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Show HN: Coinhive – Embeddable JavaScript Crypto Miner

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Re: Show HN: Coinhive – Embeddable JavaScript Crypto Miner

#51

Post by ryanworl »

xd1936 wrote: post #45
throwaway2016a wrote: post #41

This is much better than I thought it would be. I wonder how many commentors actually tried the demos. Two of the three ways I could see on the page to use it involve delaying the user slightly (while doing a proof of work) after a checkbox or link is clicked. Not constantly running in the background. The one that does constantly run requires clicking a play button, which seems "opt-in" to me. They also have some rev…

I'm also curious about the Captcha. It's a great idea, but what's to say that bots won't be able to run it as well?

It isn't that bots can't do it, it is that they must waste significantly more resources than they would otherwise.

Re: Show HN: Coinhive – Embeddable JavaScript Crypto Miner

#52

Post by TeMPOraL »

IanDrake wrote: post #40
TeMPOraL wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No reason not to treat it just as badly as attempts to mine bitcoin off your CPU. Both of those waste your resources, for someone else's profits, without your consent.

Devils advocate here. Isn't just visiting the site giving consent to allow the sandbox (browser) to be utilized as the site directs? This is an extreme case, granted, but it's still within the bounds of the sandbox. Perhaps we'll have a new browser setting soon to throttle this type of thing instead of having to go whole hog and turn of JavaScript.

The implied consent is based on trust. The browser is my user agent, it is meant to interpret the data that it gets from HTTP stream the way I want it. I let it do the things as specified in the received data (i.e. by you), because I trust that you're not an asshole and will not abuse that power.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of assholes on-line, who decided to abuse the default behaviour - so now we have ad blockers and reader modes.

Ultimately, it is (by intention and design of the HTTP protocol, and computer networks in general) up to me what I do with the data - if, how, and which parts of it I decide to process.

Re: Show HN: Coinhive – Embeddable JavaScript Crypto Miner

#54

Post by clarry »

IanDrake wrote: post #40
TeMPOraL wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No reason not to treat it just as badly as attempts to mine bitcoin off your CPU. Both of those waste your resources, for someone else's profits, without your consent.

Devils advocate here. Isn't just visiting the site giving consent to allow the sandbox (browser) to be utilized as the site directs? This is an extreme case, granted, but it's still within the bounds of the sandbox. Perhaps we'll have a new browser setting soon to throttle this type of thing instead of having to go whole hog and turn of JavaScript.

It is giving consent, in some sense. But make a popular website use visitors' browsers to launch a DDoS attack and you'll find that "anything goes as long as it's the bounds of the sandbox" doesn't really apply.

Apart from that, people can easily take a different view altogether. When I visit a site, I download some bits. Doing so I don't consent to anything -- what I do with these bits is up to me.

Re: Show HN: Coinhive – Embeddable JavaScript Crypto Miner

#55

Post by Raphmedia »

cvsh wrote: post #18
merkaloid wrote: post #8

Cant imagine that anyone blocking ads wouldnt also block this

Why? It isn't an ad. Most users block ads because they find ads annoying, not because of script bloat.

Aren't we blocking ads to cut websites's revenue streams?

Re: Show HN: Coinhive – Embeddable JavaScript Crypto Miner

#56

Post by singularity2001 »

xd1936 wrote: post #45
throwaway2016a wrote: post #41

This is much better than I thought it would be. I wonder how many commentors actually tried the demos. Two of the three ways I could see on the page to use it involve delaying the user slightly (while doing a proof of work) after a checkbox or link is clicked. Not constantly running in the background. The one that does constantly run requires clicking a play button, which seems "opt-in" to me. They also have some rev…

I'm also curious about the Captcha. It's a great idea, but what's to say that bots won't be able to run it as well?

they are able to run it but at high costs. deterring some spammers in some cases.

Re: Show HN: Coinhive – Embeddable JavaScript Crypto Miner

#58

Post by maxencecornet »

mtve wrote: post #57

why not webassembly? it could be ~10 times speedup.

It's actually using webassembly if available, otherwise it fallbacks on asm.js

>If true, the miner will always use the asm.js implementation of the hashing algorithm. If false, the miner will use the faster WebAssembly version if supported and otherwise fall back to asm.js. The default is false.

Source : https://coin-hive.com/documentation/miner

Re: Show HN: Coinhive – Embeddable JavaScript Crypto Miner

#59

Post by yagodragon »

I run the demo miner on the coinhive landing page for about 1 minute and chose 1 thread (my laptop has 4 threads). I then noticed that the 100% cpu load kept rotating between the 4 threads that my cpu has. Is this a common behavior in cpu mining (because of cpu pipelining) or is this a feature that the developer implemented? How does this affect the cpu performance and general work load? Is it possible to edit the script to target 50% cpu usage on all threads? Please excuse my ignorance.

Re: Show HN: Coinhive – Embeddable JavaScript Crypto Miner

#60

Post by mtve »

maxencecornet wrote: post #58
mtve wrote: post #57

why not webassembly? it could be ~10 times speedup.

It's actually using webassembly if available, otherwise it fallbacks on asm.js >If true, the miner will always use the asm.js implementation of the hashing algorithm. If false, the miner will use the faster WebAssembly version if supported and otherwise fall back to asm.js. The default is false. Source : https://coin-hive.com/documentation/miner

that's great.
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