ciferecaNinjo

joined 2 years ago
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Riopan is an over-the-counter (OTC) drug that anyone can buy for stomach pain relief. Docs prescribe it, but the prescription is almost meaningless because it is not reimbursable. So the prescription only serves as a doc→pharmacist communication so the patient gets the right stuff.

20 sacs (10ml ea.) of Riopan is €8.95. Thus 45 €cents/dose. Bit pricey, no? So I checked a few places. All the same price and one pharmacist said the price is controlled on Riopan. No pharmacist can legally charge less than €8.95.

Yet this stuff is non-reimbursible. WTF? If a doc prescribes something, it means the patient needs it. If it’s needed, why would it not be covered?

At the same time, what’s the point in a price control on something that is unnecessary? This is bizarre, no? If medicine is needed, sure price controls make sense in a socialised medicine context to ensure equal access. But if it’s not reimbursable, it’s therefore treated as not needed, yet there are price controls which seem to worsen the deal for consumers on something like this due to lack of competition. It seems like an incoherent combination of disadvantages to consumers.

Also bizarre that despite being an openly accessible OTC drug, they don’t put Riopan on the shelf. You have to ask the pharmacist for it as if it needs some kind of controlled supervision/nannying. What is that about?

Does it make sense to buy Riopan or other drugs in neighboring countries? Obviously not worth a trip for Riopan but I just wonder if I happen to visit NL, DE, or FR, are there any OTC drugs I should buy.

 

A supermarket has a cashback option with a limit of €200. The cashier entered a cashback transaction for €100. I tapped the terminal using a non-SEPA card. Instant decline. We tried again, this time using the EMV chip. The cashier said enter your PIN. The terminal displayed the amount and said “press OK” (did not ask for PIN). Pressing digits had no effect. It was apparently only asking for confirmation not authentication. I pressed OK and got an instant decline with no reason given. Tried again, this time entering my whole pin even though the buttons had no effect, then pressed OK. Again declined.

It is bizarre that PIN was not requested. I think the cashier rightfully expected PIN entry because it was a 3-figure amount.

I went to an entirely different shop and asked for much less cashback. Same thing. Terminal just asked me to press OK then gave an instant decline. Then at that same shop I made a normal purchase without cashback, and it succeeded.

I asked the bank why I was declined. The bank said there are no problems with the account and that their records show that every transaction was approved. The bank insisted that there is no trace of any failed transaction.

So, WTF is happening? Is the PoS terminal deciding to refuse the transaction without even contacting the bank? And if so, why would it make the offer in the 1st place (to press OK)?

My wild theoryI believe EMV chips are designed to confirm a PIN without using the network which enables transactions to happen offline (to later settle with the bank when online). My bank told me over the phone that my PIN is active and confirmed it. This implies the bank expects to confirm PIN over the network.

So is it possible that the European machine expects to verify the PIN for the EMV chip, and my bank only verifies PINs over the network?

 

no receipts

ATMs in Germany did not ask if I wanted a receipt. Then they simply neglected to print a receipt. I noticed one ATM did not even have a printer.. no slot to output a receipt.

Not too long ago I came across some international law regarding ATMs. One of the requirements was that ATMs provide a receipt. How is Germany getting around that law? Or did the law change?

no mention of fees

Every ATM I have encountered outside of Germany (w/the exception of 1 machine) mentions a fee for non-SEPA cards, which is then printed on the receipt. The transparency is also an obligation imposed by international law. Is it safe to assume German ATMs do not charge a fee to non-SEPA cards? Or did I just get lucky on the ATMs I encountered? I think I once used an ATM in France which did not charge a fee on a non-SEPA card.. so they do exist but I’ve found it to be quite rare before traveling to Germany.

Ideally there would be a list of ATMs somewhere that are wholly fee-free. AFAICT, it’s a crapshoot.

banknotes

I heard some German ATMs will dispense bills as big as €200. But banknote availibility is never disclosed until you do a transaction. Some ATMs only went up to €50 and some €100 but I never got a bigger note than that. What bank or ATM operator has €200?

tailgating to reach an ATM

There was a locked ATM room. I did not try my card to open the door because it was not of that bank. But luckily there was enough traffic that I could tailgate someone in to access the ATMs. That’s a bit bizarre, no? Anything wrong with tailgating? Is it setup that way to be a kind of VIP privilege to enter for just that particular bank’s customers?

 

If you send an email to a recipient whose email account is hosted by Microsoft, or you share you email address with such entities, you are part of the problem.

I refuse to be part of the problem. So before contacting a recipient (gov agencies in particular), I do an MX lookup on their email address. It almost always points to MS servers.

