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CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers

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Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers

#141

Post by rdlecler1 »

csomar wrote: post #121
rdlecler1 wrote: post #117

In the absence of an effective micropayment method, I could see this exchange of mining for content becoming main stream that replaces commercials. The cost to the viewer is ultimately a few cents of electricity, without the need for a bank account information, which the content producer indirectly turns into cash.

The problem is that mining through the browser is very inefficient. I don't have numbers but it'd probably cost an order of magnitude more, at least, to mine on the browser. And I'm talking about CPU cryptos, forget about bitcoin.

If this became mainstream I’m sure we would find more efficient solutions.

Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers

#142

Post by viraptor »

brailsafe wrote: post #68

I bet some clever person on the marketing team just went ahead and inserted the tag. My first experience on a large corporate dev team was eye-opening. While the core product code was version controlled and reviewed, the marketing team had the power to insert any kind of scripts onto the page without clearance. In theory, anything new on the page would require many ridiculous meetings. In practice, they could and did…

> they could and did put in whatever through a third-party like New Relic.

They didn't put anything through the third-party. It's commented as NewRelic, but anyone even glancing at the link would notice this is completely wrong.

Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers

#143

Post by rdlecler1 »

simias wrote: post #124
rdlecler1 wrote: post #117

In the absence of an effective micropayment method, I could see this exchange of mining for content becoming main stream that replaces commercials. The cost to the viewer is ultimately a few cents of electricity, without the need for a bank account information, which the content producer indirectly turns into cash.

The problem is that mining is effectively a zero-sum game (value of the underlying cryptocurrency notwithstanding). The more people mine the less each individual hash is worth. If this becomes mainstream the overall difficulty of the cryptocurrency they're mining will raise making it less rewarding. In other words you have a "micropayment" method where you can't really fix the price unless you're willing to force the…

I’m no economist, but it seems like the millions of dollars of electricity that have gone into mining crypto currencies is transferred into the underlying value of the crypto currency. So if I know that it will take $100m of today’s money to mine crypto currency for the next year, then I would expect the total market cap of that crypto currency to rise by at least $100m with a premium for speculation and other supply demand issues. So in that sense the value of the mined currency should increase with the mining cost.

Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers

#144

Post by Nursie »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #117

In the absence of an effective micropayment method, I could see this exchange of mining for content becoming main stream that replaces commercials. The cost to the viewer is ultimately a few cents of electricity, without the need for a bank account information, which the content producer indirectly turns into cash.

>> mining for content becoming main stream that replaces commercials

Replaces? Like they'll ever give those up...

Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers

#145

Post by rdlecler1 »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #117

In the absence of an effective micropayment method, I could see this exchange of mining for content becoming main stream that replaces commercials. The cost to the viewer is ultimately a few cents of electricity, without the need for a bank account information, which the content producer indirectly turns into cash.

Legal uncertainty aside, I could also see an entity like Facebook running their own ICO and then using that crypto currency for micro payments and other transactions on the Facebook platform. In some ways that crypto currency would becomes the official currency of Facebook’s virtual nation state.

Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers

#146

Post by Nursie »

sumitgt wrote: post #3

Actually, why is this not a potential legitimate business model? I let you stream content for free and you let me mine cryto-coins with your spare CPU cycles while you watch. Isn't that better for people who don't like all the tracking by ads?

Well at the moment, likely because people aren't being told about it...

Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers

#147

Post by viraptor »

NietTim wrote: post #115
callumjones wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NewRelic doesn’t let you add random JS, it only injects their browser monitoring script. Don’t spread fake news.

Right back at ya. https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/browser/new-relic-browser/ins...

What are you trying to show? The page describes either manually copying NR's snippet, or injecting it via an agent. But it's always going to point at the newrelic server.

Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers

#148

Post by simias »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #143
simias wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that mining is effectively a zero-sum game (value of the underlying cryptocurrency notwithstanding). The more people mine the less each individual hash is worth. If this becomes mainstream the overall difficulty of the cryptocurrency they're mining will raise making it less rewarding. In other words you have a "micropayment" method where you can't really fix the price unless you're willing to force the…

I’m no economist, but it seems like the millions of dollars of electricity that have gone into mining crypto currencies is transferred into the underlying value of the crypto currency. So if I know that it will take $100m of today’s money to mine crypto currency for the next year, then I would expect the total market cap of that crypto currency to rise by at least $100m with a premium for speculation and other supply…

It's the other way around really, the value of the crypto dictates how much money you can spend mining it and still break even. Except then the difficulty will increase and even things out. Having more miners could increase the trust in the currency and increase its value but it's not directly correlated.

Mining from a random browser will almost certainly never be cost effective for the user, you're better off buying or renting dedicated hardware, mine on it and use the reward to pay for microtransactions.

Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers

#149

Post by tyler33 »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #117

In the absence of an effective micropayment method, I could see this exchange of mining for content becoming main stream that replaces commercials. The cost to the viewer is ultimately a few cents of electricity, without the need for a bank account information, which the content producer indirectly turns into cash.

Don't worry, it is too much profitable ads than mining, and this difference increase every day

Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers

#150

Post by andai »

kevan wrote: post #91
brailsafe wrote: post #68

I bet some clever person on the marketing team just went ahead and inserted the tag. My first experience on a large corporate dev team was eye-opening. While the core product code was version controlled and reviewed, the marketing team had the power to insert any kind of scripts onto the page without clearance. In theory, anything new on the page would require many ridiculous meetings. In practice, they could and did…

Tealium was my worst enemy at a previous job. 5 different departments had access to dump whatever garbage scripts they wanted on the website with no auditing by devs to make sure it wouldn't break things. I eventually put in a feature flag to nuke everything from Tealium to help us debug problems because so many were caused by rogue scripts. An unexpected side benefit was being able to demonstrate side by side the ef…

So this is why "modern" websites take 30 seconds to load!
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