Prepaid GSM data in Belgium -- comparison but more crowd-sourced info wanted
There are only three GSM carriers in Belgium:...
Belgian election information in English for Tor users (some political parties are blocking some people from election info)
It’s quite difficult to find information on election candidates in English, and on top of that I only use Tor for the web which really narrows the election information available to nearly nothing....
Belgians say your national ID card is sensitive and should not be presented to non-gov entities, but reality differs. Mobib refused.
Several Belgians have said generally the national ID card is for official government operations not for the private sector; willy-nilly requests to show it should be refused in general. But then in reality ID card is demanded in countless commercial non-gov scenarios:...
Water quality in Brussels -- Brita-filtered tap vs. bottled water
The tap water in Brussels is at the high end of the hardness scale which shortens the life of Brita filters. The water also seems dicey in terms of cleanliness. On a couple occasions I’ve seen something floating in the tap water in two different apartments. So I switched to bottled water....
What happens in Belgium when you have a legal obligation to do some administrative task & you can’t b/c of bad tech?
People living in Belgium are sometimes legally obligated to perform an administrative task. At the same time, sometimes the only mechanism to do so imposes some technology that’s actually exclusive....
SNCB still dead to me. Privacy-hostile enshitified protectionist website and yet very high prices (winner: the bus)
I quit using the trains a couple years ago because SNCB started blocking Tor, which is a form of privacy abuse....
Belgian eBox service assumes recipients have received their correspondence even if they do not login -- really??
When you register an “ebox” box #Belgium for official correspondence, they warn you that correspondence has been “received” merely by landing in your inbox, even if you do not login....
Why the GDPR is largely unenforced in Belgium (the DPA only employs 62 workers)
Anyone wondering why your #GDPR complaint reports are not leading to enforcement - this may be the answer:...
Vivaqua has quit accepting cash payments
Vivaqua removed their cash machine and now refuses cash. So indeed: being able to get access to water service in #Brussels is now contingent on being accepted by the bank and agreeing to use banking services....
Do any ATMs in Belgium support balance inquiries? (BNP Paribas does not)
An ATM from BNP Paribas did not offer an option to check my balance. Nor did it print the balance on the receipt....
bPost now charges €9.90 for registered letters. Any competition?
Both stamp prices and registered letter prices have been taking giant leaps. A charge of €9.85 for confirmed registered letters is not #inflation, it’s crazy....
Kitchen scale from Lidl has 2 pages of “⚠ warning!… Caution! Danger to Life!”
Every #userGuide for every recent product I’ve looked at has several pages of safety notices. I’ve been conditioned to just ignore them. How can we take them seriously when a kitchen scale manual says:...
Getting bPost mail from past residents - some a decade past.. some from high volume senders
For privacy, my mailbox and buzzer does not list names. Thus bPost has no way of knowing who lives in the house. So it’s fair enough that they simply deliver everything that matches the address....
Bicycle anti-theft infrastructure: Denmark vs Belgium
I saw a bicycle worth €1500 new at a Brussels street market for €200. I thought surely it’s too good to be true. The seller must be in a real hurry to sell it. I had no idea how to verify the legitimacy of it....
French library network has started blocking Invidious
Until recently, it was possible to download #Youtube videos on a library PC & store on USB drive by using an #Invidious front-end. Recently the library has blocked all invidious instances. You can still view videos but when you try to download one it gives a 403 forbidden error....
The war on cash is well underway in Belgium.
A VRT news article covers the state of cash essentially saying it is still obligatory for retailers to accept payments in cash though the law is being ignored and going unenforced. This is the English translation of the article:...