So snail mail it is. Otherwise sending them email serves as a signal to the recipient that MS is okay for email.

 

The mod might want to consider adding these related communities to the sidebar (all of which are properly decentralised):

 

This seems a bit off. Public payphones were what, 25¢/min? Now that they have been eliminated, the cash equivalent is a prepaid mobile service.

Public payphones had an infrastructure of phone booths that needed to be maintained, cleaned, and serviced. They consumed real estate.

Prepaid mobile service is a trivial deployment by comparison. I must maintain my own hardware. Yet my carrier charges 22¢/min in 2025. Comparable to the cost of public payphones.

 

A lot of useful information covering the city of Brussels is jailed. Apparently only clearnet users are allowed to access the website, AFAICT.

 

If you need to do any kind of public administration in Belgium, such as perform transactions with city hall or the tax authority, for most uses you are redirected to eid.belgium.be to login using a smartcard reader. A PIN and eID serve as the 2nd factor when authenticating on this site.

But eid.belgium.be blocks Tor. Isn’t 2FA enough? Why would the confidence in their security be so low that they are skiddish about someone’s IP address? IMO it’s unlikely that their security confidence is that low. Most likely they want to track the IP address and thus day-to-day of every citizen. Otherwise it makes no sense for this service to block Tor, which mushrooms into being blocked from accessing many essential services.

This is why the right to be analog is important. I think someone in Denmark is working on that. Belgium has an org called something like the gang of angry elders working on the right to be analog.

[–] ciferecaNinjo@fedia.io -1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

No, it must land on an account electronically, as directed using an IBAN. Post offices double as banks in Europe, so I brought up the post office because their banking service tends to cover this need.

(edit) but regarding your comment that no courier guarantees cash, I thought FedEx did and that people used FedEx for cash for that reason. But then there was a recent scandal in the US where a big FedEx hub allowed cops with sniffer dogs trained specifically to sniff for cash, and the police were simply confiscating banknotes without cause (arbitrarily without a crime). I have to wonder how the insurance claims play out in that case.

[–] ciferecaNinjo@fedia.io -2 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Do all accounts support cash deposits?

In Belgium, banks can refuse you an account for any reason unless you open a “basic” account which they cannot refuse. But cash deposits are banned from basic accounts (which is possibly a Belgian-specific constraint). What about basic accounts in Germany?

[–] ciferecaNinjo@fedia.io -3 points 6 months ago (6 children)

No, it’s nannying. When the hunt for criminals interferes with law-abiding people, it’s oppression.

Forced banking and anti-cash policy is definately something that varies from one country to the next. There is an “EU recommendation” that all debts be payable in cash. Belgium is not following the recommendation and it causes problems. Germany has a reputation for respecting people’s privacy, autonomy, and ability to use cash. Hence why I thought Germany might have a decent option.

You can make an account in Germany without being a resident, better try this

I do not want an account. I could fill a book with reasons.

Normally post office’s demand ID. I am fine with that as long as my ID is accepted (which I’m not sure if it would be if it’s not German, although in principle any EU resident should have equal access to any EU service).

[–] ciferecaNinjo@fedia.io 2 points 7 months ago

Can you elaborate on the limitations? In Belgium it seems more like a shitty deployment, but I don’t see what blocks a community FOSS option. Is it just that no one has been inspired to make an open source tool, or are the carrier’s APIs proprietary, secret, or restricted?

[–] ciferecaNinjo@fedia.io 1 points 7 months ago

you need to learn to read.

Try reading your own source. Look for “usually” in your cited definition. If you replace “usually” with “always” it would get you closer to the definition you’re attempting to apply in your claims. At least it’s more clear why you originally thought expression rights would matter.

I never said a boycott required an organization

Yet you just indicated you are standing behind Webster’s definition, which (incorrectly) claims that a boycott is necessarily “concerted”. An “organised” boycott isconcerted”. Working in concert.

A dictionary’s 2-liner gives a very rudimentary understanding of the practice. It’s good for someone starting from zero, but you should really read the history and learn a bit about the concept instead of trying to think like a robot. Lookup Charles C. Boycott to learn the origins. A dictionary is really a shitty source for gaining in-depth insight. Anyone can find a dictionary that supports different meanings. Then what? A battle of dictionaries.. Webster vs. Random House? A prof would be embarrassed to refer to a dictionary. The problem with Webster is that it attempts to capture the general concept in 2 lines of text but in an effort to capture the typical practice it yields something inaccurately narrow. They made a trade-off. Webster was right to say it /usually/ manifests as an expression, but a boycott does not cease to be a boycott in the absence of a concerted effort of multiple actors. Indeed that is also usually the case but not always. And you’re hoping a 2 line blurb will cover all situations. It’s a non-starter because those of us who live by the boycott as a lifestyle could not possibly convey expression across the board. If I were to introduce expression to my lifestyle of boycotting ~1000+ brands for every one of them, it would be unsurmountable. I would have to cut back on the quantity of boycotts by 2 orders of magnitude.

