Show HN: No Coin – A browser extension to block coin miners • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by jacalata » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 8:14 PM UTC

wyc wrote: post #45

fiatjaf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what was attempted with Greasemonkey and Tampermonkey, wasn't it? Userscripts and so on.

I loved using those tools, but I think many browser extensions today are more involved than small shim scripts. A lot of them have CRUD operations, data editing interfaces, css/image assets, etc. I was thinking about something a bit more composed like create-react-app.

I wrote a grease monkey script that allowed you to annotate a website and save the notes permanently to local storage. It had all of the above features. The only real limitation is the sandboxing.

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

#52

Post by detaro » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 8:24 PM UTC

rodorgas wrote: post #38

richdougherty wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In uBlock you can just click the big off button and then click it on again. I see that No Coin has a 'disable for 1 minute' button, which is slightly different, but probably not worth a separate extension for most people. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/How-to-whitelist-a-we...

OTOH I'm ok with ads, but not ok with miners. So wouldn't make sense have an ad blocker that doesn't block ads. People seems allergic to browser extensions this days. I also get the "why is this an extension and not a filter?" on a non ad-related extension.

More browser extensions means more potential for conflicts, slowdowns and more UI clutter (assuming they have an interactive function like this one). Browser extensions getting hacked or bought and turned into malware is a concern. My adblocker is available for all browsers I use (and not just Chrome) and I know it's UI already - disabling a single block temporarily is done in 2 clicks.

That's why I'm skeptical of new browser extensions for things that the ones I have can already cover.

Doesn't mean everybody else has to feel like that (e.g. I honestly hadn't considered someone might want to install this but not a generic configurable blocker - even if you aren't aggressively blocking ads uBlock would be useful for me)

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

#53

Post by thinkloop » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 8:29 PM UTC

I really like the idea of a proof-of-work captcha, but can it work? The hash requirement needs to be low enough for mobile devices, but scraping and automation are usually done on powerful servers. Is there an equilibrium where it's comfortable for end users, but a real deterrent for servers?

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

#54

Post by codexon » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 8:32 PM UTC

thinkloop wrote: post #53

I really like the idea of a proof-of-work captcha, but can it work? The hash requirement needs to be low enough for mobile devices, but scraping and automation are usually done on powerful servers. Is there an equilibrium where it's comfortable for end users, but a real deterrent for servers?

No there isn't, that's why it won't work.

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

#55

Post by slig » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 8:40 PM UTC

einrealist wrote: post #30

Is there a way to exploit the miner scripts? I mean in a way: Never trust the client? If the proof is calculated on the client, how does the server confirm that the proof is correct?

Generally, checking the solution is trivial. Hashing billions of hashings to find what you want is want takes resources.

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

#56

Post by komaromy » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 8:42 PM UTC

maxencecornet wrote: post #20

Animats wrote: post #17

The extension is simply blocking a list of blacklisted domains in blacklist.txt. Some way to detect that a non-visible page or service worker is using excessive CPU time or GPU assets would be useful. How long until porn sites start doing mining in the background?

>How long until porn sites start doing mining in the background? How long have porn sites being doing mining in the background ? Remember that porn sites are always the front line of innovation on the web, some are probably already doing it

> Remember that porn sites are always the front line of innovation on the web

Often stated, rarely with any actual support.

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

#57

Post by cbarrick » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 8:50 PM UTC

einrealist wrote: post #30

Is there a way to exploit the miner scripts? I mean in a way: Never trust the client? If the proof is calculated on the client, how does the server confirm that the proof is correct?

> how does the server confirm that the proof is correct?

The point of proof-of-work algorithms is to be hard to compute but easy to verify.

As a simplified example, a proof-of-work might be to take some input and find a corresponding salt that leads to a sha256 with 10 leading zeros. The user works hard to find that salt (the proof-of-work) using some brute force search, but the server easily verifies that the proof is correct because checking a sha256 is easy.

So the proof is verifiable by the definition of the algorithm.

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

#58

Post by johnday » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 8:58 PM UTC

Yoric wrote: post #31

ComputerGuru wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the reddit thread on the matter, even at TPB's scale they were looking at only a month . I wonder why CoinHive isn't using WebGL for this.

Can you actually use WebGL for this? I mean, don't you need a user-visible graphics context? That's a serious question, I have used WebGL only once in my life and that was years ago. On the other hand, WebGPU looks exactly like the kind of technology that would make web-based GPU-enabled bitcoin mining realistic.

You could put it off screen.

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

#59

Post by always_good » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 9:01 PM UTC

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #24

eyezick wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CPU mining is so unprofitable, but I suppose with thousands of users..

What do you mean by unprofitable? If you have cheap (or free) power, it's absolutely profitable. EDIT: I see you meant CPU mining, not mining in general. My mistake!

People are fixated on power, but this browser miningware doesn't even pay for the wear on your machine.

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

#60

Post by thinbeige » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 9:20 PM UTC

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 before it even started people are fighting it.

Found this solution better than ads and infinetely loading ad-tech JS files.