Increasing Donations for Calibre

[samcohen]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@Penny_Dreadful: Yes indeed, it will be a download on opt-in type of thing. That has the advantage of avoiding antivirus issues for people that dont opt-in as well.

I agree that it clearly needs to be opt in.

The harder you make it for people to just turn it on the less likely people are actually going to contribute through this method.

It's essential that it is as easy as clicking 1 button.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the user flow from the start of download to allowing the miner.

[gbm]

Originally Posted by Penny_Dreadful

I'd really prefer this as a plug-in if it does happen, as I don't really want a crypto miner on my computer opt-in or not, it's not that I don't trust you Kovid I just don't want any thing to do with cryptocurrency. I'm a supporter on Patreon instead.

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@Penny_Dreadful: Yes indeed, it will be a download on opt-in type of thing. That has the advantage of avoiding antivirus issues for people that dont opt-in as well.

This takes care of my objections.

I would say advertise it on the update popup so people will know about it, way to many do not read the what's new page.

bernie

[samcohen]

Originally Posted by gbm

This takes care of my objections.

I would say advertise it on the update popup so people will know about it, way to many do not read the what's new page.

bernie

I really like this idea Bernie. Thanks! That seems like the ideal location for it.

[crane3]

Please make the opt-in visible prior to install. eg: NOT like how the Norton, McAfee, or Vast does the sneaky "opt-in" or even Google Chrome.

I have to select 'customize' or advance to check whether there are stuff already selected as 'opt-in' in the the plain/simple non-customize install selection for apps.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by samcohen

I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the user flow from the start of download to allowing the miner.

Someone decides to click the heart to support calibre, they are presented with two options, donate money or computer resources. If they choose computer resources, they are presented with a short paragraph explaining what that means and OK or Cancel buttons. The rest will happen automatically, the miner will be downloaded and run in the background while calibre is open.

And this is still assuming I decide to go for this, I have not made up my mind yet.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by samcohen

A lot to respond to here!

You see dystopian I see utopian.

.

back in 1999, when I was young and arrogant enough to simply "know" that the future was going to be digital money.. I was all-in on the dot COM boom [ and working in digital banking & therefore on the "inside track" ]

thus I was "smart enough" to see that digital certificate technology was going to be at the heart of it, so companies like Baltimore Technologies had shares that were going to the moon..

thus I was one of those still holding at £13.75...... and wasn't it a long way down...
The Irish computer security company had a share price as high as £13.75 in 2000. Yesterday, [ 2003] an analyst said he expected shareholders would get as little as 37p a share if the company is put into voluntary liquidation.
The shares fell .75 to 35p yesterday, and the company is valued at around £19m.

enjoy your bitcoin optimism- while it lasts

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Yeah this is rather annoying, as it is calibre gets regularly flagged as malware by antivirus and I get to deal with the consequent breakage. However, the extent of the issue is hard to know without trying it.

Any anti-virus that flags Calibre as as malware should be deleted and never used again.

[JSWolf]

if I was to opt-in, go ahead and download. If I opt-out, I want the files and data associated with this to be removed. If I was to find out that I've lost disk space because opted in, I would never opt-in again.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by stumped

OK , I'll bite.
explain how, when if/your dystopia of choice comes to pass, the world will still have a functioning internet, endless electricity for the bit mines, and enough rare metals to keep making the devices we use to trade and shop on ( and the batteries they run on)

Indeed all true. Also Blockchain itself, apart from the total evil of bitcoin mining helping to destroy the planet, is ABSOLUTELY NOT SCALEABLE. It doesn't even work on a theoretical basis. It's only a niche and the transaction time is terrible. It gets worse FASTER than users doing transactions are added.

Compare CPU and electricity costs per transaction for IBAN (totally secure and independent), PayPal, random credit card and ANY Cryptocurrency. The cryptocurrency essentially is only working at all because compared with the other three almost no-one is using it. Most of those are speculators or criminals.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Indeed all true. Also Blockchain itself, apart from the total evil of bitcoin mining helping to destroy the planet, is ABSOLUTELY NOT SCALEABLE. It doesn't even work on a theoretical basis. It's only a niche and the transaction time is terrible. It gets worse FASTER than users doing transactions are added.

