Most legit providers offer filter rules you can configure as you need.

Filters are for email post-delivery. By the time a server is executing your filter instructions, Microsoft’s server has already delivered the message and disconnected. It’s too late at that point. If some rare mail service were to bounce a message based on user-specified filters, it would have to be after the msg has already been delivered. This would risk “backscatter”, whereby the bounced response attempts to connect to the /perceived/ sending server, which could be incorrect. And even if it is correct, the sending server may not accept the bounced msg.

The configuration I describe can only competently be done on the server and it necessarily must be the same behavior for all users on that server because the refusal happens before the sending server even has a chance to send an SMTP “RCPT TO” line.

Unless you are intentionally finding services that do not use M$ infrastructure then you risk losing a lot of access.

It would be senders who lose access. I’m already happy to not connect to surveillance advertisers. The idea is that users on surveillance ad platforms lose access so they cannot deliver to my inbox.

Any email service could be configured to block Microsoft.

Indeed, whoever controls the server could do that. But who does? I don’t have an always-on WAN-facing machine, so I am interested in finding an email provider who does the blocking because as an end user I don’t have the privs.

I’m not sure why you want to do that at the platform level though. That’s a great way to not have delivered legitimate email traffic.

Microsoft is a surveillance advertiser who I boycott. I do not want to feed MS’s ad machine. For outbound mail, I can do an MX lookup first and only send email to non-MS non-Google recipients, but that’s not reliable because some recipients mask their email providers using a firewall like barracuda networks. So when such users try to email me, I would like their email to be refused.

About blocking “legit” traffic, MS does that anyway. I’ve seen MS reject RFC-compliant non-spam email 1st hand. I am happy to reciprocate.

What they don’t mention is that ~15 or so years ago beer in the US was all garbage. But the trend of artisinal beers and microbreweries started to take off. Now you can get decent domestic beer in an ordinary grocery store in the US. So they no longer have to rely so heavily on Belgium for that.

On top of Trump’s tarrifs, that would explain why exports are expected to drop as far as the US market goes. Not sure how big of a chunk that was.

From the article:

Critics say this trend leads to unfair competition for European online shops and increases the risk of fraud, such as undervaluation, counterfeiting and non-compliant products.

Critics of what? Surely they must mean critics of the previous status quo, not critics of the new policy. The new policy gives EU shops an advantage over non-EU shops.

“If you have eight different items in your parcel ordered online, this tax will amount to 24 euros in total. In some cases, the value of the tax will exceed the value of the parcel.”

Oof. That’s harsh for online shoppers. But as an offline-only consumer, I welcome this new policy. It’s all a swindle anyway. Even when customs duty was /zero/ they would charge a flat “clearance fee” of €10. My first imported item was worth <€10 but I was forced to pay €10 for the “priviledge” of the courrier dealing with customs on my behalf. WTF… I got fleeced. My first online purchase became my last.

So now I buy everything offline, locally. Some items I can no longer find in local shops. When I ask for an item expected to be in a shop, shop owners are not embarrassed to say “get it online”. Went to a battery shop. Their sole trade is to just sell batteries. I used to be able to say “I need a battery for laptop model XYZ”. They would order it and call me when the order is ready for pick-up. No longer. Now they say go online. If you need a non-standard battery, you’re fucked in Brussels.

Maybe this new law will help the offline market improve.

Thanks! IIUC (from a machine translation), there is no code of “good administrative” conduct for Germany:

Administrative Procedure Act (VwVfG) § 10 Non-formal nature of the administrative procedure The administrative procedure is not bound to specific forms unless there are special legal provisions for the form of the procedure. It is simple, practical and quick to carry out.

I wouldn’t go that far. I mean, it’s not great that they have the liberty of writing a vague or minimal standard for themselves. But at least you can hold them to their own standard. And in situations where there is no standard in place, you can argue that your CFREU Art.41 rights are generally undermined.

A good judge would treat an unwritten standard in favor of the complainant. There is a legal concept in contract law that says the benefit of vague or ambiguous terms in a contract goes to the party who did not draft the contract. This principle punishes the side who had the advantage of writing the contract for their negligence. Hopefully a similar concept would be considered in the case of good administration. Not sure if this principle exists in Europe or how realistic that is.

I have encountered several cases where a Belgian administrative office violated the Belgian standards. In principle I can escalate a complaint on that basis. I would not consider this useless.

