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Mozilla Bitcoin

Mozilla Foundation Hits Pause on Crypto Donations Following Backlash (techcrunch.com) 52

Posted by msmash from the change-of-heart dept.
The Mozilla Foundation is pausing accepting donations in cryptocurrency following a backlash from scores of people including a founder of the Mozilla Project. From a report: The foundation, which oversees the development of Firefox browser, on Thursday acknowledged conversations around the environment impact that cryptocurrency potentially pose and said it is reviewing whether its current policy on crypto donations "fits with our climate goals."

The foundation started to face backlash following a tweet late last year that invited people to donate via using a variety of crypto tokens including Bitcoin. In response to it, Jamie Zawinski expressed dismay at the foundation's move. "Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters," he said, adding an expletive.
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Mozilla Foundation Hits Pause on Crypto Donations Following Backlash More

Mozilla Foundation Hits Pause on Crypto Donations Following Backlash

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  • And YET (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Osgeld ( 1900440 ) on Thursday January 06, 2022 @04:49PM (#62150115)

    They won't back down on their quest to fuck the user experience even after a decade of backlash

    • There's been a bug for years where the browser refuses to load any new content until it's been quit and restarted. But the moz foundation would rather make the browser collect your browsing information, so they took away the functionality extensions used to write to local disk and then spent US$20M on Pocket, then integrated it into the browser when it should be an extension anyway. Now if you want to save a webpage as displayed you have to use Pocket, and they get to know what you're saving. Simultaneously

  • I guess with all the currencies falling in the last while, the folks at Slashdot need to prop up their "investments" to save face.

  • ...tell us what you really think!

    I also have to give him extra credit for "Dunning-Krugerrands" https://twitter.com/jwz/status... [twitter.com]

  • Because this stupid idea is just an indicator for the abysmal quality of that Mozilla Foundation "leadership" and that is the actual problem here.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday January 06, 2022 @05:24PM (#62150221)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dbialac ( 320955 )

        UI both simpler and more difficult to use at the same time are also seen across the industry

        Maybe just leave the UI alone? There was nothing hard or wrong with the previous Firefox UI and frankly I'm tired of redesigning the UI being Mozilla's go-to. How about realizing when a product has reached maturity and doesn't need a radical redesign. But then again too many tech people don't realize that newer often does not mean better. See also AOL IM, ICQ, Yahoo Chat, Skype, Slack, Teams and the litany of other chat clients that don't do anything significantly better than the one before.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Indeed. A striking example of this extreme stupidity is the last Kindle software update: Used to be that setting/removing a bookmark was one tap. Not well executed as the tap area was hard to hit. But one tap. Now it needs three (or two if you hit it just right). I expect with the next update they will require two or more taps to go to the next page in a book. Just like a lot of functionality in MS Office now needs three or even more mouse actions to execute it. WTH? That is right out of the "Bad Example" s

          • Indeed. A striking example of this extreme stupidity is the last Kindle software update: Used to be that setting/removing a bookmark was one tap. Not well executed as the tap area was hard to hit. But one tap.

            Yeah... exact same for firefox on android. Was one tap, which was hard to hit, now it's two, and still hard to hit the second one.

        • Sadly, UI modifications are done both for technical/usability reasons and marketing reasons.
          Most software does the second. The reasons are several:
          • If it's commercial software because users can see more easily the UI changes than other changes and that's good marketing. Because touchscreens are drving UI design nowadays (even though you might have many users who don't use them, e.g. Windows). Because you want your users to upgrade and a UI refresh looks nice. Because everyone else is changing their UI an

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        I'm seeing this bullshit everywhere, I think what we're seeing is a fad and unfortunately there's a high profile contingent within tech that actually buys the idea of cryptocurrency, either because of swivel-eyed ideological nutcasery (the people I know directly who believe in it are like that) or because they're in on the con.

        That a high profile tech corp is blinded by the fad should not be surprising. It's not merely "leadership" that's to blame, it's top to bottom.

        Well, true. It is probably also that IT people are even more prone to the Dunning-Kruger effect because they believe they are smarter than other people because IT is "new" and "flashy" and "will save the world" and such drivel. Given the available evidence (the abysmal state of IT almost everywhere), I would say that on average IT people are dumber than the rest. That may well contribute here.

        Mozilla's leadership is also questionable - they appointed Brandon Eich to run Mozilla FFS (at least he had the eventual farsightedness to realize "Inventing Javascript" is not a qualification to be a CEO) - but I think they're kind of stuck right now as the "experts" they're bringing in are ultimately part of a tech establishment that believes in all the crap that has proven to be awful and make things worse for everyone for at least a decade. This isn't limited to Mozilla - the same pressures that are bloating the browser's memory usage and somehow making the UI both simpler and more difficult to use at the same time are also seen across the industry. GNOME 3 was awful for the same reasons.

