Mastodawn

dominix 🦇Mar 9

Jan Wildeboer 😷

Repost from https://todon.eu/@marcohackney/115992340469511552 with ALT text added. Unified chargers, free roaming, travel, study and work everywhere in the EU, simple bank transfers with SEPA and Wero. EU makes life better. It' definitely not GoodEnough™ in all parts.Work remains to be done. And that's worth doing!

Originally from a Facebook post by the EU Commission, ALT text added by me.

Jan Wildeboer 😷

(It took less than an hour for the first "Yes, but" folks to show up and accuse me of being ignorant of the EU border policies and how we drown refugees in the mediterranean. Thank you for giving me that short moment of peace. Everything I have done and do for refugees is irrelevant to you because you just want to make your point. So. Welcome to my blocklist.)

Jan Wildeboer 😷

Maybe I should just leave all of this "social" network stuff to those that want to destroy any positive moments and retreat. (I won't. I pity those that seem to be so filled with negativity that there is nothing positive they can ever add here. I will continue to try and hope my mental health won't suffer too much.)

Jan Wildeboer 😷

No matter what you think is more important — please do remember that I am a human being, not a machine. That I post here to share a message, not an invitation to you to accuse or attack me. Treat me with the respect I try to give you with every post and we can all have good discussions, even on tough topics. Deal?

Jan Wildeboer 😷

I really tried to stay friendly and welcoming. I asked for the people that reply to have a bit of respect and to not use my post as a soapbox to stand on to spread negativity. But still, replies have been added on Frontex, the EU being racist and so on. Lesson learned: Some loud people just MUST be negative and project their negativity on me whenever I say something slightly positive. Those will all be blocked by me. My timeline, my decision, my freedom. Have a wonderful day!

Wigbert B 🎻🏛🎭🎤🗞🎥📚Feb 2

please not - don’t let them win…

Rasmus Lindegaard Feb 2

@jwildeboer yes, but then they win...

Oh shit 😰

@jwildeboer Please don't, you're on the right side.

Small anecdote: my 20-year old daughter is currently traveling in Asia. Some days back out of nowhere she said: "Europe is actually pretty cool: potable tap water and rule of law." (She had an accident and had to deal with local police.)
#thanksEU

xchangeee Feb 2

@jwildeboer Please dont. Haters Gonna Hate.

I know I rant a lot and I'm quite aware of my cynicist world view, yet we need more people like you who spread at least a little bit of positivity in a world full of shit.

Danielle BAILLY-SALINS Feb 2

@jwildeboer Take care of yourself. Have a small media break to be quiet. But stay further more. Mastodon is a relatively safe place to speak out.

John Rohde Jensen Feb 2

@jwildeboer EU is pretty cool and likely the most important thing post WWII Europe have ever done.
Perfect, F no, but a big step in the right direction.

@johnrohde @jwildeboer OK, thank you for that because it's important perspective that maybe this type of marketing is needed and works (I'm not a fan, it's just so... limp, lol! But I'm also not the target audience, I guess).

Mark Wyner Won’t Comply

@jwildeboer nice. I didn’t know this was how it worked over there. Except for the borders/rights, these things are not unlike being able to move around between states in the U.S.

I guess I’ve taken that for granted. Traveling across the country here requires almost no thought, unless you’re marginalized.

@jwildeboer all we’ve got to do is fix the cookie thing and we’re golden 👌

Jan Wildeboer 😷

@xavez Which cookie thing? Just because your fav websites sell their online presence to the tracker and ad mafia who decided to block access until you agree to allow them and their 1482 partners in? The EU is to praise, not blame for that. Cookie banners are not an EU thing. My blog doesn’t ask because they are not needed.

@jwildeboer you can’t possibly know but I understand all of that better than you might think.

It’s the implementation that’s the mess. Leaving this to millions of websites was a bad idea. It should have always been a browser preference. One exists and could have been adapted.

@jwildeboer on top of that there really are legitimate benign reasons to track user behaviour and make improvements to websites and applications, that do require some form of cookies or persistent storage on the user’s device.

It’s too easy to wave the data brokers and tracking flag, because the cynical truth is that you don’t even need cookies to do that part.

Coen Wesselman Feb 2

@xavez @jwildeboer it's messed up because the sector failed to explain what cookies can do in a way that policy makers and politicians can comprehend and work with. Saving the advertising income from policy driven disruption was a larger concern, and now we are stuck with the banners (if you don't block them, run a pi-hole, and avoid advertising hell holes).

@wsslmn @jwildeboer yep that’s a part of it for sure. That said if you’re going to pass any law that’s so important, shouldn’t you attempt to understand the thing you’re regulating at a slightly deeper level?

