld communities, then you must individually enter each community that appears in a timeline and click “block”. That’s very tedious.

It would be useful if I could input the nodes I want to block, and a bot would login as me and click block for me on all communities from whatever nodes I have blacklisted.

 

I just started using the LaTeX community (!tex@lemmy.sdfeu.org). Sad to see it go.

update


Just noticed it’s back up, but there are no communities. That’s bizarre. So if someone not on lemmy.sdfeu.org were to post to !tex@lemmy.sdfeu.org, I guess it’d still be like a ghost node because the post would have nowhere to go on the hosting node.

 

I hate to link into MS Github but that’s where the Kalium project exists. It’s intended for API testing, but among proficient users it should possibly be the primary way to use the #Wire network because:

  • WireApp (on Android) is a forced obsolescence shit show
  • WireApp (desktop) has been a shit show from day one (based on Electron/Chromium) plus a fuckup just caused it to block logins for Linux users.

So Kalium seems to be a lesser of evils. But I must say it was a shit show too when I tried to get it running a year or so ago.

Has anyone successfully gotten #Kalium to run?

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