ciferecaNinjo

For example:

Via freepost (without stamp)

Défenseur des droits
Free answer 71120
75342 Paris CEDEX 07 

I have only ever seen postage-free envelopes whereby the position where postage normally appears states that no postage is necessary. Without some kind of pre-printed envelope, does the French post office check all destination addresses on envelopes missing postage to see if they qualify?

This is a problem in Belgium for sure. I think Netherlands (at least in parts) tend to bury their cables under the sidewalk. Any examples of gracefullly hiding the cables in cities which are hostile toward making telecoms dig up the sidewalk?

Crossposted to !exclusive_public_resources.

The French federal website www.economie.gouv.fr should be public access. But they allow US tech giant Cloudflare to restrict access and then snoop on people who manage to get access.

The most recent cached version on archive.org is also useless because archive.org was also presented with Cloudflare’s blockade.

The only openly accessible content is old versions of archive.org snapshots, from the time before CF became archive-hostile.

The French federal website www.economie.gouv.fr should be public access. But they allow US tech giant Cloudflare to restrict access and then snoop on people who manage to get access.

The most recent cached version on archive.org is also useless because archive.org was also presented with Cloudflare’s blockade.

The only openly accessible content is old versions of archive.org snapshots, from the time before CF became archive-hostile.

Crossposted from https://europe.pub/post/9269750

A utility bill came on paper using:

• black text (on a variety of different backgrounds- white, orange, gray..)
• white text (on a variety of different backgrounds- blue, green..)
• very light grey text (on a variety of different backgrounds- white, intermittent light green imagery..)
• blue text (on a variety of different backgrounds- white, intermittent light green imagery..)
• 2 kinds of bold text (extra heavy black and dark green)

I’m not blind. I can see it just fine. But when I try to scan this thing into a bi-level doc, it’s impossible because of this shit-show of color combinations. There is no possible level by which all the text can be made clear. As soon as a level is used to eliminate the colored backgrounds, a lot of the light gray text goes white. This forces me to scan it as color, which wastes file space.

So I thought-- what about blind people? Aren’t they fucked in this situation? If I were blind, I would scan, OCR, then use a screen reader on the text. Some OCR tools can work on color docs but I don’t think all OCR software has that.

Reaching the accessibility law is itself a shitshow in the EU now that the EU blocks Tor. Indeed, only clearnet users are permitted to be aware of the law. I had to pull directive 2019/882 from the archives, where the most recent capture was bad but an old capture was fetchable.

Directive 2019/882 seems to only address “products and services”, and documentation for that commercial category. I see nothing about paper bills. That seems bizarre, no?

I found this Color Contrast for PDF Accessibility: Why Does It Matter?, but that’s not exactly relevant.

So is the utility company legally compliant with this shitty unscannable invoice design?

A utility bill came on paper using:

• black text (on a variety of different backgrounds- white, orange, gray..)
• white text (on a variety of different backgrounds- blue, green..)
• very light grey text (on a variety of different backgrounds- white, intermittent light green imagery..)
• blue text (on a variety of different backgrounds- white, intermittent light green imagery..)
• 2 kinds of bold text (extra heavy black and dark green)

I’m not blind. I can see it just fine. But when I try to scan this thing into a bi-level doc, it’s impossible because of this shit-show of color combinations. There is no possible level by which all the text can be made clear. As soon as a level is used to eliminate the colored backgrounds, a lot of the light gray text goes white. This forces me to scan it as color, which wastes file space.

So I thought-- what about blind people? Aren’t they fucked in this situation? If I were blind, I would scan, OCR, then use a screen reader on the text. Some OCR tools can work on color docs but I don’t think all OCR software has that.

Reaching the accessibility law is itself a shitshow in the EU now that the EU blocks Tor. Indeed, only clearnet users are permitted to be aware of the law. I had to pull directive 2019/882 from the archives, where the most recent capture was bad but an old capture was fetchable.

Directive 2019/882 seems to only address “products and services”, and documentation for that commercial category. I see nothing about paper bills. That seems bizarre, no?

I found this Color Contrast for PDF Accessibility: Why Does It Matter?, but that’s not exactly relevant.

So is the utility company legally compliant with this shitty unscannable invoice design?

