cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53109474

I was very successful asking these on Reddit, so let’s see if Lemmy is better even in this regard.

I am taking part in an unconference in Brussels, and I would like to organize a brunch, possibly with waffles involved, the day after on Sunday 15/11.

The venue should be as central as possible and with the possibility to book (online and for free, preferably) a table for 6 to 10 people.

Gaufre liégeois is preferred (hoping not to be stoned for blasphemy).

(crossposted to !brussels) A decent bank has their own (insourced) ATMs. This protects consumers from lots of shenanigans, like:

centralised surveillance centralised power ATMs that eat your card because its shitty AI decided something there is an irregularity (such as wrong PIN entered or too much cash was requested in relation to an ever decreasing nannied threshold allowance) denial of service based on criteria set by the cartel (not by your bank) small banknotes (≤€50) daily and weekly withdrawal limits (if there is only one ATM network, that network’s limit is imposed on you without recourse using competing ATM networks) reduced services (e.g. no balance inquiry; no deposits)

AFAIK, the only banks good enough to have their own ATM are AXA (Crelan), Attijariwafa and maybe Chabba? Related: The Dutch ATM shit-show spreads to Belgium (update) also related: Why you might want to avoid banking at BNP Parabas, bPost, Ing, Belfius, Aion/UniCredit

A Belgium-specific fedi instance has emerged: belgae.social. That’s great news. There is a new forum there for Brussels as well: !brussels@belgae.social I think !brussels should plan to close down. Rationale:

belgae.social is a thematic node specific to Belgium, while fedia.io is general purpose. General purpose instances are best suited for topics that lack a thematic instance. The forum herein is not too popular anyway. Very few others post here and that’s a rare event. No downvotes. Silent downvotes are both an injustice and are ripe for abusive & suppressive shenanigans. Since no fedi platform is smartly designed in this regard, it’s better to just disable downvotes. Which is what belgae.social has done. It’s more of a safe space this way. You can still make a critical post but then at least the OP’s dignity is respected enough to be informed of the criticism.

I will keep !brussels open for maybe 3-6 months or so, just in case belgae.social turns out to be short-lived. Folks should probably crosspost to both. Probably best to post on belgae.social first, then cross-post to fedia.io. That’s best for visibility.. so that fedia.io readers become aware of belgae.social and not the other way around.

I have tried two TVs with tuners. One is an old pocket device with DVB-T. The tuner for the other more recent TV has these specs:

Tuner/Reception/Transmission
• Aerial Input: 75 ohm coaxial (IEC75)
• TV system: PAL I, PAL B/G, PAL D/K, SECAM B/G, SECAM D/K, SECAM L/L
• Video Playback: NTSC, SECAM, PAL
• Tuner bands: Hyperband, S-Channel, UHF, VHF
• Number of Preset Channels: 100
• Tuner Display: PLL

I’m surprised this TV is only a few years old yet there is no mention of DVB-T/2. A powered DVB-T2 antenna is connected to it. Neither finds any signals when autotuning. Is that expected? Wikipedia mentions a long list of stations for Belgium and some seem to be Brussels based.

Can anyone confirm or deny terrestrial TV broadcasts in Brussels?

Before 1st of Jan, my FM radios have always been 1 hour behind. DAB was always correct. So when switching between DAB and FM the clock would instantly change by an hour -- on all my radios.

Now FM clocks are all mysteriously correct too. I figured FM was broadcasting UTC or not accounting for daylight savings. Seems weird that it would be 1st of Jan at midnight that it gets corrected and not a daylight time switch.

Update: the FM clocks just regressed to being 1 hour behind again.

New emissions rules come into force, I think on Jan.1. High-emissions cars entering Brussels will automatically fined €350. The fine is good for a quarter. So if you decide to pay the fine, you then have a free pass to continue commuting to Brussels for 3 months (IIUC).

My source is heresay so I could have some of the details wrong. Something about class 5 cars being subject to this.

