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Show HN: No Coin – A browser extension to block coin miners

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Re: Show HN: No Coin – A browser extension to block coin miners

#251

Post by wtallis »

phailhaus wrote: post #248
wtallis wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works, if you trust the user not to lie when they have every incentive to lie.

It's not possible for the user to lie since the miner has to report back to the server with the proof of work that they've done.

Hardly any website is going to be willing to require non-trivial proof of work before delivering content. It might work for cutting off a streaming video and to a lesser extent as a gate before allowing a large file download, but it's completely implausible for a text-based article. Would-be readers are not that patient.

Re: Show HN: No Coin – A browser extension to block coin miners

#252

Post by devotedtoneu »

otakucode wrote: post #247
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://help.getadblock.com/support/solutions/articles/60001... It's clearly the future of ad delivery. If you burn ads into video, you can't block them short of doing some kind of realtime detection against the video frames. It absolutely sucks because the pause button has become a "play ad" button. There's no way to temporarily pause anymore without showing an ad. Hopefully they won't realize they can do the same t…

Back before cable companies gave everyone a DVR to try to kill Tivo (their plan was kill Tivo then kill the DVR but courts got in their way), I had a hacked Tivo with a network card. I could pull recorded shows off onto my PC. And then the PC would run a custom bit of software that would process the video and strip out the commercials (or you could have it just insert auto-jumps for the Tivo to follow). That was back…

I'm being unrelated, but thank you for this comment.

This instantly brought me back to the 2003/2004 Computer Magazine articles with customized TiVo Setups or homebrewed alternatives entirely running on a media center PC.

Re: Show HN: No Coin – A browser extension to block coin miners

#253

Post by icebraining »

hobofan wrote: post #249
paultopia wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, I have doubts. I'm not saying "definitely illegal," just dubious as all hell. In terms of specifics, maybe not anything criminal (though a prosecutor could try the CFAA), but on the civil side tort law trespass theories, maybe also unjust enrichment theories, would be well worth a try for a plaintiff's lawyer. But really, I'm thinking in terms of more abstract legal ideas that could use some caselaw develo…

One point of reference: World of Warcraft and other games (apparently Windows 10 too) have used P2P (torrent-like) patch systems in the past, where after you downloaded a content update, you also distribute it to other users. AFAIK this was opt-out rather than opt-in. I think that falls under the same category of using the users' computer for an extraordinary purpose.

Skype and Spotify too.

Re: Show HN: No Coin – A browser extension to block coin miners

#254

Post by whipoodle »

thinbeige wrote: post #60

Today I read that The Pirate Bay tested this new form of monetization (running a miner in you browser). I thought that might solve website monetization finally. We still have to figure out stuff like battery draining on mobile but it is the first step and I can buy some Monero which is well suited for JS/CPU mining (or in other words, it doesn't have a huge upside when mined on GPUs). And what do I see here? That bef…

> And what do I see here? That before it even started people are fighting it.

Ha, I really dig the implication that people are impetuous brats for not wanting this to run on their computers. The audacity..!

Re: Show HN: No Coin – A browser extension to block coin miners

#255

Post by Nursie »

rootlocus wrote: post #245
Nursie wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure I'm entitled to request content, and my machine can render it however it likes. They make the choice whether to serve it or not.

> my machine can render it however it likes The cost isn't what hardware does the most work. It's what time was spent creating the content. Of course they have the choice whether to serve it or not, but don't mistake the hours put into writing an article with the milliseconds used to serve a request. You're not (not) paying for the latter.

What a strange argument, it's not about cost, it's about ownership. The creators own their content, the consumers own their hardware. Either is free to do what they wish with their piece.

Re: Show HN: No Coin – A browser extension to block coin miners

#256

Post by otakucode »

devotedtoneu wrote: post #252
otakucode wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back before cable companies gave everyone a DVR to try to kill Tivo (their plan was kill Tivo then kill the DVR but courts got in their way), I had a hacked Tivo with a network card. I could pull recorded shows off onto my PC. And then the PC would run a custom bit of software that would process the video and strip out the commercials (or you could have it just insert auto-jumps for the Tivo to follow). That was back…

I'm being unrelated, but thank you for this comment. This instantly brought me back to the 2003/2004 Computer Magazine articles with customized TiVo Setups or homebrewed alternatives entirely running on a media center PC.