[–] ciferecaNinjo@fedia.io 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

A boycott is by definition choosing not to partake in a transaction ~~so as to show your dissatisfaction financially~~, any action that doesn't fit the definition of a boycott is not one.

There is no “showing your dissatisfaction” nonsense here. A boycott can absolutely be silent. You’re under the common misconception that boycotts are necessarily organised by many people with a list of demands. A single person can -- on their own initiative -- decide to boycott a company as just one person. I did not buy the Unilever bar of soap because I boycott Unilever. Yet Unilever does not get the slightest expression or signal from me to “show” dissatisfaction. I may be the only person boycotting them. Wholly undetectable. I might make some noise about it, optionally, but my boycott does not cease to be a boycott for not showing dissatisfaction.

Intent is nothing from a utilitarian standpoint. Someone or a small group might think or hope their boycott inherently signals dissatisfaction. Yet it likely fails in that regard despite having the intent that your definition introduces.

A boycott is consumers refusing to feed a bad actor. They may or may not show contempt. I boycott hundreds of corporations and I never send them my list of demands. That’s optional. Different people partake in boycotts different ways. Vegans often do not voice contempt for their adversary. But it’s a boycott against animal abusers nonetheless. The only way the meat industry could satisfy the demands of the vocal vegans would be to wholly cease their activity.. their existence.

I boycott Micorosoft and Amazon for hundreds of reasons. There is absolutely no hope of those companies changing enough to redeem themselves enough for me to back off my boycott. They cannot be salvaged. I am boycotting them until I die.

You cannot force somebody to partake in a transaction,

How could you possibly not have seen all the examples I gave of people being forced to partake in a transaction? Some are hypothetical but doesn’t matter. I count 8. In every single one of those cases the consumer could (if they wanted) ensure that their dissatisfaction is registered which would then adapt the example for your definition of boycott.

If we assume you are not swayed about the meaning of the word, so what? My questions in the OP are formed using my own interpretation of the word boycott. If necessary, you could mentally find and replace “boycott” with “foo”. My questions still stand.

[–] ciferecaNinjo@fedia.io 1 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I can’t quite grasp much of what you’re saying but I can respond to this:

Realistically, you can't ban boycotts because you can't make people buy things

Boycotting is no longer limited to purchases because data has value. So boycotting also means to refuse to share your profitable data with the entity who you boycott. Whether the boycott is exercised by refusing to purchase or refusing to share data, there are various situations where people’s boycotts can be suppressed:

  • An arabic teacher in Texas was forced to sign an agreement to not boycott Israel. She refused to sign and so the school district refused to renew her teaching contract. (that actually happened)
  • An obligatory government procedure requires either sending an email to the gov office or supplying an email address to them to receive email from them. The gov office uses Microsoft (a notorious surveillance advertiser who abuses data every opportunity). There are hundreds of reasons to boycott Microsoft. Complying with the gov obligation requires you to participate in Microsoft gaining profitable data from your transaction. OTOH refusing to comply on the basis of boycotting Microsoft leads to whatever action the gov takes for non-compliance with their procedure.
  • A creditor only accepts Paypal payments toward a debt. If the debtor is not legally entitled to pay by other means in the country at hand (or the contract supersedes), the creditor would sue a debtor who boycotts Paypal for non-payment. This could happen if both agree to use Paypal, but then the debtor later gets booted by Paypal (yes, paypal has a reputation for booting customers and even keeping their money). The customer would be reasonable to boycott Paypal in such event, but the boycott would be impeded by their obligation to pay the creditor.
  • (the OP example) a vegan is incarcerated in a prison that has no vegan food. It’s perhaps a messy example, but a vegan could refuse the animal products. When they reach a bad condition, some human rights issues would eventually be triggered since they have a right to live. Force feeding aside, ideally they should have a legal basis to demand vegan food simply from the start. It’s probably not a realistic example in most of the developed world but nonetheless indicates how a boycott can be impeded.
  • Someone who boycotts Google might be forced to use an app exclusive for Google customers. That force can arise out of various circumstances including government mandates as govs increasingly assume everyone has a smartphone. It’s very common for apps to be exclusively obtainable from Google or Apple’s websites, and increasingly common that apps are unavoidable. Google profits from the Playstore, as does Apple from their store. There is a community for capturing some of these situations. See the healthcare thread in particular.
  • Someone who boycotts non-free software might be forced to use a government website that’s actually a JavaScript app, non-free software.
  • A consumer who boycotts Google might be forced to solve a Google reCAPTCHA (from which Google profits) in the course of fulfilling an obligation to use a shitty website. E.g. the water company might require you to supply your meter reading on their website. You might agree after seeing no problem with the website. Then a couple years later the water company decides to make solving a Google reCAPTCHA a precondition to entering the meter reading. Since the agreement does not say they will /not/ do this, you are contractually obligated to solve Google’s CAPTCHA and help Google profit from your labor (because telling Google where the crosswalks are adds value to their profitable maps).
  • A consumer sensible enough to boycott Twitter will be unable to microblog to most (if not all) of their gov reps, which of course has some interplay with free expression rights. If the gov rep were on a gov-administered Mastodon host, boycotts would be respected. Constituents could boycott the shitty corps without sacrificing the option to microblog to their rep.

