Mozilla alienating everyone and everything
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@loopback0 said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Gąska said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
although most (all?) of them only allow it for a short while.
Probably because of:
@topspin said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
ETA: the transaction cost would probably be higher than the cost of the pizza today.
It varies quite significantly - apparently the average cost at the moment is ~$2, but in April 2021 hit $62.
And presumably it's difficult to predict the cost of the transaction until you launch it.
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@remi said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
Put a little bit more directly, it is weird that Peter Linss and Jamie Zawinski, who are former key players at Mozilla, can dictate Mozilla's current culture to it.
I suspect they can't, despite maybe wishing they would.
I haven't seen much suggesting that their reaction has any impact on what Mozilla is, or is not, doing. They sound to me like old farts buried by history who still believe they matter -- especially when they feel the need to point out their past history with Mozilla: if they really were still influent, they wouldn't have to mention it!
(for a version, you wouldn't see a Trump tweet saying "I'm sure whoever runs this account has no idea who I am, but I was President of the USA and ...")
They can, like anyone else, say whatever they want about Mozilla, but that's entirely different from saying that they can "dictate" anything.
I think this speaks to my point, though.
President Trump is still putting out statements. He hasn't put out a statement like the one you described, though. Presumably because, like you noted, that would be dumb.
Jwz and the other guy, on the other hand, put out a dumb statement.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
And presumably it's difficult to predict the cost of the transaction until you launch it.
I Googled it and the answer wasn't straight forward, so yeah, I assume that's the case.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
Jwz and the other guy, on the other hand, put out a dumb statement.
If an organization has a publicly stated goal of being environmentally friendly, and also chooses to accept payments in a form that is intensely environmentally damaging, that is indicative of either hypocrisy or stupidity. Which is not to say that the organization has to have that as a public goal, but that's the situation that Mozilla has put itself in. Highlighting the hypocritical and the stupid is entirely fair game in public discourse.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
Jwz and the other guy, on the other hand, put out a dumb statement.
I didn't know you were still naive enough to believe anything on Twitter can be an actual "statement" (as opposed to a random utterance), or that it's not dumb.
Other than that... it's no worse than any tweet that roasts crypto-stuff, for good or bad reasons. Maybe slightly worse because of the cringe factor of "you don't know me but actually I'm someone important [at least I wish I still were...]" but that's about it.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@loopback0 said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Gąska said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
although most (all?) of them only allow it for a short while.
Probably because of:
@topspin said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
ETA: the transaction cost would probably be higher than the cost of the pizza today.
It varies quite significantly - apparently the average cost at the moment is ~$2, but in April 2021 hit $62.
And presumably it's difficult to predict the cost of the transaction until you launch it.
As I understand it, you post a transaction like:
- 0.012BTC should be withdrawn from account ABC
- 0.011BTC should be deposited to account PQR
- The remainder is reward for the miner
- Signed, ABC
And then you wait for it to show up on the blockchain.
So it's not exactly hard to predict the cost. But it is hard to predict whether the transaction will go through at all with that cost.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
Jwz and the other guy, on the other hand, put out a dumb statement.
He's still bitter that people are running insecure screen savers.
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@boomzilla said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
Accepting the crypto plays to the and makes it easier for people to donate.
There's also a tax difference (at least in the US) between selling an asset (like Bitcoin) and donating the money to a tax-deductible non-profit, and just donating the asset to the non-profit. If you donate the asset directly, you get the tax deduction for the full current market value and ignore the capital gain appreciation that happened from the time you bought it (assuming, of course, that the asset went up in value since you bought it), whereas if you cash it out yourself then you need to pay the capital gains tax on the appreciation too. So many larger nonprofits will accept things like stocks, and sometimes even real estate, bitcoin, and airline miles, directly and take the responsibility for selling them, rather than making the donor do so, because it's more tax-advantageous for the donor (which in theory makes the donor more willing to donate or willing to donate more than he or she otherwise would).
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@pcooper yeah, hadn't thought about that but that provision is very popular with
tax avoiderswealthy philanthropists.