It’s not a game of chance because there are plate readers automatically checking. Could be fun for pranks.

A great prank executed in Germany comes to mind. At least at one point in time photocops could not be relied on to fine speeders. A human had to sit under the speedcam to serve as a witness for the state. So some people approached one such person and chatted them up because they are otherwise bored out of their skull sitting there all day. While distracted, someone unscrewed his plate, mounted it on their car, sped by the photocop many times in circles, and then returned the plate without detection. Then he got a flood of speeding fines worth thousands of Euros. It’s an old story.. not sure that still works.

Delhaize used to sell Black Pete beer, which was a black IPA. It was the only place I had ever encountered it. Since several years ago, I do not see Black Pete anywhere.

Black IPAs are quite rare generally as it is, so it’s unclear if the beer struggled with sales or if there was controversy over the name or branding.

Anyone know where to get it?

Media access will be dropped from public libraries. Some politician decided that everyone has Internet with streaming subscriptions.

Or they figured it’s okay to marginalise those who do not. They assumed no one has a problem with patronising shitty surveillance capitalists like Netflix and Amazon.

IIUC, the only possible ways to watch movies in Belgium without feeding corporate databases is:

• buying CDs/DVDs with cash
• theaters (cash paid tickets)
• the high seas (☠)
• broadcast TV (does that exist in Brussels? My hand-held dvb-t player finds no signals to tune)

Only two of those options serves the poor. One is illegal and the other is content-constrained. And still out of reach for anyone who can’t afford Internet at home.

I think their doors close permanently on Jan.4¹. Most items are 25—50% off now.

The Anderlecht branch seems to be more generous with discounts (50% off expiring food vs. 30% at Woluwe). All spirits are 25% off but I noticed one of the spirits has a regular price of ~€2 more at Woluwe than Anderlecht. Some of those spirits are about the same price as the liquor store /after the discount/. So the deals aren’t as good as they seem.

¹ UPDATE: another Cora worker said jan.31 is the date of closure.

Anyone know of any conventional banks offering free accounts these days? By “conventional”, I mean a bank with a vault that is not strictly digital/cashless, where you still have at least a fighting chance at getting over-the-counter cash services (to withdraw and deposit cash).

Or if none are free, what would be the bank with the cheapest fees spanning a year?

Any tips on where to get cheap jalapeño peppers? For a couple weeks abbatoir had them for €3/kg, which was a great deal. And unlike many jalapeños in the past decade, these were rightfully spicy hot. But apparently they were just temporary with that vendor. Other vendors (same market) price them at €10/kg.

Avacados are really unpredictable in Brussels. There are some bad genetics with many of them which are hard as apples and tasteless. When I say hard, I don’t think they are unripe because they start turn color with gray and black parts while still hard. Then recently I got some that were perfect, which seems rare in Brussels but it happens. The question is, does it make any sense to stick to one vendor? I suspect that the street vendors get their supply from a wholesale street market at mabru, in which case supply chain would be chaoticly inconsistent anyway.

Municipalities in Brussels municipalities are considering measures that would restrict the use of e-scooters in areas that are affected by drug dealing. The exact nature and extent of the measures have yet to be finalised.

Bizarre that drug dealers would favor shared e-scooters which are tracked in realtime and tied to the identity of the user. And bizarre that because drug dealers use them, that then justifies banning them. Would be great if the drug dealers switch back to cars, then lawmakers ban cars. Oh, but lawmakers drive cars too? Guess we can’t get carried away with this logic.