I could go on but I think this sufficiently shows that there are plenty of situations where people are increasingly disempowered to boycott. Pointing to the free expression article of the UDHR would be useless in these scenarios.

[–] ciferecaNinjo@fedia.io 2 points 8 months ago

I am not asking for legal advice¹. I am asking how the human rights text I have quoted can reasonably be interpretted -- and in fact what is the common interpretation.

Lawyers have specific disciplines. At this point with so little critical thinking (and thinking in general in this thread) it’s unclear if a human rights lawyer is even appropriate for my situation. Whether I can even obtain a lawyer is an entirely different mess -- totally irrelevant to the thread. But due to those irrelevant circumstances I believe I will be forced to defend myself (btw, it is a human right that someone can defend themself pro se.. fyi). In which case it is extra important for me to know my rights.

This hostility in here to people knowing their rights is something else. It’s far from the liberal community I was expecting to find here. Where are the people who actually endorse human rights, endorse the knowledge of those rights, and the exercise thereof? Where are the thinkers? The profs, and academics?

Folks -- please read the sidebar -- all of it:

!humanrights is a safe place to discuss the topic of human rights, through the lens of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. …

  • Treat everyone with dignity. …

¹ I only brought up the legal case because to fend off the anti-intellectual speech-chilling asshat who managed to break every rule in the sidebar at once. The legal case is irrelevant to the thread’s thesis of knowing our rights -- and was intentionally withheld from the OP.

[–] ciferecaNinjo@fedia.io 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I am being dragged into court over a boycott. Opposition to my boycott is being shoved down my throat, so your uncivil reponse not only fails to answer the questions and neglects to give insight into human rights law and interpretation, it’s not helpful in terms of how human rights law can be applied to defend boycotts. It’s worse than unhelpful because threadcrap is just garbage that assaults the discussion and blocks people from knowing their rights.

BTW, many US states have a prohibition on boycotting Israel, and Texas enforces it. So the idea that everyone happily gets to practice boycotts free from oppression is delusional. I already knew that some prisons offer vegan options, but that mere fact does not reveal the legal basis for that option.

[–] ciferecaNinjo@fedia.io -1 points 8 months ago (6 children)

That sounds bizarre because boycotting produces no expression whatsoever. Boycotting is simply the absence of an action which leaves no trace of expression, written, verbal, or as art. Can you elaborate?

[–] ciferecaNinjo@fedia.io 2 points 8 months ago

Love that you are keeping tabs on the gradual decline of tech. Could be useful to build an enshitification timeline. We really need an observatory of garbage tech which then needs to be cross referenced with search results. Imagine if your bank came up in a search with a blurb next to it (sensible and functional in 2013, shitshow thereafter).

[–] ciferecaNinjo@fedia.io 1 points 8 months ago

I’m uncertain. The EU’s words 3 weeks ago were:

“Now, with the #WiFi4EU app, enjoy free, high-speed WiFi in public spaces across Europe.”

That seems to imply that it is. A few replies seem to suggest opposition to a smartphone app requirement:

https://freesoftwareextremist.com/objects/0f42d401-7c57-4f78-a73c-c42278ffb0ed https://piaille.fr/@aaribaud/113260758404320106 https://sns.neonka.info/@nk/113261087148349618 https://westergaard.social/objects/8d4873c1-e674-4403-9f0a-b0adb5dd4246

But this post comes from someone who apparently believes the app is purely for finding the hotspots, not using them:

https://wetdry.world/@cyrus/113264605839060934

If you find something solid let me know. I’ll correct the post if needed. The branch started by @aaribaud seems to have the most insight, implying that the EU is distrusting WPA and using an app to do TLS.

(update) I think you are right. I just heard from someone saying it’s a regular hotspot with captive portal. Still not good but not as bad as an app mandate (like we see with eduroam).

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