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@PleegWat said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@loopback0 said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Gąska said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
although most (all?) of them only allow it for a short while.
Probably because of:
@topspin said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
ETA: the transaction cost would probably be higher than the cost of the pizza today.
It varies quite significantly - apparently the average cost at the moment is ~$2, but in April 2021 hit $62.
And presumably it's difficult to predict the cost of the transaction until you launch it.
As I understand it, you post a transaction like:
- 0.012BTC should be withdrawn from account ABC
- 0.011BTC should be deposited to account PQR
- The remainder is reward for the miner
- Signed, ABC
And then you wait for it to show up on the blockchain.
So it's not exactly hard to predict the cost. But it is hard to predict whether the transaction will go through at all with that cost.
Fair enough, although that means that it's difficult to predict the actual cost (the fee that the miner will accept), as opposed to the proposed cost (what the two parties offer, the difference between the 0.012 and 0.011 in your example).
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@PleegWat said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@loopback0 said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Gąska said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
although most (all?) of them only allow it for a short while.
Probably because of:
@topspin said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
ETA: the transaction cost would probably be higher than the cost of the pizza today.
It varies quite significantly - apparently the average cost at the moment is ~$2, but in April 2021 hit $62.
And presumably it's difficult to predict the cost of the transaction until you launch it.
As I understand it, you post a transaction like:
- 0.012BTC should be withdrawn from account ABC
- 0.011BTC should be deposited to account PQR
- The remainder is reward for the miner
- Signed, ABC
And then you wait for it to show up on the blockchain.
So it's not exactly hard to predict the cost. But it is hard to predict whether the transaction will go through at all with that cost.
Fair enough, although that means that it's difficult to predict the actual cost (the fee that the miner will accept), as opposed to the proposed cost (what the two parties offer, the difference between the 0.012 and 0.011 in your example).
And the actual cost in real money (ie USD or whatever), since between the time you post the request and the time it takes effect, the price of bitcoin could jump 100% or drop 50%.
The other issue for regular (not charity) transactions is the time required--last I looked it was several minutes at best to clear a transaction (including confirming that the transaction could be done at all). Which means lots of waiting and people dropping out/abandoning transactions.
Basically, bitcoin (and all blockchain coins) suck at actually being either stores of value OR transactional facilitators, except for specific things. Their only value (the decentralized nature) is an informed attribute only, since in practice you have centralized clearinghouses and "facilitators" just to make it practical.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
The other issue for regular (not charity) transactions is the time required--last I looked it was several minutes at best to clear a transaction (including confirming that the transaction could be done at all). Which means lots of waiting and people dropping out/abandoning transactions.
Average is about 10mins per confirmation at the moment. In May it was over 2 days. Some transactions need multiple confirmations.
It'll be slower if you pay a lower transaction fee, and faster if you pay a higher one.
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@loopback0 said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
The other issue for regular (not charity) transactions is the time required--last I looked it was several minutes at best to clear a transaction (including confirming that the transaction could be done at all). Which means lots of waiting and people dropping out/abandoning transactions.
Average is about 10mins per confirmation at the moment. In May it was over 2 days. Some transactions need multiple confirmations.
It'll be slower if you pay a lower transaction fee, and faster if you pay a higher one.And what stores really want is people having to hang around at the register for multiple minutes minimum, with high variability, before being able to confirm the transaction. /sarc
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@loopback0 said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
The other issue for regular (not charity) transactions is the time required--last I looked it was several minutes at best to clear a transaction (including confirming that the transaction could be done at all). Which means lots of waiting and people dropping out/abandoning transactions.
Average is about 10mins per confirmation at the moment. In May it was over 2 days. Some transactions need multiple confirmations.
It'll be slower if you pay a lower transaction fee, and faster if you pay a higher one.And what stores really want is people having to hang around at the register for multiple minutes minimum, with high variability, before being able to confirm the transaction. /sarc
I'd like a large pizza please.
How are you paying?
