There is a PR currently active in Privacy Guides GitHub about a service called Coinsbee, but there wasn’t any forum discussion about it, so here we are.
Coinsbee is a gift card marketplace where you can buy those gift cards from over 2,500 merchants across 185 countries. You can buy these cards with cryptocurrencies and only cryptocurrencies as far as I know. You can buy cards from Amazon, Apple, Sony’s PlayStation, Steam and much more. It supports BTC, LTC, ETH and of course XMR (Monero).
NOTE: It doesn’t KYC you if you don’t spend more than €1,000 per order. If you spend more than that amount, you will be KYC’d.
Hey, I authored this PR. First, my apologies for butchering the PR process by not putting up a discussion. From my other OS work, I’ve only contributed to crypto projects and have only fired off PRs, and I should have done more due diligence.
To add a little extra info on this post, you can use normal cards, not just cryptocurrency. To clarify (what you said is 100% correct and how I phrased it in the PR), they do not KYC you if you do more than 1000 euros, only if it is more than 1000 euros in one order. So, you can do 9 orders with the same email address with no KYC (up to 10k euros). However, they accept ephemeral emails, so you can essentially order unlimited amounts. Since they do collect the IP address when placing an order, use a VPN to ensure you do not get KYC’d.
@jerm I’ve actually used them and they’re reliable. However, the “doesn’t KYC at all” thing is a semi-myth. For example, with their prepaid visa cards, they use tremendous, which may KYC. Coincards has to implement some since they’re the actual gift card vendor working with companies X,Y, and Z. I’d be happy to add Stealths too but thought I should do one thing at a time. There’s a lot of great vendors out there that take Monero nowadays.
The comment at the end of the GitHub pull request seems self explanatory to me.
Quoting the comment:
Privacy guides has proved so immensely slow with an inane contribution process that it is not worth contributing to. Nor is it relevant for anyone seeking up-to-date privacy tools.
The user who started this PR seems to have thought that it wasn’t worth keeping the PR open without activity for over 4 months.
Maybe someone else could open a similar PR to the previous one, maybe once this tool is accepted for official recommendation by the Privacy Guides team in this discussion.
@mangomango@jerm I closed the PR because Privacy Guides has demonstrated to be an inserious project concerned about gatekeeping instead of promoting privacy tools. My and @jerm 's conversation perfectly illustrates how slow they are to make any changes: Stealths stopped using Tremendous months ago! So you can no longer buy 3D Secure gift cards with Monero!
Why is critical software changes easier than a static privacy guide website? The answer is this is steeped in bureaucracy and gatekeeping. I would recommend building your own privacy guide website instead of contributing to this slug of a project.
Ikr, so much delay. Why isn’t Privacy Guides (run by volunteers) competing with RHEL (literal company that sells contracts based on short TATs and frequest updates) in delivery speed?
How dare they ignore a non-critical addition for a non-everyday use store on a recommendations website. They should be matching critical software that runs in production in their speed to work.
The amount of entitlement lol. Take your PR, I’ll file one and wait for them to review it. You filing a PR does not entitle you to bypass what happens for most other additions, or add any obligations on the volunteers running this.
(As an aside, PG moves fast when it needs to, go check how they respond to changes in privacy policies of the tools they recommend like Optery. Addition of new information is non-critical, and requires review to ensure credibility doesn’t hurt by recommending bad solutions. I am also sometimes frustrated by speed of non-critical changes, but I don’t expect volunteers to be at my Beck and call.)
Maybe you used a blue instead of black pen when filling out Form PG-404-B12 (Request for Permission to Request Permission to Make a Pull Request)? That can delay things.
If you seriously think it’s more complicated for a volunteer to click a single button to accept or reject a merge request than it is for RHEL to evaluate how increasing the computational load by 25x for hashing iterations by-default impacts their global network, then it sounds like you’re in the perfect community here at privacyguides.
Ah yes, I am so entitled because I thought I could contribute a privacy update to privacyguides. I should have known better that we all sit on our hands here and applaud the highly complex html. Have fun with that.
Perfect encapsulation of the nonsensical bureaucracy that duplicates the existing version control system used by the entire world, including privacyguides. This is such a good idea that I think you should have filled out your permission to make a forum post before posting here.
Edit Throwing in this edit because I was playing along with your humor but thought it might’ve come across as actually aggressive.
PR trolls when they face due diligence be like. Do you think accepting PRs is just pressing one button? No no, let’s press one button, what’s the worst that can happen - it will include something malicious XZ updates (in critical software) or compromised tool recommendations (in PG).
Keep chirping, have seen many people like you on hundreds of FOSS projects. The projects still exist and improve, the threatening usernames stay commit-less.
Ah, so that’s the issue. You had issue with the “complex” html and now want reward for working on it? Apologies, perfectly justified response, must have been insanely hard work
Anyway, this has gone way offtopic. Don’t bother responding, go create GiftCardGuides(dot)com lol.
I am making fun of the simplicity of html contributions. And yes, it is as easy as clicking a button. There is nothing complicated to review with html
If you read the thread, you’ll see I’m not commitless, I’ve contributed to plenty of FOSS products and proprietary products built on FOSS. It’s a bit embarassing to charcterize text-contribution as a commitment as if it’s programming or git is a some mystical system that takes deep thought.
What could this new p tag possibly do to the website
Yes, people who actually want techniques will go elsewhere, that’s kind of the whole point. We’re here to improve privacy, not LARP, do fork all, and make ridiculous defenses of inaction.