I hate the fuckin’ things because they are flooding the street with unavoidable surveillance cameras wherever the cars go, grabbing our faces and probably logging our identity and location. At the same time, we probably need them to have surveillance so that when they run over a kid that the car thinks is a tumbleweed, there is evidence to analyse.

Not at all shocked to hear that Trump hates welfare states. But it’s unclear specifically what Trump plans to do to threaten pharmaceutical access in Belgium.

Considering Belgium colonised Congo, shouldn’t Belgium take some responsibility for whatever motivates the economic refugees? My history on this is fuzzy but obviously if the economy were decent in Congo there would not be a flood of people trying to escape it.

I have no 1st-hand experience with being homeless but Belgium appears to be on the ball with welfare. They have shelters, social housing, and food. I would be surprised if anyone was starving.

I think the homeless shelters exclude drunks. So I can see how a alcoholics might fall through the cracks on that and I believe this is why we see some people sleeping on the street. If the shelters were open to drunks, that would fail to incentivise fighting the addiction. But I don’t imagine that drunks are denied food. In any case, I don’t see how giving to beggars is a good solution. I would sooner look for a charity that tries to address any shortcomings and give to them because they will ensure the aid is better allocated than ad hoc begging.

Expect to see signs like “need money to pay my €500 begging fine”.

The rules also prohibit “aggressive, intrusive or intimidating” begging across the entire city for a two-year trial period, after which the policy will be reviewed.

WTF? Why is that just a trial? I have been sitting at a restaurant and had beggers get in my face when I ignore them, waving their hand in front of my face as if to check whether I am blind. That kind of shit should carry the highest penalty.

Also when they find a high-traffic bottleneck, they sit right in the bottleneck to make it even harder to walk along with a crowd of tourists who have to squeeze through a choke point. Tolerance should be lower in those cases.

Opposition parties, including Greens and left-wing groups, voted against the measures.

Yikes. Should be the other way around. Right wing groups oppose welfare but advocate begging because it puts the payers in power. Left-wing groups are smarter, and advocate for fair distribution of wealth. Giving to beggers is contrary to that, as those who create the biggest eye sore get paid, not those who need help the most. As a liberal, I want to see a fair distribution. Every payment to a begger is unfair.

min fine €400… yikes. I don’t see from the video how they could ID all those riders. Some of their numbers were showing… probably not all. I never heard of a “level crossing”. Apparently that means rail crossing?

I would hope they aren’t this harsh on urban cyclists running reds at street intersections.

Good news. Let’s put this to the test.

For some reason I thought Brussels had no gov, which would make petitions useless. OTOH, it was a competition. Perhaps no gov outperforms the rest of European democracies after right-leaning autocracies took power.

It should be in here:

https://refli.be/fr/lex/1994000357

AFAIK there is no English translation published.

“the non-profit that has been campaigning for years for places to swim outdoors in the capital.”

Interesting to see what an uphill battle a simple and non-controversial change is.

It’s bizarre that a liberal party politician is praising this, considering Deutsche Bank is relatively evil for anyone who is progressive. It has ties to Bank of America and heavily finances fossil fuel.

I’m a bit on the fence about whether this is a good move in Belgium. It’s an interesting experiment, but the election process is democratic because a representative is selected by the majority who they represent. This would seem to risk shifting power to those not elected, which could be regarded as a reduction to democracy.

This citizens’ council and assembly would perhaps be a great idea in the USA, where politicians are bought and owned by corporations. It would be a good hack to show corporate lobbyists the door.

“To achieve this, De Wever said Europe must invest more in artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, cybersecurity and telecom networks. Governments must also create conditions that allow innovation to flourish, he added, as “innovation is not a law of nature. Innovation requires talent and daring”.”

He may be right, but he is missing the low-hanging fruit. Every single Belgian gov agency uses Microsoft for email. WTF? Email is not that complicated. There is no reason for this. They could have simply used a European email provider. They also use Facebook and Twitter when they could simply be using the fediverse. Before talking about starting local industries, just make the simple changes first.

Indeed it’s a trivial move. No reason to break international law and help countries that don’t even need help. It would just risk creating haters of Belgium, thus attacks.

Thanks for the insight. Apparently Mozilla is okay with this.

I suspect it violates open data law to impose JS execution as a precondition to reaching public documents.