Bitcoin
Certainly Sir. It'll be ready in about 2 days. We'll confirm the final cost then.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@loopback0 said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
The other issue for regular (not charity) transactions is the time required--last I looked it was several minutes at best to clear a transaction (including confirming that the transaction could be done at all). Which means lots of waiting and people dropping out/abandoning transactions.
Average is about 10mins per confirmation at the moment. In May it was over 2 days. Some transactions need multiple confirmations.
It'll be slower if you pay a lower transaction fee, and faster if you pay a higher one.And what stores really want is people having to hang around at the register for multiple minutes minimum, with high variability, before being able to confirm the transaction. /sarc
Not Steam, despite initially jumping on the bandwagon in 2017.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
And what stores really want is people having to hang around at the register for multiple minutes minimum, with high variability, before being able to confirm the transaction. /sarc
Realistically (and that may be what Steam does, though to even read the link posted above this post), I would expect a large-enough shop to accept a promise of a transaction (i.e. checking that the source wallet has the money, and that the transaction is sent) and smooth out the variability themselves. On average and on the huge number of customers that e.g. Walmart has, I'm pretty confident that they would make it work -- at worst they would tie that to some sort of credit card system so that if the transaction doesn't go through it just adds to your debt.
And that's not pie-in-the-sky: this is exactly how cheques work(ed)!
It's just a promise that the bank will pay them, it takes (took) literally days to clear (and a couple of minutes to write...) and there is no guarantee that the source account even has the money (and there is some sort of tied-in credit in the form of overdraft). And yet it was (is) widely used everywhere -- and not even just in large shops, since the risk is (was) actually covered mostly by the banks, not the shops.
So that probably wouldn't necessarily be a killing blow.
I'm still not saying it's a good idea.
(also the above doesn't address the variation in value, though again statistically that part could be smoothed out by large organisations, be it banks or shops -- plus, if BitCoin ever truly became mainstream, I would expect that it would become more stable, both for technical and financial reasons)
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@remi said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
And that's not pie-in-the-sky: this is exactly how cheques work(ed)!
Which died out, here at least, for paying in shops. I imagine due to the advantages of debit/credit cards.
Going back to what is effectively cheques but worse is stupid.@remi said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
I'm still not saying it's a good idea.
Indeed.
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@loopback0 said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
Going back to what is effectively cheques but worse is stupid.
Definitely.
But let's at least recognise that some of the technical challenges of handling the payment in the shop aren't really new things, and a "solution" to that aspect has existed for decades.
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@remi said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
this is exactly how cheques work(ed)!
And yet it was (is) widely used everywhereNot in my lifetime.
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@topspin I think that depends when/where you are. I very firmly remember cheques here in the UK, and I’m only just officially old since I’m now just over 37. (37 isn’t old. Monty Python wouldn’t lie to us, but 38 is old, I guess.)
Heck, the lady who lives upstairs recently got a new chequebook. Though I have no idea who will accept her cheques.
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@Arantor Same age. I've had to deal with cheques twice in my life (from an organization whose whole existence is a WTF in itself, basically sending me royalties for my thesis), and that meant opening a letter and bringing that shit to a bank to pay it into my account.
I've never seen anyone use a cheque to pay in any kind of market, and I don't know anyone with a chequebook. I'm pretty sure if you tried to pay with a cheque here the cashier would say "WTF am I supposed to do with that" and call a manager, who would then say the same.
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@Arantor I'm just over 35 and I remember cheques being used in shops but never used one myself in a shop. I remember back in the pre-Paypal days sending (and receiving) cheques for stuff bought online from eBay and I think that was about it.
IIRC topspin is around the same age.
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I remember my mother using her chequebook in the supermarket when I was under 10 or so. Though I suspect this was a “delaying the payment until money is in the account” moment.
Now that I think about it I had to write cheques out for my grandmother after I became the guardian of her estate after she was deemed mentally unfit. Writing cheques to a care home is a depressing state of affairs.