Compare CPU and electricity costs per transaction for IBAN (totally secure and independent), PayPal, random credit card and ANY Cryptocurrency. The cryptocurrency essentially is only working at all because compared with the other three almost no-one is using it. Most of those are speculators or criminals.

i was curious enough to go look at what happened to the digital certificates of ~1999 plans. Even my own laggard bank sank millions into an interbank consortium that was going to bring about the great new digital money thing, but it just crashed and burned. as did Mondex ( a midland bank- Nat west bank anonymous digital money trial
this one: Friday 30 October 1998 | 00:00 CET | News
Barclays Bank has joined eight other banks, including Citibank and Deutsche Bank, and CertCo, security vendor, in a consortium which will issue digital certificates for secure online trading in order to encourage business-to-business E-commerce. The consortium will use software from CertCo Software (US), vendor, based on the Public Key Infrastructure technology. The scheme will be managed by a profit-making group which has not yet been set up. The group will install infrastructure in late-1998 and launch a trial service in early-1999.
it was going to replace SWIFT but it never did. had it worked, banks would, a have sold and managed digital IDs for companies to use for e-commerce as per this article.https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/marke...gital-identity


and in ~2018 Fran Rooney, the ex CEO of Baltimore Technologies tried to establish irelands first cryptocurrency - Mongo- which is now on the dead coins list

[samcohen]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Indeed all true. Also Blockchain itself, apart from the total evil of bitcoin mining helping to destroy the planet, is ABSOLUTELY NOT SCALEABLE. It doesn't even work on a theoretical basis. It's only a niche and the transaction time is terrible. It gets worse FASTER than users doing transactions are added.

Compare CPU and electricity costs per transaction for IBAN (totally secure and independent), PayPal, random credit card and ANY Cryptocurrency. The cryptocurrency essentially is only working at all because compared with the other three almost no-one is using it. Most of those are speculators or criminals.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/study...newable-energy

Also look up the lightning network if you want to learn more about scalability on top of bitcoin. It's instantaneous.

[samcohen]

Originally Posted by stumped

i was curious enough to go look at what happened to the digital certificates of ~1999 plans. Even my own laggard bank sank millions into an interbank consortium that was going to bring about the great new digital money thing, but it just crashed and burned. as did Mondex ( a midland bank- Nat west bank anonymous digital money trial
this one: Friday 30 October 1998 | 00:00 CET | News
Barclays Bank has joined eight other banks, including Citibank and Deutsche Bank, and CertCo, security vendor, in a consortium which will issue digital certificates for secure online trading in order to encourage business-to-business E-commerce. The consortium will use software from CertCo Software (US), vendor, based on the Public Key Infrastructure technology. The scheme will be managed by a profit-making group which has not yet been set up. The group will install infrastructure in late-1998 and launch a trial service in early-1999.
it was going to replace SWIFT but it never did. had it worked, banks would, a have sold and managed digital IDs for companies to use for e-commerce as per this article.https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/marke...gital-identity


and in ~2018 Fran Rooney, the ex CEO of Baltimore Technologies tried to establish irelands first cryptocurrency - Mongo- which is now on the dead coins list

Bitcoin doesn't need your bank to have success. I'm sorry to hear that one of your investments didn't work out but it's also not a good reason to dislike bitcoin.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by samcohen

https://cointelegraph.com/news/study...newable-energy

Also look up the lightning network if you want to learn more about scalability on top of bitcoin. It's instantaneous.

It's nonsense.

[stumped]

let me throw another argument into the mix:


compare these 3 ways to donate:

1> i give Kovid $1 via any of the current mechanisms such as paypal. takes a few seconds. costs me nothing but Kovid actually gets about 93 cents after intermediaries have gouged out their commission

2> I give Kovid the bitcoin equivalent of $1. That coin exchange is now permanently recorded all over the system as an added record to be written into everyone's blockchain. What a waste of resources. Info is valuless very quickly so why keep it forever. The pro of this route is that I give $1 from my wallet, he gets $1 in his wallet , minus some usually very tiny transaction fees scraped off. it takes me a LOT longer, especially if I have 2 factor authentication on my bitcoin wallet.

3> i give Kovid that $1 somehow , eventually, like this: by installing some software that eventually generates $1 worth of crypto mining output which is gathered up and sold by some 3rd party who then gives the proceeds to Kovid
What a kerfuffle compared with option #1. the cost to me in electricity billing for providing the computing power to generate the $1 gift is unknown. i suspect its the least efficient option.

[DiapDealer]

Moderator Notice
This is not the place to debate the merits/evils of bitcoin mining in general. Kovid has made it clear that it will be opt-in only, and that no mining software will be installed on a user's machine until such time as they explicitly opt-in to that donation method.

Everyone can do their own research, and make up their own minds about the (de)merits of bitcoin mining in general.

So let's please return to indicating whether or not you would be willing to donate to calibre via the opt-in (and add-on) method Kovid indicated it would be.