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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

#261

Post by aoeusnth1 »

thinkloop wrote: post #258
aoeusnth1 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Call it what you want, but the language of "negative externality" is too clinical in my opinion when it refers to killing people and putting the stability of the entire planet at risk, especially when perfectly adequate non-destructive PoW systems exist, namely, PoS.

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

#262

Post by drumttocs8 »

stordoff wrote: post #235
drumttocs8 wrote: post #234

Trading content for processing power seems like a logical and satisfactory solution to an age-old problem- people wanting free stuff, businesses wanting to stay in business. I think it's a beautiful example of new economic models enabled by tech. Are people's main concerns battery life/power usage?

My concern is that I can't leave a tab open long-term without risking a performance hit. Of course that's also true now (with ads or heavy JS), but those generally aren't deliberately trying to induce high(er) CPU loads.

It makes sense. Maybe a cryptocurrency could be used to symbolize that transaction, and limit the amount of allowed processing power.

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

#263

Post by TeMPOraL »

monsieurbanana wrote: post #259
TeMPOraL wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One straightforward (though possibly not the best) way: just ban ads on-line.

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

#264

Post by thinkloop »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #261
thinkloop wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Call it what you want, but the language of "negative externality" is too clinical in my opinion when it refers to killing people and putting the stability of the entire planet at risk, especially when perfectly adequate non-destructive PoW systems exist, namely, PoS.

I am a fan of PoS, but it is still different from PoW, with its own set of risks and benefits. Decentralized databases are important and society should have redundancy in their implementations. PoW is still the gold standard.

There are many things that cost the environment much more than Bitcoin, that are much less useful (almost everything?), where is the resistance to those.

Basically if you use resources to build a machine that does something, or just burn the equivalent amount of resources to achieve the same thing, it's about the same.

Cruise ships probably harm the environment significantly more than Bitcoin, are you mad at them?

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

#265

Post by lagadu »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #224
cpeterso wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not expect miners to voluntarily stop mining just because the user agent reports low battery. Any miners that care about mobile users could check the user agent string and throttle mining.

If the battery API ever becomes a thing, the first thing I will do is to hack the browser to perpetually report an almost-dying battery. Similarly, if there ever comes a standard for network link quality, I'll make my browser report I'm on a 56k modem. The reason is simple: whatever cruft the site decides to only serve to high-end users is the cruft I'm very much not interested in seeing. And because I'm definitely n…

It'd be fine. You would do that, I would do that and most people here would do that. The vast majority of users would not, it's just like adblockers: only a minority uses them.

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

#266

Post by lagadu »

phailhaus wrote: post #169
outoftacos wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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".

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.

If the server feels I'm not entitled to its resources, the server is welcome to respond with a 402 code.

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

#267

Post by lagadu »

eyezick wrote: post #3
ComputerGuru wrote: post #2

For context: The Pirate Bay is now launching a javascript-based Monero miner in all visitors' browsers to mine coins for them in the background (possibly as an alternative to ads).

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

Not for XMR: a good 6+ core cpu will mine 1/3 to 1/2 of what a 1080ti mines using the native miners.

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

#268

Post by lagadu »

IamCarbonMan wrote: post #112
mikeash wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall that for Bitcoin, the profit was something like a billionth of a cent per user-hour. So it would be hard to be profitable even if all you're paying for is a little engineer time to deploy it. I assumed this whole notion of browser mining as a replacement for ads was just a laugh, but maybe not. Are there coins where it can actually make a noticeable amount of money?

That's the reason TPB is using Monero. It was specifically designed to be mined on consumer CPUs with little to no benefit to running on a GPU or ASIC.

That's partially incorrect. While XMR is very resistant to ASICs and not very GPU friendly, a high-end consumer GPU will still mine over 2x as much as a high-end consumer CPU.

edit: of course because the majority of users have integrated gpus, cpu mining will typically be faster.

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

#269

Post by wlievens »

thinkloop wrote: post #264
aoeusnth1 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call it what you want, but the language of "negative externality" is too clinical in my opinion when it refers to killing people and putting the stability of the entire planet at risk, especially when perfectly adequate non-destructive PoW systems exist, namely, PoS.

I am a fan of PoS, but it is still different from PoW, with its own set of risks and benefits. Decentralized databases are important and society should have redundancy in their implementations. PoW is still the gold standard. There are many things that cost the environment much more than Bitcoin, that are much less useful (almost everything?), where is the resistance to those. Basically if you use resources to build…

Would cruise ships still harm the environment more than an entire world economy based on PoW cryptocurrency?
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