A lot of the datasets on the opendata.brussels.be website are strangely specific to the Brussels City commune. E.g. the list of public libraries and the ATM list just covers libraries and ATMs in the 1000, 1020, and 1130 postal codes. No others. Bit annoying, no? It means the admins went to the trouble of gathering the data for publication, then they drew a line and said “1040 is not our responsibility”. So every commune has to duplicate the open data effort, correct? Reminds me of a story where a commune’s sidewalk hit the jurisdictional border so they ended the sidewalk right there on the edge of the border. Then the other commune installed a sidewalk on their side of the border, but at a different distance from the road. So as you are walking along crossing the border of the commune, you have to walk across grass/mud to get from the end of one commune’s sidewalk to the end of the other commune’s sidewalk. I would love to have a picture of that.. it was only described to me (and IIRC, it was the border between French and Dutch communes). So regarding data, if we want the big picture, it seems we need to go to every commune’s website to find their open data space, which then has completely different datasets. What a shit show. It somewhat defeats the purpose of being accessible.

I am sick of buying non-rechargeabe non-disposable lithium cr2032 batteries. Too many devices require these batteries then suck them dry in no time.

The rumor is that rechargeable versions of these button batteries exist. Anyone know where to find them in brussels?

The only good ATM was operated by BNP Parabas in the center near De Brouckere. It was indoors, which usually implies bigger notes and higher amounts. The bank branch remained but they took away the ATMs. WTF. ATMs are important for tourism so if BNP is going to eliminate that ATM location, is it fair to assume BNP has removed all their ATMs?

We don’t want to be like the Dutch, who have created a monopolistic consortium shitshow with a single dominant ATM operator. If that one ATM network rejects your card or gives you troubles, you’re essentially fucked unless you’re in a city like Amsterdam which still has a few scarce independantly operarted ATMs.

Anyone know of an ATM that dispenses €100 notes? And preferrably not the “CASH”-branded machines. I avoid those so as not to support growth toward a monopoly.

(update) This does not exactly answer my question but interesting anyway to know that there is an open data dataset on ATMs in brussels:

https://opendata.brussels.be/explore/dataset/bruxelles_distributeurs_bancaires/information/?sort=postalcode

We can easily watch this list shrink over time. Last update was 2024 so not the best resource.

(update 2) Indeed BNP Parabas has removed all their ATM machines and joined the Bancontact/CASH consortium, which centralises power over consumers and centralises surveillance.

On Sundays there has been a cat-mouse game on the sidewalk near mabru. 2nd-hand sellers lay out their wares on the sidewalk because mobs of shoppers pass by on their way to the mabru market. The police would periodically drive by and move them along. But the instant the police are out of sight, the street peddlers pop up again. It was a game of whack-a-mole.

Now two cops sit there stationary in a van non-stop for 6+ hours to block sellers. It’s interesting how when you call the police or go to a police station for service of some kind, it’s like they have no time for you. They don’t want a discussion. They are short with you and just want you not taking their time.

And yet they have the time to sit idly for 6 hours (12 man hours) to stop people selling 2nd-hand goods on a short stretch sidewalk. What is the motivation? Of course mabru ownership is annoyed by the street sellers because they want those sellers on mabru property paying rent. Using the sidewalk outside of mabru property is a kind of free-loading of sorts that exploits mabru traffic. But what I don’t get is why the police care so much about a dozen or so people not doing business with mabru. 12 man hours of police wages is higher than the rental value that mabru loses if you assume those sellers would otherwise rent space from mabru.

I entered a police station to ask a simple general question. They immediately demanded ID and asked if I live in a different commune (yes). They then interrogated why I am asking my question in their commune.

WTF is going on here? Do police have some kind of rule to only serve people residing within the borders of their commune?

LED bulbs are so short lived that I keep receipts and track them with a log. The industry is banking on consumers not doing that. These are my stats:

• e27 Xanlite, 5yr warranty, failed inside warranty
• GU10 Beneito, 3yr warranty, failed inside warranty
• GU10 Sencys, no warranty, failed a few months outside of 2yr legal warranty

Couple others died quite close to the warranty ending as well, as did the above. I’ve heard LEDs themselves don’t fail. It’s the other circuits converting AC to DC that burn out.