Coen Wesselman Feb 2

@xavez @jwildeboer yes, but if the experts from the sector don't inform you well, what else can there be done?

They wanted to keep the responsibility with the end user, and they succeeded. The same sector was very angry at the annoying banners, while this was also what they suggested to the policy makers.

Be very careful when you write down your wishes and send them to people who turn those whishes into policy!

F4GRX SÃ©bastien Feb 3

@xavez @jwildeboer there are NEVER good reasons to track users. Users do a favor to you by visiting your website, reapect your visitors. IRL cookies would be extremely cringe. Can you imagine being tagged with a sticker every time you enter a store, to be checked again when you exit the store or enter another one?

@xavez
You can do telemetry completely without tracking cookies / cookie banners. See GoatCounter.

It losses some precission in the name of privacy (visits are bucketed by IP address and software identifier into rolling 8 hour intervals), but the resulting data is still very useful for answering “What are my users doing on my website?” (with click paths!), without deanonymizing any individuals.

Cookie banner sell the lie, that you somehow need to keep records on every individual for this. You don’t.
@jwildeboer

Jan Wildeboer 😷

@[email protected] Thank you, stranger on the Fediverse, for insinuating that my 30+ years of experience, being deep in the trenches of how the internet and the web works means I „don’t possibly know“ how things work. Welcome to my blocklist!

harbeider Feb 2

@jwildeboer @xavez didn't write *that*, Blocklist Hero.

@harbeider @jwildeboer indeed I did not 😅 not worth the energy…

Magnus Ahltorp Feb 2

@xavez @jwildeboer Are you complaining about the regulation or the enforcement of the regulation?

Where in the regulation does it say ”you have to show annoying buttons to all your users and try to trick them into pressing the wrong button”?

@ahltorp @jwildeboer the regulation.

F4GRX SÃ©bastien Feb 3

@xavez @ahltorp @jwildeboer good for you

F4GRX SÃ©bastien Feb 3

@xavez @jwildeboer the cookies are a mess. No cookies, no banners. Dont blame the messenger.

Eggs now in different baskets.Feb 3

@xavez @jwildeboer No, no, no.

Leaving it to millions of websites is brilliant.

There are a couple of cookie choice systems in use that are so utterly awful (in terms of having to block "Legitimate interest" cookies for all of their 847 partners ONE BY ONE) that when they appear after following a link from a search engine I can immediately leave that website and then block the site from ever appearing in my search engine again.

Eggs now in different baskets.Feb 3

@xavez @jwildeboer Why on earth am I going to use a web page provided by an organisation that wants to make it so profoundly difficult for me to avoid giving them my data?

@the_wub @jwildeboer sounds like you're already a savvy internet user. 95% of the people on the internet are not. They'll just click accept and move on with their life.

Eggs now in different baskets.Feb 3

@xavez @jwildeboer So wouldn't a simple alternative be to NOT collect this data in the first place?

OR

Make data collection, both "legitimate interest" and data for tracking purposes OFF unless you specifically say you want to be tracked?

A big red button at the top of each website with the text "Please track me around the internet" on it.

So opt-in rather than opt-out.

@the_wub @jwildeboer the only sane path forward is a browser setting with those defaults. Doing this per website makes no sense. That's like having to agree to terms and conditions every time you enter a building.

Eggs now in different baskets.Feb 3

@xavez @jwildeboer ...for the first time...

Once your preferences are saved then you don't need to go through the cookie consent rigmarole again.

Except I do as most of my searches are done in private browser windows opened per search.

The "do not track" initiative died a death because it relied on the co-operation of sites that would lose money by not tracking you.

Any browser based solution would still have to be backed by legislation like the cookie-consent laws in the EU.

@the_wub @jwildeboer of course, you solve this with laws and enforcement.

That said, the current implementation does not solve anything. Cookies are not the issue. Reselling data or using it for purposes other than the intended use (e.g. modelling user behaviour but then reselling it to meta so they can profile better to sell ads of which they don't share the revenue with you) is the real problem.

Eggs now in different baskets.Feb 3

@xavez @jwildeboer While we are on the subject of Meta...

https://mastodon.social/@campuscodi/116006573358262232

Nat Schaeffer Feb 2

@jwildeboer In the image, YES should be replaced by FOR SURE ;-)

Wiredfire Feb 2

@jwildeboer I’m still yet to be convinced that forcing everything to USB-C charging was effective and didn’t generate a bunch of ewaste.

