ciferecaNinjo

I don't know the Belgian case, but I think it's the same thing in many member states; the publishing of laws online is done by private for-profit companies, and comes with weird restrictions.

Belgium has an open data law obligating the state to make available to the public generally all information that the state has, with some reasonable restrictions w.r.t private info about individuals. Legal statutes themselves would obviously have to be openly accessible under that law. That law was even used to force publication of train routes and schedules. I’ve not read the law but I guess it’s likely sloppy about what constitutes “open”, because the state’s own website is access restricted (e.g. Tor IPs are blocked).

I’ve always appreciated your competence and diligence in setting a good example of responsible hosting without resorting to shitty technofeudal fiefdoms like Cloudflare. Nice to see you are standing your ground and not selling the users out (unlike lemmy world and many other boot licking hosts).

I must say there is a notable side-effect to this. Since mbin does not have a cross-posting feature, I have been cross-posting by creating a link post to my original post from other relevant magazines. Now all of those links are unreachable to outsiders. To outsiders, I polluted their magazine with access-restricted links.

I can think of only two workarounds:

1. Make the original post on a publicly open forum, then link to that from other forums. This means the original post can never be on Fedia (which has the side-effect of reducing fedia publicity); and/or
2. Copy/paste the payload of the original msg into the cross-post.

Fix 1 is impossible for existing past threads. Fix 2 is tedious and it’s a maintenance burden esp. if a post needs edits or updates. Fix 2 is also problematic because if I withold the original link, users cannot find other discussions that are scattered; but if I supply the original link, then non-Fedia readers cannot reach the OP anyway.

That will mean we don't show up in search engines and whatnot, which for some will considered a good thing and will likely cause others to leave.

Worth mentioning that paywall sites handle this by giving crawlers special treatment. I’m not necessarily suggesting that though.

There is a remaining problem related to the login form. Calls to the login page are breathtakingly expensive,

The login form loads must be through the roof because whenever a non-fedia user follows a cross-post into fedia, they are redirected to a login form which did not happen before.

There would be some relief if Mbin would implement a cross-post feature that automatically copies the OP text into the body, which would cut down on the number of visits. At the same time, I’ve always considered that a sloppy approach because edits are not sychronised. So in principle the threadiverse probably needs a smarter API specifically for cross-posts.

The use of 3rd-party clients would obviously give relief on the login form loading. But I have not found any decent 3rd-party clients for Lemmy or [km]bin - (perhaps because I’m fussy… I could really use a text UI in linux that stores content locally).

If a resource blocks certain IP addresses, that is not open access. It is access restricted. It is a deliberate blockade against a demographic of people.

“Open data” has different meanings in different bodies of law, so your comment is meaningless without context. But in any case, we can call shenanigans whenever an “open data” legal definition fails to thwart access restrictions in an Emporer wears no clothes type of attempt.

IOW, you cannot claim that an access restriction ceases to exist on some emotional plea that you believe the access restriction is just, appropriate, or necessary. An access restriction is an access restriction. “Open” implies open to all people, not some select demographics.

Yes I understood that but it is not correct. We choose to use Tor for privacy, not to lose access to resources. There is no exclusion on the Tor side of this.

You don’t know how Tor works. The Tor community has exit nodes on the clearnet which give them inclusion. When a tor user is blocked, the exclusion is done by the resource, not from the Tor side. The tor network in no way excludes people from accessing legal publications.

I mentioned that, along with the problem of that. As well as the problem of searching using private sector tools.

We should not be pushed to use private search engines like Google, Bing, or their syndicates to find public resources. Public administrations have an “open data” obligation to some extent. Certainly the EU knows where the member state’s implementations are.

This is generally saying if you are being discriminated against, change whatever your demographic is that is subject to discrimination. Putting oneself inside the included group does nothing to remedy the fact that there is an excluded group of people.

It’s also wrong to assume everyone has clearnet access. At this very moment I am using a machine that does not have clearnet access.

What an anti-feature. Thanks for pointing that out! Should be corrected now.

Well that rationale doesn’t withstand the fact that people can change their gender identity without updating their ID docs. Recipe for disaster.

I was thinking about doing that. I read that mother of vineger is not necessary, but it speeds up the process. I also read that results are only good with certain beers like brown ales.. and I think IPA was given as an example of a bad result (i’m assuming due to the hoppy bitterness).

I mainly use it on fried potatoes, and I’m open to experiments, perhaps with lentil salad. I am familiar with Sarson’s and managed to find another bottle of that but I would like to try more varieties of malt vinegar. Saw a small bottle of lambic-based vinegar in a speciality shop and didn’t buy it because the price is a bit high (€14).

Well, it wouldn’t require lying but certainly it seems tricky. You can deregister before you leave the country and neglect to provide an address for where you are going -- because you wouldn’t necessarily know in advance and you cannot provide information that does not exist. So they clear your address from your id card which then just has an empty address.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t have a specific legal obligation to state where you live abroad.

Though one snag is that you have a legal obligation to vote in elections and you must vote in the nearest embassy, which requires giving an address to get on the voting roster. However, voting is not strictly enforced. If you fail to vote there is a small fine but I don’t think they actually hit unregistered people abroad with that. If you do not vote in 3 consecutive elections, then you could lose your voting rights for a few years, I think.

I do not believe the bank gets a notification that you have deregistered. But at some point your ID card on the bank’s files will expire and they will expect an updated copy and freeze your account until they receive it.

If you walk into an embassy to “renew” your passport, do they demand an address? I would think you would pick up your passport at the embassy a week later. Or do they mail it?

Anyway, I can understand giving in to surveillance and disclosing US ties, but OTOH it seems like a nightmare to do what’s expected as well.. to be tagged as a toxic US person. It’s a mess either way. Perhaps the wisest move is to “move” to Canada, stay there a couple months, setup residency, then move to the US and just neglect to mention it. Get mail forwarding from Canada.