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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

#241

Post by TeMPOraL »

phailhaus wrote: post #236
TeMPOraL wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am. That's literally how HTTP, and broadly the Internet , works. If you want to put restrictions on how your site is meant to be used, use appropriate protocol means. Like, respond with 402, or simply don't serve content until I pay you / agree to display ads / agree to run your cryptocoin miners / whatever. Ads, and sneaky cryptocoin mining scripts, are underhand attempts at having a cake and eating it too. Becaus…

> Ads, and sneaky cryptocoin mining scripts, are underhand attempts at having a cake and eating it too Like I already said, I'm fine with it if they're transparent about what they're doing . Miners should not run by default, they should get the user's permission first. If they refuse, don't serve the site.

Yes, we agree on that. If and only if they're transparent about the requirements, they can demand whatever they want. They're also free to back those requirements up with tech to get rid of the users who, as you called it, feel entitled anyway.

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

#242

Post by TeMPOraL »

wtallis wrote: post #240
phailhaus wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or I mean, you can just ask if the user is okay with the site running a miner, and if they refuse then don't serve the content. That's what I mean by transparency.

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

You can't; hence you should back it up with tech checking if the user is complying with your requirements.

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

#243

Post by ComputerGuru »

amelius wrote: post #206
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 think browsers and OSes need to improve to make mining in the background possible such that the UX is not hampered in any way. Right now, with Javascript in the same thread as the UI, that seems not really possible.

They already have. It’s called using a web worker.

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

#244

Post by rootlocus »

outoftacos wrote: post #137
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…

"Solution" wow, just step back a second here, I never signed up for advertisements AT ALL, much less background CPU miners for shady schemes. Solution is the last word to use, there is no problem first off and malware is not how you would solve this fantasy of a "problem".

> there is no problem first off and malware is not how you would solve this fantasy of a "problem".

If you think consuming content online without paying anything for it isn't a problem, you're wrong and it's not even debatable [1]. I'm not saying this is a good solution. I'm just pointing out it's not a "fantasy" of a problem.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq2_wSsDwkQ

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

#245

Post by rootlocus »

Nursie wrote: post #193
phailhaus wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to remember that you're not entitled to their server resources. If you are not okay with a CPU miner, then don't use their site. I'm okay with this as long as they are 100% transparent about their monetization scheme.

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.

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

#246

Post by amelius »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #243
amelius wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think browsers and OSes need to improve to make mining in the background possible such that the UX is not hampered in any way. Right now, with Javascript in the same thread as the UI, that seems not really possible.

They already have. It’s called using a web worker.

Still, such threads get the same priority as other threads, instead of running in pure idle time.

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

#247

Post by otakucode »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #111
Tharre wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the ads are burned into the stream, so you can't block them. Source? Adblock seems to work fine.

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 in the very early 2000s... so I'd expect this would not be difficult at all now. The software back then did raw processing of the stream and, as I understood it, looked for stacks of I-frames and fade-to-black as well as volume differences. Those stats might be different for online ads, but a little experimentation would solve it.

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

#248

Post by phailhaus »

wtallis wrote: post #240
phailhaus wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or I mean, you can just ask if the user is okay with the site running a miner, and if they refuse then don't serve the content. That's what I mean by transparency.

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.

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

#249

Post by hobofan »

paultopia wrote: post #145
icebraining wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What law do you think would prohibit this?

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.

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

#250

Post by amriksohata »

drusepth wrote: post #218
amriksohata wrote: post #16

Can anyone explain to me like I'm a five year old why would anyone need to block coin miners on their browser and why they would be mining there in the first place?

Why someone is mining there in the first place: - A website author can include a script for their _users_ to mine coins for the website author, which effectively distributes work across many machines you don't own. - This means, instead of mining on just your own machine, you're effectively mining across N machines (however many users you have) as long as they have your website open (at a ~60% efficiency rate accordi…

thanks
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