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Show HN: Coinerra – JavaScript Crypto Miner

coinerra.com

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Re: Show HN: Coinerra – JavaScript Crypto Miner

#21

Post by zdkl »

bastawhiz wrote: post #12
kienankb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels like the problem to me--there's no incentive for a website to do so instead of simply mining without the user's consent.

And the big problem isn't consent. If I'm paying to watch a video by mining, my battery might not last the duration of the video I'm mining to watch!

Okay I'll bite. How is your choice of device the dev's responsibility?

I mean it's not like it'd make sense to flame blizzard or bethesda because you can't play as long as you'd like on a laptop/mobile.

You use the proper device for the proper use, and this way you just get an additional option to trade value with the site owner. You're free not to mine in the same way you're free to get a paid account if you don't like ads.

Re: Show HN: Coinerra – JavaScript Crypto Miner

#22

Post by TrickyRick »

Kiro wrote: post #18

I think all ad blockers and the like should block these miners. Full stop. Not because I'm anti-miner but because serious websites must explicitly ask for users' consent and while doing that it's easy just to whitelist the miner for that specific website when you want to mine. I don't see any dichotomy. The problem is obviously rogue sites mining in the background.

uBlock does block Coinhive by default which is another one of these, not sure about Coinerra though.

Re: Show HN: Coinerra – JavaScript Crypto Miner

#23

Post by wakamoleguy »

I love their first FAQ. You don't often see a service that comes out and says "This probably isn't for you."

> Q: Will This Work On My Site? > A: Technically yes, economically probably not.

That same answer goes on to discuss how much revenue you could actually expect from using this crypto miner: "With just 10–20 active miners on your site, you can expect a monthly revenue of about 0.3 XMR (~$29)."

It seems like in some situations, where users are incentivized to stick around and mine for a bit, this could be an effective model. It seems like there is room for improvement in tuning power consumption and fees charged. Plus, if ad blockers block miners, it's likely a non-starter... but the merits of that are a different debate.

Re: Show HN: Coinerra – JavaScript Crypto Miner

#24

Post by Kiro »

bastawhiz wrote: post #12
kienankb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels like the problem to me--there's no incentive for a website to do so instead of simply mining without the user's consent.

And the big problem isn't consent. If I'm paying to watch a video by mining, my battery might not last the duration of the video I'm mining to watch!

That's not "the big problem" in my opinion. I don't even know if I would consider it a problem at all. If I want to drain my computer's battery and get something for it that's my choice. As I said in another comment, the actual big problem is rogue sites putting this crap without user initialization or even informing them.

Re: Show HN: Coinerra – JavaScript Crypto Miner

#25

Post by factsaresacred »

wakamoleguy wrote: post #19
factsaresacred wrote: post #15

The animation on the 'Sign Up' button is a sin. Instant tab close. Almost as bad as the 'subscribe' popup nonsense way too many websites have.

It doesn't bother me too much, all in all. Distracting, sure, but then again, they found a way to draw your attention to the most important button on their website (in their opinion). It doesn't obscure the content like a popup or prevent you from closing the tab with an alert. By my book, that's playing by the rules.

Nah it's not that bad but it's similar to seeing a '.biz' domain or comic-sans font - an innate heuristic that informs my brain to nope the hell out of there.

It triggers the this is scammy response (no matter how unjustly).

Re: Show HN: Coinerra – JavaScript Crypto Miner

#26

Post by wakamoleguy »

Kiro wrote: post #18

I think all ad blockers and the like should block these miners. Full stop. Not because I'm anti-miner but because serious websites must explicitly ask for users' consent and while doing that it's easy just to whitelist the miner for that specific website when you want to mine. I don't see any dichotomy. The problem is obviously rogue sites mining in the background.

It seems pretty natural for ad blockers to block miners, which extends them more into the space of allowing users to maintain control over their client, rather than purely blocking ads as the name implies.

That being said, the primary concern so far seems to be the CPU melting effect of the mining. (I don't want to use my battery, CPU, etc to make you money without you asking me.) Rather than blacklisting certain domains or requests to crypto-mining services, I'd like to see something that protects against intensive scripts in general.

Here's how I could see it working:

* Services like Coinerra want to do intensive work without blocking site responsiveness, so they should use something like Web Workers.

* Browsers should provide user controls to throttle the execution of Web Workers. This will protect their resources from most intensive scripts.

* Intensive execution on the main thread already has (inelegant) protections (no responsiveness, script timeout warnings). Maybe these will need to be improved as more sites request intense, continuous computations on behalf of clients.

Unfortunately, crypto miners themselves will have little incentive to add the controls on their end, because it is best for their customers if the hashes are computed at the maximum rate. (Well, they will have a little incentive, because throttling may allow them to fly under the radar, providing smaller revenue without being blocked entirely.)

Re: Show HN: Coinerra – JavaScript Crypto Miner

#27

Post by Kiro »

wakamoleguy wrote: post #23

I love their first FAQ. You don't often see a service that comes out and says "This probably isn't for you." > Q: Will This Work On My Site? > A: Technically yes, economically probably not. That same answer goes on to discuss how much revenue you could actually expect from using this crypto miner: "With just 10–20 active miners on your site, you can expect a monthly revenue of about 0.3 XMR (~$29)." It seems like in…

The FAQ is copypasted word-by-word from Coinhive though which I find kind of sloppy and non-serious.

Re: Show HN: Coinerra – JavaScript Crypto Miner

#29

Post by kienankb »

Kiro wrote: post #14
kienankb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels like the problem to me--there's no incentive for a website to do so instead of simply mining without the user's consent.

Except being morally objectionable and a PR disaster? No serious website would do that. I've completely stopped visiting The Pirate Bay after they put a miner there without users' consent. The serious use case for these miners is that you have some kind of incentive for your users to mine, not just have it mine randomly in the background. I guess it works for pure donations but take a look at "Use Cases" on the front…

That makes sense. I do appreciate that they went to the effort of putting intended use cases on their website, and I wouldn't mind explicitly encountering some of them (I would gladly mine some cryptocurrency to help support video creators I enjoy rather than watching or seeing ads). I just worry that "morally objectionable" and "PR disaster" aren't enough to stop JS miners from being used without the user's consent on sites--to me it feels somewhat comparable to ad tracking behavior.

Re: Show HN: Coinerra – JavaScript Crypto Miner

#30

Post by wakamoleguy »

Kiro wrote: post #27
wakamoleguy wrote: post #23

I love their first FAQ. You don't often see a service that comes out and says "This probably isn't for you." > Q: Will This Work On My Site? > A: Technically yes, economically probably not. That same answer goes on to discuss how much revenue you could actually expect from using this crypto miner: "With just 10–20 active miners on your site, you can expect a monthly revenue of about 0.3 XMR (~$29)." It seems like in…

The FAQ is copypasted word-by-word from Coinhive though which I find kind of sloppy and non-serious.

Hmm. That definitely seems sketchy. I'll redirect my love elsewhere.
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