It was a fun time! I got to find out that if your local cable company responds with "huh?" when you ask for a cable box with an active firewire port (just for reliable channel changing, I was never able to get video) and then call the state utilities commission when they refuse... you get a call from the actual owner of the local Time Warner franchise confused out of his mind! That was fun... he called saying "you were asking about whether our cable boxes were fireproof?" so I got to explain what Firewire was, that they were legally obligated to provide a box with an active port if I requested one under such-and-such FCC regulation, etc. They eventually figured out what checkbox on my account to tick and I got it.

I still have the hacked Tivo with its network card actually, down in the basement. Hasn't been used for probably going on a decade, but I loved that thing to death while it lasted.

Re: Show HN: No Coin – A browser extension to block coin miners

#257

Post by rdiddly »

keraf wrote: post #208
rdiddly wrote: post #177

Tried the Chrome extension, but it just toggles between "Enable No Coin" and "Unpause No Coin." I didn't disable it, but I have to enable it? Repeatedly? And I didn't pause it, so why would I be unpausing it? Where do I look if I merely want to find out whether it is currently 1) enabled and/or 2) paused? And how do I toggle either or both of those? Does it need to be this complicated?

This is a bug that is happening when the background script doesn't run. It only happened to me in an outdated version of Opera. Updating my browser fixed it. It is a very early version of the extension, improvements are on their way.

I've got the browser sandboxed... and adblocked... and ScriptSafe'd and sometimes HTML5-blocked... so maybe that has something to do with it too! Will test it again with all that stuff turned off.

Re: Show HN: No Coin – A browser extension to block coin miners

#258

Post by thinkloop »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #190
thinkloop wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that mining is a waste is a bit strange to me - of course it is a waste, that is the genius insight of it all. Waste is the most powerful thing, it is pure cost, the hardest thing to do, raw sacrifice. There are no tricks or shortcuts to over-taking the blockchain, just pure cost and waste. If the proof-of-work had value and could be sold, it would make the network less safe, and less predictable, subject to…

Two quibbles I have with this argument: 1. PoW based on waste which has massive negative externalities is abusive. Power generation generally has large negative externalities. Bitcoin kills. 2. PoS is just another type of PoW - people will compete to earn the PoS rewards up until they are "burning" 0.99 worth of potential ETH they could have earned (with stocks or bonds for example) for every 1 ETH they earn through…

Abusive is not a fair word. The system allows for something that was never before possible. Waste is how it works. Everything takes energy to accomplish, every input to a process is waste in the end. The total cost vs. benefit is what matters. We could each name many things in society that produce much more carbon, that are much less useful than a decentralized ledger - and no-one would call them abusive.

Re: Show HN: No Coin – A browser extension to block coin miners

#259

Post by monsieurbanana »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #229
notheguyouthink wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because they know people don't like to pay, they choose to pretend they're free, while at the same time bleeding the visitors for small amounts of indirect money (in attention => time, or computing resources => electricity). I mean... I get where you're coming from, and I agree that I don't like it either - but I'm curious what the "right" solution is. I think it's clear that people, on average, hate to pay. They h…

Yes, people hate to pay. Like 'Eliezer said once, paying literally feels like losing hit points in a video game. Still, I think we should accept it. My proposed solution is bit unpopular, but it goes like this: just have people pay actual money. Now, this would cause a lot of the present Internet to disappear, and I say good riddance . Here is why. The Internet is mostly made of two kinds of people: 1) those who publ…

That's not an unpopular solution. Because it's not a solution at all.

What you just said: "Here's what I would do: I would make a perfect world. How? That's for you to figure out."

How would you get rid of ads? If you can't answer that, the best you can do is write a fiction book.

Re: Show HN: No Coin – A browser extension to block coin miners

#260

Post by devotedtoneu »

otakucode wrote: post #256
devotedtoneu wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm being unrelated, but thank you for this comment. This instantly brought me back to the 2003/2004 Computer Magazine articles with customized TiVo Setups or homebrewed alternatives entirely running on a media center PC.

It was a fun time! I got to find out that if your local cable company responds with "huh?" when you ask for a cable box with an active firewire port (just for reliable channel changing, I was never able to get video) and then call the state utilities commission when they refuse... you get a call from the actual owner of the local Time Warner franchise confused out of his mind! That was fun... he called saying "you we…

I would've never guessed providing a channel-changing interface over firewire would be law! That's very interesting.

Sounds like you might've been the first to ask!

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