ciferecaNinjo

RCS seems to be replacing email-SMS gateways. RCS is supposedly an open standard, but apparently if you do not have Android 8.1 or newer, you cannot use RCS to send an SMS in Belgium.

In principle, iiuc, you should be able to use a desktop app or browser to send an RCS msg. But for some reason it’s a shitshow.

The closed-source app is exclusively available in these places:

• Google Playstore
• Apple store
• Huawei store

The app will only run on quite recent phones. So anyone who does not keep their OS up to date (which implies periodically buying new hardware for the shitshow platforms people much choose between) are locked out of their account. Also:

• No walk-in service
• Over the counter service requires appointment and a fee for many staff-assisted operations
• No paper statements. No phone → no statements.

The app requires SMS 2fa, so non-phone or landphone users: don’t even think about trying to use an android emulator.

If you want to close your account to escape this shitshow, you have 2 options:

• In the app use the account closure feature, OR
• Send a shit load of sensitive information (ID/passport, utility bill, bank account numbers to close, account numbers of your new external account to transfer the money to, etc) via Google (gmail) from an IP address that Google accepts.

(edit) Worth mentioning an aspect of these cashless banks that should be embarrassing for them: when you close an account, they have no cash so they cannot pay you your balance. You can pull money from an ATM but obviously only in denominations of paper banknotes. So how do you get the rest out? They expect you to open an account elsewhere and transfer it. How silly is that? Maybe you don’t want another account, or maybe you’re moving to a completely different part of the world and the transfer cost will exceed what remains.

You can hack around this various ways, like dining out and paying an exact amount by card and the rest by cash. But really, banks should be embarrassed they cannot give you cash. They shouldn’t need a vault just to secure €20 or so in change.

The EU has implemented a free public wi-fi infrastructure and is pitching this service to various public buildings, including public libraries. This “Wifi4EU” project is limited to people with smartphones, and only those that are running iOS or Android OS. The app needed to connect to the network is closed-source and exclusively available in the walled gardens of Google and Apple. The network is inaccessible without the special app.

AFAICT, these are the excluded demographics of people:

• people with laptops
• people who do not have or carry a smartphone
• people with old non-updatable smartphones (all iOS & AOS devices are designed for obsolescence)
• people with cheap Chinese phones that exclude Google Playstore (which requires licensing with Google that some vendors do not subscribe to)
• people with deGoogled phones
• people with no Google account (i.e. those without the mobile phone number needed to register with Google)
• people who refuse to install and execute non-free closed-source software, and those on FOSS platforms that do not support such software

My concern is that when a public library decides to deploy Wifi4EU, they will discontinue their current wi-fi service, which does not require a special app and which is generally open to more demographics of people. Note that it’s a bit of a shit-show already because some current library wi-fi services already exclude people who cannot overcome the shitty captive portal + SMS verification design. Wifi4EU is even more exclusive.

The rumor I heard was that if you buy a product that fails before the warranty ends, you do not need to contact the manufacturer (in #Belgium). You can simply return the product to the merchant and the merchant must deal with the warranty service.

A store manager refused to accept my return of a device that died after 2yrs+2 months, which was covered under a 3 year warranty. He said I must deal directly with the manufacturer. I threatened to complain officially and the manager gave in. But then as he was angrily returning money to me, he said he is only required to handle warranty service for the 1st two years and that he is making an exception for me. I figured he was confused because 2 years happens to be the length of the EU implied warranty. I had not heard that it was also a limit of the store’s obligation as an intermediary.

To complicate matters, the product was marked down on liquidation because the store apparently severed ties with that manufacturer. Though I doubt that’s relevant to my situation because it would not void the warranty. But the article also says merchants must accept returns for any reason in the first 14 days, yet the store makes that zero days for liquidated goods. Does that break EU law?

Anyway, I need answers. Maybe I owe the manager a bottle of wine. The EU article indeed confirms sellers must handle warranty returns for up to 2 years. But that’s EU-wide #law. What about #Belgian national law?

Next question, out of curiousity: normally manufacturers have a choice whether to replace, repair or refund. Is that choice passed through to merchants? Or are merchants required to handle this with one instant transaction (thus no repair as the consumer would have to return to the store later)?

There are two ways to get online at the library:

1. bring your own device → wifi
2. use the library’s Windows PCs

I needed to grab content from http://$host:$highPortNum/$path…

The connection worked on the library’s own PCs, but kept dying part way into the fetch at very different points on the different repeated attempts.

So I tried a BYOD (laptop) over wifi. This was a non-starter with immediate failure:

$ wget $URL
Connecting to $HOST:$largePort... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... Read error (Connection reset by peer) in headers.
Retrying.

This behavior breaks many of the Internet radio stations I listen to, as well as more important fetches. The workaround I found was to simply prefix wget with torsocks to go over the Tor network.

Apparently the library’s network decides “this PC is untrusted, so only allow certain ports (e.g. 80)”. Questions:

1. What is the rationale? What security problem is the library trying to control by blocking uncommon ports?
2. Are there more clever circumventions than using Tor? Streaming radio over Tor is perhaps a bit needlessly wasteful.

One thought is to configure tor (if possible) to have just one hop, which would give up the needless anonymity in order to put less burden on the tor network. Is that possible? Otherwise, a VPN is the other thought but that has other downsides.

For example, this invidious instance offers a download option for a YoutTube video, as that instance does for all YT videos:

~~https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=lU4vv7qCQvg~~ (see update)

Exceptionally, if you opt to download it it merely opens a player to watch realtime. While other downloads from the same invidious instance have no issues. Why is this one getting different treatment?

update Apparently it’s an instance-specific problem with that particular video:

works → https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=lU4vv7qCQvg

broken → https://iv.ggtyler.dev/watch?v=lU4vv7qCQvg

I’ve seen other instances where this particular video download is broken. AFAIK, invidious.fdn.fr is the only place where it works as expected.