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@topspin said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
I've never seen anyone use a cheque to pay in any kind of market, and I don't know anyone with a chequebook
I do vaguely remember from years ago having heard something about getting a chequebook for paying when you're on vacation abroad. They also said something about you should only accept "euro cheques", because apparently they had some kind of guarantee that the bank would cover it up to an amount of 400€ (or 400DM? This must have been before the introduction of cash Euro in 2002), and if you wanted to receive a larger amount you should thus split it up in several.
Anyway, never used it, never seen it used.
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@Arantor said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
38 is old, I guess.
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@Zerosquare well if 37 isn’t old, what is old? I am 38, and each day I remain in web dev I feel like I’m getting more ancient :(
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Being old is not a matter of age. It's a matter of whether you have a membership card.
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@Arantor said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
well if 37 isn’t old, what is old?
I'm sure Team Belt Onion will be along to clarify soon
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@Zerosquare I work with a web designer so young, she was still in diapers when I started writing HTML. By hand, which was the fashion at the time.
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@remi said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
this is exactly how cheques work(ed)!
There is a huge difference there …
the risk is (was) actually covered mostly by the banks, not the shops
… the banks are few, well known, and have the resources to pay the shop and then go after the person who wrote the fraudulent check whose identity they'd usually know, so the risk for the shop is low, because there is effective enforcement. For craptocurrencies finding the real person in control of a virtual wallet with certain hash is often extremely hard (which is the reason criminals use them), so the enforcement is much bigger problem.
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@topspin said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
Same age. I've had to deal with cheques twice in my life (from an organization whose whole existence is a WTF in itself, basically sending me royalties for my thesis), and that meant opening a letter and bringing that shit to a bank to pay it into my account.
Same-ish. I got checks when I did my time in the US (silly valley). I think I only ever used them to pay rent and among colleagues - e.g., for settling expenses after a trip or something. I think the latter was slightly more convenient than trying to transfer money online (go figure). IIRC, you could scan the check with the app or feed it into an ATM.
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@Arantor said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Zerosquare well if 37 isn’t old, what is old? I am 38, and each day I remain in web dev I feel like I’m getting more ancient :(
LOL. I'm about to turn 60 (and I know there's a few others around here like me, but I'll be nice and not tag names). Of course, I'm firmly keeping my on and staying in C++ dev. So at least there's quite a few others of my generation around me. (tho the younguns at work are about to push everything towards Qml. sigh...)
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@dcon said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
I'm about to turn 60
I was going to say I remember doing that, but I don't. It happened, but whatever I did to celebrate/lament the occasion wasn't memorable enough to remember now.
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@Arantor said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Zerosquare I work with a web designer so young, she was still in diapers when I started writing HTML. By hand, which was the fashion at the time.
How else would someone put on a diaper? Robots?
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@dcon said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
the younguns at work are about to push everything towards Qml. sigh...
Qml sounds like a thing with an ABI or other native plugin model, so, you can probably get your C++ all up in their Qml if you need or want to
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@Arantor said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Zerosquare I worked with a web designer so young, she was still in diapers when I started writing HTML. By hand, which was the fashion at the time.
have a
I'm in my mid-30s (north of the middle bit), but I only fell into IT in my late 20s. I don't know how I do it, but I nearly always fall into jobs with multi decade-old technologies where it seems that people somehow lobotomized themselves of common sense. On the bright side, they're willing to throw stupid amounts of money at me because they didn't identify the magpie in their mists a decade earlier.
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@DogsB said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
multi decade-old technologies
I believe the correct word is Enterprise
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@topspin said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@remi said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
"this is exactly how cheques work(ed)!"Not in my lifetime.
Yeah, the ones that still work like that are called "checks."
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@Bulb said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@remi said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
this is exactly how cheques work(ed)!
There is a huge difference there …
the risk is (was) actually covered mostly by the banks, not the shops
… the banks are few, well known, and have the resources to pay the shop and then go after the person who wrote the fraudulent check whose identity they'd usually know, so the risk for the shop is low, because there is effective enforcement. For craptocurrencies finding the real person in control of a virtual wallet with certain hash is often extremely hard (which is the reason criminals use them), so the enforcement is much bigger problem.
