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

Post by PrimHelios » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 9:48 PM UTC

jacalata wrote: post #51

wyc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by r3bl » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 9:50 PM UTC

forthefuture wrote: post #12

slg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as there is disclosure of it and the mining is relatively efficient, that is a very interesting business model. The site collects revenue relative to the amount of time users spend on the site and not the number of page/ad views. It is also a pretty seamless way to integrate micropayments from users into a site. Handing over a credit card number or similar is a big barrier to overcome while this requires no s…

I'd definitely prefer this to ads in a world where phone software and hardware improved energy capacity and efficiency at a faster rate than applications bloat. I don't think we've reached that point yet. An iPhone doesn't last a single day if you use it the whole time, it would barely last for hours mining constantly.

Post by mobiletelephone » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 9:59 PM UTC

IamCarbonMan wrote: post #37

detaro wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying 50 cents requires you to keep their mining browser tab open for around a week with your CPU churning. Somehow I don't think that's the solution.

WebAssembly with OpenGL could change this.

Post by cpeterso » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 10:05 PM UTC

r3bl wrote: post #72

narrowtux wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. If you run those on a laptop you pretty much kill battery life, same thing with phones.

If HTML5's battery API ever became a thing, this issue could be solved without any user interaction.

Post by icebraining » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 10:09 PM UTC

paultopia wrote: post #70

Wait, people are actually doing this? Using client-side resources not to deliver content or applications to clients, or even to visibly deliver things like advertisements, but to divert user CPU cycles for their own purposes? I want to know more about this. Are they seeking any kind of consent from the users, or even disclosing it to the users? If not, I have serious doubts about the legality of this behavior.