I have tried two TVs with 3 different tuners and 2 different antennas, in Brussels. One is an old pocket device with DVB-T. The tuner for the other TV (made in 2022) has these specs:

Tuner/Reception/Transmission
• Aerial Input: 75 ohm coaxial (IEC75)
• TV system: PAL I, PAL B/G, PAL D/K, SECAM B/G, SECAM D/K, SECAM L/L
• Video Playback: NTSC, SECAM, PAL
• Tuner bands: Hyperband, S-Channel, UHF, VHF
• Number of Preset Channels: 100
• Tuner Display: PLL

I’m surprised this TV is only a few years old yet there is no mention of DVB-T/2. A powered DVB-T2 antenna is connected to it. Neither finds any signals when autotuning. Is that expected? Wikipedia mentions a long list of stations for Belgium and some seem to be Brussels based.

Can anyone confirm or deny terrestrial TV broadcasts in Brussels or anywhere in the rest of Belgium?

I have some expiring money trapped on a GSM phone. Use-it-or-lose-it. I cannot see how to spend it all at the last minute.

Anyone know of any clever ways to use phone credit?

I think there would be no problem if this were Africa because a lot of people there have no bank account; they use their GSM phones for banking instead.

Update: I found a business that sells the “Premium SMS” service to other companies who want to accept payment in that way:

https://www.cellcom.eu/en/sms-services/11/premium-sms/

But sadly, there is no list of their customers.

So far, I have only found De Lijn, parking, and shitty US tech giants (e.g. Google Play Store) who can take payments via premium SMS.

I have tried two TVs with 3 different tuners and 2 different antennas, in Brussels. One is an old pocket device with DVB-T. The tuner for the other TV (made in 2022) has these specs:

Tuner/Reception/Transmission
• Aerial Input: 75 ohm coaxial (IEC75)
• TV system: PAL I, PAL B/G, PAL D/K, SECAM B/G, SECAM D/K, SECAM L/L
• Video Playback: NTSC, SECAM, PAL
• Tuner bands: Hyperband, S-Channel, UHF, VHF
• Number of Preset Channels: 100
• Tuner Display: PLL

I’m surprised this TV is only a few years old yet there is no mention of DVB-T/2. A powered DVB-T2 antenna is connected to it. Neither finds any signals when autotuning. Is that expected? Wikipedia mentions a long list of stations for Belgium and some seem to be Brussels based.

Can anyone confirm or deny terrestrial TV broadcasts in Brussels or anywhere in the rest of Belgium?

Anyone know of any ways to spend GSM credit, obviously apart from calls, data, & text?

Here is my list:

1. De Lijn - you can send an SMS to De Lijn to order a single ticket. You get back a code that you show to the driver as you board.

That’s it. My whole list.

I have credit that will expire soon, so I am in a use-it-or-lose it situation and I don’t need a bus ride.

It would be useful if all radio topics could be hosted and discussed on a dedicated fedi instance. The lemmy.radio description is constrained to amateur radio:

“A lemmy instance for amateur radio enthusiasts and communities.”

There are no communities anywhere in the fedi for FM or AM radio apart from !radio on LW (a Cloudflare-centralised instance). And that community is strangely constrained (tech support/user inquiries unwelcome according to the sidebar). DAB radio has one community strangely placed on a “UK centric” instance: !dabradio@feddit.uk.

(crossposted from !exclusive_public_resources)

Musk’s changes to Twitter:

• must register as a member to get read access to content
• members no longer see a non-biased chronological linear timeline; an opaque algorithm decides what to prioritise on the timelines, subject to Elon’s hard-right manipulation

It’s perhaps fair enough that boot-licking pawns decide to subject themselves to quasi-brainwashing manipulation. But when GOVERNMENTS use Twitter, people with a legitimate interest in gov communication are forced to register on an exclusive walled garden where they will come under influence of the extreme right (and thus climate denial among other garbage; hence the crosspost to !climate_action_individual).

How to fix this using open data laws:

Public content published on Twitter legally must be openly accessible to all people. Perhaps not by default but certainly by request. This means individuals can submit an open data request to gov agencies who use Twitter, requesting a copy of all content they publish on Twitter. The gov legally must satisfy the request. All tweets must be in an open machine-readable format (csv, json, or xml).

The dataset is “dynamic”, so I believe future updates must be added to the open data. But what I’ve seen in practice is the gov is not diligent about pushing the updates. They may need to be nagged. If they are nagged enough, perhaps they will decide Twitter is not worth it.

BTW, all of this applies to Facebook as well, noting that Cambridge Analytica is why Trump took power in 2016.

Why this is in degoogle

European govs are using Youtube and thus force people into that access restricted walled garden. You need not register but you can only get access if you reveal your IP address to Google by not using Tor.

The same strategy of open data requests can perhaps be adapted to Google. Request that the gov agency put their videos in peertube or their own website.