Returning the Beneito turned into a fight. It was around 2¾ years after purchase. The shop owner was angry, saying I have to go through the manufacturer in Spain. I stood my ground. Then later found out the shop owner was right. Shops only have to deal with returns during the legal warranty period of 2yrs. For commercial warranties beyond the 2yrs, sellers are off the hook and consumers have to hassle with the manufacturer and pay shipping, IIUC. Not worth it.

The whole market seems to be flooded with shitty bulbs. They are like €1—2 at the street market and at least 4 times as much in the shops. So street market it is.

Recupel must be getting hammered with an onslaught of dead bulbs. Sustainability of LED bulbs seems questionable.

I have no idea why someone would do this. Big thank you to whoever dumped a perfectly working Brother laser printer! 🫶

I needed a laser printer like nothing else.. but resisted buying and kept using print shops; basically kicking the can down the street. Glad I didn’t buy one because a Brother laser printer was sitting in a dumpster insecurely nearly teetering on an unstable pile of broken furniture. I assumed something would be wrong with it, but figured it’d be worthwhile to try to fix it.

Well it turns out it simply works. Drum is good - not even a scratch. Still has toner. Was mostly full of paper, in fact. It’s hard to see why someone would toss it like that. The only defect was a missing plastic panel with the button labels on it - nothing important. Brother is good brand because it’s platform neutral (respects FOSS platforms) and they have a working non-enshitified website. And no shenanigans. Unlike Canon IIRC, who packs their PDF user guides inside a Windows EXE. Brother is also the lesser of evils when it comes to ink/toner swindles.

I’m grateful I found it, which only occurred because the dumpster happened to be en route from a print shop. It’s all incidental. Had no one spotted it that day it would have taken a tumble when the truck tips the load 45°, and that would have destroyed it. That would have been a shameful waste. No idea if recupel is even in the loop when someone rents a huge skip and fills it with anything arbitrarily.

If someone has /working/ electronics to dump, isn’t there a hotline they can call? Surely it would be worth it for a charity like Oxfam come by and pick up anything that works.

¹ title disambiguation: Brother the printer brand not the relative.

Public libraries have increased the cost of prints to 10¢/page (huge leap from 5¢) and print shops charge the same for <50 pages. Bulk pricing is around 7¢/pg. Non-self service places charge 18¢/pg.

I would like to find a cheaper option. Or if not cheaper, perhaps at least a print shop that does not use Canan or HP hardware. I try to boycott both. HP supports Israel and I forgot what Canon’s nefarious wrongdoing was but their printers tend to have a large unprintable border area. I think Ricoh is decent. At least it has a larger printable area on the page.

The Brussels-wide waste management system blocks repairers from access to wasted material at every step. Recupel collects the e-waste and appliance waste. The moment it is in their hands, the public is forbidden access. They also collect it haphazardly. Fragile electronics get tossed in a box without protection and under the crushing weight of other waste. So there is a good chance of destruction in the transport of it before it’s even looked at. Then various charities go through it and guess whether stuff works. Sometimes they test it and sometimes they don’t even bother. The bulk of it gets broken down, materials separated and melted down. The charities have an opportunity to repair stuff for the 2nd hand market, but I think they only consider the most trivial of low-effort repairs.

It seems to be an opaque process. No one in the chain of custody knows anything about the rest of the chain. There is never a stage where the public gets access to the waste. I need many parts that parts dealers cannot get from their suppliers. It’s a shitshow. The parts I need are usually unavailable. And when they are available, it’s bundled in a costly monolithic blob of components that exceeds the value of the thing. So I go to the “junkyards”, where they kick me out as soon as the realise I’m not dumping but looking to harvest. Because they will be damned if they lose a fraction of a penny melt value of whatever I take to prolong the life of something else. They also pile shit so high as to make dumpster diving dangerous, which then serves as good sounding rationale to block repairers from access.

And sadly, it’s probably the best process in the world because the rest of world doesn’t even bother separating hazardous materials out. They just dump e-waste into landfills while the EPA looks the other way (in the US case).