Jan Wildeboer 😷

@wiredfire Looking at my big box of weird chargers that I probably have not used since many years and probably never will — not sure ;)

Wiredfire Feb 2

@jwildeboer Ha! Thing is we already had de facto universal charging in that regardless of if the device itself used micro USB or USB-C or lightening everything went into a charger with a USB-A port on it. Then gear started turning up with cables with USB-C at both ends and folk needed to buy new chargers when their USB-A ones were still perfectly functional. And I refuse to concede the often cited notion that carrying 2-3 wires instead of one (which all worked on a USB-A charger) was a problem 😅

Magnus Ahltorp Feb 2

@wiredfire @jwildeboer The really nice thing is that you don’t require everyone else to have 3 cables when you need to borrow their charger.

Wiredfire Feb 2

@ahltorp @jwildeboer which is nice but not hugely common and probably not something to base a whole regulation around 😉

Jan Wildeboer 😷

@wiredfire Do you have anything positive to add or are you just using my thread to share your negativity? @ahltorp

SamuelJohnson Feb 7

@wiredfire @ahltorp @jwildeboer I disagree and wish you hadn't shown up here to piss on something I and most people I know consider a simple tangible benefit of EU democracy in action.

We know perfectly well the propensity of monopoly and oligarchic vendors to create unnecessarily proprietary chargers and to sell them for extortionate prices and generating future e-waste.

Half a billion EU citizens have billions of old chargers. Too many already.

Eggs now in different baskets.Feb 3

@wiredfire @jwildeboer 1/n
1) I am not particularly elderly and still have reasonable hand-eye coordination. A USB-C plug is much simpler to insert into the relevant socket than a USB-A plug is and a USB-A plug is an order of magnitude easier to plug in correctly than a Micro-USB plug.

2) Other people's chargers usually come with their own cables. The important bit is that the end you need to plug into your device has a USB-C plug on it. It does not matter what is on the charger end.

Eggs now in different baskets.Feb 3

@wiredfire @jwildeboer n/n
3) I can still buy chargers here in Norway with USB-A sockets on them. I can also buy ones that support both USB-A to C and USB-C to C cables. Or ones that just support USB-C to C cables.

4) If the only charger available is a USB-C to C PD charger powerful enough to charge a laptop I can still charge my dumb phone from it.

mirabilos Feb 2

@jwildeboer one charger works… bwahahahahaha…

What few USB C devices and cables I already have are already a tricky mess that has me completely fed up with it.

Jan Wildeboer 😷

@mirabilos Some people just always have to be negative about everything because they still think that's how they get an audience. Welcome to my blocklist!

@[email protected]
Now when you come to your friends' home and want to charge your phone, they give you their box of chargers and at least one of the three USB-C ones works… On most days. That's progress! 😂

mirabilos Feb 2

@m0xEE oh, the chargers work, it’s the fucking cables that don’t

F4GRX SÃ©bastien Feb 3

@mirabilos @m0xEE you can find a replacement at least. I think you dont remember the old usb cables with no USB-A end that were unique to each model/brand.

Eggs now in different baskets.Feb 3

@f4grx @mirabilos @m0xEE I still have two old Samsung dumb phone chargers lying around for phones bought in the same decade.

They, at first glance seem to have the same type of charging plug and the same socket in the phones.

On closer inspection it becomes clear that although they have a similar design they only fit the phone that they were supplied with.

mirabilos Feb 3

@m0xEE @f4grx oh, I do, no worries, I have some of these and they work.

It’s the stuff from after the EU USB C mandate that doesn’t.

@jwildeboer
This is the kind of posts I love, positive, constructive, clever, with humour, thanks

Ketakater Feb 2

@jwildeboer to some extend, and for people in the EU.

Don't look at it's borders though....

MidgePhoto Feb 2

@jwildeboer Also, regulating banks a lot is right on point.

@Photo55
I sew the last pic before the rest of the post and got confused why there is a but after “regulating banks”. (You almost cannot overregulate banks, they’ll always find another dumb loophole to seep their corrupting powers through.)
@jwildeboer

nachtpfoetchen2️⃣Feb 2

@jwildeboer tbh i wish less people would die in the mediterranian and north afrika. i even would use ten different chargers to archive that.
They are two sides of the same medal, and i think it's important to see both.

computer maus Feb 2

@nachtpfoetchen @jwildeboer yeah, i appreciate some stuff the eu does, but they also do so many terrible things that way too many people don't care about at all

Jan Wildeboer 😷

@nachtpfoetchen Thank you for accusing me of turning a blind eye to that. You don't know me, but you come in to change the topic. Le sigh. Welcome to my blocklist.