        What I'm trying to say is Mozilla isn't failing tech, tech is failing Mozilla. Our industry is plagued by irrational ideas that come out of nowhere, and become adopted as patterns everyone has to adopt or else be seen as stale and insulting of our users. How we change that is another question...

        Well, yes. A very good point and something that really grates whenever I see it. The core problem I see is that mos

      • What I'm trying to say is Mozilla isn't failing tech, tech is failing Mozilla. Our industry is plagued by irrational ideas that come out of nowhere, and become adopted as patterns everyone has to adopt or else be seen as stale and insulting of our users. How we change that is another question...

        Don't limit this to tech. Most everything in life recently seems to be going down the irrational rabbit hole.

        Part of the problem for tech though, is that I think tech is no long technical. It's gone from let's think like an engineer into something that's social, fashionable, etc. Back when nerds were nerds this didn't seem to happen. But now nerds are cool and people want to get on the cool train, and then you've got people claiming that they're a techie because they have a blog. And for the technical

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • I actually liked the flat UI on the Mac. People complained that the colored "jewels" were just flat circles now, but so what? The irrelevant parts of the GUI went away, like window borders. Meanwhile Windows 7 doubled down on the the flash; highlights on the title bars, animated actions, etc, and I wasn't really happy with it (though better than XP). Ie, the start button being round, and sticking up higher than the taskbar if you tried to shrink the taskbar to save space. When Windows 8 went flat it was

    • MoFo is woke grift now. The libretech people went to Brave.

  • the Mozilla foundation accepting crypto donations will push the price of crypto down because the foundation will be selling it.

    With the price pushed down, crypto mining will be discouraged.

  • Better to take crypto donations (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ickleberry ( 864871 ) <web@pineapple.vg> on Thursday January 06, 2022 @05:04PM (#62150185) Homepage
    Than to be funded by the privacy-hating almighty GOOG

    • Than to be funded by the privacy-hating almighty GOOG

      After reading JWZ's impassioned response, Google is shutting down all of their servers worldwide.

      "He's right, you know.", was the response given to investors.

  • The money laundering, the slavery, the ransomware, the pump&dump stock manipulations, the pyramid schemes, and the new traffic in fake vaccine cards are not enough to avoid the pseudo-currency?

  • Or just people beclowning themselves... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DeplorableCodeMonkey ( 4828467 ) on Thursday January 06, 2022 @07:13PM (#62150475)

    "Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters," he said, adding an expletive.

    No, you should be witheringly ashamed for thinking that the properties of Bitcoin apply to all major cryptos. Notice how these assholes never talk about modern proof of stake cryptos like Cardano, Solana or Polkadot or even Ethereum 2. Or don't even get started on XRP which is so energy efficient it scared the powers that be into ordering the SEC to burn its last shreds of credibility as a regulator charging them with security fraud simply for carrying out an ICO.

    Slashdot has become an absolute embarrassment here as well.

    • The NPC patch went out, causing all NPCs to jump aboard the environmental impact of crypto - regardless of how little any given NPC actually knows about crypto. Just pickup a pitchfork and follow mob.

      There's currently a tizzy being thrown over Kickstarter's announcement of a blockchain- based system. Doesn't matter that it's proof of stake - the people freaking out don't need to know what that means. All they know is that crypto is evil, both due to environmental impact and because their political enemies u

    • "Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters," he said, adding an expletive.

      No, you should be witheringly ashamed for thinking that the properties of Bitcoin apply to all major cryptos.

      I bow to your knowledge of the other cryptocurrencies. However, Mozilla were going to use Bitcoin (TFA doesn't say which other ones) - and "planet-incinerating" sounds like a decent summary for Bitcoin. (I suspect 'ponzi grifter' is a bit more contentious).

      So I think that the statement holds. and maybe he would have been happy it Mozilla used only $PARENT_LIST.

  • Just like a stock, your donation can lose value. What a stupid form of payment.
  • As soon as some people are crying on twitter, we have to do what they ask. That's it. This is the new normal.

  • Mozilla jumped on the bandwagon in support of censoring President Donald Trump.

    Somebody get these bastards for making their product designed to censor.

    Shame on them.

    They are forbidden from the sort of acts they did.

    I'm an anarchist... not a Trump Supporter - and No Antifa is not a true anarchist organization and I have no affiliation with Antifa. I never voted for Trump and I never will vote for anybody in a political election - period.

    Mozilla's tax exempt status as a "non -profit" needs to be challenged

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