In any case, I must say I’m grateful for those who do not follow the proper dumping procedure because it gives repairers a feasible chance at harvesting parts, or repairing the thing that’s dumped.

thanks:

I want to thank whoever tossed ½ of a laptop on the curb recently. I got a working SSD and a stick of DDR3 memory out of it.

And to whoever dumped the perfectly working air frier: thanks! Looked clean and new, like it was only used once.

Thanks as well to whoever dumped the broken ice maker. I might be able to fix it.

Whover dumped the LCD screens-- thanks! I use one of them daily.

I think it was over 10 yrs ago that SNCF had a ticket sales office in Gallery Louise. There were situations where the SNCB price differed from the SNCF price for the exact same ticket, and so you could get a cheaper SNCF ticket in that location.

They left from there long ago, but I wonder if SNCF has any office whatsoever in Brussels. Anyone know? I don’t need sales but it would be useful if they had some adminstration of some kind.

DIGI needed to run a cable across a street. So they sent ~6—8 workers to dig up both sides of the road.

If any other company did this (like Vivaqua), they would dig up the road, block it off and put up barriers, and leave. From there, they would typically not return for weeks, or even months, while everyone has to navigate around an unattended eye sore.

Why do they do this all over Brussels?

Answer: the instant they win a work contract, they are afraid the contract will be reneged on. So they dig things up immediately before the client can change their mind. So indeed, the reason so much of Brussels is dug up with no one working is due to job security fears. Or so I heard.. it may be conjecture.

Intermarché has a “1+1” promo this week advertising €3.78 for 2 bundles of leeks. I was charged €2.50 for each 1kg bundle (which I later weighed at 1.9kg). When I pointed out the fact that the 1+1 was not applied, they corrected it and I got €2.50 back.

I’m not going the sweat them too much on honest mistakes like someone forgetting to update the register. But what’s interesting here is that the unadjusted/nonpromo price was €2.50, not €3.78. Superficially, they seem to be using the old trick of decieving consumers on what the regular price is when printing the promo.

The price would naturally swing as the market does. So they might argue that market prices increased just at the very same instant they ran the promo. Fair enough, but happens often. Before I started boycotting Lidl, I’ve also seen X+Y promos there where the “regular price” increases the same moment the promo starts. I see no one regulating that.

Belgium has no regulator for false advertising. The ad industry is “self regulated” by:

Jury d’Ethique Publicitaire (JEP)
Rue Bara 175
1070 Bruxelles

It’s a façade. They will not act on reports of false advertising. This is why false ads are out of control in Belgium.

Anyway, the only retaliation in the case at hand is to buy the leeks before they correct the register so you get a better price than they intended (2 for €2.50).

The trick I missed: when produce is priced per piece, you take several to the scale and weigh each of them. Buy the heaviest. Of course it only works when there is a scale available. Hence why I got cheated out of 100g.

I don’t mean to bash Intermarché too hard.. they are still a lesser of evils. I no longer shop at Aldi, Lidl, Carrefour, and Delhaize. They either support Israel and/or their website blocks the Tor community.

Moneytrans was the only offline way to buy Flixbus tickets without getting hit with commissions. Now #Moneytrans is gone, at least in Brussels. Every Moneytrans shop in Brussels is closed. Anyone know what happened? I find no news on this and the moneytrans.eu website is access-restricted.

There is apparently no #Flixbus office anywhere in Belgium.

For a €5 ticket, travel agents charge €5 in commission. Indeed, the commission is 100% the cost of the trip in those cases. Fuck me. All unbanked people seem to be fucked by this.

Or am I missing something? Did anyone take over the commission-free Flixbus contract from Moneytrans?

Gare du midi has removed their information booth. I think that happened yrs ago but nonetheless I’m documenting that shitty move now because you can’t even get information with confidence as to whether there is a way to buy a Flixbus ticket there.