It also used to be common to require identification. I remember checkers at grocery stores looking at your driver's license and writing the ID number on the check, so you were on the hook, too, when you wrote a check.
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@boomzilla said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
...driver's license and writing the ID number on the check...I worked for a check guarantee company (in a different department). Not putting the DL number on the check was the fastest way for check guarantee to refuse to pay.
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@boomzilla Yes. If you (whether you refers to an individual or a business such as a grocery store) deposit a check to your account, and the check turns out to be bad, the bank takes the money back out of your account (or never put it in to begin with), along with a processing fee.
The way it works, at least in the US, is something like this:
- A writes a check to B.
- B deposits the check to their account with their bank.
- B's bank sends the check to ACH.
- ACH sends the check to A's bank.
- A's bank debits the money from A's account and gives it to ACH.
- ACH gives the money to B's bank.
- B's bank credits the money to B's account. At this point, the check is said to be "cleared".
If B has sufficiently good reputation with their bank, the bank may choose to credit their account without waiting for step 6. If step 5 fails for some reason, e.g., NSF, the check is returned by A's bank, through ACH, to B's bank. If B's bank already credited B's account in anticipation that the check would clear, B's bank will deduct that amount from B's account. Whether it was already credited or not, the bank will also charge B a bad check deposit fee. A's bank will also charge them a fee for writing a bad check. And B can seek another means of collecting the money from A and/or return of the goods purchased, typically B can also try to collect a fee from A for B's cost of collecting the debt, and can also report A to a credit reporting bureau.
So (at least while I've been an adult and aware of how checks work), neither bank is really on the hook for the amount of the check. The risk lies primarily with the person or business accepting the check. This is (or was) a risk most businesses were willing to accept in order to increase business by making purchases more convenient for potential customers.
B's bank is at risk only if they chose to do step 7 early and B immediately withdraws the funds, so there are not sufficient funds in B's account for the bank reverse the credit.
A's bank is at risk only if they chose to perform step 5 despite A not having sufficient funds because they anticipate A making good the shortfall promptly.
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@HardwareGeek yeah, plus the potential of criminal charges for passing bad checks.
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@boomzilla Yeah, at some point in writing that post, that occurred to me, but I forgot to include it. I guess that turned into more of a refutation of an earlier post that banks are on the hook for bad checks than an affirmation of your post that the check writer is on the hook.
I also forgot to mention that for the last decade or two, the business accepting the check typically runs it through an electronic scanner that reads the routing and account numbers from the check, and the whole process is done in seconds instead of days. If the writer's bank won't honor the check, the business accepting it will know right away and won't accept it in the first place.
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@HardwareGeek Which makes it completely unlike Bitcoin, bringing us full circle, except with added . Even checks do it better!
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
Even checks do it better!
Almost as if those pesky central organisations are beneficial.
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@loopback0 said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
Even checks do it better!
Almost as if those pesky central organisations are beneficial.
They do get in the way of drug dealing and money laundering though...
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@izzion said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@loopback0 said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
Even checks do it better!
Almost as if those pesky central organisations are beneficial.
They do get in the way of drug dealing and money laundering though...
They’re also expensive. Wouldn’t it be nice to cut the middle man and just… umm… pay a $20 transaction fee instead to burn energy on proof of work?
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@DogsB said in Mozilla alienating everyone and everything:
I don't know how I do it, but I nearly always fall into jobs with multi decade-old technologies where it seems that people somehow lobotomized themselves of common sense.
I know how: you work in IT.
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And Mozilla turned around after backlash (for now).
Last week, we tweeted a reminder that Mozilla accepts cryptocurrency donations. This led to an important discussion about cryptocurrency’s environmental impact. We’re listening, and taking action.
Decentralized web technology continues to be an important area for us to explore, but a lot has changed since we started accepting crypto donations.
So, starting today we are reviewing if and how our current policy on crypto donations fits with our climate goals. And as we conduct our review, we will pause the ability to donate cryptocurrency.
In the spirit of open-source, this will be a transparent process and we'll share regular updates.We look forward to having this conversation and appreciate our community for bringing this to our attention.