Dries007

As a Belgian I still dislike this new branding.

Normal sunglasses it sees trough, but if you somehow block it, you can't enable some features anymore (pilot assist).

That was different in the early sw versions, where blocking it would simply do nothing, so I had a 3D printed thing to block the camera.

The emissions tests only test to the level that the car was first registered (or produced) doesn't it?

My experience with my Volvo EX30 has been the complete opposite. Although the false positives have gone down with software updates, it's still wrong so often I turn it off every time it bothers me. Due to some other regulation, this setting is unfortunately not remembered. That means every time I get in the car, I have to spend time going trough the settings to disable it, often while already driving. Seems like a great idea.

The biggest false positives involve singing or talking being mis-interpreted for yawning. Which then triggers a notification and a noise telling me "maybe it's time for a beak", which makes me look at the screen in the center console, which then triggers a second notification telling me to "please look at the road".

Great system over all. 10/10 no notes.

Communal bins mean everyone pays for everyone's garbage and/or lack of sorting.

Here the rate per kg is different depending on which bin it is, so you're "rewarded" for sorting properly.

My local garbage org has a site where you can download an ical for your location or put in an address and get it for the entire year.

So nice, until it's the third week of January and I remember that I need to manually import a new year :P

GDPR could have been great, if it was actually enforced in the way it was intended. Cookie banners and dark patterns are not actually allowed, but without enforcement, it's basically meaningless.

IMO the biggest issue is that the member states are individually required to set up agencies to police this. This makes perfect sense for local companies, but is meaningless against large entities that operate across the entire EU.

Almost all EU credit cards are automatic debit at the end of the month, i.e. carrying over balance is not even possible. You will simply be over-drafted on the linked debit account and charged a fee + steep interest if you spend more then you have. Typically until the overdraft is resolved, no further debit card payments can be made.

The only reasons to use a CC in EU are:

- online payments where CC is the only accepted form of payment

- delay payments until after receiving wage

- hotels, car rentals, and other places that lock an amount on your card

- extra insurance provided by some more premium cards (VISA Gold etc)

Ever since 3-D Secure (2FA for CC transactions, beyond the CCV code), you have been liable for any transaction that was validated by it. Your bank may still do a chargeback as a courtesy, but that's not guaranteed.

Except that personalized cards have been a thing since I've had a card in 2014...

The linked size is also quite common in Belgium.

A bit off topic, but changing your name when getting married is so strange to me. It is not at all common where I live (Belgium), in fact I don't think I personally know a single person who did.

After having some persistent issues with my previous pi-hole setup, running as an add-on on my Home Assistant rPi 5, I moved to AdGuard Home on dedicated hardware.

I run it on a rPi Zero 2W (15$), with the Waveshare Ethernet / USB HUB BOX (16$). Together with a power brick (5$) and a meh µSD card, it's very affordable. I did add a small heatsink on the CPU and left the lid off the box to improve the temperature situation (it's in a small room that easily gets warm).

Software wise I've opted for DietPi, which works great for this kind of "dedicated device" pi setup. Current up-time is 135 days, with the last reboot being likely due to a power/breaker issue. It's truly become a set and forget thing now. It also runs Tailscale (not as exit node due to USB 2.0 limited bandwidth for Ethernet) and a dynamic DNS refresh script on a timer. It still has some headroom, but I prefer to keep it rock solid and do more fancy stuff on my Home Assistant pi, which gets rebooted/updated more frequently.

I do have the option to set my DNS settings in my router (ISP provided routers don't have that option here typically), so all of my devices follow.

In combination with µBlock Origin and SponsorBlock in my browser, I almost cry every time I see the "raw" internet on other people's devices. The only remaining source of ads is if I watch YT via my TV, so if someone has ideas to make that stop, I'm all ears. (I used to pay for the discontinued Premium Basic, but I refuse to pay double for a bunch of crap "features" I don't want/need.)